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Latest revision as of 01:19, 19 February 2022
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When the Abbé Louis Constant — known as Eliphas Lévi — said in his Histoire de la Magie that the “ Sepher Jezirah, the Zohar, and the Apocalypse (of St. John) are the master-pieces of the Occult Sciences,” he ought, if he wanted to be correct and clear, to have added, “ in Europe.” It is quite true that these works contain “ more significance than words ” ; and that “ its expression is poetical, while in numbers it is exact.” Unfortunately, before any one can appreciate the poetry of the expressions, or the exactness of the numbers, he will have to learn the real significance and meaning of the terms and symbols used. And man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of the fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in Oriental Esotericism, or in the Kabalistical symbology : — the key, or value, in all their aspects, of the “ God ”-names, “ Angel ”-names, and “ Patriarchal ” names in the Bible — their mathematical or geometrical value, and their relations to manifested nature.
Therefore, if, on the one hand, the Zohar “ astonishes (the mystic) by the profundity of its views and the great simplicity of its images,” on the other hand, that work misleads the student by such expressions as those used with respect to Ain-Soph and Jehovah, notwithstanding the assurance that “ the book is careful to explain that the human form with which it clothes God is but an image of the word, and that God should not be expressed by any thought, or any form.” It is well known that Origen, Clemens, and the Rabbis confessed, with regard to the Kabala and the Bible, to their being veiled and secret Books ; but few know that the esotericism of the Kabalistic books in their present re-edited form is simply another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive symbolism of these secret volumes.
The idea of representing the hidden deity by the circumference of a Circle, and the Creative Power (male and female, or the Androgynous Word), by the diameter across it, is one of the oldest symbols. It is upon this conception that every great Cosmogony was built. With the old Aryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldeans, it was complete, as it embraced the idea of the eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its absoluteness, separated entirely from the incipient stage of (the so-called)
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creation ; and comprised psychological and even Spiritual evolution, and its mechanical work, or cosmogonical construction. With the Hebrews, however, though the former conception is to be distinctly found in the Zohar, and the Sepher Jezirah — or what remains of the latter — that which has been embodied subsequently in the Pentateuch proper, and especially in Genesis, is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical law of creation, or rather of construction ; while theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined.
It is only in the first six chapters of Genesis, in the rejected Book of Enoch, and the misunderstood and mistranslated poem of Job, that true echoes of the archaic doctrine may now be found. The key to it is lost, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the early period of the middle ages have preferred, in their national exclusiveness and pride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, to cast it into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share their knowledge with their relentless and fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their own tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out of his original frame, which he fitted and which fitted him, the “ lord god of Abraham and Jacob ” could hardly be crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian Canon. Being the weakest, the Judeans could not help the desecration ; but they kept the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or male-female Jehovah ; and the new tabernacle proved a complete misfit for the old god : they were, indeed, avenged !
The statement that Jehovah was the tribal god of the Jews and no higher, will be denied like many other things. Yet the theologians are not in a position to tell us, in that case, the meaning of verses 8 and 9 in Deuteronomy, chapter xxxii. These verses say quite plainly : “ When the Most High (not the “ Lord,” or “ Jehovah ” either) divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the Sons of Adam he set the bounds . . . according to the number of the children of Israel. . . . The Lord’s ( Jehovah’s) portion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.” This settles the question. So impudent were the modern translators of Bibles and Scriptures and so damaging are these verses, that, following in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each translator rendered these verses in his own way. While the above-cited quotation is taken verbatim from the authorized English version, in the French Bible (of the Protestant Biblical Society of Paris, according to the version revised in 1824 by J. E. Ostervald) one finds the “ Most High ” translated by Souverain (a Sovereign ! !), the “ sons of Adam ” rendered by “ the children of men,” and the “ Lord ” changed into the “ Eternal.” For impudent sleight-of-hand, the French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even English ecclesiasticism.
