The Way of Power

The Way of Power
by Lily Adams Beck
1928, copyright un-renewed
* Preface
* Chapter I. "The Occult of Today Is the Science of Tomorrow"
* Chapter II
* Chapter III
* Chapter IV
* Chapter V
* Chapter VI
* Chapter VII
* Chapter VIII
* Chapter IX
* Chapter X
* Chapter XI
* Chapter XII
* Chapter XIII
* Chapter XIV

* Chapter XV
* Epilogue

NOTICE OF ATTRIBUTION Scanned at sacred-texts.com, November
2005. Proofed and formatted by John Bruno Hare. This text is in the
public domain in the United States because it was published between
1922 and 1964 and its copyright was not renewed in a timely fashion as
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Books by L. ADAMS BECK
The House of Fulfilment
Dreams and Delights
The Key of Dreams
The Ninth Vibration
The Perfume of the Rainbow
The Splendor of Asia
The Treasure of Ho
The Way of Stars

PREFACE
A book of this sort has so many debts to acknowledge that it should be
thickly set with notes and references, and yet in writing for the general
reader this is not possible. Therefore I can only say, speaking generally,

how much I owe to many and great thinkers from those of three
millenniums ago down to the present time. I am often asked to
recommend books on these subjects, but it is difficult to do so, for with
regard to many of the Indian thinkers on whom so much depends their
invaluable writings, even when translated, are hampered with Sanskrit
terms very difficult for those unused to them, and modern writers
sometimes assume more patience and perhaps knowledge than the
average man with all the preoccupations of life has time to possess. Yet
he may wish to know. This book is therefore an effort to interpret, to
suggest, and no one knows better than myself what a contracted
statement it is of what a great subject. Yet I venture to hope there are
those to whom my experiences and conclusions,
p. vi as I felt my way, may be of the same value that they have been to
myself. And this is why I have stated them in a detail which may be
misunderstood as egoism.
L. Adams Beck,
(E. Barrington.)
CHAPTER I
"The Occult of Today Is the Science of Tomorrow."
I have chosen this motto for my book relating to the occult, for it is an
attempt to describe the (at first) very small experiences and knowledge
which led me to see the reality of the true occult world lying like an
almost uncharted country behind the thick jungle of fraud and
charlatanry, and which have led me also to state in comparative detail
what I found on my journey and the conclusions it compelled. I use the
illustration of "going through the Looking Glass" for two excellent
reasons. Firstly, everyone knows that remarkable story of Alice, dear to
two or three generations, and how she passed through the Looking
Glass to the queer upside-down sort of country behind it. Secondly, few
people realize that the book is a wonderful parable of how you can get
through the mere reflections of things into the reality behind them if
only you know the way. Carroll, who was a great mathematician, knew

of the undiscovered country from that point of view. I found a very
different road and as a matter of fact there are almost as many roads as
there are people. The country behind the Looking Glass, generally
called the Occult world, is reality, and the daily world we live in is
Shadow-land though the reflections look so hard and bright and real
that they take most of us in.
The world is a great mirror. A man sees himself in it as the foremost
figure and around him the persons and things which make his
surroundings. The Japanese have called it the Mirror of the Passing
Show--an uncommonly good name. Seeing it with our eyes we take this
reflection for reality and are quite content to believe our senses and go
comfortably or uncomfortably on our way. Very few people know what
blind feelers the five senses are--feeble, faulty, mistaken, and yet (until
we know better) our only means of approach to anything outside the
prison of ourselves. We pity a blind, deaf, dumb man, but are much in
the same case ourselves. It is only a question of degree, and the
microscope, telephone, and so forth carry us a few steps farther into the
dark. They are simply extensions. That is what makes the occult world
so amazingly interesting.
We see, no longer blinded by our eyes,
And hear, no longer