Isis Unveiled

When Swayambhuva, the “Lord who exists through himself,” feels impelled to manifest himself, he is thus described in the Hindu sacred books. Having been impelled to produce various beings from his own divine substance, he first manifested the waters which developed within themselves a productive seed. The seed became a germ bright as gold, blazing like the luminary with a thousand beams; and in that egg he was born himself, in the form of BRAHMA, the great principle of all the beings (Manu, book i., slokas 8, 9).

The Egyptian Kneph, or Chnuphis, Divine Wisdom, represented by a serpent, produces an egg from his mouth, from which issues Phtha. In this case Phtha represents the universal germ, as well as Brahmä, who is of the neuter gender, when the final a has a diaresis on it; otherwise it becomes simply one of the names of the Deity. The former was the model of the THREE LIVES of the Nazarenes, as that of the kabalistic “Faces,” PHARAZUPHA, which, in its turn, furnished the model for the Christian Trinity of Irenæus and his followers. The egg was the primitive matter which served as a material for the building of the visible universe; it contained, as well as the Gnostic Pleroma, the kabalistic Shekinah, the man and wife, the spirit and life, “whose light includes all other lights” or life-spirits. This first manifestation was symbolized by a serpent, which is at first divine wisdom, but, falling into generation, becomes polluted. Phtha is the heavenly man, the Egyptian Adam-Kadmon, or Christ, who, in conjunction with the female Holy Ghost, the ZOE, produces the five elements, air, water, fire, earth, and ether; the latter being a servile copy from the Buddhist A’d, and his five Dhyana Buddhas, as we have shown in the preceding chapter. The Hindu Swayambhuva-Nara, develops from himself the mother-principle, enclosed within his own divine essence - Nari, the immortal Virgin, who, when impregnated by his spirit, becomes Taumâtra, the mother of the five elements - air, water, fire, earth, and ether. Thus may be shown how from the Hindu cosmogony all others proceed.

Knorr von Rosenroth, busying himself with the interpretation of the Kabala, argues that, “In this first state (of secret wisdom), the infinite God Himself can be understood as ‘Father’ (of the new covenant). But the Light being let down by the Infinite through a canal into the ‘primal Adam,’ or Messiah, and joined with him, can be applied to the name SON. And the influx emitted down from him (the Son) to the lower parts (of the universe), can be applied to the character of the Holy Ghost.” Sophia-Achamoth, the half-spiritual, half-material LIFE, which vivifies the inert matter in the depths of chaos, is the Holy Ghost of the Gnostics, and the Spiritus (female) of the Nazarenes. She is - be it remembered - the sister of Christos, the perfect emanation, and both are children or emanations of Sophia, the purely spiritual and intellectual daughter of Bythos, the Depth. For the elder Sophia is Shekinah, the Face of God, “God’s Shekinah, which is his image.” “The Son Zeus-Belus, or Sol-Mithra is an image of the Father, an emanation from the Supreme Light,” says Movers. “He passed for Creator.”

“Philosophers say the first air is anima mundi. But the garment (Shekinah) is higher than the first air, since it is joined closer to the En-Soph, the Boundless.” Thus Sophia is Shekinah, and Sophia-Achamoth the anima mundi, the astral light of the kabalists, which contains the spiritual and material germs of all that is. For the Sophia-Achamoth, like Eve, of whom she is the prototype, is “the mother of all that live.”

There are three trinities in the Nazarene system as well as in the Hindu philosophy of the ante and early Vedic period. While we see the few translators of the Kabala, the Nazarene Codex, and other abstruse works, hopelessly floundering amid the interminable pantheon of names, unable to agree as to a system in which to classify them, for the one hypothesis contradicts and overturns the other, we can but wonder at all this trouble, which could be so easily overcome. But even now, when the translation, and even the perusal of the ancient Sanscrit has become so easy as a point of comparison, they would never think it possible that every philosophy - whether Semitic, Hamitic, or Turanian, as they call it, has its key in the Hindu sacred works. Still facts are there, and facts are not easily destroyed. Thus, while we find the Hindu trimurti triply manifested as Nara (or Para-Pouroucha), Agni, Brahma, the Father, Nari (Mariama), Vaya, Vishnu, the Mother, Viradj (Brahmä), Surya, Siva, the Son, and the Egyptian trinity as follows: Kneph (or Amon), Osiris, Ra (Horus), the Father, Maut (or Mut), Isis, Isis, the Mother, Khons, Horus, Malouli, the Son; the Nazarene System runs, Ferho (Ish-Amon), Mano, Abatur, the Father, Chaos (dark water), Spiritus (female), Netubto, the Mother, Fetahil, Ledhaio, Lord Jordan, the Son.

The first is the concealed or non-manifested trinity - a pure abstraction. The other the active or the one revealed in the results of creation, proceeding out of the former - its spiritual prototype. The third is the mutilated image of both the others, crystallized in the form of human dogmas, which vary according to the exuberance of the national materialistic fancy.

The Supreme Lord of splendor and of light, luminous and refulgent, before which no other existed, is called Corona (the crown); Lord Ferho, the unrevealed life which existed in the former from eternity; and Lord Jordan - the spirit, the living water of grace. He is the one through whom alone we can be saved; and thus he answers to the Shekinah, the spiritual garment of En-Soph, or the Holy Ghost. These three constitute the trinity in abscondito. The second trinity is composed of the three lives. The first is the similitude of Lord Ferho, through whom he has proceeded forth; and the second Ferho is the King of Light - MANO (Rex Lucis). He is the heavenly life and light, and older than the Architect of heaven and earth. The second life is Ish Amon (Pleroma), the vase of election, containing the visible thought of the Iordanus Maximus - the type (or its intelligible reflection), the prototype of the living water, who is the “spiritual Jordan.” Third life, which is produced by the other two, is ABATUR (Ab, the Parent or Father). This is the mysterious and decrepit “Aged of the Aged,” the “Ancient Senem sui obtegentem et grandævum mundi.” This latter third Life is the Father of the Demiurge Fetahil, the Creator of the world, whom the Ophites call Ilda-Baoth, though Fetahil is the only-begotten one, the reflection of the Father, Abatur, who begets him by looking into the “dark water;” but the Lord Mano, “the Lord of loftiness, the Lord of all genii,” is higher than the Father, in this kabalistic Codex - one is purely spiritual, the other material.

So, for instance, while Abatur’s “only begotten” one is the genius Fetahil, the Creator of the physical world, Lord Mano, the “Lord of Celsitude,” who is the son of Him, who is “the Father of all who preach the Gospel,” produces also an “only-begotten” one, the Lord Lehdaio, “a just Lord.” He is the Christos, the anointed, who pours out the “grace” of the Invisible Jordan, the Spirit of the Highest Crown.

In the Arcanum, “in the assembly of splendor, lighted by MANO, to whom the scintillas of splendor owe their origin,” the genii who live in light “rose, they went to the visible Jordan, and flowing water ... they assembled for a counsel ... and called forth the Only-Begotten Son of an imperishable image, and who cannot be conceived by reflection, Lehdaio, the just Lord, and sprung from Lehdaio, the just lord, whom the life had produced by his word.” Mano is the chief of the seven Æons, who are Mano (Rex Lucis) Aiar Zivo, Ignis Vivus, Lux, Vita, Aqua Viva (the living water of baptism, the genius of the Jordan), and Ipsa Vita, the chief of the six genii, which form with him the mystic seven. The Nazarene Mano is simply the copy of the Hindu first Manu - the emanation of Manu Swayambhuva - from whom evolve in succession the six other Manus, types of the subsequent races of men. We find them all represented by the apostle-kabalist John in the “seven lamps of fire” burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God, and in the seven angels bearing the seven vials. Again in Fetahil we recognize the original of the Christian doctrine.

In the Revelation of Joannes Theologos it is said: “I turned and saw in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man ... his head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire ... and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace” (i. 13, 14, 15). John here repeats, as is well known, the words of Daniel and Ezekiel. “The Ancient of Days ... whose hair was white as pure wool ... etc.” And “the appearance of a man ... above the throne ... and the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round about.” The fire being “the glory of the Lord.” Fetahil is son of the man, the Third Life, and his upper part is represented as white as snow, while standing near the throne of the living fire he has the appearance of a flame.

All these “apocalyptic” visions are based on the description of the “white head” of the Sohar, in whom the kabalistic trinity is united. The white head, “which conceals in its cranium the spirit,” and which is environed by subtile fire. The “appearance of a man” is that of Adam Kadmon, through which passes the thread of light represented by the fire. Fetahil is the Vir Novissimis (the newest man), the son of Abatur, the latter being the “man,” or the third life, now the third personage of the trinity. John sees “one like unto the son of man,” holding in his right hand seven stars, and standing between “seven golden candlesticks” (Revelation i.). Fetahil takes his “stand on high,” according to the will of his father, “the highest Æon who has seven sceptres,” and seven genii, who astronomically represent the seven planets or stars. He stands “shining in the garment of the Lord’s, resplendent by the agency of the genii.” He is the Son of his Father, Life, and his mother, Spirit, or Light. The Logos is represented in the Gospel according to John as one in whom was “Life, and the life was the light of men” (i. 4). Fetahil is the Demiurge, and his father created the visible universe of matter through him. In the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians (iii. 9), God is said to have “created all things by Jesus.” In the Codex the Parent-LIFE says: “Arise, go, our son first-begotten, ordained for all creatures.” “As the living father hath sent me,” says Christ, “God sent his only-begotten son that we might live.” Finally, having performed his work on earth, Fetahil reascends to his father Abatur. “Et qui, relicto quem procreavit mundo, ad Abatur suum patrem contendit.” “My father sent me ... I go to the Father,” repeats Jesus.

Laying aside the theological disputes of Christianity which try to blend together the Jewish Creator of the first chapter of Genesis with the “Father” of the New Testament, Jesus states repeatedly of his Father that “He is in secret.” Surely he would not have so termed the ever-present “Lord God” of the Mosaic books, who showed Himself to Moses and the Patriarchs, and finally allowed all the elders of Israel to look on Himself. When Jesus is made to speak of the temple at Jerusalem as of his “Father’s house,” he does not mean the physical building, which he maintains he can destroy and then again rebuild in three days, but of the temple of Solomon; the wise kabalist, who indicates in his Proverbs that every man is the temple of God, or of his own divine spirit. This term of the “Father who is in secret,” we find used as much in the Kabala as in the Codex Nazaræus, and elsewhere. No one has ever seen the wisdom concealed in the “Cranium,” and no one has beheld the “Depth” (Bythos). Simon, the Magician, preached “one Father unknown to all.”

