Magic is a dual power: nothing is easier than to turn it into Sorcery; _an
evil thought suffices for it_. Therefore while theoretical Occultism is
harmless, and may do good, practical Magic, or the fruits of the Tree of
Life and Knowledge,(116) or otherwise the “Science of Good and Evil,” is
fraught with dangers and perils. For the study of theoretical Occultism
there are, no doubt, a number of works that may be read with profit,
besides such books as the _Finer Forces of Nature_, etc., the _Zohar_,
_Sepher Jetzirah_, _The Book of Enoch_, Franck’s _Kabalah_, and many
Hermetic treatises. These are scarce in European languages, but works in
Latin by the mediæval Philosophers, generally known as Alchemists and
Rosicrucians, are plentiful. But even the perusal of these may prove
dangerous for the unguided student. If approached without the right key to
them, and if the student is unfit, owing to mental incapacity, for Magic,
and is thus unable to discern the Right from the Left Path, let him take
our advice and leave this study alone; he will only bring on himself and
on his family unexpected woes and sorrows, never suspecting whence they
come, nor what are the powers awakened by his mind being bent on them.
Works for advanced students are many, but these can be placed at the
disposal of only sworn or “pledged” chelâs (disciples), those who have
pronounced the ever‐binding oath, and who are, therefore, helped and
protected. For all other purposes, well‐intentioned as such works may be,
they can only mislead the unwary and guide him imperceptibly to Black
Magic or Sorcery—if to nothing worse.
The mystic characters, alphabets and numerals found in the divisions and
sub‐divisions of the _Great Kabalah_, are, perhaps, the most dangerous
portions in it, and especially the numerals. We say dangerous, because
they are the most prompt to produce effects and results, and this with or
without the experimenter’s will, even without his knowledge. Some students
are apt to doubt this statement, simply because after manipulating these
numerals they have failed to notice any dire physical manifestation or
result. Such results would be found the least dangerous: it is the moral
causes produced and the various events developed and brought to an
unforeseen crisis, that would testify to the truth of what is now stated
had the lay students only the power of discernment.
The point of departure of that special branch of the Occult teaching known
as the “Science of Correspondences,” numerical or literal or alphabetical,
has for its epigraph with the Jewish and Christian Kabalists, the two mis‐
interpreted verses which say that God
ordered all things in number, measure and weight;(117)
and:
He created her in the Holy Ghost, and saw her, and numbered her,
and measured her.(118)
But the Eastern Occultists have another epigraph: “_Absolute Unity, x_,
within number and plurality.” Both the Western and the Eastern students of
the Hidden Wisdom hold to this axiomatic truth. Only the latter are
perhaps more sincere in their confessions. Instead of putting a mask on
their Science, they show her face openly, even if they do veil carefully
her heart and soul before the inappreciative public and the profane, who
are ever ready to abuse the most sacred truths for their own selfish ends.
But Unity is the real basis of the Occult Sciences—physical and
metaphysical. This is shown even by Éliphas Lévi, the learned Western
Kabalist, inclined as he is to be rather jesuitical. He says:
Absolute Unity is the supreme and final reason of things.
Therefore, that reason can be neither one person, nor three
persons; it is Reason, and pre‐eminently Reason (_raison par
excellence_).(119)
The meaning of this Unity in Plurality in “God” or Nature, can be solved
only by the means of transcendental methods, by numerals, as by the
correspondences between soul and the Soul. Names, in the _Kabalah_ as in
the _Bible_, such as Jehovah, Adam Kadmon, Eve, Cain, Abel, Enoch, are all
of them more intimately connected, by geometrical and astronomical
relations, with Physiology (or Phallicism) than with Theology or Religion.
Little as people are as yet prepared to admit it, this will be shown to be
a fact. If all those names are symbols for things hidden, as well as for
those manifested, in the _Bible_ as in the _Vedas_, their respective
mysteries differ greatly. Plato’s motto “God geometrises” was accepted by
both Âryans and Jews; but while the former applied their Science of
Correspondences to veil the most spiritual and sublime truths of Nature,
the latter used their acumen to conceal only one—to them the most
divine—of the mysteries of Evolution, namely, that of birth and
generation, and then they deified the organs of the latter.
