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270 EXTERNAL INFLUENCE ON THE HUMAN BEING
study a body as thoroughly prepared as a mind; a physique fitted by temperance, chastity and purity to allow full sway to the mind which inhabited it, and is so often cramped by inharmonious physical states.
When we come to lay down the conditions under which alone the occult practices can become effective and describe the lifelong descipline which the powerful magian must pursue, in order to become one, we shall put to shame the self-indulgent, intemperate, and too often dissolute habits of the present age-habits which not even the sacred assumption of the priestly office seems always to impose restraint upon. And yet this self-indulgent and luxuriant age looks back with contempt on the asceticism of the ancient Priest, while those who profess to believe in all the miraculous records of Jewish history, treat those of every other nation of antiquity with scornful denial. Book. learning and a superficial digest of the opinions of others cannot point out the royal road to power. Tinseled drawing rooms, wines and cigars, gilded mirrors and extrait de bouque cannot become silent, awe-inspiring, soul breathing caves of philosophers. A few figments of Latin, an essay. done into bad Greek and worse Hebrew, by a professional college drudge, for the benefit of his rich paying patron is not a sufficient passport to the holy orders of your modern priesthood in which God, Angels Spirits, the immortal soul's origin, destiny and powers, together with all the glories, marvels and mysteries of the boundless aud eternal universe are the themes which demand interpretaticc.
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