We can trace this appellation of a “secret” God still farther back. In the Kabala the “Son” of the concealed Father who dwells in light and glory, is the “Anointed,” the Seir-Anpin, who unites in himself all the Sephiroth, he is Christos, or the Heavenly man. It is through Christ that the Pneuma, or the Holy Ghost, creates “all things” (Ephesians iii. 9), and produces the four elements, air, water, fire, and earth. This assertion is unquestionable, for we find Irenæus basing on this fact his best argument for the necessity of there being four gospels. There can be neither more nor fewer than four - he argues. “For as there are four quarters of the world, and four general winds (καθολικὰ πνεύματα) ... it is right that she (the Church) should have four pillars. From which it is manifest that the Word, the maker of all, he who sitteth upon the Cherubim ... as David says, supplicating his advent, ‘Thou that sittest between the Cherubim, shine forth!’ For the Cherubim also are four-faced and their faces are symbols of the working of the Son of God.”

We will not stop to discuss at length the special holiness of the four-faced Cherubim, although we might, perhaps, show their origin in all the ancient pagodas of India, in the vehans (or vehicles) of their chief gods; as likewise we might easily attribute the respect paid to them to the kabalistic wisdom, which, nevertheless, the Church rejects with great horror. But, we cannot resist the temptation to remind the reader that he may easily ascertain the several significances attributed to these Cherubs by reading the Kabala. “When the souls are to leave their abode,” says the Sohar, holding to the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls in the world of emanations, “each soul separately appears before the Holy King, dressed in a sublime form, with the features in which it is to appear in this world. It is from this sublime form that the image proceeds” (Sohar, iii., p. 104 ab). Then it goes on to say that the types or forms of these faces are four in number - those of the angel or man, of the lion, the bull, and the eagle. Furthermore, we may well express our wonder that Irenæus should not have re-enforced his argument for the four gospels - by citing the whole Pantheon of the four-armed Hindu gods?

Ezekiel in representing his four animals, now called Cherubim, as types of the four symbolical beings, which, in his visions support the throne of Jehovah, had not far to go for his models. The Chaldeo-Babylonian protecting genii were familiar to him; the Sed, Alap or Kirub (Cherubim), the bull, with the human face; the Nirgal, human-headed lion; Oustour the Sphinx-man; and the Nathga, with its eagle’s head. The religion of the masters - the idolatrous Babylonians and Assyrians - was transferred almost bodily into the revealed Scripture of the Captives, and from thence came into Christianity.

Already, we find Ezekiel addressed by the likeness of the glory of the Lord, “as Son of man.” This peculiar title is used repeatedly throughout the whole book of this prophet, which is as kabalistic as the “roll of a book” which the “Glory” causes him to eat. It is written within and without; and its real meaning is identical with that of the Apocalypse. It appears strange that so much stress should be laid on this peculiar appellation, said to have been applied by Jesus to himself, when, in the symbolical or kabalistic language, a prophet is so addressed. It is as extraordinary to see Irenæus indulging in such graphic descriptions of Jesus as to show him, “the maker of all, sitting upon a Cherubim,” unless he identifies him with Shekinah, whose usual place was among the Charoubs of the Mercy Seat. We also know that the Cherubim and Seraphim are titles of the “Old Serpent” (the orthodox Devil) the Seraphs being the burning or fiery serpents, in kabalistic symbolism. The ten emanations of Adam Kadmon, called the Sephiroth, have all emblems and titles corresponding to each. So, for instance, the last two are Victory, or Jehovah-Sabaoth, whose symbol is the right column of Solomon, the Pillar Jachin; while GLORY is the left Pillar, or Boaz, and its name is “the Old Serpent,” and also “Seraphim and Cherubim.”

The “Son of man” is an appellation which could not be assumed by any one but a kabalist. Except, as shown above, in the Old Testament, it is used but by one prophet - Ezekiel, the kabalist. In their mysterious and mutual relations, the Æons or Sephiroth are represented in the Kabala by a great number of circles, and sometimes by the figure of a MAN, which is symbolically formed out of such circles. This man is Seir-Anpin, and the 243 numbers of which his figure consists relate to the different orders of the celestial hierarchy. The original idea of this figure, or rather the model, may have been taken from the Hindu Brahma, and the various castes typified by the several parts of his body, as King suggests in his Gnostics. In one of the grandest and most beautiful cave-temples at Ellora, Nasak, dedicated to Vishvakarma, son of Brahma, is a representation of this God and his attributes. To one acquainted with Ezekiel’s description of the “likeness of four living creatures,” every one of which had four faces and the hands of a man under its wings, etc., this figure at Ellora must certainly appear absolutely biblical. Brahma is called the father of “man,” as well as Jupiter and other highest gods.

It is in the Buddhistic representations of Mount Meru, called by the Burmese Myé-nmo, and by the Siamese Sineru, that we find one of the originals of the Adam Kadmon, Seir-Anpin, the “heavenly man,” and of all the Æons, Sephiroth, Powers, Dominions, Thrones, Virtues, and Dignities of the Kabala. Between two pillars, which are connected by an arch, the key-stone of the latter is represented by a crescent. This is the domain in which dwells the Supreme Wisdom of A’di Buddha, the Supreme and invisible Deity. Beneath this highest central point comes the circle of the direct emanation of the Unknown - the circle of Brahma with some Hindus, of the first avatar of Buddha, according to others. This answers to Adam Kadmon and the ten Sephiroth. Nine of the emanations are encircled by the tenth, and occasionally represented by pagodas, each of which bears a name which expresses one of the chief attributes of the manifested Deity. Then below come the seven stages, or heavenly spheres, each sphere being encircled by a sea. These are the celestial mansions of the devatas, or gods, each losing somewhat in holiness and purity as it approaches the earth. Then comes Meru itself, formed of numberless circles within three large ones, typifying the trinity of man; and for one acquainted with the numerical value of the letters in biblical names, like that of the “Great Beast,” or that of Mithra μειθρας αβραξας, and others, it is an easy matter to establish the identity of the Meru-gods with the emanations or Sephiroth of the kabalists. Also the genii of the Nazarenes, with their special missions, are all found on this most ancient mythos, a most perfect representation of the symbolism of the “secret doctrine,” as taught in archaic ages.

King gives a few hints - though doubtless too insufficient to teach anything important, for they are based upon the calculations of Bishop Newton - as to this mode of finding out mysteries in the value of letters. However, we find this great archæologist, who has devoted so much time and labor to the study of Gnostic gems, corroborating our assertion. He shows that the entire theory is Hindu, and points out that the durga, or female counterpart of each Asiatic god, is what the kabalists term active Virtue in the celestial hierarchy, a term which the Christian Fathers adopted and repeated, without fully appreciating, and the meaning of which the later theology has utterly disfigured. But to return to Meru.

The whole is surrounded by the Maha Samut, or the great sea - the astral light and ether of the kabalists and scientists; and within the central circles appears “the likeness of a man.” He is the Achadoth of the Nazarenes, the twofold unity, or the androgyne man; the heavenly incarnation, and a perfect representation of Seir-Anpin (short-face), the son of Arich Anpin (long-face). This likeness is now represented in many lamaseries by Gautama-Buddha, the last of the incarnated avatars. Still lower, under the Meru, is the dwelling of the great Naga, who is called Rajah Naga, the king-serpent - the serpent of Genesis, the Gnostic Ophis - and the goddess of the earth, Bhumây Nari, or Yâma, who waits upon the great dragon, for she is Eve, “the mother of all that live.” Still lower is the eighth sphere, the infernal regions. The uppermost regions of Brahma are surrounded by the sun, moon, and planets, the seven stellars of the Nazarenes, and just as they are described in the Codex.

“The seven impostor-Dæmons who deceive the sons of Adam. The name of one is Sol; of another Spiritus Venereus, Astro; of the third Nebu, Mercurius a false Messiah; ... the name of a fourth is Sin Luna; the fifth is Kiun, Saturnus; the sixth, Bel-Zeus; the seventh, Nerig-Mars.” Then there are “Seven Lives procreated,” seven good Stellars, “which are from Cabar Zio, and are those bright ones who shine in their own form and splendor that pours from on high.... At the gate of the HOUSE OF LIFE the throne is fitly placed for the Lord of Splendor, and there are THREE habitations.” The habitations of the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity, are placed beneath the key-stone - the golden crescent, in the representation of Meru. “And there was under his feet (of the God of Israel) as it were a paved work of a sapphire-stone” (Exodus xxiv. 10). Under the crescent is the heaven of Brahma, all paved with sapphires. The paradise of Indra is resplendent with a thousand suns; that of Siva (Saturn), is in the northeast; his throne is formed of lapis-lazuli and the floor of heaven is of fervid gold. “When he sits on the throne he blazes with fire up to the loins.” At Hurdwar, during the fair, in which he is more than ever Mahadeva, the highest god, the attributes and emblems sacred to the Jewish “Lord God,” may be recognized one by one in those of Siva.

The Binlang stone, sacred to this Hindu deity, is an unhewn stone like the Beth-el, consecrated by the Patriarch Jacob, and set up by him “for a pillar,” and like the latter Binlang is anointed. We need hardly remind the student that the linga, the emblem sacred to Siva and whose temples are modelled after this form, is identical in shape, meaning, and purpose with the “pillars” set up by the several patriarchs to mark their adoration of the Lord God. In fact, one of these patriarchal lithoï might even now be carried in the Sivaitic processions of Calcutta, without its Hebrew derivation being suspected. The four arms of Siva are often represented with appendages like wings; he has three eyes and a fourth in the crescent, obtained by him at the churning of the ocean, as Pâncha Mukhti Siva has four heads.

In this god we recognize the description given by Ezekiel, in the first chapter of his book, of his vision, in which he beholds the “likeness of a man” in the four living creatures, who had “four faces, four wings,” who had one pair of “straight feet ... which sparkled like the color of burnished brass ... and their rings were full of eyes round about them four.” It is the throne and heaven of Siva that the prophet describes in saying “... and there was the likeness of a throne as the appearance of a sapphire stone ... and I saw as the color of amber (gold) as the appearance of fire around about ... from his loins even upward, and from the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the appearance of fire” (Ezekiel i. 27). “And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace” (Revelation i. 15). “As for their faces ... one had the face of a cherub, and the face of a lion ... they also had the face of an ox and the face of an eagle” (Ezekiel i. 10, x. 14). This fourfold appearance which we find in the two cherubims of gold on the two ends of the ark; these symbolic four faces being adopted, moreover, later, one by each evangelist, as may be easily ascertained from the pictures of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, prefixed to their respective gospels in the Roman Vulgate and Greek Bibles.

