munication similar to, but transcending, wireless or telepathic communication with that deity. For example, if the adept be of the left-hand path, that is to say, a black magician, he can, by mantras, call up and command elementals and inferior orders of spiritual beings, because to each belongs a particular rate of vibration, and this being known and formulated as sound in a mantra gives the magician power even to annihilate by dissolution the particular elemental or spirit to whom it belongs. As a highwayman at the point of a gun compels a traveller to give up money, so a black magician with a mantra compels a spirit to act as he wills.
‘On account of this supreme power of sound, when formulated in mantras corresponding to the particular rate of vibration of spiritual beings and of spiritual and physical forces, the mantras are jealously guarded. And, for the purpose of main- taining this guardianship, lines of gurus (i.e. religious teachers) are established in whose keeping the words of power are placed. Candidates for initiation into this Brotherhood of Guardians of the Mysteries must necessarily be well tested before the Treasures can be entrusted to them, and they them- selves, in turn, be made Guardians.
Unto the shishya, after he has been well tested, the mantra which confers power over the sleeping Goddess Kundalini is transmitted ; and when he utters it the Goddess awakens and comes to him to be commanded. Then is the need of the guru great; for the awakened Goddess can destroy as well as save—according as the mantra is wisely or unwisely used.
As the outer air vibrates to gross sounds, the inner vital- airs (pra#a-vayu) are set in motion and utilized by the use of the sounds of mantras: the Goddess first catches up the subtle occult sound, and, in tones of divine music, she causes it to ascend from her throne in the Root-Support Psychic-Centre to one after another of the Centres above, until its music fills the Lotus of a Thousand Petals and is there heard and re- sponded to by the Supreme Gurz,
The visualization of a deity, as frequently directed in our text, is often but another way of thinking of the essential characteristics of that deity. A like yogic effect comes from
visualizing or else audibly pronouncing the mantra correspond- ing to that deity; for, by speaking forth as sound the mantra of any deity, that deity is made to appear.
Unless the mantras are properly intoned they are without effect; and when printed and seen by the eye of the unini- tiated they appear utterly meaningless—and so they are without the guidance of the human gurz.
Furthermore, the correct pronunciation of the mantra of a deity depends upon bodily purity as well as upon knowledge of its proper intonation. Therefore it is necessary for the devotee first to purify, by purificatory mantras, the mouth, the tongue, and then the mantra itself, by a process called giving life to or awakening the sleeping power of the mantra.
The occult ability to employ a mantra properly confers supernormal powers called Szddhi,} and these can be used, according to the character of the adept, either as white magic for good ends or as black magic for evil ends: the right- and left-hand paths being the same up to this point of practical application of the fruits obtained through psychic development. One path leads upward to Emancipation, the other downward to Enslavement.