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I HAVE said that everything is fourfold, and as is the planet, so also is the man. The perfect man has a fourfold outer body,--gaseous, mineral, vegetable, and animal: a fourfold sideral body,--magnetic, odic, sympathetic, elemental: a
fourfold soul,--partaking of the soulic elements of all the grades through which he has passed, being elemental, instinctive, vital, rational: and a triune Spirit,--because there is no external to Spirit,--desirous, willing, obedient. There is nothing in the universe save Man; and the Perfect Man is "Christ Jesus."
"Mercury" fecundated by "sulphur" becomes the master and regenerator of "salt." It is azoth, or the universal magnesia (of the Alchemists), the great magical agent, the light of light fecundated by animating force, or intellectual energy, which is the sulphur. As to salt, it is simple matter. Everything which is matter contains salt; and all salt may be converted into pure gold by the combined action of sulphur and mercury. These sometimes act so rapidly that the transmutation may be made in an hour, an instant, almost without labour and without cost. At other times, owing to the contrary dispositions of the atmospheric medium, the operation may necessitate days, months, or years. Salt is fixed; mercury is volatile. The fixation of the volatile is the synthesis; the volatilisation of the fixed is the analysis. On applying to the fixed the sulphuretted mercury, or the astral fluid rendered powerful by the secret operation of the soul, the mastery over nature is obtained. The two terms of the process are materialisation and transmutation. These two terms are those of the "Great Work,"--the redemption of spirit from matter.
Miracles are natural effects of exceptional causes. The man who has arrived at wishing for nothing and fearing nothing, is master of all.
The Initiate of the highest grade--one who has power to command the elemental spirits, and thereby to hush the storm and still the waves--can, through the same agency, heal the disorders and regenerate the functions of the body. And this he does by an exercise of his will which sets in motion the magnetic fluid.
Such a person, an Adept or Hierarch of magnetic science, is, necessarily, a person of many incarnations. And it is principally in the East that these are to be found. For it is there that the oldest souls are wont to congregate. It is in the East that human science first arose; and the soil and astral fluid there are charged with power as a vast battery of many piles. So that the Hierarch of the Orient both is himself an older soul and has the magnetic support of a chain of older souls, and the earth beneath his feet
and the medium around him are charged with electric force in a degree not to be found elsewhere.
Now, the odic or sideral body is the real body of the man. The phenomenal body is secondary. The odic body is not necessarily of the same shape or appearance as the outward body, but it is of the nature of the soul. The creation of man in the image of God "before the transgression," is the picture of the man having power; that is, having an odic body in which the elements were not fixed,--a body such as that of the "risen Christ." What I have said concerning the volatilisation of salt, will help to the understanding of this. But when the "sin of idolatry" had been committed, then man ceased to have power over his own body, and thus became a "pillar of salt," fixed and material. He was "naked."
The man thus referred to attained power over his body by evolution from rudimentary being; and at last, becoming polarised, received the Divine Flame of Deity, and thereby the power over "salt." But by reason of perverse will to the outer, he depolarised, and thereby fixed the volatile. Then he knew that he was "naked," and so lost "Paradise."
Can Paradise be regained? Yes, through the Cross and Resurrection of "Christ." For, as in "Adam" all die, so in "Christ" shall all be made alive. And forasmuch as the earthly dies, the celestial lives. The body can be transmuted into its prototype, the magnetic body. This is the work of the adept. The magnetic body can be abandoned to the odic fluid, and the soul set free. This is the work of post mortem evolution. But to transmute phenomenal body, magnetic body, and soul alike into spirit,--this is the work of "Christ." "I have power," said Jesus, "over my body, to lay it down and to take it up again."
You have said to me, "If the odic or sideral body be the maker of the physical body, how can this differ in form from it? How can a man be outwardly human, and really a wolf, a hare, or a dog?"
When you become an adept you will know that such fact involves no contradiction. The transitions of the sideral body are not sudden. It becomes gradually, and does not undergo changes by cataclysm. It is already partly human before it has ceased to wear the form of a rudimentary man,--that is, of an animal. You have seen this in visions when you beheld the human shape in
creatures under torture in the laboratory. 1 And it is still partly rudimentary when it puts on the human. Indulgence in its lower propensities may strengthen it in its old likeness, and accentuate its former propensities. On the other hand, aspiration towards the divine will accelerate the change, and cause it to lose altogether its lower attributes. That which is born of flesh is in the image of the flesh; but that which cometh from the beyond is of the beyond. The womb can bring forth only its own kind, in the semblance of the generators; and as soon as the human is attained, even in the least degree, the soul has power to put on the body of humanity. Hence the odic body always possesses some attribute of humanity. But it may lose this by sin; and in such case it returns, by a fresh incarnation, to the form of the beast. Of such returns to the lower form, some are purely penitential; but most are retributory. The adept can see the human in the beast, and can tell whether the soul therein is an ascending or a descending soul. He can also see the soul in a man; and all men are not to him of the same shape or appearance. If your eyes were opened, you would be astonished at the number of animals you meet in the streets, and the scarcity of men. The parable of the Enchanted City, in the eastern fables, is descriptive of this mystery.
57:1 Herein is suggested yet another application of the parable of the Deluge. Thibet, like Thebes, signifies Ark; and if, as long supposed, it was once the sole home of spiritual knowledge in the world and centre whence it was diffused, it may be said of the ancient Thibetan mysteries as of the dwellers in the Ark, "Of them was the whole earth overspread." The facts are noteworthy that Thibet is the highest table-land on the globe, and that the word Ararat is identical with the word Arhat, the Hindu term for the summit of spiritual attainment. E. M.
57:2 Concerning the method of recovery of these recollections, see note at end of No. XXXII.
57:3 London, December 1880. Spoken in trance, but not, as in the foregoing, in the speaker's own person, but under dictation heard interiorly; and so also with the three utterances which follow. E. M.
Referred to in Life of Anna Kingsford, Vol. i, pp. 404-408.
60:1 See Dreams and Dream-Stories, No, XIV, "The Laboratory Under-ground."