April-May, 1966

Our Goal is UNION

 

I BELIEVE THAT WE HAVE PASSED A MILESTONE of inestimable importance and are now in a position to lay before the world as an exoteric FACT, what has for endless centuries been known in inner circles as a secret so sacred and wonderful that only the picked members of the esoteric orders were allowed to glimpse it, and still our shining “FACT” is only half baked into final form. Like the “Proof of the pudding”, which is “in the eating”, our “FACT” – while not being something one may eat – is CERTAINLY something that must be EXPERIENCED before it becomes one’s very own to live and even die for and by. Our “FACT” can now be given thus:

Our goal is UNION.

The FIRST UNION is between the lower selves and the HIGH. It is NOT a blending or permanent adding of the selves together to make ONE new Self. That is the old mistake. It is the recognition of the Aumakua and its part in the three self man. It is making contact with it, and inviting it to take its proper part in our lives. That is the only possible UNION on this level of living, being and doing.

The SECOND UNION is the final reunion and reuniting of the MATES, male and female, as they graduate into the Aumakua state and in Union become a NEW AUMAKUA Father-Mother.

The proofs are THREE:

In trying for union or CONTACT with the Aumakua, we first hear that there is an Aumakua, then we think of it and try to make the contact. Eventually contact is made and we have the physical sensation of seeing THE LIGHT which is symbolic of the Aumakua.

In learning the fact that we have a MATE, we hear that there IS one. We think about it and begin to believe. We are given a dream, vision or “seeing” in which we meet the mate. We feel as a physical sensation the greatest love we have ever experienced. We may be amazed that we are capable of so much love. Belief becomes CONVICTION.

The third proof is the feeling of ecstatic love and joy that, at times, comes when a contact with the Aumakua is made but when no LIGHT is seen. This may be called “The joy of the Lord”, and is something not uncommon in human experience. (About all of these sensations of “seeing”, feeling or of visual perception in a physical sense, there is something that marks each as much truer, clearer and weighted with verity. Other lesser experiences are often forgotten, but not these. The memory of each is retained as if burned in by the fire of Truth Itself. Each carries with it all the PROOF that is possible to us on the physical level, and we do well to remember that the conclusions we reach by the processes of “reasoning” will seldom remain fixed and able to bear weight if leaned upon too heavily. They are reeds which bend in the winds of contrary arguments, while the things of the “seeing” and “feeling” remain the rocks upon which we can build.)

LOVE IS THE LAW. In the lower forms of life the growth is toward individuality and separateness. One individual, so very often, eats the next. But always there is a uniting process and colonies of cells increase in size at each evolutionary step. At last, at the upper heights, individuals begin voluntarily to cooperate and to cease to prey on others of their kind. Love begins to dawn. And under the Law of Love the final step of “graduation” takes place and the mates unite.

THE AUNIHIPILI STILL BELONGS TO THE ANIMAL LEVEL and, while it responds like an animal and loves a mate in the lesser way, it is learning to think and react like an Auhane. Mixing reason and love with animal selfishness, jealousy and anger is the Aunihipili way, and our task, as I now see it, is to do our best to take the Aunihipili in hand and cultivate its good side – the side that gives love and makes it worthy of love.

THE AUHANE LOVE appears to me NOW to be made possible because the ability to love is not like the other emotions – things stemming from the Aunihipili. It may be the one and only emotion that the Auhane can carry along with it when it graduates from the Aunihipili to the Auhane state. That the Aumakua has the ability to love is a foregone conclusion. It is something we can feel and to which we can respond in kind. Literature, be it sacred or secular, stresses the higher octaves of love. Moses gives as the very first commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy might”. Jesus adds, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” The kahunas speak through the Code from the dim past and say to the “elect”, “Only by learning to love and to make yourself worthy of love can you become ready to enjoy the Marriage made in Heaven – the union with the mate.”

A FINE EXAMPLE OF THE SECULAR APPROACH is to be found in the letters of Will Levington Comfort. (I quote from page 30 of the little booklet I made and sent to some of you long ago.)

