MAGICAL STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
SECRETS OF PATHWORKING
by Osborne Phillips

MODULE 7.1

http://www.aurumsolis.co.uk
E-mail: paracletian@tiscali.co.uk

Copyright © 2002 by Leon Barcynski
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
 in any form or by any means 
without prior permission in writing of the author

MSC MODULE 7
Unit 1                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
THE 26th PATH: NORMAL WORKING

CORRESPONDENCES
Sephirah of commencement
	Greek name: Lamprotesis.
	Hebrew name: Hod. 
	English name: Splendour.
	Aurum Solis Divine Name: AZOTH.
	Hebrew Divine Name: ELOHIM TZABAOTH.
	Planetary correspondence: Mercury.
	Element: Water.	
Colours: Orange, black, white.
Path of the Tree of Life
	Titles: The 26th Path; the Renewing Intelligence.
	Aurum Solis Divine Name: IALDABAOTH.
	Hebrew Divine Name: YHVH ELOHIM.
	Philosophic attribution: Aristotelianism, especially of the Nicomachean Ethics.
	Influence: Capricorn (the Goat).
	Hebrew letter: Ayin (Eye).
	Magical Image: Tarot Arcanum XV, The Devil.
	Planetary correspondences: Saturn.
Element of the Path: Earth.
	Magical phenomena: The dance of the “Sabbat”, the power of the Fountain of the Eye, the Lake of Fire, the vision of the Philosophers’ Stone, the vision of the Golden Age.
Sephirah of destination
	Greek name: Kalon.
	Hebrew name: Tiphareth.
	English name: Beauty.
	Aurum Solis Divine Name: ONOPHIS.
	Hebrew Divine Name: YHVH ELOAH V’DAATH.
	Planetary correspondence: The Sun. 
	Number: 6.
	Element: Air.
	Magical phenomenon: Vision of the world of the four elements in its essential goodness.

PRELIMINARIES
1 – The participants stand in a circle around the altar.
2 – The battery is sounded: a single stroke of bell or gavel.
3 – The director states:
	I proclaim a working of the Twenty-sixth Path of the Tree of Life!
4 – All link hands right over left.
5 – The director proclaims:
	The 26th Path is the Renewing Intelligence, so named because by means of it everything which is capable of change is brought by the Holy One to a new creation.
6 – The participants visualize a single sphere of white light above the centre of the circle. 
	This sphere grows brighter and more radiant, until the light from it encompasses all participants.
7 – The director proclaims verse XXVI of The Song of Praises:
Out of the wellspring of forms
Filling the wide spheres with its fashionings
Myriad images rise,
Wild or serene, fleshly, ethereal:
Hail, O thou Eye that hast seen
All things that are, Knowledge to gaze on them
Blessing their goodliness!
8 – All participants now visualize a wall of white light enclosing their circle and revolving anti-clockwise; then they visualize a wall of blue light, revolving clockwise about their circle and replacing the wall of white light.
9 – After a few moments, all visualization is allowed to fade from consciousness.
10 – The participants unlink hands and seat themselves. They close their eyes and breathe in a steady rhythm, evenly and quietly.
11 – The director now says:
The Song of Praises seems to glance at the verse in Genesis in which God beholds all of his new creation and sees it to be very good.
The goodness of all the Worlds, including the material universe, is an essential part of Qabalistic teaching. Yet at some points in the Pathworkings, as in the teachings of a number of exoteric religions, it appears that we human beings can endorse the Divine approval only “at our peril”. This needs to be understood.
A foreshadowing of this warning occurred in the working of the 32nd Path, when we had to turn away from materiality to begin our upward progress. Our own body is a part of the material world, and linked closely to it is our emotional-instinctual nature, the Nephesh. Our rational consciousness, which is of a higher order, is committed in the unity of our personality to love and care for this subrational and childlike part of us. But to show true love for a child is not to submit oneself to its wayward impulses. One must govern the child one loves. One must also govern the lower nature that one loves, even though in both cases it is healthy and delightful to share sometimes in their play. The rational mind thus needs to develop into the full Ruach consciousness which is the vehicle of the supernal, Intuitive Mind: and as soon as it turns towards that illumination, the rational mind will begin to enter into the right ordering of its own relationship with the lower self. 
If, instead of thus looking upwards, the consciousness were to habituate itself to being dominated by the Nephesh and by the physical body, then the Higher Self (the supernal level of the psyche) would be unable to direct the rational consciousness in the governance of the whole. Even rationality itself would fail. This possibility of disintegration within the psyche is, in general terms, the source of the grave warnings involved in the moral teachings of the various religions.
