How can any Kabalist, acquainted with the foregoing, deduce his
conclusions with regard to the true Esoteric beliefs of the primitive
Jews, from that only which he now finds in the Jewish scrolls? How can any
scholar—even though one of the keys to the universal language be now
positively discovered, the true key to the numerical reading of a pure
geometrical system—give out anything as his _final_ conclusion? Modern
Kabalistic speculation is on a par now with modern “speculative Masonry;”
for as the latter tries vainly to link itself with the ancient—or rather
the archaic—Masonry of the Temples, failing to make the link because all
its claims have been shown to be inaccurate from an archæological
standpoint, so fares it also with Kabalistic speculation. As no mystery of
Nature worth running after can be revealed to humanity by settling whether
Hiram Abif was a living Sidonian builder, or a solar myth, so no fresh
information will be added to Occult Lore by the details of the exoteric
privileges conferred on the Collegia Fabrorum by Numa Pompilius. Rather
must the symbols used in it be studied in the Âryan light, since all the
Symbolism of the ancient Initiations came to the West with the light of
the Eastern Sun. Nevertheless, we find the most learned Masons and
Symbologists declaring that all these weird symbols and glyphs, that run
back to a common origin of immense antiquity, were nothing more than a
display of cunning natural phallicism, or emblems of primitive typology.
How much nearer the truth is the author of _The Source of Measures_, who
declares that the elements of human and numerical construction in the
_Bible_ do not shut out the spiritual elements in it, albeit so few now
understand them. The words we quote are as suggestive as they are true:
How desperately blinding becomes a superstitious use, through
ignorance, of such emblems, when they are made to possess the
power of bloodshed and torture, through orders of propaganda of
any species of religious cultus. When one thinks of the horrors of
a _Moloch_, or _Baal_, or _Dagon_ worship; of the correlated
blood‐deluges under the Cross baptized in gore by Constantine, at
the initiative of the secular Church; ... when one thinks of all
this and then that the cause of all has been simply ignorance of
the real radical reading of the _Moloch_, and _Baal_, and _Dagon_,
and the _Cross_ and the _T’phillin_, all running back to a common
origin, and after all being nothing more than a display of pure
and natural mathematics, ... one is apt to feel like cursing
ignorance, and to lose confidence in what are called _intuitions_
of religion; one is apt to wish for a return of the day when all
the world was of one _lip_ and of one _knowledge_.... But while
these elements [of the construction of the pyramid] are rational
and scientific, ... let no man consider that with this discovery
comes a cutting‐off of the _spirituality_(354) of the _Bible_
intention, or of man’s relation to this spiritual foundation. Does
one wish to build a house? No house was ever actually built with
tangible material _until first the architectural design of
building had been accomplished_, no matter whether the structure
was palace or hovel. So with these elements and numbers. They are
not of man, nor are they of his invention. They have been revealed
to him to the extent of his ability to realize a system, which is
_the creative system_ of the eternal God.... But _spiritually_, to
man the value of this matter is that he can actually in
contemplation, bridge over all material construction of the
cosmos, and pass into the very _thought_ and _mind_ of God, to the
extent of recognizing this _system of design_ for cosmic
creation—yea, even before the words went forth: “_Let there
be_.”(355)
But true as the above words may be, when coming from one who has re‐
discovered, more completely than anyone else has done during the past
centuries, one of the keys to the universal Mystery Language, it is
impossible for an Eastern Occultist to agree with the conclusion of the
able author of _The Source of Measures_. He “has set out to find the
truth,” and yet he still believes that:
The best and most authentic vehicle of communication from [the
creative] God to man ... is to be found in the Hebrew Bible.
To this we must and shall demur, giving our reasons for it in a few words.
