The human soul : its movements, its lights, and the iconography of ...

THE HUMAN SOULand because it expresses the nature of thesecret more completely and perfectly.It istruly the fluid and potable gold of themasters in alchemy ; the word aurum (gold)comes from the Hebrew Aoizr which meanslight. What do you desire, was demandedof the new members of every initiation ? —To see the light, they had to reply.« The name of illuminati which is generallygiven to the adepts was then in thegreater number of cases ill chosen, when itwas given a mysterious sense, as if it meantmen, whose intelligence was enlightened bymiraculous daylight. Illuminati simplymeans knowers and possessors of the light,whether by the science of the great magicagent or by the rational ontological notionof the absolute.« This universal agent is the vital forcesubordinated to intelligence. Abandonedto itself, it rapidly devours, like Moloch,all it gives birth to and turns into a vastwaste the superabundance^ of life. It isthen the infernal serpent of the ancient— 92 —