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254 EXTERNAL INFLUENCE ON THE HUMAN BEING
which alone the occult practices can become effective and describe the lifelong discipline 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. Booklearning 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 eassy 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 and eternal universe are the themes which demand interpretation.
The most superficial retrospect of the lives, educa.. tion and preparatory methods of discipline enforced upon the ancient Priesthood, invest that body with the true dignity of men in “holy orders" ; but how do these compare with the careless, lax system of mere
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