This Qabalistic doctrine indicates a uniquely human problem. Thus, in the present Pathworking, the elemental beings, the animals and the children below the age of reason who participate in the “Sabbat” are but enjoying the astral world in which they are fully at home. Our own Nephesh is at home in that World too, but as whole and adult persons we cannot find our guiding vision at that level. That is why the completion of this Path is denied to us until we have gained the Sun Sphere by the authentic portal of the 25th Path. Then, certainly, we can pass through the purifying Lake of Fire and, with our higher discernment, see the true mystical goodness and beauty of the material and astral worlds. The vision of the Golden Age and the transmuting power of the Philosophers’ Stone indicate the profound significance of the change of viewpoint. Thus The 32 Paths of Wisdom calls this Path the Renewing Intelligence, “because by means of it everything which is capable of change is brought by the Holy One to a new creation.”
12 – After a suitable pause for reflection, the director sounds the battery once, and makes the invocation:
	May we be encompassed by the power of the name AZOTH (or ELOHIM TZABAOTH) and established in Hod, Splendour.
May the portal of the 26th Path be opened to us, and may we journey thereon in the power of the name IALDABAOTH (or YHVH ELOHIM) to the gate of the Sphere of Tiphareth, Beauty. 
And, in the name ONOPHIS (or YHVH ELOAH V’DAATH), may the gate of Tiphareth be opened to us and may we be firmly established in the wonders of that Sphere.
13 – The battery is sounded once, and the Pathworking commences.

THE WORKING OF THE TWENTY-SIXTH PATH

Oration
1
We stand in a place that is dark and shadowy, although the light is sufficient for us to perceive our surroundings. This is a temple, octagonal in shape. Eight pillars, equally placed a few feet within the enclosing walls, are connected to each other by Gothic arches so as to form a colonnade surrounding the central space. High up in each of these eight arches hangs a small lamp that burns with an orange flame. In the centre of the temple, directly before us, stands the Bomos draped with the same vivid colour; upon it is the Mystical Tessera, and above it hangs the Lamp of the Mysteries, of greater magnitude than the other lamps and burning with a clear white flame.
	Behind us, we know, is the doorway to the outer world with the two columns, Machetes and Nomothetes. Before us, beyond the Bomos, in the arch directly opposite to the door, stands a tall Caduceus of marble, carved, and inlaid with stones of many colours. The two serpents, one dark and one light, are entwined about the central staff. Their scales gleam with lozenge shapes of iridescent lustre: the dark one with black opal and haematite, the light one with aquamarine and mother of pearl. The staff is of brown marble, very plainly carved with the appearance of wood, but at its head are extended two delicately plumed wings, their glistening crystalline whiteness touched into splendour by the fiery radiance of the lamp in the arch above.
	  We approach the Caduceus more closely, to consider it and to reflect upon something of its significance. The serpents cling tautly about the staff, their eyes of onyx shining lifelike. Their vitality gives force and meaning to the whole Caduceus: just as the person in whom the powers of sex are alive and equilibrated is an infinitely more dynamic individual than one in whom those powers are inert, even though both states could be described as conditions of balance and repose. 
	But yet it is not from the serpents that the Caduceus gains its stability and unity, but from the central rod; and it is the rod, moreover, which is crowned with those white and shining wings of power. Even thus, in the diversity of magical knowledge and experience that we seek, we need also a central reality that shall give strength and unity to the whole, a reality that shall lift us on wings of inspiration.
	Somewhat to the right of the Caduceus, in the wall of the temple, is a narrow door which stands slightly ajar, and which leads, as we perceive, to the outside. We gaze once more at the Caduceus to fix its image in our mind, and then we move to this door and, opening it, look out to the open air.
	The light outside scarcely appears to be brighter than that within the temple. Night is approaching, and the sky is filled with swiftly moving dark clouds. A gust of wind dashes the cold drops of a transient shower across our cheeks. The twisted boughs of a leafless tree nearby creak as they sway to and fro, and beyond the tree the road takes a slowly descending course through a bare landscape to disappear into the thick forest below. Over this wild and gloomy scene, the sky between the flying clouds glows with the lurid fire of a diffused and fading sunset. Assuredly this is not a prospect to tempt the timid, but we recognise this Path as a needful part of our experience and we do not expect all our progress to be made beneath smiling skies. Resolutely we step forth from the doorway of the temple.
