reation." As the Aeons imitated the Boundless Power and
emanated or created in their turn, so could man imitate the Aeons and
emanate or create in his turn. But "creation" is not generation, it is a
work of the "mind," in the highest sense of the word. By purification
and aspiration, by prayer and fasting, man had to make his mind
harmonious with the Great Mind of the Universe, and so by imitation
create pure vehicles whereby his consciousness could be carried in
every direction of the Universe. Such spiritual operations required the
greatest purity and piety, real purity and true piety, without disguise
or subterfuge, for man had to face himself and his God, before whom no
disguise was possible. The most secret motives, the most hidden desires,
were revealed by the stern self-discipline to which the Adepts of the
Science subjected themselves.

But as in all things here below, so with the Art of Magic, it was
two-fold. Above I have only spoken of the bright side of it, the path
along which the World-Saviours have trodden, for no one can gain
entrance to the path of self-sacrifice and compassion unless his heart
burns with love for all that lives, and unless he treads the way of
wisdom only in order that he may become that Path itself for the
salvation of the race. But there is the other side; knowledge is
knowledge irrespective of the use to which it may be put. The sword of
knowledge is two-edged, as remarked above, and may be put to good or
evil use, according to the selfishness or unselfishness of the
possessor.

But _corruptio optimi pessima_, and as the employment of wisdom for the
benefit of mankind--as, for instance, curing the sick, physically and
morally--is the highest, so the use of any abnormal power for the
advantage of self is the vilest sin that man can commit.

There are strange analogies in Nature, and the higher the spiritual, the
lower the corresponding material process; so that we find in the history
of magic--perhaps the longest history in the world--extremes ever
meeting. Abuse of spiritual powers, and the vilest physical processes,
noxious, fantastic, and pestilential, are recorded in the pages of
so-called magical literature, but such foul deeds are no more real Magic
than are the horrors of religious fanaticism the outcome of true
Mohammedanism or Christianity. This is the abuse, the superstition, the
degeneration of all that is good and true, rendered all the more vile
because it pertains to