Theosophy - Secret Doctrine-by H.P.Blavatsky - Volume 3- Part 2 of 4
THE
SECRET DOCTRINE -VOLUME -3-
by H.P.Blavatsky
- Part 2 of 4
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SECTION
XVII
Appollonius
of Tyana
(Page
129)
IT is said in Isis Unveiled that the greatest teachers of divinity agree
that nearly all ancient books were written symbolically and in a language intelligible
only to the Initiated. The biographical sketch of Apollonius of Tyana affords
an example. As every Kabalist knows, it embraces the whole of the Hermetic Philosophy,
being a counterpart in many respects of the traditions left us of King Solomon.
It reads like a fairy story, but, as in the case of the latter, sometimes facts
and historical events are presented to the world under the colours of fiction.
The journey to India represents in its every stage, though of course allegorically,
the trials of a Neophyte, giving at the same time a geographical and topographical
idea of a certain country as it is even now, if one knows where to look for
it. The long discourses of Apollonius with the Brâhmans, their sage advice,
and the dialogues with the Corinthian Menippus would, if interpreted, give the
Esoteric Catechism. His visit to the empire of the wise men, his interview with
their king Hiarchas, the oracle of Amphiaraus, explain symbolically many of
the secret dogmas of Hermes - in the generic sense of the name - and of Occultism.
Wonderful is this to relate, and were not the statement supported by numerous
calculations already made, and the secret already half revealed, the writer
would never have dared to say it. The travels of the great Magus are correctly,
though allegorically described - that is to say, all that is related to Damis
had actually taken place - but the narrative is based upon the Zodiacal signs.
As transliterated by Damis under the guidance of Appollonius and translated
by Philostratus, it is a marvel indeed. At the conclusion of what may now be
related of the wonderful Adept of Tyana our meaning will become clearer. Suffice
it to say for the present that the dialogues spoken of would disclose, if correctly
understood, some of the most important secrets of Nature. Eliphas Levi points
out the great (Page
130) resemblance which exists between King Hiarchus and the fabulous
Hiram, from whom Solomon procured the cedars of Lebanon and the gold of Ophir.
But he keeps silent as to another resemblance of which, as a learned Kabalist,
he could not be ignorant. Moreover, according to his invariable custom, he mystifies
the reader more than he teaches him, divulging nothing and leading him off the
right track.
Like
most of the historical heroes of hoary antiquity, whose lives and works strongly
differ from those of commonplace humanity, Apollonius is to this day a riddle,
which has, so far, found no Oedipus. His existence is surrounded with such a
veil of mystery that he is often mistaken for a myth. But according to every
law of logic and reason, it is quite clear that Apollonius should never be regarded
in such a light. If the Tyanean Theurgist may be put down as a fabulous character,
then history has no right to her Caesars and Alexanders. It is quite true that
this Sage, who stands unrivalled in his thaumaturgical powers to this day -
on evidence historically attested - came into the arena of public life no one
seems to know whence, and disappeared from it, no one seems to know whither.
But the reasons for this are evident. Every means was used - especially during
the fourth and fifth centuries of our era - to sweep from people’s minds
the remembrance of this great and holy man. The circulation of his biographies,
which were many and enthusiastic, was prevented by the Christians, and for a
very good reason, as we shall see. The diary of Damis survived most miraculously,
and remained alone to tell the tale. But it must not be forgotten that Justin
Martyr often speaks of Apollonius, and the character and truthfulness of this
good man are unimpeachable, the more in that he had good reason to feel bewildered.
Nor can it be denied that there is hardly a Church Father of the first six centuries
that left Apollonius unnoticed. Only, according to invariable Christian customs
of charity, their pens were dipped as usual in the blackest ink of odium
theologicum, intolerance and one-sidedness. St. Jerome (Hieronymus) gives
at length the story of St. John’s alleged contest with the Sage of Tyana
- a competition of “miracles” - in which, of course, the truthful
saint [ See Preface to St. Matthew’s Gospel. Baronius ,
i.752, quoted in De Mirville, VI, 63. Jerome is the Father who having found
the authentic and original Evangel (the Hebrew text), by Matthew the
Apostle-publican, in the library of Caesarea, “written by the hand
of Matthew” (Hieronymus: De Viris, Illus. Chap. III) - as he himself
admits - set it down as heretical, and substituted for it his own Greek text.
And it is also he who perverted the text in the Book of Job to enforce
belief in the resurrection in flesh (see Isis Unveiled. Vol. II, pp.
181 and 182, et seq.) quoting in support the most learned authorities.]
describes in glowing colours the defeat of Apollonius, and seeks corroboration
in St. John’s Apocrypha proclaimed doubtful even by the
Church. [ De Mirville gives the following thrilling account of the “contest.”
“John, pressed, as St. Jerome tells us, by all the churches of Asia to
proclaim more solemnly [in the face of the miracles of Apollonius] the
divinity of Jesus Christ, after a long prayer with his disciples on the Mount
of Patmos and being in ecstasy by the divine Spirit, made heard amid thunder
and lightning his famous In Principio erat Verbum. When that sublime
extasis, that caused him to be named the ‘Son of Thunder,’ had passed,
Apollonius was compelled to retire and to disappear. Such was his defeat, less
bloody but as hard as that of Simon, the Magician. (“The Magician Theurgist.”
VI 63.) For our part we have never heard of extasis producing thunder and lightning
and we are at a loss to understand the meaning.]
The
Mysterious Teacher (Page
131)
Therefore it is that nobody can say where or when Apollonius was born, and everyone
is equally ignorant of the date at which, and of the place where he died. Some
think he was eighty or ninety years old at the time of his death, others that
he was one hundred or even one hundred and seventeen. But, whether he ended
his days at Ephesus in the year 96 A.D., as some say, or whether the event took
place at Lindus in the temple of Pallas-Athene, or whether again he disappeared
from the temple of Dictynna, or whether, as others maintain, he did not die
at all, but when a hundred years old renewed his life by Magic,and went on working
for the benefit of humanity, no one can tell. The Secret Doctrine alone have
noted his birth and subsequent career. But then - “Who hath believed in
that report?”
All
that history knows is that Apollonius was the enthusiastic founder of a new
school of contemplation. Perhaps less metaphorical and more practical than Jesus,
he nevertheless inculcated the same quintessence of spirituality, the same high
moral truths. He is accused of having confined them to the higher classes of
society instead of doing what Buddha and Jesus did, instead of preaching them
to the poor and the afflicted. Of his reasons for acting in such an exclusive
way it is impossible to judge at so late a date. But Karmic law seems to be
mixed up with it. Born, as we are told, among the aristocracy, it is very likely
that he desired to finish the work undone in this particular direction by his
predecessor, and sought to offer “peace on earth and good will”
to all men, and not alone to the outcast and the criminal. Therefore
he associated with the kings and mighty ones of the age. Nevertheless, the three
“miracle-workers” exhibited striking similarity of purpose. Like
Jesus and like Buddha, Apollonius was the uncompromising enemy of all outward
show of piety, all display of useless religious ceremonies, bigotry and hypocrisy.
That his “miracles” were more wonderful, more varied, and far better
attested in (Page
132) History than any others, it is also true. Materialism denies;
but evidence, and the affirmations of even the Church herself, however much
he is branded by her, show this to be the fact. [ This is the old, old
story. Who of us, Theosophists, but knows by bitter personal experiences what
clerical hatred, malice and persecution can do in this direction; to what an
extent of falsehood, calumny and cruelty these feelings can go, even in our
modern day, and what exemplars of Christ like charity His alleged and
self-constituted servants have shown themselves to be! ]
The
calumnies set afloat against Apollonius were as numerous as they were false.
So late as eighteen centuries after his death he was defamed by Bishop Douglas
in his work against miracles. In this the Right Reverend bishop crushed himself
against historical facts. For it is not in the miracles, but in the
identity of ideas and doctrines preached that we have to look for a similarity
between Buddha, Jesus and Apollonius. If we study the question with a dispassionate
mind, we shall soon perceive that the ethics of Gautama, Plato, Apollonius,
Jesus, Ammonius Sakkas, and his disciples, were all based on the same mystic
philosophy - that all worshipped one divine ideal, whether they considered
it as the “Father” of humanity, who lives in man, as man lives
in Him, or as the Incomprehensible Creative Principle. All led God-like lives.
Ammonius, speaking of his philosophy, taught that their school dated from
the days of Hermes, who brought this wisdom from India. It was the same mystical
contemplation throughout as that of the Yogin: the communion of the Brahman
with his own luminous Self - the “Atman.” [ Isis Unveiled,
ii. 342.]
The
groundwork of the Eclectic School is thus shown to be identical with the doctrines
of the Yogis - the Hindu Mystics; it is proved that it has a common origin,
from the same source as the earlier Buddhism of Gautama and of his Arhats.
The
Ineffable Name in the search for which so many Kabalists - unacquainted
with any Oriental or even European Adepts - vainly consume their knowledge
and lives, dwells latent in the heart of every man. This mirific name which,
according to the most ancient oracles, “rushes into the infinite worlds,αφοιτητω
οτροφαλιγαι ,”
can be obtained in a twofold way: by regular initiation, and through the “small
voice” which Elijah heard in the cave of Horeb, the mount of God. And
“when Elijah heard it he wrapped his face in his mantle and stood
in the entering of the cave. And behold there came the voice.”
When
Apollonius of Tyana desired to hear the “small voice,” he used
to wrap himself up entirely in a mantle of fine wool, on which he placed both
his feet, after having performed certain magnetic passes, and pronounced not
the “name” but an invocation well known to every adept. Then he
drew the mantle over his head and face, and his translucid or astral spirit
was free. On ordinary occasions he no more wore wool than the priests of the
temples. The possession of the secret combination of the “name”
gave the Hierophant supreme power over every being, human or otherwise, inferior
to himself in soul-strength. [ Loc. cit., ii, 343, 344.]
Apollonius
Cannot Be Destroyed (Page
133)
To whatever school he belonged, this fact is certain, that Apollonius of Tyana
left an imperishable name behind him. Hundreds of works were written upon this
wonderful man; historians have seriously discussed him; pretentious fools, unable
to come to any conclusion about the Sage, have tried to deny his very existence.
As to the Church, although she execrates his memory, she has ever tried to present
him in the light of a historical character. Her policy now seems to be to direct
the impression left by him into another channel - a well known and a very old
stratagem. The Jesuits, for instance, while admitting his “miracles,”
have set going a double current of thought, and they have succeeded, as they
succeed in all they undertake. Apollonius is represented by one party as an
obedient “medium of Satan,” surrounding his theurgical powers by
a most wonderful and dazzling light; while the other party professes to regard
the whole matter as a clever romance, written with a predetermined object in
view.
In
his voluminous Memoirs of Satan, the Marquis de Mirville, in the course of his
pleading for the recognition of the enemy of God as the producer of spiritual
phenomena, devotes a whole chapter to this great Adept. The following translation
of passages in his book unveils the whole plot. The reader is asked to bear
in mind that the Marquis wrote every one of his works under the auspices and
authorisation of the Holy See of Rome.
It
would be to leave the first century incomplete and to offer an insult to the
memory of St. John, to pass over in silence the name of one who had the honour
of being his special antagonist, as Simon was that of St. Peter, Elymas that
of Paul, etc. In the first years of the Christian era, . . . there appeared
at Tyana in Cappadocia one of those men of whom the Pythagorean School was
so very lavish. As great a traveller as was his master, initiated in all the
secret doctrines of India, Egypt and Chaldaea, endowed, therefore, with all
the theurgic powers of the ancient Magi, he bewildered, each in its turn,
all the countries which he visited, and which all - we are obliged to admit
- seem to have blessed his memory. We could not doubt this fact without repudiating
real historical records. The details of his life are transmitted to us by
a historian of the fourth century (Philostratus), himself the translator of
a diary that recorded day by day the life of the philosopher, written by Damis,
his disciple and intimate friend. [ Pneumatologie, vi. 62.]
De
Mirville admits the possibility of some exaggerations in both recorder
and translator; but he “does not believe they hold a very wide space in
the narrative.” Therefore, he regrets to find the Abbe (Page
134) Freppel “in his eloquent Essays, [ Les
Apologistes Chrétiens au Second Siècle. p.106.] calling
the diary of Damis a romance.” Why?
[Because]
the orator bases his opinion on the prefect similitude, calculated as he imagines,
of that legend with the life of the Saviour. But in studying the subject more
profoundly, he [Abbe Freppel] can convince himself that neither
Apollonius nor Damis, nor again Philostratus ever claimed a greater honour
than a likeness to St. John. This programme was in itself sufficiently fascinating,
and the travesty as sufficiently scandalous; for owing to magic arts Apollonius
had succeeded in counterbalancing, in appearance, several of the miracles
at Ephesus [produced by St. John], etc. [ Pneumatologie,
vi. 62.]
The
anguis in herba has shown its head. It is the perfect, the wonderful similitude
of the life of Apollonius with that of the Saviour that places the Church between
Scylla and Charybdis. To deny the life and the “miracles” of the former,
would amount to denying the trustworthiness of the same Apostles and patristic
writers on whose evidence is built the life of Jesus himself. To father the Adept’s
beneficent deeds, his raisings of the dead, acts of charity, healing powers, etc.,
on the “ old enemy” would be rather dangerous at this time. Hence
the stratagem to confuse the ideas of
those
who rely upon authorities and criticisms. The Church is far more clear-sighted
than any of our great historians. The Church knows that to deny the existence
of that Adept would lead her to denying the Emperor Vespasian and his
Historians, the Emperors Alexander Severus and Aurelianus and their Historians,
and finally to deny Jesus and every evidence about Him, thus preparing the way
to her flock for finally denying herself. It becomes interesting to learn
what she says in this emergency, through her chosen speaker, De Mirville. It
is as follows:
What
is there so new and so impossible in the narrative of Damis concerning their
voyages to the countries of the Chaldees and the Gymnosophists? - he asks. Try
to recall, before denying, what were in those days those countries of marvels
par excellence, as also the testimony of such men as Pythagoras, Empedocles
and Democritus, who ought to be allowed to have known what they were writing
about. With what have we finally to reproach Apollonius? Is it for having made,
as the Oracles did, a series of prophecies and predictions wonderfully verified?
No: because, better studied now, we know what they are. [ Many
are they who do not know: hence, they do not believe in them.] The
Oracles have now become to us, what they were to every one during the past century,
from Van Dale to Fontenelle.
De
Mirville on Apollonius (Page
135) Is it for having been endowed with second sight, and having
had visions at a distance? [ Just so. Apollonius, during a lecture he
was delivering at Ephesus before an audience of many thousands, perceived the
murder of the Emperor Domitian in Rome and notified it at the very moment it
was taking place, to the whole town: and Swedenborg, in the same manner, saw
from Gothenburg the great fire at Stockholm and told it to his friends, no telegraph
being in use in those days.] No; for such phenomena are at the present
day endemical in half Europe. Is it for having boasted of his knowledge of every
existing language under the sun, without having ever learned one of them? But
who can be ignorant of the fact that this is the best criterion [ No
criterion at all. The Hindu Saddhus and Adepts acquire the gift by the holiness
of their lives. The Yoga-Vidya teaches it, and no “spirits” are
required.] of the presence and assistance of a spirit of whatever nature
it may be? Or is it for having believed in transmigration (reincarnation)? It
is still believed in (by millions) in our day. No one has any idea of the number
of the men of Science who long for the re-establishment of the Druidical Religion
and of the Mysteries of Pythagoras. Or is it for having exorcised the demons
and the plague? The Egyptians, the Etruscans and all the Roman Pontiffs had
done so long before. [ As to the Pontiffs, the matter is rather doubtful.]
For having conversed with the dead? We do the same today, or believe we do so
- which is all the same. For having believed in the Empuses? Where is the Demonologist
that does not know that the Empuse is the “south demon” referred
to in David’s Psalms, and dreaded then as it is feared even now
in all Northern Europe? [ But this alone is no reason why people should
believe in this class of spirits. There are better authorities for such belief.]
For having made himself invisible at will? It is one of the achievements of
mesmerism. For having appeared after his (supposed) death to the Emperor Aurelian
above the city walls of Tyana, and for having compelled him thereby to raise
the siege of that town? Such was the mission of every hero beyond the tomb,
and the reason of the worship vowed to the Manes. [ De Mirville’s
aim is to show that all such apparitions of the Manes or disembodied Spirits
are the work of the Devil. “Satan’s simulacra.”] For
having descended into the famous den of Trophonius, and taken from it an old
book preserved for years after by the Emperor Adrian in his Antium library?
The trustworthy and sober Pausanias had descended into the same den before Apollonius,
and came back no less a believer. For having disappeared at his death? Yes,
like Romulus, like Votan, like Lycurgus, like Pythagoras,
(Page 136) [ He might have added: like the great
Shankaracharya, Tsong-Kha-Pa, and so many other real Adepts - even his own Master,
Jesus: for this is indeed a criterion of true Adeptship, though “to disappear”
one need not fly up in the clouds.] always under the most mysterious
circumstances, ever attended by apparitions, revelations, etc. Let us stop here
and repeat once more: had the life of Apollonius been simple romance,
he would never have attained such a celebrity during his lifetime or created
such a numerous sect, one so enthusiastic after his death.
And,
so to add to this, had all this been a romance, never would a Caracalla have
raised a haroon to his memory, [ See Dion Cassius. XXVII XVIII,
2 ] or Alexander Severus have placed his bust between those of two Demi-Gods
and of the true God, [Lampridlius, Adrian, xxxix. 2.]
or an Empress have corresponded with him. Hardly rested from the hardships of
the siege at Jerusalem, Titus would not have hastened to write to Apollonius
a letter, asking to meet him at Argos and adding that his father and himself
(Titus) owed all to him, the great Apollonius, and that, therefore, his first
thought was for their benefactor. Nor would the Emperor Aurelian have built
a temple and a shrine to that great Sage, to thank him for his apparition and
communication at Tyana. That posthumous conversation, as all knew, saved
the city, inasmuch as Aurelian had in consequence raised the siege. Furthermore,
had it been a romance, History would not have had Vopiscus, [ The passage
runs as follows: “Aurelian had determined to destroy Tyana, and the town
owed its salvation only to a miracle of Apollonius; this man so famous and wise,
this great friend of the Gods, appeared suddenly before the Emperor, as he was
returning to his tent, in his own figure and form, and said to him in the Pannonian
language: ‘Aurelian, if thou wouldst conquer, abandon these evil designs
against my fellow-citizens: if thou wouldst command, abstain from shedding innocent
blood; and if thou wouldst live, abstain from injustice.’ Aurelian, familiar
with the face of Apollonius, whose portraits he had seen in many temples, struck
with wonder, immediately vowed to him (Apollonius) statue, portrait and temple,
and returned completely to ideas of mercy.” And then Vopiscus adds: “If
I have believed more and more in the virtues of the majestic Apollonius,
it is because, after gathering my information from the most serious men, I have
found all these facts corroborated in the Books of the Ulpian Library.”
(See Flavius Vopiscus, Aurelianus). Vopiscus wrote in 250 and consequently
preceded Philostratus by a century.] one of the most trustworthy Pagan Historians,
to certify to it. Finally, Apollonius would not have been the object of the
admiration of such a noble character as Epictetus, and even of several of the
Fathers of the Church; Jerome for instance, in his better moments, writing thus
of Apollonius:
This
travelling philosopher found something to learn wherever he went; and profiting
everywhere thus improved with every day. [ Ep. ad Paulinum.]
Apollonius
No Fiction (Page
137)
As to his prodigies, without wishing to fathom them, Jerome most undeniably
admits them as such; which he would assuredly never have done, had he not been
compelled to do so by facts. To end the subject, had Apollonius been a simple
hero of a romance, dramatised in the fourth century, the Ephesians would not,
in their enthusiastic gratitude, have raised to him a golden statue for all
the benefits he had conferred upon them. [ The above is mostly summarised
from De Mirville. loc cit., pp. 66-69 ]
SECTION
XVIII
Facts
Underlying Adept Biographies
(Page
138)
THE tree is known by its fruits; the nature of the Adept by his words and deeds.
These words of charity and mercy, the noble advice put into the mouth of Apollonius
(or of his sidereal phantom), as given by Vopiscus, show the Occultists who
Apollonius was. Why then call him the “Medium of Satan” seventeen
centuries later? There must be a reason, and a very potent reason, to justify
and explain the secret of such a strong animus of the Church against one of
the noblest men of his age. There is a reason for it, and we give it in the
words of the author of the Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery in the Source
of Measures, and of Professor Seyffarth. The latter analyses and explains
the salient dates in the life of Jesus, and thus throws light on the conclusions
of the former. We quote both, blending the two.
According
to solar months (of thirty days, one of the calendars in use among the Hebrews)
all remarkable events of the Old Testament happened on the days of
the equinoxes and the solstices; for instance, the foundations and dedications
of the temples and alters [and consecration of the tabernacle].
On the same cardinal days, the most remarkable events of the New Testament
happened; for instance, the annunciation, the birth, the resurrection of Christ,
and the birth of John the Baptist. And thus we learn that all remarkable epochs
of the New Testament were typically sanctified a long time before by
the Old Testament, beginning at the day succeeding the end of the Creation,
which was the day of the vernal equinox. During the crucifixion, on the 14th
day of Nisan, Dionysius Areopagita saw, in Ethopia, an eclipse of the sun,
and he said, “Now the Lord (Jehovah) is suffering something.”
Then Christ arose from the dead on the 22d March, 17 Nisan, Sunday,
the day of the vernal equinox (Seyf., quoting Philo de Septen) - that is,
on Easter, or on the day when the sun gives new life to the earth. The words
of John the Baptist “He must increase, but I must decrease,” serve
to prove, as is affirmed by the fathers of the church, that John was born
on the longest day of the year, and Christ, who was six months younger, on
the shortest, 22d June and 22d December, the solstices.
Jesus
and Apollonius-
(Page
139)
This only goes to show that, as to another phase, John and Jesus were but
epitomisers of the history of the same sun, under differences of aspect or
condition; and one condition following another, of necessity, the statement,
Luke, ix. 7, was not only not an empty one, but it was true, that which
“was said of some, that (in Jesus) John was risen from the dead.”
(And this consideration serves to explain why it has been that the Life
of Apollonius of Tyana, by Philostratus, has been so persistently kept
back from translation and from popular reading. Those who have studied it
in the original have been forced to the comment that either the Life of
Apollonius has been taken from the New Testament, or that the New
Testament narratives have been taken from the Life of Apollonius,
because of the manifest sameness of the means of construction of the
narratives. The explanation is simple enough, when it is considered that the
names of Jesus Hebrew שי,and Apollonius, or Apollo, are
alike names of the sun in the heavens; and necessarily the history
of the one, as to his travels through the signs, with the personifications
of his sufferings, triumphs and miracles, could be but the history of the
other, where there was a widespread, common method of describing those
travels by personification.) It seems also that, for long afterward, all this
was known to rest upon an astronomical basis; for the secular church, so to
speak, was founded by Constantine, and the objective condition of the worship
established was that part of his decree, in which it was affirmed that the
venerable day of the sun should be the day set apart for the worship
of Jesus Christ, as Sun-day. There is something weird and startling
in some other facts about this matter. The prophet Daniel (true prophet,as
says Graetz). [ A “true prophet” because an Initiate, one
perfectly versed in Occult astronomy.] by use of the pyramid numbers,
or astrological numbers, foretold the cutting off of the Meshiac, as
it happened (which would go to show the accuracy of his astronomical knowledge,
if there was an eclipse of the sun at that time). . . . Now, however, the
temple was destroyed in the year 71, in the month Virgo, and 71 is the Dove
number, as shown, or 71X5 = 355, and with the fish, a Jehovah number.
“Is
it possible,” queries, further on the author, thus answering the intimate
thought of every Christian and Occultist who reads and studies his work:
Is
it possible that the events of humanity do run co-ordinately with these number
forms? If so, while Jesus Christ, as an astronomical figure, was true to all
that has been advanced, and more, possibly. He may, as a man, have filled
up, under the numbers, answers in the sea of life to predestined type. The
personality of Jesus does not appear to have been destroyed, because, as
a condition, he was answering to astronomical forms and relations. The
Arabian says, “Your destiny is written in the stars.” [
Key to Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery. p. 259 et seq. Astronomy and
physiology are the bodies, astrology and psychology their informing souls:
the former being studied by the eye of sensual perception, the latter by the
inner or “soul-eye”: and both are exact sciences.]
Nor
is the “personality” of Apollonius “destroyed,” for
the same (Page
140) reason. The case of Jesus covers the ground for the same possibility
in the cases of all Adepts and Avataras - such as Buddha, Shankaracharya, Krishna,
etc. - all of these as great and as historical for their respective followers
and in their countries, as Jesus of Nazareth is now for Christians and in this
land.
But
there is something more in the old literature of the early centuries. Iamblichus
wrote a biography of the great Pythagoras.
The
latter so closely resembles the life of Jesus that it may be taken for a travesty.
Diogenes Laërtius and Plutarch relate the history of Plato according
to a similar style. [ New Platonism and Alchemy. p.12.]
Why
then wonder at the doubts that assail every scholar who studies all these lives?
The Church herself knew all these doubts in her early stages; and though only
one of her Popes has been known publicly and openly as a Pagan, how many more
were there who were too ambitious to reveal the truth?
This
“mystery,” for mystery indeed it is to those who, not being Initiates,
fail to find the key of the perfect similitude between the lives of Pythagoras,
Buddha, Apollonius, etc, - is only a natural result for those who know that
all these great characters were Initiates of the same school. For them there
is neither “travesty” nor “copy” of one from the other;
for them they are all “originals,” only painted to represent one
and the same subject: the mystic, and at the same time the public, life of the
Initiates sent into the world to save portions of humanity, if they could not
save the whole bulk. Hence, the same programme for all. The assumed “immaculate
origin” for each, referring to their “mystic birth” during
the Mystery of Initiation, and accepted literally by the multitudes, encouraged
in this by the better informed but ambitious clergy. Thus, the mother of each
one of them was declared a virgin, conceiving her son directly by the Holy Spirit
of God; and the Sons, in consequence, were the “Sons of God,” though
in truth, none of them was any more entitled to such recognition than were the
rest of his brother Initiates, for they were all - so far as their mystic lives
were concerned - only “the epitomisers of the history of the same Sun,”
which epitome is another mystery within the Mystery. The biographies of the
external personalities bearing the names of such heroes have nothing to do with,
and are quite independent of the private lives of the heroes, being only the
mystic records of their public and, parallel therewith, of their inner
lives, in their characters as Neophytes and Initiates.
Biographies
of Initiates- (Page
141)
Hence, the manifest sameness of the means of construction of their respective
biographies. From the beginning of Humanity the Cross, or Man, with his arms
stretched out horizontally, typifying his kosmic origin, was connected with
his psychic nature and with the struggles which lead to Initiation. But, if
it is once shown that (a) every true Adept had, and still has, to pass through
the seven and the twelve trials of Initiation, symbolised by the twelve labours
of Hercules; (b) that the day of his real birth is regarded as that day when
he is born into the world spiritually, his very age being counted from the hour
of his second birth, which makes of him a “twice-born,” a Dvija
or Initiate, on which day he is indeed born of a God and from an immaculate
Mother; and (c) that the trials of all these personages are made to correspond
with the Esoteric significance of initiatory rites - all of which corresponded
to the twelve zodiacal signs - then every one will see the meaning of the travels
of all those heroes through the signs of the Sun in Heaven; and that they are
in each individual case a personification of the “sufferings, triumphs
and miracles” of an Adept, before and after his Initiation. When to the
world at large all this is explained, then also the mystery of all those lives,
so closely resembling each other that the history of one seems to be the history
of the other, and vice versa, will, like everything else, become plain.
Take
an instance. The legends - for they are all legends for exoteric purposes,
whatever may be the denials in one case - of the lives of Krishna, Hercules,
Pythagoras, Buddha, Jesus, Apollonius, Chaitanya. On the worldly plane, their
biographies, if written by one outside the circle, would differ greatly from
what we read of them in the narratives that are preserved of their mystic lives.
Nevertheless, however much masked and hidden from the profane gaze, the chief
features of such lives will all be found there in common. Each of those characters
is represented as a divinely begotten Soter (Saviour), a title bestowed on deities,
great kings and heroes; everyone of them, whether at their birth or afterwards,
is searched for, and threatened with death (yet never killed) by an opposing
power (the world of Matter and Illusion), whether it be called a king Kansa,
king Herod, or king Mara (the Evil Power). They are all tempted, persecuted
and finally said to have been murdered at the end of the rite of Initiation,
i.e. in their physical personalities, of which they are supposed
to have been rid for ever after spiritual “resurrection”
or “birth.” And having thus come (Page
142) to an end by this supposed violent death, they all descend to
the Nether World, the Pit or Hell - the Kingdom of Temptation, Lust and Matter,
therefore of Darkness, whence returning, having overcome the “Chrest-condition,”
they are glorified and become “Gods.”
It
is not in the course of their everyday life, then, that the great similarity
is to be sought, but in their inner state and in the most important events of
their career as religious teachers. All this is connected with, and built upon,
an astronomical basis, which serves, at the same time, as a foundation for the
representation of the degrees and trials of Initiation: descent into the Kingdom
of Darkness and Matter, for the last time, to emerge therefrom as “Suns
of Righteousness,” is the most important of these and, therefore, is found
in the history of all the Soters - from Orpheus and Hercules, down to Krishna
and Christ.
Says
Euripides:
Heracles,
who has gone from the chambers of earth,
Leaving
the nether home of Pluto. [ Heracles 807 ]
And
Virgil writes:
At
Thee the Stygian lakes trembled; Thee the janitor of Orcus
Feared
. . . Thee not even Typhon frightened . . .
Hail,
true son of Jove, glory added to the Gods. [ Aeneid, viii.,
274, ff.]
Orpheus
seeks, in the kingdom of Pluto, Eurydice, his lost Soul; Krishna goes down into
the infernal regions and rescues therefrom his six brothers, he being the seventh
Principle; a transparent allegory of his becoming a “perfect Initiate,”
the whole of the six Principles merging into the seventh. Jesus is made to descend
into the kingdom of Satan to save the soul of Adam, or the symbol of material
physical humanity.
Have
any of our learned Orientalists ever thought of searching for the origin of
this allegory, for the parent “Seed” of that “Tree of Life”
which bears such verdant boughs since it was first planted on earth by the hand
of its “Builders”? We fear not. Yet it is found, as is now shown,
even in the exoteric, distorted interpretations of the Vedas - of the
Rig Veda, the oldest, the most trustworthy of all the four - this root
and seed of all future Initiate-Saviours being called in it the Visvakarmâ,
the “Father” Principle, “beyond the comprehension of mortals;”
in the second stage Sûrya, the “Son,” who offers Himself
as a sacrifice to Himself; in the third, the Initiate, who sacrifices His physical
to His Spiritual Self.
Similarity
of Legends- (Page
143)
It is in Visvakarmâ, the “omnificent” who becomes (mystically)
Vikkartana, the “sun shorn of his beams,” who suffers for his too
ardent nature, and then becomes glorified (by purification), that the keynote
of the Initiation into the greatest Mystery of Nature was struck. Hence the
secret of the wonderful “similarity.”
All
this is allegorical and mystical, and yet perfectly comprehensible and plain
to any student of Eastern Occultism, even superficially acquainted with the
Mysteries of Initiation. In our objective Universe of Matter and false appearances
the Sun is the most fitting emblem of the life-giving, beneficent Deity. In
the subjective, boundless World of Spirit and Reality the bright luminary has
another and a mystical significance, which cannot be fully given to the public.
The so-called “idolatrous” Parsis and Hindus are certainly nearer
the truth in their religious reverence for the Sun, than the cold, ever-analysing,
and as ever-mistaken, public is prepared to believe, at present. The Theosophists,
who will be alone able to take in the meaning, may be told that the Sun is the
external manifestation of the Seventh Principle of our Planetary System, while
the Moon is its Fourth Principle, shining in the borrowed robes of her master,
saturated with and reflecting every passionate impulse and evil desire of her
grossly material body, Earth. The whole cycle of Adeptship and Initiation and
all its mysteries are connected with, and subservient to, these two and the
Seven Planets. Spiritual clairvoyance is derived from the Sun; all psychic states,
diseases, and even lunacy, proceed from the Moon.
According
even to the data of History - her conclusions being remarkably erroneous while
her premises are mostly correct - there is an extraordinary agreement between
the “legends” of every Founder of a Religion (and also between the
rites and dogmas of all) and the names and course of constellations headed by
the Sun. It does not follow, however, because of this, that both Founders and
their Religions should be, the one myths, and the other superstitions. They
are, one and all, the different versions of the same natural primeval Mystery,
on which the Wisdom-Religion was based, and the development of its Adepts subsequently
framed
And
now once more we have to beg the reader not to lend an ear to the charge - against
Theosophy in general and the writer in particular - of disrespect toward one
of the greatest and noblest characters in the History of Adeptship - Jesus of
Nazareth - nor even of hatred to the Church. The expression of truth and fact
can hardly be regarded, (Page
144)
with any approximation to justice, as blasphemy or hatred. The whole
question hangs upon the solution of that one point: Was Jesus as “Son
of God” and “Saviour” of Mankind, unique in the World’s
annals? Was His case - among so many similar claims - the only exceptional and
unprecedented one; His birth the sole supernaturally immaculate; and were others
as maintained by the Church, but blasphemous Satanic copies and plagiarisms
by anticipation? Or was He only the “son of his deeds,” a pre-eminently
holy man, and a reformer, one of many, who paid with His life for the presumption
of endeavouring, in the face of ignorance and despotic power, to enlighten mankind
and make its burden lighter by His Ethics and Philosophy? The first necessitates
a blind, all-resisting faith; the latter is suggested to every one by reason
and logic. Moreover, had the Church always believed as she does now - or rather,
as she pretends she does, in order to be thus justified in directing her anathema
against those who disagree with her - or has she passed through the same throes
of doubt, nay, of secret denial and belief, suppressed only by the force of
ambition and love of power?
The
question must be answered in the affirmative as to the second alternative. It
is an irrefutable conclusion, and a natural inference based on facts known from
historical records. Leaving for the present untouched the lives of many Popes
and Saints that loudly belied their claims to infallibility and holiness, let
the reader turn to Ecclesiastical History, the records of the growth and progress
of the Christian Church (not of Christianity), and he will find the answer on
those pages. Says a writer:
The
Church has known too well the suggestions of freethought created by enquiry,
as also all those doubts that provoke her anger today; and the “sacred
truths” she would promulgate have been in turn admitted and repudiated,
transformed and altered, amplified and curtailed, by the dignitaries of the
Church hierarchy, even as regards the most fundamental dogmas.
Where
is that God or Hero whose origin, biography, and genealogy were more hazy, or
more difficult to define and finally agree upon than those of Jesus? How was
the now irrevocable dogma with regard to His true nature settled at last? By
His mother, according to the Evangelists, He was a man - a simple mortal man;
by His Father He is God! But how? Is He then man or God, or is He both at the
same time? asks the perplexed writer. Truly the propositions offered on this
point of the doctrine have caused floods of ink and blood to be shed, in turn,
on poor Humanity, and still the doubts are not at rest. In this as in everything
else , the wise Church Councils have contradicted themselves and changed their
minds a number of times.
Nature
of Christ- (Page
145)
Let us recapitulate and throw a glance at the texts offered for our inspection.
This is History.
The
Bishop Paul of Samosata denied the divinity of Christ at the first Council of
Antioch; at the very origin and birth of theological Christianity, He was called
“Son of God” merely on account of His holiness and good deeds. His
blood was corruptible in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
At
the Council of Nicaea, held A.D. 325, Arius came out with his premisses, which
nearly broke asunder the Catholic Union.
Seventeen
bishops defended the doctrines of Arius, who was exiled for them. Nevertheless,
thirty years after, A.D. 355, at the Council of Milan, three hundred bishops
signed a letter of adherence to the Arian views, notwithstanding that ten years
earlier, A.D. 345, at a new Council of Antioch, the Eusebians had proclaimed
that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and One with His Father.
At
the Council of Sirmium, A.D. 357, the “Son” had become no longer
consubstantial. The Anomaeans, who denied that consubstantiality, and the Arians
were triumphant. A year later, at the second Council of Ancyra, it was decreed
that the “Son was not consubstantial but only similar to the Father in
his substance.” Pope Liberius ratified the decision. During several centuries
the Council fought and quarrelled, supporting the most contradictory and opposite
views, the fruit of their laborious travail being the Holy Trinity, which, Minerva-like,
issued forth from the theological brain, armed with all the thunders of the
Church. The new mystery was ushered into the world amid some terrible strifes,
in which murder and other crimes had a high hand. At the Council of Saragossa,
A.D. 380, it was proclaimed that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and
the same Person, Christ’s human nature being merely an “illusion”
- an echo of the Avatâric Hindu doctrine. “Once upon this slippery
path the Fathers had to slide down ad absurdum - which they did not fail
of doing.” How deny human nature in him who was born of a woman? The only
wise remark made during one of the Councils of Constantinople came from Eutyches,
who was bold enough to say: “May God preserve me from reasoning on the
nature of my God” - for which he was excommunicated by Pope Flavius.
At
the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 449, Eutyches had his revenge. As Eusibius, the
veracious Bishop of Caesarea, was forcing him into the (Page
146) admission of two distinct natures in Jesus Christ, the
Council rebelled against him and it was proposed that Eusebius should be burned
alive. The bishops arose like one man, and with fists clenched, foaming with
rage, demanded that Eusebius should be torn into halves, and be dealt by as
he would deal with Jesus, whose nature he divided. Eutyches was re-established
in his power and office, Eusebius and Flavius deposed. Then the two parties
attacked each other most violently and fought. St. Flavius was so ill-treated
by Bishop Diodorus, who assaulted and kicked him, that he died a few days from
the injuries inflicted.
Every
incongruity was courted in these Councils, and the result is the present living
paradoxes called Church dogmas. For instance, at the first Council of Ancyra,
A.D. 314, it was asked, “In baptising a woman with child, is the unborn
baby also baptised by the fact?” The Council answered in the negative;
because as was alleged, “the person thus receiving baptism must be a consenting
party, which is impossible to the child in the mother’s womb.” Thus
then unconsciousness is a canonical obstacle to baptism, and thus no child baptised
nowadays is baptised at all in fact. And then what becomes of the tens of thousands
of starving heathen babies baptised by the missionaries during famines, and
otherwise surreptitiously “saved” by the too zealous Padres? Follow
one after another the debates and decisions of the numberless Councils, and
behold on what a jumble of contradictions the present infallible and Apostolic
Church is built!
And
now we can see how greatly paradoxical, when taken literally, is the assertion
in Genesis: “God created man in his own image.” Besides the
glaring fact that it is not the Adam of dust (of Chapter ii.) who is thus made
in the divine image, but the Divine Androgyne (of Chapter i.), or Adam Kadmon,
one can see for oneself that God - the God of the Christians at any rate - was
created by man in his own image, amid the kicks, blows and murders of the early
Councils.
A
curious fact, one that throws a flood of light on the claim that Jesus was an
Initiate and a martyred Adept, is given in the work, (already so often referred
to) which may be called “a mathematical revelation” - The Source
of Measures.
Attention
is called to the part of the 46th verse of the 27th Chapter
of Matthew, as follows: “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani? - that is to say,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Of course, our versions are
taken from the original Greek manuscripts (the reason why we have no
original Hebrew manuscripts concerning these occurrences being because the enigmas
in Hebrew would betray themselves on comparison with the sources of their derivation,
the Old Testament).
A
Serious Mistranslation
(Page
147)
The Greek manuscripts, without exception, give these words as -
Hλι
Hλι λαμα .σαβαχθανι
They
are Hebrew words, rendered into the Greek, and in Hebrew are
as follows:
.
The
scripture of these words says, “that is to say, My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?” as their proper translation. Here then are the
words beyond all dispute; and beyond all question, such is the interpretation
given of them by Scripture. Now the words will not bear this interpretation,
and it is a false rendering. The true meaning is just the opposite of the
one given, and is -
My
God, My God, how thou dost glorify me!
But
even more, for while lama is why, or how, as a verbal
it connected the idea of to dazzle, or adverbially, it could run “how
dazzlingly,” and so on. To
the unwary reader this interpretation is enforced, and made to answer, as
it were, to the fulfilment of a prophetic utterance, by a marginal reference
to the first verse of the twenty-second Psalm, which reads:
“My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The
Hebrew of this verse for these words is -
as
to which the reference is correct, and the interpretation sound and good,
but with an utterly different word. The words are -
Eli,
Eli, lamah azabvtha-ni?
No
wit of man, however scholarly, can save this passage from falseness of
rendering on its face; and as so, it becomes a most terrible blow upon
the proper first-face sacredness of the recital. [ App., vii., p.301.]
For
ten years or more, sat the revisers (?) of the Bible, a most imposing
and solemn array of the learned of the land, the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars
of England, purporting to correct the mistakes and blunders, the sins of omission
and of commission of their less learned predecessors, the translators of the
Bible. Are we going to be told that none of them saw the glaring difference
between the Hebrew words in Psalm xxii., Azabbvtha-ni , and sabachthani
in Matthew; that they were not aware of the deliberate falsification?
For
“falsification” it was. And if we are asked the reason why the early
Church Fathers resorted to it, the answer is plain: Because the Sacramental
words belonged in their true rendering to Pagan temple rites.
(Page
148) They were pronounced after the terrible trials of Initiation,
and were still fresh in the memory of some of the “Fathers” when
the Gospel of Matthew was edited into the Greek language. Because, finally,
many of the Hierophants of the Mysteries, and many more of the Initiates were
still living in those days, and the sentence rendered in its true words would
class Jesus directly with the simple Initiates. The words “My God, my
Sun, thou hast poured thy radiance upon me?” were the final words that
concluded the thanksgiving prayer of the Initiate, “the Son and the glorified
Elect of the Sun.” In Egypt we find to this day carvings and paintings
that represent the rite. The candidate is between two divine sponsors; one “Osiris-Sun”
with the head of a hawk, representing life, the other Mercury - the ibis-headed,
psychopompic genius, who guides the Souls after death to their new abode, Hades
- standing for the death of the physical body, figuratively. Both are shown
pouring the “stream of life,” the water of purification, on the
head of the Initiate, the two streams of which, interlacing, form a cross. The
better to conceal the truth, this basso-relievo has also been explained
as a “Pagan presentment of a Christian truth.” The Chevalier des
Mousseaux calls this Mercury:
The
assessor of Osiris-Sol, as St. Michael is the assessor, Ferouer, of the Word.
The
monogram of Chrestos and the Labarum, the standard of Constantine - who, by
the by, died a Pagan and was never baptised - is a symbol derived from the above
rite and also denotes “life and death.” Long before the sign of
the Cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, it was employed as a secret sign
of recognition among Neophytes and Adepts. Says Eliphas Levi:
The
sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to
them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium
of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the Pater, to which
we have called attention in another work, that there were originally two ways
of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning;
one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophyte and the
profane. [Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, ii, 88.]
One
can understand now why the Gospel of Matthew, the Evangel of the Ebionites,
has been for ever excluded in its Hebrew form from the world’s curious
grace.
Jerome
found the authentic and original Evangel written in Hebrew, by Matthew the
Publican, at the library collected at Caesarea by the martyr Pamphilius, “I
received permission from the Nazaraeans, who at Beroea of Syria used this
(gospel to translate it, “ he writes toward the end of the fourth century.
[ (Hieronymus, Des Viris Illust., III) “It is remarkable
that, while all Church Fathers say that Matthew wrote in Hebrew,
the whole of them use the Greek text as the genuine apostolic writing,
without mentioning what relation the Hebrew Matthew has to our Greek
one! It had many peculiar additions which are wanting in our (Greek
) Evangel” (Olshausen, Nachweis der Echtheit der Sammtlichen Schriften
des Neuen Test., p.32; Dunlap, Sod, the Son of Man, p. 44.)
]
Secret
Doctrine of Jesus
(Page
149)
“In the Evangel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use,”
said Jerome, “which recently I translated from Hebrew into Greek, and
which is called by most persons the genuine gospel of Matthew,”
etc. [Comment to Matthew (XII, 13) Book 11. Jerome adds that
it was written in the Chaldaic language, but with Hebrew letters.]
That
the apostles had received a “secret doctrine” from Jesus, who
confessed it in an unguarded moment. Writing to the Bishops Chromatius and
Heliodorus, he complains that “a difficult work is enjoined, since this
(translation) has been commanded me by your Felicities, which St Matthew
himself, the Apostle and Evangelist, did not wish to be openly written.
For if this had not been secret he (Matthew) would have added to the
Evangel that what he gave forth was his ; but he made up this book
sealed up in the Hebrew characters, which he put forth even in such
way that the book, written in Hebrew letters and by the hand of himself,
might be possessed by the men most religious ; who also, in the course
of time, received it from those who preceded them. But this very book they
never gave to any one to be transcribed, and its text they related
some one way and another.” [ “St. Jerome.” v.445:
Dunlap, Sod, the Son of Man, p. 46.] And he adds further on
the same page: “And it happened that this book, having been published
by a disciple of Manichaeus, named Seleucus, who also wrote falsely The
Acts of the Apostles, exhibited matter not for edification, but for destruction;
and that this (book) was approved in a synod which the ears of the
Church properly refused to listen to.” [This accounts also for
the rejection of the works of Justin Martyr, who used only this “Gospel
according to the Hebrews,” as also did most probably Tatian, his disciple.
At what a later period the divinity of Christ was fully established we can
judge by the mere fact that even in the fourth century Eusebius did not denounce
this book as spurious, but only classed it with such as the Apocalypse
of John: and Credner ( Zur Gesch. des Kan, p. 129) shows Nicephorus
inserting it, together with the Revelation, in his Stichometry,
among the Antilegomena. The Ebionites, the genuine primitive Christians,
rejecting the rest of the Apostolic writings, make use only of this Gospel
(Adv Hev., i. 26) and the Ebionites, as Epiphanius declares, firmly
believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man, “of the seed
of a man.”]
Jerome
admits, himself, that the book which he authenticates as being written “by
the hand of Matthew,” was nevertheless a book which, notwithstanding
that he translated it twice, was nearly unintelligible to him, for it was
arcane. Nevertheless, Jerome coolly sets down every commentary upon it but
his own as heretical. More than that, Jerome knew that this Gospel
was the only original one, yet he becomes more zealous than ever in
his persecution of the “Heretics.” Why? Because to accept it was
equivalent to reading the death sentence of the established Church. The
Gospel according to the Hebrews was well known to have been the (Page
150) only one accepted for four centuries by the Jewish Christians,
the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. And neither of the latter accepted the divinity
of Christ. [ Isis Unveiled. II, 182-3.]
The
Ebionites were the first, the earliest Christians, whose representative was
the Gnostic author of the Clementine Homilies, and as the author of
Supernatural Religion shows, 8 [Op. cit., II, 5]
Ebionitic Gnosticism had once been the purest form of Christianity. They were
the pupils and followers of the early Nazarenes - the kabalistic Gnostics.
They believed in the Aeons, as the Cerinthians did, and that “the world
was put together by Angels” (Dhyan Chohans), as Epiphanius complains
(Contra Ebionitas) : “Ebion had the opinion of the Nazarenes,
the form of Cerinthians.” “They decided that Christ was of the
seed of a man,” he laments. [ See also Isis Unveiled,
ii. 180, to end of chapter.] Thus again:
The
badge of Dan-Scorpio is death-life, in the symbol .as
crossbones and skull ,
. . or life-death . . . the standard of Constantine, the Roman Emperor.
Abel has been shown to be Jesus, and Cain-Vulcain, or Mars, pierced him. Constantine
was the Roman Emperor, whose warlike god was Mars, and a Roman soldier pierced
Jesus on the cross . . . .
But
the piercing of Abel was the consummation of his marriage with Cain, and this
was proper under the form of Mars Generator; hence the double glyph, one of
Mars-Generator [Osiris-Sun] and Mars-Destroyer [Mercury the God of
Death in the Egyptian basso-relievo] in one; significant, again,
of the primal idea of the living cosmos, or of birth and death, as necessary
to the continuation of the stream of life. [ Source of Measure,
p.299. This “stream of life” being emblematised in the Philloc
basso-relievo just mentioned, by the water poured in the shape of a
Cross on the initiated candidate by Osiris - Life and the Sun - and
Mercury - Death. It was the finale of the rite of Initiation
after the seven and the twelve tortures in the Crypts of Egypt
were passed through successfully.]
