The Secret Doctrine

The question must be answered in the affirmative as to the second alternative. It is an irrefutable conclusion, and a natural inference based on facts known from historical records. Leaving for the present untouched the lives of many Popes and Saints that loudly belied their claims to infallibility and holiness, let the reader turn to Ecclesiastical History, the records of the growth and progress of the Christian Church (not of Christianity), and he will find the answer on those pages. Says a writer: The Church has known too well the suggestions of freethought created by enquiry, as also all those doubts that provoke her anger to‐day; and the “sacred truths” she would promulgate have been in turn admitted and repudiated, transformed and altered, amplified and curtailed, by the dignitaries of the Church hierarchy, even as regards the most fundamental dogmas.

Where is that God or Hero whose origin, biography, and genealogy were more hazy, or more difficult to define and finally agree upon than those of Jesus? How was the now irrevocable dogma with regard to His true nature settled at last? By His mother, according to the Evangelists, He was a man—a simple mortal man; by His Father He is God! But how? Is He then man or God, or is He both at the same time? asks the perplexed writer. Truly the propositions offered on this point of the doctrine have caused floods of ink and blood to be shed, in turn, on poor Humanity, and still the doubts are not at rest. In this, as in everything else, the wise Church Councils have contradicted themselves and changed their minds a number of times. Let us recapitulate and throw a glance at the texts offered for our inspection. This is History. The Bishop Paul of Samosata denied the divinity of Christ at the first Council of Antioch; at the very origin and birth of theological Christianity, He was called “Son of God” merely on account of His holiness and good deeds. His blood was corruptible in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

At the Council of Nicæa, held A.D. 325, Arius came out with his premisses, which nearly broke asunder the Catholic Union. Seventeen bishops defended the doctrines of Arius, who was exiled for them. Nevertheless, thirty years after, A.D. 355, at the Council of Milan, three hundred bishops signed a letter of adherence to the Arian views, notwithstanding that ten years earlier, A.D. 345, at a new Council of Antioch, the Eusebians had proclaimed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and One with His Father. At the Council of Sirmium, A.D. 357, the “Son” had become no longer consubstantial. The Anomæans, who denied that consubstantiality, and the Arians were triumphant. A year later, at the second Council of Ancyra, it was decreed that the “Son was not consubstantial but only similar to the Father in his substance.” Pope Liberius ratified the decision.

During several centuries the Councils fought and quarrelled, supporting the most contradictory and opposite views, the fruit of their laborious travail being the Holy Trinity, which, Minerva‐like, issued forth from the theological brain, armed with all the thunders of the Church. The new mystery was ushered into the world amid some terrible strifes, in which murder and other crimes had a high hand. At the Council of Saragossa, A.D. 380, it was proclaimed that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are one and the same Person, Christ’s human nature being merely an “illusion”—an echo of the Avatâric Hindu doctrine. “Once upon this slippery path the Fathers had to slide down ad absurdum—which they did not fail of doing.” How deny human nature in him who was born of a woman? The only wise remark made during one of the Councils of Constantinople came from Eutyches, who was bold enough to say: “May God preserve me from reasoning on the nature of my God”—for which he was excommunicated by Pope Flavius.

At the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 449, Eutyches had his revenge. As Eusebius, the veracious Bishop of Cæsarea, was forcing him into the admission of two distinct natures in Jesus Christ, the Council rebelled against him and it was proposed that Eusebius should be burned alive. The bishops arose like one man, and with fists clenched, foaming with rage, demanded that Eusebius should be torn into two halves, and be dealt by as he would deal with Jesus, whose nature he divided. Eutyches was re‐ established in his power and office, Eusebius and Flavius deposed. Then the two parties attacked each other most violently and fought. St. Flavius was so ill‐treated by Bishop Diodorus, who assaulted and kicked him, that he died a few days later from the injuries inflicted.

Every incongruity was courted in these Councils, and the result is the present living paradoxes called Church dogmas. For instance, at the first Council of Ancyra, A.D. 314, it was asked, “In baptizing a woman with child, is the unborn baby also baptized by the fact?” The Council answered in the negative; because, as was alleged, “the person thus receiving baptism must be a consenting party, which is impossible to the child in its mother’s womb.” Thus then unconsciousness is a canonical obstacle to baptism, and thus no child baptised nowadays is baptised at all in fact. And then what becomes of the tens of thousands of starving heathen babies baptised by the missionaries during famines, and otherwise surreptitiously “saved” by the too zealous Padres? Follow one after another the debates and decisions of the numberless Councils, and behold on what a jumble of contradictions the present infallible and Apostolic Church is built!

And now we can see how greatly paradoxical, when taken literally, is the assertion in Genesis: “God created man in his own image.” Besides the glaring fact that it is not the Adam of dust (of Chapter ii.), who is thus made in the divine image, but the Divine Androgyne (of Chapter i.), or Adam Kadmon, one can see for oneself that God—the God of the Christians at any rate—was created by man in his own image, amid the kicks, blows and murders of the early Councils. A curious fact, one that throws a flood of light on the claim that Jesus was an Initiate and a martyred Adept, is given in the work, (already so often referred to) which may be called “a mathematical revelation”.—The Source of Measures. Attention is called to the part of the 46th verse of the 27th Chapter of Matthew, as follows: “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani?—that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Of course, our versions are taken from the original Greek manuscripts (the reason why we have no original Hebrew manuscripts concerning these occurrences being because the enigmas in Hebrew would betray themselves on comparison with the sources of their derivation, the Old Testament). The Greek manuscripts, without exception, give these words as— Ἠλί Ἠλί λαμὰ σαβαχθανί

They are Hebrew words, rendered into the Greek, and in Hebrew are as follows: אלי אלי למח שבחתני The Scripture of these words says, “that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” as their proper translation. Here then are the words, beyond all dispute; and beyond all question, such is the interpretation given of them by Scripture. Now the words will not bear this interpretation, and it is a false rendering. The true meaning is just the opposite of the one given, and is— My God, my God, how thou dost glorify me! But even more, for while lama is why, or how, as a verbal it connects the idea of to dazzle, or adverbially, it could run “how dazzlingly,” and so on. To the unwary reader this interpretation is enforced, and made to answer, as it were, to the fulfilment of a prophetic utterance, by a marginal reference to the first verse of the twenty‐second Psalm, which reads: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The Hebrew of this verse for these words is— אלי אלי למה עזבתני as to which the reference is correct, and the interpretation sound and good, but with an utterly different word. The words are— Eli, Eli, lamah azabvtha‐ni?

No wit of man, however scholarly, can save this passage from falseness of rendering on its face; and as so, it becomes a most terrible blow upon the proper first‐face sacredness of the recital.(258) For ten years or more, sat the revisers (?) of the Bible, a most imposing and solemn array of the learned of the land, the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars of England, purporting to correct the mistakes and blunders, the sins of omission and of commission of their less learned predecessors, the translators of the Bible. Are we going to be told that none of them saw the glaring difference between the Hebrew words in Psalm xxii., azabvtha‐ni, and sabachthani in Matthew; that they were not aware of the deliberate falsification?

For “falsification” it was. And if we are asked the reason why the early Church Fathers resorted to it, the answer is plain: Because the Sacramental words belonged in their true rendering to Pagan temple rites. They were pronounced after the terrible trials of Initiation, and were still fresh in the memory of some of the “Fathers” when the Gospel of Matthew was edited into the Greek language. Because, finally, many of the Hierophants of the Mysteries, and many more of the Initiates were still living in those days, and the sentence rendered in its true words would class Jesus directly with the simple Initiates. The words “My God, my Sun, thou hast poured thy radiance upon me!” were the final words that concluded the thanksgiving prayer of the Initiate, “the Son and the glorified Elect of the Sun.” In Egypt we find to this day carvings and paintings that represent the rite. The candidate is between two divine sponsors; one “Osiris‐Sun” with the head of a hawk, representing life, the other Mercury—the ibis‐headed, psychopompic genius, who guides the Souls after death to their new abode, Hades—standing for the death of the physical body, figuratively. Both are shown pouring the “stream of life,” the water of purification, on the head of the Initiate, the two streams of which, interlacing, form a cross. The better to conceal the truth, this basso‐relievo has also been explained as a “Pagan presentment of a Christian truth.” The Chevalier des Mousseaux calls this Mercury:

The assessor of Osiris‐Sol, as St. Michael is the assessor, Ferouer, of the Word. The monogram of Chrestos and the Labarum, the standard of Constantine—who, by the by, died a Pagan and was never baptised—is a symbol derived from the above rite and also denotes “life and death.” Long before the sign of the Cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, it was employed as a secret sign of recognition among Neophytes and Adepts. Say Éliphas Lévi: The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the Pater, to which we have called attention in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning: one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane.(259) One can understand now why the Gospel of Matthew, the Evangel of the Ebionites, has been for ever excluded in its Hebrew form from the world’s curious gaze.