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Nevertheless, one thing is patent : the “ Lord’s (“ Jehovah’s ”) portion ” is his “ chosen people ” and none else, for, Jacob alone is the lot of his inheritance. What, then, have other nations, who call themselves Aryans, to do with this Semitic deity, the tribal god of Israel ? Astronomically, the “ Most High ” is the Sun, and the “ Lord ” is one of his seven planets, whether it be Iao, the genius of the moon, or Ilda-Baoth-Jehovah, that of Saturn, according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics. * Let the “ Angel Gabriel,” the “ Lord ” of Iran, watch over his people ; and Michael-Jehovah, over his Hebrews. These are not the gods of other nations, nor were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is chained to his planet (see Origen’s Copy of the Chart), so each Hindu Deva (a “ Lord ”) has its allotted portion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of worlds implies plurality of gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize, but will never worship, the latter. (Vide Part III., “ On Chains of Worlds and their Plurality.”)
It has been repeatesdly stated in this work that every religious and philosophical symbol had seven meanings attached to it, each pertaining to its legitimate plane of thought, i.e., either purely metaphysical or astronomical ; psychic or physiological, etc., etc. These seven meanings and their applications are hard enough to learn when taken by themselves ; but the interpretation and the right comprehension of them become tenfold more puzzling, when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow consecutively out of and to follow each other, each, or any one of these meanings is accepted as the one and sole explanation of the whole symbolical idea. An instance may be given, as it admirably illustrates the statement. Here are two interpretations given by two learned Kabalists and scholars, of one and the same verse in Exodus, xxxiii, 18-23. Moses beseeches the Lord to show him his “ glory.” Evidently it is not the crude dead letter phraseology as found in the Bible that is to be accepted. There are seven meanings in the Kabala, of which we may give two as interpreted by the said two scholars. One of them quotes, while explaining : “ Thou canst not see my face . . . I will put thee in the cleft of the rock . . . cover thee with my hand while I pass by. And then I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my a’hoor, my back ; . .” and tells us in a gloss, “ That is, I will show you ‘ My back,’ i.e., my visible universe, my lower manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, thou canst not
* With the Egyptian Gnostics it was Thoth (Hermes), who was chief of the Seven (Vide “ Book of the Dead ”). Their names are given by Origen, as Adonai (of the Sun) Iao (of the Moon), Eloi (Jupiter), Sabao (Mars), Orai (Venus), Astaphoi (Mercury), and, finally, Ildabaoth (Saturn).
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see my invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah.” * This is correct, and is the cosmo-metaphysical explanation. And now speaks the other Kabalist, giving the numerical meaning. As it involves a good many suggestive ideas, and is far more fully given, we may allow it more space. This synopsis is from an unpublished MSS., and explains more fully what was given in § XVII., “ The Holy of Holies,” page 467.
The numbers of the name Moses are those of “ I am that I am,” so that the names Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony. The word Moses is Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \frac{מ}{5,}} Failed to parse (syntax error): {\displaystyle \frac{ש}{300,}} Failed to parse (SVG (MathML can be enabled via browser plugin): Invalid response ("Math extension cannot connect to Restbase.") from server "https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/":): {\displaystyle \frac{ה,}{40,}} and the sum of the values of its letters is 345 ; Jehovah — the genius par excellence of the lunar year — assumes the value of 543, or the reverse of 345. . . . In the third chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it is said : And Moses said . . . Behold when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you ; and they shall say, What is his name ? What shall I say unto them ? and God said unto Moses — “ I am that I am.”
