Edward Maitland

“ For—as we had come to learn—God's Two Witnesses in man are ever the Intellect and the Intuition, when duly unfolded and united in a pure spirit. Under such conditions the Shiloh comes, and mounted on them man rides triumphant as king into the holy city of his own regenerate nature. But divorced from her, the Intuition, and—leagued with the Sense-Nature—knowing matter only and the body, the Intellect becomes "prince of devils" in man, the maker of men into fiends, and of the earth into a hell. ”

“ What folly, what ignorance, to offer material flesh and drink to pure power and essential being! Surely in vain have the prophets spoken, and in vain have the Christs been manifested!
"Why will you have Adam to be spirit, and Eve matter, since the mystic books deal only with spiritual entities? The tempter himself even is not matter, but that which gives matter the precedence. Adam is, rather, intellectual force: he is of earth. Eve is the moral conscience: she is the mother of the living. Intellect, then, is the male, and Intuition the female principle. ”

“ Those of us who, being men, refuse to accord to women the same freedom of evolution for their consciousness which we claim for ourselves, do so in consequence of a total misconception of the nature and functions both of Humanity and of Existence at large. The notion that men and women can by any possibility do each other's work, is utterly absurd. Whom God hath distinguished, none can confound. To do the same thing is not to do the same work; inasmuch as the spirit is more than the fact, and the spirit of man and of woman is different. ”

“ But the spirit of his fellow descends. She indraws, and blesses, and confers; and hers is the office which redeems. Wherefore if she fail in her love, her failure is greater than his who hath no love; and to be perfect she must forgive until the seventy times seven, and be great in humility. For the violet, which is the colour of humility, is of the blue. And if she seek her own, or yield not in outward things, her nature is not perfected, and her light is darkened. ”

“ To accept a religion on the ground that one had been born in it, and apart from its appeal to the mind and moral conscience, and thus to make it dependent upon the accident of birth and parentage, was to resemble the African savage who for the same reason worships Mumbo Jumbo. How, moreover,—I asked myself—could a religion which was not in accord with first principles, represent a God, Who, to be God, must Himself be the first of, and must comprise all principles; must account logically for all the facts of consciousness, be it unfolded as far as it may? ”

“ Make living elements of all the elements of your body. Mortify the members of earth. Take your food full of life, and let not the touch of death pass upon it. You understand me, but you shrink. Remember that without self-immolation, there is no power over death. Deny the touch. Seek no bodily pleasure in sexual communion; let desire be magnetic and soulic. If you indulge the body, you perpetuate the body, and the end of the body is corruption. You understand me again, but you shrink. Remember that without self-denial and restraint there is no power over death. ”

“ And it was to the eradication of Materialism that, from that moment, I dedicated myself. It was a rescue work for both man and beast, seeing that humanity itself was menaced with extinction. For the materialist, of course, that which makes the man is the form. For me it was the character, and it was this, the character of mankind present and to come, that was at stake. For man demonised is no longer man. In the overthrow of Materialism, I saw absolutely, was salvation alone to be found, whether for man or beast. ”

“ Therefore the High Gods will give through a woman the Interpretation which alone can save the world. A woman shall open the gates of the Kingdom to mankind, because Intuition only can redeem. Between the Woman and the Astrals there is always enmity; for they seek to destroy her and her office, and to put themselves in her place. They are the delusive shapes who tempted the saints of old with exceeding beauty and wiles of love, and great show of affection and flattery. ”

“ Hymn to Phoibos, the First of the Gods.
"Strong art thou and adorable, Phoibos Apollo, who bearest life and healing on thy wings, who crownest the year with thy bounty, and givest the spirit of thy divinity to the fruits and precious things of all the worlds.
Where were the bread of the initiation of the Sons of God, except thou bring the corn to ear; or the wine of their mystical chalice, except thou bless the vintage?
[175]
Many are the angels who serve in the courts of the spheres of heaven: but thou, Master of Light and of Life, art followed by the Christs of God. ”

“ Being desirous once to test the powers of a medium to whom she was totally unknown even by name, she asked his controlling spirit about herself and her faculty. "You are not a trance-medium at all!" the spirit exclaimed in reply. "My medium is a trance-medium. You are far beyond [78] that. You are a spiritual lens. You are a mirror in which the highest spirits—the Gods—can reflect their faces. You take the light of the whole universe and divide it so that it can be understood, as it has never been understood yet. ”

“ It is the Angel of the Earth himself that is your genius and mine, Caro. He it was who inspired you, who spoke to you. And they call me 'Bitterness.' And I see sorrow—oh, what unending sorrow do I behold! Sorrow, always sorrow, but never without love. I shall always have love. How dim is this sphere!... ”

“ For as the angel was to the man, so is the intuition to the intellect, which of itself cannot transcend the sense-nature, but remains blind and dark and lost in the wilderness of illusion. And as she, my colleague, had supplemented me, so were we each to supplement in ourselves intellect by intuition, in order to become capable of knowledge and understanding. It was, moreover, a parable of the Fall and of the Redemption, an epitome in short of man's spiritual history. ”

“ All things are yours, even the kingdom and the power, but the glory is to God. Do not be ignorant of their teaching, for I would have you know all. Take, therefore, every means to know. This knowledge is of man, and cometh from the mind. Go, therefore, to man to learn it. 'If you will be perfect, learn also of these.' 'Yet the wisdom which is from above, is above all.' For one man may begin from within, that is, with wisdom, and wisdom is one with love. Blessed is the man who chooseth wisdom, for she leaveneth all things. ”

