"Through the darkness of the Obscure Night—faint and slow, then permeating and suffusing, then overwhelming, absorbing, rapid, bright, glittering—there comes the gleam of a rising radiance—the Eos* of Light, the Celestial Convolvulus, the Morning Glory comes:
And radiant on the hills the Morning* stands,
Her saffron hair back blown from rosy bands,
And light and joy and fragrance in her hands.
This is the Soul's awakening. Now the Soul awakens after the manner that the sun rises, for in herself she never sleeps. It is the mind which becomes illuminated by her knowledge, and we are lifted into a higher sphere of consciousness. This is the first state of transcendental knowledge, and the first experience in the positive unification of potencies. It is called the Absorption of Quietism**; but what are we to understand by this bizarre term, which seems in a vague and half-realized fashion to open the gulf beneath our feet and to expose the height above our head, till we pause dizzy, possessed once again by the fear of the unknown, facing once more the portents of mystery, and stung by the electric shock of the "awe which freezes words"?
*Goddess of the Dawn -mkg
**The Absorption of Quietism is a name Waite used for a state necessary to Union with the Divine, but not quite the Union itself.
