The Secret Doctrine

We are persuaded that the things to which reference is made proceeded from the original writers or compilers of the books [Old Testament]. Sometimes they took other writings, annals, genealogies, and such like, with which they incorporated additional matter, or which they put together with greater or less condensation. The Old Testament authors used the sources they employed (that is, the writing of other people) with freedom and independence. Conscious of the aid of the Divine Spirit, they adapted their own productions, or the productions of others, to the wants of the times. But in these respects they cannot be said to have corrupted the text of Scripture. They made the text.(357) But of what did they make it? Why, of the writings of other persons, justly observes Kenealy: And this is Horne’s notion of what the Old Testament is—a cento from the writings of unknown persons collected and put together by those who, he says, were divinely inspired. No infidel that I know of has ever made so damaging a charge as this against the authenticity of the Old Testament.(358)

This is quite sufficient, we think, to show that no key to the universal language‐system can ever open the mysteries of Creation in a work in which, whether through design or carelessness, nearly every sentence has been made to apply to the latest outcome of religious views—to Phallicism, and to nothing else. There are a sufficient number of stray bits in the Elohistic portions of the Bible to warrant the inference that the Hebrews who wrote it were Initiates; hence the mathematical coördinations and the perfect harmony between the measures of the Great Pyramid and the numerals of the Biblical glyphs. But surely if one borrowed from the other, it cannot be the architects of the Pyramid who borrowed from Solomon’s Temple, if only because the former exists to this day as a stupendous living monument of Esoteric records, while the famous temple has never existed outside of the far later Hebrew scrolls.(359) Hence there is a great distance between the admission that some Hebrews were Initiates, and the conclusion that because of this the Hebrew Bible must be the best standard, as being the highest representative of the archaic Esoteric System.

Nowhere does the Bible say, moreover, that the Hebrew is the language of God; of this boast, at any rate, the authors are not guilty. Perhaps because in the days when the Bible was last edited the claim would have been too preposterous—hence dangerous. The compilers of the Old Testament, as it exists in the Hebrew canon, knew well that the language of the Initiates in the days of Moses was identical with that of the Egyptian Hierophants; and that none of the dialects that had sprung from the old Syriac and the pure old Arabic of Yarab—the father and progenitor of the primitive Arabians, long before the time of Abraham, in whose days the ancient Arabic had already become vitiated—that none of those languages was the one sacerdotal universal tongue. Nevertheless all of them included a number of words which could be traced to common roots. And to do this is the business of modern Philology, though to this day, with all the respect due to the labours of the eminent Philologists of Oxford and Berlin, that Science seems to be hopelessly floundering in the Cimmerian darkness of mere hypothesis.

Ahrens, when speaking of the letters as arranged in the Hebrew sacred scrolls, and remarking that they were musical notes, had probably never studied Âryan Hindu music. In the Sanskrit language letters are continually arranged in the sacred Ollas so that they may become musical notes. For the whole Sanskrit alphabet and the Vedas, from the first word to the last, are musical notations reduced to writing; the two are inseparable.(360) As Homer distinguished between the “language of Gods” and the “language of men,”(361) so did the Hindus. The Devanâgarî, the Sanskrit characters, are the “speech of the Gods,” and Sanskrit is the divine language. It is argued in defence of the present version of the Mosaic Books that the mode of language adopted was an “accommodation” to the ignorance of the Jewish people. But the said “mode of language” drags down the “sacred text” of Esdras and his colleagues to the level of the most unspiritual and gross phallic religions. This plea confirms the suspicions entertained by some Christian Mystics and many philosophical critics, that:

(a) Divine Power as an Absolute Unity had never anything more to do with the Biblical Jehovah and the “Lord God” than with any other Sephiroth or Number. The Ain‐Suph of the Kabalah of Moses is as independent of any relation with the created Gods as is Parabrahman Itself. (b) The teachings veiled in the Old Testament under allegorical expressions are all copied from the Magical Texts of Babylonia, by Esdras and others, while the earlier Mosaic Text had its source in Egypt. A few instances known to almost all Symbologists of note, and especially to the French Egyptologists, may help to prove the statement. Furthermore, no ancient Hebrew Philosopher, Philo no more than the Sadducees, claimed, as do now the ignorant Christians, that the events in the Bible should be taken literally. Philo says most explicitly: The verbal statements are fabulous [in the Book of the Law]: it is in the allegory that we shall find the truth. Let us give a few instances, beginning with the latest narrative, the Hebrew, and thus if possible trace the allegories to their origin. 1. Whence the Creation in six days, the seventh day as day of rest, the seven Elohim,(362) and the division of space into heaven and earth, in the first chapter of Genesis?