The “Hebrew _Bible_” exists no more, as has been shown in the foregoing
pages, and the garbled accounts, the falsified and pale copies we have of
the real Mosaic _Bible_ of the Initiates, warrant the making of no such
sweeping assertion and claim. All that the scholar can fairly claim is
that the Jewish _Bible_, as now extant—in its latest and final
interpretation, and according to the newly‐discovered key—may give a
partial presentment of the truths it contained before it was mangled. But
how can he tell what the _Pentateuch_ contained before it had been re‐
composed by Esdras; then corrupted still more by the ambitious Rabbis in
later times, and otherwise remodelled and interfered with? Leaving aside
the opinion of the declared enemies of the Jewish Scriptures, one may
quote simply what their most devoted followers say.
Two of these are Horne and Prideaux. The avowals of the former will be
sufficient to show how much now remains of the original Mosaic books,
unless indeed we accept his sublimely blind faith in the inspiration and
editorship of the Holy Ghost. He writes that when a Hebrew scribe found a
writing of any author he was entitled, if he thought fit, being “conscious
of the aid of the Holy Spirit,” to do exactly as he pleased with it—to cut
it up, or copy it, or use as much of it as he deemed right, and so to
incorporate it with his own manuscript. Dr. Kenealy aptly remarks of
Horne, that it is almost impossible to get any admission from him
That makes against his church, so remarkably guarded is he [Horne]
in his phraseology and so wonderfully discreet in the use of words
that his language, like a diplomatic letter, perpetually suggests
to the mind ideas other than those which he really means; I defy
any unlearned person to read his chapter on “Hebrew characters”
and to derive _any knowledge_ from it whatever on the subject on
which he professes to treat.(356)
And yet this same Horne writes:
We are persuaded that the things to which reference is made
proceeded from the original writers or _compilers_ of the books
[_Old Testament_]. Sometimes they took other writings, annals,
genealogies, and such like, with which they _incorporated
additional matter_, or which they put together with greater or
less condensation. The _Old Testament_ authors used the sources
they employed (that is, the writing of other people) with freedom
and independence. Conscious of the aid of the Divine Spirit, _they
adapted_ their own productions, or the productions of others, to
the wants of the times. But in these respects they cannot be said
to have corrupted the text of Scripture. _They made the
text._(357)
But of what did they make it? Why, of the writings of other persons,
justly observes Kenealy:
And this is Horne’s notion of what the _Old Testament_ is—a cento
from the writings of unknown persons collected and put together by
those who, he says, were divinely inspired. No infidel that I know
of has ever made so damaging a charge as this against the
authenticity of the _Old Testament_.(358)
This is quite sufficient, we think, to show that no key to the universal
language‐system can ever open the mysteries of Creation in a work in
which, whether through design or carelessness, nearly every sentence has
been made to apply to the latest outcome of religious views—to Phallicism,
and to nothing else. There are a sufficient number of stray bits in the
Elohistic portions of the _Bible_ to warrant the inference that the
Hebrews who wrote it were Initiates; hence the mathematical coördinations
and the perfect harmony between the measures of the Great Pyramid and the
numerals of the Biblical glyphs. But surely if one borrowed from the
other, it cannot be the architects of the Pyramid who borrowed from
Solomon’s Temple, if only because the former exists to this day as a
stupendous living monument of Esoteric records, while the famous temple
has never existed outside of the far later Hebrew scrolls.(359) Hence
there is a great distance between the admission that some Hebrews were
Initiates, and the conclusion that because of this the Hebrew _Bible_ must
be the best standard, as being the highest representative of the archaic
Esoteric System.
Nowhere does the _Bible_ say, moreover, that the Hebrew is the language of
God; of this boast, at any rate, the authors are not guilty. Perhaps
because in the days when the _Bible_ was last edited the claim would have
been too preposterous—hence dangerous. The _compilers_ of the _Old
Testament_, as it exists in the Hebrew canon, knew well that the language
of the Initiates in the days of Moses was identical with that of the
Egyptian Hierophants; and that none of the dialects that had sprung from
the old Syriac and the pure old Arabic of Yarab—the father and progenitor
of the primitive Arabians, long before the time of Abraham, in whose days
the ancient Arabic had already become vitiated—that none of those
languages was the one sacerdotal universal tongue. Nevertheless all of
them included a number of words which could be traced to common roots. And
to do this is the business of modern Philology, though to this day, with
all the respect due to the labours of the eminent Philologists of Oxford
and Berlin, that Science seems to be hopelessly floundering in the
Cimmerian darkness of mere hypothesis.
