Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/226

 and not Thotmor; and still am Thotmor and not Socrates. Here is another enigma. Do you comprehend? Again the same method; again this strange weird being not only provokes to mental exertion, but reveals a clue to millions of profound and priceless secrets! He is then the great Ramus, the imperial lord of an imperial order,—that great and mystic brotherhood at whose power kings and potentates have trembled most abjectly. And this lordly being condescends to teach a few of the mysteries of Being to my humble self, and through me to the world. How wonderful! How my soul rejoices! Verily, from this day forth I will endeavor to prove worthy of the kingly favor. This was my resolve; how it was afterward forgotten has already been stated. Men ever neglect and forget their best friends! But even this forgetfulness, so I have been told, was foreseen; it was known long years ago that the painful career since accomplished, was the decree of a power above my feebleness, and it was known that all the terrible sufferings, trials, temptations and repentances were to be instruments toward
 * for remember the human soul is infinite in its nature! Its capacities are boundless. You aspire to comprehend the mighty secret of the . You seek to become an acolyte of the imperial order of the Rosy Cross, and to re-establish it upon the earth; and no dares shrink from attempting the solution of the mysteries and problems that human minds in heaven or on earth may conceive or propound. Our motto—the motto of the great order of which I was a brother on the earth,—an order which has, under a variety of names, existed since the very dawn of civilization on the earth—is '.'"