To
quote once more from Isis Unveiled:
A
Latin cross of a perfect Christian shape was found hewn upon the granite slabs
of the Adytum of the Serapeum; and the monks did not fail to claim that the
cross had been hallowed by the Pagans in a “spirit of prophecy.”
At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph, records the fact. [ Another
untrustworthy, untruthful and ignorant writer, an ecclesiastical historian
of the fifth century. His alleged history of the strife between the Pagans,
Neoplatonists, and the Christians of Alexandria and Constantinople, which
extends from the year 324 to 439, dedicated by him to Theodosius, the younger,
is full of deliberate falsifications.] But archaeology and symbolism,
those tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have found
in the hieroglyphics of the legend running round the design at least a partial
interpretation of its meaning.
According
to King and other numismatists and archaeologists, the cross was placed there
as the symbol of eternal life.
The
Cross and Crucifix
(Page
151)
Such a Tau, or Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries.
Symbol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon the breast of the Initiate,
after his “new birth” was accomplished, and the Mystae had returned
from their baptism in the sea. It was a mystic sign that his spiritual birth
had regenerated and united his astral soul with his divine spirit, and that
he was ready to ascend in spirit to the blessed abodes of light and glory
- the Eleusinia. The Tau was a magic talisman at the same time as a religious
emblem. It was adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics and Kabalists,
who used it largely, as their numerous gems testify. These in turn had the
Tau (or handled cross) from the Egyptians, and the Latin Cross from the Buddhist
missionaries, who brought it from India (where it can be found even now) two
or three centuries B.C. The Assyrians, Egyptians, ancient Americans, Hindus
and Romans had it in various, but very slight modifications of shape. Till
very late in the middle ages, it was considered a potent spell against epilepsy
and demoniacal possession, and the “signet of the living God”
brought down in St. John’s vision by the angel ascending from the east
to “seal the servants of our God in the foreheads,” was but the
same mystic Tau - the Egyptian Cross. In the painted glass of St. Denis (France)
this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the forehead of the elect;
the legend reads, SIGNUM TAY. In King’s Gnostics, the author
reminds us that “this mark is commonly borne by St. Anthony, an Egyptian
recluse.” [ Gems of the Orthodox Christians. Vol. 1.,
p.135.] What the real meaning of the Tau was, is explained to us by
the Christian St. John, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Hindu Brahmans. It is
but too evident that, with the Apostle at least, it meant the “Ineffable
Name,” as he calls this “signet of the living God” a few
chapters further on [ Revelation, XIV, 1 ] “Father’s
name written in their foreheads.”
The
Brahmâtmâ the chief of the Hindu Initiates, had on his headgear
two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death, placed cross-like;
and in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber
within the temple, generally containing the staircase which leads to the inner
dagoba. [ A Dagoba is a small temple of globular form, in which are
preserved the relics of Gautama.] and the porticos of some Prachidas
[ Prachidas are buildings of all sizes and forms, like our mausoleums,
and are sacred to votive offerings to the dead.] are ornamented with
a cross formed of two fishes, as found on some of the zodiacs of the Buddhists.
We should not wonder at all at learning that the sacred device in the tombs
in the catacombs at Rome, the “Vesica Piscis,” was derived from
the said Buddhist zodiacal sign. How general must have been that geometrical
figure in the world-symbols, may be inferred from the fact that there is a
Masonic tradition that Solomon’s temple was built on three foundations,
forming the “triple Tau” or three crosses.
In
its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an emblem, to the
realisation by the earliest philosophy of an androgynous dualism of every
manifestation in nature, which proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise
androgynous deity, while the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had
the Mosaic law
(Page 152) prevailed, Jesus should have been lapidated. [ The
Talmudistic records claim that, after having been hanged, he was lapidated
and buried under the water at the junction of two streams. Mishna Sanhedrin,
Vol. V1., p.4: Talmud, of Babylon, same article, 43a, 67a. ]
The crucifix was an instrument of torture, and utterly common among Romans
as it was unknown among Semitic nations. It was called the “Tree of
Infamy.” It is but later that it was adopted as a Christian symbol;
but during the first two decades the apostles looked upon it with horror.[
Coptic Legends of the Crucifixion. MSS. XI ]. It is certainly
not the Christian Cross that John had in mind when speaking of the “signet
of the living God,” but the mystic Tau - the Tetragrammaton,
or mighty name, which, on the most ancient Kabalistic talismans, was represented
by the four Hebrew letters composing the Holy Word.
The
famous Lady Ellenborough, known among the Arabs of Damascus, and in the desert,
after her last marriage, as Hanoum Medjouye, had a talisman in her
possession, presented to her by a Druse from Mount Lebanon. It was recognised
by a certain sign on its left corner as belonging to that class of gems which
is known in Palestine as a “Messianic” amulet, of the second
or third century B.C. It is a green stone of a pentagonal form; at the bottom
is engraved a fish, higher, Solomon’s Seal; [ We are at a loss
to understand why King, in his Gnostic Gems, represents Solomon’s
Seal as a five-pointed star, whereas it is six-pointed, and is the signet
of Vishnu in India.] and still higher, the four Chaldaic letters -
Jod, He, Vau, He, IAHO, which form the name of the Deity. These are arranged
in quite an unusual way, running from below upward, in reversed order, and
forming the Egyptian Tau. Around these there is a legend which, as the gem
is not our property, we are not at liberty to give. The Tau, in its mystical
sense, as well as the Crux ansata, is the Tree of Life.
It
is well known that the earliest Christian emblems - before it was ever attempted
to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus - were the Lamb, the Good Shepherd,
and The Fish. The origin of the latter emblem, which has so puzzled
the archaeologists, thus becomes comprehensible. The whole secret lies in
the easily ascertained fact that, while in the Kabalah the King Messiah
is called “Interpreter,” or Revealer of the Mystery, and shown
to be the fifth emanation, in the Talmud - for reasons we will
now explain - the Messiah is very often designated as “DAG,” or
the Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and relates - as the very
name indicates - to the Babylonian Dagon, the man-fish, who was the instructor
and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared. Abarbanel explains the
name, by stating that the sign of his (Messiah’s) coming is the conjuction
of Saturn and Jupiter in the sign Pisces. [ King (Gnostics)
gives the figure of a Christian symbol, very common during the middle ages
of three fishes, interlaced into a triangle, and having the FIVE letters (a
most sacred Pythagorean number) ΙΧΘΥΧ engraved on
it. The number five relates to the same kabalistic computation.] Therefore,
as the Christians were intent upon identifying their Christos with the Messiah
of the Old Testament, they adopted it so readily as to forget that
its true origin might be traced still further back than the Babylonian Dagon.
How eagerly and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by the early Christians,
with every imaginable kabalistic and pagan tenet, may be inferred from the
language of Clemens, of Alexandria, addressed to his co-religionists.
The
Story of Jesus
(Page
153)
When they were debating upon the choice of the most appropriate symbol to
remind them of Jesus, Clemens advised them in the following words. Let the
engraving upon the gem of your ring be either a dove or a ship running
before the wind (the Argha), or a fish.” Was the good father,
when writing this sentence, labouring under the recollection of Joshua, son
of Nun (called Jesus in the Greek and Slavonian versions); or had
he forgotten the real interpretation of these pagan symbols? [ Op.
cit.,II 253-256. ]
And
now, with the help of all these passages scattered hither and thither in Isis
and other works of this kind, the reader will see and judge for himself which
of the two explanations - the Christian or that of the Occultist - is the nearer
to truth. If Jesus were not an Initiate, why should all these allegorical
incidents of his life be given? Why should such extreme trouble be taken, so
much time wasted trying to make the above: (a) answer and dovetail with purposely
picked out sentences in the Old Testament, to show them as prophecies;
and (b) to preserve in them the initiatory symbols, the emblems so pregnant
with Occult meaning and all of these belonging to Pagan mystic Philosophy?
The author of the Source of Measures gives out that mystical intent;
but only once now and again, in its one-sided, numerical and kabalistic meaning,
without paying any attention to, or having concern with, the primeval and more
spiritual origin, and he deals with it only so far as it related to the Old
Testament. He attributes the purposed change in the sentence “Eli,
Eli, lama sabachthani” to the principle already mentioned of the crossed
bones and skull in the Labarum.
As
an emblem of death, being placed over the door of life and signifying birth,
or of the intercontainment of two opposite principles in one, just as, mystically,
the Saviour was held to be man-woman. [ Op. cit., 301. All this
connects Jesus with great Initiates and solar heroes: all this is purely Pagan,
under a newly-evolved variation, the Christian scheme.].
The
author's idea is to show the mystic blending by the Gospel writers of Jehovah,
Cain, Abel, etc., with Jesus (in accordance with Jewish kabalistic numeration);
the better he succeeds, the more clearly he shows that it was a forced
blending, and that we have not a record of the real events of the life of Jesus,
narrated by eyewitnesses or the Apostles. The narrative is all based on the
signs of the Zodiac:
Each
a double sign or male-female [ in ancient astrological Magic]
- viz.: it was Taurus-Eve, and Scorpio was Mars-Lupa, or Mars with the female
wolf [ in relation to Romulus]. (Page
154)
So, as these signs were opposites of each other, yet met in
the centre, they were connected; and so in fact it was, and in a double
sense, the conception of the year was in Taurus, as the conception of Eve
by Mars, her opposite, in Scorpio. The birth would be at the winter solstice,
or Christmas. On the contrary, by conception in Scorpio - viz., of
Lupa by Taurus - birth would be in Leo. Scorpio was Chrestos in humiliation,
while Leo was Christos in triumph. While Taurus-Eve fulfilled astronomical
functions, Mars-Lupa fulfilled spiritual ones by type. [ Op. cit.,296.]
The
author bases all this on Egyptian correlations and meanings of Gods and Goddesses,
but ignores the Aryan, which are far earlier.
Mooth
or Mouth, was the Egyptian cognomen of Venus, (Eve, mother of all
living) [as Vach, mother of all living, a permutation of Aditi,
as Eve was one of Sephira] or the moon. Plutarch (Isis, 374)
hands it down that Isis was sometimes called Muth, which word means
mother . . . (Issa, חשא woman). (Isis, p.372).
Isis, he says is that part of Nature, which, as feminine, contains in herself,
as (nutrix) nurse, all things to be born. . . “Certainly the moon, “
speaking astronomically, “chiefly exercises this function in Taurus,
Venus being the house (in opposition to Mars, generator, in Scorpio),
because the sign is luna, hypsoma. Since. . . Isis Metheur differs from Isis
Muth and that in the vocable Muth the notion of bringing
forth may be concealed and since fructification must take place, Sol
being joined with Luna in Libra, it is not improbable that Muth
first indeed signifies Venus in Libra; hence Luna in Libra. (Beiträge
zur Kenntniss, pars 11, S. 9, under Muth.) [ Pp. 294. 295.]
Then
Fuerst, under Bohu, is quoted to show
The
double play upon the word Muth by help of which the real intent is
produced in the occult way . . . sin, death, and woman are one
in the glyph, and correlatively connected with intercourse and death.
[ P.295.]
All
this is applied by the author only to the exoteric and Jewish euhemerised
symbols, whereas they were meant, first of all, to conceal cosmogonical mysteries,
and then, those of anthropological evolution with reference to the Seven Races,
already evoluted and to come, and especially as regards the last branch races
of the third Root-Race. However, the word void [primeval Chaos]
is shown to be taken for Eve-Venus-Naamah, agreeably with Fuerst’s definition;
for as he says:
In
this primitive signification [ of void] was
(bohu) taken in the Biblical cosmogony, and used in establishing the dogma [Jes(us)
m’aven, Jes-us from nothing] respecting creation.
(Which shows the writers of the New Testament considerably skilled in
the Kabalah and Occult Sciences, and corroborates still more our assertion.)
Hence Aquila translates ουδεν vulg. vacua (hence vacca,
cow) [hence also the horns of Isis - Nature, Earth, and the Moon
- taken from Vàch, the Hindu “Mother of all that lives,”
identified with Viràj and called in Atharvaveda the daughter of Kàma,
the first desires: “That daughter of thine, O kàma, is called
the cow, she whom Sages name Vach-Viraj,” who was milked
by Brihaspati, the Rishi, which is another mystery] Onkelos and Samarit
The
Primitive Woman- (Page
155) The
Phoenician cosmogony has connected Bohu
βαανBaav into a personified expression denoting the primitive
substance, and as a deity, the mother of races of the Gods [
which is Aditi and Vach]. The Aramean name
βαφσς, Buto, for the mother of the gods, which passed
over to the Gnostics, Babylonians and Egyptians, is identical then with
Môt (., our
Muth) properly, ( βωθoriiginated in Phoenician
from an interchange of b with m. [ Pp. 295. 296 ]
Rather,
one would say, go to the origin. The mystic euhemerisation of Wisdom and Intelligence,
operating in the work of cosmic evolution, or Buddhi under the names
of Brahma, Purusha, etc., as male power, and Aditi-Vàch, etc., as female,
whence Sarasvati, Goddess of Wisdom, who became under the veils of Esoteric
concealment, Butos, Bythos - Depth, the grossly material, personal female,
called Eve, the “primitive woman” of Irenaeus, and the world springing
out of Nothing.
The
workings out of this glyph of 4th Genesis help to the comprehension
of the division of one character into the forms of two persons; as Adam and
Eve, Cain and Abel, Abram and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and so on [all male
and female] . . . Now, as linking together several great salient points
in the Biblical structure: (1) as to the Old and New Testament; with
also (2) as to the Roman Empire; (3) as to confirming the meaning and uses of
symbols; and (4) as to confirming the entire explanation and reading of the
glyphs; as (5) recognizing and laying down the base of the great pyramid as
the foundation square of the Bible construction; (6) as well as the new
Roman adoption under Constantine - the following given: [ Had we known
the learned author before his book was printed, he might have been perchance
prevailed upon to add a seventh link from which all others, far preceding those
enumerated in point of time, and surpassing them in universally philosophical
meaning, have been derived, aye, even to the great pyramid, whose foundation
square was, in its turn, the great Aryan Mysteries.]
Cain
has been shown to be . . . the 360 circle of the Zodiac, the perfect and exact
standard, b a squared division; hence his name of Melchizadik . . . [The
geometrical and numerical demonstrations here follow.] It has been repeatedly
stated that the object of the Great Pyramid construction was to measure the
heavens and the earth . . . (the objective spheres as evoluting from
the subjective, purely spiritual Kosmos, we beg leave to add); therefore, its
measuring containment would indicate all the substance of measure of the
heaven and the earth, or agreeably to ancient recognition, Earth, Air,
Water and Fire.[ We would say cosmic Matter, Spirit, Chaos, and Divine
Light, for the Egyptians idea was identical in this with the Aryan. However,
the author is right with regard to the Occult Symbology of the Jews. They were
a remarkably matter of fact, unspiritual people at all times, yet even with
them “Ruach” was Divine Spirit, not “air.”] (The
base side of this pyramid was diameter to a circumference in feet of
2400. The characteristic of this is 24 feet, or 6 X 4 = 24, or this very Cain-Adam
square.) Now, by the restoration of the encampment of the Israelites, as initiated
by Moses, by the great scholar,(
Page 156) Father Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit priest, the above
is precisely by Biblical record and traditionary sources, the method of laying
off this encampment. The four interior squares were devoted to (1) Moses
and Aaron; (2) Kohath; (3) Gershom; and (4) Merari - the last three being the
head of the Levites. The attributes of these squares were the primal
attributes of Adam-Mars and were concreted of the elements, Earth, Air, Fire,
Water, or = Iam
= Water, . Nour
= Fire, = Rouach
= Air, and = Iabeshah
= Earth. The initial letters of these words are INRI. [The words
translated as Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum - “Jesus, King of the Jews.”]
This square of INRI is the Adam square, which was extended from,
as a foundation, into four others of 145 X 2 = 288, to the side of the large
square of 288 X 4 = 115 -2, = the whole circumference. But this square is the
display of also circular elements and 115-2 can denote this. Put INRI into a
circle, or read it as the letters stand in the square, as to its value of 1521,
and we have which reads
115-2 of this fact.
But
as seen Cain denotes this as, or in, the 115 of his name: which 115 was the
very complement to make up the 360 day year, to agree with the balances of the
standard circle, which were Cain. The corner squares of the larger square are,
A = Leo, and B = Dan Scorpio; and it is seen that Cain pierces Abel at the intersection
of the equinoctial with the solstice cross lines, referred to from Dan-Scorpio
on the celestial circle. But Dan-Scorpio borders on Libra, the scales, whose
sign is (which sign
is that of the ancient pillow on which the back of the head to the
ears[ Mr Ralston Skinner shows that the symbol the
crossed bones and skull, has the letter P Koph, the half of the head
behind the ears.] rested, the pillow of Jacob), and is represented for
one symbol as Also
the badge of Dan-Scorpio is death-life, in the symbol
Now the cross is the emblem of the origin of measures, in the Jehovah
form of a straight line ONE of a denomination of 20612, the perfect circumference;
hence Cain was this as Jehovah, for the text says that he was Jehovah.
But the attachment of a man to this cross was that of 113: 355 to 6561: 5153
X 4 = 20612, as shown. Now, over the head of Jesus crucified was placed
the inscription, of which the initial letters of the words have always been
retained as symbolic, and handed down and used as a monogram of Jesus Chrestos
- viz., INRI or Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum; but they are located
on the Cross, or the cubed form of the circular origin of measures
which measure the substance of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, or
INRI = 1152, as shown. Here is the man on the cross, or 113; 355 combined
with 6561: 5153 X 4 = 20612. These are the pyramid-base numbers as coming
from 113: 355 as the Hebrew source; whence the Adam-square, which is
the pyramid base, and the centre one to the larger square of the encampment.
Bend INRI into a circle, and we have 1152, or the circumference of the latter.
But Jesus dying ( or Abel married) made use of the very words needed to set
forth all. He says, Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani . . . Read them by their
power values, in circular form, as produced from the Adam form as shown,
and we have .. = 113,
= 113, or 113-311:
= 345, or Moses in the Cain-Adam pyramid circle:
= 710, equals Dove, or Jonah and 710 divided by 2 = 355, or 355 -553: and finally,
as determinative of all
or ni......... where
= nun, fish = 565, and
= 1 or 10; together 565 .
= or the Christ value.
Kabalistic
Reading of Gospels- (Page
157) [All of the above] throws light on the transfiguration
scene on the mount. There were present there Peter and James and John with Jesus;
or Iami, James, Water;
, Peter, Earth ,
John, Spirit, Air, and ,
Jesus, Fire, Life - together INRI. But behold Eli and Moses met them
there, or . and
or Eli and Lamah, or 113 and 345. And this shows that the scene
of transfiguration was connected with the one above set forth. [ Pp.
296 -302 . By these numbers, explains the author. “Eli is 113 (by
placing the word in a circle): amah being 345, is by change of letters
to suit the same value
( in a circle) or Moses, while Sabachth is John or the dove, or Holy Spirit,
because (in a circle) it is 710 (or 355 X 2). The termination ni, as meni
or 5651, becomes Jehovah.]
This
kabalistical reading of the Gospel narratives - hitherto supposed to record
the most important, the most mystically awful, yet most real events of the life
of Jesus - must fall with terrible weight upon some Christians. Every honest
trusting believer who has shed tears of reverential emotion over the events
of the short period of the public life of Jesus of Nazareth, has to choose one
of the two ways opening before him after reading the aforesaid: either his faith
has to render him quite impervious to any light coming from human reasoning
and evident fact; or he must confess that he has lost his Saviour. The One whom
he had hitherto considered as the unique incarnation on this earth of the One
Living God in heaven, fades into thin air, on the authority of the properly
read and correctly interpreted Bible itself. Moreover, since on the authority
of Jerome himself and his accepted and authentic confession, the book written
by the hand of Matthew “exhibits matter not for edification but
for destruction” (of Church and human Christianity, and
only that) what truth can be expected from his famous Vulgate? Human
mysteries, concocted by generations of Church Fathers bent upon evolving a religion
of their own invention, are seen instead of a divine Revelation; and
that this was so is corroborated by a prelate of the Latin Church. Saint Gregory
Nazianzen wrote to his friend and confidant, St. Jerome:
Nothing
can impose better on a people than verbiage; the less they understand the
more they admire . . . Our fathers and doctors have often said, not what they
thought, but that to which circumstances and necessity forced them.
(Page
158) Which then of the two - clergy, or the Occultists and Theosophists
- are the more blasphemous and dangerous? Is it those who would impose upon
the world’s acceptance a Saviour of their own fashioning, a God with human
shortcomings, and who therefore is certainly not a perfect divine Being; or
those others who say: Jesus of Nazareth was in Initiate, a holy, grand and noble
character, but withal human, though truly “a Son of God”?
If
Humanity is to accept a so-called supernatural Religion, how far more logical
to the Occultist and the Psychologist seems the transparent allegory given of
Jesus by the Gnostics. They, as Occultists, and with Initiates for their Chiefs,
differed only in their renderings of the story and in their symbols, and not
at all in substance. What say the Ophites, the Nazarenes, and other “heretics”?
Sophia, “the Celestial Virgin,” is prevailed upon to send Christos,
her emanation, to the help of perishing humanity, from whom Ilda-Baoth (the
Jehovah of the Jews) and his six Sons of Matter (the lower terrestrial Angels)
are shutting out the divine light. Therefore, Christos, the perfect, [
The Western personification of that power, which the Hindus call the Vija,
the “one seed,” or Maha Vishnu - a power, not the God - or
that mysterious Principle that contains in itself the Seed of Avatârism.]
Uniting
himself with Sophia [divine wisdom] descended through the seven
planetary regions, assuming in each an analogous form . . . [and]
entered into the man Jesus at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan. From
this time forth Jesus began to work miracles; before that he had been entirely
ignorant of his own mission.
Ilda-Baoth,
discovering that Christos was bringing to an end his kingdom of Matter, stirred
up the Jews, his own people, against Him, and Jesus was put to death. When Jesus
was on the Cross Christos and Sophia left His body, and returned to Their own
sphere. The material body of Jesus was abandoned to the earth, but He Himself,
the Inner Man, was clothed with a body made up of aether. [ Arise
into Nervi from this decrepit body into which thou hast been sent. Ascend into
thy former abode, O blessed Avatâr!”]
Thenceforth
he consisted merely of soul and spirit . . . During his sojourn upon earth
of eighteen months after he had risen, he received from Sophia that
perfect knowledge, that true Gnosis, which he communicated to the small portion
of the Apostles who were capable of receiving the same. [ The Gnostics
and their Remains. King. pp.100, 101.]
The
above is transparently Eastern and Hindu; it is the Esoteric Doctrine pure and
simple, save for the names and the allegory. It is, more or less, the history
of every Adept who obtains Initiation.
Universal
Teachings- (Page
159)
The Baptism in the Jordan is the Rite of Initiation, the final purification,
whether in sacred pagoda, tank, river, or temple lake in Egypt or Mexico. The
perfect Christos and Sophia - divine Wisdom and Intelligence - enter the Initiate
at the moment of the mystic rite, by transference from Guru to Chela, and leave
the physical body, at the moment of the death of the latter, to re-enter the
Nirmânakâya, or the astral Ego of the Adept.
The
spirit of Buddha [collectively] overshadows the Bodhisattvas
of his Church says
the Buddhist Ritual of Aryasangha.
Says
the Gnostic teaching:
When
he [ the spirit of Christos] shall have collected all the Spiritual,
all the Light [ that exists in matter], out of Ildabaoth’s
empire, Redemption is accomplished and the end of the world arrived. [
Loc. Cit.]
Say
the Buddhists;
When
Buddha [the Spirit of the Church] hears the hour strike, he
will send Maitreya Buddha - after whom the old world will be destroyed.
That
which is said of Basilides by King may be applied as truthfully to every innovator,
so called, whether of a Buddhist or of a Christian Church. In the eyes of Clemens
Alexandrinus, he says, the Gnostics taught very little that was blameable in
their mystical transcendental views.
In
his eyes the latter (Basilides), was not a heretic, that is an innovator
upon the accepted doctrines of the Catholic Church, but only a theosophic
speculator who sought to express old truths by new formulae. [ Op.
cit.,p. 258.]
There
was a Secret Doctrine preached by Jesus; and “secrecy” in those
days meant Secrets, or Mysteries of Initiation, all of which have been either
rejected or disfigured by the Church. In the Clementine Homilics we read:
And
Peter said: “We remember that our Lord and Teacher, commanding us, said
‘Guard the mysteries for me and the sons of my house.’”
Wherefore also he explained to His disciples privately the Mysteries of the
Kingdom of the Heavens.[ Homilies XIX. XX,I ]
SECTION
XIX
St.
Cyprian of Antioch
(Page
160) THE Aeons (Stellar Spirits) - emanated from the Unknown of the
Gnostics, and identical with the Dhyan Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine - and
their Pleroma, having been transformed into Archangels and the “Spirits
of the Presence” by the Greek and Latin Churches, the prototypes have
lost caste. The Pleroma[ The Pleroma constituted the synthesis or entirety
of all the spiritual entities. St. Paul still used the name in his Epistles.]
was now called the “Heavenly Host,” and therefore the old name
had to become identified with Satan and his “Host.” Might is right
in every age, and History is full of contrasts. Manes has been called the “Paraclete”
[ The “Comforter,” second Messiah, intercessor. “A term
applied to the Holy Ghost.” Manes was the disciple of Terebinthus, an
Egyptian Philosopher, who, according to the Christian Socrates (1.i., cited
by Tillemont, iv. 584). “while invoking one day the demons of the air,
fell from the roof of his house and was killed.”] by his followers.
He was an Occultist, but passed to posterity, owing to the kind exertions of
the Church, as a Sorcerer, so a match had to be found for him by way of contrast.
We recognise this match in St. Cyprianus of Antioch, a self-confessed if not
a real “Black Magician,” it seems, whom the Church - as a reward
for his contrition and humility - subsequently raised to the high rank of Saint
and Bishop.
What
history knows of him is not much, and it is mostly based on his own confession,
the truthfulness of which is warranted, we are told, by St. Gregory, the Empress
Eudoxia, Photius and the Holy Church. This curious document was ferreted out
by the Marquis de Mirville, [Cy.Op. cit.,vi, 169-183.]
in the Vatican, and by him translated into French for the first time, as he
assures the reader. We beg his permission to retranslate a few pages, not for
the sake of the penitent Sorcerer, but for that of some students of Occultism,
who will thus have an opportunity of comparing the methods of ancient Magic
(or as the Church calls it, Demonism) with those of modern Theurgy and Occultism.
Magic
in Antioch- (Page
161)
The scenes described took place at Antioch about the middle of the third century,
252 A.D., says the translator. This Confession was written by the penitent Sorcerer
after his conversion; therefore, we are not surprised to find how much room
he gives in his lamentations to reviling his Initiator “Satan,”
or the “Serpent Dragon,” as he calls him. There are other and more
modern instances of the same trait in human nature. Converted Hindus, Parsis
and other “heathen” of India are apt to denounce their forefathers’
religions at every opportunity. Thus runs the Confession:
O
all of you who reject the real mysteries of Christ, see my tears! . . .You
who wallow in your demoniacal practices, learn by my sad example all the vanity
of their [the demons’] baits . . . I am that Cyprianus,
who, vowed to Apollo from his infancy, was early initiated into all the arts
of the dragon. [“The great serpent placed to watch
the temple,” comments de Mirville. “How often have we repeated
that it was no symbol, no personification but really a serpent occupied
by a god!” - he exclaims; and we answer that at Cairo in a Mussulman,
not a heathen temple, we have seen, as thousands of other visitors
have also seen, a huge serpent that lived there for centuries, we were told,
and was held in great respect. Was it also “occupied by a God,”
or possessed, in other words?] Even before the age of seven I had already
been introduced into the temple of Mithra: three years later, my parents taking
me to Athens to be received as citizen, I was permitted likewise to penetrate
the mysteries of Ceres lamenting her daughter,[ The Mysteries of Demeter,
or the "afflicted mother".] and I also became the guardian
of the Dragon in the Temple of Pallas.
Ascending
after that to the summit of Mount Olympus, the Seat of the Gods, as it is
called, there too I was initiated into the sense, and the real meaning
of their [the Gods’] speeches and their clamorous manifestations
(strepituum). It is there that I was made to see in imagination (phantasia)
[or mayâ] those trees and all those herbs that operate
such prodigies with the help of demons; . . . and I saw their dances, their
warfares, their snares, illusions and promiscuities. I heard their singing.
[ By the satyrs.] I saw finally, for forty consecutive days,
the phalanx of the Gods and Goddesses, sending from Olympus, as though they
were Kings, spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among
all the nations. [ This looks rather suspicious and seems interpolated.
De Mirville tries to have what he says of Satan and his Court sending their
imps on earth to tempt humanity and masquerade at seances corroborated
by the ex-sorcerer.]
At
that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset, the virtues
of which were explained to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices. [
This does not look like sinful food. It is the diet of Chelas to this
day.]
When
I was fifteen my parents desired that I should be made acquainted, not only
with all the natural laws in connection with the generation and corruption
of (Page
162) bodies on earth, in the air and in the seas, but also
with all the other forces grafted [“Grafted” is
the correct expression. “The seven Builders graft the divine and the
beneficent forces on to the gross material nature of the vegetable and mineral
kingdoms every Second Round - says the Catechism of Lanoos.]
(insitas) on these by the Prince of the World in order to counteract
their primal and divine constitution. [ Only the Prince of the World
is not Satan, as the translator would make us believe, but the collective
Host of the Planetary. This is a little theological backbiting.] At
twenty I went to Memphis, where, penetrating into the Sanctuaries, I was taught
to discern all that pertains to the communications of demons [Daimones
or Spirits] with terrestrial matters, their aversion for certain places,
they sympathy and attraction for others, their expulsion from certain planets,
certain objects and laws, their persistence in preferring darkness and their
resistance to light. [ Here the Elemental and Elementary Spirits are
evidently meant.] There I learned the number of the fallen Princes,
[ The reader has already learned the truth about them in the course of
the present work.] that which takes place in human souls and the bodies
they enter into communication with.
I
learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and the rains, between
the motion of the earth [ Pity the penitent Saint had not imparted
his knowledge of the rotation of the earth and heliocentric system earlier
to his Church. That might have saved more than one human life - that of Bruno
for one.] and the motion of the seas; I saw the spirits of the Giants
plunged in subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a
man carrying a burden on is shoulders. [ Chelas in their trials of
initiation, also see in trances artificially generated for them, the
vision of the Earth supported by an elephant on the top of a tortoise standing
on nothing - and this, to teach them to discern the true from the false.].
When
thirty I travelled to Chaldaea to study there the true power of the air, placed
by some in the fire and by the more learned in light [Akâsha]. I was taught
to see that the planets were in their variety as dissimilar as the plants on
earth, and the stars were like armies ranged in battle order. I knew the Chaldaean
division of Ether into 365 parts, [ Relating to the days of the year,
also to 7X7 divisions of the earth’s sublunary sphere, divided into seven
upper and seven lower spheres with their respective Planetary Hosts or “armies.”]
and I perceived that everyone of the demons who divide it among themselves [
Daimon is not “demon,” as translated by De Mirville, but Spirit.
] was endowed with that material force that permitted him to execute
the orders of the Prince and guide all the movements therein [in the
Ether]. [ All this is to corroborate his dogmatic assertions that
Pater Aether or Jupiter is Satan! and that pestilential diseases, cataclysms,
and even thunderstorms that prove disastrous, come from the Satanic Host dwelling
in Ether - a good warning to the men of Science! ] They [the Chaldees]
explained to me how those Princes had become participants in the Council of
Darkness, ever in opposition to the Council of Light.
I
got acquainted with the Mediatores [surely not mediums as De Mirville
explains! ] [ The translator replaces the word Mediators by mediums,
excusing himself in a footnote by saying that Cyprian must have meant
modern mediums!] and upon seeing the covenants they were mutually bound by,
I was struck with wonder upon learning the nature of their oaths and observances.[
Cypriannus simply meant to hint at the rites and mysteries of Initiation, and
the pledge of secrecy and oaths that bound the Initiates together. His translator,
however, has made a Witches Sabbath of it instead.]
Sorcerer
Become Saint
(Page
163) Believe me, I saw the Devil; believe me I have embraced him
[“Twelve centuries later, in full renaissance and reform, the
world saw Luther do the same [embrace the Devil he means? ] -
according to his own confession and in the same conditions,” explains
De Mirville in a footnote, showing thereby the brotherly love that binds Christians.
Now Cyprianus meant by the Devil (if the word is really in the original text)
his Initiator and Hierophant. No Saint - even a penitent Sorcerer - would
be so silly as to speak of his (the Devil’s ) rising from his seat to
see him to the door, were it otherwise.] [like the witches at the Sabbath
(?)] when I was yet young, and he saluted me by the title of the new
Jambres, declaring me worthy of my ministry (initiation). He promised me continual
help during life and a principality after death. [ Every Adept has
a “principality after his death.”] Having become in great
honour (an Adept) under his tuition, he placed under my orders a phalanx of
demons, and when I bid him goodbye, “Courage, good success, excellent
Cyprian,” he exclaimed, rising up from his seat to see me to the door,
plunging thereby those present into a profound admiration. [ Which
shows that it was the Hierophant and his disciples. Cyprianus shows himself
as grateful as most of the other converts (the modern included) to his Teachers
and Instructors.
Having
bidden farewell to his Chaldaean Initiator, the future Sorcerer and Saint went
to Antioch. His tale of “iniquity” and subsequent repentance is
long but we will make it short. He became “an accomplished Magician,”
surrounded by a host of disciples and “candidates to the perilous and
sacrilegious art.” He shows himself distributing love-philtres and dealing
in deathly charms “to rid young wives of old husbands, and to ruin Christian
virgins.” Unfortunately Cyprianus was not above love himself. He fell
in love with the beautiful Justine, a converted maiden, after having vainly
tried to make her share the passion one named Aglaides, a profligate, had for
her. His “demons failed” he tells us, and he got disgusted with
them. This disgust brings on a quarrel between him and his Hierophant, whom
he insists on indentifying with the Demon; and the dispute is followed by a
tournament between the latter and some Christian converts, in which the “Evil
One” is, of course, worsted. The Sorcerer is finally baptised and gets
rid of his enemy. Having laid at the feet of Anthimes, Bishop of Antioch, all
his books on Magic, he became a Saint in company with the beautiful Justine,
who had converted him; both suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Diocletian;
and both are buried side by side in Rome, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran,
near the Baptistery.
SECTION
XX
The
Eastern Gupta Vidya & The Kabalah
(Page
164)
WE now return to the consideration of the essential identity between the Eastern
Gupta Vidya and the Kabalah as a system, while we must also show the dissimilarity
in their philosophical interpretations since the Middle Ages.
It
must be confessed that the views of the Kabalists - meaning by the word those
students of Occultism who study the Jewish Kabalah and who know little,
if anything, of any other Esoteric literature or of its teachings - are as varied
in their synthetic conclusions upon the nature of the mysteries taught even
in the Zohar alone, and are as wide of the true mark, as are the dicta
upon it of exact Science itself. Like the mediaeval Rosicrucian and the Alchemist
- like the Abbot Trithemius, John Reuchlin, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Robert Fludd,
Philalethes, etc. - by whom they swear, the continental Occultists see in the
Jewish Kabalah alone the universal well of wisdom; they find in it the
secret lore of nearly all the mysteries of Nature - metaphysical and divine
- some of them including herein, as did Reuchlin, those of the Christian Bible.
For them the Zohar is an Esoteric Thesaurus of all the mysteries of the
Christian Gospel; and the Sephyr Yetsirah is the light that shines in
every darkness, and the container of the keys to open every secret in Nature.
Whether many of our modern followers of the mediaeval Kabalists have an idea
of the real meaning of the symbology of their chosen Masters is another question.
Most of them have probably never given even a passing thought to the fact that
the Esoteric language used by the Alchemists was their own, and that it was
given out as a blind, necessitated by the dangers of the epoch they lived in,
and not as the Mystery-language, used by the Pagan Initiates, which the Alchemists
had retranslated and re-veiled once more.
A
Mystery Within a Mystery- (Page
165)
And now the situation stands thus: as the old Alchemists have not left a key
to their writings, the latter have become a mystery within an older mystery.
The Kabalah is interpreted and checked only by the light which mediaeval
Mystics have thrown upon it, and they, in their forced Christology, had to put
a theological dogmatic mask on every ancient teaching, the result being that
each Mystic among our modern European and American Kabalists interprets the
old symbols in his own way, and each refers his opponents to the Rosicrucian
and the Alchemist of three and four hundred years ago. Mystic Christian dogma
is the central maelstrom that engulfs every old Pagan symbol, and Christianity
- Anti-Gnostic Christianity, the modern retort that has replaced the alembic
of the Alchemists - has distilled out of all recognition the Kabalah, i.e.,
the Hebrew Zohar and other rabbinical mystic works. And now it has come
to this: The student interested in the Secret Sciences has to believe that the
whole cycle of the symbolical “Ancient of Days,” every hair of the
mighty beard of Macroprosopos, refers only to the history of the earthly career
of Jesus of Nazareth! And we are told that the Kabalah “was first
taught to a select company of angels” by Jehovah himself - who, out of
modesty, one must think, made himself only the third Sephiroth in it, and a
female one into the bargain. So many Kabalists, so many explanations. Some believe
- perchance with more reason than the rest - that the substance of the Kabalah
is the basis upon which masonry is built, since modern Masonry is undeniable
the dim and hazy reflection of primeval Occult Masonry, of the teaching of those
divine Masons who established the Mysteries of the prehistoric and prediluvian
Temples of Initiation, raised by truly superhuman Builders. Others declare that
the tenets expounded in the Zohar relate merely to mysteries terrestrial
and profane, having no more concern with metaphysical speculations - such as
the soul, or the post-mortem life of man - than have the Mosaic books.
Others, again - and these are the real, genuine Kabalists, who had their instructions
from initiated Jewish Rabbis - affirm that if the two most learned Kabalists
of the mediaeval period, John Reuchlin and Paracelsus, differed in their religious
professions - the former being the Father of the Reformation and the latter
a Roman Catholic, at least in appearance - the Zohar cannot contain much
of Christian dogma or tenet, one way or the other. In other words, they maintain
that the numerical language of the Kabalistic works teaches universal truths
- and not any one Religion in particular. Those who make this (Page
166) statement are perfectly right in saying that the Mystery-language
used in the Zohar and in other Kabalistic literature was once, in a time
of unfathomable antiquity, the universal language of Humanity. But they become
entirely wrong if to this fact they add the untenable theory that this language
was invented by, or was the original property of, the Hebrews, from whom
all the other nations borrowed it.
They
are wrong, because, although the Zohar ( .)
, The Book of Splendour of Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, did indeed originate
with him - his son, Rabbi Eleazar, helped by his secretary, Rabbi Abba, compiling
the Kabalistic teachings of his deceased father into a work called the Zohar
- those teachings were not Rabbi Simeon’s, as the Gupta Vidya shows. They
are as old as the Jewish nation itself. , and far older. In short, the writings
which pass at present under the title of the Zohar of Rabbi Simeon are
about as original as were the Egyptian synchronistic Tables after being handled
by Eusebius, or as St. Paul’s Epistles after their revision and
correction by the “Holy Church.” [ This is proved if we take
but a single recorded instance. J. Picus de Mirandola, finding that there was
more Christianity than Judaism in the Kabalah, and discovering in it
the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Divinity of Jesus, etc.,
wound up his proofs of this with a challenge to the world at large from Rome.
As Ginsburg shows: “In 1486, when only twenty-four years old, he [Pieus]
published nine hundred [Kabalistic] theses, which were placarded in Rome,
and undertook to defend them in the presence of all European scholars whom he
invited to the Eternal City, promising to defray their travelling expenses.]
Let
us throw a rapid retrospective glance at the history and the tribulations of
that very same Zohar, as we know of them from trustworthy tradition and
documents. We need not stop to discuss whether it was written in the first century
B.C. , or in the first century A.D. Suffice it for us to know that there was
at all times a Kabalistic literature among the Jews; that though historically
it can be traced only from the time of the Captivity, yet from the Pentateuch
down to the Talmud the documents of that literature were ever written
in a kind of Mystery-language, were, in fact, a series of a symbolical records
which the Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldaean Sanctuaries, only
adapting them to their own national history - if history it can be called. Now
that which we claim - and it is not denied even by the most prejudiced Kabalist,
is that although Kabalistic lore had passed orally through long ages down to
the latest Pre-Christian Tanaim, and although David and Solomon may have been
great Adepts in it, as is claimed, yet no one dared to write it down till the
days of Simeon Ben Iochai.
Authorship
of the Zohar- (Page
167) In short, the lore found in Kabalistic literature was
never recorded in writing before the first century of the modern era.
This
brings the critic to the following reflection: While in India we find the Vedas
and the Brahmanical literature written down and edited ages before the Christian
era - the Orientalists themselves being obliged to concede a couple of millenniums
of antiquity to the older manuscripts; while the most important allegories in
Genesis are found recorded on Babylonian tiles centuries B.C.; while
the Egyptian sarcophagi yearly yield proofs of the origin of the doctrines borrowed
and copied by the Jews; yet the Monotheism of the Jews is exalted and thrown
into the teeth of all the Pagan nations, and the so-called Christian Revelation
is placed above all others, like the sun above a row of street gas lamps. Yet
it is perfectly well known, having been ascertained beyond doubt or cavil, that
no manuscript, whether Kabalistic, Talmudistic, or Christian, which has reached
our present generation, is of earlier date than the first centuries of our era,
whereas this can certainly never be said of the Egyptian papyri or the Chaldaean
tiles, or even of some Eastern writings.
But
let us limit our present research to the Kabalah, and chiefly to the
Zohar - called also the Midrash. This book, whose teachings were
edited for the first time between 70 and 110 A.D., is known to have been lost,
and its contents to have been scattered throughout a number of minor manuscripts,
until the thirteenth century. The idea that it was the composition of Moses
de Leon of Valladolid, in Spain, who passed it off as a pseudograph of Simeon
Ben Iochai, is ridiculous, and was well disposed of by Munk - though he does
point to more than one modern interpolation in the Zohar. At the same
time it is more than certain that the present Book of Zohar was written
by Moses de Leon, and, owing to joint editorship, is more Christian in its colouring
than is many a genuine Christian volume. Munk gives the reason why, saying that
it appears evident that the author made use of ancient documents, and among
these of certain Midraschim, or collections of traditions and Biblical
expositions, which we do not now possess.
As
a proof, also, that the knowledge of the Esoteric system taught in the Zohar
came to the Jews very late indeed - at any rate, that they had so far forgotten
it that the innovations and additions made by de Leon provoked no criticism,
but were thankfully received - Munk quotes from Tholuck, a Jewish authority,
the following information: Haya Gaon, who died in 1038, is to our knowledge
the first author who developed (Page
168) (and perfected) the theory of the Sephiroth, and he gave them
names which we find again among the Kabalistic names used by Dr. Jellinek. Moses
Ben Schem-Tob de Leon, who held intimate intercourse with the Syrian and Chaldaean
Christian learned scribes was enabled through the latter to acquire a knowledge
of some of the Gnostic writings. [ This account is summarised from Isaac
Myer’s Qabbalah, p.10 et seq.]
Again,
the Sepher Jetzirah (Book of Creation) - though attributed to Abraham
and though very archaic as to its contents - is first mentioned in the eleventh
century by Jehuda Ho Levi (Chazari). And these two, the Zohar and Jetzirah,
are the storehouse of all the subsequent Kabalistic works. Now let us see how
far the Hebrew sacred canon itself is to be trusted.
The
word “Kabalah” comes from the root “to receive,” and
has a meaning identical with the Sanskrit “Smriti” (“received
by tradition”) - a system of oral teaching, passing from one generation
of priests to another, as was the case with the Brahmanical books before they
were embodied in manuscript. The Kabalistic tenets came to the Jews from the
Chaldaeans; and if Moses knew the primitive and universal language of the Initiates,
as did every Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numerical system
on which it was based, he may have - and we say he has - written Genesis
and other “scrolls.” The five books that now pass current under
his name, the Pentateuch, are not withal the original Mosaic Records.
[ There is not in the decalogue one idea that is not the counterpart, or
the paraphrase, of the dogmas and ethics among the Egyptians long before the
time of Moses and Aaron. (The Mosaic Law a transcript from the Egyptian Sources:
vide Geometry in Religion, 1890)] Nor were they written in the old Hebrew
square letters, nor even in the Samaritan characters, for both alphabets belong
to a date later than that of Moses, and Hebrew - as it is now known - did not
exist in the days of the great lawgiver, either as a language or as an alphabet.
As
no statements contained in the records of the Secret Doctrine of the East are
regarded as of any value by the world in general, and since to be understood
by and convince the reader one has to quote names familiar to him, and use arguments
and proofs out of documents which are accessible to all, the following facts
may perhaps demonstrate that our assertions are not merely based on the teachings
of Occult Records.
Chaldaic
and Hebrew (
Page 169) (1) The great Orientalist and scholar, Klaproth, denied
positively the antiquity of the so-called Hebrew alphabet, on the ground that
the square Hebrew characters in which the Biblical manuscripts are written,
and which we use in printing, were probably derived from the Palmyrene writing,
or some other Semitic alphabet, so that the Hebrew Bible is written merely
in the Chaldaic phonographs of Hebrew words.
The
late Dr. Kenealy pertinently remarked that the Jews and Christians rely on
A
phonograph of a dead and almost unknown language, as abstruse as the cuneiform
letters on the mountains of Assyria, [ Book of God. Kenealy,
p.383. The reference to Klaproth is also from this page.]
(2)
The attempts made to carry back the square Hebrew character to the time of Esdras
(B.C. 458) have all failed.
(3)
It is asserted that the Jews took their alphabet from the Babylonians during
their captivity. But there are scholars who do not carry the now-known Hebrew
square letters beyond the late period of the fourth century, A.D. [ See
Asiat. Jour., N.S. vii., p.275, quoted by Kenealy.]
The
Hebrew Bible is precisely as if Homer were printed, not in Greek, but in English
letters; or as if Shakespeare’s works were phonographed in Burmese.
[ Book of God, loc.cit.]
(4)
Those who maintain that the ancient Hebrew is the same as the Syraic or Chaldaic
have to see what is said in Jeremiah, wherein the Lord is made to threaten
the house of Israel with bringing against it the mighty and ancient nation of
the Chaldaeans:
A
nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.
[ Op.cit., v.15.]
This
is quoted by Bishop Walton [ Prolegomena.iii, 13, quoted by Kenealy.
p.385.] against the assumption of the identity of Chaldaic and Hebrew,
and ought to settle the question.
(5)
The real Hebrew of Moses was lost after the seventy years’ captivity,
when the Israelites brought back Chaldaic with them and grafted it on their
own language, the fusion resulting in a dialectical variety of Chaldaic, the
Hebrew tincturing it very slightly and ceasing from that time to be a spoken
language.[ See Book of God. p.385. Care should be taken, “
says Butler (quoted by Kenealy. p489), “ to distinguish between the Pentateuch
in the Hebrew language but in the letters of the Samaritan alphabet, and the
version of the Pentateuch in the Samaritan language. One of the most important
differences between the Samaritan and the Hebrew text respects the duration
of the period between the deluge and the birth of Abraham. The Samaritan text
makes it longer by some centuries than the Hebrew text; and the Septuagint makes
it longer by some centuries than the Samaritan.” It is observable that
in the authentic translation of the Latin Vulgate, the Roman Church follows
the computation expressed in the Hebrew text; and in her Martyrology follows
that of the Seventy, both texts being inspired, as she claims.]
(Page
170)
As to our statement that the present Old Testament does not contain
the original Books of Moses, this is proven by the facts that:
(1)
The Samaritans repudiated the Jewish canonical books and their “Law
of Moses.” They will have neither the Psalms of David, nor the
Prophets, nor the Talmud and Mishna: nothing but the real Books
of Moses, and in quite a different edition. [ See Rev. Joseph Wolff’s
Journal. p. 200.] The Books of Moses and of Joshua are disfigured
out of recognition by the Talmudists, they say,
(2)
The “black Jews” of Cochin, Southern India - who know nothing of
the Babylonian Captivity or of the ten “lost tribes” (the
latter a pure invention of the Rabbis), proving that these Jews must have come
to India before the year 600 B.C. - have their Books of Moses which they will
show to no one. And these Books of Laws differ greatly from the present scrolls.
Nor are they written in the square Hebrew characters (semi-Chaldaic and semi-Palmyrean)
but in the archaic letters, as we were assured by one of them - letters entirely
unknown to all but themselves and a few Samaritans.