2
	As soon as we are moving along the road, much of its threatened unpleasantness is gone. The brief shower is over, we become accustomed to the gloom, the air is invigorating and the slight downward slope gives impetus to our steps. It would not be difficult to travel a long distance in these conditions, and the austere countryside offers us no distractions. As our power of sight adapts itself to the shadowy road we fail to notice how fast the meagre light is fading, until we enter the first fringe of the forest and find ourselves all at once in total blackness.
	We stand still. The wind has ceased, and the darkness is silent, without stir. Wrapped in leaden night we remain thus motionless while long minutes pass. This deeper blackness does not become penetrable to us, nor do we have any idea what direction to take, if indeed we can take any. The forest is no longer present to us; in imagination we seem encompassed by a void that is empty and yet oppressive, a waste region of leaden air. A drowsiness as of sleep begins to settle upon our unoccupied senses. Our situation in space and time becomes less relevant; the mind begins to feel free to make its own excursions.
	This sense of space and freedom is abruptly ended by a harsh animal sound that seems near a hand, yet without specific direction. A goose cackles, a goat begins to bleat, an ass brays; then all these sounds blend into what seems to be wild mocking laughter. Then abruptly again there is silence. Again we know we are in the forest, for now we are conscious of the odour of dead leaves that hangs in the heavy air.
	All at once a gleam of radiance is reflected on the trees in front of us, and we turn to discover its source. We are not alone in travelling this desolate path. The grim nature of the place where we are, and the fact that the newcomer is indeed a Being of Light, make him very welcome to us; otherwise we might demur at the company of so strange a figure.
	His features are thin and severe. He is clean-shaven, dark of complexion, with narrow face, high forehead and bright, piercing eyes. His bearing is stately and commanding. His lean angular figure is wrapped in a heavy cloak of dark brown cloth, with in-woven geometric designs in red-brown, black and white, a wide border embroidered in rich, bright colours, and a tasselled fringe. Beneath the cloak he wears a robe of heavy unbleached linen, extending to mid-calf. On his feet are sandals ornamented upon the instep with a mosaic of semiprecious stones. His hair is black, with a heavy forelock falling upon his brow; and at the sides of this there arise two tall spiral horns curving slightly backwards, each ending in a sharp point tipped with a sheath of obsidian. His whole figure is surrounded with a radiant nimbus of white light. He treads this wild path with easy grace, and soon comes up with us.
	He passes us, then after a couple of paces he turns and looks at us inquiringly. His austere, resolute mouth remains closed, and plainly he intends no conversation with us. We ask him, however, if he will guide us upon this Path; and after regarding us a little longer he turns about and, with a gesture that bids us to follow, proceeds again upon his way.
3
	Now, in the light shed by the nimbus of our guide, we advance easily. We pass beneath the high vaulted branches of majestic trees, through thickets of lesser growth where our guide unerringly finds the hidden track ways, through dim hollows in which we skirt the margin of black pools, and over ridges where mighty roots form the steps and terraces by which we mount.
	At last we emerge from the forest, and, our luminous guide still going before us, we proceed steadily under the thick darkness of the night sky.
	And now our inner faculties overlay the darkness with forms and colours of pure light.
We stop as we look at a high cone shaped mound, lonely and abandoned as it is to outward seeming. To it we behold advancing the rich pageantry of a great funeral procession, even though we know that what we are witnessing took place ages upon ages past, in most ancient time. It is the burial of a king or a mighty chieftain, and in the procession we see proud armoured warriors, ascetic priests in fantastic and sumptuous regalia, barbaric banners glittering with gold and gems, totemic masks and effigies stained with bright pigments – each of which would have been prepared with its own mysterious rite. We see the corpse carried seated upright in a litter, crowned and robed magnificently, and accompanied by a host of incense-bearers, singers and flagellant dancers. With great solemnity the corpse is conducted into the prepared mound, then the entrance is sealed. The envisioned concourse of people fades slowly from our sight. But, stationed even yet about the mound, we behold those elemental entities which in the funeral rites the priests invoked to guard the tomb: those beings which have long trumpet-shaped muzzles to proclaim the deeds of the departed, those others with diamond-shaped sea green eyes to weep for his death, those again which have wings and talons of pure flame to menace mortals who would desecrate or plunder, and lastly those which have teeth of granite rock to crush such as will not take warning. These four cohorts of elementals remain, we perceive, couched even now at the four quarters of the forgotten mound; the place is most regal, most mournful and most desolate. Our guide moves silently away, and we follow.
