anoint some ailing limb with it, the malady will be cured." a Fire is the great purifier, hence the Neophyte must make it his servant, resting in the divine assurance that fire, the divine element, will consume only that which is evil; that which agrees with its inner force will be sublimed and glorified. But woe to him if he be not pure, for at this step where he invokes the fire he is threatened with dissolution more or less complete according to his intellectual and moral unworthiness. If however, he be found worthy this baptism of fire makes him one of the Magi.

This idea is expressed in the beautiful myth of Psyche and Cupid, the Soul and the fire of love. In this myth we have a story of the Soul in its struggles through matter, its seduction through mortal love and its purification through labor and suffering, i. e., another story of Initiation. Cupid the son of Venus or the earthly offspring of the Divine Mother-love, the reflection of the Divine into matter, found Psyche, the Soul, sleeping in the garden of Venus. In the garden there were two fountains of water (the water of life-the water of illusion) the one sweet and the other bitter. These two fountains forever spread their sweet and bitter waters in the garden of love where the Soul wanders and often sleeps. But Cupid who wished to chain Psyche to earth touched her lips with the bitter waters of earth. Then Psyche awoke and in her amazement at the beauty of Cupid she spilled over him the sweet Waters of Life Eternal, and at the same time wounded herself with her own arrow.

As earth love touches the lips with bitterness the Soul awakes, and by its wondrous beauty enamours the earthly child of the Divine Mother, human love, Cupid. For a long time Psyche never saw her husband, but constantly heard his seductive voice and felt his radiant presence, until at last, driven to desperation by the desire to see and know, i. e., reaching the stage of 16 or the culmination of the cycle of six

3 Quoted by Papus, Tarot of the Bohemians, 269.

(unrest) in the darkness of the night (the rest hour), Psyche determines to see. Finding Cupid asleep she holds high her Lamp of Truth, determined to see her godlike spouse, even if she perish at the sight. But being amazed and enraptured at the beauty of her sleeping lord she lets fall one drop of burning oil upon his fair shoulder and he flees from her, for he was only the earthly shadow of Divine Love hence could not stand the test of the Divine Fire.

How often we seek for the Divine in its human offspring and then when the fiery ordeal comes we find it no more! Yet like Psyche we cannot forget. If the love given to humanity has been pure, little by little the Soul remembers that it is of divine origin, hence must be immortal. So while accepting it as the offspring of heaven we seek its source, knowing that Love is immortal even if Cupid, its earthly child, can be wounded or frightened away. Then in our life experience we pass through the mental ordeal of fire, for Divine Love is Fire in its highest aspect. Hence no burning earthly tear-drop, no withering doubt or fear can quench it. In its radiant shining it swallows up all tears. Once having reached this point the Soul like Psyche can never rest, but starts out on its long and laborious search through all the worlds, or we enter on the Path by giving up our earthly god to find God. And only when the Soul like Psyche has climbed laboriously to the dreary heights of the Mount of Attainment and humbly knocked for admission on the little door which gives entrance to the Temple of Venus (the Divine Mother), can we complete the sixth day of labor and find our rest one the seventh, 16=1+6=7. Then we find not only Divine Love, but we find that this Divine Love includes all love throughout the Manifest Universe, hence if we are joined to it at its source it must bring to us Love Immortal throughout the spheres,

CHAPTER XXXI.

The Sixteenth Letter, AYIN (y)

"He produced Ayin, predominant in Anger, crowned it, combined and formed with it Capricornus in the Universe, Tebet in the year, and the liver in man."-Sepher Yetzirah, 25.

The sixteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Ayin (y). It is one of the twelve simple letters and corresponds to the zodiacal sign Capricorn. Its meaning is an eye. By Papus this letter is given a hieroglyphical correspondence with the sixth letter Vau, the meaning of which is given as a peg or nail, a link or connection between two antagonists. The human eye, the window of the Soul, is a link between the spiritual life and the physical. But there is a decided difference in the meaning of Ayin, for while both refer to the eye and its power of seeing, Vau refers to the human eye which can look out and by its power of seeing grasp something of the physical plane, while the Ayin is the inner eye, which is the organ of spiritual sight. For only as an inner comprehension of what we see with the outer eye is grasped and interpreted can we say we really see. Hence the expression often used when one comprehends a thing, "I see," meaning I comprehend. Therefore while undeveloped man has a perfect physical eye given him as a link between the inner world or Soul and the outer world of manifestation he may remain quite ignorant until he has passed through a complete cycle of unfoldment comparable to ten and has learned to see by the use of his mind, i. e., until the things he sees outwardly have taken on a new significance in his mind. Here is where the letter Ayin corresponds with the liver in man, for in the liver is a very important center, namely, that of Kama or the desire principle. And only as this principle of desire is illumined by the Light from the Inner Eye and we begin to desire enlightenment can

the mind be gradually illumined and enable us to see the inner meaning and reality of things and thus interpret what we see. Thus while 16 by some authors is compared to the physical eye and is considered from its material basis we can still see that it represents a cycle of ongoing.

The desire principle, Kama, has ever been looked upon as man's tempter, the cause of his fall, et cetera, yet since the fall into matter or the clothing of the Soul in coats of skin was an absolutely necessary step in evolution, so through the desire principle alone can he fully learn the great lessons and accomplish the great work of redemption which his evolution demands. Again while the seat of desire is in the liver, it is by its mysterious connection with Manas, the mind, that it produces effects. For the Rational Mind acting through a center in the corpora-quadrigemina is called by Eastern teachers Kama-manas, and this is where the mental pictures produced through the eye are registered. And since this Rational Mind of man is the battle ground where the desires of the lower animal self (Kama) come up to man's attention for him to cognize and, by the power of his higher mind (Buddhi manas), to decide whether they are to be indulged or denied, if we postulate man's impotency to control these lower desires, we may agree with Papus who says of the sixteenth letter, "it is the sign of material sense. Again, degenerated, it expresses all that is crooked, false, perverse, and bad." But if on the other hand if we refuse to admit his impotency to control his desires we see in this step but a link between man's lowest materialization and his highest ideals. We see in it, as we did in the sixth letter, the Christ-force struggling with matter, but now struggling with the materials of man's mindstuff; the Christ-consciousness struggling with the animal consciousness. Shall the desire of the animal hold him in its power? or through the mental pictures seen by his inner understanding of outer things shall it but force him to reach up and grasp hold of the rope (the antaskarana) thrown him as a bridge to connect his lower mind with his higher, over which