7'he Mysteries G 175
possessed of theurgic powers. "The intensely heightened vibrations of
the brain, glands, cells, and aerial substance in the ventricles cause the
brain and cranium to be responsive to egoic and Monadic life and con-
~ciousne~s.''
Hodson explains that when Moses sublimated this creative force,
forcing it to flow upward from the pelvis, it became the magician's
wand of power in his hand. "Then the genie of the four elements,
earth, water, air, and fire, become obedient to the will of the holder of
such a rod."'
In the Great Mysteries, culmination of the demonstration of readi-
ness to be made a Master Mason or an initiate of the first degree con-
sists, says Leadbeater, not only in departure from the physical body in
full consciousness, returning with full remembrance of all that has oc-
curred in the superphysical worlds, but also in realizing there is no
longer a "you" and an "I"; both are one-facets of something that tran-
scends and includes them both."It is one thing to talk about this down
here and to grasp it intellectually. Quite another to enter into the mar-
velous world and know it with a certainly that can never be shaken."
The initiate is then required to pass into this cosmic aloneness to
discover his identity with all. "He realizes at last, and forever, that he is
the Eternal and the Eternal is himself, and then he is beyond the pos-
sibility of submergence into the illusion of separated self."
And so ends the initiation. With the closing of the lodge, the
elemental hosts that have been gathered together are described by
Hodson as scattering outward to all points of the compass. Only their
captains, the representative angels of the oscers, still remain.When the
- Far-fetched as the notion may appear, C. Janarajadasa tells in his book Occult
Investigations how in India Leadbeater made use of nature spirits to help him investi-
gate various chemical elements. Some, such as scandium, being rare and difficult to
obtain, were located by Leadbeater with the help of a nature spirit of the sea. He got
in touch with a triton he knew to be living in the ocean near the Adyar beach and
asked if it could find somethng like scandium in the sea. In no time, says Janarajadasa,
the nature spirit produced some erbium, whose atoms were described as being "like
spiculae, or a handful of tiny pencils held in the hand." Curious to know why
Leadbeater should want to see them, the triton said he could not understand the
reason for being asked to produce what to him were merely toys.