We are ultimately indifferent to the truth or falseness of all religions, all philosophies, and all the uselessly verifiable hypotheses we call sciences. Nor are we really concerned about the fate of so-called humanity, or about what as a whole it does or doesn’t suffer. Charity, yes, for our ‘neighbour’, as the Gospel says, and not for man, of whom it says nothing. And we all feel this way to a certain extent. How much does a massacre in China really disturb even the most noble of us? It’s more heart-rending, even for the most sensitively imaginative, to see a child in the street get slapped for no apparent reason.

Charity for all, intimacy with none. Thus FitzGerald, in one of his notes, interprets a certain aspect of Khayyám’s ethics.

The Gospel recommends love towards our neighbour; it doesn’t mention love towards man or towards humanity, which no one can help or improve.

Some may wonder if I myself subscribe to the philosophy of Khayyám as restated and interpreted here (with fair accuracy, I believe). I would have to say that I don’t know. On certain days it seems to me the best, and even the only, practical philosophy there is. On other days it strikes me as void, dead and useless, like an empty glass. Because I think, I don’t know myself. And so I don’t know what I really think. If I had faith, I would be different, but I would also be different if I were crazy. I would be different, yes, if I were different.

Besides these lessons from the profane world, there are, of course, the secret teachings of esoteric orders, the mysteries that are freely acknowledged but kept strictly secret, and the veiled mysteries embodied in public rites. There are things hidden, or half hidden, in great universal rites such as the Marian Ritual of the Roman Church, or the Freemasons’ Ceremony of the Spirit.

But who’s to say that the initiate, having entered the inner sanctum of mystery, isn’t merely the eager prey of a new facet of our illusion? What certainty can he have, if a madman is even more certain of his mad ideas? Spencer compared our knowledge to a sphere which, as it expands, touches more and more on all that we don’t know. And I also remember, with respect to secret initiations and what they can offer us, the terrible words of a Grand Wizard: ‘I have seen Isis and touched Isis, but I do not know if she exists.’