Jerome found the authentic and original Evangel written in Hebrew, by Matthew the Publican, at the library collected at Cæsarea by the martyr Pamphilius. “I received permission from the Nazaræans, who at Berœa of Syria used this (gospel) to translate it,” he writes toward the end of the fourth century.(260) “In the Evangel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use,” said Jerome, “which recently I translated from Hebrew into Greek, and which is called by most persons the genuine gospel of Matthew,” etc.(261)

That the apostles had received a “secret doctrine” from Jesus, and that he himself taught one, is evident from the following words of Jerome, who confessed it in an unguarded moment. Writing to the Bishops Chromatius and Heliodorus, he complains that “a difficult work is enjoined, since this (translation) has been commanded me by your Felicities, which St. Matthew himself, the Apostle and Evangelist, did not wish to be openly written. For if this had not been secret, he (Matthew) would have added to the Evangel that what he gave forth was his; but he made up this book sealed up in the Hebrew characters, which he put forth even in such a way that the book, written in Hebrew letters and by the hand of himself, might be possessed by the men most religious; who also, in the course of time, received it from those who preceded them. But this very book they never gave to any one to be transcribed, and its text they related some one way and some another.”(262) And he adds further on the same page: “And it happened that this book, having been published by a disciple of Manichæus, named Seleucus, who also wrote falsely The Acts of the Apostles, exhibited matter not for edification, but for destruction; and that this (book) was approved in a synod which the ears of the Church properly refused to listen to.”(263)

Jerome admits, himself, that the book which he authenticates as being written “by the hand of Matthew,” was nevertheless a book which, notwithstanding that he translated it twice, was nearly unintelligible to him, for it was arcane. Nevertheless, Jerome coolly sets down every commentary upon it but his own as heretical. More than that, Jerome knew that this Gospel was the only original one, yet he becomes more zealous than ever in his persecution of the “Heretics.” Why? Because to accept it was equivalent to reading the death sentence of the established Church. The Gospel according to the Hebrews was well known to have been the only one accepted for four centuries by the Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes and the Ebionites. And neither of the latter accepted the divinity of Christ.(264)

The Ebionites were the first, the earliest Christians, whose representative was the Gnostic author of the Clementine Homilies, and as the author of Supernatural Religion shows,(265) Ebionitic Gnosticism had once been the purest form of Christianity. They were the pupils and followers of the early Nazarenes—the kabalistic Gnostics. They believed in the Æons, as the Cerinthians did, and that “the world was put together by Angels” (Dhyân Chohans), as Epiphanius complains (Contra Ebionitas): “Ebion had the opinion of the Nazarenes, the form of Cerinthians.” “They decided that Christ was of the seed of a man,” he laments.(266) Thus again: The badge of Dan‐Scorpio is death‐life, in the symbol ☧ as cross‐bones and skull, ... or life‐death ... the standard of Constantine, the Roman Emperor. Abel has been shown to be Jesus, and Cain‐Vulcain, or Mars, pierced him. Constantine was the Roman Emperor, whose warlike god was Mars, and a Roman soldier pierced Jesus on the cross....

But the piercing of Abel was the consummation of his marriage with Cain, and this was proper under the form of Mars Generator; hence the double glyph, one of Mars‐Generator [Osiris‐Sun] and Mars‐ Destroyer [Mercury the God of Death in the Egyptian basso‐ relievo] in one; significant, again, of the primal idea of the living cosmos, or of birth and death, as necessary to the continuation of the stream of life.(267) To quote once more from Isis Unveiled: A Latin cross of a perfect Christian shape was found hewn upon the granite slabs of the Adytum of the Serapeum; 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.(268) But archæology and symbolism, those tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have found in the hieroglyphics of the legend running round 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. These in turn 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 even 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 middle ages, it was considered a potent spell again at 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 the foreheads,” was but the same mystic Tau—the Egyptian Cross.

In the painted glass of St. Denis (France) this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the forehead of the elect; the legend reads, SIGNUM TAY. In King’s Gnostics, the author reminds us that “this mark is commonly borne by St. Anthony, an Egyptian recluse.”(269) 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(270) the “Father’s name written in their foreheads.”

The Brahmâtmâ, 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 dagoba,(271) and the porticos of some Prachidas(272) are ornamented with a cross formed of two fishes, 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 realisation 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.(273) 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.(274) 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.

The famous Lady Ellenborough, known among the Arabs of Damascus, and in the desert, after her last marriage, as Hanoum Medjouye, had a talisman in her possession, presented to her by a Druse from Mount Lebanon. It was recognised by a certain sign on its left corner as belonging to that class of gems which is known in Palestine as a “Messianic” amulet, of the second or third century B.C. It is a green stone of a pentagonal form; at the bottom is engraved a fish; higher, Solomon’s Seal;(275) and still higher, the four Chaldaic letters—Jod, He, Vau, He, IAHO, which form the name of the Deity. These are arranged in quite an unusual way, running from below upward, in reversed order, and forming the Egyptian Tau. Around these there is a legend which, as the gem is not our property, we are not at liberty to give. The Tau, in its mystical sense, as well as the Crux ansata, is the Tree of Life.

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 Kabalah 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.(276) 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 further 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 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, labouring 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?(277)

And now, with the help of all these passages scattered hither and thither in Isis and other works of this kind, the reader will see and judge for himself which of the two explanations—the Christian or that of the Occultist—is the nearer to truth. If Jesus were not an Initiate, why should all these allegorical incidents of his life be given? Why should such extreme trouble be taken, so much time wasted trying to make the above: (a) answer and dovetail with purposely picked out sentences in the Old Testament, to show them as prophecies; and (b) to preserve in them the initiatory symbols, the emblems so pregnant with Occult meaning and all of these belonging to Pagan mystic Philosophy? The author of the Source of Measures gives out that mystical intent; but only once now and again, in its one‐sided, numerical and kabalistic meaning, without paying any attention to, or having concern with, the primeval and more spiritual origin, and he deals with it only so far as it relates to the Old Testament. He attributes the purposed change in the sentence “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani” to the principle already mentioned of the crossed bones and skull in the Labarum,

As an emblem of death, being placed over the door of life and signifying birth, or of the intercontainment of two opposite principles in one, just as, mystically, the Saviour was held to be man‐woman.(278) The author’s idea is to show the mystic blending by the Gospel writers of Jehovah, Cain, Abel, etc., with Jesus (in accordance with Jewish kabalistic numeration); the better he succeeds, the more clearly he shows that it was a forced blending, and that we have not a record of the real events of the life of Jesus, narrated by eye‐witnesses or the Apostles. The narrative is all based on the signs of the Zodiac:

Each a double sign or male‐female [in ancient astrological Magic]—viz: it was Taurus‐Eve, and Scorpio was Mars‐Lupa, or Mars with the female wolf [in relation to Romulus]. So, as these signs were opposites of each other, yet met in the centre, they were connected; and so in fact it was, and in a double sense, the conception of the year was in Taurus, as the conception of Eve by Mars, her opposite, in Scorpio. The birth would be at the winter solstice, or Christmas. On the contrary, by conception in Scorpio—viz., of Lupa by Taurus—birth would be in Leo. Scorpio was Chrēstos in humiliation, while Leo was Christos in triumph. While Taurus‐Eve fulfilled astronomical functions, Mars‐Lupa fulfilled spiritual ones by type.(279) The author bases all this on Egyptian correlations and meanings of Gods and Goddesses, but ignores the Âryan, which are far earlier.

Mooth or Mouth, was the Egyptian cognomen of Venus, (Eve, mother of all living) [as Vach, mother of all living, a permutation of Aditi, as Eve was one of Sephira] or the moon. Plutarch (Isis, 374) hands it down that Isis was sometimes called Muth, which word means mother ... (Issa, אשה, woman). (Isis, p. 372). Isis, he says is that part of Nature, which, as feminine, contains in herself, as (nutrix) nurse, all things to be born.... “Certainly the moon,” speaking astronomically, “chiefly exercises this function in Taurus, Venus being the house (in opposition to Mars, generator, in Scorpio), because the sign is luna, hypsoma. Since ... Isis Metheur differs from Isis Muth and that in the vocable Muth the notion of bringing forth may be concealed, and since fructification must take place, Sol being joined with Luna in Libra, it is not improbable that Muth first indeed signifies Venus in Libra; hence Luna in Libra.” (Beiträge zur Kenntniss, pars. 11, S. 9, under Muth.)(280) Then Fuerst, under Bohu, is quoted to show The double play upon the word Muth by help of which the real intent is produced in the occult way ... sin, death, and woman are one in the glyph, and correlatively connected with intercourse and death.(281)

All this is applied by the author only to the exoteric and Jewish euhemerised symbols, whereas they were meant, first of all, to conceal cosmogonical mysteries, and then, those of anthropological evolution with reference to the Seven Races, already evoluted and to come, and especially as regards the last branch races of the third Root‐Race. However, the word void (primeval Chaos) is shown to be taken for Eve‐Venus‐Naamah, agreeably with Fuerst’s definition; for as he says: In this primitive signification [of void] was בהו [bohu] taken in the Biblical cosmogony, and used in establishing the dogma יש מאין Jes (us) m’aven, (Jes‐us from nothing), respecting creation. [Which shows the writers of the New Testament considerably skilled in the Kabalah and Occult Sciences, and corroborates still more our assertion.] Hence Aquila translates οὔδεν vulg. vacua (hence vacca, cow) [hence also the horns of Isis—Nature, Earth, and the Moon—taken from Vâch, the Hindu “Mother of all that lives,” identified with Virâj and called in Atharvaveda the daughter of Kâma, the first desires: “That daughter of thine, O Kâma, is _called __ the cow_, she whom Sages name Vâch‐Virâj,” who was milked by Brihaspati, the Rishi, which is another mystery] Onkelos and Samarit. ריקבי.

The Phœnician cosmogony has connected Bohu בהו Βααυ into a personified expression denoting the primitive substance, and as a deity, the mother of races of the gods [which is Aditi and Vâch]. The Aramean name בהו‐תא, בהו‐ת, בהו‐ת, Βαώθ, Βυθ‐ός, Buto, for the mother of the gods, which passed over to the Gnostics, Babylonians and Egyptians, is identical then with Môt (מות, our Muth) properly, (Βώθ) originated in Phœnician from an interchange of b with m.(282) Rather, one would say, go to the origin. The mystic euhemerisation of Wisdom and Intelligence, operating in the work of cosmic evolution, or Buddhi under the names of Brahmâ, Purusha, etc., as male power, and Aditi‐Vâch, etc., as female, whence Sarasvatî, Goddess of Wisdom, who became under the veils of Esoteric concealment, Butos, Bythos—Depth, the grossly material, personal female, called Eve, the “primitive woman” of Irenæus, and the world springing out of Nothing.