“Sensuous love is a developer of the psychic nature, through which at last we grope up to the spiritual. No force can arouse a certain type of human being to great endeavor, helping him to overcome inertia and cross all the mountains and rivers, like the attraction of a possible mate. He feels keenly the division in his own being. He agonizes to merge with one who doubles him. Sensuous love becomes a psychic disease, as the new quest calls. One finds after all his rushing to and from after earth love, that only within is the compelling power which overcomes separation and casts out fear; he finds he must bring a new, fearless, invincibly faithful love to the one who now attracts, a love risen above the painful barriers of birth and death, a love that amounts to the accomplishment of his own Enlightenment, by which he perceives that all his former rushing to and fro in earth love was but to devour the darling  of the gods who called. But one cannot preach the inevitable failure of sensuous love to the world today that has not learned to dress and cleanse and die for a meeting with an earth mate, any more than one can tell the mass of school children in lock step for competitive struggle to kill out ambition. (And on page 24:) “The Soul is a composite containing many elements; Spirit is one of them. The nature of Spirit is loveliness; its supreme function is loving; it is the Lover.” (From Comfort’s Reconstruction Letters.)

Phylos (Hilliard), in A DWELLER ON TWO PLANETS, had his hero eventually united with his soul mate at the end of the book. Earlier, they had met and loved and parted in other incarnations. Mark Twain, in his MYSTERIOUS STRANGER told the story of the Mate (so one of the HRAs has informed me, but to date I have not been successful in my library  searching for a copy of the book).

I was deeply touched, and not a little relieved, to have many understanding and warmly sympathetic letters come from HRA friends after I had ventured uncertainly to tell of my “seeing” of my mate in Huna Vistas #71. The nakedness I had felt was covered by one letter after another, and slowly I became delightedly aware that I had been speaking of a secret thing which many others have experienced and of which they had not dared to speak. I am impressed that the far sensing of the mate is a blessed thing given to a considerable number of advanced souls for some unknown reason, but perhaps as a gift of love from the Aumakuas to encourage and to make rough paths feel less rough and long journeys less endless.

An odd thing happened to me when I read some of the letters. As if a similar note had been sounded and the identical string plucked, I fell into a strange state of resonance and felt again just the beginning edge of the great welling up of love which was aroused in my seeing as the woman with the droop stemmed flower and silly little hat came toward me. I told myself, after three such “risings”, that I had not been alone at all. Dear friends all around me had sensed the same lovely truth and had also clutched it close while not daring to speak of it to others.

LET ME SHARE WITH YOU some of the priceless letters of which I speak, starting with an imaginary one which I fully expected, but which I am happy to say did not arrive.

Dear Max: “I think your “seeing” was a phony and if there was anything at all to it, it was the echo of your Aunihipili’s former gonadal ambitions. I think you are off on the wrong path and doubt that any woman was ever worth that much fuss and feathers. But go to it, and be a silly old goat if you must. I will try to put up with you, but please try to keep your mind on the research into the Kabala. (Imagined signature: About half of the HRA.)

Almost the first letter said: “I have read with joy and interest your bulletin. Especially the part wherein you share your experience of glimpsing your ‘true love.’ Our first and only Love is Truth. She comes in the form we feel we can recognize her. When we recognize this ‘Glorious One’, we are, as you say, ‘never so glad to see anyone in my whole life.’ It is the whole of Life, and brings complete satisfaction, joy and happiness, beyond the ken of human plans and hopes. At first it is a fleeting experience but as we accept Her she sojourns with us.  However, we do not have to die into that…. we live into it! When we seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, these things are added unto us. We become acquainted with Him/Her and find Peace! It is the Bride for the Bridegroom. This unfolding is Love and ALL that any of us ever desire. The human experience is a stage upon which many fading experiences dance, but the Stage of Life, Truth and Love is Reality. And when we perceive this Stage we are made ready for Progress and Service in His Vineyard!”