Apart from this, every cosmogony, from the earliest to the latest, is
based upon, interlinked with, and most closely related to, numerals and
geometric figures. Questioned by an Initiate, these figures and numbers
will yield numerical values based on the integral values of the
Circle—“the secret habitat of the ever‐invisible Deity” as the Alchemists
have it—as they will yield every other Occult particular connected with
such mysteries, whether anthropographical, anthropological, cosmic, or
psychical. “In reuniting Ideas to Numbers, we can operate upon Ideas in
the same way as upon Numbers, and arrive at the Mathematics of Truth,”
writes an Occultist, who shows his great wisdom in desiring to remain
unknown.
Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of
numerals and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views
of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical principles.
“True mathematics,” says the _Magicon_, “is something with which
all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a
deceitful phantasmagoria, whose much praised infallibility only
arises from this—that materials, conditions and references are
made to foundation.” ...
The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned in
India, and from the Egyptian Hierophants, is alone able to
reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to
demonstrate the other mathematically. The sacred numbers of the
universe in their esoteric combination can alone solve the great
problem, and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of the
emanations. The lower orders, before they develop into higher
ones, must emanate from the higher spiritual ones, and when
arrived at the turning‐point, be reäbsorbed into the
infinite.(120)
It is upon these true Mathematics that the knowledge of the Kosmos and of
all mysteries rests, and to one acquainted with them, it is the easiest
thing possible to prove that both Vaidic and Biblical structures are based
upon “God‐in‐Nature” and “Nature‐in‐God,” as the radical law. Therefore,
this law—as everything else immutable and fixed in eternity—could find a
correct expression only in those purest transcendental Mathematics
referred to by Plato, especially in Geometry as transcendentally applied.
_Revealed_ to men—we fear not and will not retract the expression—in this
geometrical and symbolical garb, Truth has grown and developed into
additional symbology, invented by man for the wants and better
comprehension of the masses of mankind that came too late in their cyclic
development and evolution to have shared in the primitive knowledge, and
would never have grasped it otherwise. If later on, the clergy—crafty and
ambitious of power in every age—anthropomorphised and degraded abstract
ideals, as well as the real and divine Beings who do exist in Nature, and
are the Guardians and Protectors of our manvantaric world and period, the
fault and guilt rests with those would‐be leaders, not with the masses.
But the day has come when the gross conceptions of our forefathers during
the Middle Ages can no longer satisfy the thoughtful religionist. The
mediæval Alchemist and Mystic are now transformed into the sceptical
Chemist and Physicist; and most of them are found to have turned away from
truth, on account of the purely anthropomorphic ideas, the gross
Materialism, of the forms in which it is presented to them. Therefore,
future generations have either to be gradually initiated into the truths
underlying Exoteric Religions, including their own, or be left to break
the feet of clay of the last of the gilded idols. No educated man or woman
would turn away from any of the now called “superstitions” which they
believe to be based on nursery tales and ignorance, if they could only see
the basis of fact that underlies every “superstition.” But let them once
learn for a certainty that there is hardly a claim in the Occult Sciences
that is not founded on philosophical and scientific facts in Nature, and
they will pursue the study of those Sciences with the same, if not with
greater, ardour than that they have expended in shunning them. This cannot
be achieved at once, for to benefit mankind such truths have to be
revealed gradually and with great caution, the public mind not being
prepared for them. However much the Agnostics of our age may find
themselves in the mental attitude demanded by Modern Science, people are
always apt to cling to their old hobbies so long as the remembrance of
them lasts. They are like the Emperor Julian—called the Apostate, because
he loved truth too well to accept aught else—who, though in his last
Theophany he beheld his beloved Gods as pale, worn‐out, and hardly
discernible shadows, nevertheless clung to them. Let, then, the world
cling to its Gods, to whatever plane or realm they may belong. The true
Occultist would be guilty of high treason to mankind, were he to break for
ever the old deities before he could replace them with the whole and
unadulterated truth—and this he cannot do as yet. Nevertheless, the reader
may be allowed to learn at least the alphabet of that truth. He may be
shown, at any rate, what the Gods and Goddesses of the Pagans, denounced
as demons by the Church, are not, if he cannot learn the whole and final
truth as to what they are. Let him assure himself that the Hermetic “Tres
Matres,” and the “Three Mothers” of the _Sepher Jetzirah_ are one and the
same thing; that they are no Demon‐Goddesses, but Light, Heat, and
Electricity, and then, perchance, the learned classes will spurn them no
longer. After this, the Rosicrucian Illuminati may find followers even in
the Royal Academies, which will be more prepared, perhaps, than they are
now, to admit the grand truths of archaic Natural Philosophy, especially
when their learned members shall have assured themselves that, in the
dialect of Hermes, the “Three Mothers” stand as symbols for the whole of
the forces or agencies which have a place assigned to them in the modern
system of the “correlation of forces.”(121) Even the polytheism of the
“superstitious” Brâhman and idolater shows its _raison d’être_, since the
three Shaktis of the three great Gods, Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva, are
identical with the “Three Mothers” of the monotheistic Jew.
