THE TABLETS OF ÆTH
__________
T
HES
ACREDS
CROLLW
HICH ISC
ALLEDT
HET
ABLETSOFÆ
THNOWFORTHEFIRSTTIME TRANSCRIBEDFROMTHE ASTRALRECORDSANDDONEINTOABOOK,
INTHREEPARTS.
By ZANONI
TO WHICH IS ADDED A SERIES OF INTERPRETATIVE REFLECTIONS FOR THE SPIRITUAL MEDITATION OF THE FAITHFUL.
FOREWORD
Thy temple is the arch Of yon unmeasured sky;
Thy Sabbath the stupendous march Of grand eternity.
To my Brothers and Sisters of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor:
G
REETING--For some years it has been my desire to leave a spiritual legacy to the many devoted friends and followers who have braved so much amid present truth and error for my sake.In choosing the present work for such a purpose, I have had in view the deeper spiritual needs of the soul--the prophetic element of the interior spirit, which can best exalt itself through the contemplation of Nature's arcane symbolism of the starry heavens--not the material expression of the glittering splendors of the midnight sky, but the spiritual soul-pictures of those blazing systems that reveal to the seeing eye the shining thrones of the Rulers--the Powers that Be.
Ever since the dawn of intellectual human life upon our Mother Earth, long before the days of the cave man, or even the first frost that heralded the coming of the Ice Age, souls have hoped and hungered and souls have quailed and fallen in their struggles with the mysteries of God. But ever and anon some bright flower of the race has gained the spiritual victory. A Messianic soul has responded to aspirations of a great-hearted, great-souled woman, pregnant with spiritual yearnings beyond her race, and she has unconsciously blessed her kind for the generations yet to come with that incarnated mystery--the Son of God. Blessed, O Woman, is thy patient mission on the earth, and transcendent are the holy mysteries of thy maternity. Every human birth is a Divine miracle in humanity, performed by the Motherhood of God.
Hence it is that, from the earliest ages of life, triumphant souls have stormed the gates of the sanctuary and penetrated Nature's most occult mysteries and there recorded their spiritual victories.
Amid these sacred records lies one great scroll, that none but the brightest and bravest may read.
This sacred scroll, sealed with the seven mystic seals of the heavens, contains The Tablets of Æth, a record of the soul's experiences upon the planes of both conscious and sub-conscious life-spirit and matter, that are expressed in a series of universal symbols, which manifest to the seer the processes of creative life, of spiritual cause with material effect. And, finally, the mystery of the seven vials and the seven stars of Saint John are written therein; for the Tablets are the hieroglyphic keys which unlock the realities of truth involved within the unrealities of external life, and open up, to the aspiring soul, inconceivable vistas of knowledge yet possible of realization, within the Divine womb of the uncreated Æther.
Myriads of exalted spirits, who have toiled for the treasure which doth not corrupt, have added, and are adding, their portion of personal conception to this universal conception of life, so that the sacred symbols themselves, inscribed upon these imperishable Tablets, are evolutionary--are slowly unfolding through the eons of time, and revealing wider and yet deeper processes of the light, life, and love, of the Motherhood of God.
Therefore, all Divine revelation of infinite truth is limited and finite as to its conception, when revealed through a finite capacity. All Divine truths are universal; all personal conceptions of such truths are limited; hence springs the unquenchable fountain of the one eternal truth, eternally repeating itself, in cosmic as in human life, by the progressive unfoldment of Nature's unlimited potentialities.
"The outward doth from the inward roll, And the inward dwells in the inmost soul."
The true poet is always a seer, and he might have added that the inmost soul is the uncreate, and, the yet uncreated itself, lies buried in the ever eternal beyond; hence the immortality of the human spirit.
This sacred astral scroll, rightly and reverently studied by the disciple of the higher law, becomes a boundless source of knowledge and inspiration. There is no mood of the mind or yearning of the soul that cannot be satisfied and refreshed from this inexhaustible fountain of spiritual truth, no passion of the human heart that cannot be eased of its burden and soothed of its pain. Its spiritual refreshment falls like the dew from heaven upon those who are weary and heavy laden with the trials and sufferings of external life.
Accept it, then, even as it is given unto you. My friends and brethren, accept it as Zanoni's last work on earth--his legacy to you, and may the spirit of the All-Father-Mother, the ineffable spirit of Life, Light, and Love,--the Unknowable, whom men call God, rest upon you and be with you now and forever.
INTRODUCTION
Thought whispered, 'Arise, O seeker, and explore.' "
The Tablets of Æth are the culminating expression of symbolical ideas, and the studious meditation thereof is to be approached and continued in this wise:
First, commit to memory, as near as may be, all the ideas involved in the astrological laws and principles laid down in "The Science of the Stars," formulated in the second part of "The Light of Egypt," Vol. I, especially as regards the symbolism there given and manifestation thereof on the intellectual plane. Mentally digest these aspects of truth most thoroughly.
Second, carry forward the same course of mental training with regard to the preceding chapters in this volume, from No. 1 to No. 12. There are thirteen chapters, but No. 13, the last one, being "The Penetralia," should not be included in this course, but, rightly used, should be reserved as the last and final revelation for spiritual contemplation.
The twelve chapters just mentioned continue the great astral laws given in "The Light of Egypt," Vol. I, from this plane to that of the soul life of the human monad (both prior to and after human incarnation). At this point we leave the finite and step into the realms of the infinite. From the sphere of limitations which surround the microcosm we enter the starlit path of the macrocosm, and here, with the illimitable ocean of eternal life sweeping onward before us, we hear the first strains of the Grand March of the Universe burst forth from the organs of God! The suns of creative life swell the infinite chorus of sound; archangels swing their fiery batons to the march of the heavenly host;
and all earthly sound has ceased. We are absorbed in the music of the spheres.
We are now in the realm of universals, the domain of living realities. The Tarot of Mother Nature revolves before us, revealing her mystic meanings to the soul. All ideas are symbols, and symbols are reservoirs for the conservation of thought. And this is a very truth: Even so on earth as it is in heaven.
The Tablets of Æth, then, constitute a spiritual astrology, a spiritual science of the stars, void of mathematics, yet possessing all the exactitude of figures, constructed on the principles of astronomy, yet expressed by the methods of the Kabbalah.
The transmission of spiritual truth from inward to outward form, though differing according to the age in which it is expressed, is ever the same in principle. And in the same way that the sacred clavicula of Solomon became the Tarot of Bohemian gypsies, so did the Tablets of Æth manifest their mysteries in the starry science of Chaldean lore. But there is this sharp line of demarcation between them, namely, the Tablets of Æth deal with universal human life and nature, with infinite principles