Zirkoff B. - Appendix (BCW vol.12): Difference between revisions

'''Ragon de Bettignies, Jean-Baptiste-Marie (1781-1862)''', *Notice historique sur le calendrier avec un comput maçonnique pour le XIXme siècle, à l’usage des hauts grades. Paris: Berlandier, 1842, 8vo. See for biographical and other data Vol. XI, pp. 587-88.

'''<nowiki>*</nowiki>Ràmàyana (Vâlmîki)'''. Edited by T. R. Krishnachârya and T. R. Vyâsâchârya, Bombay, Nirnaya-sâgara Press, 1911-13. Translated by Ralph T. H. Griffith, London, Trübner & Co., 1870-74, in five Vols.

'''Reade, Amye'''. *Ruby. A Novel. Founded on the life of a circus girl. London, 1889; rev. ed., 1890.

'''Ripley, George'''. Alchemist born about the middle of the fifteenth century at Ripley, in Yorkshire. Taking holy orders, he became an Augustinian and was appointed Canon of Bridlington in Yorkshire. Travelled extensively and, while on the island of Rhodes, is said to have made a large quantity of gold for the knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Going to Rome, he received personal attention from the Pope. Some of the stories about him seem to indicate that he had been confused with George Ripley, a Carmelite friar who lived at Boston in the thirteenth century. Our Ripley died in England in 1490. He had been among the first to popularize the alchemical writings attributed to Raymond Lully. He was the author of Medulla Alchemiae, The Treatise of Mercury, and The Compound of Alchymy, or the ancient hidden Art of Archemie, etc., London, 1591, 4to., this work being dedicated to King Edward IV. A collected edition of Ripley’s writings was issued at Cassel in Germany in 1649. See also information s.v. Eyrenaeus Philaletha Cosmopolita.

'''Rosny, Léon Louis Lucien Prunol de (1837-1914)''', French Orientalist who wrote a number of works on the subject of Buddhism and other Oriental religions. His “Buddhist Lectures” have not been definitely identified.

'''Russell, George William'''. Irish poet, painter, economist and journalist, better known by his pseudonym of Æ. He was born at Lurgan, Co. Armagh, April 10, 1867, the youngest of the three children, two sons and one daughter, of Thomas Elias Russell, by his wife, Mary Ann Armstrong. The father was a book-keeper in a firm of cambric manufacturers at Lurgan, and attended both the parish church and the Primitive Methodist chapel. When George was about ten years old, the family moved to Dublin, where he became a pupil at Rathmines School. After he left school, in 1884, a rather curious episode of his early life was his employment in the Phoenix brewery {{Page aside|772}}in Dublin. Being a student at the Metropolitan School of Art, before he turned thirteen, he met W. B. Yeats, through whom he became acquainted with Theosophy. It has been stated by competent people that his distinctive gift for painting could have made him “the most noteworthy painter of the age,” had he continued his studies in this direction.

“Having given up the brewery, ‘as my ethical sense was outraged, Bussell gained his living for some six years from 1890 as a clerk in Pim’s drapery business in Dublin. His verses had interested Yeats and others, and in 1894 his friend Charles Weeks persuaded him to allow the publication (under the pseudonym of Æ) of a little volume, Homeward: Songs by the Way. It attracted wide attention, and Æ was thenceforth a leading figure in the new Irish literary movement. In 1897 came a great change in his life, when, with Yeats as intermediary, he joined the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, which had been founded some three years earlier. Normal life now claimed him more and more, and in 1898 he married a fellow theosophist of English parentage, Violet, daughter of Archibald North, and had two sons. His powers as a writer soon became invaluable to the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, and he made of its organ, the Irish Homestead—of which he remained editor from 1906 until its amalgamation with the Irish Statesman in 1923—a unique journal read at least as much by British and American intellectuals as by Irish farmers. His interest in economics overflowed in various writings, of which the most notable are Co-operation and Nationality (1912) and The National Being (1916). His great conversational gifts and radiant presence attracted many visitors, and few of the distinguished people who came to study Ireland’s problems thought their errand accomplished until they had had a talk with Æ.