The division of the vault above from the Abyss, or Chaos, below is one of the first acts of creation or rather of evolution, in every cosmogony. Hermes in Pymander speaks of a heaven seen in seven circles with seven Gods in them. We examine the Assyrian tiles and find the same on them—the seven creative Gods busy each in his own sphere. The cuneiform legends narrate how Bel prepared the seven mansions of the Gods; how heaven was separated from the earth. In the Brâhmanical allegory everything is septenary, from the seven zones, or envelopes, of the Mundane Egg down to the seven continents, islands, seas, etc. The six days of the week and the seventh, the Sabbath, are based primarily on the seven creations of the Hindu Brahmâ, the seventh being that of man; and secondarily on the number of generation. It is preëminently and most conspicuously phallic. In the Babylonian system the seventh day, or period, was that in which man and the animals were created. 2. The Elohim make a woman out of Adam’s rib.(363) This process is found in the Magical Texts translated by G. Smith. The seven Spirits bring forth the woman from the loins of the man, explains Mr. Sayce in his Hibbert Lectures.(364)

The mystery of the woman who was made from the man is repeated in every national religion, and in Scriptures far antedating the Jewish. You find it in the Avestan fragments, in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and finally in Brahmâ, the male, separating from himself, as a female self, Vâch, in whom he creates Virâj. 3. The two Adams of the first and second chapters in Genesis originated from garbled exoteric accounts coming from the Chaldæans and the Egyptian Gnostics, revised later from the Persian traditions, most of which are old Âryan allegories. As Adam Kadmon is the seventh creation,(365) so the Adam of dust is the eighth; and in the Purânas one finds an eighth, the Anugraha creation, and the Egyptian Gnostics had it. Irenæus, complaining of the heretics, says of the Gnostics: Sometimes they will have him [man] to have been made on the sixth day, and sometimes on the eighth.(366) The author of The Hebrew and Other Creations writes:

These two creations of man on the sixth day and on the eighth were those of the Adamic, or fleshly man, and of the spiritual man, who were known to Paul and the Gnostics as the first and second Adam, the man of earth and the man of Heaven. Irenæus also says they insisted that Moses began with the Ogdoad of the Seven Powers and their mother, Sophia (the old Kefa of Egypt, who is the Living Word at Ombos).(367) Sophia is also Aditi with her seven sons.

One might go on enumerating and tracing the Jewish “revelations” ad infinitum to their original sources, were it not that the task is superfluous, since so much is already done in that direction by others—and done thoroughly well, as in the case of Gerald Massey, who has sifted the subject to the very bottom. Hundreds of volumes, treatises, and pamphlets are being written yearly in defence of the “divine‐inspiration” claim for the Bible; but symbolical and archæological research is coming to the rescue of truth and fact—therefore of the Esoteric Doctrine—upsetting every argument based on faith and breaking it as an idol with feet of clay. A curious and learned book, The Approaching End of the Age, by H. Grattan Guinness, professes to solve the mysteries of the Bible chronology and to prove thereby God’s direct revelation to man. Among other things its author thinks that: It is impossible to deny that a septiform chronology was divinely appointed in the elaborate ritual of Judaism.

This statement is innocently accepted and fervently believed in by thousands and tens of thousands, only because they are ignorant of the Bibles of other nations. Two pages from a small pamphlet, a lecture by Mr. Gerald Massey,(368) so upset the arguments and proofs of the enthusiastic Mr. Grattan Guinness, spread over 760 pages of small print, as to prevent them from ever raising their heads any more. Mr. Massey treats of the Fall, and says:

