IAMBLICUS ARGUES HOW the tenuity and attractive subtility of divine guidance is such that initiates might be affected in the manner of fishes drawn upward through dense, turbid waters toward the luminous radiance of a higher atmosphere, only to become deprived and languid and sickened—forsaking the connascent spirit which directed them.
PYTHAGORAS NOTES HOW we seek a light, exemplified by angels, when we speak of God, so that during journeys through prayer and convocation we carry a candle to refute those obscurities which accumulate with darkness.
FROM THE ANONYMOUS Pedagogue we learn of a prodigious book in which our Lord has communicated such truth as we require for adequate knowledge of the world and of His high majesty. This being so, who should cry out? We do but change position, twisting like victims of plague which endeavor to alleviate their anguish. Is it not wiser to let stars shine through us? Afflictions beyond reason entreat the spirit to suffer calmly while in a darkened antechamber the body waits.
ARTEPHIUS, WITH HIS learned work on humanity’s predicament, has endeavored to explain that transcendent process whereby all men shall pass through the discipline of God and nature out of chaos toward unity. So we find our heavenly roadstead charted with its various coasts and bays—how the land falls. So would we indict heretics that, like stolid contented oxen licking their noses, do not appreciate Genesis. If not oxen, what are they but monkeys dressed in silk?
NOW, AS THE tree was adorned by our Lord with succulent fruit so did He burden the human spirit with an exuberance of shapes and ambitions toward knowledge. Therefore, we ask of the mole what does it signify in his blindness? Might this be a papist reluctant to admit the folly of his course? Or with Patricius we ask whether oceans roil above the sky. Also, we would learn how it is that gold spent by the wise, stamped with lightning, glistens pure and clear. And why should yesterday perplex men with unrequested answers? We are distressed by all affections which plentifully doubt the geniture and scheme of existence since all matters descend from His hand. Still, as registrars we dedicate our season to metaphysic service. We fat ourselves with present joy as a glutton slips toward his dish, a satyr his harlot, the credulous his idol.
FROM HUGH OF Saint Victor we learn how the dove’s two wings represent the active and contemplative lives of Christianity. Next are we taught how the blue color of her wing signifies Heaven. The shimmering, soft nuance of her body—tremulous and inconstant as the sea—exemplifies a passion threatening our vigilant church, about which Mankind must thread its path. Behold those grasping red claws that betoken an ignoble world saturated with the blood of martyrs. Behold those yellow eyes, what do they represent? Thus are men consumed with unfulfilled desire, gnats drawn to a candle.
WE ARE TAUGHT by the hermit Morien that he who lusts toward superiority encounters no abundance surpassing his own self, while the orb of this earth reveals no greater excellence or mystery than the humble figure of a common man reformed by our Lord into some other image. Yet, should the aspirant be not himself purified and cleansed and aged by the labor of experiment—much as the subjectum with which he works—why should the measure of his ordeal be preserved?
ACCORDING TO THALES there is but one world which demonstrates the construction of God. Metadorus argues otherwise, claiming a universe populated by numberless worlds since their causes must be numberless, which contention we reject as sophistry. Who has not felt the obstetric hand of God? Who can mistake the light for its ray? Light is the cause, brightness the effect.
WE HAVE STUDIED how four elements representing a Quaternarius grow entwined with their indecipherable Ternarius and Unity during the incarnation of our Savior. Hence, three plus four make seven, that Septenary a Sabaoth into which the creature enters. Therefore, we suppose transmutation with resurrection must be equivalent. Yet, for no two men are events identical and the springs of behavior lie hidden.
WE HAVE LOOKED upon the considerate spider assembling his web more efficiently than a man and have watched the industrious honeybee manufacturing a house more artistic than any palace, so we conclude these must be blessed insects, albeit assigned to trafficking with fungible goods which decay or degenerate. Man by himself goes ranging across the night and neither Luna nor Sol shall direct the course of his study.
SOME ENDORSE THE stars as instruments of unlimited authority, intermediaries that influence us yet neither seduce nor abduct nor deprive men of opinions which formulate their inheritance. Nevertheless we are at first deceived by what looks virtuous—much as the light bequeathed us turns mutable or shifting.
SEPARATE SUBJECTS HAVE separate truths. According to Meister Franciscus Picus, men watch approaching events through a mirror governed by benevolent constellations and built in compliance with natural laws of perspective—which Friar Bacon would name Almuchefi. Now, this may happen as we are told, but mayhap not. Often with great fiction some claim they were there to see it. Being as we are but didactic amanuenses, we look to divisible success until the prophet be modified in body and spirit.
WE ARE INFORMED how a wreath of Sinechrusmontes Behdem encloses the deadly glass encircled by blackwood sticks which harridans arrange, which they float upon buckets filled with lake water and expose to a nascent moon—whose image reflected upward must radiate downward, because a poisonous oval infects the earth. This proves how the atmosphere is able to convey foul influence, and how the vindictive contaminate spirits other than their own. But as conscience becomes a tablet on which offenses are laid up we ask how amoral souls persist in the moral universe. What is the agent of such audacity?
WE ASK IF Jehovah delights in righteous adherents. Or is this a mockery, a conceit? We
