Gedulah, to produce Tephareth, Harmony and Beauty, is also called in the
Kabalah "_Judgment_," in which term are included the ideas of
_limitation_ and _conditioning_, which often seems, indeed, to be its
principal sense; while Benignity is as often styled _Infinite_. Thus it
is obscurely taught that in everything that is, not only the _Finite_
but also the _Infinite_ is present; and that the rigor of the stern law
of limitation, by which everything below or beside the Infinite Absolute
is limited, bounded, and conditioned, is tempered and modified by the
_grace_, which so relaxes it that the Infinite, Unlimited,
Unconditioned, is also everywhere present; and that it is thus the
Spiritual and Material Natures are _in equilibrio_, Good everywhere
counterbalancing Evil, Light everywhere in equilibrium with Darkness:
from which again results the Universal Harmony of things. In the vacant
space effected for creation, there at last remained a faint vestige or
trace of Ainsophic Light, of the Light of the Substance of the Infinite.
Man is thus both human and divine: and the _apparent_ antagonisms in his
Nature are a real equilibrium, _if he wills it shall be so_; from which
results the Harmony, not only of Life and Action, but of Virtue and
Perfection.
To understand the Kabalistic idea of the Sephiroth, it must be borne in
mind that they were assigned, not only to the world of Emanation,
Aziluth, but also to each of the other worlds, Briah, Jezirah, and
Asiah. They were not only attributes of the Unmanifested Deity, not only
Himself in limitation, but His actual manifestations, or His qualities
made apparent as modes; and they were also qualities of the Universal
Nature--Spiritual, Mental, and Material, produced and made existent by
the outflow of Himself.
In the view of the Kabalah, God and the Universe were One, and in the
One General, as the type or source, were included and involved, and from
it have been evolved and issued forth, the manifold and all particulars.
Where, indeed, does individuality begin? Is it the Hidden Source and
Spring alone that is the individual, the Unit, or is it the flowing
fountain that fills the ocean, or the ocean itself, or its waves, or the
drops, or the vaporous particles, that are the individuals? The Sea and
the River--these are each One; but the drops of each are many. The tree
is one; but its leaves are a multitude: they drop with the frosts, and
fall upon his roots; but the tree still continues to grow, and new
leaves come again in the Spring. Is the Human Race not the Tree, and are
not individual men the leaves? How else explain the force of will and
sympathy, and the dependence of one man at every instant of his life on
others, except by the oneness of the race? The links that bind all
created things together are the links of a single Unity, and the whole
Universe is One, developing itself into the manifold.
Obtuse commentators have said that the Kabalah assigns sexual
characteristics to the very Deity. There is no warrant for such an
assertion, anywhere in the Sohar or in any commentary upon it. On the
contrary, the whole doctrine of the Kabalah is based on the fundamental
proposition, that the Very Deity is Infinite, everywhere extended,
without limitation or determination, and therefore without any
conformation whatever. In order to commence the process of creation, it
was necessary for Him, first of all, to effect a vacant space within
Himself. To this end the Deity, whose Nature is approximately expressed
by describing Him as Light filling all space, formless, limitless,
contracts Himself on all sides from a point within Himself, and thus
effects a quasi-vacant space, in which only a vestige of His Light
remains; and into this circular or spherical space He immits His
Emanations, portions of His Light or Nature; and to some of these,
sexual characteristics are symbolically assigned.
The Infinite first limits Himself by flowing forth in the shape of
_Will_, of determination to act. This _Will_ of the Deity, or the Deity
_as_ will, is _Kether_, or the _Crown_, the first Sephirah. In it are
_included_ all other Emanations. This is a philosophical necessity. The
Infinite does not _first_ will, and _then_, as a sequence to, or
consequence of, that determination, _subsequently_ perform. To will and
to act must be, with Him, not only simultaneous, but in reality _the
same_ ... Nor does He, by His Omniscience, _learn_ that a particular
action will be wise, and then, in consequence of being so convinced,
first _determine_ to do the act, and _then_ do it. His Wisdom and His
Will, also, act simultaneously; and, with Him, to decide that it was
wise to create, _was_ to create. Thus His will contains in itself all
the Sephiroth. This will, determining Him to the exercise of
intellection, to thought, to frame the Idea of the Universe, caused the
Power in Him to excite the intellectual Faculty to exercise, and _was_
that Power. Its SELF, which had flowed forth from Ainsoph as Will, now
flows forth as the Generative Power to beget intellectual action in the
Intellectual Faculty, or Intelligence, Binah. The _Act_ itself, the
Thought, the Intellection, producing the Idea, is _Daath_; and as the
text of the _Siphra de Zeniutha_ says, The Power and Faculty, the
Generative and Productive, the Active and Passive, the Will and
Capacity, which unite to produce that Act of reflection or Thought or
Intellection, are _always_ in conjunction. As is elsewhere said in the
Kabalah, both of them are _contained_ and essentially _involved_ in the
result. And the Will, _as_ Wisdom or Intellectual Power, and the
Capacity or Faculty, are really the Father and Mother of all that is;
for to the creation of _anything_, it was absolutely necessary that The
Infinite should form for Himself and _in_ Himself, an idea of what HE
willed to produce or create: and, as there is no Time with Him, to _will
was_ to _create_, to _plan_ was to _will_ and to _create_; and in the
Idea, the Universe in potence, the universal succession or things was
included. Thenceforward all was merely evolution and development.
Netsach and Hōd, the Seventh and Eighth Sephiroth, are usually called in
the Kabalah, Victory and Glory. Netsach is the perfect _Success_, which,
with the Deity, to Whom the Future is present, _attends_, and to His
creatures is to _result_, from the plan of Equilibrium everywhere
adopted by Him. It is the reconciliation of Light and Darkness, Good and
Evil, Free-will and Necessity, God's omnipotence and Man's liberty; and
the harmonious issue and result of all, without which the Universe would
be a failure. It is the inherent Perfection of the Deity, manifested in
His Idea of the Universe, and in all the departments or worlds,
spiritual, mental, or material, of that Universe; but it is that
Perfection regarded as the successful _result_, which it both causes or
produces and _is_; the _perfection_ of the plan _being_ its _success_.
It is the prevailing of Wisdom over Accident; and it, in turn, both
produces and _is_ the Glory and Laudation of the Great Infinite
Contriver, whose plan is thus Successful and Victorious.
From these two, which are one,--from the excellence and perfection of
the Divine Nature and Wisdom, considered as Success and Glory, as the
opposites of Failure and Mortification, results what the Kabalah,
styling it Yesod, Foundation or Basis, characterizes as the Generative
member of the Symbolical human figure by which the ten Sephiroth are
represented, and from this flows Malakoth, Empire, Dominion, or Rule.
Yesod is the Stability and Permanence, which would, in ordinary
language, be said to _result_ from the perfection of the Idea or
Intellectual Universal, out of which all particulars are evolved; from
the _success_ of that scheme, and the consequent _Glory_ or
Self-Satisfaction of the Deity; but which Stability and Permanence that
Perfection, Success, and Glory really Is; since the Deity, infinitely
Wise, and to Whom the Past, Present, and Future were and always will be
one Now, and all space one HERE, had not to await the operation and
evolution of His plan, as men do the result of an experiment, in order
to see if it would succeed, and so to determine whether it should stand,
and be stable and permanent, or fall and be temporary. Its _Perfection_
was its _Success_; His _Glory_, its _permanence_ and _stability_: and
the Attributes of Permanence and Stability belong, like the others, to
the Universe, material, mental, spiritual, and real, _because_ and _as_
they belong to the Infinite Himself.
This Stability and Permanence causes continuance and generates
succession. It _is_ Perpetuity, and continuity without solution; and by
this continuous succession, whereby out of Death comes new Life, out of
dissolution and resolution comes reconstruction, Necessity and Fatality
result as a consequence: that is to say, the absolute control and
dominion (Malakoth) of The Infinite Deity over all that He produces, and
over chance and accident; and the absolute non-existence in the
Universe, in Time and in Space, of any other powers or influences than
those which, proceeding from Him, are and cannot _not_ be perfectly
submissive to His will. This _results_, humanly speaking; but in
reality, the Perfection of the plan, which is its _success_, His
_glory_, and its _stability_, IS also His Absolute Autocracy, and the
utter absence of Chance, Accident, or Antagonism. And, as the Infinite
Wisdom or Absolute Reason rules in the Divine Nature itself, so also it
does in its Emanations, and in the worlds or systems of Spirit, Soul,
and Matter; in each of which there is as little Chance or Accident or
Unreasoning Fate, as in the Divine Nature unmanifested.
This is the Kabalistic theory as to each of the four worlds;--1st, of
the Divine Nature, or Divinity itself, quantitatively limited and
determined, but not manifested into Entities, which is the world of
_Emanation_; 2d, of the first Entities, that is, of Spirits and Angels,
which is the world of _Creation_; 3d, of the first _forms_; souls, or
psychical natures, which is the world of _Formation_ or _Fashioning_;
and, 4th, of Matter and Bodies, which is the world of _Fabrication_, or,
as it were, of manufacture. In each of these the Deity is _present, as,
in_, and _through_ the Ten Sephiroth. First of these, in each, is
Kether, the Crown, ring, or circlet, the HEAD. Next, _in_ that Head, as
the two Hemispheres of the Brain, are Hakemah and Binah, and their
result and progeny, Daath. These three are found also in the Spiritual
world, and are universals in the psychical and material world, producing
the lower Sephiroth. Then follow, in perfect Equilibrium, Law and
Equity, Justice and Mercy, the Divine Infinite Nature and the Human
Finite Nature, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Benignity and
Severity, the Male and the Female again, as Hakerrah and Binah are,
mutually tempering each other, and by their intimate union producing the
other Sephiroth.
The whole Universe, and all the succession of entities and events were
present to The Infinite, before any act of creation; and His Benignity
and Leniency, tempering and qualifying the law of rigorous Justice and
inflexible Retribution, enabled Him to create: because, but for it, and
if He could not but have administered the strict and stern law of
justice, that would have compelled Him to destroy, immediately after its
inception, the Universe He purposed to create, and so would have
_prevented_ its creation. This Leniency, therefore, was, as it were, the
very essence and quintessence of the Permanence and Stability of the
plan of Creation, and part of the Very Nature of the Deity. The Kabalah,
therefore, designates it as _Light_ and _Whiteness_, by which the Very
Substance of Deity is symbolized. With this agree Paul's ideas as to Law
and Grace; for Paul had studied the Kabalah at the feet of Gamaliel the
Rabbi.
With this Benignity, the Autocracy of the dominion and control of the
Deity is imbued and interpenetrated. The former, _poured_, as it were,
into the latter, is an integral and essential _part_ of it, and causes
it to give birth to the succession and continuance of the Universe. For
Malakoth, in the Kabalah, is _female_, and the matrix or womb out of
which all creation is born.
¤_The Sephiroth may be arranged as on page 770._
The Kabalah is the primitive tradition, and its entirety rests on the
single dogma of Magism, "the visible is for us the proportional measure
of the invisible." The Ancients, observing that equilibrium is in
physics the universal law, and that it results from the apparent
opposition of two forces, concluded from the physical to the
metaphysical equilibrium, and thought that in God, that is to say, in
the first living and active cause, two properties necessary to each
other, should be recognized; stability and movement, necessity and
liberty, order dictated by reason and the self-rule of Supreme Will,
Justice, and Love, and consequently Severity and Grace, Mercy or
Benignity.
The idea of equilibrium among all the impersonations; of the male on one
side, and the female on the other, with the Supreme Will, which _is_
also the Absolute Reason, above each two, holding the balance, is,
according to the Kabalah, the foundation of all religions and all
sciences, the primary and immutable idea of things. The Sephiroth are a
triple triangle and a circle, the idea of the Ternary explained by the
balance and multiplied by itself in the
¤ כתר: Kether: Crown
Will.
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \
Binah: ¤ חכמח ¤ / \ כינח: Hakemah:
Passive capacity <──────────> Active Potency
of being impregnated \ / of begetting intellection
and producing \ /
intellection. \ /
\ /
\/ ¤ דעת: Daath: Intellection.
/\
/ \
/ \
/ \
/ \ ¤ גדולה Gedulah: Benignity
Geburah: ¤ גבורה <──────────> or or or
Severity or rigid \ / ¤ הםד Khased: Mercy.
Justice \ /
\ /
\ /
\/ תפארה: Tĕphareth: Beauty:
/\ the Universal Harmony.
/ \
/ \
/ \
<────────>
Hod: ¤ נצה ¤ \ / הוד: Netsach: Victory
Glory \ / or Success.
\ /
\/
| ¤ יםוב Yesūd: Foundation:
| _i.e._, Stability and
| Permanency of things.
|
|
¤ מלכות: Malakoth: Dominion:
Supremacy and absolute control of the Divine Will in all things,
domain of the Ideal; then the realization of this Idea in forms.
Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of
Unity are already two.
The human unity is made complete by the right and left. The primitive
man was of both sexes.
The Divinity, one in its essence, has two essential conditions as
fundamental bases of its existence--Necessity and Liberty.
The laws of the Supreme Reason necessitate and regulate liberty in God,
Who is necessarily reasonable and wise.
Knowledge supposes the binary. An object known is indispensable to the
being that knows.
The binary is the generator of Society and the law. It is also the
number of the _gnosis_, a word adopted in lieu of _Science_, and
expressing only the idea of cognizance by intuition. It is Unity,
multiplying itself by itself to create; and therefore it is that the
Sacred Symbols make Eve issue from the very chest of Adam.
Adam is the human Tetragram, which is summed up in the mysterious Yōd of
the Kabalah, image of the Kabalistic Phallus. Add to this Yōd [י], the
ternary name of Eve, and you form the name of Jehova, the _Divine_
Tetragram, the transcendent Kabalistic and magical word:
יהוה
Thus it is that Unity, complete in the fecundity of the Ternary, forms,
with it, the Quaternary, which is the key of all numbers, movements, and
forms.
The Square, turning upon itself, produces the circle equal to itself,
and the circular movement of four equal angles turning around one point,
is the quadrature of the circle.
The Binary serves as a measure for Unity; and the relation of equality
between the Above and the Below, forms with them the Ternary.
To us, Creation is Mechanism: to the Ancients it was Generation. The
world-producing egg figures in all cosmogonies; and modern science has
discovered that all animal production is oviparous. From this idea of
generation came the reverence everywhere paid the image of generative
power, which formed the Stauros of the Gnostics, and the philosophical
Cross of the Masons.
_Aleph_ is the man; _Beth_ is the woman. _One_ is the Principle; _two_
is the Word. A. is the Active; B. is the Passive. Unity is Boaz, and the
Binary is Jachin.
The two columns, Boaz and Jachin, explain in the Kabalah all the
mysteries of natural, political, and religious antagonism.
Woman is man's creation; and universal creation is the female of the
First Principle. When the Principle of Existence made Himself Creator,
He produced by emanation an ideal Yōd; and to make room for it in the
plenitude of the uncreated Light, He had to hollow out a pit of shadow,
equal to the dimension determined by His creative desire; and attributed
by Him to the ideal Yōd of radiating Light.
The nature of the Active Principle is to diffuse: of the Passive
Principle, to collect and make fruitful.
Creation is the habitation of the Creator-Word. To create, the
Generative Power and Productive Capacity must unite, the Binary become
Unity again by the conjunction. The WORD is the First-BEGOTTEN, not the
first _created_ Son of God.
SANCTA SANCTIS, we repeat again; the Holy things to the Holy, and to him
who is so, the mysteries of the Kabalah will be holy. Seek and ye shall
find, say the Scriptures: knock and it shall be opened unto you. If you
desire to find and to gain admission to the Sanctuary, we have said
enough to show you the way. If you do not, it is useless for us to say
more, as it has been useless to say so much.
The Hermetic philosophers also drew their doctrines from the Kabalah;
and more particularly from the Treatise _Beth Alohim_ or _Domus Dei_,
known as the _Pneumatica Kabalistica_, of Rabbi Abraham Cohen Irira, and
the Treatise _De Revolutionibus Animarum_ of Rabbi Jitz-chak Lorja.
This philosophy was concealed by the Alchemists under their Symbols, and
in the jargon of a rude Chemistry,--a jargon incomprehensible and absurd
except to the Initiates; but the key to which is within your reach; and
the philosophy, it may be, worth studying. The labors of the human
intellect are always interesting and instructive.
To be always rich, always young, and never to die: such has been in all
times the dream of the Alchemists.
To change into gold, lead, mercury, and all the other metals; to possess
the universal medicine and elixir of life; such is the problem to be
resolved, in order to accomplish this desire and realize this dream.
Like all the Mysteries of Magism, the Secrets of "the Great Work" have a
threefold signification; they are religious, philosophical, and natural.
The philosophal gold, in religion, is the Absolute and Supreme Reason:
in philosophy, it is the Truth; in visible nature, the Sun; in the
subterranean and mineral world, the most perfect and pure gold.
It is for this that the pursuit of the Great Work is called the Search
for the Absolute; and the work itself, the work of the Sun.
All the masters of the Science admit that it is impossible to attain the
material results, unless there are found in the two higher Degrees all
the analogies of the universal medicine and of the philosophal stone.
Then, they say, the work is simple, easy, and inexpensive; otherwise, it
consumes fruitlessly the fortune and lives of the seekers.
The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme Reason and Absolute
Justice; for the mind, mathematical and practical Truth; for the body,
the Quintessence, a combination of light and gold.
The prima materia of the Great Work, in the Superior World, is
enthusiasm and activity; in the intermediate world, intelligence and
industry; in the lower world, labor: and, in Science, it is the Sulphur,
Mercury, and Salt, which by turns volatilized and fixed, compose the
AZOTH of the Sages.
The Sulphur corresponds with the elementary form of the Fire; Mercury
with the Air and Water; and Salt with the Earth.
The Great Work is, above all things, the creation of man by himself;
that is to say, the full and entire conquest which he effects of his
faculties and his future. It is, above all, the perfect emancipation of
his will, which assures him the universal empire of Azoth, and the
domain of magnetism, that is, complete power over the universal Magical
agent.
This Magical agent, which the Ancient Hermetic philosophers disguised
under the name of "_Prima Materia_," determines the forms of the
modifiable Substance; and the Alchemists said that by means of it they
could attain the transmutation of metals and the universal medicine.
There are two Hermetic operations, one spiritual, the other material,
dependent the one on the other.
The whole Hermetic Science is contained in the dogma of Hermes, engraven
originally, it is said, on a tablet of emerald. Its sentences that
relate to operating the Great Work are as follows:
"Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the
gross, gently, with much industry.
"It ascends from earth to Heaven, and again descends to earth, and
receives the force of things above and below.
"Thou shalt by this means possess the glory of the whole world, and
therefore all obscurity shall flee away from thee.
"This is the potent force of all force, for it will overcome everything
subtile, and penetrate everything solid.
"So the world was created."
All the Masters in Alchemy who have written of the Great Work, have
employed symbolic and figurative expressions; being constrained to do
so, as well to repel the profane from a work that would be dangerous for
them, as to be well understood by Adepts, in revealing to them the whole
world of analogies governed by the single and sovereign dogma of Hermes.
So, in their language, gold and silver are the King and Queen, or the
Sun and Moon; Sulphur, the flying Eagle; Mercury, the Man-woman, winged,
bearded, mounted on a cube, and crowned with flames; Matter or Salt, the
winged Dragon; the Metals in ebullition, Lions of different colors; and,
finally, the entire work has for its symbols the Pelican and the Phœnix.
The Hermetic Art is, therefore, at the same time a religion, a
philosophy, and a natural science. As a religion, it is that of the
Ancient Magi and the Initiates of all ages; as a philosophy, we may find
its principles in the school of Alexandria and the theories of
Pythagoras; as a science, we must inquire for its processes of
Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel, and Raymond Lulle.
The Science is a real one only for those who admit and understand the
philosophy and the religion; and its process will succeed only for the
Adept who has attained the sovereignty of will, and so become the King
of the elementary world: for the grand agent of the operation of the
Sun, is that force described in the Symbol of Hermes, of the table of
emerald; it is the universal magical power; the spiritual, fiery, motive
power; it is the Od, according to the Hebrews, and the Astral light,
according to others.
Therein is the secret fire, living and philosophical, of which all the
Hermetic philosophers speak with the most mysterious reserve: the
Universal Seed, the secret whereof they kept, and which they represented
only under the figure of the Caduceus of Hermes.
This is the grand Hermetic arcanum. What the Adepts call dead matter are
bodies as found in nature; living matters are substances assimilated and
magnetized by the science and will of the operator.
So that the Great Work is more than a chemical operation; it is a real
creation of the human word initiated into the power of the Word of God.
The creation of gold in the Great Work is effected by transmutation and
multiplication.
Raymond Lulle says, that to make gold, one must have gold and mercury;
and to make silver, silver and mercury. And he adds: "I mean by mercury,
that mineral spirit so fine and pure that it gilds even the seed of
gold, and silvers that of silver." He meant by this, either electricity,
or Od, the astral light.
The Salt and Sulphur serve in the work only to prepare the mercury, and
it is to the mercury especially that we must assimilate, and, as it
were, incorporate with it, the magnetic agent. Paracelsus, Lulle, and
Flamel alone seem to have perfectly known this mystery.
The Great Work of Hermes is, therefore, an operation essentially
magical, and the highest of all, for it supposes the Absolute in Science
and in Will. There is light in gold, gold in light, and light in all
things.