“He came into much prominence during the labour disputes in Dublin in 1913, and, ‘doing violence unto himself’, was one of the principal speakers at a great meeting held in London at the Albert Hall on 1 November to protest against the obstinacy of the employers and the arrest of James Larkin for sedition. His belief in the economic interdependence of England and Ireland kept him aloof from the Sinn Fein rising of Easter 1916, but of those who served in the convention which was set up in 1917 he was by all accounts one of the most practical in his recommendations, although he greatly disappointed Plunkett, who was chairman, by his sudden withdrawal. He claimed in later life to have had some share in expediting the settlement of December 1921 by {{Page aside|773}}suggesting, in an interview with Lord Northcliffe, that the latter should give ‘dominion home rule’ the support of his newspapers. From 1923 to 1930 he edited the Irish Statesman which he strove to make the organ of reasonable opinion in the Irish Free State. In order to raise funds for its continuance he paid in 1928 the first of several visits to the United States, where he responded buoyantly to American hospitality, talked with the President and most of those prominent in politics, literature, and science, and discovered a faculty for addressing large audiences which pleased and surprised himself. In that year Yale conferred upon him the honorary degree of Litt.D., an example followed by Dublin University in 1929. Life in a self-governing and of course mainly Catholic Ireland brought some disillusionment; the censorship in particular drew his vigorous protests; and after his wife’s death in 1932 he lived mostly in London. During a last lecturing tour in the United States his health broke down, and he died at Bournemouth 17 July 1935.

“Æ looked consistently to the antiquity of all races for the oracles of a universal wisdom-religion, and in Irish mythology he sought for hints of an ancestral lore identical with that of the sages of the East. These beliefs were called in Ireland, somewhat irreverently, ‘Ætheism’, but were not without influence on the idealism of Sinn Fein. His religious philosophy is expounded most fully in The Candle of Vision (1918), and his political idealism in two fictional fantasies. The Interpreters (1922) and The Avatars (1933). Song and its Fountains (1932), a prose commentary on his poems, is written in a tone of wondering confidence in his gift; for it was as a poet that Æ wished to be remembered. His poems are not for everyone, and it has been truly said that there is nothing quite like them in English poetry; in them the reader listens to one who remembers past lives, exults rather eerily in cosmic happenings, and, more consolingly, in the divinity of man. To many they have brought comfort and encouragement. Perhaps his best-known poem, ‘On behalf of some Irishmen not followers of tradition’, is also, objectively, his best. The House of the Titans and other poems (1934) includes a curious poem, ‘The Dark Lady’. His Collected Poems were published in 1913 (2nd ed. 1926).

“In person Russell was a large, bearded man, and was the subject of many portraits. These include paintings in oils by Sarah Purser (c. 1902) formerly in the artist’s possession; John Butler Yeats (1903) formerly in the John Quinn collection, New York; and Dermod O’Brien (c. 1914) at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. {{Page aside|774}}There are two drawings by Sir William Rothenstein, of which the first (1914) is published in Twenty-four Portraits, first series (1920), and the second (1921) was formerly in the artist’s possession; also busts, by John Hughes (1885-1886) in the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin; Oliver Shepard (1916) in the National Gallery of Ireland; Jerome Connor (c. 1930), and others.”<ref>[Quoted from the National Biographical Dictionary, London, an account signed by W. K. Magee who was Russell’s personal friend, known under the pseudonym of John Eglinton.]</ref>

His son Diarmuid wrote in The Atlantic Monthly (February, 1943) that his father’s real preoccupation had nothing to do with worldly success, “It was with the completion of his character” which produced “a kind of warm serenity, a saintliness .... moving and lovable. He possessed ... an air of spiritual power, an emanation of sweetness and tenderness that was almost as perceptible as the light from a lamp . . . His presence was as warming as a fire, and people not only felt better to be with him but were better . . .”

Captain P. G. Bowen wrote in The Aryan Path (December, 1935) that none among the followers of H.P.B. was more charitable than Æ to others’ weaknesses and few, if any, who had made Theosophy a more living power in their lives.

Another friend, James Stephens, said in his obituary note in The Observer (July 21, 1935) that ?E had told him that “he held that to meditate on the ideas of the Bhagavad-Gita and to practice the psychological discipline systematized by Patanjali must astonishingly energize any person, and that these ideas and this discipline had transformed him from a shy, self-doubting youth to the cheerful, courageous personage he certainly became.”