(3)
The Karaim Jews of the Crimea - who call themselves the descendants of the true
children of Israel, i.e. of the Sadducees - reject the Torah and
the Pentateuch of the Synagogue, reject the Sabbath of the Jews (keeping
Friday), will have neither the Books of the Prophets nor the Psalms -
nothing but their own Books of Moses and what they call his one and real Law.
This
makes it plain that the Kabalah of the Jews is but the distorted echo
of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldaeans, and that the real Kabalah is
found only in the Chaldaean Book of Numbers now in the possession of
some Persian Sufis. Every nation in antiquity had its traditions based on those
of the Aryan Secret Doctrine; and each nation points to this day to a Sage of
its own race who had received the primordial revelation from, and had recorded
it under the orders of, a more or less divine Being. Thus it was with the Jews,
as with all others. They had received their Occult Cosmogony and Laws from their
Initiate, Moses, and they have now entirely mutilated them.
Adi
is the generic name in our Doctrine of all the first men, i.e.., the
first speaking races, in each of the seven zones - hence probably “Ad-am.”
The
First Men (Page
171)
And such first men, in every nation, are credited with having been taught the
divine mysteries of creation. Thus, the Sabaeans (according to a tradition preserved
in the Sufi works) say that when the “Third First Man” left the
country adjacent to India for Babel, a tree [ A tree is symbolically
a book - as “pillar” is another synonym of the same.] was
given to him, then another and a third tree, whose leaves recorded the history
of all the races; the “Third First Man” meant one who belonged to
the Third Root-Race, and yet the Sabaeans call him Adam. The Arabs of Upper
Egypt, and the Mohammedans generally have recorded a tradition that the Angel
Azaz-el brings a message from the Wisdom-Word of God to Adam whenever he is
reborn; this the Sufis explain by adding that this book is given to every Seli-Allah
(“the chosen one of God”) for his wise men. The story narrated by
the Kabalists - namely, that the book given to Adam before his Fall (a book
full of mysteries and signs and events which either had been, were, or were
to be) was taken away by the Angel Raziel after Adam's Fall, but again restored
to him lest men might lose its wisdom and instruction; that this book was delivered
by Adam to Seth, who passed it to Enoch, and the latter to Abraham, and so on
in succession to the most wise of every generation - relates to all nations,
and not to the Jews alone. For Berosus narrates in his turn that Xisuthrus compiled
a book, writing it at the command of his deity, which book was buried in Zipara
[ The wife of Moses, one of the seven daughters of a Midian priest, is
called Zipora. It was Jethro, the priest of Midian, who initiated Moses, Zipora,
one of the seven daughters, being simply one of the seven Occult powers that
the Hierophant was and is supposed to pass to the initiated novice.]
or Sippara, the City of the Sun, in Ba-bel-on-ya, and was dug up long afterwards
and deposited in the temple of Belos; it is from this book that Berosus took
his history of the antediluvian dynasties of Gods and Heroes. Aelian (in Nimrod)
speaks of a Hawk (emblem of the Sun), who in the days of the beginnings brought
to the Egyptians a book containing the wisdom of their religion. The Sam-Sam
of the Sabaeans is also a Kabalah, as is the Arabic Zem-Zem (Well
of Wisdom). [ See for these details the Book of God, pp. 244,
250 ]
We
are told by a very learned Kabalist that Seyffarth assets that the old Egyptian
tongue was only old Hebrew, or a Semitic dialect; and he proves this, our correspondent
thinks, by sending him “some 500 words in common” in the two languages.
This proves very little to our mind. It only shows that the two nations lived
together for centuries, and that before adopting the Chaldaean for their phonetic
(Page
172) tongue the Jews had adopted the old Coptic or Egyptian. The
Israelitish Scriptures drew their hidden wisdom from the primeval Wisdom-Religion
that was the source of other Scriptures, only it was sadly degraded by being
applied to things and mysteries of this Earth, instead of to those in the higher
and ever-present, though invisible, spheres. Their national history, if they
can claim any autonomy before their return from the Babylonian captivity, cannot
be carried back one day earlier than the time of Moses. The language of Abraham
- if Zeruan (Saturn, the emblem of time - the “Sar,” “Saros,”
a “cycle”) can be said to have any language - was not Hebrew, but
Chaldaic, perhaps Arabic, and still more likely some old Indian dialect. This
is shown by numerous proofs, some of which we give here; and unless, indeed,
to please the tenacious and stubborn believers in Bible chronology, we
cripple the years of our globe to the Procrustean bed of 7,000 years, it becomes
self-evident that the Hebrew cannot be called an old language, merely because
Adam is supposed to have used it in the Garden of Eden. Bunsen says in Egypt’s
Place in Universal History that in the
Chaldean
tribe immediately connected with Abraham, we find reminiscences of dates disfigured
and misunderstood as genealogies of single men, or figures of epochs. The
Abrahamic recollections go back at least three millennia beyond the grandfather
of Jacob [ Op. cit. V. 85.]
The
Bible of the Jews has ever been an Esoteric Book in its hidden meaning,
but this meaning has not remained one and the same throughout since the days
of Moses. It is useless, considering the limited space we can give to this subject,
to attempt anything like the detailed history of the vicissitudes of the so-called
Pentateuch, and besides, the history is too well known to need lengthy
disquisitions. Whatever was, or was not, the Mosaic Book of Creation
- from Genesis down to the Prophets - the Pentateuch of today
is not the same. It is sufficient to read the criticisms of Erasmus, and even
of Sir Isaac Newton, to see clearly that the Hebrew Scriptures had been tampered
with and re -modelled, had been lost and rewritten, a dozen times before the
days of Ezra. This Ezra himself may yet one day turn out to have been Azara;
the Chaldaean priest of the Fire and Sun-God, a renegade who through his desire
of becoming a ruler, and in order to create an Ethnarchy, restored that old
lost Jewish Books in his own way.
Many
Events Not Historical- (Page
173)
It was an easy thing for one versed in the secret system of Esoteric numerals,
or Symbology, to put together events from the stray books that had been preserved
by various tribes, and make of them an apparently harmonious narrative of creation
and of the evolution of the Judaean race. But in its hidden meaning, from Genesis
to the last word of Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch is the symbolical narrative
of the sexes, and is an apotheosos of Phallicism, under astronomical and physiological
personations. [ As is fully shown in the Source of Measures and
other works.] Its co-ordination, however, is only apparent; and the human
hand appears at every moment, is found everywhere in the “Book of God.”
Hence the Kings of Edom discuss in Genesis before any king had reigned
in Israel; Moses records his own death, and Aaron dies twice and is buried in
two different places, to say nothing of other trifles. For the Kabalist they
are trifles, for he knows that all these events are not history, but are simply
the cloak designed to envelope and hide various physiological peculiarities;
but for the sincere Christian, who accepts all these “dark sayings”
in good faith, it matters a good deal. Solomon may very well be regarded as
a myth [ Surely even Masons would never claim the actual existence
of Solomon? As Kenealy shows, he is not noticed by Herodotus, nor by Plato,
nor by any writer of standing. It is most extraordinary, he says, “that
the Jewish nation, over whom but a few years before the mighty Solomon had reigned
in all his glory, with a magnificence scarcely equalled by the greatest monarchs,
spending nearly eight thousand millions of gold on a temple, was overlooked
by the historian Herodotus, writing of Egypt on the one hand, and of Babylon
on the other - visiting both places, and of course passing almost necessarily
within a few miles of the splendid capital of the national Jerusalem? How can
this be accounted for? “ he asks (p.457). Nay, not only are there no proofs
of the twelve tribes of Israel having ever existed, but Herodotus, the most
accurate of historians, who was in Assyria when Ezra flourished, never mentions
the Israelites at all: and Herodotus was born in 484 B.C. How is this?] by the
Masons, as they lose nothing by it, for all their secrets are Kabalistic and
allegorical - for those few, at any rate, who understand them. For the Christian,
however, to give up Solomon, the son of David - from whom Jesus is made to descend
- involves a real loss. But how even the Kabalists can claim great antiquity
for the Hebrew texts of the old Biblical scrolls now possessed by the scholars
is not made at all apparent. For it is certainly a fact of history, based on
the confessions of the Jews themselves, and of Christians likewise, that:
The
Scriptures having perished in the captivity of Nabuchodonozar, Esdras, the
Levite, the priest, in the times of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, having
become inspired, in the exercise of prophecy restored again the whole of the
ancient Scriptures. [ Clement, Stromateis. XXII.]
(Page
174)
One must have a strong belief in “Esdras,” and especially in his
good faith, to accept the now-existing copies as genuine Mosaic Books; for:
Assuming
that the copies, or rather phonographs which had been made by Hilkiah and
Esdras, and the various anonymous editors, were really true and genuine, they
must have been wholly exterminated by Antiochus; and the versions of the Old
Testament which now subsist must have been made by Judas, or by some unknown
compilers, probably from the Greek of the Seventy, long after the appearance
and death of Jesus. [ Book of God. p.408.]
The
Bible, therefore, as it is now (the Hebrew texts, that is), depends for
its accuracy on the genuineness of the Septuagint; this, we are again
told, was written miraculously by the Seventy, in Greek, and the original copy
having been lost since that time, our texts are retranslated back into Hebrew
from that language. But in this vicious circle of proofs we once more have to
rely upon the good faith of two Jews - Josephus and Philo Judaeus of Alexandria
- these two Historians being the only witnesses that the Septuagint was written
under the circumstances narrated. And yet it is just these circumstances that
are very little calculated to inspire one with confidence. For what does Josephus
tell us? He says that Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to read the Hebrew Law
in Greek, wrote to Eleazar, the high-priest of the Jews, begging him to send
him six men from each of the twelve tribes, who should make a translation
for him. Then follows a truly miraculous story, vouchsafed by Aristeas, of these
seventy-two men from the twelve tribes of Israel, who, shut up in an island,
compiled their translation in exactly seventy-two days, etc.
All
this is very edifying, and one might have had very little reason to doubt the
story, had not the “ten lost tribes” been made to play their part
in it. How could these tribes, lost between 700 and 900 B.C., each send six
men some centuries later, to satisfy the whim of Ptolemy, and to disappear once
more immediately afterwards from the horizon? A miracle, verily.
We
are expected, nevertheless, to regard such documents as the Septuagint
as containing direct divine revelation: Documents originally written in a tongue
about which nobody now knows anything; written by authors that are practically
mythical, and at dates as to which no one is able even to make a defensible
surmise; documents of the original copies of which there does not now remain
a shred.
The
Real Hebrew Characters Lost - (Page
175)
Yet people will persist in talking of the ancient Hebrew, as if there were any
man left in the world who knows one word of it. So little, indeed was
Hebrew known that both the Septuagint and the New Testament had to be
written in a heathen language (the Greek), and no better reasons for
it given than what Hutchinson says, namely, that the Holy Ghost chose to write
the New Testament in Greek.
The
Hebrew language is considered to be very old, and yet there exists no trace
of it anywhere on the old monuments, not even in Chaldaea. Among the great number
of inscriptions of various kinds found in the ruins of that country:
One
in the Hebrew Chaldee letter and language has never been found; nor
has a single authentic medal or gem in this newfangled character been ever
discovered, which could carry it even to the days of Jesus. [ Book
of God. p.453.]
The
original Book of Daniel is written in a dialect which is a mixture of
Hebrew and Aramaic; it is not even in Chaldaic, with the exception of a few
verses interpolated later on. According to Sir. W. Jones and other Orientalists,
the oldest discoverable languages of Persia are the Chaldaic and Sanskrit, and
there is no trace of the “Hebrew” in these. It would be very surprising
if there were, since the Hebrew known to the Philologists does not date earlier
than 500 B.C., and its characters belong to a far later period still. Thus,
while the real Hebrew characters, if not altogether lost are nevertheless so
hopelessly transformed -
A
mere inspection of the alphabet showing that it has been shaped and made regular,
in doing which the characteristic marks of some of the letters have been
retrenched in order to make them more square and uniform - [ Asiatic
Journal, VII., p.275, quoted by Kenealy.]
That
no one but an initiated Rabbi of Samaria or a “Jain” could read
them, the new system of the masoretic points has made them a sphinx-riddle for
all. Punctuation is now to be found everywhere in all the later manuscripts,
and by means of it anything can be made of a text; a Hebrew scholar can put
on the texts any interpretation he likes. Two instances given by Kenealy will
suffice:
In
Genesis,x1ix. 21, we read:
Naphtali
is a hind let loose; he giveth goodly words.
By
only a slight alternation of the points Bochart changes this into:
Napthali
is a spreading tree, shooting forth beautiful branches.
So
again, in Psalms (xxix.9), instead of:(Page
176)
The voice of the Lord maketh the hind to calve, and discovereth the forests;
Bishop Lowth gives:
The
voice of the Lord striketh the oak, and discovereth the forests.
The
same word in Hebrew signifies “God” and “nothing,”
etc. [ Book of God. p.385.]
With
regard to the claim made by some Kabalists that there was in antiquity one knowledge
and one language, this claim is also our own, and it is very just. Only it must
be added, to make the thing clear, that this knowledge and language have both
been esoteric every since the submersion of the Atlanteans. The Tower of Babel
myth relates to that enforced secrecy. Men falling into sin were regarded as
no longer trustworthy for the reception of such knowledge, and, from
being universal, it became limited to the few. Thus, the “one-lip”
- or the Mystery-language - being gradually denied to subsequent generations,
all the nations became severally restricted to their own national tongue; and
forgetting the primeval Wisdom-language, they stated that the Lord - one of
the chief Lords or Hierophants of the Mysteries of the Java Aleim - had confounded
the languages of all the earth, so that the sinners could understand one another’s
speech no longer. But Initiates remained in every land and nation, and the Israelites,
like all others, had their learned Adepts. One of the keys to this Universal
Knowledge is a pure geometrical and numerical system, the alphabet of every
great nation having a numerical value for every letter, [ Speaking of
the hidden meaning of the Sanskrit words, Mr. T. Subba Row, in his able article
on “The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac.” gives some advice as to the
way in which one should proceed to find out “the deep significance of
ancient Sanskrit nomenclature in the old Aryan myths. 1. Find out the synonyms
of the word used which have other meanings. 2. Find out the numerical value
of the letters composing of the word according to the methods of the ancient
Tântrik works [Tântrika Shastra - works on Incantation
and Magic ]. 3. Examine the ancient myths or allegories if there are
any, which have any special connection with the word in question. 4. Permute
the different syllables composing the word and examine the new combinations
that will thus be formed and their meanings.” etc. But he does not give
the principal rule. And no doubt he is quite right. The Tântrika Shâstras
are as old as Magic itself. Have they also borrowed their Esotericism from the
Hebrews?] and, moreover, a system of permutation of syllables and synonyms
which is carried to perfection in the Indian Occult methods, and which the Hebrew
certainly has not. This one system, containing the elements of Geometry and
Numeration, was used by the Jews for the purpose of concealing their Esoteric
creed under the mask of a popular and national monotheistic Religion. The last
who knew the system to perfection were the learned and “atheistical”
Sadducees, the greatest enemies of the pretensions of the Pharisees and of their
confused notions brought from Babylon.
Hebrew
Esotericism Not Primitive-
(Page
177) Yes, the Sadducees, the Illusionists, who maintained that the
Soul, the Angels, and all similar Beings, were illusions because they were temporary
- thus showing themselves at one with Eastern Esotericism. And since they rejected
every book and Scripture, with the exception of the Law of Moses, it seems that
the latter must have been very different from what it is now. [ Their
founder, Sadoc, was the pupil, through Antigonus Saccho, of Simon the Just.
They had their own secret Book of the Law ever since the foundation of
their sect (about 400 B.C.) and this volume was unknown to the masses. At the
same time of the Separation the Samaritans recognized only the Book of the
Law of Moses and the Book of Joshua, and their Pentateuch
is far older, and is different from the Septuagint. In 168 B.C. Jerusalem had
its temple plundered, and its Sacred Books - namely, the Bible made up
by Ezra and finished by Judas Maccabeus - were lost (see Burder’s Josephus,
vol. ii. pp. 331-335): after which the Massorah completed the work of
destruction (even of Ezra’s once-more adjusted Bible) begun by
the change into square from horned letters. Therefore the later Pentateuch
accepted by the Pharisees was rejected and laughed at by the Sadducees. They
are generally called atheists; yet, since those learned men, who made no secret
of their freethought, furnished from among their number the most eminent of
the Jewish high-priests, this seems impossible. How could the Pharisees and
the other two believing and pious sects allow notorious atheists to be selected
for such posts? The answer is difficult to find for bigotry and for believers
in a personal, anthropomorphic God but very easy for those who accept facts.
The Sadducees were called atheists because they believed as the initiated Moses
believed, thus differing very widely from the latter made-up Jewish legislator
and hero of Mount Sinai.]
The
whole of the foregoing is written with an eye to our Kabalists. Great scholars
as some of them undoubtedly are, they are nevertheless wrong to hang the harps
of their faith on the willows of Talmudic growth - on the Hebrew scrolls, whether
in square or pointed characters, now in our public libraries, museums, or even
in the collections of Paleographers. There do not remain half-a-dozen copies
from the true Mosaic Hebrew scrolls in the whole world. And those who are in
possession of these - as we indicated a few pages back - would not part with
them, or even allow them to be examined, on any consideration whatever. How
then can any Kabalist claim priority for Hebrew Esotericism, and say, as does
one of our correspondents, that “the Hebrew has come down from
a far remoter antiquity than any of them [whether Egyptian or even Sanskrit!],
and that it was the source, or nearer to the old original source, than any of
them”? [ The measurements of the Great Pyramid being those of the
temple of Solomon, of the Ark of the Covenant, etc., according to Piazzi Smythe
and the author of the Source of Measures, and the Pyramid of Gizeh being
shown on astronomical calculations to have been built 4950 B.C., and Moses having
written his books - for the sake of argument - not even half that time
before our era, how can this be? Surely if any one borrowed from the other,
it is not the Pharaohs from Moses. Even philology shows not only the Egyptian,
but even the Mongolian, older than the Hebrew.]
As
our correspondent says: “It becomes more convincing to me every day that
in a far past time there was a mighty civilization with (Page
178) enormous learning, which had a common language over the
earth, as to which its essence can be recovered from the fragments which now
exist.”
Aye,
there existed indeed a mighty civilization, and a still mightier secret learning
and knowledge, the entire scope of which can never be discovered by Geometry
and the Kabalah alone: for there are seven keys to the large entrance-door,
and not one, nor even two, keys can ever open it sufficiently to allow more
than glimpses of what lies within.
Every
scholar must be aware that there are two distinct styles - two schools,
so to speak - plainly traceable in the Hebrew Scriptures: the Elohistic and
the Jehovistic. The portions belonging to these respectively are so blended
together, so completely mixed up by later hands, that often all external characteristics
are lost. Yet it is also known that the two schools were antagonistic; that
the one taught esoteric, the other exoteric, or theological doctrines; that
the one, the Elohists, were Seers (Roch), whereas the other, the Jehovists,
were prophets (Nabhi) [ This alone shows how the Books of Moses were
tampered with. In Samuel (ix.9), it is said: “He that is now a
prophet [Nabhi] was beforetime called a Seer [Roch].”
Now since before Samuel, the word “Roch” is met nowhere in
the Pentateuch, but its place is always taken by that of “Nabhi,”
this proves clearly that the Mosaic text has been replaced by that of the later
Levites. (See for fuller details Jewish Antiquities, by the Rev. D. Jennings.
D.D.) ] and that the latter - who later became Rabbis - were generally
only nominally prophets by virtue of their official position, as the Pope is
called the infallible and inspired vicegerent of God. That, again, the Elohists
meant by “Elohim” “forces,” identifying their Deity,
as in the Secret Doctrine, with Nature; while the Jehovists made of Jehovah
a personal God externally, and used the term simply as a phallic symbol - a
number of them secretly disbelieving even in metaphysical, abstract Nature,
and synthesizing all on the terrestrial scale. Finally, the Elohists made of
man the divine incarnate image of the Elohim, emanated first in all Creation;
and the Jehovists show him as the last, the crowning glory of the animal creation,
instead of his being the head of all the sensible beings on earth. ( This is
reversed by some Kabalists, but the reversion is due to the designedly-produced
confusion in the texts, especially in the first four chapters of Genesis.)
Take
the Zohar and find in it the description relating to Ain-Suph, the Western
or Semitic Parabrahman. What passages have come so nearly up to the Vedantic
ideal as the following:
The
creation [the evolved Universe] is the garment of that which
has no name, the garment woven from the Deity’s own substance.
[ Zohar. i.2a.]
The
Concealed of all the Concealed- (Page
179)
Between that which is Ain or “nothing,” and the Heavenly Man, there
is an Impersonal First Cause, however, of which it is said:
Before
It gave any shape to this world, before It produced any form, It was alone,
without form or similitude to anything else. Who, can comprehend It, how It
was before the creation, since It was formless? Hence it is forbidden to represent
It by any form, similitude, or even by Its sacred name, by a single letter
or a single point. [ Zohar, 42b.]
The
sentence that follows, however, is an evident later interpolation; for it draws
attention to a complete contradiction:
And
to this the words (Deut. iv. 15), refer - “Ye saw no manner of
similitude on the day the Lord spake unto you.”
But
this reference to Chapter iv. of Deuteronomy, when in Chapter v, God
is mentioned as speaking “face to face” with the people, is very
clumsy.
Not
one of the names given to Jehovah in the Bible has any reference whatever
to either Ain-Suph or the Impersonal First-Cause (which is the Logos) of the
Kabalah; but they all refer to the Emanations.
It
says;
For
although to reveal itself to us, the concealed of all the concealed sent forth
the Ten Emanations [Sephiroth] called the Form of God, Form
of the Heavenly Man, yet since even this luminous form was too dazzling for
our vision, it had to assume another form, or had to put on another garment,
which is the Universe. The Universe, therefore, or the visible world,
is a farther expansion of the Divine Substance, and is called in the Kabalah
“The Garment of God.” [Zohar, i.2a. See Dr. Ch.
Ginsburg’s essay on The Cabbalah, its Doctrines, Developments and
Literature.]
This
is the doctrine of all the Hindu Puranas, especially that of the Vishnu Purâna.
Vishnu pervades the Universe and is that Universe; Brahmâ enters the Mundane
Egg, and issues from it as the Universe; Brahmâ even dies with it and
there remains only Brahman , the impersonal, the eternal, the unborn, and the
unqualifiable. The Ain-Suph of the Chaldeans and later of the Jews is assuredly
a copy of the Vaidic Deity; while the “Heavenly Adam,” the Macrocosm
which unites in itself the totality of beings and is the Esse of the
visible Universe, finds his original in the Puranic Brahmâ. In Sod,“the
Secret of the Law,” one recognizes the expressions used in the oldest
fragments of the Gupta Vidyâ, the Secret Knowledge. And it is not venturing
too much to say that even a Rabbi quite familiar with his own special Rabbinical
Hebrew would only comprehend its secrets thoroughly if he added to (Page
180) his learning a serious knowledge of the Hindu philosophies.
Let us turn to Stanza I. of the Book of Dzyan
for an example.
The
Zohar premises, as does the Secret Doctrine, a universal, eternal Essence,
passive - because absolute - in all that men call attributes. The pregenetic
or pre-cosmical Triad is a pure metaphysical abstraction. The notion of a triple
hypostasis in one Unknown Divine Essence is as old as speech and thought. Hiranyagarbha,
Hari, and Shankara - the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer - are the
three manifested attributes of it, appearing and disappearing with Kosmos; the
visible Triangle, so to speak, on the plane of the ever-invisible Circle. This
is the primeval root-thought of thinking Humanity; the Pythagorean Triangle
emanation from the ever-concealed Monad, or the Central Point.
Plato
speaks of it and Plotinus calls it an ancient doctrine, on which Cudworth remarks
that:
Since
Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato, who all of them asserted a Trinity of divine
hypostases, unquestionably derived their doctrine from the Egyptians, it may
be reasonably suspected that the Egyptians did the like before them. [
Cudworth, I. iii. quoted by Wilson. Vishnu Purana, i. 14, note.]
The
Egyptians certainly derived their Trinity from the Indians. Wilson justly observes:
As,
however, the Grecian accounts and those of the Egyptians are much more perplexed
and unsatisfactory than those of the Hindus, it is most probable that we find
amongst them the doctrine in its most original, as well as most methodical
and significant form. [ Vishnu Purana. I, 14 ]
This,
then, is the meaning:
“Darkness
alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were once more
One.” [ Stanza i. 4. ]
Space
was, and is ever, as it is between the Manvantara. The Universe in its pre-kosmic
state was once more homogeneous and one - outside its aspects. This was a Kabalistic,
and is now a Christian teaching.
As
is constantly shown in the Zohar, the Infinite Unity, or Ain-Suph, is
ever placed outside human thought and appreciation; and in Sepher Jetzirah
we see the Spirit of God - the Logos, not the Deity itself -
One
is the Spirit of the Living God . . Who liveth forever. Voice, Spirit, [of
the spirit], and Word: this is the Holy Spirit, [ Mishna,
i. 9.]
Three-in-one
and Four - (Page
181)
- and the Quaternary. From this Cube emanates the whole Kosmos.
Says the Secret Doctrine:
“It
is called to life. The mystic Cube in which rests the Creative Idea, the manifesting
Mantra [or articulate speech - Vâch] and the holy
Pûrusha [both radiations of prima material] exist
in the Eternity in the Divine Substance in their latent state.
-
during Pralaya.
And
in the Sepher Jetzirah, when the Three-in-One are to be called into being
- by the manifestation of Shekinah, the first effulgency or radiation in the
manifesting Kosmos - the “Spirit of God,” or Number One, [
In its manifested state it becomes Ten, the Universe. In the Chaldaean Kabalah
it is sexless. In the Jewish, Shekinah is female, and the early Christians and
Gnostics regarded the Holy Ghost, as a female potency. In the Book of Numbers
“Shekina” is made to drop the final “h” that makes it
a female potency. Nârâyana, the Mover on the Waters, is also sexless:
but it is our firm belief that Shekinah and Daiviprakriti, the “Light
of the Logos,” are one and the same thing philosophically.] fructifies
and awakens the dual Potency, Number Two, Air, and Number Three, Water; in these
“are darkness and emptiness, slime and dung” - which is Chaos, the
Tohu-Vah-Bohu. The Air and Water emanate Number Four, Ether or Fire, the Son.
This is the Kabalistic Quaternary. This Fourth Number, which in the manifested
Kosmos is the One, or the Creative God, is with the Hindus the “Ancient,”
Sanat, the Prajâpati of the Vedas and the Brahmâ of the Brâhmans
- the heavenly Androgyne, as he becomes the male only after separating himself
into two bodies, Vâch and Virâj. With the Kabalists, he is at first
the Jah-Havah, only later becoming Jehovah, like Virâj, his prototype;
after separating himself as Adam-Kadmon into Adam and Eve in the formless, and
into Cain-Abel in the semi-objective world, he became finally the Jah-Havah,
or man and woman, in Enoch, the son of Seth.
For,
the true meaning of the compound name of Jehovah - of which, unvoweled, you
can make almost anything - is: men and women, or humanity composed of its two
sexes. From the first chapter to the end of the fourth chapter of Genesis
every name is a permutation of another name, and every personage is at the same
time somebody else. A Kabalist traces Jehovah from the Adam of earth to Seth,
the third son - or rather race - of Adam. [ The Elohim create the Adam
of dust, and in him Jehovah-Binah separates himself into Eve, after which the
male portion of God becomes the Serpent, tempts himself in Eve, then creates
himself in her as Cain, passes into Seth, and scatters from Enoch, the Son of
Man, or Humanity, as Jodheva.] Thus Seth is Jehovah male; and Enos, (Page
182)being a permutation of Cain and Abel, is Jehovah male and female,
or our mankind. The Hindu Brahmâ-Virâj, Virâj-Manu, and Manu-Vaivasvata,
with his daughter and wife, Vâch, present the greatest analogy with these
personages - for anyone who will take the trouble of studying the subject in
both the Bible and the Purânas. It is said of Brahma that
he created himself as Manu, and that he was born of, and was identical with,
his original self, while he constituted the female portion Shâta-rupa”
(hundred-formed) In this Hindu Eve, “the mother of all living beings,”
Brahmâ created Virâj, who is himself, but on a lower scale, as Cain
is Jehovah on an inferior scale: both are the first males of the Third Race.
The same idea is illustrated in the Hebrew name of God (חח)
Read from right to left “Jod” (")
is the father. “He” (ח)
the mother, “Vau” (ך) the son, and “He” (ח),
repeated at the end of the word, is generation, the act of birth, materiality.
This is surely a sufficient reason why the God of the Jews and Christians should
be personal, as much as the male Brahma, Vishnu, or Shiva of the orthodox, exoteric
Hindu.
Thus
the term of Jhvh alone - now accepted as the name of “One living [male]
God” - will yield, if seriously studied, not only the whole mystery of
Being (in the Biblical sense,) but also that of the Occult Theogony,
from the highest divine Being, the third in order, down to man. As shown by
the best Hebraists:
The
verbal or Hâyâh,
or E-y-e, means to be, to exist, while or
Chayah or H-y-e, means to live, as motion of existence.[
The Source of Measures. p.5 ]
Hence
Eve stands as the evolution and the never-ceasing “becoming” of
Nature. Now if we take the almost untranslatable Sanskrit word Sat, which means
the quintessence of absolute immutable Being, or Be-ness - as it has been rendered
by an able Hindu Occultist - we shall find no equivalent for it in any language;
but it may be regarded as most closely resembling “Ain,” or “En-Suph,”
Boundless Being. Then the term Hâyâh, “to be,” as passive,
changeless, yet manifested existence may perhaps be rendered by the Sanskrit
Jivatma, universal life or soul, in its secondary or cosmic meaning; while “Châyâh,”
“to live,” as “motion of existence,” is simply Prâna,
the ever-changing life in its objective sense. It is at the head of this third
category that the Occultist finds Jehovah - the Mother, Binah, and the Father,
Arelim.
The
Septenary Sephira- (Page
183) This is made plain in the Zohar, when the emanation and
evolution of the Sephiroth are explained: First, Ain-Suph, then Shekinah, the
Garment or Veil of Infinite Light, then Sephira or the Kadmon, and, thus making
the fourth, the spiritual Substance sent forth from the Infinite Light. This
Sephira is called the Crown, Kether, and has besides, six other names - in all
seven. These names are: 1. Kether; 2. the Aged; 3. the Primordial Point; 4.
the White Head; 5. the Long Face; 6. the Inscrutable Height; and 7. Ehejeh (“I
am”.) [ This identifies Sephira, the third potency, with Jehovah
the Lord, who says to Moses out of the burning bush: “(Here) I am.”
(Exodus, iii.4). At this time the “Lord” has not yet become
Jehovah. It was not the one male God who spoke, but the Elohim manifested, or
the Sephiroth in their manifested collectivity of seven, contained in the triple
Sephira.] This Septenary Sephira is said to contain in itself the nine
Sephiroth. But before showing how she brought them forth, let us read an explanation
about the Sephiroth in the Talmud, which gives it as an archaic tradition,
or Kabalah.
There
are three groups (or orders) of Sephiroth: 1. The Sephiroth called “divine
attributes” (the Triad in the Holy Quaternary); 2. the sidereal (personal)
Sephiroth; 3. the metaphysical Sephiroth, or a periphrasis of Jehovah, who are
the first three Sephiroth (Kether, Chokmah and Binah), the rest of the seven
being the personal “Seven Spirits of the Presence” (also of the
planets, therefore). Speaking of these, the angels are meant, though not because
they are seven, but because they represent the seven Sephiroth which contain
in them the universality of the Angels.
This
shows (a) that, when the first four Sephiroth are separated, as a Triad-Quaternary
- Sephira being its synthesis - there remain only seven Sephiroth, as there
are seven Rishis; these become ten when the Quaternary, or the first divine
Cube, is scattered into units; and (b) that while Jehovah might have been viewed
as the Deity, if he be included in the three divine groups or orders of the
Sephiroth, the collective Elohim, or the quaternary indivisible Kether, once
that he becomes a male God, he is not more than one of the Builders of the lower
group - a Jewish Brahmâ. [ The Brahmans were wise in their generation
when they gradually, for no other reason than this, abandoned Brahmâ,
and paid less attention to him individually than to any other deity. As an abstract
synthesis they worshipped him collectively and in every God, each of which represents
him. As Brâhma, the male, he is far lower than Shiva, the Lingam, who
personates universal generation, or Vishnu, the preserver - both Shiva and Vishnu
being the regenerators of life after destruction. The Christians might do worse
than follow their example, and worship God in Spirit, and not in the male Creator.]
A demonstration is now attempted.
The
first Sephira, containing the other nine, brought them forth in
(Page 184) this order: (2) Hokmah (Chokmah, or Wisdom), a masculine
active potency represented among the divine names as Jah; and, as a permutation
or an evolution into lower forms in this instance - becoming the Auphanim (or
the Wheels - cosmic rotation of matter) among the army, or the angelic hosts.
From this Chokmah emanated a feminine passive potency called (3) Intelligence,
Binah, whose divine name is Jehovah, and whose angelic name, among the Builders
and Hosts, is Arelim. [ A plural word, signifying a collective
host generically: literally, the “strong lion.”] It is from
the union of these two potencies, male and female (or Chokmah and Binah) that
emanated all the other Sephiroth, the seven orders of the Builders. Now if we
call Jehovah by his divine name, then he becomes at best and forthwith “a
female passive” potency in Chaos. And if we view him as a male God, he
is no more than one of many, an Angel, Arelim. But straining the analysis to
its highest point, and if his male name Jah, that of Wisdom, be allowed to him,
still he is not the “Highest and the one Living God;” for he is
contained with many others within Sephira, and Sephira herself is a third Potency
in Occultism, though regarded as the first in the exoteric Kabalah -
and is one, moreover, of lesser importance than the Vaidic Aditi, or the Primordial
Water of Space, which becomes after many a permutation of the Astral Light of
the Kabalist.
Thus
the Kabalah, as we have it now, is shown to be of the greatest importance
in explaining the allegories and “dark sayings” of the Bible.
As an Esoteric work upon the mysteries of creation, however, it is almost worthless
as it is now disfigured, unless checked by the Chaldaean Book of Numbers
or by the tenets of the Easter Secret Science, or Esoteric Wisdom. The Western
nations have neither the original Kabalah, nor yet the Mosaic Bible.
Finally,
it is demonstrated by internal as well as by external evidence, on the testimony
of the best European Hebraists, and the confessions of the learned Jewish Rabbis
themselves, that “an ancient document forms the essential basis of the
Bible, which received very considerable insertions and supplements;”
and that “the Pentateuch arose out of the primitive or older document
by means of a supplementary one.” Therefore in the absence of the Book
of Numbers,, [ The writer possesses only a few extracts, some dozen
pages in all, verbatim quotations from that priceless work, of which but two
or three copies, perhaps, are still extant.] the Kabalists of the West
are only entitled to come to definite conclusions, when they have at hand some
data at least from that “ancient document” - (Page
185)
data now found scattered throughout Egyptian papyri, Assyrian tiles,
and the traditions preserved by the descendants of the disciples of the last
Nazars. Instead of that, most of them accept as their authorities and infallible
guides Fabre d’Olivet - who was a man of immense erudition and of speculative
mind, but neither a Kabalist nor an Occultist, either Western or Eastern - and
the Mason Ragon, the greatest of the “Widow’s sons,” who was
even less of an Orientalist than d’Olivet, for Sanskrit learning was almost
unknown in the days of both these eminent scholars.
SECTION
XXI
Hebrew
Allegories
(Page
186) How can any Kabalist, acquainted with the foregoing, deduce
his conclusions with regard to the true Esoteric beliefs of the primitive Jews,
from only that which he now finds in the Jewish scrolls? How can any scholar
- even though one of the keys to the universal language be now positively discovered,
the true key to the numerical reading of a pure geometrical system - give out
anything as his final conclusion? Modern Kabalistic speculation is on
a par now with modern “speculative Masonry;” for as the latter tries
vainly to link itself with the ancient - or rather the archaic - Masonry;”
of the Temples, failing to make the link because all its claims have been shown
to be inaccurate from an archaeological standpoint, so fares it also with Kabalistic
speculation. As no mystery of Nature worth running after can be revealed to
humanity by settling whether Hiram Abif was a living Sidonian Builder, or a
solar myth, so no fresh information will be added to Occult Lore by the details
of the exoteric privileges conferred on the Collegia Fabrorum by Numa Pompilius.
Rather must the symbols used in it be studies in the Aryan light, since all
the Symbolism of the ancient Initiations came to the West with the light of
the Eastern Sun. Nevertheless, we find the most learned Masons and Symboligists
declaring that all these weird symbols and glyphs, that run back to a common
origin of immense antiquity, were nothing more than a display of cunning natural
phallicism, or emblems of primitive typology. How much nearer the truth is the
author of The Source of Measures, who declares that the elements of human
and numerical construction in the Bible
do not shut out the spiritual elements in it, albeit so few now understand them.
The words we quote are as suggestive as they are true:
How
desperately blinding becomes a superstitious use, through ignorance, of such
emblems when they are made to possess the power of bloodshed and torture,
through orders of propaganda of any species of religious cultus.
The
Hebrew Bible does not Exist
(Page
187)
When one thinks of the horrors of a Moloch, or Baal, or Dagon
worship; of the correlated blood deluges under the Cross baptized in gore
by Constantine, at the initiative of he secular Church; . . . when one thinks
of all this and then that the cause of all has been simply ignorance of the
real radical reading of the Moloch, and Baal, and Dagon,
and the Cross and the Tphillin, all running back to a common
origin, and after all being nothing more than a display of pure and natural
mathematics, . . . one is apt to feel like cursing ignorance, and to lose
confidence in what are called intuitions of religion; one is apt to
wish for a return of the day when all the world was of one lip and
of one knowledge . . .. But while these elements [of the construction
of the pyramid] are rational and scientific, . . . . let no man consider
that with this discovery comes a cutting off of the spirituality [
Aye: but that spirituality can never be discovered, far less proved,
unless we turn to the Aryan Scriptures and Symbology. For the Jews it was
lost, save for the Sadducees, from the day that the “chosen people”
reached the Promised Land, the national Karma preventing Moses from reaching
it.] of the Bible intention, or of man’s relation to this
spiritual foundation. Does one wish to build a house? No house was ever actually
built with tangible material until first the architectural design of building
had been accomplished, no matter whether the structure was palace or hovel.
So with these elements and numbers. They are not of man, nor are they of his
invention. They have been revealed to him to the extent of his ability to
realize a system, which is the creative system of the eternal God.
. . . But spiritually, to man the value of this matter is that he can
actually in contemplation, bridge over all material construction of the cosmos,
and pass into the very thought and mind of God, to the extent
of recognizing this system of design for cosmic creation - yea, even
before the words went forth: “ Let there be.” [
Op.cit., pp. 317-319 ]
But
true as above words may be, when coming from one who has rediscovered, more
completely than anyone else has done during the past centuries, one of the keys
to the universal Mystery Language, it is impossible for an Eastern Occultist
to agree with the conclusion of the able author of The Source of Measures.
He “has set out to find the truth,” and yet he still believes that:
The
best and most authentic vehicle of communication from [the creative]
God to man . . . is to be found in the Hebrew Bible.
To
this we must and shall demur, giving our reasons for it in a few words. The
“Hebrew Bible” exists no more, as has been shown in the foregoing
pages, and the garbled accounts, the falsified and pale copies we have of the
real Mosaic Bible of the Initiates, warrant the making of no such sweeping
assertion and claim. All that the scholar can fairly claim is that the Jewish
Bible, as now extant - in its latest and final interpretation, and according
to the newly-discovered key - may give
(Page 188) a partial presentment of the truths it contained before
it was mangled. But how can he tell what the Pentateuch contained before
it has been recomposed by Esdras; then corrupted still more by the ambitious
Rabbis in later times, and otherwise remodelled and interfered with? Leaving
aside the opinion of the declared enemies of the Jewish Scripture, one may quote
simply what their most devoted followers say.
Two
of these are Horne and Prideaux. The avowels of the former will be sufficient
to show how much now remains of the original Mosaic books, unless indeed we
accept his sublimely blind faith in the inspiration and editorship of the Holy
Ghost. He writes that when a Hebrew scribe found a writing of any author he
was entitled, if he thought fit, being “conscious of the aid of the Holy
Spirit,” to do exactly as he pleased with it - to cut it up, or copy it,
or use as much of it as he deemed right, and so to incorporate it with his own
manuscript. Dr. Kenealy aptly remarks of Horne, that it is almost impossible
to get any admission from him.
That
makes against his church, so remarkably guarded is he [Horne]
in his phraseology and so wonderfully discreet in the use of words that his
language, like a diplomatic letter, perpetually suggests to the mind ideas
other than those which he really means; I defy any unlearned person to read
his chapter on “Hebrew characters” and to derive any knowledge
from it whatever on the subject on which he professes to treat. [ The
Book of God. pp. 388, 389 ]
And
yet this same Horne writes:
We
are persuaded that the things to which reference is made proceeded from the
original writers or compilers of the books [Old Testament].
Sometimes they took other writings, annals, genealogies, and such like, with
which they incorporated additional matter, or which they put together
with greater or less condensation. The Old Testament authors used the
sources they employed (that is, the writing of other people) with freedom and
independence. Conscious of the aid of the Divine Spirit, they adapted
their own productions, or the productions of others, to the wants of the times.
But in these respects they cannot be said to have corrupted the text of Scriptures.
They made the text.
But
of what did they make it? Why, of the writings of other persons, justly observes
Kenealy:
And
this is Horne’s notion of what the Old Testament is - a cento from
the writings of unknown persons collected and put together by those who, he
says, were divinely inspired. No infidel that I know of has ever made so damaging
a charge as this against the authenticity of the Old Testament. [
See Horne’s Introduction (10th edition), vol. ii. p.33. as quoted
by Dr. Kenealy. p.389. ]
Some
Hebrews Were Initiates- (
Page 189)
This is quite sufficient, we think, to show that no key to the universal
language-system can ever open the mysteries of Creation in a work in which,
whether through design or carelessness, nearly every sentence has been made
to apply to the latest outcome of religious views - to Phallicism, and to nothing
else. There are a sufficient number of stray bits in the Elohistic portions
of the Bible to warrant the inference that the Hebrews who wrote it were
Initiates; hence the mathematical coordinations and the perfect harmony between
the measures of the Great Pyramid and the numerals of the Biblical glyphs. But
surely if one borrowed from the other, it cannot be the architects of the Pyramid
who borrowed from Solomon’s Temple, if only because the former exists
to this day as a stupendous living monument of Esoteric records, while the famous
temple has never existed outside of the far later Hebrew scrolls. [ The
author says that Parker’s quadrature is “that identical measure
which was used anciently as the perfect measure, by the Egyptians, in the construction
of the Great Pyramid, which was built to monument it and its uses.”
and that “from it the sacred cubit-value was derived, which was
the cubit-value used in the construction of the Temple of Solomon, the Ark of
Noah, and the Ark of the Covenant” (p.22). This is a grand discovery,
no doubt, but it only shows that the Jews profited well by their captivity in
Egypt, and that Moses was a great Initiate.] Hence
there is a great distance between the admission that some Hebrew Bible
must be the best standard, as being the highest representative of the archaic
Esoteric System.
Nowhere
does the Bible say, moreover, that the Hebrew is the language of God;
of this boast, at any rate, the authors are not guilty. Perhaps because in the
days when the Bible was last edited the claim would have been too preposterous
- hence dangerous. The compilers of the Old Testament, as it exists
in the Hebrew canon, knew well that the language of the Initiates in the days
of Moses was identical with that of the Egyptian Hierophants; and that none
of the dialects that had sprung from the old Syriac and the pure old Arabic
of Yarab - the father and progenitor of the primitive Arabians, long before
the time of Abraham, in whose days the ancient Arabic had already become vitiated
- that none of those languages was the one sacerdotal universal tongue. Nevertheless
all of them included a number of words which could be traced to common roots.
And to do this is the business of modern Philology, though to this day, with
all the respect due to the labours of the eminent Philologists of Oxford and
Berlin, that Science seems to be hopelessly floundering in the Cimmerian darkness
of mere hypothesis.
(Page
190) Ahrens, when speaking of the letters as arranged in the Hebrew
sacred scrolls, and remaking that they were musical notes, had probably never
studied Aryan Hindu music. In the Sanskrit language letters are continually
arranged in the sacred Ollas so that they may become musical notes. For the
whole Sanskrit alphabet and the Vedas, from the first word to the last,
are musical notations reduced to writing; the two are inseparable.[ See
Theosophist. 1879. art. “Hindu Music,” p.47.] As Homer
distinguished between the “language of Gods” and the “language
of men.” [ The Sanskrit letters are far more numerous than the
poor twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. They are all musical, and they
are read - or rather chanted - according to a system given in very old Tântrika
works, and are called Devanâgari, the speech, or language, of the Gods.
And since each letter answers to a numeral, the Sanskrit affords a far larger
scope for expression, and it must necessarily be far more perfect than the Hebrew,
which followed the same system but could apply it only in a very limited way.
If either of these two languages were taught to humanity by the Gods, surely
it would more likely be the Sanskrit, the perfect form of the most perfect language
on earth, than the Hebrew, the roughest and the poorest. For once anyone believes
in a language of divine origin, he can hardly believe at the same time that
Angels or Gods or any divine Messengers have had to develop it from a rough
monosyllable form into a perfect one, as we see in terrestrial linguistic evolution.]
so did the Hindus. The Devanagari, the Sanskrit characters, are the “speech
of the Gods,” and Sanskrit is the divine language.
It
is argued in defence of the present version of the Mosaic Books that the mode
of language adopted was an “accommodation” to the ignorance of the
Jewish people. But the said “mode of language” drags down the “sacred
text” of Esdras and his colleagues to the level of the most unspiritual
and gross phallic religions. This plea confirms the suspicions entertained by
some Christian Mystics and many philosophical critics, that;
(a)
Divine Power as an Absolute Unity had never anything more to do with the Biblical
Jehovah and the “Lord God” than with any other Sephiroth or number.
The Ain-Suph of the Kabalah of Moses is as independent of any relation
with the created Gods as is Parabrahman Itself.
(b)
The teachings veiled in the Old Testament under allegorical expressions
are all copied from the Magical Texts of Babylonia, by Esdras and others, while
the earlier Mosaic Text had its source in Egypt.
A
few instances known to almost all Symbologists of note, and especially to the
French Egyptologists, may help to prove the statement. Furthermore, no ancient
Hebrew Philosopher, Philo no more than the Sadducees, claimed, as do now the
ignorant Christians, that the events in the Bible should be taken literally.
Philo says most explicitly:
The
verbal statements are fabulous [in the Book of Law]: it is in
the allegory that we shall find the truth.
The
Seven Creative Gods- (Page
191) Let us give a few instances, beginning with the latest narrative,
the Hebrew, and thus if possible trace the allegories to their origin.
1.
Whence the Creation in six days, the seventh day as day of rest, the seven Elohim,
[ In the first chapter of Genesis the word “God” represents
the Elohim - Gods in the plural, not one God. This is a cunning and dishonest
translation. For the whole Kabalah explains sufficiently that the Alhim
(Elohim) are seven: each, creates one of the seven things enumerated in the
first chapter, and these answer allegorically to the seven creations. To make
this clear, count the verses in which it is said “And God saw that it
was good,” and you will find that this is said seven times - in verses
4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, and 31. And though the compilers cunningly represent
the creation of man as occurring on the sixth day, yet, having made man “male
and female in the image of God,” the Seven Elohim repeat the sacramental
sentence. “It was good, “ for the seventh time, thus making of man
the seventh creation, and showing the origin of this bit of cosmogony to be
in the Hindu creations. The Elohim are, of course, the seven Egyptian Khnûmû,
the “assistant-architects”: the seven Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians:
the Seven Spirits subordinate to Ildabaoth of the Nazareans; the seven Prajâpati
of the Hindus, etc.] and the division
of space into heaven and earth, in the first chapter of Genesis?
The
division of the vault above from the Abyss, or Chaos, below is one of the first
acts of creation or rather of evolution, in every cosmogony. Hermes in Pymander
speaks of a heaven seen in seven circles with seven Gods in them. We examine
the Assyrian tiles and find the same on them - the seven creative Gods busy
each in his own sphere. The cuneiform legends narrate how Bel prepared the seven
mansions of the Gods; how heaven was separated from the earth. In the Brahmanical
allegory everything is septenary, from the seven zones, or envelopes, of the
Mundane Egg down to the seven continents, islands, seas, etc. The six days of
the week and the seventh, the Sabbath, are based primarily on the seven creations
of the Hindu Brahma, the seventh being that of man; and secondarily on the number
of generation. It is pre-eminently and most conspicuously phallic. In the Babylonian
system the seventh day, or period, was that in which man and the animals were
created.
