Post by Tamrin on Sept 18, 2008 16:10:14 GMT 10
THE DWELLER ON THE THRESHOLD
From Book IV and V of ZANONI- A Rosicrucian Tale by
SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(Excerpt - Linked above)
From Book IV and V of ZANONI- A Rosicrucian Tale by
SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
(Excerpt - Linked above)
"When I first received thee as my pupil, I promised Zanoni, if convinced by thy first trials that thou couldst but swell, not the number of our order but the list of the victims who have aspired to it in vain, I would not rear thee to thine own wretchedness and doom; I would dismiss thee back to the world. I fulfil my promise. Thine ordeal has been the easiest that Neophyte ever knew. I asked for nothing but abstinence from the sensual, and a brief experiment of thy patience and thy faith. Go back to thine own world, thou hast no nature to aspire to ours!
"It was I who prepared Paolo to receive thee at the revel. It was I who instigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms. It was I who left open the book that thou couldst not read without violating my command. Well, thou has seen what awaits thee at the threshold of knowledge. Thou hast confronted the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and enthral. Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates for ever. Dost thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered, and purified, and raised, not by external spells, but by its own sublimity and valour, to pass the threshold and disdain the foe? Wretch! all my science avails nothing for the rash, for the sensual - for him who desires our secrets but to pollute them to gross enjoyments and selfish vice? How have the impostors and sorcerers of the earlier times perished by their very attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify and not deprave! They have boasted of the philosopher's stone and died in rags; of the immortal elixir, and sank to their grave, gray before their time. Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments. Yes, the fiend of their own unholy desires and criminal designs! What they coveted thou covetest; and if thou hadst the wings, of a seraph, thou couldst soar not from the slough of thy mortality. Thy desire for knowledge, but petulant presumption; thy thirst for happiness, but the diseased longing for the unclean and mudded waters of corporeal pleasure; thy very love, which usually elevates even the mean, a passion that calculates treason, amidst the first glow of lust;- thou, one of us! Thou, a brother of the August Order! Thou, an Aspirant to the Stars that shine in the Shemaia of the Chaldaean love! The eagle can raise but the eaglet to the sun. I abandon thee to the twilight!
"It was I who prepared Paolo to receive thee at the revel. It was I who instigated the old beggar to ask thee for alms. It was I who left open the book that thou couldst not read without violating my command. Well, thou has seen what awaits thee at the threshold of knowledge. Thou hast confronted the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and enthral. Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates for ever. Dost thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered, and purified, and raised, not by external spells, but by its own sublimity and valour, to pass the threshold and disdain the foe? Wretch! all my science avails nothing for the rash, for the sensual - for him who desires our secrets but to pollute them to gross enjoyments and selfish vice? How have the impostors and sorcerers of the earlier times perished by their very attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify and not deprave! They have boasted of the philosopher's stone and died in rags; of the immortal elixir, and sank to their grave, gray before their time. Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments. Yes, the fiend of their own unholy desires and criminal designs! What they coveted thou covetest; and if thou hadst the wings, of a seraph, thou couldst soar not from the slough of thy mortality. Thy desire for knowledge, but petulant presumption; thy thirst for happiness, but the diseased longing for the unclean and mudded waters of corporeal pleasure; thy very love, which usually elevates even the mean, a passion that calculates treason, amidst the first glow of lust;- thou, one of us! Thou, a brother of the August Order! Thou, an Aspirant to the Stars that shine in the Shemaia of the Chaldaean love! The eagle can raise but the eaglet to the sun. I abandon thee to the twilight!
There is what is sometimes called the "dweller on the threshold" (the threshold being that to the inner world). This phantom represents our doubts and our sense of unworthiness to progress beyond. It is, in a sense, our shadow self, although if not instructed aright in the differences between the inner and outer worlds, one might perceive it as an objective reality. At this juncture the seeker needs to assure themself that they are part of the greater whole; that they belong and are indeed awaited in that inner realm.