{{Style P-No indent|in prose and verse, to The Irish Theosophist, one o£ the most spiritual and noble journals of the early days.<ref>The Irish Theosophist. A Magazine devoted to Universal Brotherhood, Eastern Literature and Occult Science. Founded by the Dublin Lodge of The Theosophical Society, with its Headquarters at 3 Upper Ely Place, Dublin, Ireland. Edited by D. N. Dunlop. Volumes 1-5, October 15, 1892—September 15, 1897. Complete files of this journal are extremely rare today.</ref> Most of his early poems, published in 1894 as Homeward·. Songs by the Way, had first appeared in that magazine.}}

It is probable that young Russell’s direct contacts with H.P.B. were but few and not intimate; he seems to have been conscious of his immaturity at the time and of her greatness; but her works impressed him profoundly. The month before his death he wrote to his friend Sean O’Faolain: “The real source of her influence is to be found in The Secret Doctrine, a book on the religions of the world suggesting or disclosing an underlying unity between all great religions.” Having “bathed in” that work and other writings of H.P.B., he said: “ I marvelled what I could have done to merit birth in an age wherein such wisdom was on offer to all who could beg, borrow, or steal a copy of those works.”

To William Quan Judge Ai felt powerfully drawn. He wrote at the time of Judge’s passing that it was no surface tie which bound them together. He said: “No one ever tried less than he to gain from men that adherence which comes from impressive manner. I hardly thought what he was while he spoke; but on departing I found my heart, wiser than my brain, had given itself away to him; an inner exaltation lasting for months witnessed his power.” Referring to one of the saddest pages in the story of our Movement, he said: “It was in that memorable convention in London two years ago that I first glimpsed his real greatness. As he sat there quietly, one among many, not speaking a word, I was overcome by a sense of spiritual dilation, of unconquerable will about him, and that one figure with the grey head became all the room to me. Shall I not say the truth I think? Here was a hero out of the remote, antique, giant ages come among us, wearing but on the surface the vesture of our little day. We, too, came out of that past, but in forgetfulness; he with memory and power soon regained. To him and to one other we owe an unspeakable gratitude for faith and hope and knowledge born again.”

Russell was sustained from early manhood by an unwavering loyalty and gratitude to H.P.B. and Judge. In whatever he undertook, {{Page aside|776}}he became for the time being a channel through which a beneficent force would flow. He had a high ideal in regard to the national spirit of a country, above all sectarianism and ordinary politics. In his widely translated work, The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity (1916), he wrote: “None of our modern States creates in us an impression of being spiritually oversouled by an ideal as the great States of the ancient world.” In later years, he devoted much time to counselling the builders of Ireland’s emergent State. “What is a nation,” he said, “but an imagination shared by millions of people?” In his work, The Living Torch, he wrote: “A nation is but a host of men united by some God-begotten mood, some hope of liberty or dream of power or beauty or justice or brotherhood, and until that master-idea is manifested to us, there is no shining star to guide the ship of our destinies.”

Russell deplored all hatred, and pronounced racial hatred the basest of national passions. “Nations,” he wrote “hate other nations for the evil which is in themselves . . . when humanity looks on its own image and finds it terrible it changes its heart or else it breaks the mirror.” Even as a boy, Æ had a deep realization of the unity of all life. He wrote in The Candle of Vision: “I think of earth as the floor of a cathedral where altar and Presence are everywhere. This reverence came to me as a boy listening to the voice of birds one colored evening in summer, when suddenly birds and trees and grass and tinted air and myself seemed but one mood or companionship, and I felt a certitude that the same spirit was in all.”

In the Preface to his first book of verse, A wrote: “I know I am a spirit, and that I went forth in old time from the self-ancestral to labors yet unaccomplished; but filled ever and again with homesickness I made these songs by the way.”

