oth of the physical world and Hades or the Unseen
World, which surrounds every child of man. Into such a cave, in the
middle of the Ocean, Cronus shut his children, as Porphyry[136] tells
us. It was called by the name Petra, or Rock, and from such a Rock
Mithras is said to have been born.[137]

Faber endeavours to identify this symbolical cave with the Ark,[138]
which may be permissible from one aspect, as the womb of mother nature
and of the human mother correspond analogically.

In the "new birth" of the mysteries, the Souls were typified as bees
born from the body of an ox, for they were to gather the honey of
wisdom, and were born from the now dead body of their lower natures. In
the cave were two doors, one for immortals, the other for mortals. In
this connection the cave is the psychic womb that surrounds every man,
of which Nicodemus displays such ignorance in the Gospels. It is the
microcosmic Middle Distance; by one door the Lower Soul enters, and
uniting with its immortal consort, who descends through the door of the
immortals, becomes immortal.

The cavern is overshadowed by an olive tree--again the Tree of Life to
which we have referred above--on the branches of which the doves rest,
and bring back the leaves to the ark of the body and the prisoner within
it.

But space does not permit us to pursue further this interesting subject,
which requires an entire treatise by itself, or even a series of
volumes. Enough, however, has been said to show that the method of
interpretation employed by Simon is not without interest and profit, and
that the tolerant spirit of to-day which animates the best minds and
hearts in Christendom will find no reason to mete out to Simon wholesale
condemnation on this score.

There are also many other points of interest that could be elaborated
upon, in the fragments of the system we are reviewing, but as my task is
in the form of an essay, and not an exhaustive work, I must be content
to pass them by for the present, and to hurry on to a few words on that
strange and misunderstood subject, commonly known as Magic.

What Magic, the "Great Art" of the ancients, was in reality is now as
difficult to discover as is the true Religion that underlies all the
great religions of the world. It was an art, a practice, the Great and
Supreme Art of the most Sacred Science of God, the Universe and Man. It
was and it is all this in its highest sense, and its method was what is
now called "c