The workings out of this glyph of 4th Genesis help to the comprehension of the division of one character into the forms of two persons; as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abram and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and so on [all male and female].... Now, as linking together several great salient points in the Biblical structure: (1) as to the Old and New Testaments; with also (2) as to the Roman Empire; (3) as to confirming the meanings and uses of symbols; and (4) as to confirming the entire explanation and reading of the glyphs; as (5) recognising and laying down the base of the great pyramid as the foundation square of the Bible construction; (6) as well as the new Roman adoption under Constantine—the following given:(283)

Cain has been shown to be ... the 360 circle of the Zodiac, the perfect and exact standard, by a squared division; hence his name of Melchizadik.... [The geometrical and numerical demonstrations here follow.] It has been repeatedly stated that the object of the Great Pyramid construction was to measure the heavens and the earth ... [the objective spheres as evoluting from the subjective, purely spiritual Kosmos, we beg leave to add]; therefore, its measuring containment would indicate all the substance of measure of the heavens and the earth, or agreeably to ancient recognition, Earth, Air, Water and Fire.(284) (The base side of this pyramid was diameter to a circumference in feet of 2400. The characteristic of this is 24 feet, or 6 × 4 = 24, or this very Cain‐Adam square.) Now, by the restoration of the encampment of the Israelites, as initiated by Moses, by the great scholar, Father Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit priest, the above is precisely, by Biblical record and traditionary sources, the method of laying off this encampment. The four interior squares were devoted to (1) Moses and Aaron; (2) Kohath; (3) Gershom; and (4) Merari—the last three being the heads of the Levites. The attributes of these squares were the primal attributes of Adam‐ Mars and were concreted of the elements, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, or ים = Iam = Water, נור = Nour = Fire, רוח = Rouach = Air, and יבשׂׂשׂה = Iābeshah = Earth.

The initial letters of these words are INRI—the symbol usually translated as _I_esus _N_azarenus _R_ex _I_udæorum—“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” This square of INRI is the Adam square, which was extended from, as a foundation, into four others of 144 × 2 = 288, to the side of the large square of 288 × 4 = 1152, = the whole circumference. But this square is the display of also circular elements and 115·2 can denote this. Put INRI into a circle, or read it as the letters stand in the square, as to its values of 1521, and we have [Symbol: circle with numbers inside: 1, 1, 2, 5] which reads 115·2.

But as seen Cain denotes this as, or in, the 115 of his name: which 115 was the very complement to make up the 360 day year, to agree with the balances of the standard circle, which were Cain. The corner squares of the larger square are, A = Leo, and B = Dan Scorpio; and it is seen that Cain pierces Abel at the intersection of the equinoctial with the solstice cross lines, referred to from Dan‐Scorpio on the celestial circle. But Dan‐Scorpio borders on Libra, the scales, whose sign is ♎ (which sign is that of the ancient pillow on which the back of the head to the ears(285) rested, the pillow of Jacob), and is represented for one symbol as [Symbol: Letters X, P, and S, with Libra symbol atop them].... Also the badge of Dan‐Scorpio is death‐life, in the symbol ☧. Now the cross is the emblem of the origin of measures, in the Jehovah form of a straight line one of a denomination of 20612, the perfect circumference; hence Cain was this as Jehovah, for the text says that he was Jehovah. But the attachment of a man to this cross was that of 113: 355 to 6561: 5153 × 4 = 20612, as shown. Now, over the head of Jesus crucified was placed the

inscription, of which the initial letters of the words have always been retained as symbolic, and handed down and used as a monogram of Jesus Chrestos—viz., INRI or Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judæorum; but they are located on the Cross, or the cubed form of the circular origin of measures which measure the substance of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, or INRI = 1152, as shown. Here is the man on the cross, or 113: 355 combined with 6561: 5153 × 4 = 20612. These are the pyramid‐base numbers as coming from 113: 355 as the Hebrew source; whence the Adam‐square, which is the pyramid base, and the centre one to the larger square of the encampment. Bend INRI into a circle, and we have 1152, or the circumference of the latter. But Jesus dying (or Abel married) made use of the very words needed to set forth all. He says, Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani.... Read them by their power values, in circular form, as produced from the Adam form as shown, and we have אלי = 113, אלי = 113, or 113—311: לפה = 345, or Moses in the Cain‐Adam pyramid circle: שכחת = 710, equals Dove, or Jonah and 710 ÷ 2 = 355, or 355—553; and finally, as determinative of all יב or ni, where ב = nun,

[All of the above] throws light on the transfiguration scene on the mount. There were present there Peter and James and John with Jesus; or ים Iami, James, Water; יבשה, Peter, Earth; דרה, John, Spirit, Air, and יבור Jesus, Fire, Life—together INRI. But behold Eli and Moses met them there, or אלי and למה or Eli and Lamah, or 113 and 345. And this shows that the scene of transfiguration was connected with the one above set forth.(286)

This kabalistical reading of the Gospel narratives—hitherto supposed to record the most important, the most mystically awful, yet most real events of the life of Jesus—must fall with terrible weight upon some Christians. Every honest trusting believer who has shed tears of reverential emotion over the events of the short period of the public life of Jesus of Nazareth, has to choose one of the two ways opening before him after reading the aforesaid: either his faith has to render him quite impervious to any light coming from human reasoning and evident fact; or he must confess that he has lost his Saviour. The One whom he had hitherto considered as the unique incarnation on this earth of the One Living God in heaven, fades into thin air, on the authority of the properly read and correctly interpreted Bible itself. Moreover, since on the authority of Jerome himself and his accepted and authentic confession, the book written by the hand of Matthew “exhibits matter not for edification but for destruction” (of Church and human Christianity, and only that) what truth can be expected from his famous Vulgate? Human mysteries, concocted by generations of Church Fathers bent upon evolving a religion of their own invention, are seen instead of a divine Revelation; and that this was so is corroborated by a prelate of the Latin Church. Saint Gregory Nazianzen wrote to his friend and confidant, Saint Jerome:

Nothing can impose better on a people than verbiage; the less they understand the more they admire.... Our fathers and doctors have often said, not what they thought, but that to which circumstances and necessity forced them. Which then of the two—the clergy, or the Occultists and Theosophists—are the more blasphemous and dangerous? Is it those who would impose upon the world’s acceptance a Saviour of their own fashioning, a God with human shortcomings, and who therefore is certainly not a perfect divine Being; or those others who say: Jesus of Nazareth was an Initiate, a holy, grand and noble character, but withal human, though truly “a Son of God”?

If Humanity is to accept a so‐called supernatural Religion, how far more logical to the Occultist and the Psychologist seems the transparent allegory given of Jesus by the Gnostics. They, as Occultists, and with Initiates for their Chiefs, differed only in their renderings of the story and in their symbols, and not at all in substance. What say the Ophites, the Nazarenes, and other “heretics”? Sophia, “the Celestial Virgin,” is prevailed upon to send Christos, her emanation, to the help of perishing humanity, from whom Ilda‐Baoth (the Jehovah of the Jews) and his six Sons of Matter (the lower terrestrial Angels) are shutting out the divine light. Therefore, Christos, the perfect,(287) Uniting himself with Sophia [divine wisdom] descended through the seven planetary regions, assuming in each an analogous form ... [and] entered into the man Jesus at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan. From this time forth Jesus began to work miracles; before that he had been entirely ignorant of his own mission.

Ilda‐Baoth, discovering that Christos was bringing to an end his kingdom of Matter, stirred up the Jews, his own people, against Him, and Jesus was put to death. When Jesus was on the Cross Christos and Sophia left His body, and returned to Their own sphere. The material body of Jesus was abandoned to the earth, but He Himself, the Inner Man, was clothed with a body made up of æther.(288) Thenceforth he consisted merely of soul and spirit.... During his sojourn upon earth of eighteen months after he had risen, he received from Sophia that perfect knowledge, that true Gnosis, which he communicated to the small portion of the Apostles who were capable of receiving the same.(289)

The above is transparently Eastern and Hindu; it is the Esoteric Doctrine pure and simple, save for the names and the allegory. It is, more or less, the history of every Adept who obtains Initiation. The Baptism in the Jordan is the Rite of Initiation, the final purification; whether in sacred pagoda, tank, river, or temple lake in Egypt or Mexico. The perfect Christos and Sophia—divine Wisdom and Intelligence—enter the Initiate at the moment of the mystic rite, by transference from Guru to Chelâ, and leave the physical body, at the moment of the death of the latter, to re‐ enter the Nirmânakâya, or the astral Ego of the Adept. The spirit of Buddha [collectively] overshadows the Bodhisattvas of his Church says the Buddhist Ritual of Âryâsangha. Says the Gnostic teaching: When he [the spirit of Christos] shall have collected all the Spiritual, all the Light [that exists in matter], out of Ilbadaoth’s empire, Redemption is accomplished and the end of the world arrived.(290) Say the Buddhists: When Buddha [the Spirit of the Church] hears the hour strike, he will send Maitreya Buddha—after whom the old world wall be destroyed.

That which is said of Basilides by King may be applied as truthfully to every innovator, so called, whether of a Buddhist or of a Christian Church. In the eyes of Clemens Alexandrinus, he says, the Gnostics taught very little that was blameable in their mystical transcendental views. In his eyes the latter [Basilides], was not a heretic, that is an innovator upon the accepted doctrines of the Catholic Church, but only a theosophic speculator who sought to express old truths by new formulæ.(291) There was a Secret Doctrine preached by Jesus; and “secresy” in those days meant Secrets, or Mysteries of Initiation, all of which have been either rejected or disfigured by the Church. In the Clementine Homilies we read: And Peter said: “We remember that our Lord and Teacher, commanding us, said ‘Guard the mysteries for me and the sons of my house.’ ” Wherefore also he explained to His disciples privately the Mysteries of the Kingdom of the Heavens.(292)

The Æons (Stellar Spirits)—emanated from the Unknown of the Gnostics, and identical with the Dhyân Chohans of the Esoteric Doctrine—and their Pleroma, having been transformed into Archangels and the “Spirits of the Presence” by the Greek and Latin Churches, the prototypes have lost caste. The Pleroma(293) was now called the “Heavenly Host,” and therefore the old name had to become identified with Satan and his “Host.” Might is right in every age, and History is full of contrasts. Manes had been called the “Paraclete”(294) by his followers. He was an Occultist, but passed to posterity, owing to the kind exertions of the Church, as a Sorcerer, so a match had to be found for him by way of contrast. We recognise this match in St. Cyprianus of Antioch, a self‐confessed if not a real “Black Magician,” it seems, whom the Church—as a reward for his contrition and humility—subsequently raised to the high rank of Saint and Bishop.

