PART I. Of the Twelve Mansions

OF THE TWELVE MANSIONS

Here beginneth Chapter I of the Book which is called "The Tablets of Aeth," wherein is transcribed the First Quadrant of the Twelve Mansions.

"I sent my soul through the invisible, Some lesson of that after life to spell; And by and by my soul returned to me And answered, 'I, myself, am Heaven and Hell.' "

"The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line , Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

TABLET THE FIRST

Aries

SYMBOL

A deep blue Sky, a blaze, as if something were about to rise.

REFLECTION

TABLET THE FIRST

The blush of dawn of a new life, all nature quivering with the sense of coming, conscious life; Isis, vibrant with love of the coming child, her bosom flushed in expectation of the little son soon to breathe on her yearning breast.

In this we trace the great lesson of preparation, of sending the light before the form, of the prophecy before the fulfillment. Dawn must precede sunrise. What you expect will be your destiny.

It is the longing of centuries that incarnates a god, a real Sun-God, whose vibrant love-life can thrill other lives into prayer--aspiration, the struggle for eternal life. The dawn represents the expectant maternity of Nature--God.

O child of Adam! See that thou expecteth much, and that thy aspirations are reflected in thy outward life.

TABLET THE SECOND

Taurus

SYMBOL

A red sun on the horizon of an inky sea.

REFLECTION

TABLET THE SECOND

Nature has shown forth her glory, as brought forth by young Horus, but her creative force is still unreflected. The sea is black and inky. The Son of God is born, but the sea of human life still remains unconscious, in primeval darkness.

The angles of the Sun and the sea are not yet in right relation to each other. A few, standing on the watch-towers of life, seeing the red glow of the risen sun, call "Look!" But the unfortunate ones in the outer darkness cry, as they beat their breasts; "No! There is no light! You do but dream!" And yet the Sun of Life has risen--the Divine light glows.

O child of Adam! Remember that "In Him was life, and life was the light of man, and the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not."

TABLET THE THIRD

Gemini

SYMBOL

Two stars are rising at angles to each other and to the Polar star, while eight stars shine faintly in the black space of background.

III

REFLECTION

TABLET THE THIRD

The Divine symbol of soul-matehood is here signified in the two stars rising in the foreground; not only the soul-affinities of humanity, but the eternal father-mother forces manifested in the biune spirit of universal life and nature, the two great creative powers, Life and Light, whose harmony creates love, attraction and repulsion, and the straight lines of law and justice, which blend in the spiral of mercy.

The two stars are rising at an oblique angle to the pole-star, the center around which, material things revolve. So, too, life and love are balanced by the star of wisdom. Love in the spirit is adaption to the environment in matter and providence in universal life. The eight stars reveal the mystery of the tablet--universal death, present with life, the final end of all discord glimmers faintly afar off, and man questions the love of God, seeing that all things pass away, not realizing that death is the germinal promise of life, of transformation, of the realization of unrealized hopes, of the union of loving hearts in their starry pilgrimage back to the Father's home.

O child of Adam! Listen unto the words of the Teacher: "I and the Father are one." Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such ii the Kingdom of Heaven."