Now the path takes a slight upward inclination, leading through rough grassland where we might stumble but for the bright nimbus of him who goes ahead of us. As we move forward, once more phantasmal forms appear against the heavy darkness.     
Amid acclamations and feasting, a young ruler comes to power. He is dressed with showy richness that might seem simple-minded, but he is not that. His cool, sardonic expression masks a fixed resolve. The people extol him because the fountains daily flow with wine, and sweet oil burns night after night in festive lamps and beacons. But as he sits among the elders and sages, even in his silence his ironic smile and holiday attire mock their gravity; and when he is appealed to for judgment in matters of law, we see him with that same smile grant mercy to the merciless and bid the victims to learn wisdom. Everywhere he challenges institution and custom, so that at last even the assassin who slays him brings about no peace, but only precipitates civil war and ruin. These scenes fade from our vision in an instant of time, like a dream; but the conflict between law and lawlessness has sounded a timeless note of tragedy, for law and lawlessness both are in their nature Saturnian, primeval.
More steeply now the path mounts up and up. The night sky is covered with a haze that emits a faint and leaden light, and this is reflected upon the bare rocks of the region we have now entered. At last, keeping in the tracks of our silent but sure-footed guide, we reach the level surface of a barren plateau.
4
	We advance to the centre of this space, where, in an elliptical depression, is the unguarded pit of what appears to be a large well. Near this our guide halts, and as we follow his example we look down into the well. No water is visible, but the depths of the pit glimmer with what seems to be black, swirling light. 
	Now we turn our attention again to the surrounding plateau, and become aware that this place is not empty. Presences that are not yet visible to us, both human and other than human, are gathering in this area. We sense their approach even as we might feel and hear the rushing of a great wind, but this is an inward feeling and hearing and no wind stirs. Over and above this movement, too, we are aware of a force more subtle yet stronger, a watchful force that moves not but which is summoning and drawing those that approach. We feel the compelling desire with which this summoning force is pervaded, and as the atmosphere thickens and presses inward with the coming of the responding entities we strive to see them. We are eager to behold what manner of guests are awaited with such bodiless eagerness, such supra-sensual avidity. Striving to penetrate the darkness with our questing gaze, we discern only a transparent quivering of the air, only a brief and changeful movement of evanescent masses. 
	The mind’s eye, however, clothes our inward impressions with vivid form and colour that we may consciously know what is taking place. Some nude, some clad in fanciful garments, a number of youthful figures moves gracefully across our vision. Their hair streams with leaves of vine and of ivy, and with huge blossoms crimson and gold; but they are not wearing garlands, it is their hair itself that has budded forth in this exuberance.
	Now, with laughter and violent gesture, other beings less delicate crowd upon our consciousness: these appear as bearded men, powerfully muscled but of no great stature, seeming at first to be clad in the skins of animals. The rough fur, however, is their own, and their own are the short fox-like tails. These are satyrs, male elemental being who snatch every pretext for rough revelry and sexual enjoyment. Now, swiftly overtaking them and with shrill cries inviting their pursuit, are their female counterparts the amorous nymphs of mountain, forest and river. 
	Besides these, mingling with the increasing throng of humans and elementals, are a number of natural animals: horses, cattle, goats, pigs and dogs as well as some of the wilder sort. Now and then a cat rides the shoulders of man or woman, or a human rides a horse or a bullock into the concourse, but far more numerous than these are the glimpses we catch of beings neither truly beast nor human: human countenances on bird or gliding serpent, velvety muzzles illumined with human eyes, human forms with clawed or hoof-like extremities. Yet no participant shows hostility to another. 
	Fleeting although our vision is of all these beings, we know they are all merging into a riotous dance that revolves, though at a distance, about the dark well by which we are standing. It is from the black swirling depths of the well, or rather from the quivering air above it, that the strange compulsion emanates which governs this otherwise ungoverned assembly. At first the movement of the dance is confused, uncertain: some in the throng have arrived laden with provision for eating and drinking, some have musical instruments in which they delight. By degrees however there emerges a circling movement of complex and changeful involutions, in which the motley host of dancers proceeds like the joyous procession of some great carnival.
	The pace of the dance quickens as the confusion clears. Its rhythm, stressed by multitudinous footfall and by clapping hands, by drum, castanet and voice, becomes all-pervasive while the movements of the dancers become more extravagant and instinctual. Unreason holds sway.