There can be little doubt that Ai—poet, mystic, visionary and Theosophist—accepted as his ideal the spirit of the Great Renunciation, as is obvious from these words in his poem “Love” in The Earth Breath (1897):

(Source-material: John Eglinton (W. K. Magee), A Memoir of Æ, George William Russell (containing lists of his writings and of his portraits), 1937; Monk Gibbon, The Living Torch (containing selections from Russell’s journalistic work), 1937; George Moore, Hail and Farewell, 1911-1914; E. A. Boyd, Ireland’s Literary Renaissance, 1916. The finest and most complete account of Russell’s life and work is Francis Merchant’s A.E.: An Irish Promethean, Columbia, So. Carolina: Benedict College Press, 1954, which includes a large Bibliography of works about G. W. Russell. A most sympathetic account appeared in The Theosophical Movement, Bombay, {{Page aside|778}}July, 1960, from which we have drawn a number of details in the present sketch. Two articles deserve being mentioned here. One is by Russell himself and is entitled “Ireland Behind the Veil”; it appeared in The Theosophical Path, Point Loma, Calif., Vol. XXII, March, 1922. The other is by Ian Mor, is entitled “W. B. Yeats and Æ” and was published in The Theosophical Review, London, Vol. XXXVII, October, 1905. The Canadian Theosophist, Vol. XVI, August 15, 1935, contains a large number of tributes to Æ from various notable people. A comprehensive Bibliography was prepared by Alan Denson and published under the title of Printed Writings by George W. Russell (Æ): A Bibliography, by Northwestern University Press, London, 1961. It contains a Foreword by Padraic Colum and copious Notes on Russell’s paintings and portraits.)

'''Sala, George Augustus Henry'''. English journalist, b. in London, Nov. 24, 1828; d. at Brighton, Dec. 8, 1895. Educated in Paris and London. Wrote articles and stories for Charles Dickens in Household Words and All the Year Round, and was sent by Dickens in 1856 to Russia as special correspondent. Best known for his journalism on the Daily Graphic, with which he became connected in 1857. Started in 1892 a weekly paper called Sala's Journal which was a failure, and in 1895 he had to sell his library of 13,000 volumes.

'''“Saladin”''' (pseud, of Wm. Stewart Ross, 1844-1906). *“At Random,” in the Agnostic.

'''<nowiki>*</nowiki>Sarva-darsana-samgraha (Madhavacharya)'''. Translated by E. B. Cowell & A. E. Gough. London, Trubner & Co., 1892. Triibner Oriental Series.

'''Savalette de Langes'''. Founder of the Rite of Philalethes of Paris in 1773, and President of the Masonic Congress at Paris of 1785 and 1787. He died about the beginning of the First Revolution, in 1788, and left behind him manuscripts and documents of great value, which passed to the Philosophic Scottish Rite, formed of the Lodges of Saint Alexander of Scotland and of the Contrat Social.

'''Sforza, Count Giovanni (1846-1922)'''. Well-known Italian historian, bibliographer, philologist and scholar, belonging to one of the branches of the famous Sforza Family. Founder and Director of the State Archives of Massa. Superintendant of Piedmont Archives, 1903, and of those in Venice, 1910-11. Specialized in the ancient history of his country, particularly Tuscany. H.P.B. quotes from his essay: *La Fine di Cagliostro, in the Archivio Storico Italiano (Florence: G. P. Vieusseux), 5th Series, Vol. VII, February, 1891.

'''<nowiki>*</nowiki>Saivàgama'''. A generic title like the Upanishads or the Purânas. It refers to the group of Âgamas according to Saivism.

'''Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)'''. *King Henry VI (First Part), ca. 1589.—*Macbeth, ca. 1606.

'''Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)'''. *Queen Mab, 1813.

'''Simonin, Amédée H. (1822-?)'''. *Solution du problème de la suggestion hypnotique·. La Salpêtrière et l'hypnotisme, la suggestion criminelle, la loi doit intervenir, Paris, Dentu, 1889, 133 pp.

'''Sômmerring, Samuel Thomas von (1755-1830)'''. *De acervulo cerebri. Diss. primum édita, denuo révisa, correcta novisque observationibus aucta [1785]. In: Scriptores neurol, minores selecti. Lipsiae, 1793, iii, 322-338. Examined the exhumed skull of Paracelsus.

'''Sophocles (ca. 496-406 b.c.)'''. *Oedipus at Colonus. Text and English transi, by F. Sorr in Loeb Classical Library.