Ahrens, when speaking of the letters as arranged in the Hebrew sacred
scrolls, and remarking that they were musical notes, had probably never
studied Âryan Hindu music. In the Sanskrit language letters are
continually arranged in the sacred Ollas so that they may become musical
notes. For the whole Sanskrit alphabet and the _Vedas_, from the first
word to the last, are musical notations reduced to writing; the two are
inseparable.(360) As Homer distinguished between the “language of Gods”
and the “language of men,”(361) so did the Hindus. The Devanâgarî, the
Sanskrit characters, are the “speech of the Gods,” and Sanskrit is the
divine language.
It is argued in defence of the present version of the Mosaic Books that
the mode of language adopted was an “accommodation” to the ignorance of
the Jewish people. But the said “mode of language” drags down the “sacred
text” of Esdras and his colleagues to the level of the most unspiritual
and gross phallic religions. This plea confirms the suspicions entertained
by some Christian Mystics and many philosophical critics, that:
(_a_) Divine Power as an Absolute Unity had never anything more to do with
the Biblical Jehovah and the “Lord God” than with any other Sephiroth or
Number. The Ain‐Suph of the _Kabalah_ of Moses is as independent of any
relation with the created Gods as is Parabrahman Itself.
(_b_) The teachings veiled in the _Old Testament_ under allegorical
expressions are all copied from the Magical Texts of Babylonia, by Esdras
and others, while the earlier Mosaic Text had its source in Egypt.
A few instances known to almost all Symbologists of note, and especially
to the French Egyptologists, may help to prove the statement. Furthermore,
no ancient Hebrew Philosopher, Philo no more than the Sadducees, claimed,
as do now the ignorant Christians, that the events in the _Bible_ should
be taken literally. Philo says most explicitly:
The verbal statements are fabulous [in the Book of the Law]: it is
in the allegory that we shall find the truth.
Let us give a few instances, beginning with the latest narrative, the
Hebrew, and thus if possible trace the allegories to their origin.
1. Whence the Creation in six days, the seventh day as day of rest, the
seven Elohim,(362) and the division of space into heaven and earth, in the
first chapter of _Genesis_?
The division of the vault above from the Abyss, or Chaos, below is one of
the first acts of creation or rather of evolution, in every cosmogony.
Hermes in _Pymander_ speaks of a heaven seen in seven circles with seven
Gods in them. We examine the Assyrian tiles and find the same on them—the
seven creative Gods busy each in his own sphere. The cuneiform legends
narrate how Bel prepared the seven mansions of the Gods; how heaven was
separated from the earth. In the Brâhmanical allegory everything is
septenary, from the seven zones, or envelopes, of the Mundane Egg down to
the seven continents, islands, seas, etc. The six days of the week and the
seventh, the Sabbath, are based primarily on the seven creations of the
Hindu Brahmâ, the seventh being that of man; and secondarily on the number
of generation. It is preëminently and most conspicuously phallic. In the
Babylonian system the seventh day, or period, was that in which man and
the animals were created.
2. The Elohim make a woman out of Adam’s rib.(363) This process is found
in the Magical Texts translated by G. Smith.
The seven Spirits bring forth the woman from the loins of the man,
explains Mr. Sayce in his _Hibbert Lectures_.(364)
The mystery of the woman who was made from the man is repeated in every
national religion, and in Scriptures far antedating the Jewish. You find
it in the Avestan fragments, in the Egyptian _Book of the Dead_, and
finally in Brahmâ, the male, separating from himself, as a female self,
Vâch, in whom he creates Virâj.
