is stopped and challenged by the Guardians of the Gate of each
successive world, and the Soul cannot pass through the Gate and go on
his way unless he knows two things: he must pronounce a word, the Word
of Power: he must make a sign, the Sign of Power. When that Word is
spoken, when that Sign is given, the bars of the Gate fall down, and
the Guardians stand aside to let the Soul pass through. A similar
account is given in the great mystic Christian Gospel, the _Pistis
Sophia_, before mentioned.[332] Here the passage through the worlds is
not of a Soul set free from the body by death, but of one who has
voluntarily left it in the course of Initiation. There are great Powers,
the Powers of Nature, that bar his way, and till the Initiate gives the
Word and the Sign, they will not allow him to pass through the portals
of their realms. This double knowledge, then, was necessary--to speak
the Word of Power, to make the Sign of Power. Without these progress was
blocked, and without these a Sacrament is no Sacrament.

Further, in all Sacraments some physical material is used, or should be
used.[333] This is ever a symbol of that which is to be gained by the
Sacrament, and points to the nature of the "inward and spiritual grace"
received through it. This is also the material means of conveying the
grace, not symbolically, but actually, and a subtle change in this
material adapts it for high ends.

Now a physical object consists of the solid, liquid, and gaseous
particles into which a chemist would resolve it by analysis, and further
of ether, which interpenetrates the grosser stuffs. In this ether play
the magnetic energies. It is further connected with counterparts of
subtle matter, in which play energies subtler than the magnetic, but
like them in nature and more powerful.

When such an object is magnetised a change is effected in the ethereal
portion, the wave-motions are altered and systematised, and made to
follow the wave-motions of the ether of the magnetiser; it thus comes to
share his nature, and the denser particles of the object, played on by
the ether, slowly change their rates of vibration. If the magnetiser has
the power of affecting the subtler counterparts also he makes them
similarly vibrate in assonance with his own.

This is the secret of magnetic cures: the irregular vibrations of the
diseased person are so worked on as to accord with the regular
vibrations of the healthy operator, as definitely as an ir