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TETRAGRAMMATON
I would advise all in general that they would take into serious consideration the true and genuine ends of knowledge; that they seek it not either for pleasure or contention, or contempt of others, or for profit, or for fame, or for honour and promotion, or suchlike adulterate, or inferior ends; but for merit and emolument of life, that they may regulate and perfect the same in charity.
—BACON.
In the present article I shall carry no coals to Newcastle. This means that I do not propose to teach learned Brahmins the mysteries of their religious philosophy, but will take for my subject a few things from the Universal Kabbala. The former—once placed upon polemical grounds—is an awkward adversary to fight. Unless one has instead of a head an encyclopaedia crammed with quotations, figures, numbers and verses scattered throughout crores of pages, such polemics will be more injurious than useful. Each of the disputants will find himself with the same number of adherents to his views as he had before, as neither will convince a single man from the party opposed to him.
Repeating with Sir T. Browne that “I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less,” I will deal now with questions I am thoroughly conversant with, and in support of which I can quote good authorities.
Having studied the Kabbala, for nearer forty than thirty years, I may perhaps be allowed to regard the Zohar as a legitimate ground for me to stand upon. This, however, will be no discussion, but simply a few statements of facts. Four names and teachings from the Kabbala have been brought forward to oppose our septenary doctrine:—
I. We are told that the Tetragrammaton “is in the way . . . of a final union with the Logos.” Because his mystic "constitution, as represented by the sacred Tetragram, has not a septenary basis”
141 II. That “it is one of the oldest directions of the ancient Wisdom-religion that the macrocosm * should be interpreted according to the plan revealed by Malkuth”
III. That (a) “Shekinah is an androgyne power”; and (b) that she “should be accepted as a guide to the interpretation of the constitution of the microcosm.”
IV. That “Its [Shekinah’s] male form is the figure of man seen on the mysterious throne in the vision of Ezekiel.” †
I am afraid none of the above statements are correct. I am compelled to say that each and all are entirely erroneous. My authorities for saying so, will be the three chief books of the Zohar—The Book of Concealed Mystery and the two Assemblies—the Greater and the Lesser, as also the Kabbalah Denudata of Knorr von Rosenroth,‡ the Sepher Yetzirah, with its commentaries, and the Aech Metzareph, containing a key to the Kabbalistical symbolism, and all supplemented with various codices.§
An axiom echoed from the hoariest antiquity teaches us that the first step to knowledge is to know and to confess that we are ignorant. I must have taken this step, for I fully realize how very ignorant I am in many things, and confess how little I know. Nevertheless, what I know, I do know.
And perhaps, were I wiser, I ought to be glad to know so little; because if
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as Shakespeare has it,* too much of
“Knowledge, when wisdom is too weak to guide her, |
In this particular case, however, I have no fear of being thrown out of my stirrups. I venture even to say that it is quite impossible, with the Zohar before one’s eye and its (just) hundred and seventy passages of references and several hundreds of comments and glosses upon the real meaning of Tetragrammaton alone. Meanwhile, as “no man knoweth all”—errare humanum est—and as none of us, so far as I know, has reached the glorified position of an omniscient Buddha or a Sankaracharya, it is but just that we should compare notes and unveil that which can be lawfully unveiled. Hence I shall endeavour to show the true nature of the “Tetragrammaton” and prove its four letters to be a mere glyph, a mask to conceal metaphysically its connection with and relation to, the supernal and the inferior worlds. I will give nothing of my own speculations or knowledge, which are my personal property, the fruitage of my studies, and with which, therefore, the public has nothing to do. I shall only show what the Tetragrammaton is said to be in the Zohar, and as explained to the writer personally by a Hebrew initiated Rabbi, in Palestine, and made very plain to every advanced Kabbalist.
I. The Tetragrammaton is called in the Kabbala by various names. It is IHVH, the Microprosopus, in distinction to AHIH, the Macroprosopus. It is the LESSER FACE, a reflection (tainted with matter or Malkuth, its bride, the mother earth) of the “Vaster,” rather “Limitless” Face; therefore he is the antithesis of Macroprosopus. But who, or what is Macroprosopus, itself?
II. It is not “Ain-Soph” the Non-Existent, or Non-Being, no more than is Tetragrammaton; for both AHIH and IHVH are glyphs of existence, and symbols of terrestrial-androgynous, as well as male and female—life. 143