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Chapter Three schools symbolized by the name “Ark”, of which Noah’s Ark was one. Mouravieff writes: With time, the revealed Word, sometimes handed down from extinct civilizations, is subject to damage due to human forgetfulness: it becomes fragmentary. Then it receives arbitrary additions from purely human sources. With time, those conjectures are generally taken as realities. Apart from these mutilations, we should not lose sight of a phenomenon of a totally different order. Divine Revelation, the source of all true Tradition, does not crystallize into immobility through the course of millennia. Revelation is given in stages: metered out each time in a necessary and sufficient way in answer to the needs of the epoch and of the Cause. Mouravieff’s words echo those of the legendary alchemist, Fulcanelli: Every prudent mind must first acquire the Science if he can; that is to say, the principles and the means to operate. Otherwise he should stop there, without foolishly using his time and his wealth. And so, I beg those who will read this little book to credit my words. I say to them once more, that they will never learn this sublime science by means of books, and that it can only be learned through divine revelation, hence it s called Divine Art, or through the means of a good and faithful master; and since there are very few of them to whom God has granted this grace, there are also very few who teach it. When we turn back for a moment to consider the problems of the many and varied teachings of “Ascension”, we find that this issue of “works vs. faith” has always been the condition confronting the Seeker. It is part of the Haunted Forest through which he must pass even before he is faced with his true tests of stamina, courage, and discernment. A very ancient maxim quoted in Saint Luke’s Gospel places the problem [of Ascension] in its proper context. He writes: “the labourer is worthy of his hire”. This maxim is given in the context of sending the seventy disciples “as lambs among wolves’ to announce to the people that “the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” In the esoteric field we can gain nothing pure or true and thus nothing beautiful without making efforts whose sum and importance are equivalent to the result to which the worker aspires. Conversely, the value of the results we obtain is always equivalent, quantitatively and qualitatively, to the measure of the services rendered on the esoteric level. It is possible to obtain so-called esoteric results that are impure, but they are false and thus transitory. 422 Mouravieff discusses this also: This means that in the esoteric field, as in everyday life, man earns a salary for the service he provides. [...]