“ One of the aged men, who had his finger on a place in a book open before him, said:
"This spirit, who is of our order, writes in this book,—'Be ye perfect, therefore, as your Father in heaven is perfect.' How shall we understand this word 'perfection'?" And another of the old men, looking up, answered, "It must mean Wisdom, for wisdom is the sum of perfection." And another old man said, "That cannot be; for no creature can be wise as God is wise. ”

“ Thus, therefore, the spiritual ego itself is detained from perfect absorption into the divine, and union therewith. For the Ruach shall not all die, if there be in it anything worthy of recall. The astral sphere is its purging chamber. For Saturn, who is Time, is the trier of all things; he devoureth all the dross; only that escapeth which in its nature is ethereal and destined to reign. And this death of the Ruach is gradual and natural. It is a process of elimination and disintegration, often—as men measure time—extending over many decades, or even centuries. ”

“ For the feeling required of me proved to be that of the inner, not merely of the outer man, of the soul, not merely of the body; and the faculty, to be the intuition, and not merely the intellect. Hence I was made to learn by experience, long before the fact was formulated for me in words, that only "by the bruising of the outer, the inner is set free," and "man is alive only so far as he has felt." ”

“ She, King and Queen, positive and negative, centrifugal and centripetal, they are the dual powers of all things, the constituent principles at once of God and of Man. The whole Universe is Humanity, for it is the manifestation of God, and they are the divine man and woman of all being; in their conjunction omnipotent for good, in their disjunction omnipotent for evil. And whereas it is the function of Will to inflict, it is the function of Love to bear. ”

“ By her fault, indeed, is the moral conscience of humanity made subject to the intellectual force, and thereby all manner of evil and confusion abounds, since her desire is unto him, and he rules over her until now. But the end foretold by the seer is not far off. Then shall the Woman be exalted, clothed with the Sun, and carried to the throne of God. And her sons shall make war with the dragon, and have victory over him. Intuition, therefore, pure and a virgin, shall be the mother and redemptress of her fallen sons, whom she bore under bondage to her husband the intellectual force. ”

“ It is hard for thee to perceive the surfaces of things and to remember their aspect. But thy spiritual perception is the stronger for this weakness, and the profound is that which thou seest the most readily. It is hard for thee to understand and to retain the memory of material facts; but their meaning thou knowest instantly and by intuition, which is the memory of the soul. For the soul takes no pains to remember; she knows divinely. Is it not said that the immaculate woman brings forth without a pang? The sorrow and travail of conception belong to her whose desire is unto 'Adam'" [68] . ”

“ And finally, after climbing many a further step of the infinite ladder of existence, and escaping the limitations of all systems whatever, he represents—nay, finds that he is—the soul of the universe, even God Himself, once 'manifested in the flesh,' and now 'perfected through suffering,' 'purified, sanctified, redeemed, justified, glorified,' 'crowned with honour and glory,' and 'seated for ever at the right hand of the Father,' 'one with God,' even God Himself. ”

“ I answered, "If there is such a thing as divine revelation, I know of nothing that comes nearer to my ideal of what it ought to be. It is exactly what the world is perishing for want of—a reasonable faith." ”

“ None is a prophet save he who knoweth: the instructor of the people is a man of many lives.
Inborn knowledge and the perception of things, these are the sources of revelation: the Soul of the man instructeth him, having already learned by experience.
Intuition is inborn experience; that which the soul knoweth of old and of former years.
And Illumination is the Light of Wisdom, whereby a man perceiveth heavenly secrets.
Which Light is the Spirit of God within the man, showing unto him the things of God. ”

“ In a true mission of redemption, in the proclamation of a gospel to save, it is the man who must preach; it is the man who must stand forward among the people; it is the man who, if need be, must die. But he is not alone. If his be the glory of the full noontide, his day has been ushered in by a goddess. Aurora has preceded Phoibos Apollo; Mary has been before Christ. ”

“ All Scriptures which are the true Word of God, have a dual interpretation, the intellectual and the intuitional, the apparent and the hidden.
For nothing can come forth from God save that which is fruitful.
As is the nature of God, so is the Word of God's mouth.
The letter alone is barren; the spirit and the letter give life.
But that Scripture is the more excellent, which is exceeding fruitful and brings forth abundant signification.
For God is able to say many things in one, as the perfect ovary contains many seeds in its chalice. ”

“ Here is Hermes, shining like a silver light. My Genius says that the way to get the utmost vitality on the spiritual plane is to abandon the plane of the body, and keep it quite low, by not indulging it. The time for bodily indulgence is passed with us. Abstinence, we have been told, and watchfulness and fasting are needful. And the time for the first of these has come. Nothing is gained without labour or won without suffering. Fasting and Watching and Abstinence, these are Beads and Rosary. It is a hard way and a long way, and it makes one wishful to turn back. ”

“ And among the impressions which at the same instant were flashed into my mind, was the impression, amounting to a conviction, that whatever might be the part assigned to others in the work of the new illumination in progress and the restoration thereby to the world of one true doctrine of existence, the exposition of its innermost and highest sphere, the head corner-stone of the pyramid of the system which is to make the humanity of the future, had been committed to us alone. ”

“ I felt, however vaguely, that the Duality I sought was in the Bible, though it had been missed by the official expositors of that book. And the conviction that it was in some way connected with my life-work was so strong that I constructed for the covers of my two first books a monogram symbolical of Genesis i. 27. And I looked to the unfoldment of what I felt to be the secret significance of that utterance for the explication of all the mysteries the solution of which engrossed me. ”