第47章

Accept it, then, even as it is given unto you.My friends and brethren, accept it as Zanoni's last work on earth--his legacy to you, and may thespirit of the All-Father-Mother, the ineffable spirit of Life, Light, and Love,--the Unknowable, whom men call God, rest upon you and be with you now and forever.

INTRODUCTION

TO THE BOOK WHICH IS CALLED "THE TABLETS OF AETH," WHEREIN ARE DESCRIBED THE FORMULAS OF MEDITATION.

THE FORMULAS OF MEDITATION,

TO THE DRAGON, FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.

"When first, a musing boy, I stood beside Thy starlit shimmer, and asked my restless heart What secrets Nature to the herd denied, But might to earnest hierophant impart; When lo! beside me, around and o'er, Thought whispered, 'Arise, O seeker, and explore.' "The Tablets of Aeth are the culminating expression of symbolical ideas, and the studious meditation thereof is to be approached and continued in this wise:

First, commit to memory, as near as may be, all the ideas involved in the astrological laws and principles laid down in "The Science of the Stars," formulated in the second part of "The Light of Egypt," Vol.I, especially as regards the symbolism there given and manifestation thereof on the intellectual plane.Mentally digest these aspects of truth most thoroughly.

Second, carry forward the same course of mental training with regard to the preceding chapters in this volume, from No.1 to No.12.There are thirteen chapters, but No.13, the last one, being "The Penetralia," should not be included in this course, but, rightly used, should be reserved as the last and final revelation for spiritual contemplation.

The twelve chapters just mentioned continue the great astral laws given in "The Light of Egypt," Vol.I, from this plane to that of the soul life of the human monad (both prior to and after human incarnation).At this point we leave the finite and step into the realms of the infinite.From the sphere of limitations which surround the microcosm we enter the starlit path of the macrocosm, and here, with the illimitable ocean of eternal life sweeping onward before us, we hear the first strains of the Grand March of the Universe burst forth from the organs of God! The sunsof creative life swell the infinite chorus of sound; archangels swing their fiery batons to the march of the heavenly host; and all earthly sound has ceased.We are absorbed in the music of the spheres.

We are now in the realm of universals, the domain of living realities.The Tarot of Mother Nature revolves before us, revealing her mystic meanings to the soul.All ideas are symbols, and symbols are reservoirs for the conservation of thought.And this is a very truth: Even so on earth as it is in heaven.

The Tablets of Aeth, then, constitute a spiritual astrology, a spiritual science of the stars, void of mathematics, yet possessing all the exactitude of figures, constructed on the principles of astronomy, yet expressed by the methods of the Kabbalah.

The transmission of spiritual truth from inward to outward form, though differing according to the age in which it is expressed, is ever the same in principle.And in the same way that the sacred clavicula of Solomon became the Tarot of Bohemian gypsies, so did the Tablets of Aeth manifest their mysteries in the starry science of Chaldean lore.But there is this sharp line of demarcation between them, namely, the Tablets of Aeth deal with universal human life and nature, with infinite principles from which all finite laws radiate.The Tablets of Aeth express and symbolize the cause.All other mundane systems of occult study, astronomical or metaphysical, are spirito-natural effects, the individual intellectual fruits, gathered from the one universal tree of knowledge.Uncreated, Unlimited Potentiality, is the one impersonal truth shining forever in the Great White Light of God.All the laws, powers, and principalities, manifested in the moving Universe, are but the colored rays, blazing with glorious life through the prisms of matter.

Having stated thus much, the neophyte will perceive in what meditative sphere of thought the Tablets may be used.The method of study is, as shown, a purely synthetic deduction of human ideas from spiritual symbols of universal principles.The Tablets themselves constitute a grand arcane Tarot of man, God and the universe, and of all the powers that dwell therein.They may be studied singly, as, for instance, meditating upon some one great universal idea or principle; or they maybe studied in trines, as they appear in each separate book, or chapter, or as squares, like two, five, eight, eleven, or as the seal of two trines, one, three, five, seven, nine, eleven, with No.twelve in the center, as the revealer of the mystery.And, finally, they may be contemplated as the Grand Oracle of Heaven, in the following manner:

Make a circle of the tablets, as you would with a pack of Tarot cards, beginning with No.1, on the eastern horizon, and proceeding in the exact opposite order from a figure of the heavens--No.2, being on the Twelfth House, No.3, on the Eleventh, and {} on the M.C.of the figure, as in the Astro-Masonic chart, given in the second part of "The Light of Egypt," Vol.I, and so proceed with the rest of the twelve tablets of the stars.This figure will represent the potentialities of the macrocosm, the starry signs symbolizing the possibilities of things past or to be, and the rulers the active executors thereof.Study the figure in all its aspects as such, first singly, tablet by tablet, then as a whole--the cosmos.Next, place the ruler of any given tablet at the side of the Mansion, and try to penetrate its various meanings, powers and possibilities.Then proceed the same with a trine and a square, and, last, with all the rulers, in the order of their celestial lordship of the signs, each in his appointed place, as a whole Arcana.