2.
The Elohim make a woman out of Adam’s rib. [ Gen., ii.21, 22.]
This process is found in the Magical Texts translated by G. Smith.
The
seven Spirits bring forth the woman from the loins of the man,
explains
Mr. Sayce in his Hibbert Lectures. [ Op.cit., p.395, note.]
(Page
192) The mystery of the woman who
was made from the man is repeated in every national religion, and in Scriptures
far antedating the Jewish. You find it in the Avestan fragments, in the Egyptian
Book of the Dead, and finally in Brahmâ, the male, separating from
himself, as a female self, Vâch, in whom he creates Virâj.
3.
The two Adams of the first and second chapters in Genesis originated
from garbled exoteric accounts coming from the Chaldaeans and the Egyptian Gnostics,
revised later from the Persian traditions, most of which are old Aryan allegories.
As Adam Kadmon is the seventh creation, [ The seventh esoterically, exoterically
the sixth.] so the Adam of dust is the eighth; and in the Purânas
one finds an eighth, the Anugraha creation, and the Egyptian Gnostics had it.
Irenaeus, complaining of the heretics says of the Gnostics:
Sometimes
they will have him [man] to have been made on the sixth day,
and sometimes on the eighth. [ Contra Hereses. 1. xviii.2.]
The
author of The Hebrew and Other Creations
writes:
These
two creations of man on the sixth day and on the eighth were those of the
Adamic, or fleshly man, and of the spiritual man, who were known to Paul and
the Gnostics as the first and second Adam, the man of earth and the man of
Heaven. Irenaeus also says they insisted that Moses began with the Ogdoad
of the Seven Powers and their mother, Sophia (the old Kefa of Egypt, who is
the Living Word at Ombos). Op. cit, by Gerald Massey. p.19]
Sophia
is also Aditi with her seven sons.
One
might go on enumerating and tracing the Jewish “revelations” ad
infinitum to their original sources, were it not that the task is superfluous,
since so much is already done in that direction by others - and done thoroughly
well, as in the case of Gerald Massey, who has sifted the subject to the very
bottom. Hundreds of volumes, treatises, and pamphlets are being written yearly
in defence of the “divine-inspiration” claim for the Bible;
but symbolical and archaeological research is coming to the rescue of truth
and fact - therefore of the Esoteric Doctrine - upsetting every argument based
on faith and breaking it as an idol with feet of clay. A curious and learned
book, The Approaching End of the Age, by H. Gratton Guinness, professes
to solve the mysteries of the Bible chronology and to prove thereby God’s
direct revelation to man. Among other things its author thinks that:
It
is impossible to deny that a septiform chronology was divinely appointed
in the elaborate ritual of Judaism.
Seven
Keys to all Allegories- (Page
193)
This statement is innocently accepted and firmly believed in by thousands and
tens of thousands, only because they are ignorant of the Bibles of other nations.
Two pages from a small pamphlet, a lecture by Mr. Gerald Massey, [Op
cit., p.278 ] so upset the arguments and proofs of the enthusiastic
Mr. Grattan Guinness, spread over 760 pages of small print, as to prevent them
from ever raising their heads any more. Mr. Massey treats of the Fall, and says:
Here,
as before, the genesis does not begin at the beginning. There was an earlier
Fall than that of the Primal Pair. In this the number of those who failed
and fell was seven. We meet with those seven in Egypt - eight with the mother
- where they are called the “Children of Inertness,” who were
cast out from Am-Smen, the Paradise of the Eight; also in a Babylonian legend
of Creation, as the Seven Brethren, who were Seven Kings, like the Seven Kings
in the Book of Revelation; and the Seven Non-Sentient Powers, who became
the Seven Rebel Angels that made war in heaven. The Seven Kronidae, described
as the Seven Watchers, who in the beginning were formed in the interior of
heaven. The heaven, like a vault, they extended or hollowed out; that which
was not visible they raised, and that which had no exit they opened;
their work of creation being exactly identical with that of the Elohim in
the Book of Genesis. These are the Seven elemental Powers of space,
who were continued as Seven Timekeepers. It is said of them: “In watching
was their office, but among the stars of heaven their watch they kept not,”
and their failure was the Fall. In the Book of Enoch the same Seven
Watchers in heaven are stars which transgressed the commandment of God before
their time arrived, for they came not in their proper season, therefore was
he offended with them, and bound them until the period of the consummation
of their crimes, at the end of the secret, or great year of the World,
i.e., the Period of Precession, when there was to be restoration and
rebeginning. The Seven deposed constellations are seen by Enoch, looking like
seven great blazing mountains overthrown - the seven mountains in Revelation,
on which the Scarlet Lady sits.[ The
Hebrew and other Creations; with a reply to Prof. A.H. Sayce, p.19.]
There
are seven keys to this, as to every other allegory, whether in the Bible
or in pagan religions. While Mr. Massey has hit upon the key in the mysteries
of cosmogony, John Bentley in his Hindu Astronomy claims that the Fall
of the Angels, or War in Heaven, as given by the Hindus, is but a figure
of the calculations of time-periods, and goes on to show that among the Western
nations the same war, with like results, took the form of the war of the Titans.
In
short, he makes it astronomical. So does the author of The Source
of Measures:
(Page
194) The celestial sphere with the earth, was divided into twelve
compartments [astronomically], and these compartments were esteemed
as sexed, the lords or husbands being respectively the
planets presiding over them. This being the settled scheme, want of proper
correction would bring it to pass, after a time, that error and confusion
would ensue by the compartments coming under the lordship of the wrong planets.
Instead of lawful wedlock, there would be illegal intercourse, as between
the planets, “sons of Elohim.” and these compartments,
“daughters of H-Adam,” or the earth-man: and in fact the
fourth verse of sixth Genesis will bear this interpretation
for the usual one, viz., “In the same days, or periods, there
were untimely births in the earth; and also behind that, when the sons of
Elohim came to the daughters of H-Adam, they begat to them the offspring of
harlotry,” etc., astronomically indicating this confusion. [
Op. cit., p.243.]
Do
any of these learned explanations explain anything except a possible ingenious
allegory, and a personification of the celestial bodies, by the ancient Mythologists
and Priests? Carried to their last word they would undeniably explain much,
and would thus furnish one of the right seven keys, fitting a great many of
the Biblical puzzles yet opening none naturally and entirely, instead of being
scientific and cunning master-keys. But they prove one thing - that neither
the septiform chronology nor the septiform theogony and evolution of all things
is of divine origin in the Bible. For let us see the sources at which
the Bible sipped its divine inspiration with regard to the sacred number
seven. Says Mr. Massey in the same lecture:
The
Book of Genesis tells us nothing about the nature of these Elohim,
erroneously rendered “God,” who are creators of the Hebrew beginning,
and who are themselves preextant and seated when the theatre opens and the
curtain ascends. It says that in the beginning the Elohim created the heaven
and the earth. In thousands of books the Elohim have been discussed, but .
. . with no conclusive result . . . The Elohim are Seven in number, whether
as nature-powers, gods of constellations, or planetary gods, . . . as the
Pitris and Patriarchs, Manus and Fathers of earlier times. The Gnostics, however,
and the Jewish Kabalah preserve an account of the Elohim of Genesis
by which we are able to identify them with other forms of the seven primordial
powers . . . Their names are Ildabaoth , Jehovah (or Jao), Sabaoth, Adonai,
Eloeus, Orfus, and astanphaeus. Ildabaoth signifies the Lord God of the fathers,
that is the fathers who preceded the Father; and thus the seven are identical
with the seven Pitris or Fathers of India (Irenaeus, B.L., xxx., 5). Moreover,
the Hebrew Elohim were preextant by name and nature as Phoenician divinities
or powers. Sanchoniathon mentions them by name, and describes them as Auxiliaris
of Kronos or Time. In this phase, then, the Elohim are timekeepers in heaven!
In the Phoenician mythology the Elohim are the Seven sons of Sydik [Melchizedek],
identical with the Seven Kabiri, who in Egypt are the Seven sons of Ptah,
and the Seven Spirits of Ra in The Book of the Dead; . . . in America
with the seven Hohgates, . . . in Assyria with the seven Lumazi . . .
Gerald
Massey on the Seven Creators- (Page
195) They are always seven in number . . . who Kab - that
is, turn round, together, whence the “Kab-iri.” . . . They are also
the Ili or Gods, in Assyrian, who were seven in number! . . . They were first
born of the Mother in Space, [ When they are the Anupâdakas (Parentless)
of the Secret Doctrine. See Stanzas, i.9, Vol.i. 56.] and then the Seven
Companions passed into the sphere of time as auxiliaries of Kronus, or Sons
of the Male Parent. As Damascius says in his Primitive Principles, the
Magi consider that space and time were the source of all; and from being powers
of the air the gods were promoted to become timekeepers for men. Seven constellations
were assigned to them .. . .As the seven turned round in the ark of the sphere
they were designated the Seven Sailors’ Companions, Rishis, or Elohim.
The first “Seven Stars” are not planetary. They are the leading
stars of seven constellations which turned round with the Great Bear in describing
the circle of the year. [ These originated with the Aryans, who placed
therein their “bright-crested” (Chitra-Shikhandan) Seven Rishis.
But all this is far more Occult than appears on the surface.] These the
Assyrians called the seven Lumazi, or leaders of the flocks of stars, designated
sheep. On the Hebrew line of descent or development, these Elohim are identified
for us by the Kabalists and Gnostics, who retained the hidden wisdom or gnosis,
the clue of which is absolutely essential to any proper understanding of mythology
or theology. . . . There were two constellations with seven stars each. We
call them the Two Bears. But the seven stars of the Lesser Bear were once considered
to be the seven heads of the Polar Dragon, which we meet with - as the beast
with seven heads - in the Akkadian Hymns and in Revelation. The mythical
dragon originated in the crocodile, which is the dragon of Egypt. . .
. Now in one particular cult, the Sut-Typhonian, the first god was Sevekh [the
sevenfold], who wears the crocodile’s head, as well as the Serpent,
and who is the Dragon or whose constellation was the Dragon. . . . In Egypt
the Great Bear was the constellation of Typhon, or Kepha, the old genetrix,
called the Mother of Revolutions; and the Dragon with seven heads was assigned
to her son, Sevekh-Kronus, or Saturn, called the Dragon of Life. That is, the
typical dragon or serpent with seven heads was female at first, and then the
type was continued, as male in her son Sevekh, the Sevenfold Serpent, in Ea
the Sevenfold, . . . . Iao Chnubis, and others. We find these two in The
Book of Revelation. One is the Scarlet Lady, the mother of mystery, the
great harlot, who sat on a scarlet-coloured beast with seven heads, which is
the Red Dragon of the Pole. She held in her hand the unclean things of her fornication.
That means the emblems of the male and female, imaged by the Egyptians at the
Polar Centre, the very uterus of creation, as was indicated by the Thigh constellation,
called the Khepsh of Typhon, the old Dragon, in the northern birthplace of Time
in heaven. The two revolved about the pole of heaven, or the Tree, as
it was called, which was figured at the centre of the starry motion. In The
Book of Enoch these two constellations are identified as Leviathan and Behemoth-Bekhmut,
or the Dragon and Hippopotamus=Great Bear, and they are the primal pair that
were first created in the Garden of Eden. So that the Egyptian first (Page
196) mother, Kefa [or Kepha] whose name signifies “mystery,”
was the original of the Hebrew Chavah, our Eve; and therefore Adam is one with
Sevekh the sevenfold one, the solar dragon in whom the powers of light and darkness
were combined, and the sevenfold nature was shown in the seven rays worn by
the Gnostic Iao-Chnubis, god of the number seven, who is Sevekh by name and
a form of the first father as head of the Seven. [ Op.cit., pp.
19-22 ]
All
this gives the key to the astronomical prototype of the allegory in Genesis,
but it furnishes no other key to the mystery involved in the sevenfold glyph.
The able Egyptologist shows also that Adam himself according to Rabbinical and
Gnostic tradition, was the chief of the Seven who fell from Heaven, and he connects
these with the Patriarchs, thus agreeing with the Esoteric Teaching. For by
mystic permutation and the mystery of primeval rebirths and adjustment, the
Seven Rishis are in reality identical with the seven Prajâpatis, the fathers
and creators of mankind, and also with the Kumâras, the first sons of
Brahmâ, who refused to procreate and multiply. This apparent contradiction
is explained by the sevenfold nature - make it fourfold on metaphysical principles
and it will come to the same thing - of the celestial men, the Dhyan Chohans.
This nature is made to divide and separate; and while the higher principles
(Atma-Buddhi) of the “Creators of Men” are said to be the Spirits
of the seven constellations, their middle and lower principles are connected
with the earth and are shown.
Without
desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the Universe
and undesirous of progeny, [Vishnu Purana, Wilson’s Translation,
I, 101. The period of these Kumaras is Pre-Adamic. i.e. before the
separation of the sexes, and before humanity had received the creative, or
sacred, fire of Prometheus.]
remaining
Kaumâric (virgin and undefiled): therefore it is said they refuse to create.
For this they are cursed and sentenced to be born and reborn “Adams,”
as the Semites would say.
Meanwhile
let me quote a few lines more from Mr. G. Massey’s lecture, the fruit
of his long researches in Egyptology and other ancient lore, as it shows that
the septenary division was at one time a universal doctrine:
Adam
as the father among the Seven is identical with the Egyptians Atum, . . .
whose other name of Adon is identical with the Hebrew Adonai. In this way
the second Creation in Genesis reflects and continues the later creation
in the mythos which explains it. The Fall of Adam to the lower world led to
his being humanised on earth, by which process the celestial was turned into
the mortal, and this, which belongs to the astronomical allegory, got literalised
as the Fall of Man, or descent of the soul into matter, and the conversion
of the angelic into an earthly being . . . .
The
Father and Mother-
(Page
197) It is found in the [Babylonian] texts, when
Ea, the first father, is said to “grant forgiveness to the conspiring
gods,” for whose “redemption did he create mankind.” (Sayce;
Hib. Lec.,p. 140) . . . The Elohim, then, are the Egyptian, Akkadian,
Hebrew, and Phoenician form of the universal Seven Powers, who are Seven in
Egypt, Seven in Akkad, Babylon, Persia, India, Britain, and Seven among the
Gnostics and Kabalists. They were the Seven fathers who preceded the Father
in Heaven, because they were earlier than the individualised fatherhood on
earth . . .
When
the Elohim said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”
there were seven of them who represented the seven elements, powers, or souls
that went to the making of the human being who came into existence before
the Creator was represented anthropomorphically, or could have conferred the
human likeness on the Adamic man. It was in the sevenfold image of the Elohim
that was first created, with his seven elements, principles, or souls, [
The Secret Doctrine says that this was the second creation, nor the first,
and that it took place during the Third Race, when men separated, i.e.,
began to be born as distinct men and women. See Vol. ii. of this work, Stanzas
and Commentaries.] and therefore he could not have been formed in the
image of the one God. The seven Gnostic Elohim tried to make a man in their
own image, but could not for lack of virile power. [ This is a Western
mangling of the Indian doctrine of the Kumaras.] Thus their creation
in earth and heaven was a failure . . . because they themselves were lacking
in the soul of the fatherhood! When the Gnostic Ildabaoth, [ He was
regarded by several Gnostic sects as one with Jehovah. See Isis Unveiled,
vol ii., p.184.] chief of the Seven, cried: “I am the father and God,”
his mother Sophia [Achamoth] replied: “Do not tell lies,
Ildabaoth, for the first man (Anthropos, son of Anthropos [ Or “man,
son of man.” The Church found in this a prophecy and a confession
of Christ, the “Son of Man!”] ) is above thee.” That
is, man who had now been created in the image of the fatherhood was superior
to the gods who were derived from the Mother-Parent alone! [ See Stanza
ii., Secret Doctrine. ii.16.] For, as it had been first on earth, so
was it afterwards in heaven [the Secret Doctrine reaches the reverse];
and thus the primary gods were held to be soulless like the earliest races
of men . . . . The Gnostics taught that the Spirits of Wickedness, the inferior
Seven, derived their origin from the great Mother alone, who produced without
the fatherhood! It was in the image, then, of the sevenfold Elohim that the
seven races were formed which we sometimes hear of as the Pre-Adamite races
of men, because they were earlier than the fatherhood, which was individualised
only in the second Hebrew Creation. [ See Stanza ii.,5, Secret Doctrine.
ii.16 ]
This
shows sufficiently how the echo of the Secret Doctrine - of the Third and Fourth
Races of men, made complete by the incarnation in humanity of the Manasa Putra,
Sons of Intelligence or Wisdom - reached every corner of the globe. The Jews,
however, although they borrowed of the older nations the groundwork on which
to build their (Page
198) revelation, never had more than three keys out of the seven
in their mind, while composing their national allegories - the astronomical,
or numerical (metrology) and above all the purely anthropological, or rather
physiological key. This resulted in the most phallic religion of all, and has
now passed, part and parcel, into Christian theology, as is proved by the lengthy
quotations made from a lecture of an able Egyptologist, who can make naught
of it save astronomical myths and phallicism, as is implied by his explanations
of “fatherhood” in the allegories.
SECTION
XXII
The
“Zohar” on Creation and the Elohim
(Page
199)
THE opening sentence in Genesis, as every Hebrew scholar knows,
is:
.
Now
there are two well-known ways of rendering this line, as any other Hebrew writing:
one exoteric, as read by the orthodox Bible interpreters (Christian),
and the other Kabalistic, the latter, moreover, being divided into the Rabbinical
and the purely Kabalistic or Occult method. As in Sanskrit writing, the words
are not separated in the Hebrew, but are made to run together - especially in
the old systems. For instance, the above, divided, would read: “B’rashith
bara Elohim eth hashamayim v’eth h’areths;” and it can
be made to read thus: “B’rash ithbara Elohim ethhashamayim v’eth’arets,”
thus changing the meaning entirely. The latter means, “In the beginning
God made the heavens and the earth,” whereas the former, precluding
the idea of any beginning, would simply read that “out of the ever-existing
Essence [divine] [or out of the womb - also head - thereof] the dual
[or androgyne] Force [Gods] shaped the double heaven;” the upper and the
lower heaven being generally explained as heaven and earth. The latter word
means Esoterically the “Vehicle,” as it gives the idea of an empty
globe, within which the manifestation of the world takes place. Now, according
to the rules of Occult symbolical reading as established in the old Sepher
Jetzirah (in the Chaldaean Book of Numbers) [ The Sepher
Jetzirah now known is but a portion of the original one incorporated in
the Chaldean Book of Numbers. The fragment now in possession of the Western
Kabalists is one greatly tampered with by the Rabbis of the Middle Ages, as
its masoretic points show. The “Masorah” scheme is a modern
blind, dating after our era and perfected in Tiberias. (See Isis Unveiled.
vol. ii. pp. 430-431.) ] the initial fourteen letters (or “B’rasitb’
raalaim”) are in themselves quite sufficient to explain the theory of
“creation” without any further explanation (Page
200)
or qualification. Every letter of them is a sentence; and, placed side
by side with the hieroglyphic or pictorial initial version of “creation”
in the Book of Dzyan, the origin of the Phoenician and Jewish letters
would soon be found out. A whole volume of explanations would give no more to
the student of primitive Occult Symbology than this: the head of a bull within
a circle, a straight horizontal line, a circle or sphere, then another one with
three dots in it, a triangle, then the Svastika (or Jaina cross); after these
come an equilateral triangle within a circle, seven small bulls’ heads
standing in three rows, one over the other; a black round dot (an opening),
and then seven lines, meaning Chaos or Water (feminine).
Anyone
acquainted with the symbolical and numerical value of the Hebrew letters will
see at a glance that this glyph and the letters of “B’rasitb’
raalaim” are identical in meaning. “Beth” is “abode”
or “region;” “Resh,” a “circle” of “head;”
“Aleph,” “bull” (the symbol of generative or creative
power); [ In the oldest symbolism - that used in the Egyptian hieroglyphics
- when the bull’s head only is found it means the Deity, the Perfect Circle,
with the procreative power latent in it. When the whole bull is represented,
a solar God, a personal deity is meant, for it is then the symbol of
the acting generative power.] “Shin,” a “tooth”
(300 exoterically - a trident or three in one in its Occult meaning);
“Jodh,” the perfect unity or “one” ; [ It took
three Root-Races to degrade the symbol of the One Abstract Unity manifested
in Nature as a Ray emanating from infinity (the Circle) into a phallic symbol
of generation, as it was even in the Kabalah. This degradation began
with the Fourth Race, and had its raison d’etre in Polytheism,
as the latter was invented to screen the One Universal Deity from profanation.
The Christians may plead ignorance of its meaning as an excuse for its acceptance.
But why sing never-ceasing laudations to the Mosaic Jews who repudiated all
the other Gods, preserved the most phallic, and then most impudently proclaimed
themselves Monotheists? Jesus ever steadily ignored Jehovah. He went against
the Mosaic commandments. He recognized his Heavenly Father alone, and prohibited
public worship.] “Tau,” the “root” or “foundation”
(the same as the cross with the Egyptians and Aryans): again, “Beth,”
“Resh,” and “Aleph.” Then “Aleph,” or seven
bulls for the seven Alaim: an ox-goad, “Lamedh,” active procreation;
“He,” the “opening” or “matrix:” “Yodh,”
the organ of procreation; and “Mem,” “water” or “chaos,”
the female Power near the male that precedes it.
The
most satisfactory and scientific exoteric rendering of the opening sentence
of Genesis - on which was hung in blind faith the whole Christian religion,
synthesized by its fundamental dogmas - is undeniably the one given in the Appendix
to The Source of Measures by Mr. Ralston Skinner. He gives, and we must
admit in the ablest, clearest, and most scientific way, the numerical reading
of this first sentence and chapter in Genesis.
Angels
as Builders- (Page
201) By the means of number 31, or the word “El” (1 for
Aleph” and 30 for “Lamedh”), and other numerical Bible
symbols, compared with the measures used in the great pyramid of Egypt,
he shows the perfect identity between its measurements - inches, cubits, and
plan - and the numerical values of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and the
Patriarchs. In short, the author shows that the pyramid contains in itself architecturally
the whole of Genesis, and discloses the astronomical, and even the physiological,
secrets in its symbols and glyphs; yet he will not admit, it would seem, the
psycho-cosmical and spiritual mysteries involved in these. Nor does the author
apparently see that the root of all this has to be sought in the archaic legends
and the Pantheon of India. [ Is it everything to have found out that
the celestial circle of 360 degrees is determined by “the full word-form
of Elohim,” and that this yields, when the word is placed in a circle,
“3'1415, or the relation of circumference to a diameter of one.”
This is only its astronomical or mathematical aspect. To know the full septenary
significance of the “Primordial Circle,” the pyramid and the Kabalistic
Bible must be read in the light of the figure on which the temples of
India are built. The mathematical squaring of the circle is only the terrestrial
résumé of the problem. The Jews were content with the six
days of activity and the seventh of rest. The progenitors of mankind solved
the greatest problem of the Universe with their seven Rays or Rishis.]
Failing this, whither does his great and admirable labour lead him? Not further
than to find out that Adam, the earth, and Moses of Jehovah “are the same”
- or to the a-b-c of comparative Occult Symbology - and that the days in Genesis
being “circles” “displayed by the Hebrews as squares,”
the result of the sixth-day’s labour culminates in the fructifying principle.
Thus the Bible is made to yield Phallicism, and that alone.
Nor
- read in this light, and as its Hebrew texts are interpreted by Western scholars
- can it ever yield anything higher or more sublime than such phallic elements,
the root and the corner-stone of its dead-letter meaning. Anthropomorphism and
Revelation dig the impassable chasm between the material world and the ultimate
spiritual truths. That creation is not thus described in the Esoteric Doctrine
is easily shown. The Roman Catholics give a reading far more approaching the
true Esoteric meaning than that of the Protestant. For several of their saints
and doctors admit that the formation of heaven and earth of the celestial bodies,
etc., belongs to the work of the “Seven Angels of the Presence.”
St. Denys calls the “Builders” “the coöperators of God,”
and St. Augustine goes even farther, and credits the Angels with the possession
of the divine thought, the prototype, as he says, of everything created.[
Genesis begins with the third stage of “creation,” skipping
the preliminary two.] And, finally, St. Thomas Aquinas has a long (Page
202) dissertation upon this topic, calling God the primary, and the
Angels the secondary, cause of all visible effects. In this, with some dogmatic
differences of form, the “Angelic Doctor” approaches very nearly
the Gnostic ideas. Basilides speaks of the lowest order of Angels as the Builders
of our material world, and Saturnilus held, as did the Sabaeans, that the Seven
Angels who preside over the planets are the real creators of the world; the
Kabalist-monk, Trithemius, in his De Secundis Deis, taught the same.
The
eternal Kosmos, the Macrocosm, is divided in the Secret Doctrine,
like man, the Microcosm, into three Principles and four Vehicles, [ The
three root-principles are, exoterically: Man, Soul, and Spirit (meaning
by “man” the intelligent personality), and esoterically: Life, Soul,
and Spirit: the four vehicles are Body, Astral double, Animal (or human) Soul,
and Divine Soul (Sthula-Sharira, Linga-Sharira, Kâma-rûpa, and Buddhi,
the vehicle of Atma or Spirit). Or, to make it still clearer: (1) the seventh
Principle has for its vehicle the Sixth (Buddhi): (2) the vehicle of Manas is
Kâma-rûpa; (3) that of Jiva or Prana (life) is the Linga-Sharira
(the “double” of man: the Linga-Sharira proper can never leave the
body till death; that which appears is an astral body, reflecting the physical
body and serving as a vehicle for the human soul, or intelligence); and (4)
the Body, the physical vehicle of all the above collectively. The Occultist
recognizes the same order as existing for the cosmical totality, the psycho-cosmical
Universe.] which in their collectivity are the seven Principles. In the
Chaldaean of Jewish Kabalah, the Kosmos is divided into seven worlds:
the Original, the Intelligible, the Celestial, the Elementary, the Lesser (Astral),
the Infernal (Kâma-loka or Hades), and the Temporal (of man). In the Chaldaean
system it is in the Intelligible World, the second, that appear the “Seven
Angels of the Presence,” or the Sephiroth (the three higher ones being,
in fact, one, and also the sum total of all). They are also the “Builders”
of the Eastern Doctrine: and it is only in the third, the celestial world, that
the seven planets and our solar system are built by the seven Planetary Angels,
the planets becoming their visible bodies. Hence - as correctly stated - if
the universe as a whole is formed out of the Eternal One Substance or
Essence, it is not that everlasting Essence, the Absolute Deity, that builds
it into shape; this is done by the first Rays, the Angels or Dhyân Chohans,
that emanate from the One Element, which becoming periodically Light and Darkness,
remains eternally, in its Root-Principle, the one unknown, yet existing Reality.
A
learned Western Kabalist. Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, whose reasoning and conclusions
will be the more above suspicion since he is untrained in Eastern Philosophy
and unacquainted with its Secret Teachings, writes on the first verse of Genesis
in an unpublished essay:
Berashith
Bara Elohim - “in the beginning the Elohim created!” Who are
these Elohim of Genesis?
Who
are the Elohim?
(Page
203) Va-Vivra Elohim Ath Ha-Adam Be-Tzalmo, Be-Tzelem
Elohim Bara Otho. Zakhar Vingebah Bara Otham - “And the Elohim created
the Adam in Their own Image, in the Image of the Elohim created They them,
Male and Female created They them!” Who are they, the Elohim? The ordinary
English translation of the Bible renders the word Elohim by “God:”
it translates a plural noun by a singular one. The only excuse
brought forward for this is the somewhat lame one that the word is certainly
plural, but is not to be used in a plural sense: that it is “a plural
denoting excellence.” But this is only an assumption whose value may
be justly gauged by Genesis i. 26, translated in the orthodox Biblical
version thus: “And God [Elohim] said, ‘Let us make man in our
own image, after our likeness.’” Here is a distinct admission
of the fact that “Elohim” is not a “plural of excellence,”
but a plural noun denoting more than one being. [ St. Denys, the Areopagite,
the supposed contemporary of St. Paul, his co-disciple, and first Bishop of
St. Denis, near Paris, teaches that the bulk of the “work of creation”
was performed by the “Seven Spirits of the Presence” -
God’s co-operators, owing to a participation of the divinity
in them. (Hierarch., p.196) And St. Augustine also thinks that “things
were rather created in the angelic minds than in Nature, that is to say, that
the angels perceived and knew them (all things) in their thoughts before they
could spring forth into actual existence.” (Vid De Genesis ad Litteram
p.11.) (Summarized from De Mirville. Vol.II., pp. 337-338.) Thus the early
Christian Fathers, even a non-initiate like St-Augustine, ascribed the creation
of the visible world to Angels, or Secondary Powers, while St. Denys not only
specifies these as the “Seven Spirits of the Presence,”
but shows them owing their power to the informing divine energy - Fohat in
the Secret Doctrine. But the egotistical darkness which caused the Western
races to cling so desperately to the Geo-centric System, made them
also neglect and despise all those fragments of the true Religion which would
have deprived them and the little globe they took for the centre of the Universe
of the signal honour of having been expressly “created” by the
One, Secondless, Infinite God! ]
What,
then, is the proper translation of “Elohim,” and to whom is it
referable? “Elohim” is not only a plural, but a feminine plural!
And yet the translators of the Bible have rendered it by a masculine
singular! Elohim is the plural of the feminine noun El-h, for the final
letter, -h, marks the gender. It, however, instead of forming the plural in
-oth, takes the usual termination of the masculine plural, which is -im.
Although
in the great majority of cases the nouns of both genders take the terminations
appropriated to them respectively, there are yet many masculines which form
the plural in -oth, as well as feminine which form it in -im while some nouns
of each gender take alternately both. It must be observed, however, that the
termination of the plural does not affect its gender, which remains the same
as in the singular . . .
To
find the real meaning of the symbolism involved in this word Elohim we must
go to that key of Jewish Esoteric Doctrine, the little-known and less-understood
Kabalah. There we shall find that this word represents two united masculine
and feminine Potencies, co-equal and co-eternal, conjoined in everlasting
union for the maintenance of the Universe - the great Father and Mother of
Nature, into whom the Eternal One conforms himself before the Universe can
subsist. For the teaching of the Kabalah is that before the Deity conformed
himself thus - i.e., as (Page
204) male and female - the Worlds of the Universe could not subsist;
or in the words of Genesis, that “the earth was formless and
void.” Thus, then, is the conformation of the Elohim, the end of the
Formless and the Void and the Darkness, for only after conformation can the
Ruach Elohim - the “Spirit of the Elohim” - vibrate upon
the countenance of the Waters. But this is a very small part of the information
which the Initiate can derive from the Kabalah concerning this word
Elohim.
Attention
must here be called to the confusion - if not worse - which reigns in the Western
interpretations of the Kabalah. The eternal One is said to conform
himself into two: the Great Father and Mother of Nature. To begin with, it is
a horribly anthropomorphic conception to apply terms implying sexual distinction
to the earliest and first differentiations of the One. And it is even more erroneous
to identify these first differentiations - the Purusha and Prakriti of Indian
Philosophy - with the Elohim, the creative powers here spoken of; and to ascribe
to these (to our intellects) unimaginable abstractions, the formation and construction
of this visible world, full of pain, sin, and sorrow. In truth, the “creation
by the Elohim” spoken of here is but a much later “creation,”
and the Elohim, far from being supreme, or even exalted powers in Nature, are
only lower Angels. This was the teaching of the Gnostics, the most philosophical
of all the early Christian Churches. They taught that the imperfections of the
world were due to the imperfection of its Architects or Builders - the imperfect,
and therefore inferior, Angels. The Hebrew Elohim correspond to the Prajâpati
of the Hindus, and it is shown elsewhere from the Esoteric interpretation of the
Purânas that the Prajâpati were the fashioners of man’s material
and astral form only: that they could not give him intelligence or reason,
and therefore in symbolical language they “failed to create man.”
But, not to repeat what the reader can find elsewhere in this work, his attention
needs only to be called to the fact that “creation” in this passage
is not the Primary Creation, and that the Elohim are not “God,”
nor even the higher Planetary Spirits, but the Architects of this visible physical
planet and of man’s material body, or encasement.
A
fundamental doctrine of the Kabalah is that the gradual development
of the Deity from negative to positive Existence is symbolized by the gradual
development of the Ten Numbers of the denary scale of numeration, from the
Zero, through the Unity, into the plurality. This is the doctrine of the Sephiroth,
or Emanations.
For
the inward and concealed Negative Form concentrates a centre which is the
primal Unity. But the Unity is one and indivisible: it can neither be increased
by multiplication nor decreased by division, for 1x1=1, and no more; and 1
divided by1 = 1, and no less. And it is this changelessness of the Unity or
Monad, which makes it a fitting type of the One and Changeless Deity. It answers
thus to the Christian idea of God the Father, for as the Unity is the parent
of the other numbers, so is the Deity the Father of All.
Monad,
Duad, and Triad- (Page
205) The philosophical Eastern mind would never fall into the error
which the connotation of these words implies. With them the “One
and Changeless” - Parabrahman - the Absolute All and One, cannot be conceived
as standing in any relation to things finite and conditioned, and hence
they would never use such terms as these, which in their very essence imply
such a relation. Do they, then, absolutely sever man from God? On the contrary.
They feel a closer union than the Western mind has done in calling God the “Father
of All,” for they know that in his immortal essence man is himself
the Changeless, Secondless One.
But
we have just said that the Unity is one and changeless by either multiplication
or division; how then is two, the Duad, formed? By reflection. For, unlike
Zero, the Unity is partly definable - that is, in its positive aspect; and
the definition creates an Eikon or Eidolon of itself which, together with
itself, forms a Duad; and thus the number two is to a certain extent analogous
to the Christian idea of the Son as the Second Person. And as the Monad vibrates,
and recoils into the Darkness of the Primary Thought, so is the Duad left
as its vice-gerent and representative, and thus co-equal and co-eternal with
the Duad in the bosom of the Unity, yet, as it were, proceeding therefrom
in the numerical conception of its sequence.
This
explanation would seem to imply that Mr. Mathers is aware that this “creation”
is not the truly divine or primary one, since the Monad - the first manifestation
on our plane of objectivity - “recoils into the Darkness of the
Primal Thought,” i.e., into the subjectivity of the first divine
Creation.
And
this, again, also partly answers to the Christian idea of the Holy Ghost,
and of the whole three forming a Trinity in unity. This also explains the
fact in geometry of the three right lines being the smallest number which
will make a plane rectilineal figure, while two can never enclose a space,
being powerless and without effect till completed by the number Three. These
three first numbers of the decimal scale the Qabalists call by the names of
Kether, the Crown, Chokmah, Wisdom, and Binah, Understanding; and they furthermore
associate with them these divine names: with the Unity, Eheich, “I exist;”
with the Duad, Yah; and with the Triad, Elohim; they especially also call
the Duad, Abba - the Father and the Triad, Aima - the Mother, whose eternal
conjunction is symbolized in the word Elohim.
But
what especially strikes the student of the Kabalah is the malicious
persistency
(Page 206) with which the translators of the Bible have
jealously crowded out of sight and suppressed every reference to the feminine
form of the Deity. They have, as we have just seen, translated the feminine
plural “Elohim,” by the masculine singular, “God.”
But they have done more than this: they have carefully hidden the fact that
the word Ruach - the “Spirit” - is feminine, and that consequently
the Holy Ghost of the New Testament is a feminine Potency. How many
Christians are cognizant of the fact that in the account of the Incarnation
in Luke (i.35) two divine Potencies are mentioned?
“The
Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the Power of the Highest shall overshadow
thee.” The Holy Ghost (the feminine Potency) descends, and the Power
of the Highest (the masculine Potency) is united therewith. “Therefore
also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of
God” - of the Elohim namely, seeing that these two Potencies descend.
In
the Sepher Yetzirah, or Book of Formation, we read:
“One
is She the Ruach Elohim Chum - (Spirit of the Living Elohim). . . . Voice,
Spirit, and Word; and this is She, the Spirit of the Holy One.” Here
again we see the intimate connection which exists between the Holy Spirit
and the Elohim. Furthermore, farther on in this same Book of Formation
- which is be it remembered, one of the oldest of the Kabalistical Books,
and whose authorship is ascribed to Abraham the Patriarch - we shall find
the idea of a Feminine Trinity in the first place, from whom a masculine Trinity
proceeds; or as it is said in the text: “Three Mothers whence proceed
three Fathers.” And yet this double Triad forms, as it were, but one
complete Trinity. Again it is worthy of note that the Second and Third Sephiroth
(Wisdom and Understanding) are both distinguished by feminine names, Chokmah
and Binah, notwithstanding that to the former more particularly the masculine
idea, and to the latter the feminine, are attributed, under the titles of
Abba and Aima (or Father and Mother). This Aima (the Great Mother) is magnificently
symbolized in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, which is undoubtedly
one of the most Kabalistical books in the Bible. In fact, without the
Kabalistical keys its meaning is utterly unintelligible.
Now,
in the Hebrew, as in the Greek, alphabet, there are no distinct numeral characters,
and consequently each letter has a certain numerical value attached to it.
From this circumstance results the important fact that every Hebrew word constitutes
a number, and every number a word. This is referred to in the Revelations
(xiii. 18) in mentioning the “number of the beast”! In the Kabalah
words of equal numerical values are supposed to have a certain explanatory
connection with each other. This forms the science of Gematria, which is the
first division of the Literal Kabalah. Furthermore, each letter of
the Hebrew alphabet had for the Initiates of the Kabalah a certain
hieroglyphical value and meaning which, rightly applied, gave to each word
the value of a mystical sentence; and this again was variable according to
the relative positions of the letters with regard to each other. From these
various Kabalistical points of view let us now examine this word Elohim.
First
then we can divide the word into the two words, which signify “The Feminine
Divinity of the Waters;” compare with the Greek Aphrodite, “sprung
from the foam of the sea.”
The
Creative Gods
(Page
207) Again it is divisive into the “Mighty One, Star of the
Sea,” or “the Mighty One breathing forth the Spirit upon the Waters.”
Also by combination of the letters we get “the Silent Power of Iah.”
And again, “My God, the Former of the Universe,” for Mah
is a secret Kabalistical name applied to the idea of Formation. Also we obtain
“Who is my God.” Furthermore “the Mother in Iah.”
The
total number is 1+30+5+10+40=86 “Violent heat,” or “the
Power of Fire.” If we add together the three middle letters we obtain
45, and the first the last letter yield 41, making thus “the Mother
of Formation.” Lastly, we shall find the two divine names “El”
and “Yah,” together with the letter m, which signifies
“Water,” for Mem, the name of this letter, means “water.”
If
we divide it into its component letters and take them as hieroglyphical signs
we shall have:
“Will
perfected through Sacrifice progressing through successive Transformation
by Inspiration.”
The
last few paragraphs of the above, in which the word “Elohim” is Kabalistically
analysed, show conclusively enough that the Elohim are not one, nor two, nor even
a trinity, but a Host - the army of the creative powers.
The
Christian Church, in making of Jehovah - one of these very Elohim - the one
Supreme God, has introduced hopeless confusion into the celestial hierarchy,
in spite of the volumes written by Thomas Aquinas and his school on the subject.
The only explanation to be found in all their treatises on the nature and essence
of the numberless classes of celestial beings mentioned in the Bible
- Archangels, Thrones, Seraphim, Cherubim, Messengers, etc. - is that “The
angelic host is God’s militia.” They are “Gods the creatures,”
while he is “God the Creator,” but of their true functions
- of their actual place in the economy of Nature - not one word is said. They
are
More
brilliant than the flames, more rapid than the wind, and they live in love
and harmony, mutually enlightening each other, feeding on bread and a mystic
beverage - the communion wine and water? - surrounding as with a river
of fire the throne of the Lamb, and veiling their faces with their wings.
This throne of love and glory they leave only to carry to the stars, the earth,
the kingdoms and all the sons of God, their brothers and pupils, in short,
to all creatures like themselves the divine influence. . . . As to
their number, it is that of the great army of Heaven (Sabaoth), more numerous
than the stars . . . . Theology shows us these rational luminaries, each constituting
a species, and containing in their natures such or another position of Nature
covering immense space, though of a determined area; residing - incorporeal
though they are - within circumscribed limits; . . . . more rapid than light
or thunderbolt, disposing of all the elements of Nature, providing at will
inexplicable mirages [illusions?], objective and subjective (Page
208) in turn, speaking to men a language at one time articulate,
at another purely spiritual. [ De Mirville, ii. 295.]
We
learn farther on in the same work that it is these Angels and their hosts who
are referred to in the sentence of verse I, chapter ii. of Genesis: Igitur
perfecti sunt coeli et terra et omnis ornatus eorum:” and that the Vulgate
has peremptorily substituted for the Hebrew word “tsaba” (“host”
that of “ornament;” Munck shows the mistake of substitution and
the derivation of the compound title, “Tsabaoth-Elohim,” from “tsaba.”
Moreover, Cornelius a Lapide, “the master of all Biblical commentators,”
says de Mirville, shows us that such was the real meaning. Those Angels are
stars.
All
this, however, teaches us very little as to the true functions of this celestial
army, and nothing at all as to its place in evolution and its relation to the
earth we live on. For an answer to the question. “Who are the true Creators?”
we must go to the Esoteric Doctrine, since there only can the key be found which
will render intelligible the Theogonies of the various world-religions.
There
we find that the real creator of the Kosmos, as of all visible Nature - if not
of all the invisible hosts of Spirits not yet drawn into the “Cycle of
Necessity,” or evolution - is “the Lord - the Gods,” or the
“Working Host,” the “Army” collectively taken, the “One
in many.”
The
One is infinite and unconditioned. It cannot create, for It can have to relation
to the finite and conditioned. If everything we see, from the glorious suns
and planets down to the blades of grass and the specks of dust, had been created
by the Absolute Perfection and were the direct work of even the First Energy
that proceeded from It, [ To the Occultists and Chela the difference
made between Energy and Emanation need not be explained. The Sanskrit
word “Sakti” is untranslatable. It may be Energy, but it is one
that proceeds through itself, not being due to the active or conscious will
of the one that produces it. The “First-Born,” or Logos, is not
an Emanation, but an Energy inherent in and co-eternal with Parabrahman, the
One. The Zohar speaks of emanations, but reserves the word for the seven
Sephiroth emanated from the first three - which form one triad - Kether, Chokmah,
and Binah. As for these three, it explains the difference by calling them “immanations,”
something inherent to and coeval with the subject postulated, or in other words,”
“Energies.”
It
is these “Auxiliaries,” the Auphanim, the half human Prajâpatis,
the Angels, the Architects under the leadership of the “Angel of the Great
Council,” with the rest of the Kosmos-Builders of other nations, that
can alone explain the imperfection of the Universe. This imperfection is one
of the arguments of the Secret Science in favour of the existence and activity
of these “Powers.” And who know better than the few philosophers
of our civilised lands how near the truth Philo was in ascribing the origin
of evil to the admixture of inferior potencies in the arrangement of matter,
and even in the formation of man - a task entrusted to the divine Logos.] then
every such thing would have been perfect, eternal, and unconditioned like its
author.
God
the Host- (Page
209) The millions upon millions of imperfect works found in Nature
testify loudly that they are the products of finite, conditioned beings - though
the latter were and are Dhyân Chohans, Archangels, or whatever else they
may be named. In short, these imperfect works are the unfinished production
of evolution, under the guidance of the imperfect Gods. The Zohar gives
us this assurance as well as the Secret Doctrine. It speaks of the auxiliaries
of the “Ancient of Days,” the “Sacred Aged,” and calls
them Auphanim, or the living Wheels of the celestial orbs, who participate in
the work of the creation of the Universe.
Thus
it is not the “Principle,” One and Unconditioned, nor even Its reflection,
that creates, but only the “Seven Gods” who fashion the Universe
out of the eternal Matter, vivified into objective life by the reflection into
it of the One Reality.
The
Creator is they - “God the Host” - called in the Secret Doctrine
the Dhyan Chohans; with the Hindus the Prajâpatis; with the Western Kabalists
the Sephiroth; and with the Buddhist the Devas - impersonal because blind forces.
They are the Amshaspends with the Zoroastrians, and while with the Christian
Mystic the “Creator” is the “Gods of the God,” with
the dogmatic Churchman he is the “God of the Gods,” the “Lord
of lords,” etc.
“Jehovah”
is only the God who is greater than all Gods in the eyes of Israel.
I
know, that the lord [of Israel] is great and that our Lord is above all gods.[
Psalms cxxxv. 5.]
And
again:
For
all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.
[Psalms xcvi.5.]
The
Egyptian Neteroo, translated by Champollion “the other Gods,”
are the Elohim of the Biblical writers, behind which stands concealed the One
God, considered in the diversity of his powers. [ Rather as Ormazd or
Ahura-Mazda, Vit-nam-Ahmi, and all the unmanifested Logoi. Jehovah is the manifested
Virâj, corresponding to Binah, the third Sephira in the Kabalah,
a female Power which would find its prototype rather in the Prajâpati,
than in Brahma, the Creator.] This One is not Parabrahman, but the Unmanifested
Logos, the Demiurgos, the real Creator or Fashioner, that follows him, standing
for the Demiurgi collectively taken. Further on the great Egyptologist adds:
We
see Egypt concealing and hiding, so to say, the God of Gods behind
the agents she surrounds him with ; she gives the precedence to her
great gods before the one (Page
210) and sole Deity, so that the attributes of that God become
their property. Those great Gods proclaim themselves uncreate . . . . Neith
is ‘that which is ,” as Jehovah; [ Neith is Aditi,
evidently.] Thoth is self-created [ The Self-created Logos,
Narâyana, Purushottama, and others.] without having been begotten, etc.
Judaism annihilating these potencies before the grandeur of its God, they
cease to be simply Powers, like Philo’s Archangels, like the Sephiroth
of the Kabalah, like the Ogdoades of the Gnostics - they merge together
and become transformed into God himself. [ Mère d'Apis.
pp. 32-35. Quoted by De Mirville.]
Jehovah
is thus, as the Kabalah teaches, at best but the “Heavenly Man,”
Adam Kadmon, used by the self-created Spirit, the Logos, as a chariot, a vehicle
in His descent towards manifestation in the phenomenal world.
Such
are the teachings of the Archaic Wisdom, nor can they be repudiated even by
the orthodox Christian, if he be sincere and open-minded in the study of his
own Scripture. For if he reads St. Paul’s Epistles carefully he
will find that the Secret Doctrine and the Kabalah are fully admitted
by the “Apostle of the Gentiles.” The Gnosis which he appears to
condemn is no less for him than for Plato “the supreme knowledge of the
truth and of the One Being;” [ See Republic. I. vi.]
for what St. Paul condemns is not the true, but only the false, Gnosis and its
abuses: otherwise how could he use the language of a Platonist pur sang?
The Ideas, types (Archai), of the Greek Philosopher; the Intelligences of Pythagoras;
the Aeons or Emanations of the Pantheist; the Logos or Word, Chief of these
intelligences; the Sophia or Wisdom; the Demiurgos, the Builder of the world
under the direction of the Father, the Unmanifested Logos, from which He emanates;
Ain-Suph, the Unknown of the Infinite; the angelic Periods; the Seven
Spirits who are the representatives of the Seven of all the older cosmogonies
- are all to be found in his writings, recognized by the Church as canonical
and divinely inspired. Therein, too, may be recognized the Depths of Ahriman,
Rector of this our World, the “God of this World;” the Pleroma of
the Intelligences; the Archontes of the air; the Principalities, the Kabalistic
Metatron; and they can easily be identified again in the Roman Catholic writers
when read in the original Greek and Latin texts, English translations giving
but a very poor idea of the real contents of these.
SECTION
XXIII
What
the Occultists and Kabalists Have to Say
(Page
211) THE Zohar, an unfathomable store of hidden wisdom and
mystery, is very often appealed to by Roman Catholic writers. A very learned
Rabbi, now the Chevalier Drach, having been converted to Roman Catholicism,
and being a great Hebraist, thought fit to step into the shoes of Picus de Mirando
and John Reuchlin, and to assure his new co-religionists that the Zohar
contained in it pretty nearly all the dogmas of Catholicism. It is not our province
to show here how far he has succeeded or failed; only to bring one instance
of his explanations and preface it with the following.
The
Zohar, is already shown, is not a genuine production of the Hebrew mind.
