Vast ages had intervened since the first forming and receding of the continent which was the Eden of earth; the Heavens had opened their mysteries but once, and the great cataclysmic force of icy waters, known as one of the "glacial periods" of earth, had swept over the first continent, destroying a large portion; and this new continent that had not then been ready for the inhabitants of earth, had sprung into existence. It would seem, had one looked upon the Earth without the vision of past knowledge, as if the Earth had been newly formed, and that this was the first Eden, but it was the Second.

The beginning of the race was generic, not creative; the children of the first generic period had been scattered; some portions had reached the new primal continent ere the Adamic Eden was again repeated; but with the difference, that the stamp of the First Dispensation was upon them. The principle of generic life had been received in the First Dispensation and was repeated in this.

The Arch Angel having charge of this second Dispensation bears a name in the celestial Kingdom more nearly resembling Ariel and Ariella, since the symbol is the Lion, which means Strength and Power.

With material knowledge comes the desire for power and dominion; the intellect having received knowledge and understanding of all material things, then comes the awakening of the thirst for power, the wish to use the knowledge for personal ends; this was the Tempter in the New garden of Eden of the Second Dispensation. This thirst took the form of ambition and love of conquest; not simply the dominion of the Earth but the dominion of man. The knowledge which primarily led man to conquer the physical earth, which enabled him to understand the laws of material mechanical forces that are around him, and how to control them, did not suffice; that knowledge came in its secondary or reflex action to the new beginning of the new races and dispensation; it was not enough to know, but to exercise that knowledge in greater power; as power is the legitimate result of knowledge, so the perversion of knowledge is the perversion of power as the result of knowledge. The abuse of power one can trace in the history of every race, even within your knowledge of history. Power does not belong to man through knowledge alone; perversion of power does not come excepting through the perversion of that knowledge; for in the primal nature of the "elements," as they are termed, there is no power without intelligence. Nature fulfills her purposes and functions in every department of organic life (in all types of life), not through Power, but through Law, and there is no law without intelligence. In this desire for power, came first the natural dominion over the portion of earth which was a new continent, a tangled wilderness, a jungle and forest.

Whatever was necessary to do, was done in the beginning with knowledge; then when people multiplied, when there were many races in this new beginning, when added to the races that had descended from the primal portion of the Hermetic race that found their existence there were the new generations; when Ariel took possession of the first people of the New Dispensation, placing the stamp and seal of Angelic might upon them, the receding of the primal wave had already brought the love of power, each nation or people wishing to rule over the other, each wishing dominion for the sake of domination; and this led not only to the conquest of the physical earth but to the enslaving of many people; for slavery has its first birth in the thirst for personal power, which is the beginning of man's bondage unto man. Wherever there was physical infirmity there was cruelty; wherever there was physical inability there was tyranny; and such knowledge as had been handed down from the Hermetic age, was used, not for the perfection and beautifying of earth so much as for the victory over the things of earth and over man. Bondage of each individual to the senses was not enough; but that power which enables the individual to dominate others, was used for the purpose of dominion.

These, however, were days of great might and typical physical strength, of might accompanied by knowledge; Hercules with the Power of the Angel of the Mighty Arm (the Giant Orion being the symbol); the potency of force with the strength of races that were bom to command. From that continent that had previously governed through the power of knowledge, they had acquired means of transportation by methods that you have not yet attained; they sought the other continent which they knew was in the "far East," where some of the sons of Hermes dwelt.

Across the space which was nearly one-half the entire globe these conquering people passed, jealous that there should be a portion of the world which they did not possess. But such was the thirst for power, such its many stages, that when at last the southern portion of the New Continent was finally reached, it was found that the Hermetic race had also begun a new beginning there, these who were the inheritors of a portion of the knowledge of Hermes. But those to whom had been given the strength of the Lion, the new race under the Angel Ariel, conquered the more submissive receding Hermetic races.

At the same time there were smaller portions of the globe inhabited by receding tribes of people of the Hermetic races, who killed and vanquished each other, - as do some of the modern sons of power, who not being contented with their own vast possessions and habitations, seek out the islands of the sea and find the "original inhabitants," as they are termed, fragments of some races that are on the decline, and are not satisfied without slaying them, - so did these primal sons of love of power, of ambition for conquest, seek every portion of the then habitable earth; so did they desire to control, that the wish was fully and absolutely gratified in all those portions of the then habitable earth, islands and lands that were not theirs, nothing was spared; none that they did not win by force, though the force was possibly employed in more intellectual methods than has been the case in some periods of the Earth's history; but the love of power was even greater than this; it at last merged itself into the dominion by one life, which life was the