“Taaut, the great god of the Phœnicians,” says Sanchoniathon, “to express the character of Saturn or Kronos, made his image having four eyes ... two before, two behind, open and closed, and four wings, two expanded, two folded. The eyes denote that the god sees in sleep, and sleeps in waking; the position of the wings that he flies in rest, and rests in flying.”

The identity of Saturn with Siva is corroborated still more when we consider the emblem of the latter, the damara, which is an hour-glass, to show the progress of time, represented by this god in his capacity of a destroyer. The bull Nardi, the vehan of Siva and the most sacred emblem of this god, is reproduced in the Egyptian Apis; and in the bull created by Ormazd and killed by Ahriman. The religion of Zoroaster, all based upon the “secret doctrine,” is found held by the people of Eritene; it was the religion of the Persians when they conquered the Assyrians. From thence it is easy to trace the introduction of this emblem of LIFE represented by the Bull, in every religious system. The college of the Magians had accepted it with the change of dynasty; Daniel is described as a Rabbi, the chief of the Babylonian astrologers and Magi; therefore we see the Assyrian little bulls and the attributes of Siva reappearing under a hardly modified form in the cherubs of the Talmudistic Jews, as we have traced the bull Apis in the sphinxes or cherubs of the Mosaic Ark; and as we find it several thousand years later in the company of one of the Christian evangelists, Luke.

Whoever has lived in India long enough to acquaint himself even superficially with the native deities, must detect the similarity between Jehovah and other gods besides Siva. As Saturn, the latter was always held in great respect by the Talmudists. He was held in reverence by the Alexandrian kabalists as the direct inspirer of the law and the prophets; one of the names of Saturn was Israel, and we will show, in time, his identity in a certain way with Abram, which Movers and others hinted at long since. Thus it cannot be wondered at if Valentinus, Basilides, and the Ophite Gnostics placed the dwelling of their Ilda-Baoth, also a destroyer as well as a creator, in the planet Saturn; for it was he who gave the law in the wilderness and spoke through the prophets. If more proof should be required we will show it in the testimony of the canonical Bible itself. In Amos the “Lord” pours vials of wrath upon the people of Israel. He rejects their burnt-offerings and will not listen to their prayers, but inquires of Amos, “have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?” “But ye have borne the tabernacles of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god” (v. 25, 26). Who are Moloch and Chiun but Baal - Saturn - Siva, and Chiun, Kivan, the same Saturn whose star the Israelites had made to themselves? There seems no escape in this case; all these deities are identical.

The same in the case of the numerous Logoï. While the Zoroastrian Sosiosh is framed on that of the tenth Brahmanical Avatar, and the fifth Buddha of the followers of Gautama; and we find the former, after having passed part and parcel into the kabalistic system of king Messiah, reflected in the Apostle Gabriel of the Nazarenes, and Æbel-Zivo, the Legatus, sent on earth by the Lord of Celsitude and Light; all of these - Hindu and Persian, Buddhist and Jewish, the Christos of the Gnostics and the Philonean Logos - are found combined in “the Word made flesh” of the fourth Gospel. Christianity includes all these systems, patched and arranged to meet the occasion. Do we take up the Avesta - we find there the dual system so prevalent in the Christian scheme. The struggle between Ahriman, Darkness, and Ormazd, Light, has been going on in the world continually since the beginning of time. When the worst arrives and Ahriman will seem to have conquered the world and corrupted all mankind, then will appear the Saviour of mankind, Sosiosh. He will come seated upon a white horse and followed by an army of good genii equally mounted on milk-white steeds. And this we find faithfully copied in the Revelation: “I saw heaven opened, and beheld a white horse; and he that sat upon him was

called faithful and true.... And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses” (Revelation xix. 11, 14). Sosiosh himself is but a later Persian permutation of the Hindu Vishnu. The figure of this god may be found unto this day representing him as the Saviour, the “Preserver” (the preserving spirit of God), in the temple of Rama. The picture shows him in his tenth incarnation - the Kalki avatar, which is yet to come - as an armed warrior mounted upon a white horse. Waving over his head the sword destruction, he holds in his other hand a discus, made up of rings encircled in one another, an emblem of the revolving cycles or great ages, for Vishnu will thus appear but at the end of the Kaliyug, answering to the end of the world expected by our Adventists. “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword ... on his head were many crowns” (Revelation xix. 12). Vishnu is often represented with several crowns superposed on his head. “And I saw an angel standing on the Sun” (17). The white horse is the horse of the Sun. Sosiosh, the Persian Saviour, is also born of a virgin, and at the end of days he will come as a Redeemer to regenerate the world, but he will be preceded by two

prophets, who will come to announce him. Hence the Jews who had Moses and Elias, are now waiting for the Messiah. “Then comes the general resurrection, when the good will immediately enter into this happy abode - the regenerated earth; and Ahriman and his angels (the devils), and the wicked, be purified by immersion in a lake of molten metal.... Henceforward, all will enjoy unchangeable happiness, and, headed by Sosiosh, ever sing the praises of the Eternal One.” The above is a perfect repetition of Vishnu in his tenth avatar, for he will then throw the wicked into the infernal abodes in which, after purifying themselves, they will be pardoned - even those devils which rebelled against Brahma, and were hurled into the bottomless pit by Siva, as also the “blessed ones” will go to dwell with the gods, over the Mount Meru.

Having thus traced the similarity of views respecting the Logos, Metatron, and Mediator, as found in the Kabala and the Codex of the Christian Nazarenes and Gnostics, the reader is prepared to appreciate the audacity of the Patristic scheme to reduce a purely metaphysical figure into concrete form, and make it appear as if the finger of prophecy had from time immemorial been pointing down the vista of ages to Jesus as the coming Messiah. A theomythos intended to symbolize the coming day, near the close of the great cycle, when the “glad tidings” from heaven should proclaim the universal brotherhood and common faith of humanity, the day of regeneration - was violently distorted into an accomplished fact.

“Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God,” says Jesus. Is this the language of a God? of the second person in the Trinity, who is identical with the First? And if this Messiah, or Holy Ghost of the Gnostic and Pagan Trinities, had come in his person, what did he mean by distinguishing between himself the “Son of man,” and the Holy Ghost? “And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven,” he says. And how account for the marvellous identity of this very language, with the precepts enunciated, centuries before, by the Kabalists and the “Pagan” initiates? The following are a few instances out of many. “No one of the gods, no man or Lord, can be good, but only God alone,” says Hermes. “To be a good man is impossible, God alone possesses this privilege,” repeats Plato, with a slight variation.

Six centuries before Christ, the Chinese philosopher Confucius said that his doctrine was simple and easy to comprehend (Lûn-yù, chap. 5, § 15). To which one of his disciples added: “The doctrine of our Master consists in having an invariable correctness of heart, and in doing toward others as we would that they should do to us.” “Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles,” exclaims Peter, long after the scene of Calvary. “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John,” says the fourth Gospel, thus placing the Baptist on an equality with Jesus. John the Baptist, in one of the most solemn acts of his life, that of baptizing Christ, thinks not that he is going to baptize a God, but uses the word man. “This is he of whom I said, after me cometh a man.” Speaking of himself, Jesus says, “You seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God.” Even the blind man of Jerusalem, healed by the great thaumaturgist, full of gratitude and admiration for his benefactor, in narrating the miracle does not call Jesus God, but simply says, “... a man that is called Jesus, made clay.”

We do not close the list for lack of other instances and proofs, but simply because what we now say has been repeated and demonstrated by others, many times before us. But there is no more incurable evil than blind and unreasoning fanaticism. Few are the men who, like Dr. Priestley, have the courage to write, “We find nothing like divinity ascribed to Christ before Justin Martyr (A.D. 141), who, from being a philosopher, became a Christian.” Mahomet appeared nearly six hundred years after the presumed deicide. The Græco-Roman world was still convulsed with religious dissensions, withstanding all the past imperial edicts and forcible Christianization. While the Council of Trent was disputing about the Vulgate, the unity of God quietly superseded the trinity, and soon the Mahometans outnumbered the Christians. Why? Because their prophet never sought to identify himself with Allah. Otherwise, it is safe to say, he would not have lived to see his religion flourish. Till the present day Mahometanism has made and is now making more proselytes than Christianity. Buddha Siddhârtha came as a simple mortal, centuries before Christ. The religious ethics of this faith are now found to far exceed in moral beauty anything ever dreamed of by the Tertullians and Augustines.

The true spirit of Christianity can alone be fully found in Buddhism; partially, it shows itself in other “heathen” religions. Buddha never made of himself a god, nor was he deified by his followers. The Buddhists are now known to far outnumber Christians; they are enumerated at nearly 500,000,000. While cases of conversion among Buddhists, Brahmanists, Mahometans, and Jews become so rare as to show how sterile are the attempts of our missionaries, atheism and materialism spread their gangrenous ulcers and gnaw every day deeper at the very heart of Christianity. There are no atheists among heathen populations, and those few among the Buddhists and Brahmans who have become infected with materialism may always be found to belong to large cities densely thronged with Europeans, and only among educated classes. Truly says Bishop Kidder: “Were a wise man to choose his religion from those who profess it, perhaps Christianity would be the last religion he would choose!”

In an able little pamphlet from the pen of the popular lecturer, J. M. Peebles, M.D., the author quotes, from the London Athenæum, an article in which are described the welfare and civilization of the inhabitants of Yarkand and Kashgar, “who seem virtuous and happy.” “Gracious Heavens!” fervently exclaims the honest author, who himself was once a Universalist clergyman, “Grant to keep Christian missionaries away from ‘happy’ and heathen Tartary!”

From the earliest days of Christianity, when Paul upbraided the Church of Corinth for a crime “as is not so much as named among the Gentiles - that one should have his father’s wife;” and for their making a pretext of the “Lord’s Supper” for debauch and drunkenness (1 Corinthians, v. 1), the profession of the name of Christ has ever been more a pretext than the evidence of holy feeling. However, a correct form of this verse is: “Everywhere the lewd practice among you is heard about, such a lewd practice as is nowhere among the heathen nations - even the having or marrying of the father’s wife.” The Persian influence would seem to be indicated in this language. The practice existed “nowhere among the nations,” except in Persia, where it was esteemed especially meritorious. Hence, too, the Jewish stories of Abraham marrying his sister, Nahor, his niece, Amram his father’s sister, and Judah his son’s widow, whose children appear to have been legitimate. The Aryan tribes esteemed endogamic marriages, while the Tartars and all barbarous nations required all alliances to be exagamous.

