The Book of Ceremonial Magic

and suffered and died, had risen and ascended and reigned in them. So that Divine life, finally original: "in fine", carried them to its last stage. It was not Dionysius Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, a 5th-century Christian theologian and philosopher. or Ruysbroeck Jan van Ruysbroeck (1293–1381), a Flemish mystic., the author of The Cloud of Unknowing An anonymous 14th-century Middle English book on contemplative prayer., or the soul of the poor imprisoned Jesuit Molinos Miguel de Molinos (1628–1696), a Spanish mystic who was imprisoned for his "Quietist" teachings., but the Christ-nature within each and all of these—within ten thousand times ten thousand of their peers, in all ages and nations and faiths and climates—which entered into that incredible intensity. That which is termed the act or state of being lost in God is what I have elsewhere described using a perfection of all metaphors—which is my adaptation but not of my making—when Christ delivers up the Kingdom of each soul to His Father, and God is all in all.

This is the state which is beyond the state where it is said that "they shall see His face."

Of this is the mystic tradition in the Christian era; it has been perpetuated in an unbroken line from the beginnings of the new dispensation The "new dispensation" refers to the period of the New Testament or the Christian era. until this moment. It is, of course, in itself the most secret, exotic, and incomprehensible of all languages, though at the same time it is the most open, universal, and simple. The understanding of it is a question of experience, and that experience is attained in sanctity—though, as I have said elsewhere, the intellectual light concerning it belongs more to the dedication out of which sanctity may eventually emerge than to the state of sainthood itself. The technicalities of the occult sciences may seem hard to the beginner, and they are actually hard like the wilderness because they are barren wastes; but they are written in words of one syllable if compared with the little catechisms of eternal life, which are exclusive to the children of God.

Behind this Open Entrance to the Closed Palace of the King The title of a famous 17th-century alchemical text by Eirenaeus Philalethes.—which is so like the eye of the needle—there is the concealed tradition in and behind the mysticism of Christian times. It is scarcely possible to speak about this here, and it will require some care not to confuse the image with which I have opened my statement. The Open Entrance, of course, leads to the Palace, but at a certain point, one finds an exceedingly hidden postern A back door or private entrance. and a path beyond. This path is absolutely unattainable except through the lawful entrance because, although the Kingdom of Heaven tolerates a certain quality of enlightened and loving violence, the sanctuary of all its sanctuaries responds only to the violence of that man who knows how to lay hands on himself, so that he may carry none of his external traits to the most innermost original: intrinsecus place in all the world of God.

This postern is hidden deeply on the deepest side of tradition. However, by what can be traced concerning it, I think there has been such a going to and fro upon the Ladder of Jacob A reference to Genesis 28:12, symbolizing the connection between Earth and Heaven. that something more of those states—which are not the end, but perhaps the second-to-last step toward it—has been brought back by those who have accomplished all but the final stage of the Great Work The "Great Work" (Magnum Opus) is an alchemical term for the process of spiritual transformation and union with the Divine.. I think further that they have gone so far that they have seen with their own eyes some intimacies of the end itself—the state of those who go in and never come back.

These are aspects of the Secret Tradition in so far as it has declared itself on the side of God. It remains now to be said that there is a backward tradition original: à rebours, meaning "against the grain" or in reverse., and though it may seem very hard to put it so roughly and frankly, I have not taken all the consciousness of the inner man as my subject just to smooth over or reduce any of the distinctions between the loss and gain of the soul. The backward tradition is definitely and clearly that of miraculous...