	Those beings that are not wholly caught into the dance itself, nonetheless show in their own manner their oneness with the joyous and heedless will of the gathering. Some participants leave its sweeping circle, to couple in obsessive embrace on its inner fringe, where also are gathered many less active sharers in the scene. There are children, too, in this astral festival, drawn simply as the animals are by its primal vitality, or who knows by what call of inherited race or of past incarnation? Here in this inner ring, among the drinkers and onlookers and lovers are young infants, contentedly drawing sweet milk from the breasts of young matrons or from the udders of she-goats, or sucking the juice of grapes or nectarines held to their mouths by playmates. The older children are for the most part indistinguishable among the adults, but here and there we see a small figure carried high among the dancers, bestriding the shaggy neck of a satyr or seated upon the dimpled motherly shoulders of a Bacchanal. These children laugh and crow as they sway in the dance, looking with innocent acceptance upon scenes which many a hardened adult would repudiate.
	Every aspect of life that seeks fulfilment is here, the energies of all gathered up into the vortex of the rhythmic stampede that whirls, ever faster and more vertiginously, about the conscious, hungry and swirling Eye of the central pit. And we perceive by the pulsing of the air above the pit that all those beings who make glad sounds and dance, who eat, drink or dream, who lust and enjoy for themselves, as it seems, and for their fellows, are in truth yielding up the gathered honey and the smoking incense of their experience to nourish and to enkindle the questing and perfervid Well of the Eye.
	In a sudden instant of silence the thread of frenzy snaps. Each entity remains as if frozen, all at once void of emotion and of impulse; then the still figures with one accord slowly turn their gaze to the centre of the circle. We, too, who are standing near the pit, look to it for a resolution of this juncture.
	The silence is only of a moment’s duration. The earth trembles underfoot as a mighty thunder sounds from the depth, then from the pit a vast fountain of blazing light mounts to the blackness of the heavens. At an incalculable height the light changes; it splinters and coruscates, spreading in all directions as if to create a new cosmos of fire, ablaze with every fragmented colour of the spectrum. Then those whirling and scattered fires turn and rush downwards, descending upon every living entity upon the plateau. Beast and human, elemental being, astral traveller, dreamer – ourselves with all the rest – are overwhelmed and infused with this fiery rainbow of creative energy, the Fountain of the Eye. For a flashing moment of time we are aware only of the iridescent, dazzling light, engulfing us in its brightness.
5
	The moment passes, but everything around us is changed. 
	Now we are standing upon a small grassy hill in a deep valley. Our guide stands nearby, holding a lamp that burns with a bright golden light. None of those other beings whom we saw upon the plateau is here with us: all those lives are following their own proper paths, we realise, as we are following ours.
	The engulfing brightness has vanished, but we feel inspired, uplifted by it. Now to stand beneath the night sky is itself an intoxication, and the odour of wild herbs in the darkness is an exquisite and precious thing. The Fountain of the Eye is not a phenomenon that we left when we departed from the plateau, if indeed we have departed from it. The Fountain of the Eye is deep within us: the fountain itself, and not only the inspiration that it bestows. Upon this Path, no matter what we behold, whether inwardly or outwardly, the Fountain of the Eye is the experiencer, and continually the fragmented spectrum of its experience is flung back into the soul to germinate and to flash forth in ever new developments from the original.  
We recall the purpose with which we set out upon this Path, to find a central unity that would give purpose to all we might learn or discover. Does the Fountain of the Eye represent that central unity? – is the purpose of our life to be found in the continual flux and reflux of experience? – the giving of the will in all directions so as to make ourselves one with the universe around us, and in exchange to make the experience of the universe a part of ourselves? Whether or not this be our true objective on this Path, we each feel ourselves glowing inwardly with the glory of this concept, and mantled outwardly in the increasing resplendence of the rainbow light. We exult in its many-coloured brilliance, and even more in the conscious creative vitality that expands within us with the light’s increase. Each of us has a body, limbs, and features, composed entirely of scintillating energic light, whose radiance spreads outwardly to form a splendour all about us. We stand proudly, as beings transfigured: transfigured not by becoming other than we ever have been, but by coming to a conscious realisation of the power of our selfhood.
Now our guide holds aloft the lamp that he carries, and we understand that he is about to leave us. The golden light of the lamp becomes brighter and more luminous, increasing to an intense radiance in which his form fades from our sight, and we know he is gone from us.
The effulgence of the lamp however remains. It encompasses us, shines into us, and for a while we behold nothing but its dazzling golden splendour. Illuminating us through and through, it strips away from us even the rainbow fire in which we have gloried, the astral light of the Fountain of the Eye that had seemed so powerful.
