.] O Wisdom, the preparation and ordering of the bridal
garments is given in charge to you alone, which shall be of divers colors,
with which the king's daughter, [Analogue of the king's son, the improved
son figure of the parable.] who is entrusted to thy teaching and
instruction, may be distinguished from all others, and known [as
redeemed]." (L. G. B., I, pp. 51 ff., wherewith the magic journey is
ended.)

Thus there is a confident tone, a hope in that which loses itself in the
infinite. But Leade suspects that it is an unattainable ideal and knows
what regulative import it has: "Ah, who up to this hour has traveled so
far, and what are all our realized gifts until we have reached this goal
[union with the Divinity]. Can our plummet even sound it and explore in
the deep abyss, the matchless wonder of the immeasurable being? And
because the revolving wheel of my spirit has found no rest in all that it
has seen, known, possessed and enjoyed, it stretched its errant senses
continuously towards what was still held back, and kept, by the strong
rock of omnipotence; to struggle towards which with a fresh attack I
resolutely determined, and would be sent away with nothing less than the
kingdom and the ruling power of the Holy Ghost." (L. G. B., I, p. 87.)

In a parallel between the old and new royal art, I cannot overlook the
French masonic writer Oswald Wirth, who has worked in the same province. I
agree with him in general; although much of his method of interpretation
seems to me too arbitrary. I have already called attention to several
passages from W. S. H. on the preparation of the subject [i.e., the
uninitiated]. I will endeavor to outline the contents of the rest of the
work according to the ideas of Wirth.

Having given up himself, the Subjectum is overcome in the philosophic egg
[preparation chamber, i.e., sch. K.] by sadness and suffering. His
strength ebbs away, the decomposition begins; the subtle is separated from
the coarse. [Smaragdine tablet.] That is the first phase of the air test.
After descending to the center of the earth [Visita interiora terrae,
etc.--Smaragdine tablet, 6, 8.] where the roots of all individuality meet,
the spirit rises up again [Smaragdine tablet, 10.] released from the caput
mortuum, which is blacked on the floor of the hermetic receptacle. The
residuum is represented by the cast-off raiment of the novice. Laboriously
now, he toils forward in the darkness; the heights draw him on;