r of all worlds, in order to work in him and through him. When any
one says that that is mysticism, he is not wrong. Being developed on the
three successive ways of purgatio, illuminatio, and unio, this mysticism
is no less logical than the religious mysticism that with its
mortifications, if it were only rightly understood, would accomplish the
same purpose. Mortification is, as the word itself says, the endeavor for
a certain kind of death. Twice is the mason enjoined to die; at the
beginning in the preparation room and at the end at the final initiation
into the inmost chamber. The second death corresponds to the perfection of
the grand mastery. It signifies the complete sacrifice of his personality,
the renunciation of every personal desire. It is the effacement of that
radical egotism that caused the fall of Adam, in that he dragged down
spirituality into corporeality. The narrow pusillanimous ego melts into
nothing before the high impersonal self, symbolized by Hiram. The mythical
sins of the eternal universal human Adam are thus expatiated. The
architect of the temple is to the Grand Master Builder of All Worlds (G.
B. a. W.) just what in Christian symbolism the Word become flesh is to the
Eternal Father. In order to carry on the work of the universal structure
with advantage the Master must enter into the closest union of the will
with God. No longer a slave in anything he is the more a master of all,
the more his will works in harmony with the one that rules the universe.
"Placed between the abstract and the concrete, between the creative
intelligence and the objective creation, man thus conceived, appears like
the mediator par excellence, or the veritable Demiurge of the gnostics."
Yet it is not enough that he gets light from its original source, he must
also be bound by endless activity to those whom he is to lead. The
necessary bond is sympathy, love. "The master must make himself loved and
he can only succeed by himself loving with all the warmth of a generosity
extending even to absolute devotion, even to the sacrifice of himself."
The pelican [We are already acquainted with this hermetic bird.] is the
hieroglyph for this loving sacrifice without which every effort remains
vain. (W. S. H., p. 105.)

The master's degree, this necessarily last degree, corresponds to an ideal
that is set us as a task: we must strive towards it even if its
realization is beyond our powers. Our temple will never be finished, and