It is the repository and compendium of the oldest doctrine of the East transmitted
orally at first, and then written down in independent treatises during the Captivity
at Babylon, and finally brought together by Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, toward
the beginning of the Christian era. As Mosaic cosmogony was born under a new
form in Mesopotamian countries, so the Zohar was a vehicle in which were
focussed rays from the light of Universal Wisdom. Whatever likenesses are found
between it and the Christian teachings, the compilers of the Zohar never
had Christ in their minds. Were it otherwise there would not be one single Jew
of the Mosaic law left in the world by this time. Again, if one is to accept
literally what the Zohar says, then any religion under the sun may find
corroboration in its symbols and allegorical sayings; and this, simply because
this work is the echo of the primitive truths, and every creed is founded on
some of these; the Zohar being but a veil of the Secret Doctrine. This
is so evident that we have only to point to the said ex-Rabbi, the Chevalier
Drach, to prove the fact.
(Page
212)
In Part III, fol. 87 (col. 346th) the Zohar treats of the
Spirit guiding the Sun, its Rector, explaining that it is not the Sun itself
that is meant thereby, but the Spirit “on, or under” the
Sun. Drach is anxious to show that it was Christ who was meant by that “Sun,”
or the Solar Spirit therein. In his comment upon that passage which refers to
the Solar Spirit as “that stone which the builders rejected,” he
asserts most positively that this
Sun-stone (pierre soleil) is identical with Christ, who was that stone,
and
that therefore
The
sun is undeniably (sans contredit) the second hypostasis of the Deity,
[Harmonie entre l’Eglise et la Synagogue. t. 11., p.427
by the Chevalier Drach. See de Mirville.] or Christ.
If
this be true, then the Vaidic or pre-Vaidic Aryans, Chaldaeans and Egyptians,
like all Occultists past, present, and future, Jews included, have been Christians
from all eternity. If this be not so, then modern Church Christianity is Paganism
pure and simple exoterically, and transcendental and practical Magic or Occultism,
Esoterically.
For
this “stone” has a manifold significance, a dual existence, with
gradations, a regular progression and retrogression. It is a “mystery”
indeed.
The
Occultists are quite ready to agree with St. Chrystostom, that the infidels
- the profane, rather -
Being
blinded by sun-light, thus lose sight of the true Sun in the contemplation
of the false one.
But
if that Saint, and along with him now the Hebraist Drach, chose to see in the
Zohar and the Kabalistic Sun “ the second hypostasis,”
this is no reason why all others should be blinded by them. The mystery of the
Sun is the grandest perhaps, of all the innumerable mysteries of Occultism.
A Gordian knot, truly, but one that cannot be severed with the double-edged
sword of scholastic casuistry. It is a true deo dignus vindice nodus,
and can be untied only by the Gods. The meaning of this is plain, and
every Kabalist will understand it.
Contra
solem ne loquaris was not said by Pythagoras with regard to the visible
Sun. It was the “Sun of Initiation” that was meant, in its triple
form - two of which are the “Day-Sun” and the “Night-Sun.”
If
behind the physical luminary there were no mystery that people sensed instinctively,
why should every nation, from the primitive peoples down to the Parsis of today,
have turned towards the Sun during prayers?
The
Mystery of the Sun- (Page
213) The Solar Trinity is not Mazdean, but is universal, and is as
old as man . All the temples in Antiquity were invariably made to face the Sun,
their portals to open to the East. See the old temples of Memphis and Baalbec,
the Pyramids of the Old and of the New (?) Worlds, the Round Towers of Ireland,
and the Serapeum of Egypt. The Initiates alone could give a philosophical explanation
of this, and a reason for it - its mysticism notwithstanding - were only the
world ready to receive it, which, alas! it is not. The last of the Solar Priests
in Europe was the Imperial Initiate, Julian, now called the Apostate. [
Julian died for the same crime as Socrates. Both divulged a portion of the solar
mystery, the heliocentric system being only a part of what was given during
Initiation - one consciously, the other unconsciously, the Greek Sage never
having been initiated. It was not the real solar system that was preserved in
such secrecy, but the mysteries connected with the Sun’s constitution.
Socrates was sentenced to death by earthly and worldly judges: Julian died a
violent death because the hitherto protecting hand was withdrawn from him, and,
no longer shielded by it, he was simply left to his destiny or Karma. For the
student of Occultism there is a suggestive difference between the two kinds
of death. Another memorable instance of the unconscious divulging of secrets
pertain to mysteries is that of the poet, P. Ovidius Naso, who, like Socrates,
had not been initiated. In his case, the Emperor Augustus, who was an Initiate,
mercifully changed the penalty of death into banishment to Tomos on the Euxine.
This sudden change from unbounded royal favour to banishment has been a fruitful
scheme of speculation to classical scholars not initiated into the Mysteries.
They have quoted Ovid’s own lines to show that it was some great and heinous
immorality of the Emperor of which Ovid had become unwillingly cognizant. The
inexorable law of the death penalty always following upon the revelation of
any portion of the Mysteries to the profane, was unknown to them. Instead of
seeing the amiable and merciful act of the Emperor in its true light, they have
made it an occasion for traducing his moral character. The poet’s own
words can be no evidence, because as he was not an Initiate, it could not be
explained to him in what his offence consisted. There have been comparatively
modern instances of poets unconsciously revealing in their verses so much of
the hidden knowledge as to make even Initiates suppose them to be fellow-Initiates,
and come to talk to them on the subject. This only shows that the sensitive
poetic temperament is sometimes so far transported beyond the bounds of ordinary
sense as to get glimpses into what has been impressed on the Astral Light. In
the Light of Asia there are two passages that might make an Initiate
of the first degree think that Mr. Edwin Arnold had been initiated himself in
the Himalyan ashrams, but this is not so.] He tried to benefit
the world by revealing at least a portion of the great mystery of the τρεπλασος
and - he died. “There are three in one,” he said of the
Sun - the central Sun [ A proof that Julian was acquainted with the heliocentric
system.] being a precaution of Nature: the first is the universal cause
of all, Sovereign Good and perfection; the Second Power is paramount Intelligence,
having dominion over all reasonable beings, νοεροις;the
third is the visible Sun. The pure energy of solar intelligence proceeds from
the luminous seat occupied by our Sun in the centre of heaven, that pure energy
being the Logos of our system; the “Mysterious Word Spirit produces all
through the Sun, and never operates through any other medium,” says Hermes
Trismegistus. For it is in the Sun, more than in any other heavenly body
that the [unknown] Power placed the (Page
214) seat of its habitation. Only neither Hermes Trismegistus nor
Julian an initiated Occultist, nor any other, meant by this Unknown Cause Jehovah,
or Jupiter. They referred to the cause that produced all the manifested “great
Gods” or Demiurgi (the Hebrew God included) of our system. Nor was our
visible, material Sun meant, for the latter was only the manifested symbol.
Philolaus the Pythagorean, explains and completes Trismegistus by saying:
The
Sun is a mirror of fire, the splendour of whose flames by their reflection
in that mirror [the Sun] is poured upon us, and that splendour we call image.
It
is evident that Philolaus referred to the central spiritual Sun, whose beams
and effulgence are only mirrored by our central Star, the Sun. This is as clear
to the Occultists as it was to the Pythagoreans. As for the profane of pagan
antiquity, it was, of course, the physical Sun that was the “highest God”
for them, as it seems - if Chevalier Drach’s view be accepted - to have
now virtually become for the modern Roman Catholics. If words mean anything,
the statements made by the Chevalier Drach that “this sun is, undeniably,
the second hypostasis of the Deity,” imply what we say; as “this
Sun” refers to the Kabalistic Sun, and “hypostasis” means
substance or subsistence of the Godhead or Trinity - distinctly personal. As
the author, being an ex-Rabbi, thoroughly versed in Hebrew, and in the mysteries
of the Zohar, ought to know the value of words; and as, moreover, in
writing this, he was bent upon reconciling “the seeming contradictions,”
as he puts it, between Judaism and Christianity - the fact becomes quite evident.
But
all this pertains to questions and problems which will be solved naturally and
in the course of the development of the doctrine. The Roman Catholic Church
stands accused, not of worshipping under other names the Divine Beings worshipped
by all nations in Antiquity, but of declaring idolatrous, not only the Pagans
ancient and modern, but every Christian nation that has freed itself from the
Roman yoke. The accusation brought against herself by more than one man of Science,
of worshipping the stars like true Sabaeans of old, stands to this day uncontradicted,
yet no star-worshipper has ever addressed his adoration to the material stars
and planets, as will be shown before the last page of this work is written;
none the less it is true that those Philosophers alone who studied Astrology
and Magic knew that the last word of those sciences was to be sought in, and
expected from, the Occult forces emanating from those constellations.
SECTION
XXIV
Modern
Kabalists in Science and Occult Astronomy
(Page
215) THERE is a physical, an astral, and a super-astral Universe
in the three chief divisions of the Kabalah; as there are terrestrial,
super-terrestrial, and spiritual Beings. The “Seven Planetary Spirits”
may be ridiculed by Scientists to their hearts’ content, yet the need
of intelligent ruling and guiding Forces in so much felt to this day that scientific
men and specialists, who will not hear of Occultism or of ancient systems, find
themselves obliged to generate in their inner consciousness some kind of semi-mystical
system. Metcalf’s “sun-force” theory, and that of Zaliwsky,
a learned Pole, which made Electricity the Universal Force and placed its storehouse
in the Sun, [ La Gravitation par l’Electricité, p.7.
quoted by De Mirville, iv. 156 ] were revivals of the Kabalistic teachings.
Zaliwsky tried to prove that Electricity, producing “the most powerful,
attractive, calorific, and luminous effects,” was present in the physical
constitution of the Sun and explained its peculiarities. This is very near the
Occult teaching. It is only by admitting the gaseous nature of the Sun-reflector,
and the powerful Magnetism and Electricity of the solar attraction and repulsion,
that one can explain (a) the evident absence of any waste of power and luminosity
in the Sun - inexplicable by the ordinary laws of combustion; and (b) the behaviour
of the planets, so often contradicting every accepted rule of weight and gravity.
And Zaliwsky makes this “solar electricity” “differ from
anything known on earth.”
Father
Secchi may be suspected of having sought to introduce
Forces
of quite a new order and quite foreign to gravitation, which he had discovered
in Space. [ De Mirville. iv.157.] (Page
216)
in
order to reconcile Astronomy with theological Astronomy. But Nagy, a member
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was no clerical, and yet he develops a
theory on the necessity of intelligent Forces whose complacency “would
lent itself to all the whims of the comets.” He suspects that:
Notwithstanding
all the actual researches on the rapidity of light - that dazzling product
of an unknown force . . . . which we see too frequently to understand –
that light is motionless in reality.
[ C. E. Love, the well-known railway builder and engineer in France,
tired of blind forces, made all the (then) “imponderable agents”
- now called “forces” - subordinates of Electricity, and declares
the latter to be
an
Intelligence
- albeit molecular in nature and material. [ Essai sur l'Identité
des Agents Producteurs du Son, de la Lumiere, etc., p.15, ibid .]
In
the author’s opinion these Forces are atomistic agents, endowed with intelligence,
spontaneous will, and motion, [ Ibid.,p.218.] and he thus,
like the Kabalists, makes the cousal Forces substantial, while the Forces that
act on this plane are only the effects of the former, as with him matter is
eternal, and the Gods also; [ Summarised from Ibid., p.213. De
Mirville, iv.158.] so is the Soul likewise, though it has inherent in
itself a still higher Soul [Spirit], preëxistent, endowed with memory,
and superior to Electric Force; the latter is subservient to the higher Souls,
those superior Souls forcing it to act according to the eternal laws. The concept
is rather hazy, but is evidently on the Occult lines. Moreover, the system proposed
is entirely pantheistic, and is worked out in a purely scientific volume. Monotheists
and Roman Catholics fall foul of it, of course; but one who believes in the
Planetary Spirits and who endows Nature with living Intelligences, must always
expect this.
In
this connection, however, it is curious that after the moderns have so laughed
at the ignorance of the ancients,
Who,
knowing only of seven planets [yet having an ogdoad which did not include
the earth!], invented therefore seven Spirits to fit in with the number,
Babinet
should have vindicated the “superstition” unconsciously to himself.
In the Revue des Deux Mondes this eminent French Astronomer writes:
The
Place of Neptune -
(Page
217) The ogdoad of the Ancients included the earth [which
is an error] i.e., eight or seven according to whether or not the earth
was comprised in the number. [ May. 1855. Ibid., p.139.]
De
Mirville assures his readers that:
M.
Babinet was telling me but a few days ago that we had in reality only eight
big planets, including the earth, and so many small ones between Mars and
Jupiter . . . .Herschell offering to call all those beyond the seven primary
planets asteroids! [ La Terre et notre Systieme solaire. De
Mirville, iv. 139.]
There
is a problem to be solved in this connection. How do Astronomers know that Neptune
is a planet, or even that it is a body belonging to our system? Being found
on the very confines of our Planetary World, so called, the latter was arbitrarily
expanded to receive it; but what really mathematical and infallible proof have
Astronomers that it is (a) a planet, and (b) one of our planets? None
at all! It is as such an immeasurable distance from us,
the apparent
diameter of the sun being to Neptune but one-fortieth of the sun’s apparent
diameter to us,
and
it is so dim and hazy when seen through the best telescope that it looks like
an astronomical romance to call it one of our planets. Neptune’s heat
and light are reduced to 1/900th part of the heat and light received by the
earth. His motion and that of his satellites have always looked suspicious.
They do not agree - in appearance at least - with those of the other planets.
His system is retrograde, etc. But even the latter abnormal fact resulted only
in the creation of new hypotheses by our Astronomers, who forthwith suggested
a probable overturn of Neptune, his collision with another body, etc. Was Adams’
and Leverrier’s discovery so welcomed because Neptune was as necessary
as was Ether to throw a new glory upon astronomical prevision, upon the certitude
of modern scientific data and principally upon the power of mathematical analysis?
It would so appear. A new planet that widens our planetary domain by more than
four hundred million leagues is worthy of annexation. Yet, as in the case of
terrestrial annexation, scientific authority may be proved “right”
only because it has “might.” Neptune’s motion happens to be
dimly perceived: Eureka! it is a planet! A mere motion, however, proves very
little. It is now an ascertained fact in Astronomy that there are no absolutely
fixed stars in Nature, [ If, as Sir W. Herschel thought, the so-called
fixed stars have resulted from, and owe their origin to nebular combustion,
they cannot be fixed any more than is our sun, which was believed to be motionless
and is now found to rotate around its axis every twenty-five days. As the fixed
star nearest to the sun, however, is eight-thousand times farther away from
him than is Neptune the illusions furnished by the telescopes must be also eight-thousand
times as great. We will therefore leave the question at rest, repeating only
what A. Maury said in his work (La Terre et l’Homme, published
in 1858): “It is utterly impossible, so far, to decide anything concerning
Neptune’s constitution, analogy alone authorising us to ascribe to him
a rotary motion like that of other planets.” (De Mirville, iv.140).]
even though such stars should (Page
218) continue to exist in astronomical parlance, while they have
passed from the scientific imagination. Occultism, however, has a strange theory
of its own with regard to Neptune.
Occultism
says that if several hypotheses resting on mere assumption - which have been
accepted only because they have been taught by eminent men of learning - are
taken away from the Science of Modern Astronomy, to which they serve as props,
then even the presumably universal law of gravitation will be found to be contrary
to the most ordinary truths of mechanics. And really one can hardly blame Christians
- foremost of all the Roman Catholics - however scientific some of these may
themselves be, for refusing to quarrel with their Church for the sake of scientific
beliefs. Nor can we even blame them for accepting in the secresy of their hearts
- as some of them do - the theological “Virtues” and “Archons”
of Darkness, instead of all the blind forces offered them by Science.
Never
can there be intervention of any sort in the marshalling and the regular precession
of the celestial bodies! The law of gravitation is the law of laws; who ever
witnessed a stone rising in the air against gravitation? The permanence of
the universal law is shown in the behaviour of the sidereal worlds and globes
eternally faithful to their primitive orbits; never wandering beyond their
respective paths. Nor is there any intervention needed, as it could only be
disastrous. Whether the first sidereal incipient rotation took place owing
to an intercosmic chance, or to the spontaneous development of latent primordial
forces; or again, whether that impulse was given once for all by God or Gods
- it does not make the slightest difference. At this stage of cosmic evolution
no intervention, superior or inferior, is admissible. Were any to take place,
the universal clock-work would stop, and Kosmos would fall into pieces.
Such
are stray sentences, pearls of wisdom, fallen from time to time from scientific
lips, and now chosen at random to illustrate a query. We lift our diminished
heads and look heavenward. Such seems to be the fact: worlds, suns, and stars,
the shining myriads of the heavenly hosts, remind the Poet of an infinite, shoreless
ocean, whereon move swiftly numberless squadrons of ships, millions upon millions
of cruisers, large and small, crossing each other, whirling and gyrating in
every direction; and Science teaches us, that though they be without rudder
or compass or any beacon to guide them, they are nevertheless secure from collision
- almost secure, at any rate, save in chance accidents - as the whole celestial
machine is built upon and guided by an immutable, albeit blind, law, and by
constant and accelerating force or forces.
Self-Generation
Ex-Niholo?- (Page
219) “Built upon” by whom? “By self-evolution,”
is the answer. Moreover, as dynamics teach that
A
body in motion tends to continue in the same state of relative rest or motion
unless acted upon by some external force,
this
force has to be regarded as self-generated - even if not eternal, since this
would amount to the recognition of perpetual motion - and so well self-calculated
and self-adjusted as to last from the beginning to the end of Kosmos. But “self-generation”
has still to generate from something, generation ex-nihilo being as contrary
to reason as it is to Science. Thus we are placed once more between the horns
of a dilemma: are we to believe in perpetual motion or in self-generation ex-nihilo?
And if in neither, who or what is that something, which first produced that
force or those forces?
There
are such things in mechanics as superior levers, which give the impulse and
act upon secondary or inferior levers. The former, however, need an impulse
and occasional renovation, otherwise they would themselves very soon stop and
fall back into their original status. What is the external force which puts
and retains them in motion? Another dilemma!
As
to the law of cosmical non-intervention, it could be justified only in
one case, namely, if the celestial mechanism were perfect; but it is not. The
so-called unalterable motions of celestial bodies alter and change incessantly;
they are very often disturbed, and the wheels of even the sidereal locomotive
itself occasionally jump off their invisible rails, as may be easily proved.
Otherwise why should Laplace speak of the probable occurrence at some future
time of an out-and-out reform in the arrangements of the planets; [
Exposition du vrai System du Monde. p. 282.] or Lagrange maintain
the gradual narrowing of the orbits; or our modern Astronomers, again, declare
that the fuel in the sun is slowly disappearing? If the laws and forces which
govern the behaviour of the celestial bodies are immutable, such modifications
and wearing-out of substance or fuel, of force and fluids, would be impossible;
yet they are not denied. Therefore
(Page 220) one has to suppose that such modifications will have
to rely upon the laws of forces, which will have to self-regenerate themselves
once more on such occasions, thus producing an astral antinomy, and a kind of
physical palinomy, since, as Laplace says, one would then see fluids disobeying
themselves and reacting in a way contrary to all their attributes and properties.
Newton
felt very uncomfortable about the moon. Her behaviour in progressively narrowing
the circumference of her orbit around the earth made him nervous, lest it should
end one day in our satellite falling upon the earth. The world, he confessed,
needed repairing, and that very often. [ See the passage quoted by Herschel
in Natural Philosophy, p. 165. De Mirville. iv.165.] In this he
was corroborated by Herschel. [ l,oc. cit.] He speaks
of real and quite considerable deviations, besides those which are only apparent,
but gets some consolation from his conviction that somebody or something will
probably see to things.
We
may be answered that the personal beliefs of some pious Astronomers, however
great they may be as scientific characters, are no proofs of the actual existence
and presence in space of intelligent supramundane Beings, of either Gods or
Angels. It is the behaviour of the stars and planets themselves that has to
be analysed and inferences must be drawn therefrom. Renan asserts that nothing
that we know of the sidereal bodies warrants the idea of the presence of any
Intelligence, whether internal or external to them.
Let
us see, says Reynaud, if this is a fact, or only one more empty scientific assumption.
The
orbits traversed by the planets are far from being immutable. They are, on
the contrary, subject to perpetual mutation in position, as in form. Elongations,
contractions, and orbital widenings, oscillations from right to left, slackening
and quickening of speed . . .. And all this on a plane which seems to vacillate.
[ Terre et Ciel. p.28. Ibid. ]
As
is very pertinently observed by des Mousseux:
Here
is a path having little of the mathematical and mechanical precision claimed
for it; for we know of no clock which, having gone slow for several minutes
should catch up the right time of itself and without the turn of
a key.
So
much for blind law and force. As for the physical impossibility - a miracle
indeed in the sight of Science - of a stone raised in the air against the law
of gravitation, this is what Babinet - the deadliest enemy and opponent of the
phenomena of levitation - (cited by Arago) says:
Are
There Angels in Stars?-
(Page
221) Everyone knows the theory of bolides [meteors]
and aerolithes . . . . In Connecticut an immense aerolith was seen [a mass
of eighteen hundred feet in diameter], bombarding a whole American zone and
returning to the spot [in mid-air] from which it had started. [
Oeuvres d'Arago.vol.i., 219: quoted by De Mirville, iii. 462.]
Thus
we find in both of the cases above cited - that of self-correcting planets and
meteors of gigantic size flying back into the air - a “blind force”
regulating and resisting the natural tendencies of “blind matter,”
and even occasionally repairing its mistakes and correcting its failures. This
is far more miraculous and even “extravagant,” one would say, than
any “Angel-guided” Element.
Bold
is he who laughs at the idea of Von Haller, who declares that:
The
stars are perhaps an abode of glorious Spirits; as here Vice reigns, there
is Virtue master. [“Die Sterne sind vielleicht ein Sitz Verklarter
Geister;
Wie
hier das Laster herrscht, ist dort die Tugend Meister. ]
SECTION
XXV
Eastern
and Western Occultism
(Page
222) IN The Theosophist for March, 1886, [ Op.cit.,p.411]
in an answer to the “Solar Sphinx,” a member of the London Lodge
of the Theosophical Society wrote as follows:
We
hold and believe that the revival of Occult Knowledge now in progress will some
day demonstrate that the Western system represents ranges of perceptions which
the Eastern - at least as expounded in the pages of The Theosophist—has
yet to attain.[ Whenever Occult doctrines were expounded in the pages
of The Theosophist, care was taken each time to declare a subject incomplete
when the whole could not be given in its fullness, and no writer has ever tried
to mislead the reader. As to the Western “ranges of perception”
concerning doctrines really Occult, the Eastern Occultists have been made acquainted
with them for some time past. Thus they are enabled to assert with confidence
that the West may be in possession of Hermetic philosophy as a speculative system
of dialectics, the latter being used in the West admirably well, but it lacks
entirely the knowledge of Occultism. The genuine Eastern Occultist keeps silent
and unknown, never publishes what he knows, and rarely even speaks of it, as
he knows too well the penalty of indiscretion.]
The
writer is not the only person labouring under this erroneous impression. Greater
Kabalists than he had said the same in the United States. This only proves that
the knowledge possessed by Western Occultists of the true Philosophy, and the
“ranges of perceptions” and thought of the Eastern doctrines, is
very superficial. This assertion will be easily demonstrated by giving a few
instances, instituting comparisons between the two interpretations of one and
the same doctrine---the Hermetic Universal Doctrine. It is the more needed since,
were we to neglect bringing forward such comparisons, our work would be left
incomplete.
Primordial
Matter- (Page
223) We may take the late Éliphas Lévi, rightly referred
to by another Western Mystic, Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, as “one of the greatest
representatives of modern Occult Philosophy,” [ See The Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia,art. “Sepher Jetzirah.”] as presumably
the best and most learned expounder of the Chaldaean Kabalah, and compare
his teaching with that of Eastern Occultists. In his unpublished manuscripts
and letters, lent to us by a Theosophist, who was for fifteen years his pupil,
we had hoped to find that which he was unwilling to publish. What we do find,
however, disappoints us greatly. We will take these teachings, then, as containing
the essence of Western or Kabalistic Occultism, analyzing and comparing them
with the Eastern interpretation as we go on.
Éliphas
Lévi teaches correctly, though in language rather too rhapsodically rhetorical
to be sufficiently clear to the beginner, that
Eternal
life is Motion equilibrated by the alternate manifestations of force.
But
why does he not add that this perpetual motion is independent of the manifested
Forces at work? He says:
Chaos
is the Tohu-vah-bohu of perpetual motion and the sum total of primordial matter;
and
he fails to add that Matter is “primordial” only at the beginning
of every new reconstruction of the Universe: matter in abscondito, as
it is called by the Alchemists, is eternal, indestructible, without beginning
or end. It is regarded by Eastern Occultists as the eternal Root of all, the
Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântin, and the Svabhâvat of the Buddhist;
the Divine Essence, in short, or Substance; the radiations from This are periodically
aggregated into graduated forms, from pure Spirit to gross Matter; the Root,
or Space, is in its abstract presence the Deity Itself, the Ineffable and Unknown
One Cause.
Ain-Suph
with him also is the Boundless, the infinite and One Unity, secondless and causeless
as Parabrahman. Ain-Suph is the indivisible point, and therefore, as “being
everywhere and nowhere,” is the absolute All. It is also “Darkness”
because it is absolute Light, and the Root of the seven fundamental Cosmic Principles.
Yet Éliphas Lévi, by simply stating that “Darkness was upon
the face of the Earth,” fails to show (a) that “Darkness”
in this sense is Deity Itself, and he is (Page
224) therefore withholding the only philosophical solution of this
problem for the human mind; and (b) he allows the unwary student to believe
that by “Earth” our own little globe—an atom in the Universe—is
meant. In short, this teaching does not embrace the Occult Cosmogony, but deals
simply with Occult Geology and the formation of our cosmic speck. This is further
shown by his making a resume of the Sephirothal Tree in this wise:
God
is harmony, the astronomy of Powers and Unity outside of the World.
This
seems to suggest (a) that he teaches the existence of an extra-cosmic God, thus
limiting and conditioning both the Kosmos and the divine Infinity and Omnipresence
which cannot be extraneous to or outside of one single atom; and (b) that by
skipping the whole of the pre-cosmic period—the manifested Kosmos here
being meant —the very root of Occult teaching he explains only the Kabalistic
meaning of the dead-letter of the Bible and Genesis, leaving its
spirit and essence untouched. Surely the “ranges of perception”
of the Western mind will not be greatly enlarged by such a limited teaching.
Having
said a few words on Tohu-vah-bohu—the meaning of which Wordsworth rendered
graphically as “higgledy-piggledy”—and having explained that
this term denoted Cosmos, he teaches that:
Above
the dark abyss [ Chaos] were the Waters . . . . the earth
[la terre!] was Tohu-vah-bohu, i.e., in confusion,
and darkness covered the face of the Deep, and vehement Breath moved on the
Waters when the Spirit exclaimed [?], “Let there be light,”
and there was light. Thus the earth [our globe, of course] was
in a state of cataclysm; thick vapours veiled the immensity of the
sky, the earth was covered with waters and a violent wind was agitating this
dark ocean, when at a given moment the equilibrium revealed itself and light
reappeared; the letters that compose the Hebrew word “Bereshith”
(the first word of Genesis) are “Beth,” the binary, the
verb manifested by the act, a feminine letter; then “Resch,”
the Verbum and Life, number 20, the disc multiplied by 2; and “Aleph,”
the spiritual principle, the Unit, a masculine letter.
Place
these letters in a triangle and you have the absolute Unity, that without
being included into numbers creates the number, the first manifestation, which
is 2, and these two united by harmony resulting from the analogy of contraries
[opposites], make I, only. This is why God is called Elohim (plural).
All
this is very ingenious, but is very puzzling, besides being incorrect. For owing
to the first sentence, “Above the dark abyss were the Waters,” the
French Kabalist leads the student away from the right track. This an Eastern
Chela will see at a glance, and even one of the profane may see it. For if the
Tohu-vah-bohu is “under” and the Waters are “above,”
then these two are quite distinct from each other, and this is not the case.
The
Great Deep -(Page
225) This statement is a very important one, inasmuch as it
entirely changes the spirit and nature of Cosmogony, and brings it down to a
level with exoteric Genesis—gerhaps it was so stated with an eye
to this result. The Tohu-vah-bohu is the “Great Deep,” and is identical
with “the Waters of Chaos,” or the primordial Darkness. By stating
the fact otherwise it makes both “the Great Deep” and the “Waters”—which
cannot be separated except in the phenomenal world --- limited as to space and
conditioned as to their nature. Thus Éliphas in his desire to conceal
the last word of Esoteric Philosophy, fails—whether intentionally or otherwise
does not matter—to point out the fundamental principle of the one true
Occult Philosophy, namely, the unity and absolute homogeneity of the One Eternal
Divine Element, and he makes of the Deity a male God. Then he says:
Above
the Waters was the powerful Breath of the Elohim [the creative Dhyan
Chohans]. Above the Breath appeared the Light, and above the Light
the Word . . . that created it.
Now
the fact is quite the reverse of this: it is the Primeval Light that creates
the Word or Logos, Who in His turn creates physical light. To prove and illustrate
what he says he gives the following figure:
Now
any Eastern Occultist upon seeing this would not hesitate to
pronounce it a “left hand” magic figure. It is
entirely reversed, and it represents the third stage of religious
thought,
that current in Dvapara Yuga, when the
one principle is already separated into male and female,
and humanity is approaching the fall into materiality (Page
226)
which brings the Kali Yuga. A student of Eastern Occultism
would draw it thus:
For
the Secret Doctrine teaches us that the reconstruction of the Universe takes
place in this wise: At the periods of new generation, perpetual Motion becomes
Breath; from the Breath comes forth primordial Light, through whose radiance
manifest the Eternal Thought concealed in darkness, and this becomes the Word
(Mantra). [ In the exoteric sense, the Mantra (or that psychic faculty
or power that conveys perception or thought) is the older portion of the Vedas,
the second part of which is composed of the Brâhmanas. In Esoteric
phraseology Mantra is the Word made flesh, or rendered objective, through divine
magic.] It is That (the Mantra or Word) from which all This (
the Universe) sprang into being.
Further
on Éliphas Lévi says:
This
[ the concealed Deity ] radiated a ray into the Eternal Essence
[ Waters of Space] and, fructifying thereby the primordial germ,
the Essence expanded. [The secret meaning of the word “Brahmâ”
is “expansion,” “increase,” or “growth.”]
giving birth to the Heavenly Man from whose mind were born all forms.
The
Kabalah states very nearly the same. To learn what it really teaches
one has to reverse the order in which Éliphas Lévi gives it, replacing
the word “above by that of "in" as there cannot
surely be any "above" or "under"”
in the Absolute. This is what he says:
Above
the waters the powerful breath of the Elohim; above the Breath the Light;
above Light the Word, or the Speech that created it. We see here the spheres
of evolution: the soul [?] driven from the dark centre (Darkness)
toward the luminous circumference. At the bottom of the lowest circle is the
Tohu-vah-bohu, or the chaos which precedes all manifestation [ Naissances—generation
]; then the region of Water; then Breath; then Light; and, lastly, the
Word.
The
Chaos of Genesis - (Page
227) The construction of the above sentences shows that the learned
Abbé had a decided tendency to anthropomorphize creation, even though
the latter has to be shaped out of preëxisting material, as the Zohar
shows plainly enough.
This
is how the “great” Western Kabalist gets out of the difficulty:
he keeps silent on the first stage of evolution and imagines a second Chaos.
Thus he says:
The
Tohu-vah-bohu is the Latin Limbus, or twilight of the morning and
evening of life,[ Why not give at once its theological meaning,
as we find it in Webster? With the Roman Catholics it means simply
“purgatory,” the borderland between heaven and hell
(Limbus patrum and Limbus infantum), the one for all
men, whether good, bad or indifferent: the other for the souls of
unbaptized children! With the ancients it meant simply that which
in Esoteric Buddhism is
called the Kâma Loka, between Devachan and Avitchi.]
It is in perpetual motion, [ As Chaos, the eternal Element,
not as the Kâma Loka surely?] it decomposes continually
[ A proof that by this word Éliphas Lévi means
the lowest region of the terrestrial Akasha.] and the work
of putrefaction accelerates, because the world is advancing towards
regeneration [ Evidently he is concerned only wiht our periodical
world, or the terrestrial globe. ] .The Tohu-vah-bohu of
the Hebrews is not exactly the confusion of things called Chaos
by the Greeks, and which is found described in the commencement
of the Metamorphosis of Ovid; it is something greater and more profound;
it is the foundation of religion, it is the philosophical affirmation
of the immateriality of God.
Rather
an affirmation of the materiality of a personal God. If a man has to seek his
Deity in the Hades of the ancients—for the Tohu-vah bohu, or the Limbus
of the Greeks, is the Hall of Hades —then one can wonder no longer at
the accusations brought forward by the Church against the “witches”
and sorcerers versed in Western Kabalism, that they adored the goat Mendes,
or the devil personified by certain spooks and Elementals. But in face of the
task Éliphas Lévi had set before himself—that of reconciling
Jewish Magic with Roman ecclesiasticism—he could say nothing else.
Then
he explains the first sentence in Genesis:
Let
us put on one side the vulgar translation of the sacred texts and see what
is hidden in the first chapter of Genesis.
He
then gives the Hebrew text quite correctly, but transliterates it:
Bereschith
Bara Eloim uth aschamam ouatti aares ouares ayete Tohu-vah-bohu. . . . Ouimas
Eloim rai avur ouiai aour.
And
he then explains:
The
first word, “Bereschith,” signifies “genesis,” a word
equivalent to “nature.” (Page
228) “The act of generation or production,” we maintain;
not “nature.” He then continues:
The
phase, then, is incorrectly translated in the Bible. It is not “in
the beginning,” for it should be at the stage of the generating force.[
In the “reawakening” of the Forces would be more correct.]
which would thus exclude every idea of the ex-nihilo . . . .as
nothing cannot produce something. The word “Eloim” or “Elohim”
signifies the generating Powers, and such is the Occult sense of the first
verse . . . . “Bereschith” (“nature” or “genesis’),
“Bara” (“created’) “Eloim” (“the
forces”) “Athat-ashamaim” (“heavens”) “ouath”
and “oaris” (“the earth”); that is to say, “The
generative potencies created indefinitely (eternally) [ An action which
is incessant in eternity cannot be called “creation;” it is evolution,
and the eternally or ever—becoming of the Greek Philosopher and the
Hindu Vedantin: it is the Sat and the one Beingness of Parmenides, or the
Being identical with Thought. Now how can the Potencies be said to “create
movement, once it is seen movement never had any beginning, but existed in
the Eternity? Why not say that the reawakened Potencies transferred motion
from the eternal to the temporal plane of being? Surely this is not Creation.]
those forces that are the equilibrated opposites that we call heaven and earth,
meaning the space and the bodies, the volatile and the fixed, the movement
and the weight.
Now
this, if it be correct, is too vague to be understood by any one ignorant of
the Kabalistic teaching. Not only are his explanations unsatisfactory and misleading—in
his published works they are still worse—but his Hebrew transliteration
is entirely wrong; it precludes the student, who would compare it for himself
with the equivalent symbols and numerals of the words and letters of the Hebrew
alphabet, from finding anything of that he might have found were the words correctly
spelt in the French transliteration.
Compared
even with exoteric Hindu Cosmogony, the philosophy which Éliphas Lévi
gives out as Kabalistic is simply mystical Roman Catholicism adapted to the
Christian Kabalah. His Histoire de la Magie shows it plainly,
and reveals also his object, which he does not even care to conceal. For, while
stating with his Church, that
The
Christian religion has imposed silence on the lying oracles of the Gentiles
and put an end to the prestige of the false gods, [ Histoire de
la Magie. Int., p.1.]
he
promises to prove in his work that the real Sanctum Regnum, the great Magic
Art, is in that Star of Bethlehem which led the three Magi to adore the Savior
of this World. He says:
We
will prove that the study of the sacred Pentagram had to lead all the Magi
to know the new name which should be raised above all names, and before which
every being capable of worship has to bend his knees. [ Histoire
de la Magic. Int., p.2.]
The
Bible of Humanity - (Page
229) This shows that Lévi’s Kabalah is mystic
Christianity, and not Occultism; for Occultism is universal and knows no difference
between the “Saviours” (or great Avatâras) of the several
old nations. Éliphas Lévi was not an exception in preaching Christianity
under a disguise of Kabalism. He was undeniably “the greatest representative
of modern Occult Philosophy,” as it is studied in Roman Catholic countries
generally, where it is fitted to the preconceptions of Christian students. But
he never taught the real universal Kabalah, and least of all did he teach
Eastern Occultism. Let the student compare the Eastern and Western teaching,
and see whether the philosophy of the Upanishads” has yet to attain
the ranges of perception” of this Western system. Everyone has the right
to defend the system he prefers, but in doing this, there is no need to throw
slurs upon the system of one’s brother.
In
view of the great resemblance between many of the fundamental “truths”
of Christianity and the “myths” of Brâhmanism, there have
been serious attempts made lately to prove that the Bhagavad Gita and
most of the Brâhamanas and the Purânas are of a far
later date than the Mosaic Books and even than the Gospels. But were
it possible that an enforced success should be obtained in this direction, such
argument cannot achieve its object, since the Rig Veda remains. Brought
down to the most modern limits of the age assigned to it, its date cannot be
made to overlap that of the Pentateuch, which is admittedly later.
The
Orientalists know well that they cannot make away with the landmarks, followed
by all subsequent religions, set up in that “Bible of Humanity”
called the Rig Veda. It is there that at the very dawn of intellectual
humanity were laid the foundation-stones of all the faiths and creeds, of every
fane and church built from first to last; and they are still there. Universal
“myths,” personifications of Powers divine and cosmic, primary and
secondary, and historical personages of all the now-existing as well as of extinct
religions are to be found in the seven chief Deities and their 330,000,000 correlations
of the Rig Veda, and those Seven, with the odd millions, are the Rays
of the one boundless Unity.
But
to THIS can never be offered profane worship. It can only
be the “object of the most abstract meditation, which Hindus practice
in order to obtain absorption in it.” At the beginning of every “dawn”
of “Creation,” eternal Light—which is darkness—assumes
the aspect of so-called Chaos” chaos to the human intellect; the eternal
Root to the superhuman or spiritual sense.
(Page
230) “Osiris is
a black God.” These were the words pronounced at “low breath”
at Initiation in Egypt, because Osiris Noumenon is darkness to the mortal. In
this Chaos are formed the “Waters,” Mother Isis, Aditi, etc. They
are the “Waters of Life,” in which primordial germs are created—or
rather reawakened—by the primordial Light. It is Purushottama, or the
Divine Spirit, which in its capacity of Nârâyna, the Mover on the
Waters of Space, fructifies and infuses the Breath of life into that germ which
becomes the “Golden Mundane Egg,” in which the male Brahmâ
is created; [ The Vaishnavas, who regard Vishnu as the Supreme God and
the fashioner of the Universe, claim that Brahmâ sprang from the navel
of Vishnu, the “imperishable,” or rather from the lotus that grew
from it. But the word “navel” here means the Central point, the
mathematical symbol of infinitude, or Parabrahman, the One and the Secondless.]
and from this the first Prajapâti, the Lord of Beings, emerges,
and becomes the progenitor of mankind. And though it is not he, but the Absolute,
that is said to contain the Universe in Itself, yet it is the duty of the male
Brahmâ to manifest it in a visible form. Hence he has to be connected
with the procreation of species, and assumes, like Jehovah and other male Gods
in subsequent anthropomorphism, a phallic symbol. At best every such male God,
the “Father” of all, becomes the “Archetypal Man.” Between
him and the Infinite Deity stretches an abyss. In the theistic religions of
personal Gods the latter are degraded from abstract Forces into physical potencies.
The Water of Life—the “Deep” of Mother Nature—is viewed
in its terrestrial aspect in anthropomorphic religions. Behold, how holy it
has become by theological magic! It is held sacred and is deified now as of
old in almost every religion. But if Christians use it as a means of spiritual
purification in baptism and prayer; if Hindus pay reverence to their sacred
streams, tanks and rivers; if Pârsi, Mahommedan and Christian alike believe
in its efficacy, surely that element must have some great and Occult significance.
In Occultism it stands for the Fifth Principle of Kosmos, in the lower septenary:
for the whole visible Universe was built by Water, say the Kabalists who know
the difference between the two waters —the “Waters of Life”
and those of Salvation—so confused together in dogmatic religions. The
“King-Preacher” says of himself:
I,
the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I gave my heart to seek
and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under
heaven. [ Ecclesiastes. i. 12. 13.]
Speaking
of the great work and glory of the Elohim [ It is probably needless to
say here what everyone knows. The translation of the Protestant Bible
is not a word for word rendering of the earlier Greek and Latin Bibles:
the sense is very often disfigured, and “God” is put where “Jahve”
and “Elohim” stand.]—unified into the “Lord God”
in the English Bible, whose garment, he tells us, is light and heaven
the curtain—he refers to the builder
Chaos
is Theos or Kosmos -
(Page
231) Who layeth the
beams of his chambers in the waters,[ Psalms. civ. 2.3.]
that
is, the divine Host of the Sephiroth, who have constructed the Universe out
of the Deep, the Waters of Chaos. Moses and Thales were right in saying that
only earth and water can bring forth a living Soul, water being on this plane
the principle of all things. Moses was an Initiate, Thales a Philosopher - i.e.,
a Scientist, for the words were synonymous in his day.
The
secret meaning of this is that water and earth stand in the Mosaic Books for
the prima materia and the creative (feminine) Principle on our plane. In Egypt
Osiris was Fire, and Isis was the Earth or its synonym Water; the two opposing
elements—just because of their opposite properties—being necessary
to each other for a common object; that of procreation. The earth needs solar
heat and rain to make her throw out her germs. But these procreative properties
of Fire and Water, or Spirit and Matter, are symbols but of physical generation.
While the Jewish Kabalists symbolized these elements only in their application
to manifested things, and reverenced them as the emblems for the production
of terrestrial life, the Eastern Philosophy noticed them only as an illusive
emanation from their spiritual prototypes, and no unclean or unholy thought
marred its Esoteric religious symbology.
Chaos,
as shown elsewhere, is Theos, which becomes Kosmos: it is Space, the container
of everything in the Universe. As Occult Teachings assert, it is called by the
Chaldaeans, Egyptians, and every other nation Tohu-vah-bohu, or Chaos, Confusion,
because Space is the great storehouse of Creation, whence proceed not forms
alone, but also ideas, which could receive their expression only through the
Logos, the Word, Verbum, or Sound.
The
numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 are the successive emanations from Mother [Space]
as she forms running downward her garment, spreading it upon the seven steps
of Creation.[ To avoid misunderstanding of the word “creation”
so often used by us, the remarks of the author of Through the Gates of Gold
may be quoted owing to their clearness and simplicity. “The words ‘to
create’ are often understood by the ordinary mind to convey the idea of
evolving something out of nothing. This is clearly not its meaning. We are mentally
obliged to provide our Creator with chaos from which to produce the worlds.
The tiller of the soil, who is the typical producer of social life, must have
his material: his earth, his sky, rain and sun, and the seeds to place within
the earth. Out of nothing he can produce nothing. Out of a void nature cannot
arise: there is that material beyond, behind, or within, from which she is shaped
by our desire for a Universe.” (P.72) ] The roller returns upon
itself, as one end joins the other (Page
232) in infinitude, and the numbers 4, 3, and 2 are displayed,
as it is the only side of the veil that we can perceive, the first number being
lost in its inaccessible solitude.
.
. . .Father, which is Boundless Time, generates Mother, which is infinite Space,
in Eternity; and Mother generates Father in Manvantaras, which are divisions
of durations, that Day when that world becomes one ocean. Then the Mother becomes
Nârâ [Waters —the Great Deep] for Nara [
the Supreme Spirit ] to rest—or move—upon, when, it is
said, that 1, 2, 3, 4 descend and abide in the world of the unseen, while the
4, 3, 2, become the limits in the visible world to deal with the manifestations
of Father [Time]. [ Commentary on Stanza ix. on Cycles.]
This
relates to the Mahâyugas which in figures become 432, and with the addition
of noughts, 4,320.000.
Now
it is surpassingly strange, if it be a mere coincidence, that the numerical
value of Tohu-vah-bohu, or “Chaos” in the Bible—which
Chaos, of course, is the “Mother” Deep, or the Waters of Space—should
yield the same figures. For this is what is found in a Kabalist manuscript:
It
is said of the Heavens and the Earth in the second verse of Genesis
that they were “Chaos and Confusion”—that is, they were
“Tohu-vah-bohu;” “and darkness was upon the face
of the deep.” i.e., “the perfect material out of which
construction was to be made lacked organization.” The order of the digits
of these words as they stand—i.e., [ Or, read from right
to left, the letters and their corresponding numerals stand thus: “t,”
4: “h.” 5: “bh,” 2: “v,” 6: “v”
6: “h,” 5: “ ”v” or “w,” 6: which
yields “thuvbhu,” 4566256, or “Tohu-vah-bohu.”]
the letters rendered by their numerical value—is 6,526,654 and 2,386.
By art speech these are key-working numbers loosely shuffled together, the
germs and keys of construction, but to be recognized, one by one, as used
and required. They follow symmetrically in the work as immediately fol
lowing
the first sentence of grand enunciation: “In Rash developed itself Gods,
the heavens and the earth.”
Multiply
the numbers of the letters of “Tohu-vah-bohu” together continuously
from right to left, placing the consecutive single products as we go, and
we will have the following series of values, viz., (a) 30, 60, 360,
2,160, 10,800, 43,200, or as by the characterizing digits; 3, 6, 36, 216,
108, and 432; (b) 20, 120, 720 , 1,440, 7,200, or 2, 12, 72, 144, 72, 432,
the series closing in 432, one of the most famous numbers of antiquity, and
which, though obscured, crops out in the chronology up to the Flood. [
Mr. Ralston Skinner’s MSS.]
One
Hundred and Eight - (
Page 233) This shows that the Hebrew usage of play upon the numbers
must have come to the Jews from India. As we have seen, the final series yields,
besides many another combination, the figures 108 and 1008—the number
of the names of Vishnu, whence the 108 grains of the Yogi’s rosary—and
close with 432, the truly “famous” number in Indian and Chaldaean
antiquity, appearing in the cycle of 4,320,000 years in the former, and in the
432,000 years, the duration of the Chaldaean divine dynasties.
SECTION
XXVI
The
Idols and the Teraphim
(Page
234) THE meaning of the “fairy-tale” told by the Chaldaean
Qû-Tâmy is easily understood. His modus operandi with the
“idol of the moon” was that of all the Semites , before Terah, Abraham’s
father made images—the Teraphim, called after him—or the “chosen
people” of Israel ceased divining by them. These teraphim were just as
much “idols” as in any pagan image or statue. [ That the
teraphim was a statue, and no small article either, is shown in Samuel
xix., where Michal takes a teraphim (“image,” as it is translated)
and puts it in bed to represent David, her husband, who ran away from Saul (see
verse 13, et seq.) It was thus of the size and shape of a human figure—a
statue or real idol.] The injunction “Thou shalt not bow
to a graven image,” or teraphim, must have either come at a later date,
or have been disregarded, since the bowing-down to and the divining by the teraphim
seems to have been so orthodox and general that the “Lord” actually
threatens the Israelites, through Hosea, to deprive them of their teraphim.
For
the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, . . . without
a sacrifice, and without an image.
Matzebah,
or statue, or pillar, is explained in the Bible to mean “without
an ephod and without teraphim.” [ Op.cit., iii..4.]
Father
Kircher supports very strongly the idea that the statue of the Egyptian Serapis
was identical in every way with those of the seraphim, or teraphim, in the temple
of Solomon. Says Louis de Dieu:
They
were, perhaps, images of angels, or statues dedicated to the angels, the presence
of one of these spirits being thus attracted into a teraphim and answering
the inquirers [consultants]; and even in this hypothesis the
word “teraphim” would become the equivalent of “seraphim”
by changing the “t” into “s” in the manner of the
Syrians. [ Louis de Dieu, Genesis, XXI. 19. See de Mirville,
iii.257.]
Divining
By Teraphim - (Page
235) What says the Septuagint? The teraphim are translated
successively by ειδωλα—forms in someone’s
likeness; eidolon, an “astral body;” γλυπτα
—the
sculptured; κενοταφια—sculptures
in the sense of containing something hidden, or receptacles; φηλους.—manifestations;αληφειας.
truths or realities;μσρφωματα.
or φωτισμοις.—luminous, shining
likenesses. The latter expression shows plainly what the teraphim were. The
Vulgate translates the term by “annuntientes,” the “messengers
who announce,” and it thus becomes certain that the teraphim were the
oracles. They were the animated statues, the Gods who revealed themselves to
the masses through the Initiated Priests and Adepts in the Egyptian, Chaldaean,
Greek, and other temples.