There was but one apostle of Jesus worthy of that name, and that was Paul. However disfigured were his Epistles by dogmatic hands before being admitted into the Canon, his conception of the great and divine figure of the philosopher who died for his idea can still be traced in his addresses to the various Gentile nations. Only, he who would understand him better yet must study the Philonean Logos reflecting now and then the Hindu Sabda (logos) of the Mimansa school. As to the other apostles, those whose names are prefixed to the Gospels - we cannot well believe in their veracity when we find them attributing to their Master miracles surrounded by circumstances, recorded, if not in the oldest books of India, at least in such as antedated Christianity, and in the very phraseology of the traditions. Who, in his days of simple and blind credulity, but marvelled at the touching narrative given in the Gospels according to Mark and Luke of the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus? Who has ever doubted its originality? And yet the story is copied entirely from the Hari-Purana, and is recorded among the miracles attributed to Christna. We translate it from the French version:

“The King Angashuna caused the betrothal of his daughter, the beautiful Kalavatti, with the young son of Vamadeva, the powerful King of Antarvédi, named Govinda, to be celebrated with great pomp. “But as Kalavatti was amusing herself in the groves with her companions, she was stung by a serpent and died. Angashuna tore his clothes, covered himself with ashes, and cursed the day when he was born. “Suddenly, a great rumor spread through the palace, and the following cries were heard, a thousand times repeated: ‘Pacya pitaram; pacya gurum!’ ‘The Father, the Master!’ Then Christna approached, smiling, leaning on the arm of Ardjuna.... ‘Master!’ cried Angashuna, casting himself at his feet, and sprinkling them with his tears, ‘See my poor daughter!’ and he showed him the body of Kalavatti, stretched upon a mat.... “‘Why do you weep?’ replied Christna, in a gentle voice. ‘Do you not see that she is sleeping? Listen to the sound of her breathing, like the sigh of the night wind which rustles the leaves of the trees. See, her cheeks resuming their color, her eyes, whose lids tremble as if they were about to open; her lips quiver as if about to speak; she is sleeping, I tell you; and hold! see, she moves, Kalavatti! Rise and walk!’

“Hardly had Christna spoken, when the breathing, warmth, movement, and life returned little by little, into the corpse, and the young girl, obeying the injunction of the demi-god, rose from her couch and rejoined her companions. But the crowd marvelled and cried out: ‘This is a god, since death is no more for him than sleep?’” All such parables are enforced upon Christians, with the addition of dogmas which, in their extraordinary character, leave far behind them the wildest conceptions of heathenism. The Christians, in order to believe in a Deity, have found it necessary to kill their God, that they themselves should live! And now, the Supreme, unknown one, the Father of grace and mercy, and his celestial hierarchy are managed by the Church as though they were so many theatrical stars and supernumeraries under salary! Six centuries before the Christian era, Xenophones had disposed of such anthropomorphism by an immortal satire, recorded and preserved by Clement of Alexandria:

“There is one God Supreme ... Whose form is not like unto man’s, and as unlike his nature; But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members; So if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man’s fashion, And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, Each kind the Divine with its own form and nature endowing.” And hear Vyasa - the poet-pantheist of India, who, for all the scientists can prove, may have lived, as Jacolliot has it, some fifteen thousand years ago - discoursing on Maya, the illusion of the senses: “All religious dogmas only serve to obscure the intelligence of man.... Worship of divinities, under the allegories of which is hidden respect for natural laws, drives away truth to the profit of the basest superstitions” (Vyasa Maya).

It was given to Christianity to paint us God Almighty after the model of the kabalistic abstraction of the “Ancient of Days.” From old frescos on cathedral ceilings; Catholic missals, and other icons and images, we now find him depicted by the poetic brush of Gustave Doré. The awful, unknown majesty of Him, whom no “heathen” dared to reproduce in concrete form, is figuring in our own century in Doré’s Illustrated Bible. Treading upon clouds that float in mid-air, darkness and chaos behind him and the world beneath his feet, a majestic old man stands, his left hand gathering his flowing robes about him, and his right raised in the gesture of command. He has spoken the Word, and from his towering person streams an effulgence of Light - the Shekinah. As a poetic conception, the composition does honor to the artist, but does it honor God? Better, the chaos behind Him, than the figure itself; for there, at least, we have a solemn mystery. For our part, we prefer the silence of the ancient heathens. With such a gross, anthropomorphic, and, as we conceive, blasphemous representation of the First Cause, who can feel surprised at any iconographic extravagance in the representation of the Christian Christ, the apostles, and the putative Saints? With the Catholics St. Peter becomes quite naturally the janitor of Heaven, and sits at the door of the celestial kingdom - a ticket-taker to the Trinity!

In a religious disturbance which recently occurred in one of the Spanish-American provinces, there were found upon the bodies of some of the killed, passports signed by the Bishop of the Diocese and addressed to St. Peter; bidding him “admit the bearer as a true son of the Church.” It was subsequently ascertained that these unique documents were issued by the Catholic prelate just before his deluded parishioners went into the fight at the instigation of their priests.

In their immoderate desire to find evidence for the authenticity of the New Testament, the best men, the most erudite scholars even among Protestant divines, but too often fall into deplorable traps. We cannot believe that such a learned commentator as Canon Westcott could have left himself in ignorance as to Talmudistic and purely kabalistic writings. How then is it that we find him quoting, with such serene assurance as presenting “striking analogies to the Gospel of St. John,” passages from the work of The Pastor of Hermas, which are complete sentences from the kabalistic literature? “The view which Hermas gives of Christ’s nature and work is no less harmonious with apostolic doctrine, and it offers striking analogies to the Gospel of St. John.... He (Jesus) is a rock higher than the mountains, able to hold the whole world, ancient, and yet having a new gate!... He is older than creation, so that he took counsel with the Father about the creation which he made.... No one shall enter in unto him otherwise than by his Son.”

Now while - as the author of Supernatural Religion well proves - there is nothing in this which looks like a corroboration of the doctrine taught in the fourth gospel, he omits to state that nearly everything expressed by the pseudo-Hermas in relation to his parabolic conversation with the “Lord” is a plain quotation, with repeated variations, from the Sohar and other kabalistic books. We may as well compare, so as to leave the reader in no difficulty to judge for himself.

“God,” says Hermas, “planted the vineyard, that is, He created the people and gave them to His Son; and the Son ... himself cleansed their sins, etc.;” i.e., the Son washed them in his blood, in commemoration of which Christians drink wine at the communion. In the Kabala it is shown that the Aged of the Aged, or “Long-Face,” plants a vineyard, the latter typifying mankind; and a vine, meaning Life. The Spirit of “King Messiah” is, therefore, shown as washing his garments in the wine from above, from the creation of the world. Adam, or A-Dam is “blood.” The life of the flesh is in the blood (nephesh - soul), Leviticus xvii. And Adam-Kadmon is the Only-Begotten. Noah also plants a vineyard - the allegorical hot-bed of future humanity. As a consequence of the adoption of the same allegory, we find it reproduced in the Nazarene Codex. Seven vines are procreated, which spring from Iukabar Ziva, and Ferho (or Parcha) Raba waters them. When the blessed will ascend among the creatures of Light, they shall see Iavar-Zivo, Lord of LIFE, and the First VINE! These kabalistic metaphora are thus naturally repeated in the Gospel according to John (xv. 1): “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.” In Genesis (xlix.), the dying Jacob is made to say, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah (the lion’s whelp), nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh (Siloh) comes.... Binding his colt unto the vine, and his ass’s colt unto the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes.” Shiloh is “King Messiah,” as well as the Shiloh in Ephraim, which was to be made the capital and the place of the sanctuary.

In The Targum of Onkelos, the Babylonian, the words of Jacob read: “Until the King Messiah shall come.” The prophecy has failed in the Christian as well as in the kabalistico-Jewish sense. The sceptre has departed from Judah, whether the Messiah has already or will come, unless we believe, with the kabalists, that Moses was the first Messiah, who transferred his soul to Joshua - Jesus.

Says Hermas: “And, in the middle of the plain, he showed me a great white rock, which had risen out of the plain, and the rock was higher than the mountains, rectangular, so as to be able to hold the whole world; but that rock was old, having a gate hewn out of it, and the hewing out of the gate seemed to me to be recent.” In the Sohar, we find: “To 40,000 superior worlds the white of the skull of His Head (of the most Sacred Ancient in absconditus) is extended.... When Seir (the first reflection and image of his Father, the Ancient of the Ancient) will, through the mystery of the seventy names of Metatron, descend into Iezirah (the third world), he will open a new gate.... The Spiritus Decisorius will cut and divide the garment (Shekinah) into two parts.... At the coming of King Messiah, from the sacred cubical stone of the Temple a white light will be arising during forty days. This will expand, until it encloses the whole world.... At that time King Messiah will allow himself to be revealed, and will be seen coming out of the gate of the garden of Odan (Eden). ‘He will be revealed in the land Galil.’... When ‘he has made satisfaction for the sins of Israel, he will lead them on through a new gate to the seat of judgment.’ At the Gate of the House of Life, the throne is prepared for the Lord of Splendor.”

Further on, the commentator introduces the following quotation: “This rock and this gate are the Son of God. ‘How, Lord,’ I said, ‘is the rock old and the gate new?’ ‘Listen,’ He said, ‘and understand, thou ignorant man. The Son of God is older than all of his creation, so that he was a Councillor with the Father in His works of creation; and for this is he old.’” Now, these two assertions are not only purely kabalistic, without even so much as a change of expression, but Brahmanical and Pagan likewise. “Vidi virum excellentem cœli terræque conditore natu majorem.... I have seen the most excellent (superior) MAN, who is older by birth than the maker of heaven and earth,” says the kabalistic Codex. The Eleusinian Dionysus, whose particular name was Iacchos (Iaccho, Iahoh) - the God from whom the liberation of souls was expected - was considered older than the Demiurge. At the mysteries of the Anthesteria at the lakes (the Limnæ), after the usual baptism by purification of water, the Mystæ were made to pass through to another door (gate), and one particularly for that purpose, which was called “the gate of Dionysus,” and that of “the purified.”