Here, as before, the genesis does not begin at the beginning. There was an earlier Fall than that of the Primal Pair. In this the number of those who failed and fell was seven. We meet with those seven in Egypt—eight with the Mother—where they are called the “Children of Inertness,” who were cast out from Am‐Smen, the Paradise of the Eight; also in a Babylonian legend of Creation, as the Seven Brethren, who were Seven Kings, like the Seven Kings in the Book of Revelation; and the Seven Non‐Sentient Powers, who became the Seven Rebel Angels that made war in heaven. The Seven Kronidæ, described as the Seven Watchers, who in the beginning were formed in the interior of heaven. The heaven, like a vault, they extended or hollowed out; that which was not visible they raised, and that which had no exit they opened; their work of creation being exactly identical with that of the Elohim in the Book of Genesis. These are the Seven elemental Powers of space, who were continued as Seven Timekeepers. It is said of them: “In watching was their office, but among the stars of heaven their watch they kept not,” and their failure was the Fall. In the Book of Enoch the same Seven Watchers in heaven are stars which transgressed the commandment of God before their time arrived, for they came not in their proper season, therefore was he offended with them, and bound them until the period of the consummation of their crimes, at the end of the secret, or great year of the World, i.e., the Period of Precession, when there was to be restoration and rebeginning. The Seven deposed constellations are seen by Enoch, looking like seven great blazing mountains overthrown—the seven mountains in Revelation, on which the Scarlet Lady sits.(369)

There are seven keys to this, as to every other allegory, whether in the Bible or in pagan religions. While Mr. Massey has hit upon the key in the mysteries of cosmogony, John Bentley in his Hindu Astronomy claims that the Fall of the Angels, or War in Heaven, as given by the Hindus, is but a figure of the calculations of time‐periods, and goes on to show that among the Western nations the same war, with like results, took the form of the war of the Titans. In short, he makes it astronomical. So does the author of The Source of Measures:

The celestial sphere with the earth, was divided into twelve compartments [astronomically], and these compartments were esteemed as sexed, the lords or husbands being respectively the planets presiding over them. This being the settled scheme, want of proper correction would bring it to pass, after a time, that error and confusion would ensue by the compartments coming under the lordship of the wrong planets. Instead of lawful wedlock, there would be illegal intercourse, as between the planets, “sons of Elohim” and these compartments, “daughters of H‐Adam,” or the earth‐man; and in fact the fourth verse of sixth Genesis will bear this interpretation for the usual one, viz., “In the same days, or periods, there were untimely births in the earth; and also behind that, when the sons of Elohim came to the daughters of H‐Adam, they begat to them the offspring of harlotry,” etc., astronomically indicating this confusion.(370)

Do any of these learned explanations explain anything except a possible ingenious allegory, and a personification of the celestial bodies, by the ancient Mythologists and Priests? Carried to their last word they would undeniably explain much, and would thus furnish one of the right seven keys, fitting a great many of the Biblical puzzles yet opening none naturally and entirely, instead of being scientific and cunning master‐ keys. But they yet prove one thing—that neither the septiform chronology nor the septiform theogony and evolution of all things is of divine origin in the Bible. For let us see the sources at which the Bible sipped its divine inspiration with regard to the sacred number seven. Says Mr. Massey in the same lecture:

The Book of Genesis tells us nothing about the nature of these Elohim, erroneously rendered “God,” who are creators of the Hebrew beginning, and who are themselves preëxtant and seated when the theatre opens and the curtain ascends. It says that in the beginning the Elohim created the heaven and the earth. In thousands of books the Elohim have been discussed, but ... with no conclusive result.... The Elohim are Seven in number, whether as nature‐powers, gods of constellations, or planetary gods, ... as the Pitris and Patriarchs, Manus and Fathers of earlier times. The Gnostics, however, and the Jewish Kabalah preserve an account of the Elohim of Genesis by which we are able to identify them with other forms of the seven primordial powers.... Their names are Ildabaoth, Jehovah (or Jao), Sabaoth, Adonai, Eloeus, Oreus, and Astanphæus. Ildabaoth signifies the Lord God of the fathers, that is the fathers who preceded the Father; and thus the seven are identical with the seven Pitris or Fathers of India (Irenæus, B. I., xxx., 5). Moreover, the Hebrew Elohim were preëxtant by name and nature as Phœnician divinities or powers. Sanchoniathon mentions them by name, and describes them as Auxiliaries of Kronos or Time. In this phase, then, the Elohim are time‐keepers in heaven! In the Phœnician mythology the Elohim are the

