PART I
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
♈
A deep blue Sky, a blaze, as if something were about to rise.
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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
♉
A red sun on the horizon of an inky sea.
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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
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.
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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.”
PART I
Here beginneth Chapter 2 of the Book which is called “The Tablets of Aeth,” wherein is transcribed the Second Quadrant of the Twelve Mansions.
“How they struggle in the immense Universe! How they whirl and seek! Innumerable souls, that all spring forth From the vast world-soul. They drop from planet to planet, And in the abyss they weep For their forgotten land. These are thy tears, O Dionysus, O Spirit vast, Divine One, Liberator. Draw back thy daughters to the breast of light.”
“Ah, love! Could you and I with him conspire To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire, Would we not shatter it to bits? And then Remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.”
TABLET THE FOURTH Cancer
A woman’s face unconscious, in trance, surrounded by clouds.
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TABLET THE FOURTH
The dreaming woman, whose brooding thoughts shape the coming man. The race is never any farther advanced than the average thought of the woman. She is yet sleeping, knowing not her powers. So, not until she awakes and recognizes herself as conceiving by the Holy Ghost and the mother of the incarnate God, will that God be brought forth unto universal knowledge.
In this is the great lesson to woman: Ever remember thy creative power as the mother of the humanity of the future. The sun in thy mansion exerts its highest power. Awake, therefore, O soul, and eclipse not its brightness with thy dreams of sublunary power.
O child of Adam! Ever honor the womb that gave thee birth, and know that all thy earthly greatness received its seed therefrom. A fountain cannot rise higher than its source.
TABLET THE FIFTH
Leo
A man’s arm, bent, exceedingly muscular, a knife in the hand, a streak of lightning opposite the arm, which is defying the lightning.
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TABLET THE FIFTH
Here we have the symbol of the incarnate fire of the spirit defying the mere natural fire of the heavens. The woman sleeps and broods and dreams, but the man she has brought forth is awake, and bids defiance to the fiery forces of Nature. He has armed himself with the keen knife of action, and with it has conquered the forces of matter. He has harnessed the lightning, and made the electric fluid his obedient slave. And thus has he mastered all forces inferior to spirit–that spirit of conscious life which is his birthright.
The lesson to be gleaned from this is that, the kingdom of Nature must be taken by storm. Not for rest, but for work, has Mother Nature sent forth her man child; not for peace, but for battle; not for inertia, but for effort.
O child of Adam! Arm yourself with the sword–mayhap the sword of affliction–and, gallantly raising the strong right arm aloft, hurl defiance at the chaos of Nature, sure that the fire from the Sun of the spirit is burning in every vein of that arm.
TABLET THE SIXTH
Virgo
A Lotus, rising from the water, coiled around its stem a snake, whose efforts fail to reach the flower.
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REFLECTION
TABLET THE SIXTH
Here we have the sacred flower, symbol of the virgin soul, uncontaminated by the snake of passion, which can only enfold the body– the stem; the snake of matter–of lust–of evil. But the flower of the spirit–the soul–lifts its pure white petals upward as an incense cup to the Sun of the Spirit.
In this symbol read the great lesson of the experience of evil. If, the flower of the soul, blossoms; the mud of the soil and the snake of the passions are but the surroundings of its roots and stem. Both are necessary for the perfection of the flower. The roots sink deep into Mother Earth, and draw nourishment and life, lifting matter upward, while the snake of passion becomes, under another aspect, the serpent of wisdom. Coiled around the stem of this life, it gives to the incarnated soul that wisdom which later blossoms in the Seraph of the Sun spheres.
O child of Adam! Take suffering, if it forge the sword of the spirit. Take evil and passion, and turn them into deep lessons of life, blossoming the evil into good, changing passion into wisdom. Only “the pure in heart can see God.”
PART I
Here beginneth Chapter 3 of the Book which is called “The Tablets of Aeth,” wherein is transcribed the Third Quadrant of the Twelve Mansions.
“To know what really exists, one must cultivate silence with ones self, for it is in silence that the eternal and unexpected flowers open, which change their form and color according to the soul in which they grow. Souls are weighed in silence, as gold and silver are weighed in pure water.”
“The worldly hope men set their hearts upon turns to ashes; or it prospers, and anon, like snow upon the desert’s dusty face, lighting a little hour or two, is gone.”
TABLET THE SEVENTH
Libra
A crowned king, with a scythe raised in the air, looks closely at two boys wrestling beneath him in a field of grain, a red poppy below them.
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TABLET THE SEVENTH
The symbol of Nature’s eternal war for the impossible equilibrium between spirit and matter; the symbol, also, of Time, which is but the illusion in which eternity clothes itself; forever putting on and forever putting off new garments of matter. The crowned king is the victorious soul, waiting, with the scythe of Time, to reap the harvest of the world; while incarnated man, as represented in the wrestling youths, is struggling for that which he did not produce, and which only death can reap. The poppy reveals the secret of the illusions of Nature’s master-showman. All earthly things are unreal to the spirit, which is the only real thing. Man’s effort to hoard and save the things of this world IS INJUSTICE TO OTHERS. The struggle is eternal, and no matter how careful or cunning man is to monopolize either power, truth or wealth, swift-footed time will readjust all things without error.
O child of Adam! “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal.”
TABLET THE EIGHTH
Scorpio
A wide, and plain, on it a skeleton; a dull, grey sky, in which an Eagle soars, full-fed, it seems, from the flesh of the skeleton.
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TABLET THE EIGHTH
A significant symbol to the seer, showing forth the two ultimates of life and death, of earthly things and sex. Scorpio is both the eagle of the spirit, soaring aloft, well fed with all that is worth carrying away from the earth; and also the scorpion, whose natural home is the desert.
