There are two words also which convey the purpose and intent of expression upon the Cardinal Cross. They give the reason why the two "Doors of the Zodiac" open [316] wide to the impulse and demand of the divine Spirit. One is the word "self-preservation" which leads to the impulse to incarnate in Cancer, which is the Door to the physical plane expression of spirit. This impulse (when the form is the prime object of the attention of the soul and that with which it primarily identifies itself) brings about the stage of static concretion in the earth sign Capricorn. The other word is "immortality" which is the divine aspect of self-preservation; it is the major conditioning factor in the creative process and leads to the whole revelation of evolution, to the recurrent appearance of life in form, and to the revelation of life in form. In Capricorn, at the third initiation, this life aspect assumes primary importance.

The entire subject of rebirth is but little understood at present. Its modern presentation and the emphasis which has been laid so strongly on small and unimportant details have distorted and diverted the wide sweep of the subject [317] and ignored the true import of the process; the broad general lines of the incarnation process have been largely overlooked. In the debate as to the length of time a man is out of incarnation and in the consideration of foolish items of unproved and unprovable information, and in the puerile reconstruction of the past lives of theosophical inclined people (none of them based on any truth), the real truth and the real beauty of the theme have been lost to sight.

Cancer is one point of the watery triplicity, and the symbolism which underlies the three water signs is most interesting in one particular direction. You have, as you know, the Crab, the Scorpion and the Fish Goddesses of the sign Pisces. In ancient Lemuria, the symbol of Pisces was a woman with the tail of a fish, and of this symbol the legendary mermaid is the memory. It was only in late Atlantean times (when the conscious sense of duality was becoming present in the minds of the advanced humanity of the period) that the woman part of the symbol was dropped altogether and the two linked fishes took the place of the fish Goddesses. You have, therefore, the Crab, the Scorpion with the sting in its tail and the Fish. The slow moving Crab, identified with its dwelling place and carrying its house upon its back, lives upon the land (physical plane life) and also in the sea (the life of the emotions); the Scorpion is rapid in movement, deadly in its effect upon men around it and is a creature of the land; it is also the symbol of the transformed Crab and the result of the evolutionary process, and indicates the dangerous nature of the man who is not transformed and is therefore harmful and hurtful to others; the Fishes indicate the man from whom the symbol of materiality has been taken by the removal of half of the original symbol, thus indicating freedom from matter. The three water signs give us, therefore, a brief and symbolic [318] history of man's growth and true personality development. It is a picture of the law of cause and effect. These thoughts you can elaborate for yourself and thus arrive at the evident implications.