The whole of the ancient religious and mystical literature is symbolical.
The _Books of Hermes_, the _Zohar_, the _Ya‐Yakav_, the Egyptian _Book __
of the Dead_, the _Vedas_, the _Upanishads_, and the _Bible_, are as full
of symbolism as are the Nabathean revelations of the Chaldaic Qû‐tâmy; it
is a loss of time to ask which is the earliest; all are simply different
versions of the one primeval Record of prehistoric knowledge and
revelation.
The first four chapters of _Genesis_ contain the synopsis of all the rest
of the _Pentateuch_, being only the various versions of the same thing in
different allegorical and symbolical applications. Having discovered that
the Pyramid of Cheops with all its measurements is to be found contained
in its minutest details in the structure of Solomon’s Temple; and having
ascertained that the biblical names Shem, Ham and Japhet are determinative
of pyramid measures, in connection with the 600‐year period of
Noah and the 500‐year period of Shem, Ham and Japhet; ... the term
“Sons of Elohim” and “Daughters” of H‐Adam, [are] for one thing
astronomical terms,(122)
the author of the very curious work already mentioned—a book very little
known in Europe, we regret to say—seems to see nothing in his discovery
beyond the presence of Mathematics and Metrology in the _Bible_. He also
arrives at most unexpected and extraordinary conclusions, such as are very
little warranted by the facts discovered. His impression seems to be that
because the Jewish biblical names are all astronomical, therefore the
Scriptures of all the other nations can be “only this and nothing more.”
But this is a great mistake of the erudite and wonderfully acute author of
_The Source of Measures_, if he really thinks so. The “Key to the Hebrew‐
Egyptian Mystery” unlocks but a certain portion of the hieratic writings
of these two nations, and leaves those of other peoples untouched. His
idea is that the _Kabalah_ “is only that sublime Science upon which
Masonry is based”; in fact he regards Masonry as the substance of the
_Kabalah_, and the latter as the “rational basis of the Hebrew text of
Holy Writ.” About this we will not argue with the author. But why should
all those who may have found in the _Kabalah_ something beyond “the
sublime Science” upon which Masonry is alleged to have been built, be held
up to public contempt?
In its exclusiveness and one‐sidedness such a conclusion is pregnant with
future misconceptions and is absolutely wrong. In its uncharitable
criticism it throws a slur upon the “Divine Science” itself.
The _Kabalah_ is indeed “of the essence of Masonry,” but it is dependent
on Metrology only in one of its aspects, the less Esoteric, as even Plato
made no secret that the Deity was ever geometrising. For the uninitiated,
however learned and endowed with genius they may be, the _Kabalah_, which
treats only of “the garment of God,” or the _veil_ and _cloak_ of truth,
is built from the ground upward with a practical application to
present uses.(123)
Or in other words represents an exact Science only on the terrestrial
plane. To the initiated, the Kabalistic Lord descends from the primeval
Race, generated spiritually from the “Mind‐born Seven.” Having reached the
Earth the Divine Mathematics—a synonym for Magic in his day, as we are
told by Josephus—veiled her face. Hence the most important secret yet
yielded by her in our modern day is the identity of the old Roman measures
and the present British measures, of the Hebrew‐Egyptian cubit and the
Masonic inch.(124)
The discovery is most wonderful, and has led to further and minor
unveilings of various riddles in reference to Symbology and biblical
names. It is thoroughly understood and proven, as shown by Nachanides,
that in the days of Moses the initial sentence in _Genesis_ was made to
read _B’rash ithbara Elohim_, or “In the head‐source [or Mûlaprakiti—the
Rootless Root] developed [or evolved] the Gods [Elohim], the heavens and
the earth;” whereas it is now, owing to the Massora and theological
cunning, transformed into _B’rashith bara Elohim_, or, “In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth”—which word juggling alone has led
to materialistic anthropomorphism and dualism. How many more similar
instances may not be found in the _Bible_, the last and latest of the
Occult works of antiquity? There is no longer any doubt in the mind of the
Occultist, that, notwithstanding its form and outward meaning, the
_Bible_—as explained by the _Zohar_ or _Midrash_, the _Yetzirah_ (Book of
Creation) and the _Commentary on the Ten Sephiroth_ (by Azariel Ben
Manachem of the XIIth century)—is part and parcel of the Secret Doctrine
of the Âryans, which explains in the same manner the _Vedas_ and all other
allegorical books. The _Zohar_, in teaching that the Impersonal One Cause
manifests in the Universe through Its Emanations, the Sephiroth—that
Universe being in its totality simply the veil woven from the Deity’s own
substance—is undeniably the copy and faithful echo of the earliest
_Vedas_. Taken by itself, without the additional help of the Vaidic and of
Brâhmanical literature in general, the _Bible_ will never yield the
universal secrets of Occult Nature. The cubits, inches, and measures of
this physical plane will never solve the problems of the world on the
spiritual plane—for Spirit can neither be weighed nor measured. The
working out of these problems is reserved for the “mystics and the
dreamers” who alone are capable of accomplishing it.
