THE OCCULT PRESS REVIEW

Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

February/March 1923

(pages 13-14)

Q.B.L., OR THE BRIDE'S RECEPTION.

A Treatise on the Nature and Use of the Tree of Life.

By Frater Achad [Charles Stansfeld Jones].

150 pp. with numerous diagrams, charts and colored plates.

Price $10.00.

Chicago: Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum, P.O. Box 141.

In these modern days of increasing recrudescence (this term is used in its better sense) of ancient arcane science, there has appeared little or no new literature on that comprehensive, but none the too easily comprehensible system, the Qabalah. For that reason, if for none other, the present volume is taken up with interest.

Much is being written, spoken and taught, these days, anent man's At-one-ment. We are told to know God, we read about the Silence, about Yoga, Attainment, the Path to Infinity, and Union with God. There are many today who are trying to "realize the Absolute," without taking into account that there is a well-defined series of steps, and that there is much information that is not only interesting but vitally essential in the transition, as one writer puts it, "from sense to soul." We are daily reminded of the Hermetic axiom: "As above, so below;" we are taught that the Macrocosm is reduplicated in all its details in the Microcosm; but unless each of us brings his little universe out of chaos and into perfect order with the Greater, his microcosm is more than apt to remain in a state of nescience. To be able to think the God Thought implies the ascension from multiplicity to Unity. Unity in thought implies the capability of understanding the relations of things; and to be able to understand the relation of things one must be able to realize that all facts are explainable by laws, and these laws by still higher principles, so that he comes to see how things follow from, and resolve themselves into, and are explained by a few illuminative archetypal ideas. The highest function of the human intellect consists in extracting from things their reasons; and the ultimate attainment to an intellectual mastery of the Universe could only be brought about by a subsequent comparison of these reasons or ideas, that the human intellect has extracted from things, among themselves to ascertain their intrinsic relationships and necessary implications, thus finally attaining to the ultimate ideas which represent the inmost nature and final explanation of the Universe.

These preliminary remarks are made by the reviewer with the hope that they will facilitate the understanding of the casual reads of the remarks made by the author of Q.B.L., in introducing and making known the purpose of his treatise: ". . . in other words, we shall find in the "Tree of Life" and its correspondences A CONVENIENT MEANS OF CLASSIFICATION, a sort of Filing Cabinet, together with much valuable material ready to file, and room for all that we may collect in our future researches.

"We shall find in this 'Filing Cabinet' a means of getting rid of a great many ideas which have been valueless on account of their unbalanced nature, and this, not by means of suppression—but by careful arrangement, thus setting our minds against their Opposites, leaving the Mind in a state which transcends both aspects, thus gradually regaining our lost equilibrium which is the basis of the Work." It also might be noted, in passing, that elsewhere another writer has described the Qabalah as "a map of the Universe, which enables man to attain its perfect understanding."

Achad's treatise may be mainly divided into two parts, and a lengthy appendix in the form of notes. The former opens with an outline of the formation of the Tree of Life, both in literary and graphic form, it being stated at the head of the chapter that this formation is a "Qabalistic conception of the Creative Process." Following chapters take up the natural basis of correspondences in the Hebrew alphabet, with the latter carefully tabulated and symbols as well as numerical correspondences of the individual letters given between the twenty-two paths with their Yetziratic attributions and color correspondences; the Tarot trumps and their attributions to the Hebrew alphabet; an account of the Ineffable name and of the Four Worlds with their correspondences to the Minor Arcana of the Tarot; the Macrocosm and the Microcosm, and how by means of the Tree of Life we may learn to unite them, thus accomplishing the Great Work; the Literal Qabalah and the methods of Gematria, Notaricon and Temurah; Numbers, Symbols and Matters Cognate; the New Aeon; and the Kingdom and the Bride. It may be said of this part of the work that it is almost invaluable to the beginner, saving him much time and mental combustion in endeavor to gain a mastery of the fundamentals of this complicated system, without which the real study of the system can hardly be intelligently begun.

The Appendix, which is really the second part of the work, will afford something new to old and advanced students of the Qabalah, since it contains hints and clues which open up a new plan of study, which the author suggests may even open up a new and shorter method of Attainment so that "the Least of the Little Children of the Light may run to the knees of the MOTHER and be brought to UNDERSTAND". Briefly, this partly has to do with the reversal of the order of the numbered paths, with rational reasons for so doing, which is elaborated and elucidated to a certain point.

How well Frater Achad has succeeded in simplifying a complicated system, can only be demonstrated by the student to himself, and only by application. The one regrettable point about Q.B.L., is that the necessity for its limited edition of 250 copies has in turn necessitated its extremely high price which will doubtless prove prohibitive to many, and it is to be hoped that the demand will be such as will justify the issuance of a larger edition at a more popular price. But even at its present price, a careful study of the book by the serious student will convince him that the publisher is not a profiteer.

R. C. W.