'''Southcott, Joanna (1750-1814)'''. English religious visionary who for a time was a domestic servant. In 1792, becoming persuaded that she possessed supernatural gifts, she announced herself as the woman spoken of in Revelation xii. Coming to London, she began to “seal” the 144,000 elect for a small fee. After a rather peculiar career, she died of brain disease. Her followers, very numerous at the time, are not yet extinct. She was the author of over sixty publications, all rather incoherent and strange.

'''Stallo, John Bernhard (1823-1900)'''. *The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics. New York: D. Appleton, 1882, 313 pp.; also 1884 and 1897.

'''Stevenson, Robert Louis Balfour (1850-1894)'''. *The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, London, Longmans & Co., 1886, 8vo., 141 pp. ; many subsequent editions.

'''Tennyson, Alfred, First Baron (1809-1892)'''. *The Ring, December, 1889.

'''Thory, Claude-Antoine'''. French polygraphist, b. May 26, 1757; d. in 1827. Was a member of a number of scientific institutions and produced several scholarly works, both historical and in the field of botany. Among them are: Histoire de la fondation du Grand-Orient de France, etc., Paris, 1813; and *Acta Latomorum, ou Chronologie de l’histoire de la franche maçonnerie, etc., Paris, 1815.

'''Tolstoy, Count Lev Nikolayevich (1828-1910)'''. *Anna Karenina. Publ. in installments between 1875 and 1877.—*A Confession. Written in 1879; revised, 1882; published, 1884. *Death of Ivan llyich, 1884.—*The Kreutzer Sonata, 1889.—*How a Devil's Imp Redeemed his Loaf; or the First Distiller.—*Wherein is Love, Therein is God.—*God is in Right, and not in Might.

'''Tylor, Sir Edward Burnett'''. English anthropologist, b. at Camberwell, London, Oct. 2, 1832; d. Jan. 2, 1917. Son of a brassfounder. Educated at Grove House, Tottenham, a school run by the Society of Friends to which his parents belonged. During the years 1855-56 he travelled extensively, visiting the U.S.A., Cuba and Mexico, and publishing an account under the title of Anahuac, etc. In 1865 appeared his Researches into the Early History of Mankind which made his reputation. In 1871, he produced a standard treatise on anthropology entitled Primitive Culture, etc. He was elected F.R.S., 1871, and became, 1883, keeper of the University Museum at Oxford. In 1896, he became first professor of anthropology at Oxford, and was knighted in 1912.

'''Ugolino, Count of Donoratico (1220-1289)'''. See for information Vol. IX, p. 94, footnote.

'''<nowiki>*</nowiki>Vakya-Sudha''' (Samkaracharya), translated with notes [and text] by Manilal N. Dvivedi. Bombay, Bombay Theosophical Publication Fund, n.d.

'''Ventura di Raulica, Cardinal Gioacchino (1792-1861)'''. See Vol. VII, p. 400, for data.

'''Villars, Abbe Nicolas-Pierre-Henry de Montfaucon de (1635-1673)'''. *Le Comte de Gabalis. Paris: C. Barbon, 1670, 12°, ii, 327 pp.; London: Fneres Vaillant, 1742. Engl. tr. with Commentary publ. by The Brothers, 1914, xxvi, 352 pp.

'''Virgil (70-19 b.c.)'''. *Aeneid. Loeb Classical Library. Transl. by H.R. Fairclough.

'''<nowiki>*</nowiki>Vishnu-Purana'''. Edited by Jivananda Vidyasagara, Calcutta, Sarasvati Press, 1882.—Translated by H. H. Wilson, 1840; later edition, edited by Fitzedward Hall. London: Triibner & Co., 1864,65, 66, 68, 70. Also in Works by the late H. H. Wilson.

'''Weichselbaum, Anton (1845-1920)'''. Austrian physician graduated from the Josefs-Academy in Vienna. Practiced mainly at the military hospital and became professor of pathological histology and {{Page aside|781}}bacteriology at the University of Vienna. Elected member of the Academy of Sciences. Author of many writings on the subject of infectious diseases.

'''Woodhull, Victoria Claflin (1838-1927)'''. Powerful figure in the movement for the liberation of women and the struggle against prostitution and abortion. Interested in Spiritualism and is said to have practiced it in early years, together with her sister Tennessee. Founded and edited Woodhull’s and Claflins Weekly, 1870. Was married to Dr. Canning Woodhull. Lived mostly in England after 1877.

