between male and female is an union in consciousness; and if we remember the traditions of a state when male and female had not as yet been divided, it may dawn upon us that the higher alchemy was a practice for the return into this ineffable mode of being. The traditional doctrine is set forth in the _Zohar_ and it is found in writers like Jacob Boehme; it is intimated in the early chapters of Genesis and, according to an apocryphal saying of Christ, the kingdom of heaven will be manifested when two shall be as one, or when that state has been once again attained. In the light of this construction we can understand why the mystical adept went in search of a wise woman with whom the work could be performed; but few there be that find her, and he confessed to his own failure. The part of woman in the physical practice of alchemy is like a reflection at a distance of this more exalted process, and there is evidence that those who worked in metals and sought for a material elixir knew that there were other and greater aspects of the Hermetic mystery."(1b) (1a) MICHAEL MATER: _Atalanta Fugiens_ (1617), p. 97. (1b) A E. WAITE: "Woman and the Hermetic Mystery," _The Occult Review_ (June 1912), vol. xv. pp. 325 and 326. So far Mr WAITE, whose impressive words I have quoted at some length; and he has given us a fuller account of the theory as found in the _Zohar_ in his valuable work on _The Secret Doctrine in Israel_ (1913). The _Zohar_ regards marriage and the performance of the sexual function in marriage as of supreme importance, and this not merely because marriage symbolises a divine union, unless that expression is held to include all that logically follows from the fact, but because, as it seems, the sexual act in marriage may, in fact, become a ritual of transcendental magic.