In the Sohar, the kabalists are told that the work-master, the Demiurge, said to the Lord: “Let us make man after our image.” In the original texts of the first chapter of Genesis, it stands: “And the Elohim (translated as the Supreme God), who are the highest gods or powers, said: Let us make man in our (?) image, after our likeness.” In the Vedas, Brahma holds counsel with Parabrahma, as to the best mode to proceed to create the world.

Canon Westcott, quoting Hermas, shows him asking: “And why is the gate new, Lord? I said. ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘he was manifested at the last of the days of the dispensation; for this cause the gate was made new, in order that they who shall be saved might enter by it into the Kingdom of God.’” There are two peculiarities worthy of note in this passage. To begin with, it attributes to “the Lord” a false statement of the same character as that so emphasized by the Apostle John; and which brought, at a later period, the whole of the orthodox Christians, who accepted the apostolic allegories as literal, to such inconvenient straits. Jesus, as Messiah, was not manifested at the last of the days; for the latter are yet to come, notwithstanding a number of divinely-inspired prophecies, followed by disappointed hopes, as a result, to testify to his immediate coming. The belief that the “last times” had come, was natural, when once the coming of King Messiah had been acknowledged. The second peculiarity is found in the fact that the prophecy could have been accepted at all, when even its approximate determination is a direct contradiction of Mark, who makes Jesus distinctly state that neither the angels, nor the Son himself, know of that day or that hour. We might add that, as the belief undeniably originated with the Apocalypse, it ought to be a self-evident proof that it belonged to the calculations peculiar to the kabalists and the Pagan sanctuaries.

It was the secret computation of a cycle, which, according to their reckoning, was ending toward the latter part of the first century. It may also be held as a corroborative proof, that the Gospel according to Mark, as well as that ascribed to John, and the Apocalypse, were written by men, of whom neither was sufficiently acquainted with the other. The Logos was first definitely called petra (rock) by Philo; the word, moreover, as we have shown elsewhere, means, in Chaldaic and Phœnician, “interpreter.” Justin Martyr calls him, throughout his works, “angel,” and makes a clear distinction between the Logos and God the Creator. “The Word of God is His Son ... and he is also called Angel and Apostle, for he declares whatever we ought to know (interprets), and is sent to declare whatever is disclosed.”

“Adan Inferior is distributed into its own paths, into thirty-two sides of paths, yet it is not known to any one but Seir. But no one knows the SUPERIOR ADAN nor His paths, except that Long Face” - the Supreme God. Seir is the Nazarene “genius,” who is called Æbel Zivo; and Gabriel Legatus - also “Apostle Gabriel.” The Nazarenes held with the kabalists that even the Messiah who was to come did not know the “Superior Adan,” the concealed Deity; no one except the Supreme God; thus showing that above the Supreme Intelligible Deity, there is one still more secret and unrevealed. Seir-Anpin is the third God, while “Logos,” according to Philo Judæus, is the second one. This is distinctly shown in the Codex. The false Messiah shall say: “I am Deus, son of Deus; my Father sent me here.... I am the first Legate, I am Æbel Zivo, I am come from on high! But distrust him; for he will not be Æbel Zivo. Æbel Zivo will not permit himself to be seen in this age.” Hence the belief of some Gnostics that it was not Æbel Zivo (Archangel Gabriel) who “overshadowed” Mary, but Ilda-Baoth, who formed the material body of Jesus; Christos uniting himself with him only at the moment of baptism in the Jordan.

Can we doubt Nork’s assertion that “the Bereshith Rabba, the oldest part of the Midrash Rabboth, was known to the Church Fathers in a Greek translation?”

But if, on the one hand, they were sufficiently acquainted with the different religious systems of their neighbors to have enabled them to build a new religion alleged to be distinct from all others, their ignorance of the Old Testament itself, let alone the more complicated questions of Grecian metaphysics, is now found to have been deplorable. “So, for instance, in Matthew xxvii. 9 f., the passage from Zechariah xi. 12, 13, is attributed to Jeremiah,” says the author of Supernatural Religion. “In Mark i. 2, a quotation from Malachi iii. 1, is ascribed to Isaiah. In 1 Corinthians, ii. 9, a passage is quoted as Holy Scripture, which is not found in the Old Testament at all, but which is taken, as Origen and Jerome state, from an apocryphal work, The Revelation of Elias (Origen: Tract. xxxv.), and the passage is similarly quoted by the so-called Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians (xxxiv.)”. How reliable are the pious Fathers in their explanations of divers heresies may be illustrated in the case of Epiphanius, who mistook the Pythagorean sacred Tetrad, called in the Valentinian Gnosis, Kol-Arbas, for a heretic leader. What with the involuntary blunders, and deliberate falsifications of the teachings of those who differed in views with them; the canonization of the mythological Aura Placida (gentle breeze), into a pair of Christian martyrs - St. Aura and St. Placida; the deification of a spear and a cloak, under the names of SS. Longimus and Amphibolus; and the Patristic quotations from prophets, of what was never in those prophets at all; one may well ask in blank amazement whether the so-called religion of Christ has ever been other than an incoherent dream, since the death of the Great Master.

So malicious do we find the holy Fathers in their unrelenting persecution of pretended “hæresies,” that we see them telling, without hesitation the most preposterous untruths, and inventing entire narratives, the better to impress their own otherwise unsupported arguments upon ignorance. If the mistake in relation to the tetrad had at first originated as a simple consequence of an unpremeditated blunder of Hippolytus, the explanations of Epiphanius and others who fell into the same absurd error have a less innocent look. When Hippolytus gravely denounces the great heresy of the Tetrad, Kol-Arbas, and states that the imaginary Gnostic leader is, “Kalorbasus, who endeavors to explain religion by measures and numbers,” we may simply smile. But when Epiphanius, with abundant indignation, elaborates upon the theme, “which is Heresy XV.,” and pretending to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject, adds: “A certain Heracleon follows after Colorbasus, which is Heresy XVI.,” then he lays himself open to the charge of deliberate falsification.

If this zealous Christian can boast so unblushingly of having caused “by his information seventy women, even of rank, to be sent into exile, through the seductions of some in whose number he had himself been drawn into joining their sect,” he has left us a fair standard by which to judge him. C. W. King remarks, very aptly, on this point, that “it may reasonably be suspected that this worthy renegade had in this case saved himself from the fate of his fellow-religionists by turning evidence against them, on the opening of the persecution.”

And thus, one by one, perished the Gnostics, the only heirs to whose share had fallen a few stray crumbs of the unadulterated truth of primitive Christianity. All was confusion and turmoil during these first centuries, till the moment when all these contradictory dogmas were finally forced upon the Christian world, and examination was forbidden. For long ages it was made a sacrilege, punishable with severe penalties, often death, to seek to comprehend that which the Church had so conveniently elevated to the rank of divine mystery. But since biblical critics have taken upon themselves to “set the house in order,” the cases have become reversed. Pagan creditors now come from every part of the globe to claim their own, and Christian theology begins to be suspected of complete bankruptcy. Such is the sad result of the fanaticism of the “orthodox” sects, who, to borrow an expression of the author of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” never were, like the Gnostics, “the most polite, the most learned, and most wealthy of the Christian name.” And, if not all of them “smelt garlic,” as Renan will have it, on the other hand, none of these Christian saints have ever shrunk from spilling their neighbor’s blood, if the views of the latter did not agree with their own.

And so all our philosophers were swept away by the ignorant and superstitious masses. The Philaletheians, the lovers of truth, and their eclectic school, perished; and there, where the young Hypatia had taught the highest philosophical doctrines; and where Ammonius Saccas had explained that “the whole which Christ had in view was to reinstate and restore to its primitive integrity the wisdom of the ancients - to reduce within bounds the universally prevailing dominion of superstition ... and to exterminate the various errors that had found their way into the different popular religions” - there, we say, freely raved the οι πολλοι of Christianity. No more precepts from the mouth of the “God-taught philosopher,” but others expounded by the incarnation of a most cruel, fiendish superstition. “If thy father,” wrote St. Jerome, “lies down across thy threshold, if thy mother uncovers to thine eyes the bosom which suckled thee, trample on thy father’s lifeless body, trample on thy mother’s bosom, and, with eyes unmoistened and dry, fly to the Lord who calleth thee!!”

This sentence is equalled, if not outrivalled, by this other, pronounced in a like spirit. It emanates from another father of the early Church, the eloquent Tertullian, who hopes to see all the “philosophers” in the gehenna fire of Hell. “What shall be the magnitude of that scene!... How shall I laugh! How shall I rejoice! How shall I triumph when I see so many illustrious kings who were said to have mounted into heaven, groaning with Jupiter, their god, in the lowest darkness of hell! Then shall the soldiers who have persecuted the name of Christ burn in more cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints!” These murderous expressions illustrate the spirit of Christianity till this day. But do they illustrate the teachings of Christ? By no means. As Eliphas Levi says, “The God in the name of whom we would trample on our mother’s bosom we must see in the hereafter, a hell gaping widely at his feet, and an exterminating sword in his hand.... Moloch burned children but a few seconds; it was reserved to the disciples of a god who is alleged to have died to redeem humanity on the cross, to create a new Moloch whose burning stake is eternal!”

That this spirit of true Christian love has safely crossed nineteen centuries and rages now in America, is fully instanced in the case of the rabid Moody, the revivalist, who exclaims: “I have a son, and no one but God knows how I love him; but I would see those beautiful eyes dug out of his head to-night, rather than see him grow up to manhood and go down to the grave without Christ and without hope!!” To this an American paper, of Chicago, very justly responds: “This is the spirit of the inquisition, which we are told is dead. If Moody in his zeal would ‘dig out’ the eyes of his darling son, to what lengths may he not go with the sons of others, whom he may love less? It is the spirit of Loyola, gibbering in the nineteenth century, and prevented from lighting the fagot flame and heating red-hot the instruments of torture only by the arm of law.”

“The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To-morrow both are.” - Sartor Resartus: Natural Supernaturalism. “May we not then be permitted to examine the authenticity of the Bible? which since the second century has been put forth as the criterion of scientific truth? To maintain itself in a position so exalted, it must challenge human criticism.” - Conflict between Religion and Science. “One kiss of Nara upon the lips of Nari and all Nature wakes.” - VINA SNATI (A Hindu Poet).