In sex, either way, life is given. Shall it be to your spirit making fat and full your immortal self, or will the other interpretation be yours? And will you leave yourself dead and annihilated, a skeleton, to the Ego, the Divine spirit? For sex is indeed the foundation of all. Raised to the region of Libra, it is power and magnetism. To the bosom it is love; to the brain it is enthusiasm. It is the promethian fire of life, the creative force, giving vigor to whatever region to which it is raised; or, lowered, to be spent with no returns, it debases and renders life a desert of dry bones.
O child of Adam! Reflect on the fall of man from spirit to matter, and combine the wisdom of the serpent with the purity of the dove, and “lest ye partake of the tree of life ye shall surely die.”
TABLET THE NINTH
Sagittarius
A child in a shell, holding in its hand a feathered lance, is drawn by five stars, grouped in an under arc.
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TABLET THE NINTH
The symbol of the conscious soul. The shell is the body, drawn by the five senses–stars–which form an under arc, to represent the world of material things and our relation thereto. The child, armed with the feathered lance, is the soul; riding thus, fully armed, in the shell of the body, it realizes the duality of truth; that all things are changeable; and that each thing is true upon the plane of its manifestation, while an illusion to that which is interior to its life, while the soul is in its dream state. Sagittarius represents conservatism and the permanence of crystallized institutions; but, when the spirit awakes and bursts the shell of matter, the senses, instead of being the guardians and jailors of its environment, become its servants, and the means by which, united as the one Ego, sense-perception, it races o’er the fields of Aeth–a being of life and beauty, shining in the empyrean of God.
O child of Adam! Ever remember that temperament and environment constitute the north and south poles of human possibility, and that ability, combined with opportunity, is the measure of responsibility.
PART 1
Here beginneth Chapter 4 of the Book which is called–“The Tablets of Aeth,” wherein is transcribed the Fourth Quadrant of the Twelve Mansions.
“A hair, perhaps, divides the false and true. Yes, and a single alif were the clue– Could you but find it–to the treasure house, And, peradventure, to THE MASTER, too.
“Beware, O my son, of self-incense. It is the most dangerous on account of its agreeable intoxication. * * * Learn, O my beloved, that the light of Allah’s truth will often penetrate an empty head more easily than one too crammed with learning.”
TABLET THE TENTH
Capricorn
A deep, black ground, o’er which shimmers a phosphorescent light; at each side an aurora borealis rises, mountain like; above all, a tiny star.
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TABLET THE TENTH
Here is revealed the symbol of the messenger of the Most High. The star hovers over the phosphorescent light cast on the darkness as the spirit hovers over the blackness of matter. The aurora borealis stands as the emblem for the magnetic attraction of Earth on spirit, the Christ soon to be born in the manger of the Goat; the descent of the Holy Ghost into material form, so that heavenly truth may illumine the drear speculum of earthly thought with the Divine iridescence of celestial light. It is the lowest arc of the cycle that reveals the new birth of death unto life–the divine egg of Brahma, containing the promise of the new law: “Peace on Earth, good will towards men.”
O child of Adam! Be thou the star, and not a dweller of the outer darkness, and “Let your light so shine before men, that, they may see your good works.”
TABLET THE ELEVENTH
Aquarius
A stormy sea is seen; above it the eight stars shine, brilliant and clear.
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TABLET THE ELEVENTH
This tablet symbolizes the complete materialization of man–man, perfect on the earth and the lord thereof, in so far as material forces are concerned. The storm is the tempest of life, the whirl of the elements of matter in their battle with the spirit. The eight stars, brilliant now (for they are the same stars that were dimly seen in Gemini), show that the conquest of matter is complete, the great fall of spirit finished; the end of involution. And this would bring stagnation and death, if peace now ensued. The lesson taught is that, not in peace and rest can the soul grow; but amidst the earthquakes that shake thrones, the floods that overwhelm countries, the fires that reduce to ashes, has the strong man-soul grown to its present state and power. So fear not the storm, but the calm; not the unrest, but the quiet; fear not the battle, but the ignoble peace of the coward.
O child of Adam! The astral soul must learn to do and dare. Not over the brave man’s grave shall it be written, “Rest in peace,” but “I will arise, and go to my father.”
TABLET THE TWELFTH
Pisces
A comet, beyond it infinite things, only dreamed of as yet, a world floating in an ocean and in night, beneath are two hands clasped palm to palm.
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TABLET THE TWELFTH
A REVELATION OF THE TO BE. The comet is the twelfth Avatar, the herald, coming forth from the starry abyss of the infinite, staying with us a little while, and then flashing on his shining way to other worlds than ours, bearing THE DIVINE WORD from sun to planet, as the fiery messenger of God. And here the soul may well ask: “Who? Where? Whence and Whither?” For behold, he has come, and gone, and
“Earth could not answer; nor the seas that mourn In flowing purple, of their Lord forlorn; Nor rolling Heaven, with all his signs revealed And hidden by the sleeve of night and morn.”
The world floating in the sea of the infinite and resting in night shows the present state of humanity. But, “the blush of dawn” is ready to gladden the soul, and the expectant seer, from his lonely vigil on the hilltop, awaits the sunlight which will soon flood the world anew.
The two clasped hands point to many problems, chiefly soul- matehood, the message of the starry messenger, universal brotherhood, and the Father-Motherhood of God.
O child of Adam! Watch and pray, that a voice of the silence may speak unto you.
Here endeth the four Quadrants of the Tablets of the Twelve Mansions, wherein are revealed the signs and symbols thereof, as faithfully transcribed from the sacred roll in the astral records and called “The Tablets of Aeth.” April, 1893.