the Equinox - The Hermetic Library

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING
whatsoever thou givest, whatsoever thou dost of austerity, O Kaunteya, do thou
that as an offering unto Me.
On Me fix thy mind; be devoted to Me; sacrifice to Me; prostrate thyself
before Me; harmonized thus in the SELF (Âtman), thou shalt come unto Me,
having Me as thy supreme goal.*
These last two verses are taken from “The Yoga of the
Kingly Science and the Kingly Secret”; and if put into slightly
different language might easily be mistaken for a passage out
of “the Book of the Sacred Magic.”
Not so, however, the first, which is taken from "The Yoga
by the Sâñkhya,” and which is reminiscent of the Quietism of
Molinos and Madam de Guyon rather than of the operations
of a ceremonial magician. And it was just this Quietism that P.
as yet had never fully experienced; and he, realizing this, it
came about that when once the key of Yoga was proffered
him, he preferred to open the door of Renunciation and close
that of Action, and to abandon the Western methods by the
means of which he had already advanced so far rather than to
continue in them. This in itself was the first great Sacrifice
which he made upon the path of Renunciation—to abandon
all that he had as yet attained to, to cut himself off from the
world, and like an Hermit in a desolate land seek salvation by
himself, through himself and of Himself. Ultimately, as we
shall see, he renounced even this disownment, for which he
now sacrificed all, and, by an unification of both, welded the
East to the West, the two halves of that perfect whole which
had been lying apart since that night wherein the breath of
God moved upon the face of the waters and the limbs of a
living world struggled from out the Chaos of Ancient Night.
* Ibid. Ninth Discourse, 27, 34.
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