As
to the way of divining, or learning one’s fate, and of being instructed
by the teraphim, [ “The teraphim of Abram’s father, Terah,
the ‘maker of images,’ were the Kabeiri Gods, and we see them worshipped
by Micah, by the Danites, and others. (Judges, xvii., xviii, etc) Teraphim
were identical with seraphim, and these were serpent images, the origin of which
is in the Sanskrit ‘Sarpa’ (the ‘serpent’) a symbol
sacred to all the deities as a symbol of immortality. Kiyun, or the God Kivan,
worshipped by the Hebrews in the wilderness, is Shiva, the Hindu Saturn. (The
Zendic ‘h’ is ‘s’ in India; thus, ‘Hapta’
is ‘Sapta:’ ‘Hindu’ is ‘Sindhaya.’ (A. Wilder).
“The “s” continually softens to “h” from Greece
to Calcutta, from the Caucasus to Egypt,’ says Dunlap. Therefore the letters
‘k’ ‘h,’ and ‘s’ are interchangeable. The
Greek story shows that Dardanus, the Arcadian, having received them as a dowry,
carried them to Samothrace, and thence to Troy: and they were worshipped long
before the days of glory of Tyre or Sidon, though the former had been built
2760 B.C. From where did Dardanus derive them?” Isis Unveiled.
1. 570.] it is explained quite plainly by Maimonides and Seldenus. The
former says:
The
worshippers of the teraphim claimed that the light of the principal stars
[planets], penetrating into and filling the carved statue through
and through, the angelic virtue [of the regents, or animating principle
in the planets] conversed with them, teaching them many most useful
arts and sciences. [ Maimon. More Nevochim, III. xxx.]
In
his turn Seldenus explains the same, adding that the teraphim [ Those
dedicated to the sun were made in gold, and those to the moon in silver.] were
built and fashioned in accordance with the position of their respective planets,
each of the teraphim being consecrated to a special “star-angel,”
those that the Greeks called stoichae, as also according to figures located
in the sky and called the “tutelary Gods”:
Those
who traced out the στοιχεια. were
called στοιχειωματικοι.[
or the diviners by the planets] and the στοιχεια.[
De Diis Syriis, Teraph, 11. Syat. p.31.]
Ammianus
Marcellinus states that the ancient divinations were always (Page
236) accomplished with the
help of the “spirits” of the elements (spiritus elementorum), or
as they were called in Greek ηνενματα
των οτοιχειων. Now
the latter are not the “spirits” of the stars (planets), nor are
they divine Beings; they are simply the creatures inhabiting their respective
elements, called by the Kabalists elementary spirits, and by the Theosophists
elementals. [ Those that the Kabalists call elementary spirits
are sylphs, gnomes, undines and salamanders, nature-spirits, in short. The spirits
of the angels formed a distinct class.] Father Kircher, the Jesuit, tells
the reader:
Every
god had such instruments of divination to speak through. Each had his speciality.
Serapis
gave instruction on agriculture; Anubis taught sciences; Horus advised upon
psychic and spiritual matters; Isis was consulted on the rising of the Nile,
and so on. [ OEdipus. ii. 444 ].
This
historical fact, furnished by one of the ablest and most erudite among the Jesuits,
is unfortunate for the prestige of the “Lord God of Israel” with
regard to his claims to priority and to his being the one living God.
Jehovah, on the admission of the Old Testament itself, conversed with
his elect in no other way, and this places him on a par with every other Pagan
God, even of the inferior classes. In Judges, xvii., we read of Micah
having an ephod and a teraphim fabricated, and consecrating them to Jehovah
(see the Septuagint and the Vulgate); these objects were made
by a founder from the two hundred shekels of silver given to him by his mother.
True, King James’ “Holy Bible” explains this little bit of
idolatry by saying:
In
those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right
in his own eyes.
Yet
the act must have been orthodox, since Micah, after hiring a priest, a diviner,
for his ephod and teraphim, declares: “Now know I that the Lord will do
me good.” And if Micah’s act—who
Had
an house of Gods, and made an ephod and teraphim and consecrated one of his
sons
to
their service, as also to that of the “graven image” dedicated “unto
the Lord” by his mother—now seems prejudicial, it was not so in
those days of one religion and one lip. How can the Latin Church blame the act,
since Kircher, one of her best writers, calls the teraphim “the holy instruments
of primitive revelations;” since Genesis shows us Rebecca going
“ to enquire of the Lord,” [ Op. cit., xxv.22 et
seq.] and the Lord answering her (certainly through his teraphim),
and delivering to her several prophecies?
Jehovah
and Teraphim - (Page
237) And if this be not sufficient, there is Saul, who deplores the
silence of the ephod, [ The ephod was a linen garment worn by the high
priest, but as the thummim was attached to it the entire paraphernalia of divination
was often comprised in that single word, ephod. See I Sam., xxviii. 6,
and xxx. 7. 8.] and David who consults the thummim, and receives oral
advice from the Lord as to the best way of killing his enemies.
The
thumim and urim, however—the object in our days of so much conjecture
and speculation —was not an invention of the Jews, nor had it originated
with them, despite the minute instruction given about it by Jehovah to Moses.
For the priest-hierophant of the Egyptian temples wore a breastplate of precious
stones, in every way similar to that of the high priest of the Israelites.
The
high-priests of Egypt wore suspended on their necks an image of saphire, called
Truth, the manifestation of truth becoming evident in it.
Seldenus
is not the only Christian writer who assimilates the Jewish to the Pagan teraphim,
and expressed a conviction that the former had borrowed them from the Egyptians.
Moreover, we are told by Döllinger, a preeminently Roman Catholic writer:
The
teraphim were used and remained in many Jewish families to the days of Josiah.
[Paganism and Judaism, iv. I 97].
As
to the personal opinion of Döllinger, a papist, and of Seldenus, a Protestant—both
of whom trace Jehovah in the teraphim of the Jews and “evil spirits”
in those of the Pagans—it is the usual one-sided judgment of odium
theologicum and sectarianism. Seldenus is right, however, in arguing that
in the days of old, all such modes of communication had been primarily established
for purposes of divine and angelic communications only. But
The
holy Spirit [spirits, rather] spake [not] to the
children of Israel [alone] by urim and thummim, while the tabernacle
remained,
as
Dr. A. Cruden would have people believe. Nor had the Jews alone need of a “tabernacle”
for such a kind of theophanic, or divine communication; for no Bath-Kol (or
“Daughter of the divine Voice”), called thummim, could be heard
whether by Jew, Pagan, or Christian, were there not a fit tabernacle for it.
The “tabernacle” was simply the archaic telephone of those days
of Magic when Occult powers were acquired by Initiation, just as they are now.
The nineteenth century (Page 238)
has replaced with an electric telephone the “tabernacle” of specified
metals, wood, and special arrangements, and has natural mediums instead of high
priests and hierophants. Why should people wonder, then, that instead of reaching
Planetary Spirits and Gods, believers should now communicate with no greater
beings than elementals and animated shells - the demons of Porphyry? Who these
were, he tells us candidly in his work On the Good and Bad Demons:
They
whose ambition is to be taken for Gods, and whose leader demands to be recognized
as the Supreme God.
Mmost
decidedly—and it is not the Theosophists who will ever deny the fact—there
are good as well as bad spirits, beneficent and malevolent “Gods”
in all ages. The whole trouble was, and still is, to know which is which. And
this, we maintain, the Christian Church knows no more than her profane flock.
If anything proves this, it is, most decidedly, the numberless theological blunders
made in this direction. It is idle to call the Gods of the heathen “devils,”
and then to copy their symbols in such a servile manner, enforcing the distinction
between the good and the bad with no weightier proof than that they are respectively
Christian and Pagan. The planets—the elements of the Zodiac—have
not figured only at Heliopolis as the twelve stones called the “mysteries
of the elements” (elementorum arcana). On the authority of many an orthodox
Christian writer they were found also in Solomon’s temple, and may be
seen to this day in several old Italian churches, and even in Notre Dame of
Paris.
One
would really say that the warning in Clement’s Stromateis has been
given in vain, though he is supposed to quote words pronounced by St. Peter.
He says:
Do
not adore God as the Jews do, who think they are the only ones to know Deity
and fail to perceive that, instead of God, they are worshipping angels, the
lunar months, and the moon. [Op cit.,I. vi. 5.]
Who
after reading the above can fail to feel surprise that, notwithstanding such
understanding of the Jewish mistake, the Christians are still worshipping the
Jewish Jehovah, the Spirit who spoke through his teraphim! That this is so,
and that Jehovah was simply the “tutelary genius,” or spirit, of
the people of Israel - only one of the pneuma ton stoicheion (or “great
spirits of the elements”), not even a high “Planetary”—is
demonstrated on the authority of St. Paul and of Clemens Alexandrinus, if the
words they use have any meaning.
Idol
of the Moon - (Page
239) With the latter, the word στοιχεια
signifies not only elements, but also
Generative
cosmological principles, and notably the signs [or constellations]
of the Zodiac, of the months, days, the sun and the moon. [Discourse
to the Gentiles, p. I46.]
The
expression is used by Aristotle in the same sense. He says, των
αστρων στοιχεια.[De
Gener., III. iv.] while Diogenes Laertius calls δωδεκα
στοιχεια. the twelve signs of the Zodiac.
[See Cosmos, by Ménage, I., vi., p 101.] Now having
the positive evidence of Ammianus Marcellinus to the effect that
Ancient
divination was always accompanied with the help of the spirits of the elements,
or
the same πνεαματα των
στοιχειων., and seeing in the Bible
numerous passages that (a) the Israelites, including Saul and David, resorted
to the same divination, and used the same means; and (b) that it was their “Lord”—namely,
Jehovah—who answered them, what else can we believe Jehovah to be than
a “spiritus elementorum”?
Hence
one sees no great difference between the “idol of the moon”—the
Chaldaean teraphim through which spoke Saturn—and the idol or urim and
thummim, the organ of Jehovah. Occult rites, scientific at the beginning—and
forming the most solemn and sacred of sciences—have fallen through the
degeneration of mankind into Sorcery, now called “superstition.”
As Diogenes explains in his History:
The
Kaldhi, having made long observations on the planets and knowing better than
anyone else the meaning of their motions and their influences, predict to
people their futurity. They regard their doctrine of the five great
orbs—which they call interpreters, and we, planets—as the most
important. And though they allege that it is the sun that furnishes
them with most of the predictions for great forthcoming events, yet they worship
more particularly Saturn. Such predictions made to a number of kings, especially
to Alexander, Antigonus, Seleucus, Nicanor, etc., . . . have been so marvellously
realised that people were struck with admiration. [Op Cit.,
I .ii.]
It
follows from the above that the declaration made by Qû-tâmy, the
Chaldean Adept—to the effect that all that he means to impart in his work
to the profane had been told by Saturn to the moon, by the latter to her idol,
and by that idol, or teraphim, to himself, the scribe—no more implied
idolatry than did the practice of the same method by King (Page
240) David. One fails to perceive in it, therefore, either an apocrypha
or a “fairy-tale.” The above-named Chaldaean Initiate lived at a
period far anterior to that ascribed to Moses, in whose day the Sacred Science
of the sanctuary was still in a flourishing condition. It began to decline only
when such scoffers as Lucian had been admitted, and the pearls of the Occult
Science had been too often thrown to the hungry dogs of criticism and ignorance.
SECTION
XXVII
Egyptian
Magic
(Page
241) FEW of our students of Occultism have had the opportunity
of examining Egyptian papyri—those living, or rather re-arisen witnesses
that Magic, good and bad, was practised many thousands of years back into the
night of time. The use of the papyrus prevailed up to the eighth century of
our era, when it was given up, and its fabrication fell into disuse. The most
curious of the exhumed documents were immediately purchased and taken away from
the country. Yet there are a number of beautifully-preserved papyri at Bulak,
Cairo, though the greater number have never been yet properly read. [
“The characters employed on those parchments,” writes De Mirville,
“ are sometimes hieroglyphics, placed perpendicularly, a kind of lineary
tachygraphy (abridged characters), where the image is often reduced to a single
stroke; at other times placed in horizontal lines; then the hieratic or sacred
writing, going from right to left as in all Semitic languages; lastly, the characters
of the country, used for official documents, mostly contracts, etc., but which
since the Ptolemies has been also adopted for the monuments.” [v.81.
80. A copy of the Harris papyrus, translated by Chabas-Papyrus Magique -
may be studied at the British Museum.]
Others—those
that have been carried away and may be found in the museums and public libraries
of Europe—have fared no better. In the days of the Vicomte de Rougé,
some twenty-five years ago, only a few of them “were two-thirds deciphered;”
and among those some most interesting legends, inserted parenthetically and
for purposes of explaining royal expenses, are in the Register of the Sacred
Accounts.
This
may be verified in the so-called “Harris” and Anastasi collections,
and in some papyri recently exhumed; one of these gives an account of a whole
series of magic feats performed before the Pharaohs Ramses II and III. A curious
document, the first-mentioned, truly. It is a papyrus of the fifteenth century
B.C., written during the reign of Ramses V., the last king of the eighteenth
dynasty, and is the work of the scribe Thoutmes, who notes down some of the
events with (Page 242) regard to
defaulters occurring on the twelfth and thirteenth days of the month of Paophs.
The document shows that in those days of “miracles” in Egypt the
taxpayers were not found among the living alone, but every mummy was included.
All and everything was taxed; and the Khou of the mummy, in default, was punished
“by the priest-exorciser, who deprived it of the liberty of action.”
Now what was the Khou? Simply the astral body, or the aerial simulacrum of the
corpse or the mummy—that which in China is called the Hauen, and in India
the Bhût.
Upon
reading this papyrus today, an Orientalist is pretty sure to fling it aside
in disgust, attributing the whole affair to the crass superstition of the ancients.
Truly phenomenal and inexplicable must have been the dullness and credulity
of that otherwise highly philosophical and civilized nation if it could carry
on for so many consecutive ages, for thousands of years, such a system of mutual
deception! A system whereby the people were deceived by the priests, the priests
by their King-Hierophants, and the latter themselves were cheated by the ghosts,
which were, in their turn, but “the fruits of hallucination.” The
whole of antiquity, from Menes to Cleopatra, from Manu to Vikramaditya, from
Orpheus down to the last Roman augur, were hysterical, we are told. This must
have been so, if the whole were not a system of fraud. Life and death were guided
by, and were under the sway of, sacred “conjuring.” For there is
hardly a papyrus, though it be a simple document of purchase and sale, a deed
belonging to daily transactions of the most ordinary kind, and that has not
Magic, white or black, mixed up in it. It looks as though the sacred scribes
of the Nile had purposely, and in a prophetic spirit of race-hatred, carried
out the (to them) most unprofitable task of deceiving and puzzling the generations
of a future white race of unbelievers yet unborn! Anyhow, the papyri are full
of Magic, as are likewise the stelae. We learn, moreover, that the papyrus was
not merely a smooth-surfaced parchment, a fabric made of
Ligneous
matter from a shrub, the pellicles of which superposed one over the other
formed a kind of writing paper;
but
that the shrub itself, the implements and tools for fabricating the parchment
etc., were all previously subjected to a process of magical preparation—according
to the ordinance of the Gods, who had taught that art, as they had all others,
to their Priest-Hierophants.
There
are, however, some modern Orientalists who seem to have an inkling of the true
nature of such things, and especially of the analogy and the relations that
exist between the Magic of old and our modern-day phenomena.
Evidence
of Papyri -
(Page
243) Chabas is one of these, for he indulges, in his translation
of the “Harris” papyrus, in the following reflections:
Without
having recourse to the imposing ceremonies of the wand of Hermes, or to the
obscure formulae of an unfathomable mysticism, a mesmeriser in our own day
will, by means of a few passes, disturb the organic faculties of a subject,
inculcate the knowledge of a foreign language, transport him to a far-distant
country, or into secret places, make him guess the thoughts of those absent,
read in closed letters, etc. . . . The antre of the modern sybil is a modest-looking
room, the tripod has made room for a small round table, a hat, a plate, a
piece of furniture of the most vulgar kind; only the latter is even superior
to the oracle of antiquity [how does M. Chabas know?], inasmuch as
the latter only spoke, [ And what of the “Mene, mene, tekel,
upharsin,” the words that “the fingers of a man’s hand,”
whose body and arm remained invisible, wrote on the walls of Belshazzar’s
palace? (Daniel. v.) What of the writings of Simon the Magician, and
the magic characters on the walls and in the air of the crypts of Initiation,
without mentioning the tables of stone on which the finger of God wrote the
commandments? Between the writing of one God and other Gods the difference,
if any, lies only in their respective natures; and if the tree is to be known
by its fruits, then preference would have to be given always to the Pagan
Gods. It is the immortal “To be or not to be.” Either all of them
are - or at any rate, may be - true, or all are surely pious frauds and the
result of credulity.] while the oracle of our day writes its answers.
At the command of the medium the spirits of the dead descend to make the furniture
creak, and the authors of bygone centuries deliver to us works written by
them beyond the grave. Human credulity has no narrower limits today than it
had at the dawn of historical times . . . . As teratology is an essential
part of general physiology now, so the pretended Occult Sciences occupy
in the annals of humanity a place which is not without its importance, and
deserve for more than one reason the attention of the philosopher and the
historian. [ Papyrus Magique. p.186.]
Selecting
the two Champollions, Lenormand, Bunsen, Victomte de Rougé, and several
other Egyptologists to serve as our witnesses, let us see what they say of Egyptian
Magic and Sorcery. They may get out of the difficulty by accounting for each
“superstitious belief” and practice by attributing them to a chronic
psychological and physiological derangement, and to collective hysteria, if
they like; still facts are there, staring us in the face, from the hundreds
of these mysterious papyri, exhumed after a rest of four, five, and more thousands
of years, with their magical containments and evidence of antediluvian Magic.
A
small library, found in Thebes, has furnished fragments of every kind of ancient
literature, many of which are dated, and several of which have thus been assigned
to the accepted age of Moses. Books or manuscripts on ethics, history, religion
and medicine, calendars and (Page 244)
registers, poems and novels—everything—may be had in that precious
collection; and old legends - traditions of long forgotten ages (please to remark
this: legends recorded during the Mosaic period)—are already referred
to therein as belonging to an immense antiquity, to the period of the dynasties
of Gods and Giants. Their chief contents, however, are formulae of exorcisms
against black Magic, and funeral rituals: true breviaries, or the vade mecum
of every pilgrim-traveller in eternity. These funeral texts are generally written
in hieratic characters. At the head of the papyrus is invariably placed a series
of scenes, showing the defunct appearing before a host of Deities successively,
who have to examine him. Then comes the judgement of the Soul, while the third
act begins with the launching of that Soul into the divine light. Such papyri
are often forty feet long. [ See Maspero’s Guide to the Bulah
Museum, among others.]
The
following is extracted from general descriptions. It will show how the moderns
understand and interpret Egyptian (and other) Symbology.
The
papyrus of the priest Nevo-loo (or Nevolen), at the Louvre, may be selected
for one case. First of all there is the bark carrying the coffin, a black chest
containing the defunct’s mummy. His mother, Ammenbem-Heb, and his sister,
Hooissanoob, are near; at the head and feet of the corpse stand Nephtys and
Isis clothed in red, and near them a priest of Osiris clad in his panther’s
skin, his censer in his right hand, and four assistants carrying the mummy’s
intestines. The coffin is received by the God Anubis (of the jackal’s
head), from the hands of female weepers. Then the Soul rises from its mummy
and the Khou (astral body) of the defunct. The former begins its worship of
the four genii of the East, of the sacred birds, and of Ammon as a ram. Brought
into the “Palace of Truth,” the defunct is before his judges. While
the Soul, a scarabaeus, stands in the presence of Osiris, his astral Khou is
at the door. Much laughter is provoked in the West by the invocations to various
Deities, presiding over each of the limbs of the mummy, and of the living human
body. Only judge: in the papyrus of the mummy Petamenoph “the anatomy
becomes theographical,” “astrology is applied to physiology,”
or rather “to the anatomy of the human body, the heart and the soul.”
The defunct’s “hair belongs to the Nile, his eyes to Venus (Isis),
his ears to Macedo, the guardian of the tropics; his nose to Anubis, his left
temple to the Spirit dwelling in the sun . . . .What a series of intolerable
absurdities and ignoble prayers . . . . to Osiris, imploring him to give the
defunct in the other world, geese, eggs, pork, etc.” [ De Mirville
(from whom much of the preceding is taken). v 8I, 85 ]
Symbols
and Their Reading - (Page
245) It might have been prudent, perhaps, to have waited to ascertain
whether all these terms of “geese, eggs, and pork” had not some
other Occult meaning. The Indian Yogi who, in an exoteric work, is invited
to drink a certain intoxicating liquor till he loses his senses, was also regarded
as a drunkard representing his sect and class, until it was found that the Esoteric
sense of that “spirit” was quite different; that it meant divine
light, and stood for the ambrosia of Secret Wisdom.
The
symbols of the dove and the lamb which abound now in Eastern and Western Christian
Churches may also be exhumed long ages hence, and speculated upon as objects
of present-day worship. And then some “Occidentalist,” in the forthcoming
ages of high Asiatic civilization and learning, may write karmically upon the
same as follows: “The ignorant and superstitious Gnostics and Agnostics
of the sects of ‘Pope’ and ‘Calvin’ (the two monster
Gods of the Dynamite-Christian period) adored a pigeon and a sheep!” There
will be portable hand-fetishes in all and every age for the satisfaction and
reverence of the rabble, and the Gods of one race will always be degraded into
devils by the next one. The cycles revolve within the depths of Lethe, and Karma
shall reach Europe as it has Asia and her religions.
Nevertheless,
This
grand and dignified language [in the Book of the Dead],
these pictures full of majesty, this orthodoxy of the whole evidently proving
a very precise doctrine concerning the immortality of the soul and its personal
survival,
as
shown by De Rougé and Abbe Van Drival, have charmed some Orientalists.
The psychostasy (or judgment of the Soul) is certainly a whole poem to him who
can read it correctly and interpret the images therein. In that picture we see
Osiris, the horned, with his sceptre hooked at the end —the original of
the pastoral bishop’s crook or crosier—the Soul hovering above,
encouraged by Tmei, daughter of the Sun of Righteousness and Goddess of Mercy
and Justice; Horus and Anubis, weighing the deeds of the soul. One of these
papyri shows the Soul found guilty of gluttony sentenced to be re-born on earth
as a hog; forthwith comes the learned conclusion of an Orientalist, (Page
246) “This is an indisputable proof of belief in metempsychosis,
of transmigration into animals,” etc.
Perchance
the Occult law of Karma might explain the sentence otherwise. It may, for all
our Orientalists know, refer to the physiological vice in store for the Soul
when re-incarnated—a vice that will lead that personality into a thousand
and one scrapes and mis-adventures.
Tortures
to begin with, then metempsychosis during 3,000 years as a hawk,
an angel a lotus-flower, a heron, a stork, a swallow, a serpent, and a crocodile:
one sees that the consolation of such a progress was far from being satisfactory.
argues
De Mirville, in his work on the Satanic character of the Gods of Egypt. [See
De Mirville. v. 84, 85.] Again, a simple suggestion may throw on this
a great light. Are the Orientalists quite sure they have read correctly the
“metempsychosis during 3,000 years”? The Occult Doctrine teaches
that Karma waits at the threshold of Devachan (the Amenti of the Egyptians)
for 3,000 years; that then the eternal Ego is reincarnated de novo,
to be punished in its new temporary personality for sins committed in the preceding
birth, and the suffering for which in one shape or another, will atone for past
misdeeds. And the hawk, the lotus-flower, the heron, serpent, or bird —every
object in Nature, in short—had its symbolical and manifold meaning in
ancient religious emblems. The man who all his life acted hypocritically and
passed for a good man, but had been in sober reality watching like a bird of
prey his chance to pounce upon his fellow creatures, and had deprived them of
their property, will be sentenced by Karma to bear the punishment for hypocrisy
and covetousness in a future life. What will it be? Since every human unit has
ultimately to progress in its evolution, and since that “man” will
be reborn at some future time as a good, sincere, well-meaning man, his sentence
to be re-incarnated as a hawk may simply mean that he will be regarded metaphorically
as such. That, notwithstanding his real, good, intrinsic qualities, he will,
perhaps during a long life, be unjustly and falsely charged with and suspected
of greed and hypocrisy and of secret exactions, all of which will make him suffer
more than he can bear. The law of retribution can never err, and yet how many
such innocent victims of false appearance and human malice do we not meet in
this world of incessant illusion, of mistakes and deliberate wickedness. We
see them every day, and they may be found within the personal experience of
each of us.
Rebirth
and Transmigration - (Page
247) What Orientalist can say with any degree of assurance that he
has understood the religions of old? The metaphorical language of the priests
has never been more than superficially revealed, and the hieroglyphics have
been very poorly mastered to this day. [ One sees this difficulty arise
even with a perfectly known language like Sanskrit, the meaning of which is
far easier to comprehend than the hieratic writings of Egypt. Everyone knows
how hopelessly the Sanskritists are often puzzled over the real meaning and
how they fail in rendering the meaning correctly in their respective translations,
in which one Orientalist contradicts the other.
What
says Isis Unveiled on this question of Egyptian rebirth and transmigration,
and does it clash with anything that we say now?
It
will be observed that this philosophy of cycles, which was allegorized by
the Egyptian Hierophants in the “cycle of necessity,” explains
at the same time the allegory of the “Fall of Man,” According
to the Arabian descriptions, each of the seven chambers of the pyramids—those
grandest of all cosmic symbols—was known by the name of a planet. The
peculiar architecture of the pyramids shows in itself the drift of the metaphysical
thought of their builders. The apex is lost in the clear blue sky of the land
of the Pharaohs, and typifies the primordial point lost in the unseen Universe
from whence started the first race of the spiritual prototypes of man. Each
mummy from the moment that it was embalmed lost its physical individuality
in one sense: it symbolised the human race. Placed in such a way as was best
calculated to aid the exit of the “Soul,” the latter had to pass
through the seven planetary chambers before it made its exit through the symbolical
apex. Each chamber typified, at the same time, one of the seven spheres [
of our Chain] and one of the seven higher types of physico-spiritual
humanity alleged to be above our own. Every 3000 years the soul, representative
of its race, had to return to its primal point of departure before it underwent
another evolution into a more perfected spiritual and physical transformation.
We must go deep indeed into the abstruse metaphysics of Oriental mysticism
before we can realise fully the infinitude of the subjects that were embraced
at one sweep by the majestic thought of its exponents. [Op. cit.,i.
297.]
This
is all Magic when once the details are given; and it relates at the same time
to the evolution of our seven Root-Races, each with the characteristics of its
special guardian or “God,” and his Planet. The astral body of each
Initiate, after death, had to reenact in its funeral mystery the drama of the
birth and death of each Race—the past and the future—and pass through
the seven “planetary chambers,” which as said above, typified also
the seven spheres of our Chain.
The
mystic doctrine of Eastern Occultism teaches that
“The
Spiritual Ego [not the astral Khou] has to revisit, before it
incarnates into a new body, the scenes it left at its last disincarnation. It
(Page 248) has to see for
itself and take cognizance of all the effects produced by the causes [the
Nidânas] generated by its actions in a previous life; that, seeing,
it should recognize the justice of the decree, and help the law of Retribution
[Karma] instead of impeding it. [ Book II., Commentary.]
The
translations by Vicomte de Rougé of several Egyptian papyri, imperfect
as they may be, give us one advantage: they show undeniably the presence in
them of white, divine Magic, as well as of Sorcery, and the practice of both
throughout all the dynasties. The Book of the Dead, far older than Genesis
[ Bunsen and Champollion so declare, and Dr. Carpenter says that the Book
of the Dead, sculptured on the oldest monuments, with “the very phrases
we find in the New Testament in connection with the Day of Judgment .
. . was engraved probably 2,000 years before the time of Christ.” (See
Isis Unveiled, i. 518.) ] or any other book of the Old Testament,
shows it in every line. It is full of incessant prayers and exorcisms against
the Black Art. Therein Osiris is the conquerer of the “aerial demons.”
The worshipper implores his help against Matat, “from whose eye proceeds
the invisible arrow.” This “invisible arrow” that proceeds
from the eye of the Sorcerer (whether living or dead) and that “circulates
throughout the world,” is the evil eye—cosmic in its origin, terrestrial
in its effects on the microcosmical plane. It is not the Latin Christians whom
it behoves to view this as a superstition. Their Church indulges in the same
belief, and had even a prayer against the “arrow circulating in darkness.”
The
most interesting of all those documents, however, is the “Harris”
papyrus, called in France “le papyrus magique de Chabas,”
as it was first translated by the latter. It is a manuscript written in hieratic
characters, translated, commented upon, and published in 1860 by M. Chabas,
but purchased at Thebes in 1855 by Mr. Harris. Its age is given at between twenty-eight
and thirty centuries. We quote a few extracts from these translations:
Calendar
of lucky and unlucky days . . . He who makes a bull work on the 20th
of the month of Pharmuths will surely die; he who on the 24th day
of the same month pronounces the name of Seth aloud will see trouble reigning
in his house from that day; . . . . he who on the 5th day of Patchous
leaves his house falls sick and dies.
Exclaims
the translator, whose cultured instincts are revolted:
If
one had not these words under our eyes, one could never believe in such servitude
at the epoch of the Ramessides. [ De Mirville, v.88. Just such a calendar
and horoscope interdictions exist in India in our day, as well as in China
and all the Buddhist countries.]
The
Egyptian Khous - (Page
249) We belong to the
nineteenth century of the Christian era, and are therefore at the height of
civilization, and under the benign sway and enlightening influence of the Christian
Church, instead of being subject to Pagan Gods of old. Nevertheless we personally
know dozens, and have heard of hundreds, of educated, highly-intellectual persons
who would as soon think of committing suicide as of starting on any business
on a Friday, of dining at a table where thirteen sit down, or of beginning a
long journey on a Monday. Napoleon the Great became pale when he saw three candles
lit on a table. Moreover, we may gladly concur with De Mirville in this, at
any rate, that such “superstitions” are “the outcome of observation
and experience.” If the former had never agreed with facts, the authority
of the Calendar, he thinks, would not have lasted for a week. But to
resume:
Genethliacal
influences: The child born on the 5th day of Paophi will be
killed by a bull; on the 27th by a serpent. Born on the 4th
of the month of Athyr, he will succumb to blows.
This
is a question of horoscopic predictions; judiciary astrology is firmly believed
in in our own age, and has been proven to be scientifically possible by Kepler.
Of
the Khous two kinds were distinguished: first, the justified Khous, i.e.,
those who had been absolved from sin by Osiris when they were brought before
his tribunal; these lived a second life. Secondly, here were the guilty Khous,
“the Khous dead a second time;” these were the damned. Second death
did not annihilate them, but they were doomed to wander about and to torture
people. Their existence had phases analogous to those of the living man, a bond
so intimate between the dead and the living that one sees how the observation
of religious funeral rites and exorcisms and prayers (or rather magic incantations)
should have become necessary. [ See De Mirville. iii.65]. Says
one prayer:
Do
not permit that the venom should master his limbs [of the defunct ],
. . .that he should be penetrated
by any male dead, or any female dead; or that the shadow of any spirit should
haunt him (or her).”
M.
Chabas adds:
These
Khous were beings of that kind to which human beings belong after their death;
they were exorcised in the name of the god Chons . . . .The Manes then could
enter the bodies of the living, haunt and obsess the formulae and talismans,
and especially statues or divine figures were used against such formidable
invasions. [ Ibid. p.168]. They were combatted by the
help of the divine power, the god (Page
250) Chons being famed for such deliverances. The Khou, in obeying
the order of the god, none the less preserved the precious faculty inherent
in him of accommodating himself in any other body at will.
The
most frequent formula of exorcism is as follows. It is very suggestive;
Men,
gods, elect, dead spirits, amous, negroes, menti-u, do not look at this soul
to show cruelty toward it.
This
is addressed to all who were acquainted with Magic.
“Amulets
and mystic names.” This chapter is called “very mysterious,”
and contains invocations to Penhakahakaherher and Uranaokarsankrobite, and other
such easy names. Says Chabas:
We
have proofs that mystic names similar to these were in common use during the
stay of the Israelites in Egypt.
And
we may add that, whether got from the Egyptians or the Hebrews, these are sorcery
names. The student can consult the works of Éliphas Lévi, such
as his Grimoire des Sorciers. In these exorcisms Osiris is called Mamuram-Kahab,
and is implored to prevent the twice-dead Khou from attacking the justified
Khou and his next of kin, since the accursed (astral spook)
Can
take any form he likes and penetrate at will into any locality or body.
In
studying Egyptian papyri, one begins to find that the subjects of the Pharaohs
were not very much inclined to the Spiritism or Spiritualism of their day. They
dreaded the “blessed spirit” of the dead more than a Roman Catholic
dreads the devil!
But
how uncalled-for and unjust is the charge against the Gods of Egypt that they
are these “devils,” and against the priests of exercising their
magic powers with the help of “the fallen angels,” may be seen in
more than one papyrus. For one often finds in them records of Sorcerers sentenced
to the death penalty, as though they had been living under the protection of
the holy Christian Inquisition. Here is one case during the reign of Ramses
III, quoted by De Mirville from Chabas.
The
first page begins with these words: “From the place where I am to the
people of my country.” There is reason to suppose, as one will see,
that the person who wrote this, in the first personal pronoun, is a magistrate
making a report, and attesting it before men, after an accustomed formula,
for here is the main part of this accusation: “This Hai, a bad man,
was an overseer [or perhaps keeper] of sheep: he said: “Can
I have a book that will give me great power?’ . . . . And a book was
given him with the formulae of Ramses-Meri-Amen, the great God, his royal
master; and he succeeded in getting a divine power enabling him to fascinate
men.
Obsession
in Egypt -
(Page
251) He also succeeded in building a place and in finding a very
deep place, and produced men of Menh [ magical homunculi?]
and . . . love-writings . . stealing them from the Khen [ the occult
library of the palace] by the hand of the stonemason Atirma, . . .
by forcing one of the supervisors to go aside, and acting magically on the
others. Then he sought to read futurity by them and succeeded. All the horrors
and abominations he had conceived in his heart, he did them really, he practised
them all, and other great crimes as well, such as the horror [?]
of all the Gods and Goddesses. Likewise let the prescriptions great [severe?]
unto death be done unto him, such as the divine words order to be
done to him.” The accusation does not stop there, it specifies the crimes.
The first line speaks of a hand paralysed by means of the men of Menh,
to whom it is simply said, “Let such an effect be produced,”
and it is produced. Then come the great abominations, such as deserve
death. . . . The judges who had examined him (the culprit) reported saying,
“Let him die according to the order of Pharaoh, and according to what
is written in the lines of the divine language.”
M.
Chabas remarks:
Documents
of this kind abound, but the task of analysing them all cannot be attempted
with the limited means we possess. [ Maimonides in his Treatise
on Idolatry says, speaking of Jewish teraphim: “They talked with
men.” To this day Christian Sorcerers in Italy, and negro Voodoos at
New Orleans fabricate small wax figures in the likeness of their victims,
and transpierce them with needles, the wound, as on the teraphim or
Menh, being repercussed on the living, often killing them. Mysterious deaths
are still many, and not all are traced to the guilty hand.
Then
there is an inscription taken in the temple of Khous, the God who had power
over the elementaries, at Thebes. It was presented by M. Prisse d’Avenue
to the Imperial—now National —Library of Paris, and was translated
first by Mr. S. Birch. There is in it a whole romance of Magic. It dates from
the day of Ramses XII. [The Ramses of Lepsius, who reigned some 1300
years before our era.] of the twentieth dynasty; it is from the rendering
of Mr. de Rougé as quoted by De Mirville, that we now translate it.
This
monument tells us that one of the Ramses of the twentieth dynasty, while collecting
at Naharain the tributes paid to Egypt by the Asiatic nations, fell in love
with a daughter of the chief of Bakhten, one of his tributaries, married her
and, bringing her to Egypt with him, raised her to the dignity of Queen, under
the royal name of Ranefrou. Soon afterwards the chief of Bakhten dispatched
a messenger to Ramses, praying the assistance of Egyptian science for Bent-Rosh,
a young sister of the queen, attacked with illness in all her limbs.
The
messenger asked expressly that a “wise-man” (an Initiate - Reh-Het)
should be sent. The king gave orders that all the hierogrammatists of the
palace and the guardians of the secret books of the Khen should be sent for,
and choosing from among them the royal scribe Thoth-em-Hebi, an intelligent
man, well versed in writing, charged him to examine the sickness.
(Page 252) Arrived at Bakhten, Thoth-em-Hebi found that Bent-Rosh
was possessed by a Khou (Em-seh-‘eru ker h’ou), but declared himself
too weak to engage in a struggle with him. [ One may judge how trustworthy
are the translations of such Egyptian documents when the sentence is rendered
in three different ways by three Egyptologists. Rougé says: “He
found her in a state to fall under the power of spirits,” or,
“with her limbs quite stiff.” (?) another version: and Chabas
translates: “And the Scribe found the Khou too wicked.” Between
her being in possession of an evil Khou and “with her limbs quite stiff.”
there is a difference.]
Eleven
years elapsed, and the young girl’s state did not improve. The chief
of Bakhten again sent his messenger, and on his formal demand Khons-peiri-Seklerem-Zam,
one of the divine forms of Chons - God the Son of the Theban Trinity - was
dispatched to Bakhten. . . .
The
God [incarnate] having saluted (besa) the patient, she
felt immediately relieved, and the Khou who was in her manifested forthwith
with his intention of obeying the orders of the God. “O great God, who
forces: the phantom to vanish,” said the Khou, “I am thy slave
and I will return whence I came!” [ De Mirville, v.247, 248 ].
Evidently
Khons-peiri-Seklerem-Zam was a real Hierophant of the class named the “Sons
of God,” since he is said to be one of the forms of the God Khons; which
means either that he was considered as an incarnation of that God—an Avatâra—or
that he was a full Initiate. The same text shows that the temple to which he
belonged was one of those to which a School of Magic was attached. There was
a Khen in it, or that portion of the temple which was inaccessible to all but
the highest priest, the library or depository of sacred works, to the study
and care of which special priests were appointed (those whom all the Pharaohs
consulted in cases of great importance), and wherein they communicated with
the Gods and obtained advice from them. Does not Lucian tell his readers in
his description of the temple of Hierapolis, of “Gods who manifest their
presence independently?” [ Some translators would have Lucian speak
of the inhabitants of the city, but they fail to show that this view is maintainable.]
And further on that he once travelled with a priest from Memphis, who told him
he had passed twenty-three years in the subterranean crypts of his temple, receiving
instructions on Magic from the Goddess Isis herself. Again we read that it was
by Mercury himself that the great Sesostris (Ramses II.) was instructed in the
Sacred Sciences. On which Jablonsky remarks that we have here the reason why
Amun (Ammon)—whence he thinks our “Amen” is derived—was
the real evocation to the light. [ De Mirville, v. 256,,257.]
In
the Papyrus Anastasi, which teems with various formulae for the evocation of
Gods, and with exorcisms against Khous and the elementary demons, the seventh
paragraph shows plainly the difference made between the real Gods, the Planetary
Angels, and those shells of mortals which are left behind in Kama-loka, as though
to tempt mankind and to puzzle it the more hopelessly in its vain search after
the truth, outside the Occult Sciences and the veil of Initiation.
Two
Rituals of Magic - (Page
253) This seventh verse
says with regard to such divine evocation or theomantic consultations:
One
must invoke that divine and great name [ How can De Mirville see Satan
in the Egyptian God of the great divine Name, when he himself admits that
nothing was greater than the name of the oracle of Dodona, as it was that
of the God of the Jews, IAO, or Jehovah? That oracle had been brought by the
Pelasgians to Dodona more then fourteen centuries B.C. and left with the forefathers
of the Hellenes, and its history is well-known and may be read in Herodotus.
Jupiter, who loved the fair nymph of the ocean. Dodona, had ordered Pelasgus
to carry his cult to Thessaly. The name of the God of that oracle at the temple
of Dodona was Zeus Pelasgicos, the Zeuspater (God the Father), or as De Mirville
explains: “It was the name par excellence, the name that the
Jews held as the ineffable, the unpronounceable Name—in short, Jaoh-pater,
i.e., ‘he who was, who is, and who will be,’ otherwise the
Eternal.” And the author admits that Maury is right “in discovering
in the name of the Vaidic Indra the Biblical Jehovah,” and does not
even attempt to deny the etymological connection between the two names - “the
great and the lost name with the sun and the thunder-bolts.”
Strange confessions, and still stranger contradictions.] only in cases
of absolute necessity, and when one feels absolutely pure and irreproachable.
Not
so in the formula of black Magic. Reuvens, speaking of the two rituals of Magic
of the Anastasi collection, remarks that they
Undeniably
form the most instructive commentary upon the Egyptian Mysteries attributed
to Jamblichus, and the best pendant to that classical work, for understanding
the thaumaturgy of the philosophical sects, thaumaturgy based on ancient Egyptian
religion. According to Jamblichus, thaumaturgy was exercised by the ministry
of secondary genii. [ Reuvens” Letter to Letronne on the 75th
number of the Papyri Anastasi.” See De Mirville, v.255.]
Reuvens
closes with a remark which is very suggestive and is very important to the Occultists
who defend the antiquity and genuineness of their documents, for he says:
All
that he [ Jamblichus] gives out as theology we find as history
in our papyri.
But
then how deny the authenticity, the credibility, and, beyond all, the trustworthiness
of those classical writers, who all wrote about Magic and its Mysteries in a
most worshipful spirit of admiration and reverence? Listen to Pindarus, who
exclaims:
Happy
he who descends into the grave thus initiated, for he knows the end of his
life and the kingdom [The Eleusinian Fields.] given by Jupiter.
[ Fragments. ix. ]
(Page
254) Or to Cicero:
Initiation
not only teaches us to feel happy in this life, but also to die with better
hope. [ De Legibus. 11. iv.]
Plato,
Pausanias, Strabo, Diodorus and dozens of others bring their evidence as to
the great boon of Initiation; all the great as well as the partially-initiated
Adepts, share the enthusiasm of Cicero.
Does
not Plutarch, thinking of what he had learned in his initiation, console himself
for the loss of his wife? Had he not obtained the certitude at the Mysteries
of Bacchus that “the soul [ spirit] remains incorruptible,
and that there is a hereafter”? . . . Aristophanes went even further:
“All those who participated in the Myseries,” he says, “led
an innocent, calm, and holy life; they died looking for the light of the Eleusinian
Fields [Devachan], while the rest could never expect anything
but eternal darkness [ ignorance? ].
.
. .And when one thinks about the importance attached by the States to the
principle and the correct celebration of the Mysteries, to the stipulations
made in their treaties for the security of their celebration, one sees to
what degree those Mysteries had so long occupied their first and their last
thought.
It
was the greatest among public as well as private preoccupations, and this
is only natural, since according to Döllinger, “the Eleusinian
Mysteries were viewed as the efflorescence of all the Greek religion, as the
purest essence of all its conceptions. [ Judaism and Paganism.
i. 184.]
Not
only conspirators were refused admittance therein, but those who had not denounced
them; traitors, perjurers, debauchees, [Frag of Styg., ap. Stob.]
. . .so that Porphyry could say that: “Our soul has to be at the
moment of death as it was during the Mysteries. i.e., exempt from any
blemishes, passion, envy, hatred, or anger.” [ De Special.
Legi.]
Truly,
Magic
was considered a Divine Science which led to a participation in the attributes
of the Divinity itself. [ De Mirville. v. 278, 279.]
Herodotus,
Thales, Parmenides, Empedocles, Orpheus, Pythagoras, all went, each in his day,
in search of the wisdom of Egypt’s great Hierophants, in the hope of solving
the problems of the universe.
Says
Philo:
The
Mysteries were known to unveil the secret operations of Nature. [Isis
Unveiled. i.25 ] The prodigies accomplished by the priests of theurgic
magic are so well authenticated and the evidence—if human testimony is
worth anything at all—is so overwhelming that, rather than confess that
the pagan theurgists far outrivalled the Christians in miracles, Sir David Brewster
conceded to the former the greatest proficiency in physics and everything that
pertains to natural philosophy. Science finds herself in a very disagreeable
dilemma . . . .
Magical
Statues
(Page
255) “Magic,”
says Psellus, “formed the last part of the sacerdotal science. It investigated
the nature, power, and quality of everything sublunary: of the elements and
their parts, of animals, of various plants and their fruits, of stones and
herbs. In short, it explored the essence and power of everything. From hence,
therefore, it produced its effects. And it formed statues [magnetized]
which procure health, and made all various figures and things [talismans],
which could equally become the instruments of disease as well as of health.
Often, too, celestial fire is made to appear through magic, and then statues
laugh and lamps are spontaneously enkindled. [ Isis Unveiled.
I. 282. 283. ]
This
assertion of Psellus that Magic “made statues which procure health,”
is now proven to the world to be no dream, no vain boast of a hallucinated Theurgist.
As Reuvens says, it becomes “history.” For it is found in the Papyrus
Magique of Harris and on the votive stele just mentioned. Both Chabas and
De Rougé state that:
On
the eighteenth line of this very mutilated monument is found the formula with
regard to the acquiescence of the God (Chons) who made his consent known by
a motion he imparted to his statue. [ De Mirville. v.248 ]
There
was even a dispute over it between the two Orientalists. While M. de Rougé
wanted to translate the word “Han” by “favour” or “grace,”
M. Chabas insisted that “Han” meant a “movement” or
“a sign” made by the statue.
Excesses
of power, abuse of knowledge and personal ambition very often led selfish and
unscrupulous Initiates to black Magic, just as the same causes led to precisely
the same thing among Christian popes and cardinals; and it was black Magic that
led finally to the abolition of the Mysteries, and not Christianity, as is often
erroneously thought. Read Mommsen’s Roman History, vol. i., and
you will find that it was the Pagans themselves who put an end to the desecration
of the Divine Science. As early as 560 B.C. the Romans had discovered an Occult
association, a school of black Magic of the most revolting kind; it celebrated
mysteries brought from Etruria, and very soon the moral pestilence had spread
all over Italy.
More
than seven thousand Initiates were prosecuted, and most of them were sentenced
to death . . .
Later
on, Titus-Livius shows us another three thousand Initiates sentenced during
a single year for the crime of poisoning. [ De Mirville. v. 281.]
(Page
256)
And yet black Magic is derided and denied!
Paulthier
may or may not be too enthusiastic in saying that India appears to him as
The
grand and primitive hearth of human thought, that has ended by embracing the
whole ancient world,
but
he was right in his idea. That primitive thought led to Occult knowledge, which
is our Fifth Race is reflected from the earliest days of the Egyptian Pharaohs
down to our modern times. Hardly a hieratic papyrus is exhumed with the tightly
swathed-up mummies of kings and high priests that does not contain some interesting
information for the modern students of Occultism.
All
that is, of course, derided Magic, the outcome of primitive knowledge and of
revelation, though it was practised in such ungodly ways by the Atlantean Sorceres
that it has since become necessary for the subsequent Race to draw a thick veil
over the practices which were used to obtain so-called magical effects on the
psychic and on the physical planes. In the letter no one in our century will
believe the statements, with the exception of the Roman Catholics, and these
will give the acts a satanic origin. Nevertheless, Magic is so mixed up with
the history of the world, that if the latter is ever to be written it has to
rely upon the discoveries of Archaeology, Egyptology, and hieratic writings
and inscriptions; if it insists that they must be free from that “superstition
of the ages” it will never see the light. One can well imagine the embarrassing
position in which serious Egyptologists, Assyriologists, savants and academicians
find themselves. Forced to translate and interpret the old papyri and the archaic
inscriptions on stelae and Babylonian cylinders, they find themselves compelled
from first to last to face the distasteful, and to them repulsive, subject of
Magic, with its incantations and paraphernalia. Here they find sober and grave
narratives from the pens of learned scribes, made up under the direct supervision
of Chaldaean or Egyptian Hierophants, the most learned among the Philosophers
of antiquity. These statements were written at the solemn hour of the death
and burial of Pharaohs, High Priests, and other mighty ones of the land of Chemi;
their purpose was the introduction of the newly-born, Osirified Soul before
the awful tribunal of the “Great Judge” in the region of Amenti—there
where a lie was said to outweigh the greatest crimes. Were the Scribes
and Hierophants, Pharaohs, and King—Priests all fools or frauds to have
either believed in, or tried to make others believe in, such “cock-and-bull
stories” as are found in the most respectable papyri? Yet there is no
help for it.