What history knows of him is not much, and it is mostly based on his own confession, the truthfulness of which is warranted, we are told, by St. Gregory, the Empress Eudoxia, Photius and the Holy Church. This curious document was ferreted out by the Marquis de Mirville,(295) in the Vatican, and by him translated into French for the first time, as he assures the reader. We beg his permission to re‐translate a few pages, not for the sake of the penitent Sorcerer, but for that of some students of Occultism, who will thus have an opportunity of comparing the methods of ancient Magic (or as the Church calls it, Demonism) with those of modern Theurgy and Occultism. The scenes described took place at Antioch about the middle of the third century, 252 A.D., says the translator. This Confession was written by the penitent Sorcerer after his conversion; therefore, we are not surprised to find how much room he gives in his lamentations to reviling his Initiator “Satan,” or the “Serpent Dragon,” as he calls him. There are other and more modern instances of the same trait in human nature. Converted Hindus, Pârsîs and other “heathen” of India are apt to denounce their forefathers’ religions at every opportunity. Thus runs the Confession:

O all of you who reject the real mysteries of Christ, see my tears!... You who wallow in your demoniacal practices, learn by my sad example all the vanity of their [the demons’] baits ... I am that Cyprianus, who, vowed to Apollo from his infancy, was early initiated into all the arts of the dragon.(296) Even before the age of seven I had already been introduced into the temple of Mithra: three years later, my parents taking me to Athens to be received as citizen, I was permitted likewise to penetrate the mysteries of Ceres lamenting her daughter,(297) and I also became the guardian of the Dragon in the Temple of Pallas.

Ascending after that to the summit of Mount Olympus, the Seat of the Gods, as it is called, there too I was initiated into the sense, and the real meaning of their [the Gods’] speeches and their clamorous manifestations (strepituum). It is there that I was made to see in imagination (phantasia) [or mâyâ] those trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the help of demons; ... and I saw their dances, their warfares, their snares, illusions and promiscuities. I heard their singing.(298) I saw finally, for forty consecutive days, the phalanx of the Gods and Goddesses, sending from Olympus, as though they were Kings, spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among all the nations.(299) At that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset, the virtues of which were explained to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices.(300)

When I was fifteen my parents desired that I should be made acquainted, not only with all the natural laws in connection with the generation and corruption of bodies on earth, in the air and in the seas, but also with all the other forces grafted(301) (insitas) on these by the Prince of the World in order to counteract their primal and divine constitution.(302) At twenty I went to Memphis, where, penetrating into the Sanctuaries, I was taught to discern all that pertains to the communications of demons [Daimones or Spirits] with terrestrial matters, their aversion for certain places, their sympathy and attraction for others, their expulsion from certain planets, certain objects and laws, their persistence in preferring darkness and their resistance to light.(303) There I learned the number of the fallen Princes,(304) that which takes place in human souls and the bodies they enter into communication with. I learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and the rains, between the motion of the earth(305) and the motion of the seas; I saw the spirits of the Giants plunged in subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a man carrying a burden on his shoulders.(306)

When thirty I travelled to Chaldæa to study there the true power of the air, placed by some in the fire and by the more learned in light [Âkâsha]. I was taught to see that the planets were in their variety as dissimilar as the plants on earth, and the stars were like armies ranged in battle order. I knew the Chaldæan division of Ether into 365 parts,(307) and I perceived that every one of the demons who divide it among themselves(308) was endowed with that material force that permitted him to execute the orders of the Prince and guide all the movements therein [in the Ether].(309) They [the Chaldees] explained to me how those Princes had become participants in the Council of Darkness, ever in opposition to the Council of Light. I got acquainted with the Mediatores [surely not mediums as De Mirville explains!],(310) and upon seeing the covenants they were mutually bound by, I was struck with wonder upon learning the nature of their oaths and observances.(311)

Believe me, I saw the Devil; believe me I have embraced him(312) [like the witches at the Sabbath (?)] when I was yet quite young, and he saluted me by the title of the new Jambres, declaring me worthy of my ministry (initiation). He promised me continual help during life and a principality after death.(313) Having become in great honour [an Adept] under his tuition, he placed under my orders a phalanx of demons, and when I bid him good‐bye, “Courage, good success, excellent Cyprian,” he exclaimed, rising up from his seat to see me to the door, plunging thereby those present into a profound admiration.(314)

Having bidden farewell to his Chaldæan Initiator, the future Sorcerer and Saint went to Antioch. His tale of “iniquity” and subsequent repentance is long but we will make it short. He became “an accomplished Magician,” surrounded by a host of disciples and “candidates to the perilous and sacrilegious art.” He shows himself distributing love‐philtres and dealing in deathly charms “to rid young wives of old husbands, and to ruin Christian virgins.” Unfortunately Cyprianus was not above love himself. He fell in love with the beautiful Justine, a converted maiden, after having vainly tried to make her share the passion one named Aglaides, a profligate, had for her. His “demons failed” he tells us, and he got disgusted with them. This disgust brings on a quarrel between him and his Hierophant, whom he insists on identifying with the Demon; and the dispute is followed by a tournament between the latter and some Christian converts, in which the “Evil One” is, of course, worsted. The Sorcerer is finally baptised and gets rid of his enemy. Having laid at the feet of Anthimes, Bishop of Antioch, all his books on Magic, he became a Saint in company with the beautiful Justine, who had converted him; both suffered martyrdom under the Emperor Diocletian; and both are buried side by side in Rome, in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, near the Baptistery.

We now return to the consideration of the essential identity between the Eastern Gupta Vidyâ and the Kabalah as a system, while we must also show the dissimilarity in their philosophical interpretations since the Middle Ages.

It must be confessed that the views of the Kabalists—meaning by the word those students of Occultism who study the Jewish Kabalah and who know little, if anything, of any other Esoteric literature or of its teachings—are as varied in their synthetic conclusions upon the nature of the mysteries taught even in the Zohar alone, and are as wide of the true mark, as are the dicta upon it of exact Science itself. Like the mediæval Rosicrucian and the Alchemist—like the Abbot Trithemius, John Reuchlin, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, Philalethes, etc.—by whom they swear, the continental Occultists see in the Jewish Kabalah alone the universal well of wisdom; they find in it the secret lore of nearly all the mysteries of Nature—metaphysical and divine—some of them including herein, as did Reuchlin, those of the Christian Bible. For them the Zohar is an Esoteric Thesaurus of all the mysteries of the Christian Gospel; and the Sepher Yetzirah is the light that shines in every darkness, and the container of the keys to open every secret in Nature. Whether many of our modern followers of the mediæval Kabalists have an idea of the real meaning of the symbology of their chosen Masters is another question. Most of them have probably never given even a passing thought to the fact that the Esoteric language used by the Alchemists was their own, and that it was given out as a blind, necessitated by the dangers of the epoch they lived in, and not as the Mystery‐language, used by the Pagan Initiates, which the Alchemists had re‐translated and re‐ veiled once more.

And now the situation stands thus: as the old Alchemists have not left a key to their writings, the latter have become a mystery within an older mystery. The Kabalah is interpreted and checked only by the light which mediæval Mystics have thrown upon it, and they, in their forced Christology, had to put a theological dogmatic mask on every ancient teaching, the result being that each Mystic among our modern European and American Kabalists interprets the old symbols in his own way, and each refers his opponents to the Rosicrucian and the Alchemist of three and four hundred years ago. Mystic Christian dogma is the central maëlstrom that engulfs every old Pagan symbol, and Christianity—Anti‐Gnostic Christianity, the modern retort that has replaced the alembic of the Alchemists—has distilled out of all recognition the Kabalah, i.e., the Hebrew Zohar and other rabbinical mystic works. And now it has come to this: The student interested in the Secret Sciences has to believe that the whole cycle of the symbolical “Ancient of Days,” every hair of the mighty beard of Macroprosopos, refers only to the history of the earthly career of Jesus of Nazareth! And we are told that the Kabalah “was first taught to a select company of angels” by Jehovah himself—who, out of modesty, one must think, made himself only

the third Sephiroth in it, and a female one into the bargain. So many Kabalists, so many explanations. Some believe—perchance with more reason than the rest—that the substance of the Kabalah is the basis upon which Masonry is built, since modern Masonry is undeniably the dim and hazy reflection of primeval Occult Masonry, of the teaching of those divine Masons who established the Mysteries of the prehistoric and prediluvian Temples of Initiation, raised by truly superhuman Builders. Others declare that the tenets expounded in the Zohar relate merely to mysteries terrestrial and profane, having no more concern with metaphysical speculations—such as the soul, or the post‐mortem life of man—than have the Mosaic books. Others, again—and these are the real, genuine Kabalists, who had their instructions from initiated Jewish Rabbis—affirm that if the two most learned Kabalists of the mediæval period, John Reuchlin and Paracelsus, differed in their religious professions—the former being the Father of the Reformation and the latter a Roman Catholic, at least in appearance—the Zohar cannot contain much of Christian dogma or tenet, one way or the other. In other words, they maintain that the numerical language of the Kabalistic works teaches universal truths—and not any one Religion in particular. Those who make this statement are perfectly right in saying that the Mystery‐ language used in the Zohar

and in other Kabalistic literature was once, in a time of unfathomable antiquity, the universal language of Humanity. But they become entirely wrong if to this fact they add the untenable theory that this language was invented by, or was the original property of, the Hebrews, from whom all the other nations borrowed it.

