20. The Universal Medicinea

CAPUT RESURRECTIO CIRCULUS THE MAJORITY of our physical complaints come from our moral diseases, according to the one and universal dogma, and by reason of the law of analogies. A great passion to which we abandon ourselves corresponds always to a great malady in store. Mortal sins are so named because they cause death physically and positively. Alexander the Great died of pride; he was naturally temperate, and it was through pride that he yielded to the excess which occasioned his death. Francis I died of an adultery. Louis XV died of his Parc-aux-Cerfs. When Marat was assassinated he was perishing of rage and envy. He was a monomaniac of pride, who believed himself to be the only just man and would have slain everything that was not Marat. Several of our contemporaries perished of fallen ambition after the Revolution of February. So soon as any will is confirmed irrevocably in the tendency towards the absurd, the man is dead, and the rock on which he will break is not remote. It is therefore true to say that wisdom preserves and prolongs life. The great Master told us: “My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath everlasting life.” And when the crowd murmured, He added: “Here the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you are spirit and life.” So also, when He was about to die, He attached the remembrance of His life to the sign of Bread, and that of His spirit to the symbol of Wine, thus instituting the communion of faith, hope and charity. Now, it is in the same sense that the Hermetic masters have said: Make gold potable, and you will have the Universal Medicine - that is to say, appropriate truth to your needs, let it become the source at which you daily drink, and you will in yourself have the immortality of the sages. Temperance, tranquillity of soul, simplicity of character, calmness and rationality of will, these things not only make us happy but strong and well. By growth in reason and goodness man becomes immortal. We are the authors of our own destiny, and God does not save us apart from our own concurrence. There is no death for the sage; death is a phantom, made horrible by the weakness and ignorance of the vulgar. Change is the sign of motion, and motion reveals life; if the corpse itself were dead, its decomposition would be impossible; all its constituent molecules are living and working out their liberation. Yet you dream that the spirit is set free first so that it may cease to live! You believe that thought and love can die when the grossest matter is imperishable! If change must be called death, we die and are reborn daily, because daily our forms change. Fear therefore to soil or rend your garments, but do not fear to lay them by when the hour of sleep approaches. The embalming and mummification of bodies is a superstition which is against Nature; it is an attempt to create death; it is the forcible petrification of a substance which is needed by life. But, on the other hand, we must not be quick to destroy or make away with bodies; there is no suddenness in the operations of Nature, and we must not risk any violent rupture of the bonds of a departing soul. Death is never instantaneous; it is, like sleep, gradual. So long as the blood has not become absolutely cold, so long as the nerves can quiver, a man is not wholly dead, and if none of the vital organs are destroyed the soul can be recalled, either by accident or by a strong will.