We must not forget that the Christian Church owes its present canonical Gospels, and hence its whole religious dogmatism, to the Sortes Sanctorum. Unable to agree as to which were the most divinely-inspired of the numerous gospels extant in its time, the mysterious Council of Nicea concluded to leave the decision of the puzzling question to miraculous intervention. This Nicean Council may well be called mysterious. There was a mystery, first, in the mystical number of its 318 bishops, on which Barnabas (viii. 11, 12, 13) lays such a stress; added to this, there is no agreement among ancient writers as to the time and place of its assembly, nor even as to the bishop who presided. Notwithstanding the grandiloquent eulogium of Constantine, Sabinus, the Bishop of Heraclea, affirms that “except Constantine, the emperor, and Eusebius Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of illiterate, simple creatures, that understood nothing;” which is equivalent to saying that they were a set of fools. Such was apparently the opinion entertained of them by Pappus, who tells us of the bit of magic resorted to to decide which were the true gospels. In his Synodicon to that Council Pappus says, having “promiscuously put all the books that were referred to the Council for determination under a communion-table in a church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired writings might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained underneath, and it happened accordingly.” But we are not told who kept the keys of the council chamber over night!

On the authority of ecclesiastical eye-witnesses, therefore, we are at liberty to say that the Christian world owes its “Word of God” to a method of divination, for resorting to which the Church subsequently condemned unfortunate victims as conjurers, enchanters, magicians, witches, and vaticinators, and burnt them by thousands! In treating of this truly divine phenomenon of the self-sorting manuscripts, the Fathers of the Church say that God himself presides over the Sortes. As we have shown elsewhere, Augustine confesses that he himself used this sort of divination. But opinions, like revealed religions, are liable to change. That which for nearly fifteen hundred years was imposed on Christendom as a book, of which every word was written under the direct supervision of the Holy Ghost; of which not a syllable, nor a comma could be changed without sacrilege, is now being retranslated, revised, corrected, and clipped of whole verses, in some cases of entire chapters. And yet, as soon as the new edition is out, its doctors would have us accept it as a new “Revelation” of the nineteenth century, with the alternative of being held as an infidel. Thus, we see that, no more within than without its precincts, is the infallible Church to be trusted more than would be reasonably convenient. The forefathers of our modern divines found authority for the Sortes in the verse where it is said: “The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord;” and now, their direct heirs hold that “the whole disposing thereof is of the Devil.” Perhaps, they are unconsciously beginning to endorse the doctrine of the Syrian Bardesanes, that the actions of God, as well as of man, are subject to necessity?

It was no doubt, also, according to strict “necessity” that the Neo-platonists were so summarily dealt with by the Christian mob. In those days, the doctrines of the Hindu naturalists and antediluvian Pyrrhonists were forgotten, if they ever had been known at all, to any but a few philosophers; and Mr. Darwin, with his modern discoveries, had not even been mentioned in the prophecies. In this case the law of the survival of the fittest was reversed; the Neo-platonists were doomed to destruction from the day when they openly sided with Aristotle.

At the beginning of the fourth century crowds began gathering at the door of the academy where the learned and unfortunate Hypatia expounded the doctrines of the divine Plato and Plotinus, and thereby impeded the progress of Christian proselytism. She too successfully dispelled the mist hanging over the religious “mysteries” invented by the Fathers, not to be considered dangerous. This alone would have been sufficient to imperil both herself and her followers. It was precisely the teachings of this Pagan philosopher, which had been so freely borrowed by the Christians to give a finishing touch to their otherwise incomprehensible scheme, that had seduced so many into joining the new religion; and now the Platonic light began shining so inconveniently bright upon the pious patchwork, as to allow every one to see whence the “revealed” doctrines were derived. But there was a still greater peril. Hypatia had studied under Plutarch, the head of the Athenian school, and had learned all the secrets of theurgy. While she lived to instruct the multitude, no divine miracles could be produced before one who could divulge the natural causes by which they took place. Her doom was sealed by Cyril, whose eloquence she eclipsed, and whose authority, built on degrading superstitions, had to yield before hers, which was erected on the rock of immutable natural

law. It is more than curious that Cave, the author of the Lives of the Fathers, should find it incredible that Cyril sanctioned her murder on account of his “general character.” A saint who will sell the gold and silver vessels of his church, and then, after spending the money, lie at his trial, as he did, may well be suspected of anything. Besides, in this case, the Church had to fight for her life, to say nothing of her future supremacy. Alone, the hated and erudite Pagan scholars, and the no less learned Gnostics, held in their doctrines the hitherto concealed wires of all these theological marionettes. Once the curtain should be lifted, the connection between the old Pagan and the new Christian religions would be exposed; and then, what would have become of the Mysteries into which it is sin and blasphemy to pry? With such a coincidence of the astronomical allegories of various Pagan myths with the dates adopted by Christianity for the nativity, crucifixion, and resurrection, and such an identity of rites and ceremonies, what would have been the fate of the new religion, had not the Church, under the pretext of serving Christ, got rid of the too-well-informed philosophers? To guess what, if the coup d’état had then failed, might have been the prevailing religion

in our own century would indeed, be a hard task. But, in all probability, the state of things which made of the middle ages a period of intellectual darkness, which degraded the nations of the Occident, and lowered the European of those days almost to the level of a Papuan savage - could not have occurred.

The fears of the Christians were but too well founded, and their pious zeal and prophetic insight was rewarded from the very first. In the demolition of the Serapeum, after the bloody riot between the Christian mob and the Pagan worshippers had ended with the interference of the emperor, a Latin cross, of a perfect Christian shape, was discovered hewn upon the granite slabs of the adytum. This was a lucky discovery, indeed; and the monks did not fail to claim that the cross had been hallowed by the Pagans in a “spirit of prophecy.” At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph, records the fact. But, archæology and symbolism, those tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have found in the hieroglyphics of the legend running around the design, at least a partial interpretation of its meaning.

According to King and other numismatists and archæologists, the cross was placed there as the symbol of eternal life. Such a Tau, or Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries. Symbol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon the breast of the initiate, after his “new birth” was accomplished, and the Mystæ had returned from their baptism in the sea. It was a mystic sign that his spiritual birth had regenerated and united his astral soul with his divine spirit, and that he was ready to ascend in spirit to the blessed abodes of light and glory - the Eleusinia. The Tau was a magic talisman at the same time as a religious emblem. It was adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics and kabalists, who used it largely, as their numerous gems testify, and who had the Tau (or handled cross) from the Egyptians, and the Latin cross from the Buddhist missionaries, who brought it from India, where it can be found until now, two or three centuries B.C. The Assyrians, Egyptians, ancient Americans, Hindus, and Romans had it in various, but very slight modifications of shape. Till very late in the mediæval ages, it was considered a potent spell against epilepsy and demoniacal possession; and the “signet of the living God,” brought down in St. John’s vision by the angel ascending from the east to “seal the servants of our God in their foreheads,” was but the same mystic Tau - the Egyptian cross.

In the painted glass of St. Dionysus (France), this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the forehead of the elect; the legend reads, SIGNVM ΤΑΥ. In King’s Gnostics, the author reminds us that “this mark is commonly born by St. Anthony, an Egyptian recluse.” What the real meaning of the Tau was, is explained to us by the Christian St. John, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Hindu Brahmans. It is but too evident that, with the apostle, at least, it meant the “Ineffable Name,” as he calls this “signet of the living God,” a few chapters further on, the “Father’s name written in their foreheads.”

The Brahmâtma, the chief of the Hindu initiates, had on his head-gear two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death, placed cross-like; and, in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber within the temple, generally containing the staircase which leads to the inner daghôba, and the porticos of some Prachida are ornamented with a cross formed of two fishes, and as found on some of the zodiacs of the Buddhists. We should not wonder at all at learning that the sacred device in the tombs in the Catacombs, at Rome, the “Vesica piscis,” was derived from the said Buddhist zodiacal sign. How general must have been that geometrical figure in the world-symbols, may be inferred from the fact that there is a Masonic tradition that Solomon’s temple was built on three foundations, forming the “triple Tau,” or three crosses.

In its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an emblem, to the realization by the earliest philosophy of an androgynous dualism of every manifestation in nature, which proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity, while the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic law prevailed, Jesus should have been lapidated. The crucifix was an instrument of torture, and utterly common among Romans as it was unknown among Semitic nations. It was called the “Tree of Infamy.” It is but later that it was adopted as a Christian symbol; but, during the first two decades, the apostles looked upon it with horror. It is certainly not the Christian Cross that John had in mind when speaking of the “signet of the living God,” but the mystic Tau - the Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on the most ancient kabalistic talismans, was represented by the four Hebrew letters composing the Holy Word.

It is well known, that the earliest Christian emblems - before it was ever attempted to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus - were the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and the Fish. The origin of the latter emblem, which has so puzzled the archæologists, thus becomes comprehensible. The whole secret lies in the easily-ascertained fact that, while in the Kabala, the King Messiah is called “Interpreter,” or Revealer of the mystery, and shown to be the fifth emanation, in the Talmud - for reasons we will now explain - the Messiah is very often designated as “DAG,” or the Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and relates - as the very name indicates - to the Babylonian Dagon, the man-fish, who was the instructor and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared. Abarbanel explains the name, by stating that the sign of his (Messiah’s) coming “is the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sign Pisces.” Therefore, as the Christians were intent upon identifying their Christos with the Messiah of the Old Testament, they adopted it so readily as to forget that its true origin might be traced still farther back than the Babylonian Dagon. How eagerly and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by the early Christians, with every imaginable kabalistic and Pagan tenet, may be inferred from the language of Clemens, of Alexandria, addressed to his brother co-religionists.

When they were debating upon the choice of the most appropriate symbol to remind them of Jesus, Clemens advised them in the following words: “Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be either a dove, or a ship running before the wind (the Argha), or a fish.” Was the good father, when writing this sentence, laboring under the recollection of Joshua, son of Nun (called Jesus in the Greek and Slavonian versions); or had he forgotten the real interpretation of these Pagan symbols? Joshua, son of Nun, or Nave (Navis), could have with perfect propriety adopted the image of a ship, or even of a fish, for Joshua means Jesus, son of the fish-god; but it was really too hazardous to connect the emblems of Venus, Astarte, and all the Hindu goddesses - the argha, dove, and fish - with the “immaculate” birth of their god! This looks very much as if in the early days of Christianity but little difference was made between Christ, Bacchus, Apollo, and the Hindu Christna, the incarnation of Vishnu, with whose first avatar this symbol of the fish originated.

