We now come to the second of the great Formulas which give the initiate the key to the next stage of his work. These curious and ancient sets of phrases or symbols are endowed with power, owing to the potency of the minds which have reflected upon them, which have constructed thought-forms anent them, and which have used them as modes or methods of focusing triadal light upon the personality. I would call your attention to the form of words just used. These formulas do not release the light of the soul into the attentive waiting mind. They release the light of electric fire (and therefore not solar fire) into the integrated personality, so that the entire man - now become the oriented mechanism of the Monad - is flooded with this higher form of energy - an aspect of the energy of will and related to the carrying forward of divine purpose. You can appreciate, consequently, how relatively impossible it is for any of you to do more than register the more obvious significances of these formulas and then await the time when your inner growth warrants a fresh approach to their interpretation.

Curiously enough, it is this ancient symbol, with its indicated reference to the emotional nature, and therefore to the Atlantean consciousness, which points to a basis for progress, which is the subtle force behind the "flags of all nations." Flags are symbols of the devotion of a people to their national soil and to their national spiritual objectives. They have of course been prostituted to signify national separateness and selfishness and national patriotism, but behind the flag is a point of power which is the point of inspiration to the soul of the people. Not yet, equally of course, is the "point moving forward into the circle of the people's life"; as yet, you have only the square of the personality reactions of the people and the lines of their evolutionary approach to a deeper consciousness; this developing consciousness we call the "soul of the people." Some day, the point will take its place in the center of the square and all the lines will converge upon that point; we shall then have a nation, galvanized into activity by interior spiritual energy, and the lines which have hitherto converged inwards towards the center will become channels or pathways along which spiritual energy will flow into every phase of a nation's civilization and culture; the nation will then be linked up - through the point at the center - with the source of divine inspiration, which is one for all types, all nations and all races in time and space.