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A Treatise on White Magic - Introductory Remarks
The three aspects of divinity, the central energy, or spirit, the coordinating force or soul, and that which these two use and unify are in reality one vital principle manifesting in diversity. These are the Three in One, the One in Three, God in nature, and nature itself in God. Carrying the concept, for the sake of illustration, into other realms of thought this trinity of aspects can be seen functioning in the religious world as the esoteric teaching, the fundamental symbology and doctrines of the great world religions and the exoteric organizations; in government it is the sum total of the will of the people whatever that will may be, the formulated laws, and the exoteric administration; in education it is the will to learn, the arts and sciences, and the great exoteric educational systems; in philosophy it is the urge to wisdom, the interrelated schools of thought, and the outer presentation of the teachings. Thus this eternal triplicity runs through every department of the manifested world, whether viewed as that which is tangible, or as that which is sensitive and coherent, or that which is energizing. It is that intelligent activity which has been clumsily called "awareness"; it is the capacity of awareness itself, involving as it does sensitive response to environment, and the apparatus of that response, the divine duality of the soul; it is finally the sum total of that which is contacted and known; it is that of which the sensitive apparatus [21] becomes aware. This, as we shall see later, is a gradually growing realization, shifting ever into more esoteric and inner realms. These three aspects are seen in man, the divine unit of life. First he recognizes them in himself; then he sees them in every form in his environment, and finally he learns to relate these aspects of himself to the similar aspects in other forms of divine manifestation. Correct relation between forms will result in the harmonizing and right adjustment of physical plane life. Correct response to one's environment will result in correct rapport with the soul aspect, hidden in every form, and will produce right relations between the various parts of the inner nervous structure to be found in every kingdom of nature, subhuman and superhuman. This is as yet practically unknown but is rapidly coming into recognition, and when it is proven and realized it will be discovered that therein lies the basis of brotherhood and of unity. As the liver, the heart, the lungs, the stomach, and other organs in the body are separate in existence and in function and yet are unified and brought into relation through the medium of the nervous system throughout the body, so will it be found that in the world such organisms as the kingdoms in nature have their separate life and functions yet are correlated and coordinated by a vast intricate sensory system which is sometimes called the soul of all things, the anima mundi, the underlying consciousness. In dealing with the triplicities so often used when speaking of deity, such as spirit, soul, and body, - life, consciousness, and form, - it is of value to remember that they refer to differentiations of the one life, and that the more of these triplicities with which one can familiarize oneself the more one will be in rapport with a wider circle of men. But when one is dealing with things occult and subjective, and when the subject about which [22] one writes deals with the undefinable, then difficulty is encountered. It is no difficult matter to describe a man's personal appearance, his clothing, his form, and the things with which he is surrounded. Language suffices satisfactorily to deal with the concrete and with the world of form. But when one endeavors to convey an idea of his quality, character, and nature one is immediately faced with the problem of the unknown, with that undefinable unseen part which we sense, but which remains in a large sense unrevealed, end unrealized even by the man himself. How then shall we describe him through the medium of language? If this is so of man, how much greater is the difficulty when we seek through words to express that inexpressible sum total of which the terms spirit, soul, and body are regarded as the main component differentiations? How shall we define that undefinable life that men have (for the sake of understanding) limited and separated into a trinity of aspects, or persons, calling the whole by the name of God? Yet where this differentiation of God into a trinity is universal and agelong in use, where every people - ancient and modern - employ the same triplicity of ideation to express an intuitive realization, there is warrant for the usage. That some day we may think and express the truth differently may indeed be so, but for the average thinker of today the terms spirit, soul, and body stand for the aggregate of divine manifestation, both in the deity of the universe and in that lesser divinity, man himself. As this treatise is intended for the thinking human being and not for the crystallized theologians or the theoretically biassed scientists we will adhere to the well-used terminology and seek to understand what has lain back of the phrases in which man has sought to explain God Himself. "God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship [23] Him in Spirit and in Truth," states one of the scriptures of the world. "Man became a living soul," is to be found in another place in the same scripture." I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved blameless," said a great initiate of the White Lodge; and the greatest of them all yet present with us in physical form on earth, repeated the words of an earlier sage when He said: "I have said ye are Gods, and ye are all the children of the most High". In those words the triplicity of man, his divinity and his relationship to the life in Whom he lives and moves and has his being, is touched upon from the Christian standpoint, and all the great religions deal in analogous phrases with that relationship.
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