This beautiful letter was from a most advanced student of many initiations and herself a writer of books about Truth. Her beautiful lines about my “seeing” and Truth and Love are inspiring, but I had to object. What I saw wasn’t anything so wonderful and abstract as TRUTH. It was just my very own little Funny Hat – just being her own very dear self. I know that gal like the back of my hand and am sure I could tell her from even the dearest Abstraction. I could even make a very good guess at just what she would do under almost any given set of circumstances. You see, I seem to have known her for a very long time. For instance, if someone gave her the marvelous gift of TRUTH on a golden platter, I know just what she would do. She would tear for home to find me and divide with me. And, if she saw that I liked it exceptionally well, she would push her half across to me also, not saving even a taste for herself. Yes, I know that gal. She’s like that. And I strongly suspect that the reason she has such a battered little old hat is that every time she starts out with the price of a new hat saved up, she sees something she thinks I need or would like, and away goes her hat money again. Where I am concerned, she doesn’t use her head. She inevitably uses her heart. And when it comes to such Truth as we have known between us, my judgment may often be a little more reasonable, but she more than matches it with her intuitive recognition of what is NOT Truth … and where I may get fooled, she hardly ever fails to see in time to sidestep and whisper a swift warning. She has another characteristic. When she sees that I want something badly, even if she feels that it is not needed or very good for me, she will go all out to help me get it. As for herself, any smallest thing I do for her or find to give her, is accepted delightedly.

“Dear Cigbo: A little gift for you. And aren’t you proud of ‘Boss’ for having the courage to relate his lovely vision. This HRA thanks him for it. Whether this vision is a prevision of a uniting of Aumakuas as Huna teaches, or a symbolic vision of the more abstract union with the Eternal, as some religions teach, it is a lovely and significant vision, and we thank ‘Boss’ for sharing it with us. This HRA sends him her blessing and hopes with all her heart that he makes it this round into or onto the higher level for which he so yearns. She thanks him too for his courageous search and his humorous and honest willingness to stand up and be counted for what he believes. M.S.W.

(Cigbo takes a bow and says, “Terrible nice now and then to have someone give ME credik for the pretty good job I manage to get donevon boss here and there and now and again. I work hard on him, lick him when he needs it, and encourage him when his meow is kina week or out of tune. Considering what I have to work with well, I do pretty well.”)

An HRA upon whom I relied from the first for understanding, wrote: “I devoured the #70 H.V. Bless your heart. I deeply appreciate your baring your heart as you did. I fully agree with your conclusions. And YES! Most emphatically YES to your conclusions …. that the Auhane has an emotional capacity. I assume that it carries it over from its lives as an Aunihipili. This makes sense. It’s the good emotions of love, of compassion, of adoration, aspiration and such feelings that are of the right sort. You mention ‘she’s all the women I’ve ever loved’ and this leads me to say move all in turn as surrogates for your eternal mate. I am glad you told it all. I only hope some deluded female doesn’t come trapsing in with a flower stem up on her dizzy head perched like that of the little English Flower Girl and rush to say she is your mate! If that should happen, do tell me, in strictest confidence, of course. I will laugh with you. A.C.”

One of the newer HRAs has been catching up fast with the work. She wrote: “I was touched with a deep sense of joy by your wonderful expression in the last Huna Vistas. To know that there are others who have shared this intuitional knowing of the joy of a future union with the beloved! Those who truly understand the meaning of ‘Soul Mate’ have understood it to be this, not some sentimental bosh of two entities walking around in some constant joy of a fictitious heaven. But rather two Auhanes ready to join in a united effort for the betterment of their man. What matter if she waits for you or you must wait for her? Let us rejoice that the time of union cometh! Those who have met in their travels thru this incarnation that special someone who, ‘I was never so glad to see anyone in my whole life’, have always willingly returned to the duties of this incarnation, fulfilling them better because of the joy of this contact with the love that encompasses all love. Have no fear for those who shudder away from this knowledge. They too are growing into Light and will one day remember what you have so beautifully expressed in your poetic prose and feel reassured because someone else knows it too. J.M.

A seasoned HRA wrote, “Max. you have given me new courage and hope in your sharing with us the mystical experience or preview of Union with the Beloved! And speaking of seeing the Light: I had that experience a few weeks before the birth of my first daughter. The room was so bright that it awakened me from a sound sleep. I remember thinking it must be some sort of ‘signal’ about my baby. While it was still brilliant – perhaps after three minutes – my very practical husband awoke suddenly and said, ‘What is going on here?’ The light vanished, but I have seen it all my life in my memory. Years can be very long and lonely, but now, with joy and anticipation I shall press on, and with revived courage. B.B.”

An Australian HRA wrote: “Thank you and bless you for telling us of your vision. I can’t find the words to describe my feelings on reading it but I am deeply grateful. I have still to get my thought on this sifted and looked at but they often run on lines of the Aunihipili being an enduring self throughout all the incarnations, holding the memories. How then, can he go out of or on to another existence, still carrying the accumulated memories and for which he would have no real use and, as an Auhane, no way of using? Wouldn’t the Aunihipili feel so bereft and motherless if we just got ‘promoted’ and left him behind to get on the best way he could without us? Don’t forget, we get promoted mainly because he has been so good and helpful to us. It will take me months to get this sorted out to my satisfaction, but in the meantime, I feel I have to reassure my own dear little Aunihipili that there is nothing to worry about; it will all be arranged suitably and happily. L.J.”

(I comment: Yes, I am sure that the Aumakuas will take care of all such problems, even if we do not understand them fully.)

“Dear Max: Your vision of the little gal tripping lightly you-wards was so good, but the little droopy flower on the battered hat would seem to indicate she’d also had a few rugged incarnations … in Thought, i.e. consciousness, maybe! So, in due time, your strength would fill the bill for her I’d feel. I always thank heaven when someone cares. You are so lucky to be given the vision.  N. B.

“Dear Max: H.V. 70 is extra special. I am thankful that you felt you could share these precious things with us – I just ‘gotta’ have a copy of Helen Molyneaux Salisbury’s book, To Touch Infinity. Could you tell me where I can get a copy? … I’ve had some wonderful experiences myself. Thank you Max for sharing this with us. L.M. “

(Unfortunately the little book was privately printed and given to close friends. It was never placed on the open market and so far as I know, is not to be had – which is a pity. mfl.)

HRA M.W. sent in the following verse at Easter:

RESURRECTION

Love hath risen from the tomb
Which was my heart. It had no room
To hide its bright effulgence here.
It but stepped forth, as you, my dear,
Stepped forth to meet it, on the way.
So doth my heart keep Easter Day.

“Dear Max: I understand what you are trying to tell us about your experience. I have had two or three ‘out  of  this  world’ experiences when someone very dear to me passed on, and these experiences are still very vivid in my memory. I loved your description of Higher Activities right in the midst of our everyday lives. I believe with all my heart that wonders exist for us when we are ready for the experience. E.V.

“Dear Max: What you have written in H.V. 70, starting on page 4, certainly must have taken some courage to put on paper but, Max, it’s wonderful, no other words can describe it. I really am most grateful to you and am absolutely certain that you are right. (He goes on to describe some of his experiences which make him so certain that mine were real and true.) E.B.”

“Dear Max: Over a year ago I had a dream almost exactly as you described your experience, and it affected me the same way – so wonderful … I never told anyone about it – how could I? But you have almost duplicated my experience. L.B. “

Several more treasured letters, but space runs out. Let me pass on to you again Thornton Wilders’ final lines in his Bridge of San Luis Rey, where the old Mother Superior thinks of the loves of the five who fell with the Bridge, and says: “But love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for Love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

NEW ON THE FILIPINO SPIRIT HEALERS

THE LATEST NEWS ON THE FILIPINO SPIRIT HEALERS is not too clear. The writer, Harold Sherman, well known for his successful telepathic experiments and books on the materials of this and related fields, went recently to visit Tony and make colored motion picture films of his amazing operations. The report is that he is now showing the pictures and lecturing, even appearing with the pictures on television. He is said to be writing a book on the healers. Earlier reports were that he was to bring back either Tony or Terte to have demonstrations here in the States.

The competition to get hold of the healers and bring them over to demonstrate their powers has been great. Dr. Decker, (D.C.), a retired manufacturer in Florida, and Mr. Sherman seem to have gotten things into a muddled condition so that the healers refuse to come. HRA Dolly Ward, on the other hand, writes that she and her friends are trying to get one of them over to demonstrate in a large university hospital in the south under the auspices of medical doctors – which seems by far the soundest approach.

Tony is said to believe that the patients are benefited by seeing real blood, and are properly convinced that the operation has been done. He opens up his patients, takes out a part, miraculously connects pieces and then closes the opening. Terte, on the other hand, gets out parts by something akin to the method of “apporting” solid objects through other solid substances. The offending appendix suddenly materializes in his hands and is dropped into the waiting bottle.

The gentleman who accompanied Dr. Decker on his last visit to see Tony, and who took colored films of the operations seems to have backed out on helping to present the wonders to the public. He appears to be sitting on his films, much to the distress of Dr. Decker, who wants to show them around as part of his campaign to get a healer over. Meantime, Decker, who was instructed by the healers in their methods, is doing his best to develop what powers are necessary so that he can duplicate such healing. He is also busy holding classes, and, I am happy to say, is teaching Huna as nearly as he can understand and present it. The Huna theories, of course, are the only ones inclusive enough to explain how spirits can “mat” and “dematerialize” and apport “stones” and things from the insides of the patients, or how instant healing can be accomplished by dematerializing defective body tissues and rematerializing them good as new in the uninjured aka body which contains the tissue complex, be it a hand, a tumor, or an organ – even the blood.

SPEAKING RECENTLY OF GETTING ANSWERS TO PRAYERS, one of the HRAs stressed the fact that if we feel nothing when we ask the Aumakuas to help and heal us, the prayer is sure to lack the element contributed by the Aunihipili and the results are likely to be lacking. HRA L.W., upon reading the comment, sent me what Harold Sherman had written to her, touching on feeling in “mental communication” I quote:

” … I stress the necessity of mental and emotional control, but feeling is apparently the universal language and I do not know of any mental communication that has occurred without feelings having played a part. Silence is fine and shutting out the external world is necessary, but there is no substitute for FEELING. Feeling is actual awareness, as you know. In other words, thought itself is feeling. You cannot abstract it beyond feeling and remain conscious.” (I would say that in terms of Huna theories, the Aunihipili, who normally seems to create our emotions, must be on hand to supply all memories when we THINK. It creates the background also by giving us awareness of the momentary surroundings and conditions as it senses them. Against this background and carrier wave of awareness, the thinking then goes on as a dual occupation in which the Aunihipili does most of the work, but the Auhane applies direction and measuring and weighing ‘reason’. The memory will tell us that a telepathic exchange has been planned for a certain hour and that the partner in the work will be ready. The “awareness” which the Aunihipili may have that the partner is on the job, however, is a very tenuous one. There seem to be several kinds of awareness – perhaps intensities or “levels”. Mr. Sherman found in his telepathic tests with his partner in the Far North that at times the awareness that gave him the telepathic impression had stepped over the usual time barrier and had given him a mental message or impression of things which were not to take place until later. We still need Huna to explain such things, and the supposition that the Aumakua has looked ahead and then told the Aunihipili what was coming, is as good an explanation as any – perhaps the very best.)

HRA H.C. recently looked into the HEALING work of Evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman at my request and reported her findings, also sending a picture of the rather famous healer. “With a friend, I attended all but one of her meetings that were held in Los Angeles. She has been coming monthly, since last Fall or late summer I believe. (Also has a list of her many radio broadcasts printed on the back of her picture.) She is located permanently in Pittsburgh, Penna. Has the Carnegie Hall there. She was ordained a Baptist minister and from time to time people would tell her of healings they would get while attending her services. So, as a man who sat next to me at a meeting told me, she fasted for weeks and would not give up until, as she said, God would speak to her. It seems the power or gift of healing was given her and she has given her life to healing since then. She is remarkable and, as you guessed, intensely mediumistic. She will cry out while healing someone on the stage that someone in a certain section of the auditorium has been healed, and of what illness. She seems to KNOW. She is a live wire. Seems to vibrate, especially the forefinger of her right hand. At the touch of that vibrant finger some place near the temple of folks who go up for healing, some fall, even big, strong men. They begin to sway and fall backward to the floor. She has men helpers to pick them up. I feel that there is some power transmitted to them that causes them to fall. In a way she is an enigma, sometimes flippant in manner, a regular show woman – then again when she speaks of healing she says this is the work of God the Holy Spirit, and she says, ‘I beg you to take your eyes off Kathryn Kuhlman. It is nothing that I do. Beloved, I do not know how it is done. I have nothing to do with it.’

And it is then that she is filled with awe and reverence. She says, ‘I wouldn’t dare use that Spirit. I just wouldn’t dare. With her it seems to be a wholehearted surrender and a wide open consecration.” (The letter continues, saying many are healed, many not. Some permanently, others not. I was pleased to have the picture so that I could run a Psychometric Analysis test of the healer, and got a normal clockwise and constructive reading with the circle larger than usual and the degree 347, in the “mediumistic level”. I ran for any spirit who might be working through her as a medium, and a good spirit showed in the special run to find it, the reading being also clockwise and constructive, with a normal Aunihipili circle, but a much higher degree at 377. I ran for the Aumakua of the healer and got it at an even 500 degrees standing. None of these degree standings are exceptionally high, so I would say that high degrees are not the thing required for healing. The falling of strong men to the floor at the touch of the medium is pure projection of mesmeric power in Huna terms. Others have done this who were not healers. The medium either has a fine ability to accumulate mana and use it in the mesmeric form under the direction of her Aunihipili – or of the spirit helper – or else the audience is a source of mana and is drawn upon much as the “circle” sitters are tapped at some materialization seances. The instant healing done by the kahunas seems to have been of at least two kinds ‘. In one, the Aumakuas did the healing through the kahuna, who may not have had mediumistic qualities. In the other, the kahuna was either a medium or was a medium in the service of a more learned kahuna. The code for a “spirit” was bird. The medium was, quite naturally called “a bird roost”, also sometimes “the bones”. That some good spirits have been able to enlist the help of the Aumakuas in doing their instant healing, seems most probable. Some day we must find out what the spirits know and learn as living people to duplicate their work, regardless of a medium.)

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOKS HAVE ARRIVED TO BE REVIEWED, and I have also purchased a five volume set of the ZOHAR so that I could have the original writings before me instead of the writings and quotations of the modern commentators.

PENDOLOGY, by HRA George E. Bjorlanan, who was mentioned in earlier issues of the H.V.  – 34-page softcover book on art paper, the pages being printed on one side only. There are some black and white illustrations, then five in full color, the printing being most admirable, especially of one circular chart where the color segments range by easy steps through the whole spectrum of color. This is called “The No. 4 Dector” and is described as “A Twelve Senses Indicator.” The book is written to describe a new system of using a pendulum to determine one’s state of health, the readings being set down in terms of “degrees” and colors. Lectures are dropped in on proper food, sex, thinking –   even two kinds of sin being specified. The author is now at P.O. Box 437, Lakemont, Ga., U.S.A. He will sell you the book for $5, a “personalized” pendulum for $25, and supply other books and services as well as give personal instruction in the use of the pendulum and his charts at the rate of $10 for a 30-minute session. You can have your reading done for $25, and for from $400 to $500 you can go to stay for a time at Lakemont and be given personal instruction in the matter of proper ways to live and think to become 100% chart-well. An idea of how Mr. Bjorlanan will go about restoring you to health may be gained from his account of his own experience in searching for health. On page 14, after a short introduction, he says:

“I was once the victim of headaches, arthritis, neuritis, backaches, lumbago and many other aches and pains. My legs were so heavy in the mornings I could hardly lift them upon arising for a few minutes after the circulation became normal. The conditions lasted for many years before I decided to seek help through fasting. I practiced short fasts for several years before I considered myself ready to take a thirty days and nights fast on nothing but a small cup of Alfalfa tea with a small teaspoon of honey each morning,” etc., etc. He lost all desire for animal foodg, milk, eggs etc., and became completely rejuvenated.

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO QABALISTIC SYMBOLISM by Gareth Knight, comes in two volumes, the first dealing with the Kabala (to use the spelling I have chosen for use in the H.V.), and the second dealing with the 22 Paths of the Tree of Life as traced between the circles representing the ten elements of man – the Sephiroth units. These 22 paths are taken up in their possible relation to the Tarot Cards, the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, astrological parts and pieces, and to assorted and accumulated beliefs and traditions. Yes, also to colors. Publisher: Helios for direct orders, Helios Book Service, Ltd. 8, the Square, Toddingtou, Nr. Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. $7. 00 for Vol I and $8. 00 for Vol II. 249 and 292 pages respectively. Still without good index sections in the rear.