Romances
- But True - (Page
257) Corroborated by Plato and Herodotus, by Manetho and Syncellus,
as by all the greatest and most trustworthy authors and philosophers who wrote
upon the subject, those papyri note down—as seriously as they note any
history, or any fact well known and accepted as to need no commentary—whole
royal dynasties of Manes, to wit, of shadows and phantoms (astral bodies), and
such feats of magic skill and such Occult phenomena, that the most credulous
Occultist of our own times would hesitate to believe them to be true.
The
orientalists have found a plank of salvation, while yet publishing and delivering
the papyri to the criticism of literary Sadducees: they generally call them
“romances of the days of Pharaoh So-and-So.” The
idea is ingenious, if not absolutely fair.
SECTION
XXVIII
The
Origin of the Mysteries
(Page
258) ALL that is explained in the preceding Sections and a
hundredfold more was taught in the Mysteries from time immemorial. If the first
appearance of those institutions is a matter of historical tradition with regard
to some of the later nations, their origin must certainly be assigned to the
time of the Fourth Root Race. The Mysteries were imparted to the elect of that
Race when the average Atlantean had begun to fall too deeply into sin to be
trusted with the secrets of Nature. Their establishment is attributed in the
Secret Works to the King-Initiates of the divine dynasties, when the “Sons
of God” had gradually allowed their country to become Kookarma-des (land
of vice).
The
antiquity of the Mysteries may be inferred from the history of the worship of
Hercules in Egypt. This Hercules, according to what the priests told Herodotus,
was not Grecian, for he says:
Of
the Grecian Hercules I could not in no part of Egypt procure any knowledge:
. . . the name was never borrowed by Egypt from Greece . . . . Hercules, .
. . . as they [the priests] affirm is one of the twelve (great Gods,) who
were reproduced from the earlier eight Gods 17,000 years before the year of
Amasis.
Hercules
is of Indian origin, and—his Biblical chronology put aside—Colonel
Tod was quite right in his suggestion that he was Balarâma or Baladeva.
Now one must read the Purânas with the Esoteric key in one’s
hand in order to find out how on almost every page they corroborate the Secret
Doctrine. The ancient classical writers so well understood this truth that they
unanimously attributed to Asia the origin of Hercules.
A
section of the Mahâbhârata is devoted to the history of
the Hercûla, of which race was Vyasa. . . . Diodorus has the same legend
with some variety.
An
Instant in Heaven - (Page
259)
He says: “Hercules was born amongst the Indians and, like the Greeks,
they furnish him with a club and lion’s hide.” Both [Krishna and
Baladeva] are (lords) of the race (cûla) of Heri (Heri-cul-es) of which
the Greeks might have made the compound Hercules.[Tod’s Rajasthañ,i.28.]
The
Occult Doctrine explains that Hercules was the last incarnation of one of the
seven “Lords of the Flame,” as Krishna’s brother, Baladeva.
That his incarnations occurred during the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Root-Races,
and that his worship was brought into Egypt from Lanka and India by the later
immigrants. That he was borrowed by the Greeks from the Egyptians is certain,
the more so as the Greeks place his birth at Thebes, and only his twelve labours
at Argos. Now we find in the Vishnu Purâna a complete corroboration
of the statement made in the Secret Teachings, of which Purânic allegory
the following is a short summary:
Raivata,
a grandson of Sharyâti, Manu’s fourth son, finding no man worthy
of his lovely daughter, repaired with her to Brahmâ’s region to
consult the God in this emergency. Upon his arrival Hâ Hâ Hâhû,
and other Gandharvas were singing before the throne, and Raivata, waiting till
they had done, imagined that but one Muhûrta (instant) had passed, whereas
long ages had elapsed. When they had finished Raivata prostrated himself and
explained his perplexity. Then Brahmâ asked him whom he wished for a son-in-law,
and upon hearing a few personages named, the Father of the World smiled and
said: “Of those whom you have named the third and fourth generation [Root-Races]
no longer survive, for many successions of ages [Chatur-Yuga, or the four Yuga
cycles] have passed away while you were listening to our songsters. Now on earth
the twenty-eighth great age of the present Manu is nearly finished and the Kali
period is at hand. You must therefore bestow this virgin-gem upon some other
husband. For you are now alone.”
Then
the Râja Raivata is told to proceed to Kushasthaî, his ancient capital,
which was now Dvârakâ, and where reigned in his stead a portion
of the divine being (Vishnu) in the person of Baladeva, the brother of Krishna,
regarded as the seventh incarnation of Vishnu whenever Krishna is taken as a
full divinity.
“Being
thus instructed by the Lotus-born [Brahmâ], Raivata returned with his
daughter to earth, where he found the race of men dwindled in stature [see what
is said in the Stanzas and Commentaries of the races of mankind gradually decreasing
in stature]; . . .
(Page 260)
reduced in vigour, and enfeebled in intellect. Repairing to the city of Kushasthalî,
he found it much altered,” “Krishna had reclaimed from the sea a
portion of the country,” which means in plain language that the continents
had all been changed meanwhile–-and “had renovated the city”–-or
rather built a new one, Dvârakâ; for one reads in the Bhagavad
Purâna [Op. cit., ix. iii. 28.] that Kushasthalî
was founded and built by Raivata within the sea; and subsequent discoveries
showed that it was the same, or on the same spot, as Dvârakâ. Therefore
it was on an island before. The allegory in Vishnu Purâna shows
King Raivata giving his daughter to “the wielder of the ploughshare”–or
rather “the plough-bannered”–Baladeva, who “beholding
the damsel of excessively lofty height, . . . .shortened her with the end of
his ploughshare, and she became his wife.” [Vishnu Purâna.
iv. i. Wilson’s translation, iii. 248-254.]
This
is a plain allusion to the Third and Fourth Races–-to the Atlantean giants
and the successive incarnations of the “Sons of the Flame” and other
orders of Dhyân Chohans in the heroes and kings of mankind, down to the
Kali Yuga, or Black Age, the beginning of which is within historical times.
Another coincidence: Thebes is the city of a hundred gates, and Dvârakâ
is so called from its many gateways or doors, from the word “Dvâra,”
“gateway.” Both Hercules and Baladeva are of a passionate, hot temper,
and both are renowned for the fairness of their white skins. There is not the
slightest doubt that Hercules is Baladeva in Greek dress. Arrian notices the
great similarity between the Theban and the Hindu Hercules, the latter being
worshipped by the Suraseni who built Methorea, or Mathûrâ, Krishna’s
birthplace. The same writer places Sandracottus (Chandragupta, the grandfather
of King Asoka, of the clan of Morya) in the direct line of the descendants of
Baladeva.
There
were no Mysteries in the beginning, we are taught. Knowledge (Vidyâ) was
common property, and it reigned universally throughout the Golden Age (Satya
Yuga). As says the Commentary:
Men
had not created evil yet in those days of bliss and purity, for they were
of God-like more than of human nature.
But
when mankind, rapidly increasing in numbers, increased also in variety of idiosyncrasies
of body and mind, then incarnated Spirit showed its weakness. Natural exaggerations,
and along with these superstitions, arose in the less cultured and healthy minds.
Growth
of Popular Beliefs - (Page
261) Selfishness was born out of desires and passions hitherto unknown,
and but too often knowledge and power were abused, until finally it became necessary
to limit the number of those who knew. Thus arose Initiation.
Every
separate nation now arranged for itself a religious system, according to its
enlightenment and spiritual wants. Worship of mere form being discarded by the
wise men, these confined true knowledge to the very few. The need of veiling
truth to protect it from desecration becoming more apparent with every generation,
a thin veil was used at first, which had to be gradually thickened according
to the spread of personality and selfishness, and this led to the Mysteries.
They came to be established in every country and among every people, while to
avoid strife and misunderstanding exoteric beliefs were allowed to grow up in
the minds of the profane masses. Inoffensive and innocent in their incipient
stage—like a historical event arranged in the form of a fairy tale, adapted
for and comprehensible to the child’s mind—in those distant ages
such beliefs could be allowed to grow and make the popular faith without any
danger to the more philosophical and abstruse truths taught in the sanctuaries.
Logical and scientific observation of the phenomena in Nature, which alone leads
man to the knowledge of eternal truths—provided he approaches the threshold
of observation unbiassed by preconception and sees with his spiritual eye before
he looks at things from their physical aspect—does not lie within the
province of the masses. The marvels of the One Spirit of Truth, the ever-concealed
and inaccessible Deity, can be unravelled and assimilated only through Its manifestations
by the secondary “Gods,” Its acting powers. While the One and Universal
Cause has to remain for ever in abscondito, Its manifold action may be
traced through the effects in Nature. The latter alone being comprehensible
and manifest to average mankind, the Powers causing those effects were allowed
to grow in the imagination of the populace. Ages later in the Fifth, the Aryan,
Race some unscrupulous priests began to take advantage of the too-easy beliefs
of the people in every country, and finally raised those secondary Powers to
the rank of God and Gods, thus succeeding in isolating them altogether from
the One Universal Cause of all causes. [There were no Brâhmans
as a hereditary caste in days of old. In those long-departed ages a man became
a Brâhman through personal merit and Initiation. Gradually, however, despotism
crept in, and the son of a Brâhman was created a Brâhman by right
of protection first, then by that of heredity. The rights of blood replaced
those of real merit, and thus arose the body of Brâhmans which was soon
changed into a powerful caste.]
(Page
262) Henceforward the knowledge of the primeval truths remained entirely
in the hands of the Initiates.
The
Mysteries had their weak points and their defects, as every institution welded
with the human element must necessarily have. Yet Voltaire has characterised
their benefits in a few words:
In
the chaos of popular superstitions there existed an institution which has
ever prevented man from falling into absolute brutality: it was that of the
Mysteries.
Verily,
as Ragon puts it of Masonry;
Its
temple has Time for duration, the Universe for space . . . .”Let us divide
that we may rule,” have said the crafty; “Let us unite to resist,”
have said the first Masons.[Des Initiations Anciennes et Modernes.
“The mysteries,” says Ragon, “were the gift of India.”
In this he is mistaken, for the Âryan race had brought the mysteries of
Initiation from Atlantis. Nevertheless he is right in saying that the mysteries
preceded all civilisations, and that by polishing the mind and morals of the
peoples they served as a base for all the laws—civil, political, and religious.]
Or
rather, the Initiates whom the Masons have never ceased to claim as their primitive
and direct Masters. The first and fundamental principle of moral strength and
power is association and solidarity of thought and purpose. “The Sons
of Will and Yoga” united in the beginning to resist the terrible and ever-growing
iniquities of the left-hand Adepts, the Atlanteans. This led to the foundation
of still more Secret Schools, temples of learning, and of Mysteries inaccessible
to all except after the most terrible trials and probations.
Anything
that might be said of the earliest Adepts and their divine Masters would be
regarded as fiction. It is necessary, therefore, if we would know something
of the primitive Initiates to judge of the tree by its fruits; to examine the
bearing and the work of their successors in the Fifth Race as reflected in the
works of the classic writers and the great philosophers. How were Initiation
and the Initiates regarded during some 2,000 years by the Greek and Roman writers?
Cicero informs his readers in very clear terms. He says:
An
Initiate must practise all the virtues in his power: justice, fidelity, liberality,
modesty, temperance; these virtues cause men to forget the talents that he
may lack. [ De Off.,i.e. 33.]
Ragon
says"
When
the Egyptian priests said: “All for the people, nothing through the
people,” they were right: in an ignorant nation truth must be revealed
only to trustworthy persons . . . .We have seen in our days, “all through
the people, nothing for the people,” a false and dangerous system. The
real axiom ought to be: “All for the people and with the people.”
[ Des Initiations, p22.]
A
True Priesthood - (Page
263) But in order to achieve this reform the masses have to pass
through a dual transformation: (a) to become divorced from every element of
exoteric superstition and priestcraft, and (b) to become educated men, free
from every danger of being enslaved whether by a man or an idea.
This,
in view of the preceding may seem paradoxical. The Initiates were “priests,”
we may be told—at any rate, all the Hindu, Egyptian, Chaldaean, Greek,
Phoenician, and other Hierophants and Adepts were priests in the temples, and
it was they who invented their respective exoteric creeds. To this the answer
is possible: “The cowl does not make the friar.” If one may believe
tradition and the unanimous opinion of ancient writers, added to the examples
we have in the “priests” of India, the most conservative nation
in the world, it becomes quite certain that the Egyptian priests were no more
priests in the sense we give to the word than are the temple Brâhmans.
They could never be regarded as such if we take as our standard the European
clergy. Laurens observes very correctly that:
The
priests of Egypt were not, strictly speaking, ministers of religion. The word
“priest,” which translation has been badly interpreted, had an acceptation
very different from the one that is applied to it among us. In the language
of antiquity, and especially in the sense of the initiation of the priests of
ancient Egypt, the word “priest” is synonymous with that of “philosopher.”
. . . . The institution of the Egyptian priests seems to have been really a
confederation of sages gathered to study the art of ruling men, to centre the
domain of truth, modulate its propagation, and arrest its too dangerous dispersion.[
Essais Historiques sur la Franc-Maçonnerie, pp. 142. 143.]
The
Egyptian Priests, like the Brâhmans of old, held the reins of the governing
powers, a system that descended to them by direct inheritance from the Initiates
of the great Atlantis. The pure cult of Nature in the earliest patriarchal days—the
word “patriarch” applying in its first original sense to the Progenitors
of the human race, [The word “patriarch” is composed of the
Greek word “Patria” (“family.” “tribe,”
or “nation”) and “Archos” (a “chief”, the
paternal principle. The Jewish Patriarchs who were pastors, passed their name
to the Christian Patriarchs, yet they were no priests, but were simply the heads
of their tribes, like the Indian Rishis.] the Fathers, Chiefs, and Instructors
of primitive men—became the heirloom of those (Page
264) alone who could discern the noumenon beneath the phenomenon.
Later, the Initiates transmitted their knowledge to the human kings, as their
divine Masters had passed it to their forefathers. It was their prerogative
and duty to reveal the secrets of Nature that were useful to mankind—the
hidden virtues of plants, the art of healing the sick, and of bringing about
brotherly love and mutual help among mankind. No Initiate was one if he could
not heal—aye, recall to life from apparent death (coma) those who, too
long neglected, would have indeed died during their lethargy. [There
is no need to observe here that the resurrection of a really dead body is an
impossibility in Nature. ] Those who showed such powers were forthwith
set above the crowds, and were regarded as Kings and Initiates . Gautama Buddha
was a King-Initiate, a healer, and recalled to life those who were in the hands
of death. Jesus and Apollonius were healers, and were both addressed as Kings
by their followers. Had they failed to raise those who were to all intents and
purposes the dead, none of their names would have passed down to posterity;
for this was the first and crucial test, the certain sign that the Adept had
upon Him the invisible hand of a primordial divine Master, or was an incarnation
of one of the “Gods.”
The
later royal privilege descended to our Fifth Race kings through the kings of
Egypt. The latter were all initiated into the mysteries of medicine, and they
healed the sick, even when, owing to the terrible trials and labours of final
Initiation, they were unable to become full Hierophants. They were healers by
privilege and by tradition, and were assisted in the healing art by the Hierophants
of the temples, when they themselves were ignorant of Occult curative Science.
So also in far later historical times we find Pyrrhus curing the sick by simply
touching them with his foot; Vespasian and Hadrian needed only to pronounce
a few words taught to them by their Hierophants, in order to restore sight to
the blind and health to the cripple. From that time onward history has recorded
cases of the same privilege conferred on the emperors and kings of almost every
nation. [The kings of Hungary claimed that they could cure the jaundice;
the Dukes of Burgandy were credited with preserving people from the plague;
the kings of Spain delivered those possessed by the devil. The prerogative of
curing the king’s evil was given to the kings of France, in reward for
the virtues of good King Robert. Francis the First, during a short stay at Marseilles
for his son’s wedding, touched and cured of that disease upwards of 500
persons. The kings of England had the same privilege.]
The
Egyptian Priests - (Page
265) That which is known of the Priests of Egypt and of the ancient
Brâmans, corroborated as it is by all the ancient classics and historical
writers, gives us the right to believe in that which is only traditional in
the opinion of sceptics. Whence the wonderful knowledge of the Egyptian Priests
in every department of Science, unless they had it from a still more ancient
source? The famous “Four,” the seats of learning in old Egypt, are
more historically certain than the beginnings of modern England. It was in the
great Theban sanctuary that Pythagoras upon his arrival from India studied the
Science of Occult numbers. It was in Memphis that Orpheus popularized his too-abstruse
Indian metaphysics for the use of Magna Grecia; and thence Thales, and ages
later Democritus, obtained all they knew. It is to Saïs that all the honour
must be given of the wonderful legislation and the art of ruling people, imparted
by its Priests to Lycurgus and Solon, who will both remain objects of admiration
for generations to come. And had Plato and Eudoxus never gone to worship at
the shrine of Heliopolis, most probably the one would have never astonished
future generations with his ethics, nor the other with his wonderful knowledge
of mathematics.[ See Laurens’ Essais Historiques for further
information as to the world-wide, universal knowledge of the Egyptian Priests.]
The
great modern writer on the Mysteries of Egyptian Initiation—one, however,
who knew nothing of those in India—the late Ragon, has not exaggerated
in maintaining that:
All
the notions possessed by Hindustan, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Chaldaea, Sydonia,
and the priests of Babylonia, [on the secrets of Nature], was known to the
Egyptian priests. It is thus Indian philosophy, without mysteries, which,
having penetrated into Chaldaea and ancient Persia, gave rise to the doctrine
of Egyptian Mysteries.[Des Initiations. p.24.]
The
Mysteries preceded the hieroglyphics. [The word comes from the Greek
‘hieros’ (“sacred”) and “glupho” (“I
grave”). The Egyptian characters were sacred to the Gods, as the Indian
Devanâgarî is the language of the Gods.] They gave birth
to the latter, as permanent records were needed to preserve and commemorate
their secrets. It is primitive Philosophy [The same author had (as Occultists
have) a very reasonable objection to the modern etymology of the word “philosophy,”
which is interpreted “love of wisdom,” and is nothing of the kind.
The philosophers were scientists, and philosophy was a real science—not
simply verbiage, as it is in our day. The term is composed of two Greek words
whose meaning is intended to convey its secret sense, and ought to be interpreted
as “wisdom of love.” Now it is in the last word, “love,”
that lies hidden the esoteric significance: for “love” does not
stand here as a noun, nor does it mean “affection” or “fondness.”
but is the term used for Eros, that primordial principle in divine creation,
synonymous with χσφοζ, the abstract desire in Nature
for procreation, resulting in an everlasting series of phenomena. It means “divine
love,” that universal element of divine omnipresence spread throughout
Nature and which is at once the chief cause and effect. The “wisdom of
love” (or “philosophia,’) meant attraction to and love of
everything hidden beneath objective phenomena and the knowledge thereof. Philosophy
meant the highest Adeptship—love of and assimilation with Deity. In his
modesty Pythagoras even refused to be called a Philosopher (or one who knows
every hidden thing in things visible: cause and effect, or absolute truth),
and called himself simply a Sage, an aspirant to philosophy, or to Wisdom of
Love—love in its exoteric meaning being as degraded by men then as it
is now by its purely terrestrial application.] that has served as the
(Page
266) foundation-stone for modern philosophy; only the progeny, while
perpetuating the features of the external body, has lost on its way the Soul
and Spirit of its parent.
Initiation,
though it contained neither rules and principles, nor any special teaching of
Science—as now understood—was nevertheless Science, and the Science
of sciences. And though devoid of dogma, of physical discipline, and of exclusive
ritual, it was yet the one true Religion—that of eternal truth. Outwardly
it was a school, a college, wherein were taught sciences, arts, ethics, legislation,
philanthropy, the cult of the true and real nature of cosmic phenomena; secretly,
during the mysteries, practical proofs of the latter were given. Those who could
learn on all things—i.e., those who could look the great Isis in
her unveiled face and bear the awful majesty of the Goddess—became Initiates.
But the children of the Fifth Race had fallen too deeply into matter always
to do so with impunity. Those who failed disappeared from the world, without
leaving a trace behind. Which of the highest kings would have dared to claim
any individual, however high his social standing, from the stern priests, once
that the victim had crossed the threshold of their sacred Adytum?
The
noble precepts taught by the Initiates of the early races passed to India, Egypt,
and Greece, to China and Chaldaea, and thus spread all over the world. All that
is good, noble, and grand in human nature, every divine faculty and aspiration,
were cultured by the Priest-Philosophers who sought to develop them in their
Initiates. Their code of ethics, based on altruism, has become universal. It
is found in Confucius, the “atheist,” who taught that “he
who loves not his brother has no virtue in him,” and in the Old Testament
precept, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” [Lev.,
xix. 18.] The greater Initiates became like unto Gods, and Socrates,
in Plato’s Phaedo, is represented as saying:
The
Initiates are sure to come into the company of the Gods.
Revealing
and Reveiling - (Page
267) In the same work the great Athenian Sage is made to say:
It
is quite apparent that those who have established the Mysteries, or the secret
assemblies of the Initiates, were no mean persons, but powerful genii, who
from the first ages had endeavoured to make us understand under those enigmas
that he who will reach the invisible regions unpurified will be hurled into
the abyss [the Eighth Sphere of the Occult Doctrine; that is, he will
lose his personality for ever], while he who will attain them purged
of the maculations of this world, and accomplished in virtues, will be received
in the abode of the Gods.
Said
Clemens Alexandrinus, referring to the Mysteries:
Here
ends all teaching. One sees Nature and all things.
A
Christian Father of the Church speaks then as did the Pagan Pretextatus, the
pro-consul of Achaia (fourth century A.D.), “a man of eminent virtues,”
who remarked that to deprive the Greeks of “the sacred Mysteries which
bind in one the whole of mankind,” was to render their very lives worthless
to them. Would the Mysteries have ever obtained the highest praise from the
noblest men of antiquity had they not been of more than human origin? Read all
that is said of this unparalleled institution, as much by those who had never
been initiated, as by the Initiates themselves. Consult Plato, Euripides, Socrates,
Aristophanes, Pindar, Plutarch, Isocrates, Diodorus, Cicero, Epictetus, Marcus
Aurelius, not to name dozens of other famous Sages and writers. That which the
Gods and Angels had revealed exoteric religions, beginning with that
moses, reveiled and hid for ages from the sight of the world. Joseph, the son
of Jacob, was an Initiate, otherwise he would not have married Aseneth, the
daughter of Petephre (“Potiphar”—“he who belongs to
Phre,” the Sun-God), priest of Heliopolis and governor of On. [“On,”
the “Sun,” the Egyptian name of Heliopolis (the “City of the
Sun”)]. Every truth revealed by Jesus, and which even the
Jews and early Christians understood, was reviled by the Church that pretends
to serve Him. Read what Seneca says, as quoted by Dr. Kenealy:
“"The
world being melted and having reëntered the bosom of Jupiter [or
Parabrahman], this God continues for some time totally concentred in
himself and remains concealed, as it were, wholly immersed in the contemplation
of his own ideas. Afterwards we see a new world spring from him . . . .An
innocent race of men is formed.” And again, speaking of mundane dissolution
as involving the destruction or death of all, he [Seneca] teaches
us that when the laws of Nature shall be buried in ruin and the last day of
the world shall come, the Southern Pole shall crush, as it falls, all the
regions of Africa; and the North Pole shall overwhelm all the countries beneath
its axis. The affrighted sun shall be deprived of its light: (Page
268) the palace of heaven, falling to decay, shall produce at once
both life and death, and some kind of dissolution shall equally seize upon
all the deities, who thus shall return to their original chaos. [Book
of God, p. 160.]
One
might fancy oneself reading the Purânic account by Paràshara of
the great Pralaya. It is nearly the same thing, idea for idea. Has Christianity
nothing of the kind? Let the reader open any English Bible and read chapter
iii of the Second Epistle of Peter, and he will find there the same ideas.
There
shall come in the last days scoffers, . . . . saying, Where is the promise
of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they
were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant
of that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing
out of the water and in the water: whereby the world that then was, being
overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth, which are
now, by the same word are . . . .reserved unto fire, . . . .in the which the
heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat. . . Nevertheless we . . . .look for new heavens and a new earth.
If
the interpreters chose to see in this a reference to a creation, a deluge, and
a promised coming of Christ, when they will live in a New Jerusalem in heaven,
that is no fault of Peter. What he meant was the destruction of the Fifth Race
and the appearance of a new continent for the Sixth Race.
The
Druids understood the meaning of the Sun in Taurus, therefore when all the fires
were extinguished on the 1st of November their sacred and inextinguishable
fire remained alone to illumine the horizon like those of the Magi and the modern
Zoroastrian. And like the early Fifth Race and the later Chaldaeans and Greeks,
and again like the Christians (who do it to this day without suspecting the
real meaning), they greeted the “Morning-Star,” the beautiful Venus-Lucifer.
[Mr Kenealy quotes, in his Book of God, Vallancey, who says: “I
had not been a week landed in Ireland from Gibraltar, where I had studied Hebrew
and Chaldaic under Jews of various countries, when I heard a peasant girl say
to a boor standing by her ‘Feach an Maddin Nag’(Behold the
morning star) pointing to the planet Venus, the Maddena Nag of the Chaldeans.”]
Strabo speaks of an island near Britannia where Ceres and Persephone were worshipped
with the same rites as in Samothrace, and this was the sacred Ierna, where a
perpetual fire was lit. The Druids believed in the rebirth of man, not, as Lucian
explains,
That
the same Spirit shall animate a new body, not here, but in a different
world,
but
in a series of reïncarnations in this same world; for as Diodorus says,
they declared that the souls of men after a determinate period would pass into
other bodies. [There was a time when the whole world, the totality of
mankind, had one religion, as they were of “one lip.” “All
the religions of the earth were at first one, and emanated from one centre.”
says Faber.]
Atlanteans
Degenerating - (Page
269) These tenets came to the Fifth Race Aryans from their ancestors
of the Fourth Race, the Atlanteans. They piously preserved the teachings, while
their parent Root-Race, becoming with every generation more arrogant, owing
to the acquisition of superhuman powers, were gradually approaching their end.
SECTION
XXIX
The
Trial of the Sun Initiate
(Page
270) WE will begin with the ancient Mysteries—those received
from the Atlanteans by the primitive Äryans—whose mental and intellectual
state Professor Max Müller has described with such a masterly hand, yet
left so incomplete withal.
He
says: We have in it [ in the Rig Veda] a period of the
intellectual life of man to which there is no parallel in any other part of
the world. In the hymns of the Veda we see man left to himself to solve
the riddle of this world. . . .He invokes the gods around him, he praises, he
worships them. But still with all these gods . . . .beneath him, and above him,
the early poet seems ill at rest within himself. There, too, in his own breast,
he has discovered a power that is never mute when he prays, never absent when
he fears and trembles. It seems to inspire his prayers and yet to listen to
them; it seems to live in him, and yet to support him and all around him. The
only name he can find for this mysterious power is “Brahman;” for
brahman meant originally force, will, wish, and the propulsive power of creation.
But this impersonal brahman too, as soon as it is named, grows into something
strange and divine. It ends by being one of many gods, one of the great triad,
worshipped to the present day. And still the thought within him has no real
name; that power which is nothing but itself, which supports the gods, the heavens,
and every living being, floats before his mind, conceived but not expressed.
At last he calls it Ãtman,” for âtman, originally breath
or spirit, comes to mean Self and Self alone, whether divine or human; Self,
whether creating of suffering; Self, whether One or All; but always Self, independent
and free. “Who has seen the first-born?” says the poet, “when
he who has no bones (i.e., form) bore him that had bones? Where was the
life, the blood, the Self of the world? Who went to ask this from any one who
knew it?” (Rig Veda, I, 164,4.) This idea of a divine Self once
expressed, everything else must acknowledge its supremacy; Self is the
Lord of all things; it is the King of all things; as all the spokes of a wheel
are contained in the nave and circumference, all things are contained in this
Self; all selves are contained in this Self.” (Brihadâranyaka,
IV. v. 15). [Chips from a German Workshop, i. 69. 70. ]
Vishvakarma
and Vikarttana - (Page
271) This Self, the highest, the one, and the universal, was symbolised
on the plane of mortals by the Sun, its life-giving effulgence being in its
turn the emblem of the Soul—killing the terrestrial passions which have
ever been an impediment to the re-union of the Unit Self (the Spirit) with the
All-Self. Hence the allegorical mystery, only the broad features of which may
be given here. It was enacted by the “Sons of the Fire-Mist” and
of “Light.” The second Sun (the “second hypostasis”
of Rabbi Drach) appeared as put on his trial, Vishvakarma, the Hierophant, cutting
off seven of his beams, and replacing them with a crown of brambles, when the
“Sun” became Vikarttana, shorn of his beams or rays. After that,
the Sun,—enacted by a neophyte ready to be initiated—was made to
descend into Pâtâla, the nether regions, on a trial of Tantalus.
Coming out of it triumphant, he emerged from this region of lust and iniquity,
to re-become Karmasâkshin, witness of the Karma of men, [Sûrya,
the Sun, is one of the nine divinities that witness all human actions.]
and arose once more triumphant in all the glory of his regeneration, as the
Graha-Râjah, King of the Constellations, and was addressed as Gabhastiman,
“re-possessed of his rays.”
The
“fable” in the popular Pantheon of India, founded upon, and born
out of the poetical mysticism of the Rig-Veda—the sayings of which
were mostly all dramatised during the religious Mysteries—grew in the
course of its exoteric evolution into the following allegory. It may be found
now in several of the Purânas and in other Scriptures. In the Rig-Veda
and its Hymns, Vishvakarma, a Mystery-God, is the Logos, the Demiurgos, one
of the greatest Gods, and spoken of in two of the hymns as the highest. He is
the Omnificent (Vishvakarma) called the “Great Architect of the Universe,”
the
All
seeing God, . . . .the father, the generator, the disposer, who gives the
gods their names, and is beyond the comprehension of mortals,
as
is every Mystery-God. Esoterically, He is the personification of the creative
manifested Power; and mystically He is the seventh principle in man, in its
collectivity. For He is the son of Bhuvana, the self-created, luminous Essence,
and of the virtuous, chaste and lovely Yoga-Siddhâ, the virgin Goddess,
whose name speaks for itself, since it personified Yoga-power, the “chaste
mother” that creates the Adepts. In the Rig-Vaidic Hymns, Vishvakarma
performs the “great sacrifice” i.e., sacrifices himself for
the world; or, as the Nirukta is made to say, translated by the Orientalists:
(Page
272) Vishvakarma first of all offers up all the world in a sacrifice,
and then ends by sacrificing himself
In
the mystical representations of his character, Vishvakarma is often called Vittoba,
and is pictured as the “Victim,” the “Man-God,” or the
Avatàra crucified in space.
[Of
the true Mysteries, the real Initiations, nothing of course can be said in public:
they can be known only to those who are able to experience them. But a few hints
can be given of the great ceremonial Mysteries of Antiquity, which stood to
the public as the real Mysteries, and into which candidates were initiated with
much ceremony and display of Occult Arts. Behind these, in silence and darkness,
were the true Mysteries, as they have always existed and continue to exist.
In Egypt, as in Chaldaea and later in Greece, the Mysteries were celebrated
at stated times, and the first day was a public holiday, on which, with much
pomp, the candidates were escorted to the Great Pyramid and passed thereinto
out of sight. The second day was devoted to ceremonies of purification, at the
close of which the candidate was presented with a white robe; on the third day]
[There is a gap in H.P.B’s MS., and the paragraph in brackets supplies
what was missing.—A.B.] he was tried and examined as to his proficiency
in Occult learning. On the fourth day, after another ceremony symbolical of
purification, he was sent alone to pass through various trials, finally becoming
entranced in a subterranean crypt, in utter darkness, for two days and two nights.
In Egypt, the entranced neophyte was placed in an empty sarcophagus in the Pyramid,
where the initiatory rites took place. In India and Central Asia, he was bound
on a lathe, and when his body had become like that of one dead (entranced),
he was carried into the crypt. Then the Hierophant kept watch over him “guiding
the apparitional soul (astral body) from this world of Samsàra (or delusion)
to the nether kingdoms, from which, if successful, he had the right of
releasing seven suffering souls” (Elementaries). Clothed with his
Anandamayakosha, the body of bliss—the Srotâpanna remained there
where we have no right to follow him, and upon returning—received the
Word, with or without the “heart’s blood” of the Hierophant.
[ In Isis Unveiled, Vol.II., pp. 41, 42, a portion of this rite
is referred to. Speaking of the dogma of Atonement, it is traced to ancient
“heathendom” again. We say: “This cornerstone of a church
which had believed herself built on a firm rock for long centuries, is now excavated
by science and proved to come from the Gnostics. Professor Draper shows it as
hardly known in the days of Tertullian, and as having originated among the Gnostic
heretics’ (see Conflict Between Religion and Science, p.224) .
. . .But there are sufficient proofs to show that it originated among
them no more than did their anointed Christos and Sophia. The former they modelled
on the original of the King Messiah, the male principle of wisdom, and the latter
on the third Sephiroth, from the Chaldaean Kabalah, and even from the
Hindu Brahmâ and Sarasvati, and the Pagan Dionysius and Demeter. And here
we are on firm ground, if it were only because it is now proved that the New
Testament never appeared in its complete form, such as we find it now, till
300 years after the period of the apostles, and the Zohar and other Kabalistic
books are found to belong to the first century before our era, if not to be
far older still.
“The
Gnostics entertained many of the Essenean ideas; and the Essenes had their greater
and minor Mysteries at least two centuries before our era. They were the Isarim
or Initiates, the descendants of the Egyptian Hierophants, in whose
country they had been settled for several centuries before they were converted
to Buddhistic monasticism by the missionaries of King Asoka, and amalgamated
later with the earliest Christians; and they existed, probably, before the old
Egyptian temples were desecrated and ruined in the incessant invasions of Persians,
Greeks and other conquering hordes. The hierophants had their atonement enacted
in the Mystery of Initiation ages before the Gnostics, or even the Essenes,
had appeared. It was known among hierophants as the Baptism of Blood, and was
considered not as an atonement for the ‘fall of man’ in Eden, but
simply as an expiation for the past, present, and future sins of ignorant, but
nevertheless polluted mankind. The hierophant had the option of either offering
his pure and sinless life as a sacrifice for his race to the gods whom he hoped
to rejoin, or an animal victim. The former depended entirely on their own will.
At the last moment of the solemn ‘new birth,’ the Initiator passed
‘the word’ to the initiated, and immediately after the latter had
a weapon placed in his right hand, and was ordered to strike. This is
the true origin of the Christian dogma of atonement.”
As
Ballanche says, quoted by Ragon: “Destruction is the great God of the
World, justifying therefore the philosophical conception of the Hindu Shiva.
According to this immutable and sacred law, the Initiate was compelled to kill
the Initiator: otherwise initiation remained incomplete . . . . It is death
that generates life.” Orthodoxie maçonnique, p. 104. All
that, however, was emblematic and exoteric. Weapon and killing must be understood
in their allegorical sense.]
The
Transmission of Light - (Page
273) Only in truth the Hierophant was never killed—neither
in India nor elsewhere, the murder being simply feigned—unless the Initiator
had chosen the Initiate for his successor and had decided to pass to him the
last and supreme WORD, after which he had to die—only one man in a nation
having the right to know that word. Many are those grand Initiates who have
thus passed out of the world’s sight, disappearing.
As
mysteriously from the sight of men as Moses from the top of Mount Pisgah (Nebo,
oracular Wisdom), after he had laid his hands upon Joshua, who thus became
“full of the spirit of wisdom;” i.e., initiated.
But
he died, he was not killed. For killing, if really done, would belong to black,
not to divine Magic. It is the transmission of light, rather than a transfer
of life, of life spiritual and divine, and it is the shedding of Wisdom, not
of blood. But the initiated inventors of theological Christianity took the allegorical
language à la lettre ; and instituted a dogma, the crude, misunderstood
expression of which horrifies and repels the spiritual “heathen.”
All
these Hierophants and Initiates were types of the Sun and of the Creative Principle
(spiritual potency) as were Vishvakarma and Vikarttana, (Page
274) from the origin of the Mysteries. Ragon, the famous Mason, gives
curious details and explanations with regard to the Sun rites. He shows that
the biblical Hiram, the great hero of Masonry (the “widow’s son”)
a type taken from Osiris, is the Sun-God, the inventor of arts, and the “architect,”
the name Hiram, meaning the elevated,” a title belonging to the
Sun. Every Occultist knows how closely related to Osiris and the Pyramids are
the narratives in Kings concerning Solomon, his Temple and its construction;
he knows also that the whole of the Masonic rite of Initiation is based upon
the Biblical allegory of the construction of that Temple, Masons conveniently
forgetting, or perhaps ignoring, the fact that the latter narrative is modelled
upon Egyptian and still earlier symbolisms. Ragon explains it by showing that
the three companions of Hiram, the “three murderers,” typify the
three last months of the year; and that Hiram stands for the Sun—from
its summer solstice downwards, when it begins decreasing—the whole rite
being an astronomical allegory.
During
the summer solstice, the Sun provokes songs of gratitude from all that breathes;
hence Hiram, who represents it, can give to whomsoever has the right to it,
the sacred Word, that is to say life. When the Sun descends to the inferior
signs all Nature becomes mute, and Hiram can no longer give the sacred Word
to the companions, who represent the three inert months of the year. The first
companion strikes Hiram feebly with a rule twenty-four inches long, symbol
of the twenty-four hours which make up each diurnal revolution; it is the
first distribution of time, which afer the exaltation of the mighty star,
feebly assails his existence, giving him the first blow. The second companion
strikes him with an iron square, symbol of the last season, figured
by the intersections of two right lines, which would divide into four equal
parts the Zodiacal circle, whose centre symbolises Hiram’s heart, where
it touches the point of the four squares representing the four seasons; second
distribution of time, which at that period strikes a heavier blow at the solar
existence. The third companion strikes him mortally on his forehead with a
heavy blow of his mallet, whose cylindrical form symbolises the year, the
ring or circle: third distribution of time, the accomplishment of which deals
the last blow to the existence of the expiring Sun. From this interpretation
it has been inferred that Hiram, a founder of metals, the hero
of the new legend with the title of architect, is Osiris (the Sun)
of modern initiation; that Isis, his widow, is the Lodge, the
emblem of the Earth (loka in Sanskrit, the world) and that Horus,
son of Osiris (or of light) and the widow’s son, is the free Mason,
that is to say, the Initiate who inhabits the terrestrial lodge (the
child of the Widow, and of Light.) [Orthodoxie maçonnique.
pp. 102-104]
And
here again, our friend the Jesuits have to be mentioned, for the above rite
is of their making. To give one instance of their success in throwing dust into
the eyes of ordinary individuals to prevent their seeing the truths of Occultism,
we will point out what they did in what is now called Freemasonry.
Masonry
and the Jesuits - (Page
275) This Brotherhood does possess a considerable portion of the
symbolism, formulae, and ritual of Occultism, handed down from time immemorial
from the primeval Initiations. To render this Brotherhood a mere harmless negation,
the Jesuits sent some of their most able emissaries into the Order, who first
made the simple brethren believe that the true secret was lost with Hiram Abiff;
and then induced them to put this belief into their formularies. They then invented
specious but spurious higher degrees, pretending to give further light upon
this lost secret, to lead the candidate on and amuse him with forms borrowed
from the real thing but containing no substance, and all artfully contrived
to lead the aspiring Neophyte to nowhere. And yet men of good sense and abilities,
in other respects, will meet at intervals, and with solemn face, zeal and earnestness,
go through the mockery of revealing “substituted secrets” instead
of the real thing.
If
the reader turns to a very remarkable and very useful work called The Royal
Masonic Cyclopaedia, Art, “Rosicrucianism,” he will find its
author, a high and learned Mason, showing what the Jesuits have done to destroy
Masonry. Speaking of the period when the existence of this mysterious Brotherhood
(of which many pretend to know “something” if not a good deal, and
know in fact nothing) was first made known, he says:
There
was a dread among the great masses of society in byegone days of the unseen—a
dread, as recent events and phenomena show very clearly, not yet overcome
in its entirety. Hence students of Nature and mind were forced into an obscurity
not altogether unwelcome. . . .The Kabalistic reveries of a Johann Reuchlin
led to the fiery action of a Luther, and the patient labours of Trittenheim
produced the modern system of diplomatic cipher writing. . . . .It is very
worthy of remark, that one particular century, and that in which the Rosicrucians
first showed themselves, is distinguished in history as the era in which most
of these efforts at throwing off the trammels of the past [Popery and
Ecclesiasticism] occurred. Hence the opposition of the losing party,
and their virulence against anything mysterious or unknown. They freely organised
pseudo-Rosicrucian and Masonic societies in return; and these societies were
instructed to irregularly entrap the weaker brethren of the True and Invisible
Order, and then triumphantly betray anything they may be so inconsiderate
as to communicate to the superiors of these transitory and unmeaning associations.
Every wile was adopted to the authorities, fighting in self-defence against
the progress of truth, to engage, by persuasion, interest or terror, such
as might be cajoled into receiving the Pope as Master—when (Page
276)
gained, as many converts to that faith know, but dare not own, they
are treated with neglect, and left to battle of life as best they may, not
even being admitted to the knowledge of such miserable aporrheta as the Romish
faith considers itself entitled to withhold.
But
if Masonry has been spoiled, none is able to crush the real invisible Rosicrucian
and the Eastern Initiate. The symbolism of Vishvakarma and Sûrya Vikarttana
has survived, where Hiram Abiff was indeed murdered, and we will now return
to it. It is not simply an astronomical, but is the most solemn rite, an inheritance
from the Archaic Mysteries that has crossed the ages and is used to this day.
It typifies a whole drama of the Cycle of Life, of progressive incarnations,
and of psychic as well as of physiological secrets, of which neither the Church
nor Science knows anything, though it is this rite that has led the former to
the greatest of its Christian Mysteries.
SECTION
XXX
The
Mystery “Sun of Initiation”
(Page
277) THE antiquity of the Secret Doctrine may be better realised
when it is shown at what point of history its Mysteries had already been desecrated,
by being made subservient to the personal ambition of despot-ruler and crafty
priest. These profoundly philosophical and scientifically composed religious
dramas, in which were enacted the grandest truths of the Occult or Spiritual
Universe and the hidden lore of learning, and become subject to persecution
long before the days when Plato and even Pythagoras flourished. Withal, primal
revelations given to Mankind have not died with the Mysteries; they are still
preserved as heirlooms for future and more spiritual generations.
It
has been already stated in Isis Unveiled, [Op. cit.,i.
15.] that so far back in the days of Aristotle, the great Mysteries had
already lost their primitive grandeur and solemnity. Their rites had fallen
into desuetude, and they had to a great degree degenerated into mere priestly
speculations and had become religious shams. It is useless to state when they
first appeared in Europe and Greece, since recognised history may almost be
said to begin with Aristotle, everything before him appearing to be in an inextricable
chronological confusion. Suffice it to say, that in Egypt the Mysteries had
been known since the days of Menes, and that the Greeks received them only when
Orpheus introduced them from India. In an article “Was writing known before
Pânini?” [Five Years of Theosophy, p.258. A curious
question to start and to deny, when it is well-known even to the Orientalists
that, to take but one case, there is Yaska, who was a predecessor of Pânini,
and his work still exists; there are seventeen writers of Nirukta (glossary)
known to have prescribed Yaska.] it is stated that the Pândus had
acquired universal dominion and had taught the “sacrificial” Mysteries
to other races as far back as 3,300 B.C. Indeed, when Orpheus, the son of Apollo
or Helios, received from his father the phorminx—the seven-stringed lyre,
symbolical of the sevenfold mystery
(Page 278) of Initiation—these Mysteries were already hoary
with age in Central. Asia and India. According to Herodotus it was Orpheus who
brought them from India, and Orpheus is far anterior to Homer and Hesiod. Thus
even in the days of Aristotle few were the true Adepts left in Europe and even
in Egypt. The heirs of those who had been dispersed by the conquering swords
of various invaders of old Egypt had been dispersed in their turn. As 8,000
or 9,000 years earlier the stream of knowledge had been slowly running down
from the tablelands of Central Asia into India and towards Europe and Northern
Africa, so about 500 years B.C. it had begun to flow backward to its old home
and birthplace. During the two thousand subsequent years the knowledge of the
existence of great Adepts nearly died out in Europe. Nevertheless, in some secret
places the Mysteries were still enacted in all their primitive purity. The “Sun
of Righteousness” still blazed high on the midnight sky; and, while
darkness was upon the face of the profane world, there was the eternal light
in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation. The true Mysteries were never
made public. Eleusinia and Agrae for the multitudes; the God Ευβουλη,
“of the good counsel,” the great Orphic Deity for the neophyte.
This
mystery God—mistaken by our Symbologists for the Sun—who was He?
Everyone who has any idea of the ancient Egyptian exoteric faith is quite aware
that for the multitudes Osiris was the Sun in Heaven, “the heavenly King,”
Ro-Imphab; that by the Greeks the Sun was called the “Eye of Jupiter,”
as for the modern orthodox Pârsi he is “the eye of Ormuzd:”
that the Sun, moreover, was addressed as the “All-seeing God”( πολυοφθαλμος
) as the “God Saviour,” and the “saving God” (Αιτιον
της σωτηριας). Read the
papyrus of Papheronmes at Berlin, and the stela as rendered by Mariette Bey;
[La Mére d’Apis, p. 47.] and see what they say:
Glory
to thee, O Sun, divine child! . . . . thy rays carry life to the pure and to
those ready. . . .The Gods [the “Sons of God”] who
approach thee tremble with delight and awe. . . . Thou art the first born, the
Son of God, the Word. [One just initiated is called the “first-born,”
and in India he becomes dwija, “twice-born,” only after his final
and supreme Initiation. Every Adept is a “Son of God” and a “Son
of Light” after receiving the “Word,” when he becomes the
“Word” himself, after receiving the seven divine attributes or the
“lyre of Apollo.”]
The
Church has now seized upon these terms and sees presentments of the coming Christ
in these expressions in the initiatory rites and prophetic utterances of the
Pagan Oracles.
The
Sun as God - (Page
279) They are nothing of the kind, for they were applied to every
worthy Initiate. If the expressions that were used in hieratic writings and
glyphs thousands of years before our era are now found in the laudatory hymns
and prayers of Christian Churches, it is simply because they have been unblushingly
appropriated by the Latin Christians, in the full hope of never being detected
by posterity. Everything that could be done had been done to destroy the original
Pagan manuscripts and the Church felt secure. Christianity has undeniably had
her great Seers and Prophets, like every other religion; but their claims are
not strengthened by denying their predecessors.
Listen
to Plato:
Know
then, Glaucus, that when I speak of the production of good, it is the Sun
I mean. The Son has a perfect analogy with his Father.
Iamblichus
calls the Sun “the image of divine intelligence or Wisdom.” Eusebius,
repeating the words of Philo, calls the rising Sun (ανατολη
) the chief Angel, the most ancient, adding that the Archangel who is polyonymous
(of many names) is the Verbum of Christ. The word Sol (Sun) being derived from
solus, the One, or the “He alone.” and its Greek name Helios
meaning the “Most High,” the emblem becomes comprehensible. Nevertheless,
the Ancients made a difference between the Sun and its prototype.
Socrates
saluted the rising Sun as does a true Pârsî or Zoroastrian in our
own day; and Homer and Euripides, as Plato did after them several times, mention
the Jupiter-Logos, the “Word” or the Sun. Nevertheless, the Christians
maintain that since the oracle consulted on the God Iao answered: “It
is the Sun,” therefore
The
Jehovah of the Jews was well known to the Pagans and Greeks;[See De
Mirville, iv.15]
and
“Iao is our Jehovah.” The first part of the proposition has nothing,
it seems to do with the second part, and least of all can the conclusion be
regarded as correct. But if the Christians are so anxious to prove the identity,
Occultists have nothing against it. Only, in such case, Jehovah is also Bacchus.
It is very strange that the people of civilised Christendom should until now
hold on so desperately to the skirts of the idolatrous Jews—Sabaeans and
Sun worshippers as they were, [ II. Kings, xxiii, 4-13.] like
the rabble of Chaldaea—and that they should fail to see that the later
Jehovah is but a Jewish development of the Ja-va, or the (Page
280) Iao, of the Phoenicians; that this name, in short, was the secret
name of a Mystery-God, one of the many Kabiri. “Highest God” as
He was for one little nation, he never was so regarded by the Initiates who
conducted the Mysteries; for them he was but a Planetary Spirit attached to
the visible Sun; and the visible Sun is only the central Star, not the central
spiritual Sun.
