NUMERALS.
The transcendental methods of the _Kabalah_ must not be mentioned in a
public work; but its various systems of arithmetical and geometrical ways
of unriddling certain symbols may be described. The _Zohar_ methods of
calculation, with their three sections, the Gematria, Notaricon and
Temura, also the Albath and Algath, are extremely difficult to practise.
We refer those who would learn more to Cornelius Agrippa’s works.(178) But
none of those systems can ever be understood unless a Kabalist becomes a
real Master in his Science. The Symbolism of Pythagoras requires still
more arduous labour. His symbols are very numerous, and to comprehend even
the general gist of his abstruse doctrines from his Symbology would
necessitate years of study. His chief figures are the square (the
Tetraktys), the equilateral triangle, the point within a circle, the cube,
the triple triangle, and finally the forty‐seventh proposition of Euclid’s
Elements, of which proposition Pythagoras was the inventor. But with this
exception, none of the foregoing symbols originated with him, as some
believe. Millenniums before his day, they were well known in India, whence
the Samian Sage brought them, not as a speculation, but as a demonstrated
Science, says Porphyry, quoting from the Pythagorean Moderatus.
The numerals of Pythagoras were hieroglyphical symbols by means
whereof he explained _all_ ideas concerning the nature of
things.(179)
The fundamental geometrical figure of the _Kabalah_, as given in the _Book
of Numbers_,(180) that figure which tradition and the Esoteric Doctrines
tell us was given by the Deity Itself to Moses on Mount Sinai,(181)
contains the key to the universal problem in its grandiose, because
simple, combinations. This figure contains in itself all the others.
The Symbolism of numbers and their mathematical inter‐relations is also
one of the branches of Magic, especially of mental Magic, divination and
correct perception in clairvoyance. Systems differ, but the root idea is
everywhere the same. As shown in the _Royal Masonic Cyclopædia_, by
Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie:
One system adopts unity, another trinity, a third quinquinity;
again we have sexagons, heptagons, novems, and so on, until the
mind is lost in the survey of the materials alone of a science of
numbers.(182)
The Devanâgarî characters in which Sanskrit is generally written, have all
that the Hermetic, Chaldæan and Hebrew alphabets have, and in addition the
Occult significance of the “eternal sound,” and the meaning given to every
letter in its relation to spiritual as well as terrestrial things. As
there are only twenty‐two letters in the Hebrew alphabet and ten
fundamental numbers, while in the Devanâgarî there are thirty‐five
consonants and sixteen vowels, making altogether fifty‐one simple letters,
with numberless combinations in addition, the margin for speculation and
knowledge is in proportion considerably wider. Every letter has its
equivalent in other languages, and its equivalent in a figure or figures
of the calculation table. It has also numerous other significations, which
depend upon the special idiosyncrasies and characteristics of the person,
object, or subject to be studied. As the Hindus claim to have received the
Devanâgarî characters from Sarasvatî, the inventress of Sanskrit, the
“language of the Devas” or Gods (in their exoteric pantheon), so most of
the ancient nations claimed the same privilege for the origin of their
letters and tongue. The _Kabalah_ calls the Hebrew alphabet the “letters
of the Angels,” which were communicated to the Patriarchs, just as the
Devanâgarî was to the Rishis by the Devas. The Chaldæans found their
letters traced in the sky by the “yet unsettled stars and comets,” says
the _Book of Numbers_; while the Phœnicians had a sacred alphabet formed
by the twistings of the sacred serpents. The Natar Khari (hieratic
alphabet) and secret (sacerdotal) speech of the Egyptians is closely
related to the oldest “Secret Doctrine Speech.” It is a Devanâgarî with
mystical combinations and additions, into which the Senzar largely enters.
The power and potency of numbers and characters are well known to many
Western Occultists as being compounded from all these systems, but are
still unknown to Hindu students, if not to their Occultists. In their turn
European Kabalists are generally ignorant of the alphabetical secrets of
Indian Esoterism. At the same time the general reader in the West knows
nothing of either; least of all how deep are the traces left by the
Esoteric numeral systems of the world in the Christian Churches.
Nevertheless this system of numerals solves the problem of cosmogony for
whomsoever studies it, while the system of geometrical figures represents
the numbers objectively.