In the Hari-purana, in the Bagaved-gitta, as well as in several other books, the god Vishnu is shown as having assumed the form of a fish with a human head, in order to reclaim the Vedas lost during the deluge. Having enabled Visvamitra to escape with all his tribe in the ark, Vishnu, pitying weak and ignorant humanity, remained with them for some time. It was this god who taught them to build houses, cultivate the land, and to thank the unknown Deity whom he represented, by building temples and instituting a regular worship; and, as he remained half-fish, half-man, all the time, at every sunset he used to return to the ocean, wherein he passed the night. “It is he,” says the sacred book, “who taught men, after the diluvium, all that was necessary for their happiness. “One day he plunged into the water and returned no more, for the earth had covered itself again with vegetation, fruit, and cattle. “But he had taught the Brahmas the secret of all things” (Hari-purana). So far, we see in this narrative the double of the story given by the Babylonian Berosus about Oannes, the fish-man, who is no other than Vishnu - unless, indeed, we have to believe that it was Chaldea which civilized India!

We say again, we desire to give nothing on our sole authority. Therefore we cite Jacolliot, who, however criticised and contradicted on other points, and however loose he may be in the matter of chronology (though even in this he is nearer right than those scientists who would have all Hindu books written since the Council of Nicea), at least cannot be denied the reputation of a good Sanscrit scholar. And he says, while analyzing the word Oan, or Oannes, that O in Sanscrit is an interjection expressing an invocation, as O, Swayambhuva! O, God! etc; and An is a radical, signifying in Sanscrit a spirit, a being; and, we presume, what the Greeks meant by the word Dæmon, a semi-god. “What an extraordinary antiquity,” he remarks, “this fable of Vishnu, disguised as a fish, gives to the sacred books of the Hindus; especially in presence of the fact that the Vedas and Manu reckon more than twenty-five thousand years of existence, as proved by the most serious as the most authentic documents. Few peoples, says the learned Halhed, have their annals more authentic or serious than the Hindus.”

We may, perhaps, throw additional light upon the puzzling question of the fish-symbol by reminding the reader that according to Genesis the first created of living beings, the first type of animal life, was the fish. “And the Elohim said: ‘Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life’ ... and God created great whales ... and the morning and the evening were the fifth day.” Jonah is swallowed by a big fish, and is cast out again three days later. This the Christians regard as a premonition of the three days’ sepulture of Jesus which preceded his resurrection - though the statement of the three days is as fanciful as much of the rest, and adopted to fit the well-known threat to destroy the temple and rebuild it again in three days. Between his burial and alleged resurrection there intervened but one day - the Jewish Sabbath - as he was buried on Friday evening and rose to life at dawn on Sunday. However, whatever other circumstance may be regarded as a prophecy, the story of Jonah cannot be made to answer the purpose.

“Big Fish” is Cetus, the latinized form of Keto-κητω and keto is Dagon, Poseidon, the female gender of it being Keton Atar-gatis - the Syrian goddess, and Venus, of Askalon. The figure or bust of Der-Keto or Astarte was generally represented on the prow of the ships. Jonah (the Greek Iona, or dove sacred to Venus) fled to Jaffa, where the god Dagon, the man-fish, was worshipped, and dared not go to Níneveh, where the dove was revered. Hence, some commentators believe that when Jonah was thrown overboard and was swallowed by a fish, we must understand that he was picked up by one of these vessels, on the prow of which was the figure of Keto. But the kabalists have another legend, to this effect: They say that Jonah was a run-away priest from the temple of the goddess where the dove was worshipped, and desired to abolish idolatry and institute monotheistic worship. That, caught near Jaffa, he was held prisoner by the devotees of Dagon in one of the prison-cells of the temple, and that it is the strange form of the cell which gave rise to the allegory. In the collection of Mose de Garcia, a Portuguese kabalist, there is a drawing representing the interior of the temple of Dagon. In the middle stands an immense idol, the upper portion of whose body is human, and the lower fish-like. Between the belly and the tail is an aperture which can be closed like the door of a closet.

In it the transgressors against the local deity were shut up until further disposal. The drawing in question was made from an old tablet covered with curious drawings and inscriptions in old Phœnician characters, describing this Venetian oubliette of biblical days. The tablet itself was found in an excavation a few miles from Jaffa. Considering the extraordinary tendency of Oriental nations for puns and allegories, is it not barely possible that the “big fish” by which Jonah was swallowed was simply the cell within the belly of Dagon?

It is significant that this double appellation of “Messiah” and “Dag” (fish), of the Talmudists, should so well apply to the Hindu Vishnu, the “Preserving” Spirit, and the second personage of the Brahmanic trinity. This deity, having already manifested itself, is still regarded as the future Saviour of humanity, and is the selected Redeemer, who will appear at its tenth incarnation or avatar, like the Messiah of the Jews, to lead the blessed onward, and restore to them the primitive Vedas. At his first avatar, Vishnu is alleged to have appeared to humanity, in form like a fish. In the temple of Rama, there is a representation of this god which answers perfectly to that of Dagon, as given by Berosus. He has the body of a man issuing from the mouth of a fish, and holds in his hands the lost Veda. Vishnu, moreover, is the water-god, in one sense, the Logos of the Parabrahm, for as the three persons of the manifested god-head constantly interchange their attributes, we see him in the same temple represented as reclining on the seven-headed serpent, Ananta (eternity), and moving, like the Spirit of God, on the face of the primeval waters.

Vishnu is evidently the Adam Kadmon of the kabalists, for Adam is the Logos or the first Anointed, as Adam Second is the King Messiah. Lakmy, or Lakshmi, the passive or feminine counterpart of Vishnu, the creator and the preserver, is also called Ada Maya. She is the “Mother of the World,” Damatri, the Venus Aphrodite of the Greeks; also Isis and Eve. While Venus is born from the sea-foam, Lakmy springs out from the water at the churning of the sea; when born, she is so beautiful that all the gods fall in love with her. The Jews, borrowing their types wherever they could get them, made their first woman after the pattern of Lakmy. It is curious that Viracocha, the Supreme Being in Peru, means, literally translated, “foam of the sea.” Eugene Burnouf, the great authority of the French school, announces his opinion in the same spirit: “We must learn one day,” he observes, “that all ancient traditions disfigured by emigration and legend, belong to the history of India.” Such is the opinion of Colebrooke, Inman, King, Jacolliot, and many other Orientalists.

We have said above, that, according to the secret computation peculiar to the students of the hidden science, Messiah is the fifth emanation, or potency. In the Jewish Kabala, where the ten Sephiroth emanate from Adam Kadmon (placed below the crown), he comes fifth. So in the Gnostic system; so in the Buddhistic, in which the fifth Buddha - Maitree, will appear at his last advent to save mankind before the final destruction of the world. If Vishnu is represented in his forthcoming and last appearance as the tenth avatar or incarnation, it is only because every unit held as an androgyne manifests itself doubly. The Buddhists who reject this dual-sexed incarnation reckon but five. Thus, while Vishnu is to make his last appearance in his tenth, Buddha is said to do the same in his fifth incarnation.

The better to illustrate the idea, and show how completely the real meaning of the avatars, known only to the students of the secret doctrine was misunderstood by the ignorant masses, we elsewhere give the diagrams of the Hindu and Chaldeo-Kabalistic avatars and emanations. This basic and true fundamental stone of the secret cycles, shows on its very face, that far from taking their revealed Vedas and Bible literally, the Brahman-pundits, and the Tanaïm - the scientists and philosophers of the pre-Christian epochs - speculated on the creation and development of the world quite in a Darwinian way, both anticipating him and his school in the natural selection of species, gradual development, and transformation. We advise every one tempted to enter an indignant protest against this affirmation to read more carefully the books of Manu, even in the incomplete translation of Sir William Jones, and the more or less careless one of Jacolliot. If we compare the Sanchoniathon Phœnician Cosmogony, and the record of Berosus with the Bhagavatta and Manu, we will find enunciated exactly the same principles as those now offered as the latest developments of modern science. We have quoted from the Chaldean and Phœnician records in our first volume; we will now glance at the Hindu books.

“When this world had issued out of darkness, the subtile elementary principles produced the vegetal seed which animated first the plants; from the plants, life passed into fastastical bodies which were born in the ilus of the waters; then, through a series of forms and various animals, it reached MAN.” “He (man, before becoming such) will pass successively through plants, worms, insects, fish, serpents, tortoises, cattle, and wild animals; such is the inferior degree.” “Such, from Brahma down to the vegetables, are declared the transmigrations which take place in this world.” In the Sanchoniathonian Cosmogony, men are also evolved out of the ilus of the chaos, and the same evolution and transformation of species are shown. And now we will leave the rostrum to Mr. Darwin: “I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors.” Again: “I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth, have descended from some one primordial form.... I view all beings, not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited.”

In short, they lived in the Sanchoniathonian chaos, and in the ilus of Manu. Vyasa and Kapila go still farther than Darwin and Manu. “They see in Brahma but the name of the universal germ; they deny the existence of a First Cause; and pretend that everything in nature found itself developed only in consequence of material and fatal forces,” says Jacolliot.

Correct as may be this latter quotation from Kapila, it demands a few words of explanation. Jacolliot repeatedly compares Kapila and Veda Vyasa with Pyrrho and Littré. We have nothing against such a comparison with the Greek philosopher, but we must decidedly object to any with the French Comtist; we find it an unmerited fling at the memory of the great Aryan sage. Nowhere does this prolific writer state the repudiation by either ancient or modern Brahmans of God - the “unknown,” universal Spirit; nor does any other Orientalist accuse the Hindus of the same, however perverted the general deductions of our savants about Buddhistic atheism. On the contrary, Jacolliot states more than once that the learned Pundits and educated Brahmans have never shared the popular superstitions; and affirms their unshaken belief in the unity of God and the soul’s immortality, although most assuredly neither Kapila, nor the initiated Brahmans, nor the followers of the Vedanta school would ever admit the existence of an anthropomorphic creator, a “First Cause” in the Christian sense. Jacolliot, in his Indo-European and African Traditions, is the first to make an onslaught on Professor Müller, for remarking that the Hindu gods were “masks without actors ... names without being, and not beings without names.” Quoting, in support of his argument, numerous verses from the sacred Hindu books, he adds: “Is it possible to refuse to the author of these stanzas a definite and clear conception of the divine force, of the Unique Being, master and Sovereign of the Universe?... Were the altars then built to a metaphor?”