6
Gradually, however, the light partially gathers density and materiality. All at once it darkens, and we find ourselves in a visible locality. Around us rise the irregular sides of a crater-like rocky hollow, near the centre of which we stand. The floor of the crater beneath our feet is dark and lustrous, like a smooth surface of obsidian: the crags and boulders forming the walls of the cup are of rough greyish rock, with no distinctive feature save at the four quarters.
	At each of those points, carved in high relief as if looking at us out of the living rock, is a fearsome and repellent head. These heads, although each differs from the rest in individual detail and character, yet are all of one general type: a crested saurian, beyond any natural crocodile or other reptile in ferocity, bestial comprehension and intensity of vigilance. So vigorously are these characteristics indicated that the images seem almost to be more than lifeless sculpture. They represent the Devourers, nightmare beings of the Capricornian road to the Sun-Sphere, watching for the unpurified. 
	The heavens above us are no longer radiant: instead, a lurid sky is filled with dense turbulent vapours, dark and menacing.
	A movement in the centre of the floor of the crater in which we stand attracts our attention, a stirring beneath its lustrous surface. There is an appearance as of a small spring gushing at that spot, sending forth not water but flame that spreads outwards in a circle: yet all is beneath the surface, a process apparently within the substance of the glassy rock. The smooth floor beneath our feet remains unimpaired and cool. We watch the fiery circle expanding outwards, the dark obsidian green changing within its widening circumference to a deep glowing red through which run sparkles and flashings of bright flame yellow. The circumference of the fire passes beneath our feet without causing us any sensation, and we continue watching as it proceeds outwards to the very edge of the floor of the crater. It reaches the rocky walls: the whole gleaming floor is of a vivid glowing red, like a window into the heart of a furnace, and we perceive that the vertical boundary of grey rock will halt its outward progress.
	For a moment it seems as if no further development is taking place. Then at some points round the circumference a thin film of smoke arises followed by transient sparks and delicate tongues of flame. Soon the entire circumference surrounding us is covered with upsurging molten fire, which begins to flow back upon the surface towards the centre. We are caught within a converging circle of liquid fire.
	Even at a distance we feel its scorching breath upon us. We see the random wisps of transparent flame going up from it into the quivering air. An incessant sighing and crackling goes up from it, and the heat as it draws nearer becomes intolerable. So as to delay the contact as long as possible we move to the very centre of the lake of fire, for such it has become; thus, when it reaches us, it strikes from all sides at once.
	The liquid flame laps about our feet and we are powerless in its grip. The very air burns around us, with a fire that consumes us, not outwardly but inwardly. Our moths are parched, our lungs scorched, our strength is drained from us. We feel ourselves to be burned, charred: yet our garments are not even singed.
	Flame dances before our eyes so that we do not see, but images of horror present themselves to our mind as if visibly. With a dizzy sensation of falling, we seem to be slipping down limitless burning precipices into illimitable seething gulfs of flame. The heads of the Devourers, animated now with a mocking semblance of life, leer at us with cunning eyes which seem to read within us every imaginable evil, or lurch towards us champing ravenous jaws which would seize on any prey within reach, guilty or innocent. And in the flickering shadows beyond, innumerable other heads lift themselves hyena-like to see what feasting the Devourers may leave for them.
	Yet all these shapes of horror are within us, and the fire consumes them. The fathomless gulfs of fear are gone, and we stand in the midst of the lake of fire. In place of the hideous Devourers, four noble gazelles now gaze upon us: beautiful deer-like creatures of the goat kind with long backward-pointing horns, and eyes of topaz. But these are not simply natural gazelles, for each has a third topaz eye which looks serenely forth from the middle of the forehead. These four images, like those of the Devourers, seem to have some qualities of life: but with these we are glad, for they represent the Watchers upon the Heights, sentinel beings who make known the approach of newcomers upon their way. 
	Now the burning flood gathers itself into a swift eddy, swirling around our feet at first, then rising up about us with a roaring and crackling like incessant thunder. Soon we are totally encased in this column of liquid flame: we breathe it, we radiate its heat as if we were one with it. We feel that we are utterly consumed, reduced to nothingness. A great sense of tragedy and loss overwhelms us but the fire whirls away the cries we would utter, and scorches the tears we would shed. Then it burns away the grief itself and the cause of the grief, so that we know these things too were but nightmares within ourselves. We feel that a great weight has been burned away from us, yet we are by no means destroyed. We are joyful, and truly ourselves.