3. The two Adams of the first and second chapters in _Genesis_ originated
from garbled exoteric accounts coming from the Chaldæans and the Egyptian
Gnostics, revised later from the Persian traditions, most of which are old
Âryan allegories. As Adam Kadmon is the seventh creation,(365) so the Adam
of dust is the eighth; and in the Purânas one finds an eighth, the
Anugraha creation, and the Egyptian Gnostics had it. Irenæus, complaining
of the heretics, says of the Gnostics:
Sometimes they will have him [man] to have been made on the sixth
day, and sometimes on the eighth.(366)
The author of _The Hebrew and Other Creations_ writes:
These two creations of man on the sixth day and on the eighth were
those of the Adamic, or fleshly man, and of the spiritual man, who
were known to Paul and the Gnostics as the first and second Adam,
the man of earth and the man of Heaven. Irenæus also says they
insisted that Moses began with the Ogdoad of the Seven Powers and
their mother, Sophia (the old Kefa of Egypt, who is the _Living
Word_ at Ombos).(367)
Sophia is also Aditi with her seven sons.
One might go on enumerating and tracing the Jewish “revelations” _ad
infinitum_ to their original sources, were it not that the task is
superfluous, since so much is already done in that direction by others—and
done thoroughly well, as in the case of Gerald Massey, who has sifted the
subject to the very bottom. Hundreds of volumes, treatises, and pamphlets
are being written yearly in defence of the “divine‐inspiration” claim for
the _Bible_; but symbolical and archæological research is coming to the
rescue of truth and fact—therefore of the Esoteric Doctrine—upsetting
every argument based on faith and breaking it as an idol with feet of
clay. A curious and learned book, _The Approaching End of the Age_, by H.
Grattan Guinness, professes to solve the mysteries of the _Bible_
chronology and to prove thereby God’s direct revelation to man. Among
other things its author thinks that:
It is impossible to deny that _a septiform chronology was divinely
appointed_ in the elaborate ritual of Judaism.
This statement is innocently accepted and fervently believed in by
thousands and tens of thousands, only because they are ignorant of the
Bibles of other nations. Two pages from a small pamphlet, a lecture by Mr.
Gerald Massey,(368) so upset the arguments and proofs of the enthusiastic
Mr. Grattan Guinness, spread over 760 pages of small print, as to prevent
them from ever raising their heads any more. Mr. Massey treats of the
Fall, and says:
Here, as before, the genesis does not begin at the beginning.
There was an earlier Fall than that of the Primal Pair. In this
the number of those who failed and fell was seven. We meet with
those seven in Egypt—eight with the Mother—where they are called
the “Children of Inertness,” who were cast out from Am‐Smen, the
Paradise of the Eight; also in a Babylonian legend of Creation, as
the Seven Brethren, who were Seven Kings, like the Seven Kings in
the _Book of Revelation_; and the Seven Non‐Sentient Powers, who
became the Seven Rebel Angels that made war in heaven. The Seven
Kronidæ, described as the Seven Watchers, who in the beginning
were formed in the interior of heaven. The heaven, like a vault,
they extended or hollowed out; that which was not visible they
raised, and that which had no _exit_ they opened; their work of
creation being exactly identical with that of the Elohim in the
_Book of Genesis_. These are the Seven elemental Powers of space,
who were continued as Seven Timekeepers. It is said of them: “In
watching was their office, but among the stars of heaven their
watch they kept not,” and their failure was the Fall. In the _Book
of Enoch_ the same Seven Watchers in heaven are stars which
transgressed the commandment of God before their time arrived, for
they came not in their proper season, therefore was he offended
with them, and bound them until the period of the consummation of
their crimes, at the end of the _secret_, or great year of the
World, _i.e._, the Period of Precession, when there was to be
restoration and rebeginning. The Seven deposed constellations are
seen by Enoch, looking like seven great blazing mountains
overthrown—the seven mountains in _Revelation_, on which the
Scarlet Lady sits.(369)
There are seven keys to this, as to every other allegory, whether in the
_Bible_ or in pagan religions. While Mr. Massey has hit upon the key in
the mysteries of cosmogony, John Bentley in his _Hindu Astronomy_ claims
that the Fall of the Angels, or _War in Heaven_, as given by the Hindus,
is but a figure of the calculations of time‐periods, and goes on to show
that among the Western nations the same war, with like results, took the
form of the war of the Titans.