Seven sons of Sydik [Melchizedek], identical with the Seven Kabiri, who in Egypt are the Seven sons of Ptah, and the Seven Spirits of Ra in The Book of the Dead; ... in America with the seven Hohgates, ... in Assyria with the seven Lumazi.... They are always seven in number ... who Kab—that is, turn round, together, whence the “Kab‐iri.”... They are also the Ili or Gods, in Assyrian, who were seven in number!... They were first born of the Mother in Space,(371) and then the Seven Companions passed into the sphere of time as auxiliaries of Kronus, or Sons of the Male Parent. As Damascius says in his Primitive Principles, the Magi consider that space and time were the source of all; and from being powers of the air the gods were promoted to become time‐keepers for men. Seven constellations were assigned to them.... As the seven turned round in the ark of the sphere they were designated the Seven Sailors’ Companions, Rishis, or Elohim. The first “Seven Stars” are not planetary. They are the leading stars of seven constellations which turned round with the Great Bear in describing the circle of the year.(372) These the Assyrians called the seven Lumazi, or leaders of the flocks of stars, designated sheep. On the Hebrew line of descent or development,

these Elohim are identified for us by the Kabalists and Gnostics, who retained the hidden wisdom or gnosis, the clue of which is absolutely essential to any proper understanding of mythology or theology.... There were two constellations with seven stars each. We call them the Two Bears. But the seven stars of the Lesser Bear were once considered to be the seven heads of the Polar Dragon, which we meet with—as the beast with seven heads—in the Akkadian Hymns and in Revelation. The mythical dragon originated in the crocodile, which is the dragon of Egypt.... Now in one particular cult, the Sut‐Typhonian, the first god was Sevekh [the seven‐ fold], who wears the crocodile’s head, as well as the Serpent, and who is the Dragon, or whose constellation was the Dragon.... In Egypt the Great Bear was the constellation of Typhon, or Kepha, the old genetrix, called the Mother of the Revolutions; and the Dragon with seven heads was assigned to her son, Sevekh‐Kronus, or Saturn, called the Dragon of Life. That is, the typical dragon or serpent with seven heads was female at first, and then the type was continued, as male in her son Sevekh, the Sevenfold Serpent, in Ea the Sevenfold, ... Iao Chnubis, and others. We find these two in The Book of Revelation. One is

the Scarlet Lady, the mother of mystery, the great harlot, who sat on a scarlet‐coloured beast with seven heads, which is the Red Dragon of the Pole. She held in her hand the unclean things of her fornication. That means the emblems of the male and female, imaged by the Egyptians at the Polar Centre, the very uterus of creation, as was indicated by the Thigh constellation, called the Khepsh of Typhon, the old Dragon, in the northern birthplace of Time in heaven. The two revolved about the pole of heaven, or the Tree, as it was called, which was figured at the centre of the starry motion. In The Book of Enoch these two constellations are identified as Leviathan and Behemoth‐Bekhmut, or the Dragon and Hippopotamus = Great Bear, and they are the primal pair that were first created in the Garden of Eden. So that the Egyptian first mother, Kefa [or Kepha] whose name signifies “mystery,” was the original of the Hebrew Chavah, our Eve; and therefore Adam is one with Sevekh the sevenfold one, the solar dragon in whom the powers of light and darkness were combined, and the sevenfold nature was shown in the seven rays worn by the Gnostic Iao‐Chnubis, god of the number seven, who is Sevekh by name and a form of the

first father as head of the Seven.(373)

All this gives the key to the astronomical prototype of the allegory in Genesis, but it furnishes no other key to the mystery involved in the sevenfold glyph. The able Egyptologist shows also that Adam himself according to Rabbinical and Gnostic tradition, was the chief of the Seven who fell from Heaven, and he connects these with the Patriarchs, thus agreeing with the Esoteric Teaching. For by mystic permutation and the mystery of primeval rebirths and adjustment, the Seven Rishis are in reality identical with the seven Prajâpatis, the fathers and creators of mankind, and also with the Kumâras, the first sons of Brahmâ, who refused to procreate and multiply. This apparent contradiction is explained by the seven‐fold nature—make it four‐fold on metaphysical principles and it will come to the same thing—of the celestial men, the Dhyân Chohans. This nature is made to divide and separate; and while the higher principles (Âtmâ‐Buddhi) of the “Creators of Men” are said to be the Spirits of the seven constellations, their middle and lower principles are connected with the earth and are shown Without desire or passion, inspired with holy wisdom, estranged from the Universe and undesirous of progeny,(374)

