the Equinox - The Hermetic Library

188
THE EQUINOX
they would progress through would be in all cases essentially
the same, the differences, if any, being due to the mental
limitations of the experimenter, his education and prejudice,
and not because the roads were dissimilar. Thus by this law
could he with certainty predict that if a certain exercise were
undertaken certain stages would be passed through, and what
these stages meant relative to the final result, irrespective of
the creed, caste, or sect of the practitioner.
Further, he had proved beyond doubt or quibble, that the
terrific strain caused by the Eastern breathing exercises was
no whit greater or less than that resulting from The Acts of
Worship in an operation of Ceremonial Magic, that Dhâranâ
and the Mantra Yoga were in effect none other than a paraphrase
of the Sacred Magic and the Acts of Invocation; and
ultimately that the whole system of Eastern Yoga was but a
synonym of Western Mysticism. Starting from the root, he
had by now crept sufficiently far through the darkness of the
black earth to predict a great tree above, and to prophecy
concerning a Kingdom of Light and Loveliness; and, as a
worm will detect its approach to the earth surface by the
warmth of the mould, so did he detect by a sense, new and
unknown to him, a world as different from the world he lived
in as the world of awakenment differs from the world of
dreams. Further, did he grow to understand, that, though as a
sustenance to the tree itself one root might not be as important
as another, yet that they all drew their strength from
the self-same soil, and ultimately united in the one trunk
above. Some were rotten with age, some dying, some again
but feeders of useless shoots, but more sympathetically, more
scientifically, they were all of one kind, the roots of one actual