In short, he makes it _astronomical_. So does the author of _The Source of
Measures_:
The celestial sphere with the earth, was divided into twelve
compartments [astronomically], and these compartments were
esteemed as _sexed_, the _lords_ or _husbands_ being respectively
the planets presiding over them. This being the settled scheme,
want of proper correction would bring it to pass, after a time,
that error and confusion would ensue by the compartments coming
under the lordship of the wrong planets. Instead of lawful
wedlock, there would be illegal intercourse, as between the
planets, “_sons of Elohim_” and these compartments, “daughters of
H‐Adam,” or the _earth_‐man; and in fact the fourth verse of sixth
_Genesis_ will bear _this_ interpretation for the usual one,
_viz._, “In the same days, or periods, there were untimely births
in the earth; and also behind that, when the sons of Elohim came
to the daughters of H‐Adam, they begat to them the offspring of
harlotry,” etc., astronomically indicating this confusion.(370)
Do any of these learned explanations explain anything except a possible
ingenious allegory, and a personification of the celestial bodies, by the
ancient Mythologists and Priests? Carried to their last word they would
undeniably explain much, and would thus furnish one of the right seven
keys, fitting a great many of the Biblical puzzles yet opening none
naturally and entirely, instead of being scientific and cunning master‐
keys. But they yet prove one thing—that neither the septiform chronology
nor the septiform theogony and evolution of all things is of divine origin
in the _Bible_. For let us see the sources at which the _Bible_ sipped its
divine inspiration with regard to the sacred number seven. Says Mr. Massey
in the same lecture:
The _Book of Genesis_ tells us nothing about the nature of these
Elohim, erroneously rendered “God,” who are creators of the Hebrew
beginning, and who are themselves preëxtant and seated when the
theatre opens and the curtain ascends. It says that in the
beginning the Elohim created the heaven and the earth. In
thousands of books the Elohim have been discussed, but ... with no
conclusive result.... The Elohim are Seven in number, whether as
nature‐powers, gods of constellations, or planetary gods, ... as
the Pitris and Patriarchs, Manus and Fathers of earlier times. The
Gnostics, however, and the Jewish _Kabalah_ preserve an account of
the Elohim of _Genesis_ by which we are able to identify them with
other forms of the seven primordial powers.... Their names are
Ildabaoth, Jehovah (or Jao), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloeus, Oreus, and
Astanphæus. Ildabaoth signifies the Lord God of the fathers, that
is the fathers who preceded the Father; and thus the seven are
identical with the seven Pitris or Fathers of India (Irenæus, B.
I., xxx., 5). Moreover, the Hebrew Elohim were preëxtant by name
and nature as Phœnician divinities or powers. Sanchoniathon
mentions them by name, and describes them as Auxiliaries of Kronos
or Time. In this phase, then, the Elohim are time‐keepers in
heaven! In the Phœnician mythology the Elohim are the Seven sons
of Sydik [Melchizedek], identical with the Seven Kabiri, who in
Egypt are the Seven sons of Ptah, and the Seven Spirits of Ra in
_The Book of the Dead_; ... in America with the seven Hohgates,
... in Assyria with the seven Lumazi.... They are always seven in
number ... who _Kab_—that is, turn round, together, whence the
“Kab‐iri.”... They are also the Ili or Gods, in Assyrian, who were
seven in number!... They were first born of the Mother in
Space,(371) and then the Seven Companions passed into the sphere
of time as auxiliaries of Kronus, or Sons of the Male Parent. As
Damascius says in his _Primitive Principles_, the Magi consider
that space and time were the source of all; and from being powers
of the air the gods were promoted to become time‐keepers for men.