remaining Kaumâric (virgin and undefiled); therefore it is said they refused to create. For this they are cursed and sentenced to be born and reborn “Adams,” as the Semites would say. Meanwhile let me quote a few lines more from Mr. G. Massey’s lecture, the fruit of his long researches in Egyptology and other ancient lore, as it shows that the septenary division was at one time a universal doctrine:

Adam as the father among the Seven is identical with the Egyptian Atum, ... whose other name of Adon is identical with the Hebrew Adonai. In this way the second Creation in Genesis reflects and continues the later creation in the mythos which explains it. The Fall of Adam to the lower world led to his being humanised on earth, by which process the celestial was turned into the mortal, and this, which belongs to the astronomical allegory, got literalised as the Fall of Man, or descent of the soul into matter, and the conversion of the angelic into an earthly being.... It is found in the [Babylonian] texts, when Ea, the first father, is said to “grant forgiveness to the conspiring gods,” for whose “redemption did he create mankind.” (Sayce; Hib. Lec., p. 140) ... The Elohim, then, are the Egyptian, Akkadian, Hebrew, and Phœnician form of the Universal Seven Powers, who are Seven in Egypt, Seven in Akkad, Babylon, Persia, India, Britain, and Seven among the Gnostics and Kabalists. They were the Seven fathers who preceded the Father in Heaven, because they were earlier than the individualised fatherhood on earth.... When the Elohim said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” there were seven of them who represented the seven elements, powers, or souls that

went to the making of the human being who came into existence before the Creator was represented anthropomorphically, or could have conferred the human likeness on the Adamic man. It was in the sevenfold image of the Elohim that man was first created, with his seven elements, principles or souls,(375) and therefore he could not have been formed in the image of the one God. The seven Gnostic Elohim tried to make a man in their own image, but could not for lack of virile power.(376) Thus their creation in earth and heaven was a failure ... because they themselves were lacking in the soul of the fatherhood! When the Gnostic Ildabaoth,(377) chief of the Seven, cried: “I am the father and God,” his mother Sophia [Achamoth] replied: “Do not tell lies, Ildabaoth, for the first man (Anthropos, son of Anthropos)(378) is above thee.” That is, man who had now been created in the image of the fatherhood was superior to the gods who were derived from the Mother‐Parent alone!(379) For, as it had been first on earth, so was it afterwards in heaven [the Secret Doctrine teaches the reverse]; and thus the primary gods were held to be soulless like the earliest races of men.... The Gnostics taught that the Spirits of Wickedness, the inferior Seven, derived their origin

from the great Mother alone, who produced without the fatherhood! It was in the image, then, of the sevenfold Elohim that the seven races were formed which we sometimes hear of as the Pre‐Adamite races of men, because they were earlier than the fatherhood, which was individualised only in the second Hebrew Creation.(380)

This shows sufficiently how the echo of the Secret Doctrine—of the Third and Fourth Races of men, made complete by the incarnation in humanity of the Mânasa Putra, Sons of Intelligence or Wisdom—reached every corner of the globe. The Jews, however, although they borrowed of the older nations the groundwork on which to build their revelation, never had more than three keys out of the seven in their mind, while composing their national allegories—the astronomical, the numerical (metrology), and above all the purely anthropological, or rather physiological key. This resulted in the most phallic religion of all, and has now passed, part and parcel, into Christian theology, as is proved by the lengthy quotations made from a lecture of an able Egyptologist, who can make naught of it save astronomical myths and phallicism, as is implied by his explanations of “fatherhood” in the allegories.