The Hebrew words for this expression are âhiye asher ahiyé, and in the value of the sums of their letters stand thus : —
| אהיה | אשר | אהיה |
| 21 | 501 | 21 |
. . . This being his (God’s) name, the sum of the values composing it are 21, 501, 21 are 543, or simply a use of the simple digit numbers in the name of Moses . . . but now so ordered that the name of 345 is reversed, and reads 543. . . . So that when Moses asks “ Let me see Thy face or glory,” the other rightly and truly replies “ Thou canst not see my face ” . . . but thou shalt see me behind — (the true sense, though not the precise words) ; because the corner and the behind of 543 is the face of 345 — “ for check and to keep a strict use of a set of numbers to develop certain grand results, for the object of which they are specifically employed.” “ In other uses,” adds the learned Kabalist, “ of the number they saw each other face to face. It is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the gnostic Kabalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or Joshua. And so also the division of the 24 hours of the day gives three eights as quotient. . . . The chief end of all this system of number checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the Lunar year in the natural measure of days.”
This is the astronomical and numerical meaning in the secret theogony of sidereo-cosmical gods invented by the Chaldeo-Hebrews,
* The Qabbalah, by Isaac Myer.
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and two meanings out of seven. The other five would astonish the Christians still more.
The series of Œdipuses who have endeavoured to interpret the riddle of the Sphinx, is long indeed. For many ages she has been devouring the brightest and the noblest intellects of Christendom ; but now the Sphinx is conquered. In the great intellectual struggle which has ended in the complete victory of the Œdipuses of Symbolism, it is not the Sphinx, however, who, burning with the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself in the sea, but verily the many-sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians — the civilized nations — have accepted for their God. The latter has collapsed under the too close analysis, and is — drowned. Symbologists have discovered with dismay that their adopted deity was only a mask for many other gods, an Euhemerized extinct planet, at best, the genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter, with early Christians ; that the Trinity was, in truth, only an astronomical triad — unless they accepted the more abstract and metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles — composed of the Sun (the Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the Holy Ghost, Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the bright and morning Star ; vide “ Revelation,” ch. xxii., 15). Because, if the Father is the Sun (the elder Brother in the Eastern inner philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes, Budha, Thot), the name of whose mother on Earth was Maïa ; the planet which receives seven times more light than any other : which fact led the Gnostics to call their Christos, and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the “ seven-fold light ” (vide at end of this §). Finally, this God was Bel ; the Sun being “ Bel,” with the Gauls, “ Helios ” with the Greeks, “ Baal,” with the Phœnicians ; “ El ” in Chaldean, hence “ El-ohim,” “ Emanu-El,” El, “ god,” in Hebrew. But even the Kabalistic god has vanished in the rabbinical workmanship, and one has now to turn to the innermost metaphysical sense of the Zohar to find in it anything like Ain-Soph, the nameless deity and the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly claimed by the Christians. But it is certainly not to be found in the Mosaic books, by those who try to read without a Key to them. Ever since it was lost Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two conceptions, but in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the Universal Deity of Its majestic character and primitive meaning.
This is what was said in “ Isis Unveiled ” : —
It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between the mystery-god Ιαω, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.
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In the Ophite gems of King (“ Gnostics ”) we find the name of IAO repeated, and often confounded with that of Jevo, while the latter simply represents one of the genii antagonistic to Abraxas. But the name IAO neither originated with, nor was it the sole property of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon the tutelary “ Spirit,” the alleged protector and national deity of the “ chosen people of Israel,” there is yet no possible reason why other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One-living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there is the fact that Jaho or Iao was a “ Mystery name ” from the beginning, for יהיה and יח never came into use before King David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines (2 Samuel), brought thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at Hebron הברין, Habir-on or Kabeir-town, where the rites of the four (mystery-gods) were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They aspired to build a temple to יהוה, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules and Venus, Adon and Astarte.
Says Fürst : “ The very ancient name of God, Yaho, written in the Greek Ιαω, appears, apart from its derivation, to have been an old mystic name of the Supreme deity of the Shemites. Hence it was told to Moses when he was initiated at Hor-eb — the cave — under the direction of Jethro, the Kenite (or Cainite) priest of Midian. In an old religion of the Chaldeans, whose remains are to be found among the Neo-Platonists, the highest divinity, enthroned above the seven heavens, representing the Spiritual Light-Principle . . . . and also conceived of as Demiurgus, * was called Ιαω (יהו), who was, like the Hebrew Yaha, mysterious and unmentionable, and whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phœnicians had a Supreme God, whose name was triliteral and secret, and he was Ιαω.” † (Isis Unveiled), Vol. II., p. 298.)
The Cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is one of the most ancient — nay, perhaps, the most ancient of symbols. This is demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem (Vol. I.). The Eastern Initiates show it coeval with the circle of Deific infinitude and the first differentiation of the Essence, the union of spirit and matter. This was rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone was accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial events.
Let us demonstrate this statement. In astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of Cœlus and Lux — of the sky and light, or the Sun ; in mythology he is the progeny of Jupiter and Maia. He is the “ messenger ” of his Father Jupiter, the Messiah of the Sun ; in Greek, his name “ Hermes,” means, among other things, the “ Interpreter ” — the “ Word ” by mouth ; the logos, or verbum. Now, Mercury, besides being born on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, is the patron of the
* By very few though, for the creators of the material universe were always considered as subordinate gods to the Most High Deity.
† Lydus I., c. Ledrenus, I. c.
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latter. A psychopompic genius, he conducted the souls of the dead to Hades and brought them back, an office attributed to Jesus, after his death and resurrection. The symbols of Hermes-Mercury (Dii Termini) were placed along and at the turning points of highways (as crosses are now placed in Italy) and they were cruciform. * Every seventh day the priests anointed these termini with oil, and once a year hung them with garlands, hence they were the anointed. Mercury, when speaking through his oracles said, “ I am he whom you call the Son of the Father (Jupiter) and Maia. Leaving the King of Heaven (the Sun) I come to help you, mortals.” Mercury heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical. † He was often represented as three-headed and called “ Tricephalos,” “ Triplex,” as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus ‡ shows, was sometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms, because “ the power of speech and eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet.” It is this cubic form which connects the termini directly with the cross, and the eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury, which made the crafty Eusebius say “ Hermes is the emblem of the Word which creates and interprets all,” for it is the creative word ; and he shows Porphyry teaching that the speech of Hermes, (now interpreted “ Word of God ” (!) in Pymander) a creative speech (Verbum), is the seminal principle scattered throughout the Universe.§ In Alchemy “ Mercury ” is the radical Moyst, primitive or elementary water, containing the seed of the Universe, fecundated by the solar fires. To express this fecundating principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or the vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians (Vide Egyptian Museums). The cruciform termini also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the cubic Hermes. The author of “ Source of Measures ” tells us why. (But see the last page of § XVI., about the Gnostic Priapus).
As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the tau, or the Egyptian, form ; or again, “ the circle attached to the tau gives the ansated cross ” of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and their “ Kings Initiates ” for ages, and also what was meant by “ the attachment of a man to the cross,” which idea “ was made to co-ordinate with that of the origin of human life, and hence the phallic form.” Only the latter came into action aeons and ages after the idea of the carpenter and artificer of the Gods,
* Montfaucon, Antiquities. See plates in Vol. I., plate 77. The disciples of Hermes go after their death to his planet, Mercury — their Kingdom of Heaven.
† Cornutus.
‡ Lydus de Mensibus, iv.
§ Preparat, Evang. I. iii. ch. 2.
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Visvakarma, crucifying the “ Sun-Initiate ” on the cruciform lathe. As the same author writes : “ the attachment of a man to the cross . . . was made use of in this very form of display by the Hindus ” ; but, made “ to co-ordinate ” with the idea of the new rebirth of man by spiritual, not physical regeneration. The candidate for initiation was attached to the tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of mere terrestrial life.
