Mastery of the universal magnetic sympathy that exists between men, animals, plants, and minerals, selects and directs powers by sympathy; and expels unwanted ones by antipathy. As love of physical beauty grows to an appreciation of divine beauty, so the old priests, realising the mutual alliance and sympathy that underpins all kingdoms of life, and investigating the kinship between the manifested world and the occult powers that govern it, they fathomed out the relationship between Concealed Potentiality and Infinite Potencies at every level. Inspired by the presence of a Divine Virtue within, the lower classes sing the praises of the pinnacle of their respective order; some intellectually, others rationally; some in a natural manner, others physically. Every order of being proceeds gradually, in a beautiful descent, from the highest to the lowest. Stones and plants honour the sun and, in turn, they receive the bounty of divine love according to their ruling divinities. Magic is based on the affinities between organic and inorganic bodies, the visible productions of the four kingdoms, and the invisible powers of the universe. Thus, inferior ranks of the same order invariably venerate their superiors. That is why the cock is very much feared and revered by the lion. Insights to phenomena allowed the old priests to understand the power of noumena, and to control the hidden forces of nature. By combining various odours into one, they demonstrated the unity of Divine Essence. For, while division weakens each part, unity restores the idea of their exemplar. A humble herb or a self-unconscious stone is often enough to bring into being divine works. The master key of Divine Magic or Practical Theurgy is the Neo-Platonic term Theophania, when the Over-Soul (Atma-Buddhi) of a virtuous man incarnates for purposes of revelation. Then, the Word is made flesh in actuality, not as a figure of speech. A temporary divine incarnation is termed trance; if life-long, samadhi, when the mystic may at times quit his body. Personal god versus Absoluteness is the most troublesome of all doctrines. Once the self-delusion of anthropomorphism is understood and overcome, every mortal will realise that he is but a reflection of his immortal counterpart. The sole aim of Practical Occultism or Theurgy is the conscious reunion of the part with the All. Many are those who are eager to study Occultism, but very few have even an approximate idea of the Science itself. What Simon termed Magic, we now call Theosophia, i.e., Divine Wisdom, Power, and Knowledge. Its source and basis lies in the holy union of Spirit and Thought (Nous and Epinoia), whether on the purely divine or the terrestrial plane. That union is Helena, the “marriage” of Atma-Buddhi (Nous) with Lower Manas (male-female, in this sphere only), through which Spirit and Thought become one here on earth and are endowed with divine faculties and powers. Theoretical Occultism is harmless but Practical Magic is perilous. The numerals of the Kabbalah are especially dangerous. Unity, physical and metaphysical, is the real basis of Occult Sciences. While the Aryans applied their Science of Correspondences to veil the most spiritual and sublime truths of nature, the Jews used their acumen to conceal the single most divine mystery of evolution, i.e., that of birth and generation, before deifying the generative organs. Only Pythagoras’ cosmological theory of numerals can reconcile Matter and Spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the truth about the other mathematically. Let us then allow the world cling to its gods, to whatever plane or realm they may belong. The true Occultist would be guilty of high treason to mankind, were he to break forever the old deities before he could replace them with the whole and unadulterated truth. And this he cannot do as yet. The Esotericism of Egypt was that of the whole world during the long ages of the Third Race for it was imparted by Divine Instructors, the primeval Seven “Sons of Light.”

The first, semi-divine, pure and spiritual Race of Humanity had the “truths of God,” and lived up to them, and their ideals. They preserved them, so long as there was hardly any evil, and hence scarcely a possible abuse of that knowledge and those truths. But evolution and the gradual fall into materiality is also one of the “truths” and also one of the laws of “God.” And as mankind progressed, and became with every generation more of the earth, earthly, the individuality of each temporary Ego began to assert itself. It is personal selfishness that develops and urges man on to abuse of his knowledge and power. And selfishness is a human building, whose windows and doors are ever wide open for every kind of iniquity to enter into man’s soul. Few were the men during the early adolescence of mankind, and fewer still are they now, who feel disposed to put into practice Pope’s forcible declaration that he would tear out his own heart, if it had no better disposition than to love only himself, and laugh at all his neighbours. Hence the necessity of gradually taking away from man the divine knowledge and power, which became with every new human cycle more dangerous as a double-edged weapon, whose evil side was ever threatening one’s neighbour, and whose power for good was lavished freely only upon self. Those few “elect” whose inner natures had remained unaffected by their outward physical growth, thus became in time the sole guardians of the mysteries revealed, passing the knowledge to those most fit to receive it, and keeping it inaccessible to others. Reject this explanation from the Secret Teachings, and the very name of Religion will become synonymous with deception and fraud.

The compound term Theophania (from theos, “God,” and phainesthai, “to appear”) does not simply mean the appearance of God in man but the actual presence of a God in man, a divine incarnation.