'''Yermolov, Alexey Petrovich (1772-1861)'''. Russian general of infantry and artillery, companion in arms of A. V. Suvorov and M. I. Kutuzov. Hero of the 1812 campaign and outstanding military leader and diplomat. Took part in the battles against the French in Italy, 1796-98, and in the expedition against Persia, 1796. Fought in the battle of Borodino and, after the defeat of Napoleon, forced his armies to retreat along the devastated road of Smolensk. The following year, at the occupation of Paris, commanded both the Russian and the Prussian army corps. From 1816, commander-in-chief in the Caucasus and ambassador extraordinary in Persia. Erected a number of fortifications in the Caucasus and successfully defended the territory against foreign onslaughts. Yermolov was greatly loved by his soldiers; he was sympathetic to progressive Russian liberals who were exiled to the Caucasus by the Czar, and, most likely, for this reason was forced by Nicholas I to retire in 1827. (Consult: M. Pogodin, A. P. Yermolov. Biographical Material, Moscow, 1864; V. Potto, Caucasian War, etc., St. Petersburg, 1885, Two Vols.) General Yermolov’s elder son, Victor Alexeyevich Yermolov, and his wife, Mariya Grigorievna, were close friends of H.P.B.’s family, namely the Fadeyevs, during their residence at Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Caucasus, where V. A. Yermolov was Governor in the forties of last century. Mariya Grigorievna knew well Nikifor Vassilyevich Blavatsky who at the time was employed in the office of her husband, the Governor. She also knew Prince Golitzin, a relative of the Caucasian Viceroy, and testified to his interest in occult subjects which fact had apparently considerable influence on young Helena at the time, prior to her marriage to N. V. Blavatsky. According to Helena Fyodorovna Pissarev (Helena Petrovna Blavatskaya: A Biographical Sketch, Russian text, first publ. by the Russian Theosophical Society about 1911, in an anthology called Theosophical Subjects, and in 1937 by the Editorial Office of the Russian Theos. Journal Vestnik, Geneva), Mariya Grigoryeva had written her {{Page aside|782}}Memoirs in which all the above-mentioned facts were related. The MS. of this work was lost at some later period and is unavailable.

'''<nowiki>*</nowiki>Zohar'''. The Zohar, known also as the Midrash ha-Zohar and Sepher ha-Zohar, meaning “Splendor,” is the great storehouse of ancient Hebrew Theosophy, supplemented by the philosophical doctrines of mediaeval Jewish Rabbis. Together with the Sepher Yetzirah, or “Book of Formation,” one of the most ancient Kabbalistic works, the collection of the Zohar represents the oldest treatises on the Hebrew esoteric doctrines. It consists of several distinct but interrelated tracts, each discussing some special branch of the subject; each of these tracts consists again of several portions, and contains a kernel of ancient teachings, around which are clustered comments and explanations written by several hands and at very different epochs. There is considerable evidence to show that the kernel of these doctrines is of very remote antiquity, and embodies the remnants of one of the oldest systems of philosophy that have come down to us. Sufficient proof exists to connect some of these tenets with the period of the return from the Babylonian captivity, as they bear the impress of the still more ancient Chaldean secret lore.

The Zohar is largely a mystical and allegorical commentary on the Pentateuch. Together with various Appendices that must have been added to the collection at some later time, it deals with a large number of subjects, such as Ain Soph, the Emanations, the Sephi- roth, Adam-Kadmon, the Revolution of Souls (Gilgullm), the use of numbers and letters, the casting of lots, good and evil, etc., etc. The largest portion of this collection is written in one of the Aramaic dialects; other portions are in Hebrew; the presence of still other dialects adds greatly to the difficulties of an accurate translation.