And
the Angel of the Lord said unto him [Manoah] “Why askest
thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret.” [Judges,
xiii, 18. Samson, Manoah’s son, was an Initiate of that “Mystery”
Lord, Ja-va: he was consecrated before his birth to become a “Nazarite”
(a chela), an Adept. His sin with Delilah, and the cropping of his long hair
that “no razor was to touch” shows how well he kept his sacred
vow. The allegory of Samson proves the Esotericism of the Bible, as
also the character of the “Mystery Gods” of the Jews. True, Môvers
gives a definition of the Phoenician idea of the ideal sunlight as a spiritual
influence issuing from the highest God, Iao, “the light conceivable
only by intellect—the physical and spiritual Principle of all things:
out of which the soul emanates.” It was the male Essence or Wisdom,
while the primitive matter or Chaos was the female. Thus the first
two principles, co-eternal and infinite, were already with the primitive Phoenicians,
spirit and matter. But this is the echo of Jewish thought, not the opinion
of Pagan Philosophers.]
However
this may be, the identity of the Jehovah of Mount Sinai with the God Bacchus
is hardly disputable, and he is surely—as already shown in Isis Unveiled—Dionysos.
[See Isis Unveiled. ii. 526] Wherever Bacchus was worshipped
there was a tradition of Nyssa, [Beth-San or Scythopolis in Palestine
had that designation: so had a spot on Mount Parnassus. But Diodorus declares
that Nyssa was between Phoenicia and Egypt: Euripides states that Dionysos came
to Greece from India: and Diodorus adds his testimony: “Osiris was brought
up in Nyssa, in Arabia the Happy: he was the son of Zeus, and was named from
his father (nominative Zeus, genitive Dios) and the place Dio-Nysos”—the
Zeus or Jove of Nyssa. This identity of name or title is very significant. In
Greece Dionysos was second only to Zeus, and Pindar says: “So Father Zeus
governs all things, and Bacchus he governs also.”] and a cave where
he was reared. Outside Greece, Bacchus was the all-powerful “Zagreus,
the highest of Gods,” in whose service was Orpheus, the founder of the
Mysteries. Now, unless it be conceded that Moses was an initiated Priest, an
Adept, whose actions are all narrated allegorically, then it must be admitted
that he personally, together with his hosts of Israelites, worshipped Bacchus.
And
Moses built an altar, and called the name of it Jehovah Nissi [or,
Iao-nisi, or again Dionisi]. [Ex., xvii. 15.]
To
strengthen the statement we have further to remember that the place where Osiris,
the Egyptian Zagreus or Bacchus, was born, was Mount Sinai, which is called
by the Egyptians Mount Nissa. The brazen serpent was a nis, ,
and the month of the Jewish Passover is Nisan.
SECTION
XXXI
The
Objects of the Mysteries
(Page
281) THE earliest Mysteries recorded in history are those of Samothrace.
After the distribution of pure Fire, a new life began. This was the new birth
of the Initiate, after which, like the Brâhmans of old in India, he became
a dwija—a “twice born,”
Initiated
into that which may be rightly called the most blessed of all Mysteries .
. . being ourselves pure,[Phaedrus, Cary’s translation,
p.326.]
says
Plato. Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus and Sanchoniathon the Phoenician—the
oldest of Historians—say that these Mysteries originated in the night
of time, thousands of years probably before the historical period. Iamblichus
informs us that Pythagoras
Was
initiated in all the Mysteries of Byblus and Tyre, in the sacred operations
of the Syrians, and in the Mysteries of the Phœnicians. [Life
of Pythagoras, p.297. “Since Pythagoras, “he adds,”
“also spent two and twenty years in the adyta of the temples in Egypt,
associated with the Magians in Babylon, and was instructed by them in their
venerable knowledge, it is not at all wonderful that he was skilled in Magic
or Theurgy, and was therefore able to perform things which surpass merely
human power, and which appear to be perfectly incredible to the vulgar.”
(p.298).]
As was said in Isis
Unveiled:
When
men like Pythagoras, Plato and Iamblichus, renowned for their severe morality,
took part in the mysteries and spoke of them with veneration, it ill behoves
our modern critics to judge them [and their Initiates] upon their merely external
aspect.
Yet
this is what has been done until now, especially by the Christian Fathers. Clement
Alexandrinus stigmatises the Mysteries as “indecent and diabolical”
though his words, showing that the Eleusinian Mysteries were identical with,
and even, as he would allege, borrowed from, those of the Jews, are quoted elsewhere
in this work. The Mysteries were composed of two parts, of which the Lesser
were performed at Agrae, (Page
282) and the Greater at Eleusis, and Clement had been himself initiated.
But the Katharsis, or trials of purification, have ever been misunderstood.
Iamblichus explains the worst; and his explanation ought to be perfectly satisfactory,
at any rate for every unprejudiced mind.
He
says:--
Exhibitions
of this kind in the Mysteries were designed to free us from licentious passions,
by gratifying the sight, and at the same time vanquishing all evil thought,
through the awful sanctity with which these rites were accompanied.
Dr.
Warburton remarks:
The
wisest and best men in the Pagan world are unanimous in this, that the Mysteries
were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest ends by the worthiest means.
Although
persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take part in the Mysteries,
and a participation in them was even obligatory, very few indeed attained the
higher and final Initiation in these celebrated rites. The gradation of the
Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth book of his Theology of Plato.
The
perfective rite, precedes in order the initiation Telete, Muesis, and
the initiation , Epopteia, or the final apocalypse [revelation].
Theon
of Smyrna, in Mathematica, also divides the mystic rites into five parts:
The
first of which is the previous purification; for neither are the Mysteries communicated
to all who are willing to receive them; but there are certain persons who are
prevented by the voice of the crier. . . . . . since it is necessary that such
as are not expelled from the mysteries should first be refined by certain purifications;
but after purification the reception of the sacred rites succeeds. The third
part is denominated epopteia or reception. And the fourth, which is the
end and design of the revelation, is (the investiture) the binding of the head
and fixing of the crowns [This expression must not be understood simply
literally: for, as in the initiation of certain Brotherhoods, it has a secret
meaning that we have just explained; it was hinted at by Pythagoras, when he
describes his feelings after the Initiation, and says that he was crowned by
the Gods in whose presence he had drunk “the waters of life”—in
the Hindu Mysteries there was the fount of life, and soma, the sacred
drink.]. . . whether after this he [the initiated person] becomes a torchbearer,
or an hierophant of the Mysteries, or sustains some other part of the sacerdotal
office. But the fifth, which is produced from all these, is friendship and
interior communion with God. And this was the last and most awful of all
the Mysteries. [Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, T.Taylor, p.46,
47.]
The
chief objects of the Mysteries, represented as diabolical by the Christian Fathers
and ridiculed by modern writers, were instituted with the highest and most moral
purpose in view.
Mysteries
and Theophany (Page
283) There is no need to repeat here that which has been already
described in Isis Unveiled [ii. III, 113] that whether
through temple Initiation or the private study of Theurgy, every student obtained
the proof of the immortality of his Spirit, and the survival of his Soul. What
the last epopteia was is alluded to by Plato in Phaedrus:
Being
initiated in those Mysteries which it is lawful to call the
most blessed of all mysteries. . . . we were freed from the molestations of
evils, which otherwise await us in a future period of time. Likewise in consequence
of this divine initiation, we become spectators of entire, simple,
immovable, and blessed visions, resident in a pure light. [Eleusinian
and Bacchic Mysteries, p.63.]
This
veiled confession shows that the Initiates enjoyed Theophany—saw
visions of Gods and of real immortal spirits. As Taylor correctly infers:
The
most sublime part of the epopteia or final revealing, consisted in
beholding the Gods [the high Planetary Spirits] themselves, invested with
a resplendent light. [Op.cit, p.65]
The
statement of Proclus upon the subject is unequivocal:
In
all the Initiations and Mysteries, the Gods exhibit many forms of themselves,
and appear in a variety of shapes; and sometimes indeed a formless light of
themselves if held forth to the view; sometimes this light is according to
a human form and sometimes it proceeds into a different shape. [Quoted
by Taylor. p.66.]
Again
we have
Whatever
is on earth is the resemblance and shadow of something that is in the sphere,
while that resplendent thing [the prototype of the Soul-Spirit] remaineth
in unchangeable condition, it is well also with its shadow. When that
resplendent one removeth far from its shadow life removeth [from the latter]
to a distance. Again that light is the shadow of something more resplendent
than itself. [Verses 35-38]
Thus
speaks the Desatir, in the Book of Shet (the prophet Zirtusht),
thereby showing the identity of its Esoteric doctrines with those of the Greek
Philosophers.
The
second statement of Plato confirms the view that the Mysteries of the Ancients
were identical with the Initiations practised even now among the Buddhist and
the Hindu Adepts. The higher (Page
284) visions, the most truthful, were produced through a regular
discipline of gradual Initiations, and the development of psychical powers.
In Europe and Egypt the Mystæ were brought into close union with those
whom Proclus calls “mystical natures,” resplendent Gods,”
because, as Plato says:
[We]
were ourselves pure and immaculate, being liberated from this surrounding
vestment, which we denominate body, and to which we are now bound like an
oyster to its shell.[Phaedrus, 64, quoted by Taylor, p.64.]
As
to the East,
The
doctrine of planetary and terrestrial Pitris was revealed entirely
in ancient India, as well as now, only at the last moment of initiation, and
to the adepts of superior degrees. [Isis Unveiled, ii, 114.]
The
word Pitris may now be explained and something else added. In India the
chela of the third degree of Inititation has two Gurus: One, the living Adept;
the other the disembodied and glorified Mahâtmâ, Who remains the
adviser or instructor or even the high Adepts. Few are the accepted chelas who
even see their living Master, their Guru, till the day and hour of their final
and for ever binding vow. It is this that was meant in Isis Unveiled,
when it was stated that few of the fakirs (the word chela being
unknown to Europe and America in those days) however
Pure,
and honest, and self-devoted, have yet ever seen the astral form of a purely
human pitar (an ancestor or father), otherwise than at the solemn moment
of their first and last initiation. It is in the presence of his instructor,
the Guru, and just before the vatou-fakir [the just initiated chela]
is despatched into the world of the living, with his seven-knotted bamboo
wand for all protection, that he is suddenly placed face to face with the
unknown PRESENCE [of his Pitar or Father, the glorified
invisible Master, or disembodied Mahâtmâ]. He sees it, and falls
prostrate at the feet of the evanescent form, but is not entrusted with the
great secret of its evocation, for it is the supreme mystery of the holy syllable.
The
Initiate, says Éliphas Lévi, knows; therefore, “he
dares all and keeps silent.” Says the great French Kabalist:
You
may see him often sad, never discouraged or desperate; often poor, never humbled
or wretched; often persecuted, never cowed down or vanquished. For he remembers
the widowhood and the murder of Orpheus, the exile and solitary death of Moses,
the martyrdom of the prophets, the tortures of Apollonius, the Cross of the
Savior. He knows in what forlorn state died Agrippa, whose memory is slandered
to this day; he knows the trials that broke down the great Paracelsus, and
all that Raymond Lully had to suffer before he arrived at a bloody death.
The
Mysteries and Masonry - (Page
285) He remembers Swedenborg having to feign insanity, and losing
even his reason before his knowledge was forgiven to him; St. Martin, who had
to hide himself all life; Cagliostro, who died forsaken in the cells of the
inquisition; [This is false, and the Abbé Constant (Éliphas
Lévy) knew it was so. Why did he promulgate the untruth?]
Cazotte, who perished on the guillotine. Successor of so many victims, he dares,
nevertheless, but understands the more the necessity to keep silent. [Dogme
de la Haute Magie, i. 219. 220.]
Masonry—not
the political institution known as the Scotch Lodge, but real Masonry, some
rites of which are still preserved in the Grand Orient of France, and that Elias
Ashmole, a celebrated English Occult Philospher of the XVIIth century, tried
in vain to remodel, after the manner of the Indian and Egyptian Mysteries—Masonry
rests, according to Ragon, the great authority upon the subject, upon three
fundamental degrees: the triple duty of a Mason is to study whence he comes,
what he is, and whither he goes; the study that is, of God, of himself,
and of the future transformation. [Orthodoxie Maconnique, p.99.]
Masonic Initiation was modelled on that in the lesser mysteries. The third degree
was one used in both Egypt and India from time immemorial, and the remembrance
of it lingers to this day in every Lodge, under the name of the death and resurrection
of Hiram Abiff, the “Widow’s Son.” In Egypt the latter was
called “Osiris;” in India “Loka-chakshu” (Eye of the
World), and “Dinakara” (day-maker) or the Sun—and the rite
itself was everywhere named the “gate of death.” The coffin, or
sarcophagus, of Osiris, killed by Typhon, was brought in and placed in the middle
of the Hall of the Dead, with the Initiates all around it and the candidate
near by. The latter was asked whether he had participated in the murder, and
notwithstanding his denial, and after sundry and very hard trials, the Initiator
feigned to strike him on the head with a hatchet; he was thrown down, swathed
in bandages like a mummy, and wept over. Then came lightening and thunder, the
supposed corpse was surrounded with fire, and was finally raised.
Ragon
speaks of a rumour that charged the Emperor Commodus—when he was at one
time enacting the part of the Initiator—with having played this part in
the initiatory drama so seriously that he actually killed the postulant when
dealing him the blow with the hatchet. This shows that the lesser Mysteries
had not quite died out in the second century A.D.
(Page
286) The Mysteries were carried into South and Central America, Northern
Mexico and Peru by the Atlanteans in those days when
A
pedestrian from the North [of what was once upon a time also India] might
have reached—hardly wetting his feet—the Alaskan Peninsula, through
Manchooria, across the future Gulf of Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian
Islands; while another traveller, furnished with a canoe and starting from
the South, could have walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands
and trudged into any part of the continent of South America.[Five
Years of Theosophy. p.214.]
They
continued to exist down to the day of the Spanish invaders. These destroyed
the Mexican and Peruvian records, but were prevented from laying their desecrating
hands upon the many Pyramids—the lodges of an ancient Initiation—whose
ruins are scattered over Puente Nacional, Cholula, and Teotihuacan. The ruins
of Palenque of Ococimgo in Chiapas, and others in Central America are known
to all. If the pyramids and temples of Guiengola and Mitla ever betray their
secrets, the present Doctrine will then be shown to have been a forerunner of
the grandest truths in Nature. Meanwhile they have all a claim to be called
Mitla, “the place of sadness” and “the abode of the (desecrated)
dead.”
SECTION
XXXII
Traces
of the Mysteries
(Page
287) SAYS the Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, art, “Sun:”
In
all times, the Sun has necessarily played an important part as a symbol, and
especially in Freemasonry. The W.M. represents the rising sun, the J.W. the
sun at the meridian, and the S.W. the setting sun. In the Druidical rites,
the Arch-Druid represents the sun, and was aided by two other officers, one
representing the Moon in the West, and the other the Sun at the South in its
meridian. It is quite unnecessary to enter into any lengthened discussion
on this symbol.
It
is the more “unnecessary” since J.M. Ragon has discussed it very
fully, as one may find at the end of Section XXIX., where part of his explanations
have been quoted. Freemasonry derived her rights from the East, as we have said.
And if it be true to say of the modern Rosicrucians that “they are invested
with a knowledge of chaos, not perhaps a very desirable acquisition,”
the remark is still more true when applied to all the other branches of Masonry,
since the knowledge of their members about the full signification of their symbol
is nil. Dozens of hypotheses are resorted to, one more unlikely than
the other, as to the “Round Towers” of Ireland; one fact is enough
to show the ignorance of the Masons, namely, that, according to the Royal
Masonic Encylopædia, the idea that they were connected with Masonic
Initiation, may be at once dismissed as unworthy of notice. The “Towers,”
which are found throughout the East in Asia were connected with the Mystery-Initiations,
namely, with the Vishvakarma and the Vikarttana rites. The candidates for Initiation
were placed in them for three days and three nights, whenever there was no temple
with a subterranean crypt close at hand. These round towers were built for no
other purposes. Discredited as are all such monuments of Pagan origin by the
Christian clergy, who thus “soil their own nest,” they are still
the living and indestructible relics of the Wisdom of old.
(Page 288) Nothing exists in this objective and illusive world of
ours that cannot be made to serve two purposes—a good and a bad one. Thus
in later ages, the Initiates of the Left Path and the anthropomorphists
took in hand most of those venerable ruins, then silent and deserted by their
first wise inmates, and turned them indeed into phallic monuments. But this
was a deliberate, wilful, and vicious misinterpretation of their real meaning,
a deflection from their first use. The Sun—though ever, even for the multitudes,
μονος ουρανου φεος,
“the only and one King and God in heaven, and the Ευβουλη,
“the God of Good Counsel” of Orpheus—had in every exoteric
popular religion a dual aspect which was anthropomorphised by the profane. Thus
the Sun was Osiris-Typhon, Ormuzd-Ahriman, Bel-Jupiter and Baal,
the life-giving and the death-giving luminary. And thus one and the same
monolith, pillar, pyramid, tower or temple, originally built to glorify the
first principle or aspect, might become in time an idol-fane, or worse, a phallic
emblem in its crude and brutal form. The Lingam of the Hindus has a spiritual
and highly philosophical meaning, while the missionaries see in it but an “indecent
emblem;” it has just the meaning which is to be found in all those baalim,
chammanim, and the bamoth with the pillars of unhewn stone of the Bible, set
up for the glorification of the male Jehovah. But this does not alter the fact
that the pureia of the Greeks, the nur-hags of Sardinia, the teocalli of Mexico
etc., were all in the beginning of the same character as the “Round Towers”
of Ireland. They were sacred places of Initiation.
In
1877, the writer, quoting the authority and opinions of some most eminent scholars,
ventured to assert that there was a great difference between the terms Chrestos
and Christos, a difference having a profound and Esoteric meaning. Also
that while Christos means “to live” and “to be born
into a new life,” Chrestos, in “Initiation” phraseology,
signified the death of the inner, lower, or personal nature in man; thus is
given the key to the Bràhmanical title, the twice-born; and finally,
There
were Chrestians long before the era of Christianity, and the Essenes
belonged to them. [In I Peter. ii. 3, Jesus is called “the
Lord Chrestos.”]
For
this epithets sufficiently opprobrious to characterise the writer could hardly
be found. And yet then as well as now, the author never attempted a statement
of such a serious nature without showing as many learned authorities for it
as could be mustered.
Christos
and Chrestos - (Page
289) Thus on the next page it was said:
Lepsius
shows that the word Nofre means Chrestos, “good,” and that
one of the titles of Osiris, “Onnofre,” must be translated “the
goodness of God made manifest.” “The worship of Christ was not
universal at this early date,” explains Mackenzie, “by which I
mean that Christolatry had not been introduced; but the worship of Chrestos—the
Good Principle—had preceded it by many centuries, and even survived
the general adoption of Christianity, as shown on monuments still in existence
. . . .Again we have an inscription which is pre-Christian on an epitaphial
tablet, (Spon. Misc. Erud., Ant., x xviii. 2) .
.., and de Rossi (Roma
Sotteranea, tome i., tav. xxi.) gives us another example from the catacombs—“
Ælia Chreste, in Pace.” [Isis Unveiled. ii. 323.]
Today
the writer is able to add to all those testimonies the corroboration of an erudite
author, who proves whatever he undertakes to show on the authority of geometrical
demonstration. There is a most curious passage with remarks and explanations
in the Source of Measures, whose author has probably never heard of the
“Mystery-God” Visvakarma of the early Âryans. Treating on
the difference between the terms Chrest and Christ, he ends by saying that:
There
were two Messiahs: one who went down into the pit for the salvation of this
world; this was the Sun shorn of his golden rays, and crowned with blackened
ones (symbolising this loss), as the thorns: the other was the triumphant
Messiah mounting up to the summit of the arch of heaven, and personified
as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. In both instances he had the cross;
once in humiliation and once holding it in his control as the law of creation,
He being Jehovah.
And
then the author proceeds to give “the fact” that “there were
two Messiahs,” etc., as quoted above. And this—leaving the divine
and mystic character and claim for Jesus entirely independent of this event
of His mortal life—shows Him beyond any doubt, as an Initiate of the Egyptian
Mysteries, where the same rite of Death and of spiritual Resurrection for the
neophyte, or the suffering Chrestos on his trial and new birth by Regeneration,
was enacted—for this was a universally adopted rite.
The
“pit” into which the Eastern Initiate was made to descend was, as
shown before, Pâtâla, one of the seven regions of the nether world,
over which rules Vâsuki, the great “snake God.” This pit,
Pâtâla, has (Page
290) in the Eastern Symbolism precisely the same manifold meaning
as is found by Mr. Ralston Skinner in the Hebrew word shiac in its application
to the case in hand. For it was the synonym of Scorpio—Pâtâla’s
depths being “impregnated with the brightness of the new Sun”—represented
by the “newly born” into the glory; and Pâtâla was and
is in a sense, “a pit, a grave, the place of death, and the door of Hades
or Sheol” —as, the partially exoteric Initiations in India, the
candidate had to pass through the matrix of the heifer before proceeding to
Pâtâla. In its non-mystic sense it is the Antipodes—America
being referred to in India as Pâtâla. But in its symbolism it meant
all that, and much more. The fact alone that Vâsuki, the ruling Deity
of Pâtâla, is represented in the Hindu Pantheon as the great Nâga
(Serpent) —who was used by the Gods and Asuras as a rope round the mountain
Mandara, at the churning of the ocean for Amrita, the water of immortality—connects
him directly with Initiation
For
he is Shesha Nâga also, serving as a couch for Vishnu, and upholding the
seven worlds; and he is also Ananta, “the endless,” and the symbol
of eternity—hence the “God of Secret Wisdom,” degraded by
the Church to the rôle of the tempting Serpent, of Satan. That
what is now said is correct may be verified by the evidence of even the exoteric
rendering of the attributes of various Gods and Sages both in the Hindu and
the Buddhist Pantheons. Two instances will suffice to show how little our best
and most erudite Orientalists are capable of dealing correctly and fairly with
the symbolism of Eastern nations, while remaining ignorant of the corresponding
points to be found only in Occultism and the Secret Doctrine.
(1)
The learned Orientalist and Tibetan traveller, Professor Emil Schlagintweit,
mentions in one of his works on Tibet, a national legend to the effect that
Nâgârjuna
[a “mythological” personage “without any real existence,”
the learned German scholar thinks] received the book Paramârtha, or
according to others, the book Avatamsaka, from the Nâgas, fabulous
creatures of the nature of serpents, who occupy a place among the beings superior
to man, and are regarded as protectors of the law of Buddha. To these spiritual
beings Shâkyamuni is said to have taught a more philosophical religious
system than to men, who were not sufficiently advanced to understand it at
the time of his appearance. [Buddhism in Tibet, p.31.]
The
Symbolism of Narada - (Page
291)
Nor are men sufficiently advanced for it now; for “the more philosophical
religious system” is the Secret Doctrine, the Occult Eastern Philosophy,
which is the corner-stone of all sciences rejected by the unwise builders even
at this day, and more today perhaps than ever before, in the great conceit of
our age. The allegory means simply that Nâgârjuna having been initiated
by the “Serpents”—the Adepts, “the wise ones”—and
driven out from India by the Brâhmans, who dreaded to have their Mysteries
and sacerdotal Science divulged (the real cause of their hatred of Buddhism),
went away to China and Tibet, where he initiated many into the truths of the
hidden Mysteries taught by Gautama Buddha.
(2)
The hidden symbolism of Nârada—the great Rishi and the author of
some of the Rig-Vaidic hymns, who incarnated again later on during Krishna’s
time—has never been understood. Yet, in connection with the Occult Sciences,
Nârada, the son of Brahmâ, is one of the most prominent characters;
he is directly connected in his first incarnation with the “Builders”—hence
with the seven “Rectors” of the Christian Church, who “helped
God in the work of creation.” This grand personification is hardly noticed
by our Orientalists, who refer only to that which he is alleged to have said
of Pâtâla, namely, “that it is a place of sexual and sensual
gratifications.” This is thought to be amusing, and the reflection is
suggested that Nârada, no doubt, “found the place delightful.”
Yet this sentence simply shows him to have been an Initiate, connected directly
with the Mysteries, and walking, as all the other neophytes, before and after
him, had to walk, in “the pit among the thorns” in the “sacrificial
Chrest condition,” as the suffering victim made to descend thereinto—a
mystery, truly!
Nârada
is one of the seven Rishis, the “mind-born sons” of Brahmâ.
The fact of his having been during his incarnation a high Initiate—he,
like Orpheus, being the founder of the Mysteries—is corroborated, and
made evident by his history. The Mahâbhârata states that
Nârada, having frustrated the scheme formed for peopling the universe,
in order to remain true to his vow of chastity, was cursed by Daksha, and sentenced
to be born once more. Again, when born during Krishna’s time, he is accused
of calling his father Brahmâ “a false teacher,” because the
latter advised him to get married, and he refused to do so. This shows him to
have been an Initiate, going against the orthodox worship and religion. It is
curious to find this Rishi and leader among the “Builders” and the
“Heavenly Host” as
(Page 292) the prototype of the Christian “leader” of
the same “Host”—the Archangel Mikael. Both are the male “Virgins,”
and both are the only ones among their respective “Hosts” who refuse
to create. Nârada is said to have dissuaded the Hari-ashvas, the five
thousand sons of Daksha, begotten by him for the purpose of peopling the Earth,
from producing offspring. Since then the Hari-ashvas have “dispersed themselves
through the regions, and have never returned.” The Initiates are, perhaps,
the incarnations of these Hari-ashvas?
It
was on the seventh day, the third of his ultimate trial, that the neophyte arose,
a regenerated man, who, having passed through his second spiritual birth, returned
to earth a glorified and triumphant conqueror of Death, a Hierophant.
An
Eastern neophyte in his Chrest condition may be seen in a certain engraving
in Moor’s Hindu Pantheon, whose author mistook another form of
the crucified Sun or Vishnu, Vittoba, for Krishna, and calls it “Krishna
crucified in space.” The engraving is also given in Dr. Lundy’s
Monumental Christianity, in which work the reverend author has collected
as many proofs as his ponderous volume could hold of “Christian symbols
before Christianity,” as he expresses it. Thus he shows us Krishna
and Apollo as good shepherds, Krishna holding the cruciform Conch and the Chakra,
and Krishna “crucified in Space,” as he calls it. Of this figure
it may be truly said, as the author says of it himself:
This
representation I believe to be anterior to Christianity . . . . It looks like
a Christian crucifix in many respects . . . . The drawing, the attitude, the
nail marks in hands and feet, indicate a Christian origin, while the Parthian
coronet of seven points, the absence of the wood, and of the usual inscription,
and the rays of glory above, would seem to point to some other than a Christian
origin. Can it be the victim-man, or the priest and victim both in one, of
the Hindu Mythology, who offered himself a sacrifice before the worlds were?
It
is surely so.
Can
it be Plato’s Second God who impressed himself on the universe in the
form of the cross? Or is it his divine man, who would be scourged, tormented,
fettered, have his eyes burnt out; and lastly . . .would be crucified?
It
is all that and much more; archaic religious Philosophy was universal, and its
Mysteries are as old as man. It is the eternal symbol of the personified Sun—astronomically
purified—in its mystic meaning regenerated, and symbolised by all the
Initiates in memory of a sinless Humanity when all were “Sons of God.”
Egyptian
Initiation - (Page
293)
Now, mankind has become the “Son of Evil” truly. Does all this take
anything away from the dignity of Christ as an ideal, or of Jesus as a divine
man? Not at all. On the contrary, made to stand alone, glorified above all other
“Sons of God,” He can only forment evil feelings in all those many
millioned nations who do not believe in the Christian system, provoking their
hatred and leading to iniquitous wars and strifes. If, on the other hand, we
place Him among a long series of “Sons of God” and Sons of divine
Light, every man may then be left to choose for himself, among those many ideals,
which he will choose as a God to call to his help, and worship on earth as in
Heaven.
Many
among those called “Saviours” were “good shepherds,”
as was Krishna for one, and all of them are said to have “crushed the
serpent’s head”—in other words to have conquered their sensual
nature and to have mastered divine and Occult Wisdom. Apollo killed Python,
a fact which exonerates him from the charge of being himself the great dragon,
Satan: Krishna slew the snake Kalinâga, the Black Serpent; and the Scandinavian
Thor bruised the head of the symbolical reptile with his crucifixion mace.
In
Egypt every city of importance was separated from its burial-place by a sacred
lake. The same ceremony of judgement, as is described in The Book of the
Dead—“that precious and mysterious book” (Bunsen)—as
taking place in the world of Spirit, took place on earth during the burial of
the mummy. Forty-two judges or assessors assembled on the shore and judged the
departed “Soul” according to its actions when in the body. After
that the priests returned within the sacred precincts and instructed the neophytes
upon the probable fate of the Soul, and the solemn drama that was then taking
place in the invisible realm whither the Soul had fled. The immortality of the
Spirit was strongly inculcated on the neophytes by the Al-om-jalt—the
name of the highest Egyptian Hierophant. In the Crata Nepoa—the priestly
Mysteries in Egypt—the following are described as four out of the seven
degrees of Initiation.
After
a preliminary trial at Thebes, where the neophyte had to pass through many probations,
called the “Twelve Tortures,” he was commanded, in order that he
might come out triumphant, to govern his passions and never lose for a moment
the idea of his inner God or seventh Principle. Then, as a symbol of the wanderings
of the unpurified Soul, he had to ascend several ladders and wander in darkness
in a cave with many doors, all of which were locked. Having (Page
294) overcome all, he received the degree of Pastophoris, after which
he became, in the second and third degrees, the Neocoris and Melancphoris. Brought
into a vast subterranean chamber, thickly furnished with mummies lying in state,
he was placed in presence of the coffin which contained the mutilated body of
Osiris. This was the hall called the “Gates of Death,” whence the
verse in Job:
Have
the gates of Death been opened to thee,
Hast
thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Thus
asks the “Lord,” the Hierophant, the Al-om-jah, the Initiator of
Job, alluding to this third degree of Initiation. For the Book of Job
is the poem of Initiation par excellence.
When
the neophyte had conquered the terrors of this trial, he was conducted to the
“Hall of Spirits,” to be judged by them. Among the rules in which
he was instructed, he was commanded:
Never
to either desire or seek revenge; to be always ready to help a brother in
danger, even unto the risk of his own life; to bury every dead body; to honour
his parents above all; to respect old age, and protect those weaker than himself;
and finally, to ever bear in mind the hour of death, and that of resurrection
in a new and imperishable body.
Purity
and chastity were highly recommended, and adultery was threatened with death.
Thus the Egyptian neophyte was made a Kristophoros. In this degree the mystery-name
of IAO was communicated to him.
Let
the reader compare the above sublime precepts with the precepts of Buddha, and
the noble commandments in the “Rule of Life” for the ascetics of
India, and he will understand the unity of the Secret Doctrine everywhere.
It
is impossible to deny the presence of a sexual element in many religious symbols,
but this fact is not in the least open to censure, once it becomes generally
known that—in the religious traditions of every country—man was
not born in the first “human” race from father and mother. From
the bright “mind-born Sons of Brahmâ,” the Rishis, and from
Adam Kadmon with his Emanations, the Sephiroth, down to the “parentless,”
the Anupâdaka, or the Dhyâni Buddhas, from whom sprang the Bodhisattvas
and Manushi-Buddhas, the earthly Initiates—men—the first race of
men was with every nation held as being born without father or mother. Man,
the “Manushi Buddha,” the Manu, the “Enosh,” son of
Seth, or the “Son of Man” as he is called—is born in the present
way only as the consequence, the unavoidable fatality, of the law of natural
evolution.
The
Self-Sacrificing Victim - (Page
295) Mankind—having reached the last limit, and that turning
point where its spiritual nature had to make room for mere physical organization—had
to “fall into matter” and generation. But man’s evolution
and involution are cyclic. He will end as he began. Of course to our grossly
material minds even the sublime symbolism of Kosmos conceived in the matrix
of Space after the divine Unit had entered into and fructified it with Its holy
fiat, will no doubt suggest materiality. Not so with primitive mankind. The
initiatory rite in the Mysteries of the self-sacrificing Victim that dies a
spiritual death to save the world from destruction—really from depopulation—was
established during the Fourth Race, to commemorate an event, which, physiologically,
has now become the Mystery of Mysteries among the world-problems. In the Jewish
script it is Cain and the female Abel who are the sacrificed and sacrificing
couple—both immolating themselves (as permutations of Adam and Eve, or
the dual Jehovah) and shedding their blood “of separation and union,”
for the sake of and to save mankind by inaugurating a new physiological race.
Later still, when the neophyte, as already mentioned, in order to be re-born
once more into his lost spiritual state, had to pass through the entrails (the
womb) of a virgin heifer [The Aryans replaced the living cow by
one made of gold, silver or any other metal, and the rite is preserved to this
day, when one desires to become a Brâhman, a twice-born, in India.]
killed at the moment of the rite, it involved again a mystery and one as great,
for it referred to the process of birth, or rather the first entrance of man
on to this earth, through Vâch—“the melodious cow who milks
forth sustenance and water”—and who is the female Logos. It had
also reference to the same self-sacrifice of the “divine Hermaphrodite”—of
the third Root-Race—the transformation of Humanity into truly physical
men, after the loss of spiritual potency. When, the fruit of evil having been
tested along with the fruit of good, there was as a result the gradual atrophy
of spirituality and a strengthening of the materiality in man, then he was doomed
to be born thenceforth through the present process. This is the Mystery of the
Hermaphrodite, which the Ancients kept so secret and veiled. It was neither
the absence of moral feeling, nor the presence of gross sensuality in them that
made them imagine their Deities under a dual aspect; but rather their knowledge
of the mysteries and processes of primitive Nature. The Science of Physiology
was better known to them than it is to us now. It is in this
(Page 296)
that lies buried the key to the Symbolism of old, the true focus
of national thought, and the strange dual-sexed images of nearly every God and
Goddess in both pagan and monotheistic Pantheons.
Says
Sir William Drummond in Œdipus Judaïcus:
The
truths of science were the arcana of the priests because these truths were
the foundations of religion.
But
why should the missionaries so cruelly twit the Vaishnavas and Krishna worshippers
for the supposed grossly indecent meaning of their symbols, since it is made
clear beyond the slightest doubt, and by the most unprejudiced writers, that
Chrestos in the pit—whether the pit to be taken as meaning the grave or
hell—had likewise a sexual element in it, from the very origin of the
symbol.
This
fact is no longer denied today. The “Brothers of the Rosy Cross of the
Middle Ages were as good Christians as any to be found in Europe, nevertheless,
all their rites were based on symbols whose meaning was pre-eminently phallic
and sexual. Their biographer, Hargrave Jennings, the best modern authority on
Rosicrucianism, speaking of this mystic Brotherhood, describes how
The
tortures and the sacrifice of Calvary, the Passion of the Cross, were, in
their [the Rose-Croix’s] glorious blessed magic and triumph, the protest
and appeal.
Protest—by
whom? The answer is, the protest of the crucified Rose, the greatest and the
most unveiled of all sexual symbols—the Yoni and Lingam, the “victim”
and the “murderer,” the female and male principles in Nature. Open
the last work of that author, Phallicism, and see in what glowing terms
he describes the sexual symbolism in that which is most sacred to the Christian:
The
flowing blood streamed from the crown, or the piercing circlet of the thorns
of Hell. The Rose is feminine. Its lustrous carmine petals are guarded with
thorns. The Rose is the most beautiful of flowers. The Rose is the Queen of
God’s Garden (Mary, the Virgin). It is not the Rose alone which is the
magical idea, or truth. But it is the “crucified rose,” or the
“martyred rose” (by the grand mystic apocalyptic figure) which
is the talisman, the standard, the object of adoration of all the “Sons
of Wisdom” or the true Rosicrucians. [Op. cit.,p. 141.]
Not
of all the “Sons of Wisdom,” by any means, not even of the
true Rosicrucian. For the latter would never put in such sickening relievo,
in such a purely sensual and terrestrial, not to say animal light, the grandest,
the noblest of Nature’s symbols.
Orpheus
- (Page
297) To the Rosicrucian, the “Rose” was the symbol of
Nature, of the ever prolific and virgin Earth, or Isis, the mother and nourisher
of man, considered as feminine and represented as a virgin woman by the Egyptian
Initiates. Like every other personification of Nature and the Earth she is the
sister and wife of Osiris, as the two characters answer to the personified symbol
of the Earth, both she and the Sun being the progeny of the same mysterious
Father, because the Earth is fecundated by the Sun—according to the earliest
Mysticism—by divine insufflation. It was the pure ideal of mystic Nature
that was personified in the “World Virgins,” the “Celestial
Maidens,” and later on by the human Virgin, Mary, the Mother of the Saviour,
the Salvator Mundi now chosen by the Christian World. And it was the
character of the Jewish maiden that was adopted by Theology to archaic Symbolism,
[ In Ragon’s Orthodoxie Maconnique p.105, note, we
find the following statement—borrowed from Albumazar the Arabian, probably:
“The Virgin of the Magi and Chaldæans. The Chaldæan
sphere [globe] showed in its heavens a newly-born babe, called
Christ and Jesus; it was placed in the arms of the Celestial Virgin.
It was to this Virgin that Eratosthenes, the Alexandrian Librarian, born 276
years before our era, gave the name of Isis, mother of Horus.” This is
only what Kircher gives (in Ædipus Ægypticus, iii. 5), quoting
Albumazar: “In the first decan of the Virgin rises a maid, called Aderenosa,
that is pure, immaculate virgin . . .sitting upon an embroidered throne nursing
a boy . . . a boy, named Jesus . . . which signifies Issa, whom they also call
Christ in Greek.” (See Isis Unveiled, ii. 491)] and not
the Pagan symbol that was modelled for the new occasion.
We
know through Herodotus that the Mysteries were brought from India by Orpheus—a
hero far anterior to both Homer and Hesiod. Very little is really known of him,
and till very lately Orphic literature, and even the Argonauts, were attributed
to Onamacritus, a contemporary of Pisistratus, Solon and Pythagoras—who
was credited with their compilation in the present form toward the close of
the sixth century B.C., or 800 years after the time of Orpheus. But we are told
that in the days of Pausanias there was a sacerdotal family, who, like the Brâhmans
with the Vedas, had committed to memory all the Orphic Hymns, and that
they were usually thus transmitted from one generation to another. By placing
Orpheus so far back as 1200 B.C., official Science—so careful in her chronology
to choose in each case as late a period as possible—admits that the Mysteries,
or in other words Occultism dramatised, belong to a still earlier epoch than
the Chaldæans and Egyptians.
The
downfall of the Mysteries in Europe may now be mentioned.
SECTION
XXXIII
The
Last of the Mysteries in Europe
(Page
298) AS was predicted by the great Hermes in his dialogue with Æsculapius,
the time had indeed come when impious foreigners accused Egypt of adoring monsters,
and naught but the letters engraved in stone upon her monuments survived—enigmas
unintelligible to posterity. Her sacred Scribes and Hierophants became wanderers
upon the face of the earth. Those who remained in Egypt found themselves obliged
for fear of a profanation of the sacred Mysteries to seek refuge in deserts
and mountains, to form and establish secret societies and brotherhoods—such
as the Essenes; those who had crossed the oceans to India and even to the (now-called)
New World, bound themselves by solemn oaths to keep silent, and to preserve
secret their Sacred Knowledge and Science; thus these were buried deeper than
ever out of human sight. In Central Asia and on the northern borderlands of
India, the triumphant sword of Aristotle’s pupil swept away from his path
of conquest every vestige of a once pure Religion: and its Adepts receded further
and further from that path into the most hidden spots of the globe. The cycle
of* * * *being at its close, the first hour for the disappearance of the Mysteries
struck on the clock of the Races, with the Macedonian conqueror. The first strokes
of its last hour sounded in the year 47 B.C.. Alesia [Now called St.
Reine (Cote d’Or) on the two streams, the Ose and the Oserain. Its
fall is a historical fact in Keltic Gaulish History.] the famous city
in Gaul, the Thebes of the Kelts, so renowned for its ancient rites of Initiation
and Mysteries, was, as J. M. Ragon well describes it:
The
ancient metropolis and the tomb of Initiation, of the religion of the Druids
and of the freedom of Gaul. [Orthodoxie Maconnique, p. 22.]
Alesia
and Bibractis - (Page
299) It was during the first century before our era, that the last
and supreme hour of the great Mysteries had struck. History shows the populations
of Central Gaul revolting against the Roman yoke. The country was subject to
Cæsar, and the revolt was crushed; the result was the slaughter of the
garrison at Alesia (or Alisa), and of all its inhabitants, including the Druids,
the college-priests and the neophytes; after this the whole city was plundered
and razed to the ground.
Bibractis,
a city as large and as famous, not far from Alesia, perished a few years later.
J. M. Ragon describes her end as follows:
Bibractis,
the mother of sciences, the soul of the early nations [in Europe], a town
equally famous for its sacred college of Druids, its civilisation, its schools,
in which 40,000 students were taught philosophy, literature, grammar, jurisprudence,
medicine, astrology, occult sciences, architecture, etc. Rival of Thebes,
of Memphis, of Athens and of Rome, it possessed an amphitheatre, surrounded
with colossal statues, and accommodating 100,000 spectators, gladiators, a
capital, temples of Janus, Pluto, Prosperpine, Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, Cybele,
Venus and Anubis; and in the midst of these sumptuous edifices the Naumachy,
with its vast basin, an incredible construction, a gigantic work wherein floated
boats and galleys devoted to naval games; then a Champ de Mars, an
aqueduct, fountains, public baths; finally fortifications and walls, the construction
of which dated from the heroic ages.[Op. cit., p.22.]
Such
was the last city in Gaul wherein died for Europe the secrets of the Initiations
of the Great Mysteries, the Mysteries of Nature, and of her forgotten Occult
truths. The rolls and manuscripts of the famous Alexandrian Library were burned
and destroyed by the same Cæsar, [ The Christian mob in 389 of
our era completed the work of destruction upon what remained: most of the priceless
works were saved for students of Occultism, but lost to the world.] but
while History deprecates the action of the Arab general, Amrus, who gave the
final touch to this act of vandalism perpetrated by the great conqueror, it
has not a word to say to the latter for his destruction of nearly the same amount
of precious rolls in Alesia , nor to the destroyer of Bibractis. While Sacrovir—chief
of the Gauls, who revolted against Roman despotism under Tiberius, and was defeated
by Silius in the year 21 of our era—was burning himself alive with his
fellow conspirators on a funeral pyre before the gates of the city, as Ragon
tells us, the latter was sacked and plundered, and all her treasures of literature
on the Occult Sciences perished by fire. The once majestic city, Bibractis,
has now become Autun, Ragon explains.
(Page
300 ) A few monuments of glorious antiquity are still there, such
as the temples of Janus and Cybele.
Ragon
goes on:
Arles,
founded two thousand years before Christ, was sacked in 270. This metropolis
of Gaul, restored 40 years later by Constantine, has preserved to this day
a few remains of its ancient splendour; amphitheatre, capitol, an obelisk,
a block of granite 17 metres high, a triumphal arch, catacombs, etc. Thus
ended Kelto Gaulic civilisation. Cæsar, as a barbarian worthy of Rome,
had already accomplished the destruction of the ancient Mysteries by the sack
of the temples and their initiatory colleges, and by the massacre of the Initiates
and the Druids. Remained Rome; but she never had but the lesser Mysteries,
shadows of the Secret Sciences. The Great Initiation was extinct. [Op.
cit., p.23. J.M. Ragon, a Belgian by birth, and a Mason, knew more about
Occultism than any other non-initiated writer. For fifty years he studied
the ancient mysteries wherever he could find accounts of them. In 1805, he
founded at Paris the Brotherhood of Les Trinosophes, in which Lodge
he delivered for years lectures on Ancient and Modern Initiations (in 1818
and again in 1841), which were published, and now are lost. Then he became
the writer in chief of Hermes, a masonic paper. His best works were
La Maconnerie Occulte and the Fastes Initiatiques. After his
death, in 1866, a number of his MSS, remained in the possession of the Grand
Orient of France. A high Mason told the writer that Ragon had corresponded
for years with two Orientalists in Syria and Egypt, one of whom is a Kopt
gentleman.]
A
few further extracts may be given from his Occult Masonry, as they bear
directly upon our subject. However learned and erudite, some of the chronological
mistakes of that author are very great. He says:
After
deified man (Hermes) came the King-Priest [the Hierophant] Menes was the first
legislator and the founder of Thebes of the hundred palaces. He filled that
city with magnificent splendour; it is from his day that the sacerdotal epoch
of Egypt dates. The priests reigned, for it is they who made the laws. It
is said that there have been three hundred and twenty-nine [Hierophants] since
his time—all of whom have remained unknown.
After
that, genuine Adepts having become scarce, the author shows the Priests choosing
false ones from the midst of slaves, whom they exhibited, having crowned and
deified them, for the adoration of the ignorant masses.
Tired
of reigning in such a servile way, the kings rebelled and freed themselves.
Then came Sesostris, the founder of Memphis (1613, they say before our era).
To the sacerdotal election to the throne succeeded that of the warriors. .
. . Cheops who reigned from 1178 to 1122 built the great Pyramid which bears
his name. He is accused of having persecuted theocracy and closed the temples.
This
is utterly incorrect, though Ragon repeats “History.” The Pyramid
called by the name of Cheops is the Great Pyramid, the building of which even
Baron Bunsen assigned to 5,000 B.C. He says in Egypt’s Place in Universal
History:
The
Learning of Egypt -
(Page
301) The Origins of Egypt go back to the ninth millennium before
Christ.[Op. cit., iv. 462.]
And
as the Mysteries were performed and the Initiations took place in that Pyramid—for
indeed it was built for that purpose—it looks strange and an utter contradiction
with known facts in the history of the Mysteries to suppose that Cheops, if
the builder of that Pyramid ever turned against the initiated Priests and their
temples. Moreover, as far as the Secret Doctrine teaches, it was not Cheops
who built the Pyramid of that name, whatever else he might have done.
Yet,
it is quite true that
Owing
to an Ethiopian invasion and the federated government of twelve chiefs, royalty
fell into the hands of Amasis, a man of low birth.
This
was in 570 B.C., and it was Amasis who destroyed priestly power. And
Thus
perished that ancient theocracy which showed its crowned priests for so many
centuries to Egypt and the whole world.
Egypt
had gathered the students of all countries around her Priests and Hierophants
before Alexandria was founded. Ennemoser asks:
How
comes it that so little has become known of the Mysteries and of their particular
contents, through so many ages, and amongst so many different times and people?
The answer is that it is again owing to the universally strict silence of
the initiated. Another cause may be found in the destruction and total loss
of all the written memorials of the secret knowledge of the remotest antiquity.
Numa's
books, described by Livy, consisting of natural philosophy, were found in
his tomb; but they were not allowed to be made known, lest they should reveal
the most secret mysteries of the state religion. . . .The senate and the tribunes
of the people determined . . . that the books themselves should be burned,
which was done. [History of Magic, ii, II.]
Cassain
mentions a treatise, well-known in the fourth and fifth centuries, which was
accredited to Ham, the son of Noah, who in his turn was reputed to have received
it from Jared, the fourth generation from Seth, the son of Adam.
Alchemy
also was first taught in Egypt by her learned Priests, though the first appearance
of this system is as old as man. Many writers have declared that Adam was the
first Adept; but that was a blind and a pun upon the name, which is “red
earth” in one of its meanings. The correct information—under its
allegorical veil—is found in the sixth chapter of Genesis, which speaks
of the “Sons of God” who took wives of the daughters of men, after
which they communicated to
(Page 302) these wives many a mystery and secret of the phenomenal
world. The cradle of Alchemy, says Olaus Borrichius, is to be sought in the
most distant times. Democritus of Abdera was an Alchemist, and a Hermetic Philosopher.
Clement of Alexandria wrote considerably upon the Science, and Moses and Solomon
are called proficients in it. We are told by W. Godwin;
The
first authentic record on this subject is an edict of Diocletian about 300
years A.D. ordering a diligent search to be made in Egypt for all the ancient
books which treated of the art of making gold and silver, that they might,
without distinction, be consigned to the flames.
The
Alchemy of the Chaldæans and the old Chinamen is not even the parent of
that Alchemy which revived among the Arabians many centuries later. There is
a spiritual Alchemy and a physical transmutation. The knowledge of both was
imparted at the Initiations.
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