They are wrong, because, although the Zohar (זהר ZHR), The Book of Splendour of Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, did indeed originate with him—his son, Rabbi Eleazar, helped by his secretary, Rabbi Abba, compiling the Kabalistic teachings of his deceased father into a work called the Zohar—those teachings were not Rabbi Simeon’s, as the Gupta Vidyâ shows. They are as old as the Jewish nation itself, and far older. In short, the writings which pass at present under the title of the Zohar of Rabbi Simeon are about as original as were the Egyptian synchronistic Tables after being handled by Eusebius, or as St. Paul’s Epistles after their revision and correction by the “Holy Church.”(315)

Let us throw a rapid retrospective glance at the history and the tribulations of that very same Zohar, as we know of them from trustworthy tradition and documents. We need not stop to discuss whether it was written in the first century B.C. or in the first century A.D. Suffice it for us to know that there was at all times a Kabalistic literature among the Jews; that though historically it can be traced only from the time of the Captivity, yet from the Pentateuch down to the Talmud the documents of that literature were ever written in a kind of Mystery‐language, were, in fact, a series of symbolical records which the Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldæan Sanctuaries, only adapting them to their own national history—if history it can be called. Now that which we claim—and it is not denied even by the most prejudiced Kabalist, is that although Kabalistic lore had passed orally through long ages down to the latest Pre‐Christian Tanaim, and although David and Solomon may have been great Adepts in it, as is claimed, yet no one dared to write it down till the days of Simeon Ben Iochai. In short, the lore found in Kabalistic literature was never recorded in writing before the first century of the modern era.

This brings the critic to the following reflection: While in India we find the Vedas and the Brâhmanical literature written down and edited ages before the Christian era—the Orientalists themselves being obliged to concede a couple of millenniums of antiquity to the older manuscripts; while the most important allegories in Genesis are found recorded on Babylonian tiles centuries B.C.; while the Egyptian sarcophagi yearly yield proofs of the origin of the doctrines borrowed and copied by the Jews; yet the Monotheism of the Jews is exalted and thrown into the teeth of all the Pagan nations, and the so‐called Christian Revelation is placed above all others, like the sun above a row of street gas‐lamps. Yet it is perfectly well known, having been ascertained beyond doubt or cavil, that no manuscript, whether Kabalistic, Talmudistic, or Christian, which has reached our present generation, is of earlier date than the first centuries of our era, whereas this can certainly never be said of the Egyptian papyri or the Chaldæan tiles, or even of some Eastern writings.

But let us limit our present research to the Kabalah, and chiefly to the Zohar—called also the Midrash. This book, whose teachings were edited for the first time between 70 and 110 A.D., is known to have been lost, and its contents to have been scattered throughout a number of minor manuscripts, until the thirteenth century. The idea that it was the composition of Moses de Leon of Valladolid, in Spain who passed it off as a pseudograph of Simeon Ben Iochai, is ridiculous and was well disposed of by Munk—though he does point to more than one modern interpolation in the Zohar. At the same time it is more than certain that the present Book of Zohar was written by Moses de Leon, and, owing to joint editorship, is more Christian in its colouring than is many a genuine Christian volume. Munk gives the reason why, saying that it appears evident that the author made use of ancient documents, and among these of certain Midraschim, or collections of traditions and Biblical expositions, which we do not now possess.

As a proof, also, that the knowledge of the Esoteric system taught in the Zohar came to the Jews very late indeed—at any rate, that they had so far forgotten it that the innovations and additions made by de Leon provoked no criticism, but were thankfully received—Munk quotes from Tholuck, a Jewish authority, the following information: Haya Gaon, who died in 1038, is to our knowledge the first author who developed (and perfected) the theory of the Sephiroth, and he gave them names which we find again among the Kabalistic names used by Dr. Jellinek. Moses Ben Schem‐Tob de Leon, who held intimate intercourse with the Syrian and Chaldæan Christian learned scribes, was enabled through the latter to acquire a knowledge of some of the Gnostic writings.(316) Again, the Sepher Jetzirah (Book of Creation)—though attributed to Abraham and though very archaic as to its contents—is first mentioned in the eleventh century by Jehuda Ho Levi (Chazari). And these two, the Zohar and Jetzirah, are the storehouse of all the subsequent Kabalistic works. Now let us see how far the Hebrew sacred canon itself is to be trusted.

The word “Kabalah” comes from the root “to receive,” and has a meaning identical with the Sanskrit “Smriti” (“received by tradition”)—a system of oral teaching, passing from one generation of priests to another, as was the case with the Brâhmanical books before they were embodied in manuscript. The Kabalistic tenets came to the Jews from the Chaldæans; and if Moses knew the primitive and universal language of the Initiates, as did every Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numerical system on which it was based, he may have—and we say he has—written Genesis and other “scrolls.” The five books that now pass current under his name, the Pentateuch, are not withal the original Mosaic Records.(317) Nor were they written in the old Hebrew square letters, nor even in the Samaritan characters, for both alphabets belong to a date later than that of Moses, and Hebrew—as it is now known—did not exist in the days of the great lawgiver, either as a language or as an alphabet.

As no statements contained in the records of the Secret Doctrine of the East are regarded as of any value by the world in general, and since to be understood by and convince the reader one has to quote names familiar to him, and use arguments and proofs out of documents which are accessible to all, the following facts may perhaps demonstrate that our assertions are not merely based on the teachings of Occult Records: (1) The great Orientalist and scholar, Klaproth, denied positively the antiquity of the so‐called Hebrew alphabet, on the ground that the square Hebrew characters in which the Biblical manuscripts are written, and which we use in printing, were probably derived from the Palmyrene writing, or some other Semitic alphabet, so that the Hebrew Bible is written merely in the Chaldaic phonographs of Hebrew words. The late Dr. Kenealy pertinently remarked that the Jews and Christians rely on A phonograph of a dead and almost unknown language, as abstruse as the cuneiform letters on the mountains of Assyria.(318) (2) The attempts made to carry back the square Hebrew character to the time of Esdras (B.C. 458) have all failed.

(3) It is asserted that the Jews took their alphabet from the Babylonians during their captivity. But there are scholars who do not carry the now‐ known Hebrew square letters beyond the late period of the fourth century, A.D.(319) The Hebrew Bible is precisely as if Homer were printed, not in Greek, but in English letters; or as if Shakespeare’s works were phonographed in Burmese.(320) (4) Those who maintain that the ancient Hebrew is the same as the Syraic or Chaldaic have to see what is said in Jeremiah, wherein the Lord is made to threaten the house of Israel with bringing against it the mighty and ancient nation of the Chaldæans: A nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.(321) This is quoted by Bishop Walton(322) against the assumption of the identity of Chaldaic and Hebrew, and ought to settle the question. (5) The real Hebrew of Moses was lost after the seventy years’ captivity, when the Israelites brought back Chaldaic with them and grafted it on their own language, the fusion resulting in a dialectical variety of Chaldaic, the Hebrew tincturing it very slightly and ceasing from that time to be a spoken language.(323)

As to our statement that the present Old Testament does not contain the original Books of Moses, this is proven by the facts that: (1) The Samaritans repudiated the Jewish canonical books and their “Law of Moses.” They will have neither the Psalms of David, nor the Prophets, nor the Talmud and Mishna: nothing but the real Books of Moses, and in quite a different edition.(324) The Books of Moses and of Joshua are disfigured out of recognition by the Talmudists, they say. (2) The “black Jews” of Cochin, Southern India—who know nothing of the Babylonian Captivity or of the ten “lost tribes” (the latter a pure invention of the Rabbis), proving that these Jews must have come to India before the year 600 B.C.—have their Books of Moses which they will show to no one. And these Books and Laws differ greatly from the present scrolls. Nor are they written in the square Hebrew characters (semi‐Chaldaic and semi‐Palmyrean) but in the archaic letters, as we were assured by one of them—letters entirely unknown to all but themselves and a few Samaritans.

(3) The Karaim Jews of the Crimea—who call themselves the descendants of the true children of Israel, i.e., of the Sadducees—reject the Torah and the Pentateuch of the Synagogue, reject the Sabbath of the Jews (keeping Friday), will have neither the Books of the Prophets nor the Psalms—nothing but their own Books of Moses and what they call his one and real Law. This makes it plain that the Kabalah of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldæans, and that the real Kabalah is found only in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers now in the possession of some Persian Sufis. Every nation in antiquity had its traditions based on those of the Âryan Secret Doctrine; and each nation points to this day to a Sage of its own race who had received the primordial revelation from, and had recorded it under the orders of, a more or less divine Being. Thus it was with the Jews, as with all others. They had received their Occult Cosmogony and Laws from their Initiate, Moses, and they have now entirely mutilated them.

Âdi is the generic name in our Doctrine of all the first men, i.e., the first speaking races, in each of the seven zones—hence probably “Ad‐am.” And such first men, in every nation, are credited with having been taught the divine mysteries of creation. Thus, the Sabæans (according to a tradition preserved in the Sufi works) say that when the “Third First Man” left the country adjacent to India for Babel, a tree(325) was given to him, then another and a third tree, whose leaves recorded the history of all the races; the “Third First Man” meant one who belonged to the Third Root‐Race, and yet the Sabæans call him Adam. The Arabs of Upper Egypt, and the Mohammedans generally, have recorded a tradition that the Angel Azaz‐el brings a message from the Wisdom‐Word of God to Adam whenever he is reborn; this the Sufis explain by adding that this book is given to every Seli‐Allah (“the chosen one of God”) for his wise men. The story narrated by the Kabalists—namely, that the book given to Adam before his Fall (a book full of mysteries and signs and events which either had been, were, or were to be) was taken away by the Angel Raziel after Adam’s Fall, but again restored to him lest men might lose its wisdom and instruction; that this book was delivered by Adam to Seth, who passed it to Enoch, and the latter to Abraham, and so on in succession to the most wise of every generation—relates to all nations, and not to the Jews alone.