Seven constellations were assigned to them.... As the seven turned
round in the ark of the sphere they were designated the Seven
Sailors’ Companions, Rishis, or Elohim. The first “Seven Stars”
are not planetary. They are the leading stars of seven
constellations which turned round with the Great Bear in
describing the circle of the year.(372) These the Assyrians called
the seven Lumazi, or leaders of the flocks of stars, designated
sheep. On the Hebrew line of descent or development, these Elohim
are identified for us by the Kabalists and Gnostics, who retained
the hidden wisdom or gnosis, the clue of which is absolutely
essential to any proper understanding of mythology or theology....
There were two constellations with seven stars each. _We_ call
them the Two Bears. But the seven stars of the Lesser Bear were
once considered to be the seven heads of the Polar Dragon, which
we meet with—as the beast with seven heads—in the Akkadian Hymns
and in _Revelation_. The mythical dragon originated in the
crocodile, which is the dragon of Egypt.... Now in one particular
cult, the Sut‐Typhonian, the first god was Sevekh [the seven‐
fold], who wears the crocodile’s head, as well as the Serpent, and
who is the Dragon, or whose constellation was the Dragon.... In
Egypt the Great Bear was the constellation of Typhon, or _Kepha_,
the old genetrix, called the Mother of the Revolutions; and the
Dragon with seven heads was assigned to her son, Sevekh‐Kronus, or
Saturn, called the Dragon of Life. That is, the typical dragon or
serpent with seven heads was female at first, and then the type
was continued, as male in her son Sevekh, the Sevenfold Serpent,
in Ea the Sevenfold, ... Iao Chnubis, and others. We find these
two in _The Book of Revelation_. One is the Scarlet Lady, the
mother of mystery, the great harlot, who sat on a scarlet‐coloured
beast with seven heads, which is the Red Dragon of the Pole. She
held in her hand the unclean things of her fornication. That means
the emblems of the male and female, imaged by the Egyptians at the
Polar Centre, the very uterus of creation, as was indicated by the
Thigh constellation, called the Khepsh of Typhon, the old Dragon,
in the northern birthplace of Time in heaven. The two revolved
about the _pole of heaven_, or the Tree, as it was called, which
was figured at the centre of the starry motion. In _The Book of
Enoch_ these two constellations are identified as Leviathan and
Behemoth‐Bekhmut, or the Dragon and Hippopotamus = Great Bear, and
they are the primal pair that were first created in the Garden of
Eden. So that the Egyptian first mother, Kefa [or Kepha] whose
name signifies “mystery,” was the original of the Hebrew Chavah,
our Eve; and therefore Adam is one with Sevekh the sevenfold one,
the solar dragon in whom the powers of light and darkness were
combined, and the sevenfold nature was shown in the seven rays
worn by the Gnostic Iao‐Chnubis, god of the number seven, who is
Sevekh by name and a form of the first father as head of the
Seven.(373)
All this gives the key to the astronomical prototype of the allegory in
_Genesis_, but it furnishes no other key to the mystery involved in the
sevenfold glyph. The able Egyptologist shows also that Adam himself
according to Rabbinical and Gnostic tradition, was the chief of the Seven
who fell from Heaven, and he connects these with the Patriarchs, thus
agreeing with the Esoteric Teaching. For by mystic permutation and the
mystery of primeval rebirths and adjustment, the Seven Rishis are in
reality identical with the seven Prajâpatis, the fathers and creators of
mankind, and also with the Kumâras, the first sons of Brahmâ, who refused
to procreate and multiply. This apparent contradiction is explained by the
seven‐fold nature—make it four‐fold on metaphysical principles and it will
come to the same thing—of the celestial men, the Dhyân Chohans. This
nature is made to divide and separate; and while the higher principles
(Âtmâ‐Buddhi) of the “Creators of Men” are said to be the Spirits of the
seven constellations, their middle and lower principles are connected with
the earth and are shown
Without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged
from the Universe and undesirous of progeny,(374)
remaining Kaumâric (virgin and undefiled); therefore it is said they
refused to create. For this they are cursed and sentenced to be born and
reborn “Adams,” as the Semites would say.
