The Mysteries 173More sylphs appear, "lovely creatures, moving about the lodge, ra-
diant, charged with joy and vitality, their virile power liberated into the
candidate: this has the effect of making his astral body more suscepti-
ble to the forces of the ceremony. Streams of force are poured into his
aura which is made to glow with a white radiance and to expand in
size. His astral body is purified, refined, and raised in tone and vibra-
tory rate."
The effect of the elementals upon him, with their vibrations, helps
to prepare the candidate for the great experience of consecration.
Hodson says it sometimes appears that the devas throw a film across the
portal so that as the candidate passes through it his aura is combed out
and cleansed.
The candidate is then presented to the angelic hosts, at first through
the medium of their lower orders, the nature spirits. Later he meets the
higher intelligences. By this time certain parts of the lodge have been
heavily charged with magnetic force.
However little the brothers may know about what is actually hap-
pening, says Leadbeater, every Masonic lodge is in charge of a highly
developed angel. Such an angel, representing the Master Mason, arrives
with a cohort of assistant angels to take charge of the proceedings.
This central point of the ceremony, its climax, has now been
reached and consists of the definite admission of the candidate into the
order-the point at which a certain center or chakra is opened, a cer-
tain potential power given. Forces are sent through the candidate's
body in a definite manner during this ceremony. Basic to the process is
arousal by the hierophant or Master Mason of the kundalini "serpent
power" in the candidate.To bring this God-power down into the can-
didate and to raise the serpent or kundalini, says Hodson, is one part of
the ofice of the hierophant of the Great Mysteries. In ancient Egypt-
as Leadbeater claims to have witnessed clairvoyantly-a weak current
of physical electricity was sent through the candidate by means of a rod
or sword with which he was touched at certain points.
Theosophists enumerate and locate three sources for the basic and
universal energy of kundalini: for the macrocosm, the sun; for nature,
the center of the earth; for the microcosm, or physical human body, the