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228 offspring of a good "Karma" or state of Grace, and Divine Influx, by which parentage is exactly described the generation of every true "Jesus."

I must content myself with a simple expression of dissent from your reviewer's appreciation of the relation existing between the mysteries of Egyptian and of Grecian origin. No doubt I feel somewhat strongly on this point, because my own instruction and illumination in mystic doctrine have been obtained chiefly through the splendid arcana which I cannot, without regret, find characterised by your reviewer in a sentence evidently intended to disparge them, as "mythological fables."

,— In thanking you for the notice of this book in the November Theosophist, I wish to correct a misapprehension caused by your reviewer's statement that the books now being published do not appear to be the real Hermetic books. The misapprehension in question consists in the impression that this statement is made in contradiction of the position taken up by me. Whereas, the fact is it correctly dessribes that position the only conclusion to which I have committed myself in the point being "that the doctrine contained in the Hermetic books is in part, at least, a survival from the times of ancient Egypt, and therein really Hermetic." I have not said a word to imply that I considered them the work of Trismegistus himself, or that the term Hermetic meant other than a certain school or system of doctrine, originating, so far as the Western World is concerned, in Egypt, and bearing thothe [sic] name of Hermes Trismegistus, a name which has long been, for the Western World, a synonym for the intellectual principle.

Your reviewer's expression "misconception generally prevalent in the minds of the Western Hermetists" seems to me unfortunate as constituting an affirmation that the "Western Hermetists" are not rightly instructed concerning their own doctrine. Whereas all that your reviewer can possibly be in a position to affirm is that there is a divergency of view between his system and that of the West. That there may be and probably is such a divergency we "Western Hermetists" are quite ready to admit. But we are not ready to admit that the error, if any, lies with us. Rather do we hold, and believe, that the revival of occult knowledge now in progress will some day demonstrate, that the Western system represents ranges of preception, which the Eastern—at least as expounded in the pages of the Theosophist—has yet to attain.

Author:Edward Maitland.