To realise the full comprehension of the Deific and the Abstruse enjoyed
by the Ancients, one has to study the origin of the figurative
representations of their primitive Philosophers. The _Books of Hermes_ are
the oldest repositories of numerical Symbology in Western Occultism. In
them we find that the number _ten_(183) is the Mother of the Soul, Life
and Light being therein united. For as the sacred anagram Teruph shows in
the _Book of the Keys_ (Numbers), the number 1 (one) is born from Spirit,
and the number 10 (ten) from Matter; “the unity has made the ten, the ten,
the unity”; and this is only the Pantheistic axiom, in other words “God in
Nature and Nature in God.”
The kabalistic Gematria is arithmetical, not geometrical. It is one of the
methods for extracting the hidden meaning from letters, words, and
sentences. It consists in applying to the letters of a word the sense they
bear as numbers, in outward shape as well as in their individual sense. As
illustrated by Ragon:
The figure I signified the living man (a body erect), man being
the only living being enjoying this faculty. A head being added to
it, the glyph (or letter) P was obtained, meaning paternity,
creative potency; the R signifying the walking man (with his foot
forward) going, _iens_, _iturus_.(184)
The characters were also made supplementary to speech, every
letter being at once a figure representing a sound for the ear, an
idea to the mind; as, for instance, the letter F, which is a
cutting sound like that of air rushing quickly through space;
fury, fusee, fugue, all words expressive of, and depicting what
they signify.(185)
But the above pertains to another system, that of the primitive and
philosophical formation of the letters and their outward glyphic form—not
to Gematria. The Temura is another kabalistic method, by which any word
could be made to yield its mystery out of its anagram. So in _Sepher
Jetzirah_ we read “One—the Spirit of the Alahim of Lives.” In the oldest
kabalistic diagrams the Sephiroth (the seven and the three) are
represented as wheels or circles, and Adam Kadmon, the primitive Man, as
an upright pillar. “Wheels and seraphim and the holy creatures” (Chioth)
says Rabbi Akiba. In still another system of the symbolical _Kabalah_
called Albath—which arranges the letters of the alphabet by pairs in three
rows—all the couples in the first row bear the numerical value ten; and in
the system of Simeon Ben Shetah (an Alexandrian Neoplatonist under the
first Ptolemy) the uppermost couple—the most sacred of all—is preceded by
the Pythagorean cypher: one, and a nought—10.
All beings, from the first divine emanation, or “God manifested,” down to
the lowest atomic existence, “have their particular number which
distinguishes each of them and becomes the source of their attributes and
qualities as of their destiny.” Chance, as taught by Cornelius Agrippa, is
in reality only an unknown progression; and time but a succession of
numbers. Hence, futurity being a compound of chance and time, these are
made to serve Occult calculations in order to find the result of an event,
or the future of one’s destiny. Said Pythagoras:
There is a mysterious connection between the Gods and numbers, on
which the science of arithmancy is based. The soul is a world that
is self‐moving; the soul contains in itself, and is, the
quaternary, the tetraktys [the perfect cube].
There are lucky and unlucky, or beneficent and maleficent numbers. Thus
while the ternary—the first of the odd numbers (the one being the perfect
and standing by itself in Occultism)—is the divine figure or the triangle;
the duad was disgraced by the Pythagoreans from the first. It represented
Matter, the passive and evil principle—the number of Mâyâ, illusion.
