View from the Big Hills

In the appendices of the original first two editions of Mysteria Magica, published by Llewellyn, Melita Denning and Osborne Phillips include some beautiful excerpts from Edward Carpenter’s epic poem, “Towards Democracy”. They say of the poem: “That great and noble poem shows forth the phases of psychosophical development, and the functions and faculties of the psyche, in profound clarity; at the same time it is not a general treatise, and the subject-matter is seen and felt through the idiom of Carpenter’s personality and no other. The student to whom this work appeals is urged not to limit his knowledge of it to the passages given here: he should acquire a copy of the complete work, in which much of vision and power will supplement his study of Volume IV of this series (The Triumph of Light). The given passages, illustrative of the Adept’s quest and attainment, were for many years employed by the Aurum Solis as the basis of one of its recommended mediation seque...