OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD

9

view, but shall rather take it from the standpoint of a spiritual conception of the universe. We shall best approach our subject if, to begin with, we understand the meaning of an ancient maxim, one which is intimately connected with the civilization of ancient Egypt, where the priestly wisdom of HermesRefers to Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary Hellenistic figure to whom a vast body of secret wisdom and "Hermetic" writings are attributed. flourished. It is an axiom which forms the fundamental principle of all spiritual science, and which has become known as the Hermetic Axiom; it runs, “As above, so below.”

You will find that there are many dilettante interpretations of this sentence; the explanation, however, which is to occupy us today is the following: — It is plain to spiritual science that the world to which man has primary access by means of his five senses does not represent the entire world, that it is in fact only the expression of a deeper world hidden behind it—namely, the spiritual world. Now, this spiritual world is called — according to the Hermetic Axiom — the higher world, the world “above”; and the world of the senses which is displayed around us, the existence of which we know through the medium of our senses, and which we are able to study by means of our intellect, is the lower one, the world “below,” the expression of that higher and spiritual world. Thus the occultist, looking upon this