While the number _one_ symbolized harmony, order or the good
principle (the one God expressed in Latin by Solus, from which the
word Sol, the Sun, the symbol of the Deity), number two expressed
a contrary idea. The science of good and evil began with it. All
that is double, false, opposed to the only reality, was depicted
by the binary. It also expressed the contrasts in Nature which are
always double: night and day, light and darkness, cold and heat,
dampness and dryness, health and sickness, error and truth, male
and female, etc.... The Romans dedicated to Pluto the second month
of the year, and the second day of that month to expiations in
honour of the Manes. Hence the same rite established by the Latin
Church, and faithfully copied. Pope John XIX. instituted in 1003
the Festival of the Dead, which had to be celebrated on the 2nd of
November, the second month of autumn.(186)
On the other hand the triangle, a purely geometrical figure, had great
honour shewn it by every nation, and for this reason:
In geometry a straight line cannot represent an absolutely perfect
figure, any more than two straight lines. Three straight lines, on
the other hand, produce by their junction a triangle, or the first
absolutely perfect figure. Therefore, it symbolized from the first
and to this day the Eternal—the first perfection. The word for
deity in Latin, as in French, begins with D, in Greek the delta or
triangle, Δ, whose three sides symbolize the trinity, or the three
kingdoms, or, again, divine nature. In the middle is the Hebrew
Yod, the initial of Jehovah [see Éliphas Lévi’s _Dogme et Rituel_,
i. 154], the animating spirit or fire, the generating principle
represented by the letter G, the initial of “God” in the northern
languages, whose philosophical significance is generation.(187)
As stated correctly by the famous Mason Ragon, the Hindu Trimûrti is
personified in the world of ideas by Creation, Preservation and
Destruction, or Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva; in the world of matter by Earth,
Water and Fire, or the Sun, and symbolised by the Lotus, a flower that
lives by earth, water, and the sun.(188) The Lotus, sacred to Isis, had
the same significance in Egypt, whereas in the Christian symbol, the
Lotus, not being found in either Judæa or Europe, was replaced by the
water‐lily. In every Greek and Latin Church, in all the pictures of the
Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel is depicted with this trinitarian
symbol in his hand standing before Mary, while above the chief altar or
under the dome, the Eye of the Eternal is painted within a triangle, made
to replace the Hebrew Yod or God.
Truly, says Ragon, there was a time when numbers and alphabetical
characters meant something more than they do now—the images of a mere
insignificant sound.
Their mission was nobler then. Each of them represented by its
form a complete sense, which, besides the meaning of the word, had
a double(189) interpretation adapted to a dual doctrine. Thus when
the sages desired to write something to be understood only by the
savants, they confabulated a story, a dream, or some other
fictitious subject with personal names of men and localities, that
revealed by their lettered characters the true meaning of the
author by that narrative. Such were all their religious
creations.(190)
Every appellation and term had its _raison d’être_. The name of a plant or
mineral denoted its nature to the Initiate at the first glance. The
essence of everything was easily perceived by him once that it was figured
by such characters. The Chinese characters have preserved much of this
graphic and pictorial character to this day, though the secret of the full
system is lost. Nevertheless, even now, there are those among that nation
who can write a long narrative, a volume, on one page; and the symbols
that are explained historically, allegorically and astronomically, have
survived until now.
Moreover, there exists a universal language among the Initiates, which an
Adept, and even a disciple, of any nation may understand by reading it in
his own language. We Europeans, on the contrary, possess only one graphic
sign common to all, & (and); there is a language richer in metaphysical
terms than any on earth, whose every word is expressed by like common
signs. The Litera Pythagoræ, so called, the Greek Υ (the English capital
Y) if traced alone in a message, was as explicit as a whole page filled
with sentences, for it stood as a symbol for a number of things—for white
and black Magic, for instance.(191) Suppose one man enquired of another:
To what School of Magic does so and so belong? and the answer came back
with the letter traced with the right branch thicker than the left, then
it meant “to right hand or divine Magic;” but if the letter were traced in
the usual way, with the left branch thicker than the right, then it meant
the reverse, the right or left branch being the whole biography of a man.
In Asia, especially in the Devanâgarî characters, every letter had several
secret meanings.
Interpretations of the hidden sense of such apocalyptic writings are found
in the keys given in the _Kabalah_, and they are among its most sacred
lore. St. Hieronymus assures us that they were known to the School of the
Prophets and taught therein, which is very likely. Molitor, the learned
Hebraist, in his work on tradition says that:
The two and twenty letters of the Hebrew alphabet were regarded as
an emanation, or the visible expression of the divine forces
inherent in the ineffable name.
These letters find their equivalent in, and are replaced by numbers, in
the same way as in the other systems. For instance, the twelfth and the
sixth letter of the alphabet yield eighteen in a name; the other letters
of that name added being always exchanged for that figure which
corresponds to the alphabetical letter; then all those figures are
subjected to an algebraical process which transforms them again into
letters; after which the latter yield to the enquirer “the most hidden
secrets of divine Permanency (eternity in its immutability) in the
Futurity.”