Tradition current among mediaeval Rabbis assigned the authorship of the Zohar to Rabbi Shimon ben-Yohai who lived in the reign of the Roman Emperor Titus, 70-80 A.D., and was one of the most important Tannaim in the post-Hadrianic period. He was born in Galilee, and died at Meron, near Safid, in Palestine, where his traditional tomb is shown. His principal teacher was Akiba, whose Academy at Bene-Berak he attended for a good many years. Ordained after Akiba’s death by Judah ben-Baba, he escaped from Jerusalem during the violent struggle of the Jews with the Romans, and hid himself in a cave for thirteen years. It is here that Shimon ben-Yohai, a profound Kabalist already, was instructed, according to tradition, by the prophet Elias himself. In his turn, he taught his disciples, Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Abba, who committed to writing those traditional teachings of the earlier Tannaim which in {{Page aside|783}}later ages became known as the Zohar. After his seclusion, Shimon ben-Yohai settled in Galilee and founded a school of his own, gaining the reputation of a wonder-worker. He was sent to Rome with Eleazar ben-Jose, to obtain the repeal of imperial orders which had forbidden certain Jewish ceremonial observances, and returned after a successful mission.

While the name of Shimon ben-Yohai is associated with the history of the Zohar, it is nevertheless certain that a very large portion of this compilation is not older than approximately 1280, when it was edited in manuscript form by Moses ben Shem-Tob de Leon. The latter was a famous Kabbalistic writer born at Leon, Spain, about 1250, and who lived in Guadalajara, Valladolid and Avila, and died at Arevalo in 1305. Familiar with the mediaeval mystical literature, he was especially conversant with the writings of Solomon ben Judah ibn Gebirol (Avicebron), Judah ha-Levi, and Maimonides. He led a wandering life, and was a man of brilliant intellect and lofty religious idealism.

It is most likely that Moses de Leon was the first one to produce the Zohar as a whole, but many of its constituent portions date from the time of Shimon ben-Yohai and the Second Temple, even though historical evidence is not forthcoming of the many steps in the course of transmission of these doctrines from ante-Roman times.

The Zohar in its present Hebrew form was first printed in Italy, namely in Mantua, in 1558-60, in 3 vols., 4to., and in Cremona, in 1558, fol.; only one MS. of it is in existence prior to the first edition. Preparations for the printing of the Zohar were made as early as 1556, the original stimulus having come from Moses Bassola, of Pesaro, whose father was proof-reader at the famous Sonsino Press. Later editions are those of Lublin (1623), Amsterdam (1714 and 1806), Livorno (1791) and Vilna (1911).

Among the most important portions of the Zohar are the following: Siphra di-Tseniutha or “Book of Concealed Mystery” known as the Liber mysterii; Idra Rabba Qaddisha, “The Greater Holy Assembly”; Idra Zuta Qaddisha, “The Lesser Holy Assembly.” For Latin and English translations of these consult Bibliography in The Secret Doctrine, s.v. Kabbalah Denudata (Knorr von Rosenroth), Kabbalah Unveiled (MacGregor Mathers), and Qabbalah (I. Myer). An English translation of the Zohar, with the omission of those sections which seemed to the translators to be separate works or additions, is The Zohar by Harry Sperling, Maurice Simon and Paul Levertoff, published in five volumes in London, by the Sonsino Press, 1931-34 & 1949.

Other portions of the Zohar mentioned by H.P.B. are: Parha Rabbd, the Book of Ruth and Schadash, and the Book of Ham- mannunah.

The Berêshïth (Genesis) section of the Zohar, translated into English by Nurho de Manhar, was published serially in the monthly periodical, The Word, edited at New York by H. W. Percival between 1900 and 1916. This translation has been photographically reproduced by Wizards Bookshelf (San Diego, Calif., 1978), with marginal notes by John Drais, and numerous footnotes embodying passages concerning the Zohar from The Secret Doctrine. Very strong internal evidence of the translation suggests that the author thereof was Christian David Ginsburg (1831-1914), whose authoritative essay on the Kabbalah in the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is reproduced on the end sheets of the Wizards Bookshelf edition. N. de Manhar’s translation does not extend beyond Parcha Lekh Lekha (Genesis xvii, 27) and its original serial publication stopped abruptly in 1914, the year of Ginsburg’s death.

Consult also S.D., Bibi., s.v. Sëpher Yetzïrâh for particulars regarding this work, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica for a comprehensive and authoritative account concerning the Zohar.

'''Zola, Émile Édouard Charles Antoine (1840-1902)'''. *Nana, 1880; *Pot-Bouille, 1882; *La Terre, 1888; *La Bête Humaine, 1890.