The latter argument is perfectly just, so far as Max Müller’s negation is concerned. But we doubt whether the French rationalist understands Kapila’s and Vyasa’s philosophy better than the German philologist does the “theological twaddle,” as the latter terms the Atharva-Veda. Professor Müller and Jacolliot may have ever so great claims to erudition, and be ever so familiar with Sanscrit and other ancient Oriental languages, but both lack the key to the thousand and one mysteries of the old secret doctrine and its philosophy. Only, while the German philologist does not even take the trouble to look into this magical and “theological twaddle,” we find the French Indianist never losing an opportunity to investigate. Moreover, he honestly admits his incompetency to ever fathom this ocean of mystical learning. In its existence he not only firmly believes, but throughout his works he incessantly calls the attention of science to its unmistakable traces at every step in India. Still, though the learned Pundits and Brahmans - his “revered masters” of the pagodas of Villenoor and Chélambrum in the Carnatic, as it seems, positively refused to reveal to him the mysteries of the magical part of the Agrouchada-Parikshaï, and of Brahmâtma’s triangle, he persists in the honest declaration that everything is possible in Hindu metaphysics, even to the Kapila and Vyasa systems having been hitherto misunderstood.

M. Jacolliot weakens his assertion immediately afterward with the following contradiction: “We were one day inquiring of a Brahman of the pagoda of Chélambrum, who belonged to the skeptical school of the naturalists of Vyasa, whether he believed in the existence of God. He answered us, smiling: ‘Aham eva param Brahma’ - I am myself a god. “‘What do you mean by that?’ “‘I mean that every being on earth, however humble, is an immortal portion of the immortal matter.’”

The answer is one which would suggest itself to every ancient philosopher, Kabalist and Gnostic, of the early days. It contains the very spirit of the delphic and kabalistic commandment, for esoteric philosophy solved, ages ago, the problem of what man was, is, and will be. If persons believing the Bible verse which teaches that the “Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” reject at the same time the idea that every atom of this dust, as every particle of this “living soul,” contains “God” within itself, then we pity the logic of that Christian. He forgets the verses which precede the one in question. God blesses equally every beast of the field and every living creature, in the water as in the air, and He endows them all with life, which is a breath of His own Spirit, and the soul of the animal. Humanity is the Adam Kadmon of the “Unknown,” His microcosm, and His only representative on earth, and every man is a god on earth. We would ask this French scholar, who seems so familiar with every sloka of the books of Manu, and other Vedic writers, the meaning of this sentence so well known to him:

“Plants and vegetation reveal a multitude of forms because of their precedent actions; they are surrounded by darkness, but are nevertheless endowed with an interior soul, and feel equally pleasure and pain” (Manu, book i.). If the Hindu philosophy teach the presence of a degree of soul in the lowest forms of vegetable life, and even in every atom in space, how is it possible that it should deny the same immortal principle to man? And if it once admit the immortal spirit in man, how can it logically deny the existence of the parent source - I will not say the first, but the eternal Cause? Neither rationalists nor sensualists, who do not comprehend Indian metaphysics, should estimate the ignorance of Hindu metaphysicians by their own.

The grand cycle, as we have heretofore remarked, includes the progress of mankind from its germ in the primordial man of spiritual form to the deepest depth of degradation he can reach - each successive step in the descent being accompanied by a greater strength and grossness of the physical form than its precursor - and ends with the Flood. But while the grand cycle, or age, is running its course, seven minor cycles are passed, each marking the evolution of a new race out of the preceding one, on a new world. And each of these races, or grand types of humanity, breaks up into subdivisions of families, and they again into nations and tribes, as we see the earth’s inhabitants subdivided to-day into Mongols, Caucasians, Indians, etc.

Before proceeding to show by diagrams the close resemblance between the esoteric philosophies of all the ancient peoples, however geographically remote from each other, it will be useful to briefly explain the real ideas which underlie all those symbols and allegorical representations and have hitherto so puzzled the uninitiated commentators. Better than anything, it may show that religion and science were closer knit than twins in days of old; that they were one in two and two in one from the very moment of their conception. With mutually convertible attributes, science was spiritual and religion was scientific. Like the androgyne man of the first chapter of Genesis - “male and female,” passive and active; created in the image of the Elohim. Omniscience developed omnipotency, the latter called for the exercise of the former, and thus the giant had dominion given him over all the four kingdoms of the world. But, like the second Adam, these androgynes were doomed to “fall and lose their powers” as soon as the two halves of the duality separated. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge gives death without the fruit of the Tree of Life. Man must know himself before he can hope to know the ultimate genesis even of beings and powers less developed in their inner nature than himself. So with religion and science; united two in one they were infallible, for the spiritual intuition was there to supply the limitations of physical senses. Separated, exact science rejects the help of the inner voice, while religion becomes merely dogmatic theology - each is but a corpse without a soul.

The esoteric doctrine, then, teaches, like Buddhism and Brahmanism, and even the persecuted Kabala, that the one infinite and unknown Essence exists from all eternity, and in regular and harmonious successions is either passive or active. In the poetical phraseology of Manu these conditions are called the “day” and the “night” of Brahma. The latter is either “awake” or “asleep.” The Svâbhâvikas, or philosophers of the oldest school of Buddhism (which still exists in Nepaul), speculate but upon the active condition of this “Essence,” which they call Svabhâvât, and deem it foolish to theorize upon the abstract and “unknowable” power in its passive condition. Hence they are called atheists by both Christian theology and modern scientists; for neither of the two are able to understand the profound logic of their philosophy. The former will allow of no other God than the personified secondary powers which have blindly worked out the visible universe, and which became with them the anthropomorphic God of the Christians - the Jehovah, roaring amid thunder and lightning. In its turn, rationalistic science greets the Buddhists and the Svâbhâvikas as the “positivists” of the archaic ages. If we take a one-sided view of the philosophy of the latter, our materialists may be right in their own way. The Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable - hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher.

Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence, from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and “darkness,” solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the “deep.” To use a metaphor which will convey the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the “unknown essence” produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. _This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning and will have no end._

Thus we are enabled to build our theories solely on the visible manifestations of the Deity, on its objective natural phenomena. To apply to these creative principles the term God is puerile and absurd. One might as well call by the name of Benvenuto Cellini the fire which fuses the metal, or the air that cools it when it is run in the mould. If the inner and ever-concealed spiritual, and to our minds abstract, Essence within these forces can ever be connected with the creation of the physical universe, it is but in the sense given to it by Plato. IT may be termed, at best, the framer of the abstract universe which developed gradually in the Divine Thought within which it had lain dormant.

In Chapter VIII. we will attempt to show the esoteric meaning of Genesis, and its complete agreement with the ideas of other nations. The six days of creation will be found to have a meaning little suspected by the multitude of commentators, who have exercised their abilities to the full extent in attempting to reconcile them by turns with Christian theology and un-Christian geology. Disfigured as the Old Testament is, yet in its symbolism are preserved enough of the original in its principal features to show the family likeness to the cosmogonies of older nations than the Jews. We here give the diagrams of the Hindu and the Chaldeo-Jewish cosmogonies. The antiquity of the diagram of the former may be inferred from the fact that many of the Brahmanical pagodas are designed and built on this figure, called the “Sri-Iantara.” And yet we find the highest honors paid to it by the Jewish and mediæval kabalists, who call it “Solomon’s seal.” It will be quite an easy matter to trace it to its origin, once we are reminded of the history of the king-kabalist and his transactions with King Hiram and Ophir - the country of peacocks, gold, and ivory - for which land we have to search in old India. EXPLANATION OF THE TWO DIAGRAMS REPRESENTING THE

CHAOTIC AND THE FORMATIVE PERIODS, BEFORE AND AFTER OUR UNIVERSE BEGAN TO BE EVOLVED. FROM THE ESOTERIC BRAHMANICAL, BUDDHISTIC, AND CHALDEAN STANDPOINTS, WHICH AGREE IN EVERY RESPECT WITH THE EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF MODERN SCIENCE. THE HINDU DOCTRINE. THE CHALDEAN DOCTRINE. The Upper Triangle The Upper Triangle

Contains the Ineffable Name. Contains the Ineffable Name. It is the AUM - to be It is En-Soph, the pronounced only mentally, Boundless, the Infinite, under penalty of death. The whose name is known to no Unrevealed Para-Brahma, the one but the initiated, and Passive-Principle; absolute could not be pronounced and unconditioned “mukta,” aloud under the penalty of which cannot enter into the death. condition of a Creator, as the latter, in order to No more than Para-Brahma can think, will, and plan, En-Soph create, for he is in must be bound and the same condition of conditioned (baddha); hence, non-being as the former; he in one sense, be a finite is עין non-existent so long being. “THIS (Para-Brahma) as he lies in his latent or was absorbed in the passive state within Oulom non-being, imperceptible, (the boundless and termless without any distinct time); as such he is not the attribute, non-existent for Creator of the visible our senses. He was absorbed universe, neither is he the in his (to us) eternal (to Aur (Light). He will himself) periodical, sleep,” become the latter when the for it was one of the period of creation shall “Nights of Brahma.” have compelled him to expand Therefore he is not the the Force within himself, First but the Eternal according to the Law of Cause. He is the Soul of which he is the embodiment Souls, whom no being can and essence. comprehend in this state. But “he who studies the “Whosoever acquaints himself secret Mantras and with ה״ד the Mercaba and the comprehends the Vâch” (the lahgash (secret speech or Spirit or hidden voice of incantation), will the Mantras, the active learn the secret of manifestation of the latent secrets.” Force) will learn to understand him in his “revealed” aspect.

Both “THIS” and En-Soph, in their first manifestation of Light, emerging from within Darkness, may be summarized in the Svabhâvât, the Eternal and the uncreated Self-existing Substance which produces all; while everything which is of its essence produces itself out of its own nature. _The Space Around the The Space Around the Upper Triangle. Upper Triangle._

When the “Night of Brahma” When the active period had was ended, and the time came arrived, En-Soph sent forth for the Self-Existent to from within his own eternal manifest Itself by essence, Sephira, the active revelation, it made its Power, called the Primordial glory visible by sending Point, and the Crown, forth from its Essence an Keter. It is only through active Power, which, female her that the “Un-bounded at first, subsequently Wisdom” could give a becomes androgyne. It is concrete form to his Aditi, the “Infinite,” abstract Thought. Two sides the Boundless, or rather the of the upper triangle, the “Un-bounded.” Aditi is the right side and the base, are “mother” of all the gods, composed of unbroken lines; and Aditi is the Father and the third, the left side, is the Son. “Who will give dotted. It is through the us back to the great Aditi, latter that emerges Sephira. that I may see father and Spreading in every mother?” It is in direction, she finally conjunction with the latter encompasses the whole female, Force, that the triangle. In this emanation Divine but latent Thought of the female active produces the great principle from the left side “Deep” - water. “Water is of the mystic triangle, is born from a transformation foreshadowed the creation of of light ... and