Author Knight has taken advantage of the opportunity to see what a host of earlier writers have had to offer of information, misinformation, guesses and outright efforts to pull the wool over the eyes of prospective readers. He marshals the sorted parts of the conglomeration, tries to give the sources of guesses and inventions, and to evaluate the possible values – values which often fall rather flat when he begins comparing the statements of one authority with those of others.

Mr. Knight is delightfully frank in explaining that over the very thin layer of possibly original material in the Kabala and Tarot Cards, there has come to be layer after layer of comment and speculation. When some self-appointed authority has sounded off with brash statements to be accepted on his authority and little else, the following pack has taken up the cry and the statements have been reproduced as proven facts. As an example, he tells of the lady who used the pen name of Dion Fortune and carved for herself a fat place in the Kabala and Tarot circles with most of her “truths” obtained through her psychic powers – raked right in from the Blue and handed on as straight “from the horse’s mouth.” Mr. Knight gives the story of the founding of the Order of the Golden Dawn. He tells of the early orders in France and especially in England where men like Mathers and his fellow leaders fell to quarreling over authority and almost wrecked their order. It is all most entertaining to a person, like myself, who has been plodding through the books written by these Giants of the Kabala-Tarot, and wondering where they got their misinformation and why they did not agree more closely with their contemporary delvers in the inviting field.

After sorting, comparing and trying to order the muddle of ideas and beliefs, Mr. Knight has done a masterly job of placing a large helping of “stuff” in proper (approximately proper sometimes, as he admits) positions beside the units and paths of the Kabalistic “Tree” and the individual Tarot Cards. If his years of very careful collecting and sorting make the student gasp for breath, at least he has been providing holes in the covering layer of frozen “traditions” to allow one to surface frequently for a breath of air.

Not being able to offer anything better than the traditional method of meditating on the 22 paths of the Tree to get at their meaning, Mr. Knight suggests that as good a method as any, but warns that no two students may get the same results of their meditation and psychic reaching for the hidden inner meanings. On the other hand, the reader is often willing to allow the author to tar himself with the customary stick and rise up to pontificate. In his paragraph numbered 35, of page 47, Volume I, we have a pontification (with my penciled marginal question of “On what authority?”) I quote:

“An Angel is a perfect entity, it does not evolve. In a lesser way, the lesser Angels are divine automata. In this they are superior to man but they do not have man’s potentialities. Man has plucked the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which makes him potentially a God, though only after a long period of travail being strung halfway between the condition of the Angels and the beasts. Man’s Path is one of the equilibrium between the opposites, forging the pattern of his humanity. The bestial type of person is really no worse than the one who deviates to the side of the Angels and is ‘too good to be true’ – in fact the latter can be even more, and literally, inhuman. The glyph of the Pillars is very much of personal as well as Universal application.

Author Knight seems to have inherited a rather uncritical belief in such “Masters” as were current in the Blavatsky generation. On page 217 of Vol. II, paragraph 32, we read his comment on Aleister Crowley and his work on the Tarot symbolism. I quote:

“Crowley maintained that it was a contact with the Masters of Wisdom and that every word in it (The Equinox) was of profound truth. There may well be something in this but the communication does not seem to be that of a Master because of its high handed tone. However this does not discount the possibility that a Master was responsible for its transmission. The Master Morya and the Master Koot Hoomi were definitely in contact with H.P. Blavatsky but her communications were frequently distorted by her mediumship, consciously or unconsciously. Much of the renowned Mahatma letters are filled with evidence of petty spite and a preoccupation with personalities that is completely uncharacteristic of the Masters of Wisdom.” (More interesting comment on Crowley’s master given material is to be found on page 219, paragraph 38. Again I quote:

“He (Crowley) accepted the whole thing literally – including heady references to himself as the prophet for the New Age references of a type which any medium of even the slightest experience would suspect as being interpolation of the subconscious mind. To put the matter occultly, Crowley could not handle the force that was directed onto him by such a contact and consequently lost his magical equilibrium   with the usual result of a gross inflation of the Personality’s ideas of its own importance. From accounts of MacGregor Mather’s behavior in the Order of the Golden Dawn it would seem that he too may have experienced this trouble. It is one of the occupational hazards of occultism and serves to give the subject a bad name with uncommitted observers who naturally have little patience with the disproportionate crowing of occult cocks on their own esoteric dunghills.”