For Berosus narrates in his turn that Xisuthrus compiled a book, writing it at the command of his deity, which book was buried in Zipara(326) or Sippara, the City of the Sun, in Ba‐bel‐on‐ya, and was dug up long afterwards and deposited in the temple of Belos; it is from this book that Berosus took his history of the antediluvian dynasties of Gods and Heroes. Ælian (in Nimrod) speaks of a Hawk (emblem of the Sun), who in the days of the beginnings brought to the Egyptians a book containing the wisdom of their religion. The Sam‐Sam of the Sabæans is also a Kabalah, as is the Arabic Zem‐Zem (Well of Wisdom).(327)

We are told by a very learned Kabalist that Seyffarth asserts that the old Egyptian tongue was only old Hebrew, or a Semitic dialect; and he proves this, our correspondent thinks, by sending him “some 500 words in common” in the two languages. This proves very little to our mind. It only shows that the two nations lived together for centuries, and that before adopting the Chaldæan for their phonetic tongue the Jews had adopted the old Coptic or Egyptian. The Israelitish Scriptures drew their hidden wisdom from the primeval Wisdom‐Religion that was the source of other Scriptures, only it was sadly degraded by being applied to things and mysteries of this Earth, instead of to those in the higher and ever‐ present, though invisible, spheres. Their national history, if they can claim any autonomy before their return from the Babylonian captivity, cannot be carried back one day earlier than the time of Moses. The language of Abraham—if Zeruan (Saturn, the emblem of time—the “Sar,” “Saros,” a “cycle”) can be said to have any language—was not Hebrew, but Chaldaic, perhaps Arabic, and still more likely some old Indian dialect. This is shown by numerous proofs, some of which we give here; and unless, indeed, to please the tenacious and stubborn believers in Bible chronology, we cripple the years of our globe to the Procrustean bed of 7,000 years, it becomes self‐evident that the Hebrew cannot be called an old language, merely because Adam is supposed to have used it in the Garden of Eden. Bunsen says in Egypt’s Place in Universal History that in the

Chaldæan tribe immediately connected with Abraham, we find reminiscences of dates disfigured and misunderstood as genealogies of single men, or figures of epochs. The Abrahamic recollections go back at least three millennia beyond the grandfather of Jacob.(328)

The Bible of the Jews has ever been an Esoteric Book in its hidden meaning, but this meaning has not remained one and the same throughout since the days of Moses. It is useless, considering the limited space we can give to this subject, to attempt anything like the detailed history of the vicissitudes of the so‐called Pentateuch, and besides, the history is too well known to need lengthy disquisitions. Whatever was, or was not, the Mosaic Book of Creation—from Genesis down to the Prophets—the Pentateuch of to‐day is not the same. It is sufficient to read the criticisms of Erasmus, and even of Sir Isaac Newton, to see clearly that the Hebrew Scriptures had been tampered with and remodelled, had been lost and rewritten, a dozen times before the days of Ezra. This Ezra himself may yet one day turn out to have been Azara, the Chaldæan priest of the Fire and Sun‐God, a renegade who, through his desire of becoming a ruler, and in order to create an Ethnarchy, restored the old lost Jewish Books in his own way. It was an easy thing for one versed in the secret system of Esoteric numerals, or Symbology, to put together events from the stray books that had been preserved by various tribes, and make of them an apparently harmonious

narrative of creation and of the evolution of the Judæan race. But in its hidden meaning, from Genesis to the last word of Deuteronomy, the Pentateuch is the symbolical narrative of the sexes, and is an apotheosis of Phallicism, under astronomical and physiological personations.(329) Its coördination, however, is only apparent; and the human hand appears at every moment, is found everywhere in the “Book of God.” Hence the Kings of Edom discuss in Genesis before any king had reigned in Israel; Moses records his own death, and Aaron dies twice and is buried in two different places, to say nothing of other trifles. For the Kabalist they are trifles, for he knows that all these events are not history, but are simply the cloak designed to envelope and hide various physiological peculiarities; but for the sincere Christian, who accepts all these “dark sayings” in good faith, it matters a good deal. Solomon may very well be regarded as a myth(330) by the Masons, as they lose nothing by it, for all their secrets are Kabalistic and allegorical—for those few, at any rate, who understand them. For the Christian, however, to give up Solomon, the son of David—from whom Jesus is made to descend—involves a real loss. But how even the Kabalists can claim great antiquity for the Hebrew texts of

the old Biblical scrolls now possessed by the scholars is not made at all apparent. For it is certainly a fact of history, based on the confessions of the Jews themselves, and of Christians likewise, that:

The Scriptures having perished in the captivity of Nabuchodonozar, Esdras, the Levite, the priest, in the times of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, having become inspired, in the exercise of prophecy restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures.(331) One must have a strong belief in “Esdras,” and especially in his good faith, to accept the now‐existing copies as genuine Mosaic Books; for: Assuming that the copies, or rather phonographs which had been made by Hilkiah and Esdras, and the various anonymous editors, were really true and genuine, they must have been wholly exterminated by Antiochus; and the versions of the Old Testament which now subsist must have been made by Judas, or by some unknown compilers, probably from the Greek of the Seventy, long after the appearance and death of Jesus.(332)

The Bible, therefore, as it is now (the Hebrew texts, that is), depends for its accuracy on the genuineness of the Septuagint; this, we are again told, was written miraculously by the Seventy, in Greek, and the original copy having been lost since that time, our texts are re‐ translated back into Hebrew from that language. But in this vicious circle of proofs we once more have to rely upon the good faith of two Jews—Josephus and Philo Judæus of Alexandria—these two Historians being the only witnesses that the Septuagint was written under the circumstances narrated. And yet it is just these circumstances that are very little calculated to inspire one with confidence. For what does Josephus tell us? He says that Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to read the Hebrew Law in Greek, wrote to Eleazar, the high‐priest of the Jews, begging him to send him six men from each of the twelve tribes, who should make a translation for him. Then follows a truly miraculous story, vouchsafed by Aristeas, of these seventy‐two men from the twelve tribes of Israel, who, shut up in an island, compiled their translation in exactly seventy‐two days, etc.

All this is very edifying, and one might have had very little reason to doubt the story, had not the “ten lost tribes” been made to play their part in it. How could these tribes, lost between 700 and 900 B.C., each send six men some centuries later, to satisfy the whim of Ptolemy, and to disappear once more immediately afterwards from the horizon? A miracle, verily. We are expected, nevertheless, to regard such documents as the Septuagint as containing direct divine revelation: Documents originally written in a tongue about which nobody now knows anything; written by authors that are practically mythical, and at dates as to which no one is able even to make a defensible surmise; documents of the original copies of which there does not now remain a shred. Yet people will persist in talking of the ancient Hebrew, as if there were any man left in the world who now knows one word of it. So little, indeed, was Hebrew known that both the Septuagint and the New Testament had to be written in a heathen language (the Greek), and no better reasons for it given than what Hutchinson says, namely, that the Holy Ghost chose to write the New Testament in Greek.

The Hebrew language is considered to be very old, and yet there exists no trace of it anywhere on the old monuments, not even in Chaldæa. Among the great number of inscriptions of various kinds found in the ruins of that country: One in the Hebrew Chaldee letter and language has never been found; nor has a single authentic medal or gem in this new‐ fangled character been ever discovered, which could carry it even to the days of Jesus.(333) The original Book of Daniel is written in a dialect which is a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic; it is not even in Chaldaic, with the exception of a few verses interpolated later on. According to Sir W. Jones and other Orientalists, the oldest discoverable languages of Persia are the Chaldaic and Sanskrit, and there is no trace of the “Hebrew” in these. It would be very surprising if there were, since the Hebrew known to the Philologists does not date earlier than 500 B.C., and its characters belong to a far later period still. Thus, while the real Hebrew characters, if not altogether lost are nevertheless so hopelessly transformed—

A mere inspection of the alphabet showing that it has been shaped and made regular, in doing which the characteristic marks of some of the letters have been retrenched in order to make them more square and uniform—(334) that no one but an initiated Rabbi of Samaria or a “Jain” could read them, the new system of the masoretic points has made them a sphinx‐riddle for all. Punctuation is now to be found everywhere in all the later manuscripts, and by means of it anything can be made of a text; a Hebrew scholar can put on the texts any interpretation he likes. Two instances given by Kenealy will suffice: In Genesis, xlix. 21, we read: Naphtali is a hind let loose; he giveth goodly words. By only a slight alteration of the points Bochart changes this into: Naphtali is a spreading tree, shooting forth beautiful branches. So again, in Psalms (xxix. 9), instead of: The voice of the Lord maketh the hind to calve, and discovereth the forests; Bishop Lowth gives: The voice of the Lord striketh the oak, and discovereth the forests. The same word in Hebrew signifies “God” and “nothing,” etc.(335)

With regard to the claim made by some Kabalists that there was in antiquity one knowledge and one language, this claim is also our own, and it is very just. Only it must be added, to make the thing clear, that this knowledge and language have both been esoteric ever since the submersion of the Atlanteans. The Tower of Babel myth relates to that enforced secrecy. Men falling into sin were regarded as no longer trustworthy for the reception of such knowledge, and, from being universal, it became limited to the few. Thus, the “one‐lip”—or the Mystery‐language—being gradually denied to subsequent generations, all the nations became severally restricted to their own national tongue; and forgetting the primeval Wisdom‐language, they stated that the Lord—one of the chief Lords or Hierophants of the Mysteries of the Java Aleim—had confounded the languages of all the earth, so that the sinners could understand one another’s speech no longer. But Initiates remained in every land and nation, and the Israelites, like all others, had their learned Adepts. One of the keys to this Universal Knowledge is a pure geometrical and numerical system, the alphabet of every great nation having a numerical value for every letter,(336) and, moreover, a system of permutation of syllables and synonyms which is carried to perfection in the Indian Occult methods, and which the Hebrew certainly has not. This one system, containing the elements of Geometry and Numeration, was used by the Jews for the purpose of concealing their Esoteric creed under the mask of a popular and national monotheistic Religion.

