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THE TREE OF LIFE
colour of the Throne of the highest spirit, no lesser spirit would
dare attempt to challenge its guard. Others favour the projection
within a properly drawn magical circle, painted i11 colour with all the
divine names outside, and the geometrical figures within. In this case,
however, the circle must be consecrated and ceremoniallv banished
by an appropriate ritual, a rather cumbersome and arduous procedure
for so frequent a practice. For this reason it is held that the
Banishing ~itualof the Pentagram alone suffices to secure adequate
protection and eliminates all possibility of demoniac possession.
The return to the body after a vision must be attended to with
care and judicious precaution. Upon entering the physical frame
a few deep breaths should be deliberately undertaken in order to
ensure the close conjoining of the two organisms, and it has been
suggested that a God-form should be physically assumed and a
Name vibrated. Usually the Harpocrates form suffices ; that is to
stand upright, with the left arm in front of the body, with the
forefinger held to the lips in the sign of silence, accompanied by
the audible ~ronunciation of the God's name. Failure to ensure the
cornmingling of the two essences of the thought body and the
physical body may lead to disastrous consequences.
If the Egyptian Book of the Dead is consulted, the reader will
benefit very considerably in knowledge, for therein the Tuat and
the Amentet, the sub-divisions of the Astral Light, have been the
subject of close observation and precise classification. In the
second part of Chapter CXXV, the god Osiris is seen seated at one
end of the Hall of hlaati, accompanied by the Goddesses of Law
and Truth, together with the forty-two assessors to assist him.
Each of these forty-two Gods represents some one of the nomes of
Egypt, and bears a symbolic magical name. In this conception
one sees the towering ingenuity of the Egyptian theurgic-priests
who made correspondences between the planes of the Astral Light
and the nomes or county-divisions of the Upper and Lower Nile
Country. By carefully studying this and subsequent chapters the
Theurgist will glean much useful information concerning the Astral
Light and the Guardians and Keepers of the Pylons through which
he must pass in his self-initiation. Although the Book of the Dead
represents these Pylons as those through which the deceased must
pass on his way to rest in Amentet, they are also applicable to the
Gates through which the Skryer in the spirit vision must enter.
They should not be considered fictions, these guarded Gates with
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