ass, spontaneously
produces flame. The world subsists on sunlight; all animate creation
grows by it, and languishes without it, as the prosperity of cities
waxes or wanes with the presence or absence of a supply of gold. The
magnetic force of the sun, specialized as _prana_ (which is not the
breath which goes up and the breath which goes down, but that other,
in which the two repose), fulfils the same function in the human body
as does gold in civilization, sunlight in nature: its abundance makes
for health, its meagreness for enervation. Higher than _prana_ is the
mind, that golden sceptre of man's dominion, the Promethean gift of
fire with which he menaces the empire of the gods. Higher still, in
the soul, love is the motive force, the conqueror: a "heart of gold"
is one warmed and lighted by love. Still other is the desire of the
spirit, which no human affection satisfies, but truth only, the Golden
Person, the Light of the World, the very Godhead itself. Thus there is
earthy, airy, etheric gold; gold as intellect, gold as love, gold as
truth; from the curse of the world, the cause of a thousand crimes,
there ascends a Jacob's Ladder of symbols to divinity itself, whereby
men may learn that God works by sacrifice: that His universe is itself
His broken body. As gold in the purse, fire on the forge, sunlight
for the eyes, breath in the body, knowledge in the mind, love in the
heart, and wisdom in the understanding, He draws all men unto Him,
teaching them the wise use of wealth, the mastery over nature, the
care of the body, the cultivation of the mind, the love of wife and
child and neighbour, and, last lesson of all, He teaches them that in
industry, in science, in art, in sympathy and understanding, He it is
they are all the while knowing, loving, becoming; and that even when
they flee Him, His are the wings--

"When me they fly, I am the wings."

This attempt to define gold as a symbol ends with the indication of an
ubiquitous and immanent divinity in everything. Thus it is always: in
attempting to dislodge a single voussoir from the arch of truth, the
temple itself is shaken, so cunningly are the stones fitted together.
All roads lead to Rome, and every symbol is a key to the Great
Mystery: for example, read in the light of these correspondences, the
alchemist's transmutation of base metals into gold, is seen to be the
sublimation of man's lower nature into "that highest golden sheath,
which is Brahman."

K