Moses was an initiated priest, versed in all the mysteries and the Occult
knowledge of the Egyptian temples—hence thoroughly acquainted with
primitive Wisdom. It is in the latter that the symbolical and astronomical
meaning of that “Mystery of Mysteries,” the Great Pyramid, has to be
sought. And having been so familiar with the geometrical secrets that lay
concealed for long æons in her strong bosom—the measurements and
proportions of the Kosmos, our little Earth included—what wonder that he
should have made use of his knowledge? The Esoterism of Egypt was that of
the whole world at one time. During the long ages of the Third Race it had
been the heirloom, in common, of the whole of mankind, received from their
Instructors, the “Sons of Light,” the primeval Seven. There was a time
also when the Wisdom‐Religion was not symbolical, for it became Esoteric
only gradually, the change being necessitated by misuse and by the Sorcery
of the Atlanteans. For it was the “misuse” only, and not the use, of the
divine gift that led the men of the Fourth Race to Black Magic and
Sorcery, and finally to become “forgetful of Wisdom”; while those of the
Fifth Race, the inheritors of the Rishis of the Tretâ Yuga, used their
powers to atrophise such gifts in mankind in general, and then, as the
“Elect Root,” dispersed. Those who escaped the “Great Flood” preserved
only its memory, and a belief founded on the knowledge of their direct
fathers of one remove, that such a Science existed, and was now jealously
guarded by the “Elect Root” exalted by Enoch. But there must again come a
time when man shall once more become what he was during the second Yuga
(age), when his probationary cycle shall be over and he shall gradually
become what he was—semi‐corporeal and pure. Does not Plato, the Initiate,
tell us in the _Phædrus_ all that man once was, and that which he may yet
again become:
Before man’s spirit sank into sensuality and became embodied
through the loss of his wings, he lived among the Gods in the airy
spiritual world where everything is true and pure.(125)
Elsewhere he speaks of the time when men did not perpetuate themselves,
but lived as pure spirits.
Let those men of Science who feel inclined to laugh at this, themselves
unravel the mystery of the origin of the first man.
Unwilling that his chosen people—chosen by him—should remain as grossly
idolatrous as the profane masses that surrounded them, Moses utilised his
knowledge of the cosmogonical mysteries of the Pyramid, to build upon it
the Genesiacal Cosmogony in symbols and glyphs. This was more accessible
to the minds of the _hoi polloi_ than the abstruse truths taught to the
educated in the sanctuaries. He invented nothing but the outward garb,
added not one iota; but in this he merely followed the example of older
nations and Initiates. If he clothed the grand truths revealed to him by
his Hierophant under the most ingenious imagery, he did it to meet the
requirements of the Israelites; that stiff‐necked race would accept of no
God unless He were as anthropomorphic as those of the Olympus; and he
himself failed to foresee the times when highly educated statesmen would
be defending the husks of the fruit of wisdom that grew and developed in
him on Mount Sinai, when communing with his own personal God—his divine
Self. Moses understood the great danger of delivering such truths to the
selfish, for he understood the fable of Prometheus and remembered the
past. Hence, he veiled them from the profanation of public gaze and gave
them out allegorically. And this is why his biographer says of him, that
when he descended from Sinai,
Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone ... and he put a
veil upon his face.(126)
And so he “put a veil” upon the face of his _Pentateuch_; and to such an
extent that, using orthodox chronology, only 3376 years after the event
people begin to acquire a conviction that it is “a veil indeed.” It is not
the face of God or even of a Jehovah shining through; not even the face of
Moses, but verily the faces of the later Rabbis.
No wonder if Clemens wrote in the _Stromateis_ that:
Similar, then, to the Hebrew enigmas in respect to concealment are
those of the Egyptians also.(127)