Mystical Qabala
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18. The Sephiroth should be interpreted macrocosmically, and the Paths microcosmically; thus we shall find the clue to the Tree in both man and nature.
CHAPTER XIII PRACTICAL WORK UPON THE TREE
1. If among the readers who have followed these studies in the Qabalah thus far there are any of the more advanced students of Western occultism, they will no doubt have found much more that is familiar than is new or original. In work mg upon this storehouse of ancient knowledge we are in the position of excavators working on the site of a buried temple; we are digging up fragments rather than studying a coherent system; for the system, though coherent enough in its heyday, was broken and scattered and defaced by the persecutions of twenty centuries ot unenlightened bigotry and spintual jealousy. 2. More work has been done upon these scattered fragments than is generally realised, however. Mme Blavatsky gathered together a great mass of data and exposed it to the gaze of a public which understood it little better than the child gazing at the cases in a museum and marveillng at the queer things they contain. The scholarly work of G. R. S. Mead has given us much information concerning the Gnosis, the esoteric tradition of the Western world during the earlier centuries of our epoch; Mrs Atwood's monumental book has revealed the significance of the Alchemical symbolism to us. None of these, however, have expounded the Western Tradition as initiates of that Tradition, but have approached it from outside and either pieced together its fragments, or, as in the case of Mme Blavatsky, interpreted it by analogy in the light of the more familiar system of another Tradition. 3. Those who approached the study of the subject from the inside-that is to say, with the initiatory keys-and employed [Page 92] it as a practical system for the exaltation of consciousness have, for the most part, maintained a secrecy which, though it raight have been not only justifiable and even essential in the days when the Holy Inquisition rewarded such researches with the stake, is difficult to assign to any more creditable motive in our liberal age than a desire to create and maintain prestige. A very effectual "corner" in occult practice, if not in occult knowledge, has been established and maintained among English-speaking peoples for the last quarter of a century. A "corner" that effectually defeated the spiritual impulse which should have given rise to a renaissance of the Mysteries during the last quarter of the last century. Consequently, the earth being ripe for the sowing and the wheat not being broadcast therein, the four winds brought strange seeds to the waiting ground, and a