Theurgy, or the Hermetic Practice: A Treatise on Spiritual Alchemy by E.J. Langford Garstin

Author:E.J. Langford Garstin [Garstin, E.J. Langford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nicolas-Hays, Inc
Published: 2004-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER IX

WE now come to the most difficult part of our inquiry, for we are beginning to grasp the magnitude of the task that we propose for ourselves, which is nothing less than the purification of the spiritual nature to a point where it may be raised, exalted or sublimated to a real union with its higher counterparts; from which mystical marriage, as it is sometimes called, is born that which is more than human, that which may be termed divine, the risen Osiris or Christ, which is truly at one with the Eternal Gods, with True Being.

And such an undertaking involves an ascent from World to World by analogous processes in each, by becoming perfect in each. Step by step we must climb that Jacob’s ladder which stretches from earth to the super-celestial regions, purifying and purging at every stage, dissolving, distilling, calcining, imbibing, coagulating, subliming, until the goal is reached, a goal so far beyond our most vivid imaginative speculations that all attempts fail of describing.

For, as Porphyry tells us in his Auxiliary to the Perception of Intelligibles, “When you have assumed to yourself an Eternal Essence, infinite in itself according to power; and begin to perceive intellectually an hypostasis unwearied, untamed, and never failing, but transcending in the most pure and genuine life, and full from itself ; and which likewise, is established in itself ; to this essence, if you add a subsistence in place, or a relation to a certain thing, at the same time you diminish this essence, or rather appear to diminish it, by ascribing to it an indigence of place or a relative condition of being ; you do not, however, in reality diminish this essence, but you separate yourself from the perception of it, by receiving as a veil the phantasy which runs under your conjectural apprehension of it. For you cannot pass beyond, or stop, or render more perfect, or effect the least change in a thing of this kind, because it is impossible for it to be in the smallest degree deficient. For it is much more sufficient than any perpetually flowing fountain can be conceived to be. If, however, you are unable to keep pace with it, and to become assimilated to the whole Intelligible Nature, you should not investigate anything pertaining to real Being ; or if you do, you will deviate from the path that leads to it, and will look at something else ; but if you investigate nothing else, being established in yourself and in your own Essence, you will be assimilated to the Intelligible Universe, and will not adhere to anything posterior to it.

“Neither therefore should you say, I am of great magnitude ; for omitting this idea of greatness, you will become universal, as you were universal prior to this. But when, together with the universe, something was present with you, you became less by the addition ; because the addition was not from truly subsisting Being, for to that you cannot add anything.

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