“PATH  WORKING” is a term used by Mr. Knight for the meditative processes used to get at the supposed inner meanings and attribtions belonging to, not 22, but 28 “paths” or connecting lines between parts of the Tree. On page 276 of Vol. II he gives his opinion of the several meditative and ritualistic  magical approaches.

“The Golden Dawn methods of Path working tend to over emphasise the glamour aspect, whether used in Qabalistic Path working or investigation of the Tattva symbols and so on. It was their practice, for example, to visualize themselves in full ceremonial robes and accouterments and to have a complex system of checking whether a symbol or scene arising in consciousness was genuine or not by projecting upon it an appropriate Hebrew letter of a planetary sign to see if it dissolved the picture ……. Such techniques can be useful but are really unnecessary given faith and pure intention. They tend to make matters overcomplicated and spiritual truth is usually found in simplicity.

“Similar factors hold sway with the use of physical regalia and private temples, shrine cupboards and so on. These things have their uses in group working but for individual investigation they can well be so much impedimenta. To one of little experience, the physical accouterments will often serve as distractions and to one who has experience, except for specialized advanced work, they are really unnecessary.

(Skipping on to page277:) “It is well, then, not to become too involved in the form side of occultism, a side which has been over emphasized in the past, and which, together with the mystery and superstition also currently prevalent, it is hoped – and intended – will disappear in the future. Modern esotericism is for sane, healthy, balanced men and women and is a process which should make them saner, healthier and better balanced. Its function should be to teach spirits how to live harmoniously in Earth by intelligent application of higher and lower forces. It is a grave matter that, owing to mistakes in the past, it should have become the happy hunting ground of the crank and faddist and those who are primarily concerned with trying to escape from Earth conditions.

“We have said that astral working of the paths should lead on to meditative work. It is quite possible, however, to rely entirely on meditation and to ignore the astral side of things, for whatever results one gets astrally in the form of pictures and symbols to be interpreted, one can get in meditation in the form of direct realizations. Meditation is thus a more efficient, if less spectacular, process. The pictures of the astral are but representations at their own level of higher forces if possible than at second hand. There is, for example, the old technique of  ‘rising on the planes’ mentioned quite frequently by Dion Fortune, which, in astral terms, is a Path working up through the central Sephiroth of the Tree, designed to raise consciousness to a higher level. However, if one sticks to astral imagery, one is still on the astral plane, even if one seems to be floating in a brilliant blaze of glory in Kether, with the Kerubim circling all around. Thus any real direct experience of this supremely high spiritual awareness we are unlikely to achieve with our brain limited physical consciousness. We are at liberty though to strive for direct awareness on the level which is within our grasp.”

I COMMENT. The above exerpts from Mr. Knight’s two volumes will show how he has combed the available literature, tried to put it order, and has done his best to give guidance from his own experience in this cluttered field. While he has never heard of Huna, or, if so, has found no place to fit it in with his conclusions, he has done a masterly job of getting together in his two volumes practically all that has been known, guessed at, lied about, and invented out of psychic whole cloth. I can put aside the books purchased earlier as source material, and rely rather comfortably on Mr. Knights presentation. As I see it now, my problem is to clear the deck of the surprising collection of ideas and beliefs overlaid across the wide subject of the Kabala, the Tree and the Tarot Cards. Anyone who sees the Huna in these things will realize at once that simplification is the first step, and this first step cannot be taken until we put aside the many things which do not apply. With the deck clear we will have to start from the original writings of the Kabala as nearly as we can get at them, and then feel our way forward   without benefit of the Masters, astral planes, Tattvas and all those things which have been so dear to the hearts of many students – and, I would guess, so misleading. Mr. Knight offers us one priceless service in his books: he places before us the whole of the tangled materials so we can decide quickly what we can do without. MFL