The last who knew the system to perfection were the learned and “atheistical” Sadducees, the greatest enemies of the pretensions of the Pharisees and of their confused notions brought from Babylon. Yes, the Sadducees, the Illusionists, who maintained that the Soul, the Angels, and all similar Beings, were illusions because they were temporary—thus showing themselves at one with Eastern Esotericism. And since they rejected every book and Scripture, with the exception of the Law of Moses, it seems that the latter must have been very different from what it is now.(337)

The whole of the foregoing is written with an eye to our Kabalists. Great scholars as some of them undoubtedly are, they are nevertheless wrong to hang the harps of their faith on the willows of Talmudic growth—on the Hebrew scrolls, whether in square or pointed characters, now in our public libraries, museums, or even in the collections of Paleographers. There do not remain half‐a‐dozen copies from the true Mosaic Hebrew scrolls in the whole world. And those who are in possession of these—as we indicated a few pages back—would not part with them, or even allow them to be examined, on any consideration whatever. How then can any Kabalist claim priority for Hebrew Esotericism, and say, as does one of our correspondents, that “the Hebrew has come down from a far remoter antiquity than any of them [whether Egyptian or even Sanskrit!], and that it was the source, or nearer to the old original source, than any of them”?(338) As our correspondent says: “It becomes more convincing to me every day that in a far past time there was _a mighty civilization with __ enormous learning, which had a common language over the earth, as to which its essence can be recovered from the fragments which now exist_.”

Aye, there existed indeed a mighty civilization, and a still mightier secret learning and knowledge, the entire scope of which can never be discovered by Geometry and the Kabalah alone: for there are seven keys to the large entrance‐door, and not one, nor even two, keys can ever open it sufficiently to allow more than glimpses of what lies within.

Every scholar must be aware that there are two distinct styles—two schools, so to speak—plainly traceable in the Hebrew Scriptures: the Elohistic and the Jehovistic. The portions belonging to these respectively are so blended together, so completely mixed up by later hands, that often all external characteristics are lost. Yet it is also known that the two schools were antagonistic; that the one taught esoteric, the other exoteric, or theological doctrines; that the one, the Elohists, were Seers (Roch), whereas the other, the Jehovists, were prophets (Nabhi),(339) and that the latter—who later became Rabbis—were generally only nominally prophets by virtue of their official position, as the Pope is called the infallible and inspired vicegerent of God. That, again, the Elohists meant by “Elohim” “forces,” identifying their Deity, as in the Secret Doctrine, with Nature; while the Jehovists made of Jehovah a personal God externally, and used the term simply as a phallic symbol—a number of them secretly disbelieving even in metaphysical, abstract Nature, and synthesizing all on the terrestrial scale. Finally, the Elohists made of man the divine incarnate image of the Elohim, emanated first in all Creation; and the Jehovists show him as the last, the crowning glory of the animal creation, instead of his being the head of all the sensible beings on earth. (This is reversed by some Kabalists, but the reversion is due to the designedly‐produced confusion in the texts, especially in the first four chapters of Genesis.)

Take the Zohar and find in it the description relating to Ain‐Suph, the Western or Semitic Parabrahman. What passages have come so nearly up to the Vedântic ideal as the following: The creation [the evolved Universe] is the garment of that which has no name, the garment woven from the Deity’s own substance.(340) Between that which is Ain or “nothing,” and the Heavenly Man, there is an Impersonal First Cause, however, of which it is said: Before It gave any shape to this world, before It produced any form, It was alone, without form or similitude to anything else. Who, then, can comprehend It, how It was before the creation, since It was formless? Hence it is forbidden to represent It by any form, similitude, or even by Its sacred name, by a single letter or a single point.(341) The sentence that follows, however, is an evident later interpolation; for it draws attention to a complete contradiction: And to this the words (Deut. iv. 15), refer—“Ye saw no manner of similitude on the day the Lord spake unto you.” But this reference to Chapter iv. of Deuteronomy, when in Chapter v. God is mentioned as speaking “face to face” with the people, is very clumsy.

Not one of the names given to Jehovah in the Bible has any reference whatever to either Ain‐Suph or the Impersonal First‐Cause (which is the Logos) of the Kabalah; but they all refer to the Emanations. It says For although to reveal itself to us, the concealed of all the concealed sent forth the Ten Emanations [Sephiroth] called the Form of God, Form of the Heavenly Man, yet since even this luminous form was too dazzling for our vision, it had to assume another form, or had to put on another garment, which is the Universe. The Universe, therefore, or the visible world, is a farther expansion of the Divine Substance, and is called in the Kabalah “The Garment of God.”(342)

This is the doctrine of all the Hindu Purânas, especially that of the Vishnu Purâna. Vishnu pervades the Universe and is that Universe; Brahmâ enters the Mundane Egg, and issues from it as the Universe; Brahmâ even dies with it and there remains only Brahman, the impersonal, the eternal, the unborn, and the unqualifiable. The Ain‐Suph of the Chaldæans and later of the Jews is assuredly a copy of the Vaidic Deity; while the “Heavenly Adam,” the Macrocosm which unites in itself the totality of beings and is the Esse of the visible Universe, finds his original in the Purânic Brahmâ. In Sôd, “the Secret of the Law,” one recognizes the expressions used in the oldest fragments of the Gupta Vidyâ, the Secret Knowledge. And it is not venturing too much to say that even a Rabbi quite familiar with his own special Rabbinical Hebrew would only comprehend its secrets thoroughly if he added to his learning a serious knowledge of the Hindu philosophies. Let us turn to Stanza I. of the Book of Dzyan for an example.

The Zohar premises, as does the Secret Doctrine, a universal, eternal Essence, passive—because absolute—in all that men call attributes. The pregenetic or pre‐cosmical Triad is a pure metaphysical abstraction. The notion of a triple hypostasis in one Unknown Divine Essence is as old as speech and thought. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Shankara—the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer—are the three manifested attributes of it, appearing and disappearing with Kosmos; the visible Triangle, so to speak, on the plane of the ever‐invisible Circle. This is the primeval root‐ thought of thinking Humanity; the Pythagorean Triangle emanating from the ever‐concealed Monad, or the Central Point. Plato speaks of it and Plotinus calls it an ancient doctrine, on which Cudworth remarks that: Since Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato, who all of them asserted a Trinity of divine hypostases, unquestionably derived their doctrine from the Egyptians, it may be reasonably suspected that the Egyptians did the like before them.(343) The Egyptians certainly derived their Trinity from the Indians. Wilson justly observes: As, however, the Grecian accounts and those of the Egyptians are much more perplexed and unsatisfactory than those of the Hindus, it is most probable that we find amongst them the doctrine in its most original, as well as most methodical and significant form.(344) This, then, is the meaning:

“Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were once more One.”(345) Space was, and is ever, as it is between the Manvantaras. The Universe in its pre‐kosmic state was once more homogeneous and one—outside its aspects. This was a Kabalistic, and is now a Christian teaching. As is constantly shown in the Zohar, the Infinite Unity, or Ain‐Suph, is ever placed outside human thought and appreciation; and in Sepher Jetzirah we see the Spirit of God—the Logos, not the Deity itself—called One. One is the Spirit of the living God, ... who liveth for ever. Voice, Spirit, [of the Spirit], and Word: this is the Holy Spirit,(346) —and the Quaternary. From this Cube emanates the whole Kosmos. Says the Secret Doctrine: “It is called to life. The mystic Cube in which rests the Creative Idea, the manifesting Mantra [or articulate speech—Vâch] and the holy Purusha [both radiations of prima materia] exist in the Eternity in the Divine Substance in their latent state” —during Pralaya.

And in the Sepher Jetzirah, when the Three‐in‐One are to be called into being—by the manifestation of Shekinah, the first effulgency or radiation in the manifesting Kosmos—the “Spirit of God,” or Number One,(347) fructifies and awakens the dual Potency, Number Two, Air, and Number Three, Water; in these “are darkness and emptiness, slime and dung”—which is Chaos, the Tohu‐Vah‐Bohu. The Air and Water emanate Number Four, Ether or Fire, the Son. This is the Kabalistic Quaternary. This Fourth Number, which in the manifested Kosmos is the One, or the Creative God, is with the Hindus the “Ancient,” Sanat, the Prajâpati of the Vedas and the Brahmâ of the Brâhmans—the heavenly Androgyne, as he becomes the male only after separating himself into two bodies, Vâch and Virâj. With the Kabalists, he is at first the Jah‐Havah, only later becoming Jehovah, like Virâj, his prototype; after separating himself as Adam‐Kadmon into Adam and Eve in the formless, and into Cain‐Abel in the semi‐objective, world, he became finally the Jah‐Havah, or man and woman, in Enoch, the son of Seth.

For, the true meaning of the compound name of Jehovah—of which, unvoweled, you can make almost anything—is: men and women, or humanity composed of its two sexes. From the first chapter to the end of the fourth chapter of Genesis every name is a permutation of another name, and every personage is at the same time somebody else. A Kabalist traces Jehovah from the Adam of earth to Seth, the third son—or rather race—of Adam.(348) Thus Seth is Jehovah male; and Enos, being a permutation of Cain and Abel, is Jehovah male and female, or our mankind. The Hindu Brahmâ‐Virâj, Virâj‐Manu, and Manu‐Vaivasvata, with his daughter and wife, Vâch, present the greatest analogy with these personages—for anyone who will take the trouble of studying the subject in both the Bible and the Purânas. It is said of Brahmâ that he created himself as Manu, and that he was born of, and was identical with, his original self, while he constituted the female portion “Shata‐rûpâ” (hundred‐formed). In this Hindu Eve, “the mother of all living beings,” Brahmâ created Virâj, who is himself, but on a lower scale, as Cain is Jehovah on an inferior scale: both are the first males of the Third Race. The same idea is illustrated in the Hebrew name of God (יהוה) Read from right to left “Jod” (י) is the father, “He” (ה) the mother, “Vau” (ו) the son, and “He” (ה), repeated at the end of the word, is generation, the act of birth, materiality. This is surely a sufficient reason why the God of the Jews and Christians should be personal, as much as the male Brahmâ, Vishnu, or Shiva of the orthodox, exoteric Hindu.