7
	Suddenly the whole whirling column of fire in which we are contained lifts into the air and, light as we are and burned free of the dross which would have weighed us down, we rise within the flame. Rejoicing in our ascent, we are carried higher and higher: then, all at once, the column of fire disperses and is gone, leaving us free and poised in equilibrium, but also in darkness. The dazzling after-images of the flame vanish in their turn, and no doubt is possible: we are as if sealed in a silent and velvety blackness, in which no trace of stimulation from without reaches any of our senses. There is not even the slightest breath of sound, although we strain our ears for it, which might let us know whether we are still floating at the same spot, or rising up, or perhaps are drifting onwards or settling slowly down. As far as we can tell, our position remains unchanged. 
	We remain passive, since we have no alternative but to await the course of events. At last, still without any sound reaching us, we become aware of a light shining upon us from above. We look upwards to see its source.
	In the darkness there shows forth over our heads a glittering arc of light, like a crown, shining with every rainbow colour in far greater brightness than we saw those colours previously in the aura of each of us. As this glorious light ripples and flashes, we catch now and then a momentary glimpse of a beautiful and joyful face appearing out of the darkness, and illuminated by the brilliance: the face of some delicate spirit being, which has drawn near only to rejoice in the splendour.
	Now there appears more distinctly and constantly a winged and noble being, seemingly composed altogether of translucent crimson light, and bearing a torch whose flame is of the same colour. This being touches with the flame the many-coloured light of the crown, and each prismatic ray and spark in turn begins to change to that intense crimson.
	The winged shape vanishes, but the process of transformation continues: the arc of light, now completely crimson, begins to flash inwards, converging to a centre, gradually forming there into a sphere which is at first misty in outline but which is entirely of the same wondrous colour.
	The colour itself has an emotional quality of fascination that holds our attention. It is poignant as the heart’s desire, yet sweet as desire fulfilled. We would wish to grasp and hold it, to inhale it like the fragrance of red roses, to drink it like wine: yet we know it is our already, near and dear as the blood in our veins.
	While we reflect upon this paradox, the diffuse sphere into which the crimson light has been gathered becomes suddenly condensed, clear in outline and in character. All at once it is a perfectly spherical stone, translucent and lustrous, of the same pure crimson colour.
	Now another winged being appears, flying powerfully as if from a great distance. This being seems as if composed entirely of clear transparent crystal and carries a wand of pure whiteness. With this wand, the winged being, hovering, touches the crimson stone and then departs. The stone seems to tremble through its entire substance and turns slowly opalescent, then white as milk: but as we watch, the transformation continues yet further.
	The white sphere becomes more and more intensely luminous, and gives forth heat as well as light. The heat and light increase until the stone becomes a globe of white-hot incandescence, overwhelming in its intensity. That which had previously, as the red stone, seemed to be a part of our own nature now appears as quite other, alien and even menacing. Yet we cannot turn away from it, and each person’s heart begins to glow with white heat and light in response to the burning white stone. We look for some further visitant to come to our aid, but there is none. Only the searing white light itself is present to us.
8
	Suddenly with a deafening crash as of thunder, the white stone and its incandescence are gone. Bewildered and dazzled, we remain without moving until we can look about us.
	We are no longer in darkness: a new landscape surrounds us, and our feet rest upon a solid surface, although the sound of thunder is still heard until it dies away in the distance, and each of us still keeps at heart a spark, no longer menacing or alien, of the strong radiance of the white stone.
	We are looking upon a pleasant country scene, the strange quality of which does not at once impress us. The sun shines brightly from a blue sky. Before us lies a bountiful field of ripe grain, ready for harvesting: but as we consider it we wonder how it was sown, for it is not growing in the straight lines which, from time immemorial, mankind has made by one means or another for sowing grain. This field has grown of itself, and needs but the gathering. Near by stands a clump of un-pruned trees in all their natural glory, laden with rich fruits, while birds of bright plumage sing delightfully in the branches. A group of humans walk in a leisurely way across our line of vision, accompanied by playful animals that appear to be neither domesticated nor savage: the garments of the people are extremely simple without any suggestion of poverty, while men, women and children are all radiant with good health and outdoor living in a genial climate. Soon the music of strings and pipes is heard, and we realize that some rustic festivity is beginning.
	Of all the ages of human history, whether real or fabled, which have ever been described, the idyllic enchantment of this scene can belong only to one, and that is the true Golden Age itself!