On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Thus, geometrically, and according to the reading of the Bible by means of the numerical method, the author of the “ Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery ” is quite correct. Their (the Jewish) entire system —
“ Seems to have been anciently regarded as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or God, as the basis of law of the exertion practically of creative power — i.e., it was the creative design, of which creation was practically the application. This seems to be established by the fact that, under the system set forth, measures of planetary times serve co-ordinately as measures of the size of planets, and of the peculiarity of their shapes — i.e., in the extension of their equatorial and polar diameters ” . . . etc., etc. (p. 3). . . . “ This system seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure (that of creative design), as a foundation for its ritualism and for its display of the works of the Deity in the way of architecture, by use of the sacred unit of measure in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon.”
Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system the Jewish Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested duad, never the One absolute All. Geometrically demonstrated, he is a number ; symbolically, an euhemerized Priapus ; and this can hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting after the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the possession of a god with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most learned of modern Kabalists can see in the cross and circle nothing but a symbol of the manifested creative and androgyne deity in its relation to, and interference with, this phenomenal world. * One author believes that “ man (read the Jew and Rabbi) obtained knowledge of the practical measure . . . . by which nature was thought to adjust the planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements ” . . . . and adds : “ it seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the means of his realization of the Deity — that is, he approached so nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his own, only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize a law of creation
* See the Zohar and the two Qabbalahs (by Messrs. I. Myer and Mathers), with interpretations, if the reader would satisfy himself of this.
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established by that Being, which must have existed prior to any creation (Kabalistically called the Word) ” (“ Source of Measures,” p. 5).
This may have satisfied the practical Semite mind, but the Eastern Occultist has to decline the offer of such a God ; indeed, a Deity, a Being, “ having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,” is no God that has any room beyond the cycle of creation. He has nought to do with the ideal conception of the eternal universe. He is, at best, one of the creative subordinate powers, the Totality of which is called the “ Sephiroth,” the “ Heavenly Man,” and Adam Kadmon, the second logos of the Platonists.
This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest definitions of the Kabala and its mysteries, e.g., by John A. Parker, as quoted in the same work : —
“ The key of the Kabala is thought to be the geometrical relation of the area of the circle inscribed in the square, or, of the cube to the sphere, giving rise to the relation of diameter to circumference of a circle with the numerical value of this relation expressed in integrals. The relation of diameter to circumference, being a supreme one connected with the god-names of Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of these relations respectively, the first being of circumference, the latter of diameter), embraces all. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are used in the Bible : (1) The perfect, and (2) the imperfect. One of the relations between these is such that (2) subtracted from (1) will leave a unit of a diameter value in terms, or in the denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or a unit straight line having a perfect circular value, or a factor of circular value ” (p. 22).
Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries of the third stage of Evolution, or the “ third creation of Brahmâ.” The initiated Hindus know how to “ square the circle ” far better than any European. But of this more anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the universe “ falls into matter,” as the occultists say. Throughout the whole series of Kabalistic books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the remotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at the mechanical and physiological secrets of “ creation.” Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe as simply a prototype, on a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation ? as “ divine ” Phallicism, and rhapsodize on it as the evilly-inspired author of a late work of this name has done ? The writer does not think so. And she feels justified in saying so, since the most careful reading of the Old Testament — esoterically, as well as exoterically — seems to have carried the most enthusiastic enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch every scene, every character or event are shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the origin of birth in its crudest and most
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brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious the rabbinical methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern Occultists, must prefer those of the Pagans.
It is not, then, in the Bible that we have to search for the origin of the Cross and Circle, but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning to Eliphas Lévi and the Zohar, we answer for the Eastern Occultists and say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely with Pascal, who says that “ God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere,” whereas the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it solely out of their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity by the Circle is not Pascal’s at all, as E. Lévi thought. It was borrowed by the French philosopher from either Mercury Trismegistus or Cardinal Cusa’s Latin work, De Doctâ Ignorantiâ, in which he makes use of it. It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words “ Cosmic Circle,” which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by the word Theos. With the ancients both words were synonymous.