Meanwhile let me quote a few lines more from Mr. G. Massey’s lecture, the
fruit of his long researches in Egyptology and other ancient lore, as it
shows that the septenary division was at one time a universal doctrine:
Adam as the father among the Seven is identical with the Egyptian
Atum, ... whose other name of Adon is identical with the Hebrew
Adonai. In this way the second Creation in _Genesis_ reflects and
continues the later creation in the mythos which explains it. The
Fall of Adam to the lower world led to his being humanised on
earth, by which process the celestial was turned into the mortal,
and this, which belongs to the astronomical allegory, got
literalised as the Fall of Man, or descent of the soul into
matter, and the conversion of the angelic into an earthly
being.... It is found in the [Babylonian] texts, when Ea, the
first father, is said to “grant forgiveness to the conspiring
gods,” for whose “redemption did he create mankind.” (Sayce; _Hib.
Lec._, p. 140) ... The Elohim, then, are the Egyptian, Akkadian,
Hebrew, and Phœnician form of the Universal Seven Powers, who are
Seven in Egypt, Seven in Akkad, Babylon, Persia, India, Britain,
and Seven among the Gnostics and Kabalists. They were the Seven
fathers who preceded the Father in Heaven, because they were
earlier than the individualised fatherhood on earth.... When the
Elohim said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,”
there were seven of them who represented the seven elements,
powers, or souls that went to the making of the human being who
came into existence before the Creator was represented
anthropomorphically, or could have conferred the human likeness on
the Adamic man. It was in the sevenfold image of the Elohim that
man was first created, with his seven elements, principles or
souls,(375) and therefore he could not have been formed in the
image of the one God. The seven Gnostic Elohim tried to make a man
in their own image, but could not for lack of virile power.(376)
Thus their creation in earth and heaven was a failure ... because
they themselves were lacking in the soul of the fatherhood! When
the Gnostic Ildabaoth,(377) chief of the Seven, cried: “I am the
father and God,” his mother Sophia [Achamoth] replied: “Do not
tell lies, Ildabaoth, for the first man (Anthropos, son of
Anthropos)(378) is above thee.” That is, man who had now been
created in the image of the fatherhood was superior to the gods
who were derived from the Mother‐Parent alone!(379) For, as it had
been first on earth, so was it afterwards in heaven [the Secret
Doctrine teaches the reverse]; and thus the primary gods were held
to be soulless like the earliest races of men.... The Gnostics
taught that the Spirits of Wickedness, the inferior Seven, derived
their origin from the great Mother alone, who produced without the
fatherhood! It was in the image, then, of the sevenfold Elohim
that the seven races were formed which we sometimes hear of as the
Pre‐Adamite races of men, because they were earlier than the
fatherhood, which was individualised only in the second Hebrew
Creation.(380)
This shows sufficiently how the echo of the Secret Doctrine—of the Third
and Fourth Races of men, made complete by the incarnation in humanity of
the Mânasa Putra, Sons of Intelligence or Wisdom—reached every corner of
the globe. The Jews, however, although they borrowed of the older nations
the groundwork on which to build their revelation, never had more than
three keys out of the seven in their mind, while composing their national
allegories—the astronomical, the numerical (metrology), and above all the
purely anthropological, or rather physiological key. This resulted in the
most phallic religion of all, and has now passed, part and parcel, into
Christian theology, as is proved by the lengthy quotations made from a
lecture of an able Egyptologist, who can make naught of it save
astronomical myths and phallicism, as is implied by his explanations of
“fatherhood” in the allegories.