	Mingled with the sounds of music of human making, a sweeter, shriller sound impinges on our ears. It holds the essence of sadness and of laughter, it is most delicate and subtle yet its piping is most masterful: it both suggests and inspires the human music which entwines with it. For a moment we feel impelled to go and seek the unseen musician, yet we do not move. We know we would go uphill through the trees, through a region of dappled sunlight where we should be astonished at the myriad forms of life thronging around us. Then we should come to the limit of the woods, and no bird nor beast, no basilisk or chimera would venture further. But if we ourselves went on, there where the bare rocks lie under the sun we should find the player, the Rustic Pan: we should look upon the terrible innocence which remains at the heart of the world. But to look into that infinite gulf of stark simplicity and unqualified truth is not part of our quest. 
We turn towards a stretch of level grassland, and take a faintly marked path that leads across it. We are approaching what at first we take to be a low-roofed but extensive building: but as we draw nearer, it proves to be a large circle of roughly squared megaliths, each upright being linked to each by an equally massive lintel. This is a temple of the Sun, as of ancient times, in all its primal simplicity and beauty. Its stones are of an opaque pale yellow laced with veins of metallic gold, glinting and sparkling in the light of the sun that shines from high in the sky. One group of megaliths however is more finely finished than the rest, and is evidently intended to form a ceremonial entrance to the circle. Of these, the right hand upright shines with the blaze of burnished gold, while the left hand upright is entirely of bright translucent green: while the lintel uniting them is of deep scarlet rock.
9
	We pass in through this ceremonial circle, and marvel at the noonday stillness that at once takes possession of the peaceful scene. The air moves only slightly, so that the grasses stir and nod occasionally without noticeable sound. Both the rocks and we are almost without shadow, for the sun is virtually at the zenith.
	Concentric with the large outer circle of rocks there is a small inner ring consisting only of eight megaliths with no lintels: four tall white rocks alternated with four red ones. We advance and reverently enter this central circle, which is the inner sanctuary of this solar temple. Within it, the palpable energy of the enmeshed lines of force is intense: from each red megalith to the others of the same colour in this circle, and from each white megalith to the other white ones, the lines of force flash so as to form an eight-pointed star. At the same time we feel another current that surrounds us, circulating from each rock to the next around this inner ring.
	Yet the power does not shut us away from the world of life outside, but on the contrary it unites us with that world more closely. The sun now stands at its exact noon height above our heads, the sweet breath of summer blossoms fitfully reaches us, and now and then the stillness is accentuated by the musical call of birds. In the distance, between the misty slopes of wooded hills, the brightness of blue sky and clear sunshine flashes in reflection from the surface of tranquil water. Over the grassy plain nearer at hand the hot air dances, filled with a myriad tiny sparkles of prismatic light. 
From this double ring of megaliths – another emblem, if we will have it so, of the Eye whose Path we have now completed – it is easy to look forth in peace, seeing with the vision of the spirit all that exists, and blessing it because of its essential goodness.

Peroration
	Now, having followed the Path of the Goat to its happy conclusion, we can look back upon some part of what we have attained with eyes that have already, upon the Path of the Arrow, come to see from the viewpoint of the Sphere of the Sun.
	We have passed through the purifying lake of solar flame. The burning away of dross in that lake of fire brings about a renewal, not a deprivation, of all the treasury of the lower nature. The rainbow light that is distilled from our life experience has become the basis of the very transmutation that has brought us to this temple of the Sun Sphere.
	The rainbow light is essentially the same as the colours of the Peacock’s Tail marking the first stage of success in preparing the Philosophers’ Stone. We have gazed in inward vision upon that wondrous Stone, in its ensuing stages of the Red and the White: and when the White Stone has passed from our sight, something of its effulgence and ferment has found place in our hearts. There it is to increase, glowing with its own spiritual incandescence, to set up its own traditional ferment so that it will ultimately transmute not only ourselves, but also every person and thing which comes into contact with us, all according to their own nature. For the Philosophers’ Stone is itself a symbol, a presentment of the Summum Bonum, that Highest Good which is the supreme goal of every destiny.
	From the viewpoint of this temple of the Sun Sphere, we contemplate all things in the glorious truth and beauty of their inner reality. The Golden Age is neither lost to us in a remote antiquity nor tantalizingly lodged in an equally remote and unattainable future time: it is a spiritual reality that rests now and continually at the heart of all phenomena.  Its light irradiates all that we love, for the vision of love does not stop at externals: it irradiates all that we see with the vision of the Sun Sphere, for in that vision too the essential is seen within the play of circumstance, the external within the grace and beauty of change.

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