We now return to the consideration of the essential identity between the
Eastern Gupta Vidyâ 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
mediæval 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 _Sepher Yetzirah_ 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 mediæval 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 re‐translated and re‐
veiled once more.
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
mediæval 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 maëlstrom
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 undeniably 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 mediæval 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 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_ (זהר ZHR), _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 Vidyâ 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.”(315)
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 symbolical records which the
Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldæan 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. 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 Brâhmanical 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 Chaldæan 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 (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
Chaldæan Christian learned scribes, was enabled through the latter to
acquire a knowledge of some of the Gnostic writings.(316)
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 Brâhmanical books before they were embodied in
manuscript. The Kabalistic tenets came to the Jews from the Chaldæans; 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.(317) 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:
(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.(318)
(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.(319)
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.(320)
(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 Chaldæans:
A nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest
what they say.(321)
This is quoted by Bishop Walton(322) 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.(323)
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.(324) 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 and 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 Chaldæans, and that the real _Kabalah_
is found only in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_ now in the possession of
some Persian Sufis. Every nation in antiquity had its traditions based on
those of the Âryan 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.
Âdi 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.”
And such first men, in every nation, are credited with having been taught
the divine mysteries of creation. Thus, the Sabæans (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(325) 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 Sabæans 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(326) 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. Ælian (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 Sabæans is also a _Kabalah_, as is the
Arabic _Zem‐Zem_ (_Well of Wisdom_).(327)
We are told by a very learned Kabalist that Seyffarth asserts 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 Chaldæan for their phonetic 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
Chaldæan 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.(328)
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 to‐day 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 remodelled, 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 Chaldæan 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 the old lost Jewish Books in
his own way. 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
Judæan 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 apotheosis of Phallicism, under astronomical and physiological
personations.(329) Its coördination, 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(330) 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.(331)
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.(332)
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 re‐
translated 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 Judæus 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. Yet people will persist in
talking of the ancient Hebrew, as if there were any man left in the world
who now 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 Chaldæa. 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 new‐
fangled character been ever discovered, which could carry it even
to the days of Jesus.(333)
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—(334)
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_, xlix. 21, we read:
Naphtali is a _hind let loose_; he _giveth goodly words_.
By only a slight alteration of the points Bochart changes this
into:
Naphtali is a _spreading tree, shooting forth beautiful branches_.
So again, in _Psalms_ (xxix. 9), instead of:
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.(335)
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 ever 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,(336) 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. 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.(337)
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”?(338)
As our correspondent says: “It becomes more convincing to me every day
that in a far past time there was _a mighty civilization with __ 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),(339) 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 Vedântic 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_.(340)
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, then, 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.(341)
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.”(342)
This is the doctrine of all the Hindu Purânas, 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 Chaldæans 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 Purânic
Brahmâ. In _Sôd_, “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 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 emanating 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.(343)
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.(344)
This, then, is the meaning:
“_Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were
once more One._”(345)
Space was, and is ever, as it is between the Manvantaras. 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—called
One.
One is the Spirit of the living God, ... who liveth for ever.
Voice, Spirit, [of the Spirit], and Word: this is the Holy
Spirit,(346)
—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 Purusha_
[both radiations of prima materia] _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,(347)
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.(348) Thus Seth is
Jehovah male; and Enos, 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
Brahmâ 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
“Shata‐rûpâ” (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
(יהוה) Read from right to left “Jod” (י) is the father, “He” (ה) the
mother, “Vau” (ו) the son, and “He” (ה), 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 Brahmâ, 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 היה, or Hâyâh, or E‐y‐e, means _to be_, _to exist_,
while חיה or Châyâh, or H‐y‐e, means _to live_, as _motion of
existence_.(349)
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 Jîvâtmâ, universal life or soul, in its secondary and 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. 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”.)(350) 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 no more than one of the Builders of the lower group—a Jewish
Brahmâ.(351) A demonstration is now attempted.
The first Sephira, containing the other nine, brought them forth in 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_.(352) 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 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 Chaldæan _Book of
Numbers_ or by the tenets of the Eastern 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_,(353) 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”—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 Sabre
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.