[Master of Royal Secret.]
The Occult Science of the Ancient Magi was concealed under the shadows
of the Ancient Mysteries: it was imperfectly revealed or rather
disfigured by the Gnostics: it is guessed at under the obscurities that
cover the pretended crimes of the Templars; and it is found enveloped in
enigmas that seem impenetrable, in the Rites of the Highest Masonry.
Magism was the Science of Abraham and Orpheus, of Confucius and
Zoroaster. It was the dogmas of this Science that were engraven on the
tables of stone by Hanoch and Trismegistus. Moses purified and
re-_veiled_ them, for that is the meaning of the word _reveal_. He
covered them with a new veil, when he made of the Holy Kabalah the
exclusive heritage of the people of Israel, and the inviolable Secret
of its priests. The Mysteries of Thebes and Eleusis preserved among the
nations some symbols of it, already altered, and the mysterious key
whereof was lost among the instruments of an ever-growing superstition.
Jerusalem, the murderess of her prophets, and so often prostituted to
the false gods of the Syrians and Babylonians, had at length in its turn
lost the Holy Word, when a Prophet announced to the Magi by the
consecrated Star of Initiation, came to rend asunder the worn veil of
the old Temple, in order to give the Church a new tissue of legends and
symbols, that still and ever conceals from the Profane, and ever
preserves to the Elect the same truths.
It was the remembrance of this scientific and religious Absolute, of
this doctrine that is summed up in a word, of this Word, in fine,
alternately lost and found again, that was transmitted to the Elect of
all the Ancient Initiations: it was this same remembrance, preserved, or
perhaps profaned in the celebrated Order of the Templars, that became
for all the secret associations, of the Rose-Croix, of the Illuminati,
and of the Hermetic Freemasons, the reason of their strange rites, of
their signs more or less conventional, and, above all, of their mutual
devotedness and of their power.
The Gnostics caused the Gnosis to be proscribed by the Christians, and
the official Sanctuary was closed against the high initiation. Thus the
Hierarchy of Knowledge was compromitted by the violences of usurping
ignorance, and the disorders of the Sanctuary are reproduced in the
State; for always, willingly or unwillingly, the King is sustained by
the Priest, and it is from the eternal Sanctuary of the Divine
instruction that the Powers of the Earth, to insure themselves
durability, must receive their consecration and their force.
The Hermetic Science of the early Christian ages, cultivated also by
Geber, Alfarabius, and others of the Arabs, studied by the Chiefs of the
Templars, and embodied in certain symbols of the higher Degrees of
Freemasonry, may be accurately defined as the Kabalah in active
realization, or the Magic of Works. It has three analogous Degrees,
religious, philosophical, and physical realization.
Its religious realization is the durable foundation of the true Empire
and the true Priesthood that rule in the realm of human intellect: its
philosophical realization is the establishment of an absolute Doctrine,
known in all times as the "HOLY DOCTRINE," and of which PLUTARCH, in
the Treatise "_de Iside et Osiride_," speaks at large but mysteriously;
and of a Hierarchical instruction to secure the uninterrupted succession
of Adepts among the Initiates: its physical realization is the discovery
and application, in the Microcosm, or Little World, of the creative law
that incessantly peoples the great Universe.
Measure a corner of the Creation, and multiply that space in
proportional progression, and the entire Infinite will multiply its
circles filled with universes, which will pass in proportional segments
between the ideal and elongating branches of your Compass. Now suppose
that from any point whatever of the Infinite above you a hand holds
another Compass or a Square, the lines of the Celestial triangle will
necessarily meet those of the Compass of Science, to form the Mysterious
Star of Solomon.
All hypotheses scientifically probable are the last gleams of the
twilight of knowledge, or its last shadows. Faith begins where Reason
sinks exhausted. Beyond the human Reason is the Divine Reason, to our
feebleness the great Absurdity, the Infinite Absurd, which confounds us
and which we believe. For the Master, the Compass of Faith is _above_
the Square of Reason; but _both_ rest upon the Holy Scriptures and
combine to form the Blazing Star of Truth.