Thus the term of Jhvh alone—now accepted as the name of “One living [male] God”—will yield, if seriously studied, not only the whole mystery of Being (in the Biblical sense,) but also that of the Occult Theogony, from the highest divine Being, the third in order, down to man. As shown by the best Hebraists: The verbal היה, or Hâyâh, or E‐y‐e, means to be, to exist, while חיה or Châyâh, or H‐y‐e, means to live, as motion of existence.(349)

Hence Eve stands as the evolution and the never‐ceasing “becoming” of Nature. Now if we take the almost untranslatable Sanskrit word Sat, which means the quintessence of absolute immutable Being, or Be‐ness—as it has been rendered by an able Hindu Occultist—we shall find no equivalent for it in any language; but it may be regarded as most closely resembling “Ain,” or “En‐Suph,” Boundless Being. Then the term Hâyâh, “to be,” as passive, changeless, yet manifested existence may perhaps be rendered by the Sanskrit Jîvâtmâ, universal life or soul, in its secondary and cosmic meaning; while “Châyâh,” “to live,” as “motion of existence,” is simply Prâna, the ever‐changing life in its objective sense. It is at the head of this third category that the Occultist finds Jehovah—the Mother, Binah, and the Father, Arelim. This is made plain in the Zohar, when the emanation and evolution of the Sephiroth are explained: First, Ain‐Suph, then Shekinah, the Garment or Veil of Infinite Light, then Sephira or the Kadmon, and, thus making the fourth, the spiritual Substance sent forth from the Infinite Light. This Sephira is called the Crown, Kether, and has besides, six other names—in all seven. These names are: 1. Kether; 2. the Aged; 3. the Primordial Point; 4. the White Head; 5. the Long Face; 6. the Inscrutable Height; and 7. Ehejeh (“I am”.)(350) This septenary Sephira is said to contain in itself the nine Sephiroth. But before showing how she brought them forth, let us read an explanation about the Sephiroth in the Talmud, which gives it as an archaic tradition, or Kabalah.

There are three groups (or orders) of Sephiroth: 1. The Sephiroth called “divine attributes” (the Triad in the Holy Quaternary); 2. the sidereal (personal) Sephiroth; 3. the metaphysical Sephiroth, or a periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth (Kether, Chokmah and Binah), the rest of the seven being the personal “Seven Spirits of the Presence” (also of the planets, therefore). Speaking of these, the angels are meant, though not because they are seven, but because they represent the seven Sephiroth which contain in them the universality of the Angels. This shows (a) that, when the first four Sephiroth are separated, as a Triad‐Quaternary—Sephira being its synthesis—there remain only seven Sephiroth, as there are seven Rishis; these become ten when the Quaternary, or the first divine Cube, is scattered into units; and (b) that while Jehovah might have been viewed as the Deity, if he be included in the three divine groups or orders of the Sephiroth, the collective Elohim, or the quaternary indivisible Kether, once that he becomes a male God, he is no more than one of the Builders of the lower group—a Jewish Brahmâ.(351) A demonstration is now attempted.

The first Sephira, containing the other nine, brought them forth in this order: (2) Hokmah (Chokmah, or Wisdom), a masculine active potency represented among the divine names as Jah; and, as a permutation or an evolution into lower forms in this instance—becoming the Auphanim (or the Wheels—cosmic rotation of matter) among the army, or the angelic hosts. From this Chokmah emanated a feminine passive potency called (3) Intelligence, Binah, whose divine name is Jehovah, and whose angelic name, among the Builders and Hosts, is Arelim.(352) It is from the union of these two potencies, male and female (or Chokmah and Binah) that emanated all the other Sephiroth, the seven orders of the Builders. Now if we call Jehovah by his divine name, then he becomes at best and forthwith “a female passive” potency in Chaos. And if we view him as a male God, he is no more than one of many, an Angel, Arelim. But straining the analysis to its highest point, and if his male name Jah, that of Wisdom, be allowed to him, still he is not the “Highest and the one Living God;” for he is contained with many others within Sephira, and Sephira herself is a third Potency in Occultism, though regarded as the first in the exoteric Kabalah—and is one, moreover, of lesser importance than the Vaidic Aditi, or the Primordial Water of Space, which becomes after many a permutation the Astral Light of the Kabalist.

Thus the Kabalah, as we have it now, is shown to be of the greatest importance in explaining the allegories and “dark sayings” of the Bible. As an Esoteric work upon the mysteries of creation, however, it is almost worthless as it is now disfigured, unless checked by the Chaldæan Book of Numbers or by the tenets of the Eastern Secret Science, or Esoteric Wisdom. The Western nations have neither the original Kabalah, nor yet the Mosaic Bible.

Finally, it is demonstrated by internal as well as by external evidence, on the testimony of the best European Hebraists, and the confessions of the learned Jewish Rabbis themselves, that “an ancient document forms the essential basis of the Bible, which received very considerable insertions and supplements;” and that “the Pentateuch arose out of the primitive or older document by means of a supplementary one.” Therefore in the absence of the Book of Numbers,(353) the Kabalists of the West are only entitled to come to definite conclusions, when they have at hand some data at least from that “ancient document”—data now found scattered throughout Egyptian papyri, Assyrian tiles, and the traditions preserved by the descendants of the disciples of the last Nazars. Instead of that, most of them accept as their authorities and infallible guides Sabre d’Olivet—who was a man of immense erudition and of speculative mind, but neither a Kabalist nor an Occultist, either Western or Eastern—and the Mason Ragon, the greatest of the “Widow’s sons,” who was even less of an Orientalist than d’Olivet, for Sanskrit learning was almost unknown in the days of both these eminent scholars.

How can any Kabalist, acquainted with the foregoing, deduce his conclusions with regard to the true Esoteric beliefs of the primitive Jews, from that only which he now finds in the Jewish scrolls? How can any scholar—even though one of the keys to the universal language be now positively discovered, the true key to the numerical reading of a pure geometrical system—give out anything as his final conclusion? Modern Kabalistic speculation is on a par now with modern “speculative Masonry;” for as the latter tries vainly to link itself with the ancient—or rather the archaic—Masonry of the Temples, failing to make the link because all its claims have been shown to be inaccurate from an archæological standpoint, so fares it also with Kabalistic speculation. As no mystery of Nature worth running after can be revealed to humanity by settling whether Hiram Abif was a living Sidonian builder, or a solar myth, so no fresh information will be added to Occult Lore by the details of the exoteric privileges conferred on the Collegia Fabrorum by Numa Pompilius. Rather must the symbols used in it be studied in the Âryan light, since all the Symbolism of the ancient Initiations came to the West with the light of the Eastern Sun. Nevertheless, we find the most learned Masons and Symbologists declaring that all these weird symbols and glyphs, that run back to a common origin of immense antiquity, were nothing more than a display of cunning natural phallicism, or emblems of primitive typology. How much nearer the truth is the author of The Source of Measures, who declares that the elements of human and numerical construction in the Bible do not shut out the spiritual elements in it, albeit so few now understand them. The words we quote are as suggestive as they are true:

How desperately blinding becomes a superstitious use, through ignorance, of such emblems, when they are made to possess the power of bloodshed and torture, through orders of propaganda of any species of religious cultus. When one thinks of the horrors of a Moloch, or Baal, or Dagon worship; of the correlated blood‐deluges under the Cross baptized in gore by Constantine, at the initiative of the secular Church; ... when one thinks of all this and then that the cause of all has been simply ignorance of the real radical reading of the Moloch, and Baal, and Dagon, and the Cross and the T’phillin, all running back to a common origin, and after all being nothing more than a display of pure and natural mathematics, ... one is apt to feel like cursing ignorance, and to lose confidence in what are called intuitions of religion; one is apt to wish for a return of the day when all the world was of one lip and of one knowledge.... But while these elements [of the construction of the pyramid] are rational and scientific, ... let no man consider that with this discovery comes a cutting‐off of the spirituality(354) of the Bible intention, or of man’s relation to this spiritual foundation. Does one wish to build a house? No house was ever actually built with tangible material until first the architectural design of building had been accomplished, no matter whether the structure was palace or hovel.

So with these elements and numbers. They are not of man, nor are they of his invention. They have been revealed to him to the extent of his ability to realize a system, which is the creative system of the eternal God.... But spiritually, to man the value of this matter is that he can actually in contemplation, bridge over all material construction of the cosmos, and pass into the very thought and mind of God, to the extent of recognizing this system of design for cosmic creation—yea, even before the words went forth: “Let there be.”(355)

But true as the above words may be, when coming from one who has re‐ discovered, more completely than anyone else has done during the past centuries, one of the keys to the universal Mystery Language, it is impossible for an Eastern Occultist to agree with the conclusion of the able author of The Source of Measures. He “has set out to find the truth,” and yet he still believes that: The best and most authentic vehicle of communication from [the creative] God to man ... is to be found in the Hebrew Bible.

To this we must and shall demur, giving our reasons for it in a few words. The “Hebrew Bible” exists no more, as has been shown in the foregoing pages, and the garbled accounts, the falsified and pale copies we have of the real Mosaic Bible of the Initiates, warrant the making of no such sweeping assertion and claim. All that the scholar can fairly claim is that the Jewish Bible, as now extant—in its latest and final interpretation, and according to the newly‐discovered key—may give a partial presentment of the truths it contained before it was mangled. But how can he tell what the Pentateuch contained before it had been re‐ composed by Esdras; then corrupted still more by the ambitious Rabbis in later times, and otherwise remodelled and interfered with? Leaving aside the opinion of the declared enemies of the Jewish Scriptures, one may quote simply what their most devoted followers say.

Two of these are Horne and Prideaux. The avowals of the former will be sufficient to show how much now remains of the original Mosaic books, unless indeed we accept his sublimely blind faith in the inspiration and editorship of the Holy Ghost. He writes that when a Hebrew scribe found a writing of any author he was entitled, if he thought fit, being “conscious of the aid of the Holy Spirit,” to do exactly as he pleased with it—to cut it up, or copy it, or use as much of it as he deemed right, and so to incorporate it with his own manuscript. Dr. Kenealy aptly remarks of Horne, that it is almost impossible to get any admission from him That makes against his church, so remarkably guarded is he [Horne] in his phraseology and so wonderfully discreet in the use of words that his language, like a diplomatic letter, perpetually suggests to the mind ideas other than those which he really means; I defy any unlearned person to read his chapter on “Hebrew characters” and to derive any knowledge from it whatever on the subject on which he professes to treat.(356) And yet this same Horne writes: