The cosmogony of Hermes is as veiled as the Mosaic system, only it is upon
its face far more in harmony with the doctrines of the Secret Sciences and
even of Modern Science. Says the thrice great Trismegistus, “the hand that
shaped the world out of formless pre‐existent matter is no hand”; to which
_Genesis_ is made to reply, “The world was created out of nothing,”
although the _Kabalah_ denies such a meaning in its opening sentences. The
Kabalists have never, any more than have the Indian Âryans, admitted such
an absurdity. With them, Fire, or Heat, and Motion(163) were chiefly
instrumental in the formation of the world out of preëxisting Matter. The
Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântins are the prototypes of the En
Suph and Shekinah of the Kabalists. Aditi is the original of Sephira, and
the Prajâpatis are the elder brothers of the Sephiroth. The nebular theory
of Modern Science, with all its mysteries, is solved in the cosmogony of
the Archaic Doctrine; and the paradoxical though very scientific
enunciation, that “cooling causes contraction and contraction causes heat;
therefore cooling causes heat,” is shown as the chief agency in the
formation of the worlds, and especially of our sun and solar system.
All this is contained within the small compass of _Sepher Jetzirah_ in its
thirty‐two wonderful Ways of Wisdom, signed “Jah Jehovah Sabaoth,” for
whomsoever has the key to its hidden meaning. As to the dogmatic or
theological interpretation of the first verses in _Genesis_ it is
pertinently answered in the same book, where speaking of the Three
Mothers, Air, Water and Fire, the writer describes them as a balance with
The good in one scale, the evil in the other, and the oscillating
tongue of the Balance between them.(164)
One of the secret names of the One Eternal and Ever‐Present Deity, was in
every country the same, and it has preserved to this day a phonetic
likeness in the various languages. The Aum of the Hindus, the sacred
syllable, had become the Ἀιών with the Greeks, and the Ævum with the
Romans—the Pan or All. The “thirtieth way” is called in the _Sepher
Jetzirah_ the “gathering understanding,” because
Thereby gather the celestial adepts judgments of the stars and
celestial signs, and their observations of the orbits are the
perfection of science.(165)
The thirty‐second and last is called therein the “serving understanding,”
and it is so‐called because it is
A disposer of all those that are serving in the work of the Seven
Planets, according to their Hosts.(166)
The “work” was Initiation, during which all the mysteries connected with
the “Seven Planets” were divulged, and also the mystery of the “Sun‐
Initiate” with his seven radiances or beams cut off—the glory and triumph
of the anointed, the Christos; a mystery that makes plain the rather
puzzling expression of Clemens:
For we shall find that very many of the dogmas that are held by
such sects [of Barbarian and Hellenic Philosophy] as have not
become utterly senseless, and are not cut out from the order of
nature [“by cutting off Christ,”(167) or rather Chrestos] ...
correspond in their origin and with the truth as a whole.(168)
In _Isis Unveiled_,(169) the reader will find fuller information than can
be given here on the _Zohar_ and its author, the great Kabalist, Simeon
Ben Jochai. It is said there that on account of his being known to be in
possession of the secret knowledge and of the Mercaba, which insured the
reception of the “Word,” his very life was endangered, and he had to fly
to the wilderness, where he lived in a cave for twelve years surrounded by
faithful disciples, and finally died there amid signs and wonders.(170)
His teachings on the origin of the Secret Doctrine, or, as he also calls
it, the Secret Wisdom, are the same as those found in the East, with the
exception that in place of the Chief of a Host of Planetary Spirits he
puts “God,” saying that this Wisdom was first taught by God himself to a
certain number of Elect Angels; whereas in the Eastern Doctrine the saying
is different, as will be seen.
Some synthetic and kabalistic studies on the sacred _Book of Enoch_ and
the Taro (Rota) are before us. We quote from the MS. copy of a Western
Occultist, which is prefaced by these words:
There is but one Law, one Principle, one Agent, one Truth and one
Word. That which is above is analogically as that which is below.
All that which is, is the result of quantities and of
equilibriums.
The axiom of Éliphas Lévi and this triple epigraph show the identity of
thought between the East and the West with regard to the Secret Science
which, as the same MS. tells us, is:
The key of things concealed, the key of the sanctuary. This is the
Sacred Word which gives to the Adept the supreme reason of
Occultism and its Mysteries. It is the Quintessence of
Philosophies and of Dogmas; it is the Alpha and Omega; it is the
Light, Life and Wisdom Universal.
The Taro of the sacred _Book of Enoch_, or Rota, is prefaced, moreover,
with this explanation:
The antiquity of this Book is lost in the night of time. It is of
_Indian origin_, and goes back to an epoch long before Moses....
It is written upon detached leaves, which at the first were of
fine gold and precious metals.... It is symbolical, and its
combinations adapt themselves to all the wonders of the Spirit.
Altered by its passage across the Ages, it is nevertheless
preserved—thanks to the ignorance of the curious—in its types and
its most important primitive figures.
This is the Rota of Enoch, now called Taro of Enoch, to which De Mirville
alludes, as we saw, as the means used for “evil Magic,” the “metallic
plates [or leaves] escaped from destruction during the Deluge” and which
are attributed by him to Cain. They have escaped the Deluge for the simple
reason that this Flood was not “Universal.” And it is said to be “of
Indian origin,” because its origin is with the Indian Âryans of the first
Sub‐Race of the Fifth Root‐Race, before the final destruction of the last
stronghold of Atlantis. But, if it originated with the forefathers of the
primitive Hindus, it was not in India that it was first used. Its origin
is still more ancient and must be traced beyond and into the Himaleh,(171)
the Snowy Range. It was born in that mysterious locality which no one is
able to locate, and which is the despair of both Geographers and Christian
Theologians—the region in which the Brâhman places his Kailâsa, the Mount
Sumeru, and the Pârvatî Pamîr, transformed by the Greeks into Paropamisus.
Round this locality, which still exists, the traditions of the Garden of
Eden were built. From these regions the Greeks obtained their
Parnassus(172); and thence proceeded most of the biblical personages, some
of them in their day men, some demi‐gods and heroes, some—though very
few—myths, the astronomical doubles of the former. Abram was one of them—a
Chaldæan Brâhman,(173) says the legend, transformed later, after he had
repudiated his Gods and left his Ur (_pur_, “town”?) in Chaldæa, into A‐
brahm(174) (or A‐braham) “no‐brâhman” who emigrated. Abram becoming the
“father of many nations” is thus explained. The student of Occultism has
to bear in mind that every God and hero in ancient Pantheons (that of the
_Bible_ included), has three biographies in the narrative, so to say,
running parallel with each other and each connected with one of the
aspects of the hero—historical, astronomical and perfectly mythical, the
last serving to connect the other two together and smooth away the
asperities and discordancies in the narrative, and gathering into one or
more symbols the verities of the first two. Localities are made to
correspond with astronomical and even with psychic events. History was
thus made captive by ancient Mystery, to become later on the great Sphynx
of the nineteenth century. Only, instead of devouring her too dull
querists who will unriddle her whether she acknowledges it or not, she is
desecrated and mangled by the modern Œdipus, before he forces her into the
sea of speculations in which the Sphynx is drowned and perishes. This has
now become self‐evident, not only through the Secret Teachings,
parsimoniously as they may be given, but by earnest and learned
Symbologists and even Geometricians. The _Key to the Hebrew Egyptian
Mystery_, in which a learned Mason of Cincinnati, Mr. Ralston Skinner,
unveils the riddle of a God, with such ungodly ways about him as the
Biblical Jah‐ve, is followed by the establishment of a learned society
under the presidentship of a gentleman from Ohio and four vice‐presidents,
one of whom is Piazzi Smyth, the well‐known Astronomer and Egyptologist.
The Director of the Royal Observatory in Scotland and author of _The Great
Pyramid, Pharaonic by name, Humanitarian by fact, its Marvels, Mysteries,
and its Teachings_, is seeking to prove the same problem as the American
author and Mason: namely, that the English system of measurement is the
same as that used by the ancient Egyptians in the construction of their
Pyramid, or in Mr. Skinner’s own words that the Pharaonic “source of
measures” originated the “British inch and the ancient cubit.” It
“originated” much more than this, as will be fully demonstrated before the
end of the next century. Not only is everything in Western religion
related to measures, geometrical figures, and time‐calculations, the
principal period‐durations being founded on most of the historical
personages,(175) but the latter are also connected with heaven and earth
truly, only with the Indo‐Âryan heaven and earth, not with those of
Palestine.
The prototypes of nearly all the biblical personages are to be sought for
in the early Pantheon of India. It is the “Mind‐born” Sons of Brahmâ, or
rather of the Dhyâni‐Pitara (the “Father‐Gods”), the “Sons of Light,” who
have given birth to the “Sons of Earth”—the Patriarchs. For if the _Rig
Veda_ and its three sister _Vedas_ have been “milked out from fire, air
and sun,” or Agni, Indra, and Sûrya, as _Manu‐Smriti_ tells us, the _Old
Testament_ was most undeniably “milked out” of the most ingenious brains
of Hebrew Kabalists, partly in Egypt and partly in Babylonia—“the seat of
Sanskrit literature and Brâhman learning from her origin,” as Colonel Vans
Kennedy truly declared. One of such copies was Abram or Abraham, into
whose bosom every orthodox Jew hopes to be gathered after death, that
bosom being localised as “heaven in the clouds” or Abhra.(176)
From Abraham to Enoch’s Taro there seems to be a considerable distance,
yet the two are closely related by more than one link. Gaffarel has shown
that the four symbolical animals on the twenty‐first key of the Taro, at
the third septenary, are the Teraphim of the Jews invented and worshipped
by Abram’s father Terah, and used in the oracles of the Urim and Thummim.
Moreover, astronomically Abraham is the sun‐measure and a portion of the
sun, while Enoch is the solar year, as much as are Hermes or Thot; and
Thot, numerically, “was the equivalent of Moses, or Hermes,” “the lord of
the lower realms, also esteemed as a teacher of wisdom,” the same Mason‐
mathematician tells us; and the Taro being, according to one of the latest
bulls of the Pope, “an invention of Hell,” the same “as Masonry and
Occultism,” the relation is evident. The Taro contains indeed the mystery
of all such transmutations of personages into sidereal bodies and _vice
versâ_. The “wheel of Enoch” is an archaic invention, the most ancient of
all, for it is found in China. Éliphas Lévi says there was not a nation
but had it, its real meaning being preserved in the greatest secresy. It
was a universal heirloom.
As we see, neither the _Book of Enoch_ (his “Wheel”), nor the _Zohar_, nor
any other kabalistic volume, contains merely Jewish wisdom.
The doctrine itself being the result of whole millenniums of
thought, is therefore the joint property of Adepts of every nation
under the sun. Nevertheless, the _Zohar_ teaches practical
Occultism more than any other work on that subject; not as it is
translated and commented upon by its various critics though, but
with the secret signs on its margins. These signs contain the
hidden instructions, apart from the metaphysical interpretations
and apparent absurdities so fully credited by Josephus, who was
never initiated and gave out the _dead letter_ as he had received
it.(177)