All eyes do not see alike. Even the visible creation is not, for all who
look upon it, of one form and one color. Our brain is a book printed
within and without, and the two writings are, with all men, more or less
confused.
The primary tradition of the single revelation has been preserved under
the name of the "Kabalah," by the Priesthood of Israel. The Kabalistic
doctrine, which was also the dogma of the Magi and of Hermes, is
contained in the Sepher Yetsairah, the Sohar, and the Talmud. According
to that doctrine, the Absolute is the Being, in which The Word Is, the
Word that is the utterance and expression of being and life.
Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics; for it
is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws.
Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian religion,
which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the
prestiges of the false Gods, itself reveres those Magi who came from the
East, guided by a Star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His
cradle.
Tradition also gives these Magi the title of "Kings;" because initiation
into Magism constitutes a genuine royalty; and because the grand art of
the Magi is styled by all the Adepts, "_The Royal Art_," or the _Holy
Realm_ or _Empire, Sanctum Regnum_.
The Star which guided them is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof
we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the
Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the
Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the
Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself
above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend
the knee.
Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever Philosophy can
possess that is most certain, and Religion of the Infallible and the
Eternal. It perfectly and incontestably reconciles these two terms that
at first blush seem so opposed to each other; faith and reason, science
and creed, authority and liberty.
It supplies the human mind with an instrument of philosophical and
religious certainty, exact as the mathematics, and accounting for the
infallibility of the mathematics themselves.
Thus there is an Absolute, in the matters of the Intelligence and of
Faith. The Supreme Reason has not left the gleams of the human
understanding to vacillate at hazard. There is an incontestable verity,
there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the
knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give their will a
sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior things
and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters
and Kings of the World.
Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives the intellectual
world a life which has its regulated movements and its progressive
phases. It is with Truths, as with the luminous rays: nothing of what is
concealed is lost; but also, nothing of what is discovered is absolutely
new. God has been pleased to give to Science, which is the reflection of
His Glory, the Seal of His Eternity.
It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious
symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of
Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge. The Priests of
Egypt knew, better than we do, the laws of movement and of life. They
knew how to temper or, intensify action by reaction; and readily foresaw
the realization of these effects, the causes of which they had
determined. The Columns of Seth, Enoch, Solomon, and Hercules have
symbolized in the Magian traditions this universal law of the
Equilibrium; and the Science of the Equilibrium or balancing of Forces
had led the Initiates to that of the universal gravitation around the
centres of Life, Heat, and Light.
Thales and Pythagoras learned in the Sanctuaries of Egypt that the Earth
revolved around the Sun; but they did not attempt to make this generally
known, because to do so it would have been necessary to reveal one of
the great Secrets of the Temple, that double law of attraction and
radiation or of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which
is the principle of Creation, and the perpetual cause of life. This
Truth was ridiculed by the Christian Lactantius, as it was long after
sought to be proven a falsehood by persecution, by Papal Rome.
So the philosophers reasoned, while the Priests, without replying to
them or even smiling at their errors, wrote, in those Hieroglyphics that
created all dogmas and all poetry, the Secrets of the Truth.
When Truth comes into the world, the Star of Knowledge advises the Magi
of it, and they hasten to adore the Infant who creates the Future. It is
by means of the Intelligence of the Hierarchy and the practice of
obedience, that one obtains Initiation. If the Rulers have the Divine
Right to govern, the true Initiate will cheerfully obey.
The orthodox traditions were carried from Chaldea by Abraham. They
reigned in Egypt in the time of Joseph, together with the knowledge of
the True God. Moses carried Orthodoxy out of Egypt, and in the Secret
Traditions of the Kabalah we find a Theology entire, perfect, unique,
like that which in Christianity is most grand and best explained by the
Fathers and the Doctors, the whole with a consistency and a
harmoniousness which it is not as yet given to the world to comprehend.
The Sohar, which is the Key of the Holy Books, opens also all the depths
and lights, all the obscurities of the Ancient Mythologies and of the
Sciences originally concealed in the Sanctuaries. It is true that the
Secret of this Key must be known, to enable one to make use of it, and
that for even the most penetrating intellects, not initiated in this
Secret, the Sohar is absolutely incomprehensible and almost illegible.
The Secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature itself, the Secret
of the generation of the Angels and Worlds, that of the Omnipotence of
God.
"_Ye shall be like the Elohim, knowing good and evil_," had the Serpent
of Genesis said, and the Tree of Knowledge became the Tree of Death.
For six thousand years the Martyrs of Knowledge toil and die at the foot
of this tree, that it may again become the Tree of Life.
The Absolute sought for unsuccessfully by the insensate and found by the
Sages, is the TRUTH, the REALITY, and the REASON of the universal
equilibrium!
Equilibrium is the Harmony that results from the analogy of Contraries.
Until now, Humanity has been endeavoring to stand on one foot; sometimes
on one, sometimes on the other.
Civilizations have risen and perished, either by the anarchical insanity
of Despotism, or by the despotic anarchy of Revolt.
To organize Anarchy, is the problem which the revolutionists have and
will eternally have to resolve. It is the rock of Sisyphus that will
always fall back upon them. To exist a single instant, they are and
always will be by fatality reduced to improvise a despotism without
other reason of existence than necessity, and which, consequently, is
violent and blind as Necessity. We escape from the harmonious monarchy
of Reason, only to fall under the irregular dictatorship of Folly.
Sometimes superstitious enthusiasms, sometimes the miserable
calculations of the materialist instinct have led astray the nations,
and God at last urges the world on toward believing Reason and
reasonable Beliefs.
We have had prophets enough without philosophy, and philosophers without
religion; the blind believers and the skeptics resemble each other, and
are as far the one as the other from the eternal salvation.
In the chaos of universal doubt and of the conflicts of Reason and
Faith, the great men and Seers have been but infirm and morbid artists,
seeking the beau-ideal at the risk and peril of their reason and life.
Living only in the hope to be crowned, they are the first to do what
Pythagoras in so touching a manner prohibits in his admirable Symbols;
they rend crowns, and tread them under foot.
Light is the equilibrium of Shadow and Lucidity.
Movement is the equilibrium of Inertia and Activity.
Authority is the equilibrium of Liberty and Power.
Wisdom is equilibrium in the Thoughts, which are the scintillations and
rays of the Intellect.
Virtue is equilibrium in the Affections: Beauty is harmonious proportion
in Forms.
The beautiful lives are the accurate ones, and the magnificences of
Nature are an algebra of graces and splendors.
Everything just is beautiful; everything beautiful ought to be just.
* * * * *
There is, in fact, no Nothing, no void Emptiness, in the Universe. From
the upper or outer surface of our atmosphere to that of the Sun, and to
those of the Planets and remote Stars, in different directions, Science
has for hundreds of centuries imagined that there was simple, void,
empty Space. Comparing finite knowledge with the Infinite, the
Philosophers know little more than the apes! In all that "void" space
are the Infinite Forces of God, acting in an infinite variety of
directions, back and forth, and never for an instant inactive. In all of
it, active through the whole of its Infinity, is the Light that is the
Visible Manifestation of God. The earth and every other planet and
sphere that is not a Centre of Light, carries its cone of shadow with it
as it flies and flashes round in its orbit; but the darkness has no
_home_ in the Universe. To illuminate the sphere on one side, is to
project a cone of darkness on the other; and Error also is the Shadow of
the Truth with which God illuminates the Soul.
In all that "Void," also, is the Mysterious and ever Active Electricity,
and Heat, and the Omnipresent Ether. At the will of God the Invisible
becomes Visible. Two invisible gases, combined by the action of a Force
of God, and compressed, become and remain the water that fills the great
basins of the seas, flows in the rivers and rivulets, leaps forth from
the rocks or springs, drops upon the earth in rains, or whitens it with
snows, and bridges the Danubes with ice, or gathers in vast reservoirs
in the earth's bosom. God manifested fills all the extension that we
foolishly call Empty Space and the Void.
And everywhere in the Universe, what we call Life and Movement results
from a continual conflict of Forces or Impulses. Whenever that active
antagonism ceases, the immobility and inertia, which are Death, result.
If, says the Kabalah, the Justice of God, which is Severity or the
Female, alone reigned, creation of imperfect beings such as man would
from the beginning have been impossible, because Sin being congenital
with Humanity, the Infinite Justice, measuring the Sin by the Infinity
of the God offended against, must have annihilated Humanity at the
instant of its creation; and not only Humanity but the Angels, since
these also, like all created by God and less than perfect, are sinful.
Nothing imperfect would have been possible. If, on the other hand, the
Mercy or Benignity of God, the Male, were in no wise counteracted, Sin
would go unpunished, and the Universe fall into a chaos of corruption.
Let God but repeal a single principle or law of chemical attraction or
sympathy, and the antagonistic forces equilibrated in matter, released
from constraint, would instantaneously expand all that we term matter
into impalpable and invisible gases, such as water or steam is, when,
confined in a cylinder and subjected to an immense degree of that
mysterious force of the Deity which we call "heat," it is by its
expansion released.
Incessantly the great currents and rivers of air flow and rush and roll
from the equator to the frozen polar regions, and back from these to the
torrid equatorial realms. Necessarily incident to these great, immense,
equilibrated and beneficent movements, caused by the antagonism of
equatorial heat and polar cold, are the typhoons, tornadoes, and
cyclones that result from conflicts between the rushing currents. These
and the benign trade-winds result from the same great law. God is
omnipotent; but effects without causes are impossible, and these effects
cannot but sometimes be evil. The fire would not warm, if it could not
also burn, the human flesh. The most virulent poisons are the most
sovereign remedies, when given in due proportion. The Evil is the shadow
of the Good, and inseparable from it.
The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence of the Divine Will
or Power, and the result is Beauty or Harmony. The arch rests not on a
single column, but springs from one on either side. So is it also with
the Divine Justice and Mercy, and with the Human Reason and Human Faith.
That purely scholastic Theology, issue of the Categories of Aristotle
and of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, that logic of the syllogism which
argues instead of reasoning, and finds a response to every thing by
subtilizing on terms, wholly ignored the Kabalastic dogma and wandered
off into the drear vacuity of darkness. It was less a philosophy or a
wisdom than a philosophical automaton, replying by means of springs, and
uncoiling its theses like a wheeled movement. It was not the human verb
but the monotonous cry of a machine, the inanimate speech of an Androïd.
It was the fatal precision of mechanism, instead of a free application
of rational necessities. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS crushed with a single blow
all this scaffolding of words built one upon the other, by proclaiming
the eternal Empire of Reason, in that magnificent sentence, "_A thing is
not just because_ GOD _wills it; but_ GOD _wills it because it is
just_." The proximate consequence of this proposition, arguing from the
greater to the less, was this: "_A thing is not true because_ ARISTOTLE
_has said it; but_ ARISTOTLE _could not reasonably say it unless it was
true. Seek then, first of all, the_ TRUTH _and_ JUSTICE, _and the
Science of_ ARISTOTLE _will be given you in addition_."
It is the fine dream of the greatest of the Poets, that Hell, become
useless, is to be closed at length, by the aggrandizement of Heaven;
that the problem of Evil is to receive its final solution, and Good
alone, necessary and triumphant, is to reign in Eternity. So the Persian
dogma taught that AHRIMAN and his subordinate ministers of Evil were at
last, by means of a Redeemer and Mediator, to be reconciled with Deity,
and all Evil to end. But unfortunately, the philosopher forgets all the
laws of equilibrium, and seeks to absorb the Light in a splendor without
shadow, and movement in an absolute repose that would be the cessation
of life. So long as there shall be a visible light, there will be a
shadow proportional to this Light, and whatever is illuminated will cast
its cone of shadow. Repose will never be happiness, if it is not
balanced by an analogous and contrary movement. This is the immutable
law of Nature, the Eternal Will of the JUSTICE which is GOD.
The same reason necessitates Evil and Sorrow in Humanity, which renders
indispensable the bitterness of the waters of the seas. Here also,
Harmony can result only from the analogy of contraries, and what is
above exists by reason of what is below. It is the depth that determines
the height; and if the valleys are filled up, the mountains disappear:
so, if the shadows are effaced, the Light is annulled, which is only
visible by the graduated contrast of gloom and splendor, and universal
obscurity will be produced by an immense dazzling. Even the colors in
the Light only exist by the presence of the shadow: it is the threefold
alliance of the day and night, the luminous image of the dogma, the
Light made Shadow, as the Saviour is the Logos made man: and all this
reposes on the same law, the primary law of creation, the single and
absolute law of Nature, that of the distinction and harmonious
ponderation of the contrary forces in the universal equipoise.
The two great columns of the Temple that symbolizes the Universe are
Necessity, or the omnipotent Will of God, which nothing can disobey, and
Liberty, or the free-will of His creatures. Apparently and to our human
reason antagonistic, the same Reason is not incapable of comprehending
how they can be in equipoise. The Infinite Power and Wisdom could so
plan the Universe and the Infinite Succession of things as to leave man
free to act, and, foreseeing what each would at every instant think and
do, to make of the free-will and free-action of each an instrument to
aid in effecting its general purpose. For even a man, foreseeing that
another will do a certain act, and in nowise controlling or even
influencing him may use that action as an instrument to effect his own
purposes.
The Infinite Wisdom of God foresees what each will do, and uses it as an
instrument, by the exertion of His Infinite Power, which yet does not
control the Human action so as to annihilate its freedom. The result is
Harmony, the third column that upholds the Lodge. The same Harmony
results from the equipoise of Necessity and Liberty. The will of God is
not for an instant defeated nor thwarted, and this is the Divine
Victory; and yet He does not tempt nor constrain men to do Evil, and
thus His Infinite Glory is unimpaired. The result is Stability,
Cohesion, and Permanence in the Universe, and undivided Dominion and
Autocracy in the Deity. And these, Victory, Glory, Stability, and
Dominion, are the last four Sephiroth of the Kabalah.
I AM, God said to Moses, that which Is, Was and Shall forever Be. But
the Very God, in His unmanifested Essence, conceived of as not yet
having created and as Alone, has no Name. Such was the doctrine of all
the ancient Sages, and it is so expressly declared in the Kabalah.
[Hebrew: יהוה] is the Name of the Deity manifested in a single act, that
of Creation, and containing within Himself, in idea and actuality, the
whole Universe, to be invested with form and be materially developed
during the eternal succession of ages. As God never WAS NOT, so He never
THOUGHT not, and the Universe has no more had a beginning than the
Divine Thought of which it is the utterance,--no more than the Deity
Himself. The duration of the Universe is but a point halfway upon the
infinite line of eternity; and God was not inert and uncreative during
the eternity that stretches behind that point. The Archetype of the
Universe did never not exist in the Divine Mind. The Word was in the
BEGINNING with God, and WAS God. And the Ineffable NAME is that, not of
the Very Essence but of the Absolute, manifested as Being or Existence.
For Existence or Being, said the Philosophers, is limitation; and the
Very Deity is not limited nor defined, but is all that _may possibly
be_, besides all that is, was, and shall be.