Now there are two well‐known ways of rendering this line, as any other Hebrew writing: one exoteric, as read by the orthodox Bible interpreters (Christian), and the other Kabalistic, the latter, moreover, being divided into the Rabbinical and the purely Kabalistic or Occult method. As in Sanskrit writing, the words are not separated in the Hebrew, but are made to run together—especially in the old systems. For instance, the above, divided, would read: “B’rashith bara Elohim eth hashamayim v’eth h’areths;” and it can be made to read thus: “B’rash ithbara Elohim ethhashamayim v’eth’arets,” thus changing the meaning entirely. The latter means, “In the beginning God made the heavens and the earth,” whereas the former, precluding the idea of any beginning, would simply read that “out of the ever‐existing Essence [divine] [or out of the womb—also head—thereof] the dual [or androgyne] Force [Gods] shaped the double heaven;” the upper and the lower heaven being generally explained as heaven and earth. The latter word means Esoterically the “Vehicle,” as it gives the idea of an empty globe, within which the manifestation of the world takes place. Now, according to the rules of Occult symbolical reading as established in the old Sepher Jetzirah (in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers(381)) the initial fourteen letters (or “B’rasitb’ raalaim”) are in themselves quite sufficient to explain the theory of “creation” without any further explanation or qualification. Every letter of them is a sentence; and, placed side by side with the hieroglyphic or pictorial initial version of “creation” in the Book of Dzyan, the origin of the Phœnician and Jewish letters would soon be found out.

A whole volume of explanations would give no more to the student of primitive Occult Symbology than this: the head of a bull within a circle, a straight horizontal line, a circle or sphere, then another one with three dots in it, a triangle, then the Svastika (or Jaina cross); after these come an equilateral triangle within a circle, seven small bulls’ heads standing in three rows, one over the other; a black round dot (an opening), and then seven lines, meaning Chaos or Water (feminine).

Anyone acquainted with the symbolical and numerical value of the Hebrew letters will see at a glance that this glyph and the letters of “B’rasith’ raalaim” are identical in meaning. “Beth” is “abode” or “region;” “Resh,” a “circle” or “head;” “Aleph,” “bull” (the symbol of generative or creative power(382)); “Shin,” a “tooth” (300 exoterically—a trident or three in one in its Occult meaning); “Jodh,” the perfect unity or “one”(383); “Tau,” the “root” or “foundation” (the same as the cross with the Egyptians and Âryans): again, “Beth,” “Resh,” and “Aleph.” Then “Aleph,” or seven bulls for the seven Alaim; an ox‐goad, “Lamedh,” active procreation; “He,” the “opening” or “matrix;” “Yodh,” the organ of procreation; and “Mem,” “water” or “chaos,” the female Power near the male that precedes it.

The most satisfactory and scientific exoteric rendering of the opening sentence of Genesis—on which was hung in blind faith the whole Christian religion, synthesized by its fundamental dogmas—is undeniably the one given in the Appendix to The Source of Measures by Mr. Ralston Skinner. He gives, and we must admit in the ablest, clearest, and most scientific way, the numerical reading of this first sentence and chapter in Genesis. By the means of number 31, or the word “El” (1 for “Aleph” and 30 for “Lamedh”), and other numerical Bible symbols, compared with the measures used in the great pyramid of Egypt, he shows the perfect identity between its measurements—inches, cubits, and plan—and the numerical values of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and the Patriarchs. In short, the author shows that the pyramid contains in itself architecturally the whole of Genesis, and discloses the astronomical, and even the physiological, secrets in its symbols and glyphs; yet he will not admit, it would seem, the psycho‐cosmical and spiritual mysteries involved in these. Nor does the author apparently see that the root of all this has to be sought in the archaic legends and the Pantheon of India.(384) Failing this, whither does his great and admirable labour lead him? Not further than to find out that Adam, the earth, and Moses or Jehovah “are the same”—or to the a‐b‐c of comparative Occult Symbology—and that the days in Genesis being “circles” “displayed by the Hebrews as squares,” the result of the sixth‐ day’s labour culminates in the fructifying principle. Thus the Bible is made to yield Phallicism, and that alone.

Nor—read in this light, and as its Hebrew texts are interpreted by Western scholars—can it ever yield anything higher or more sublime than such phallic elements, the root and the corner‐stone of its dead‐letter meaning. Anthropomorphism and Revelation dig the impassable chasm between the material world and the ultimate spiritual truths. That creation is not thus described in the Esoteric Doctrine is easily shown. The Roman Catholics give a reading far more approaching the true Esoteric meaning than that of the Protestant. For several of their saints and doctors admit that the formation of heaven and earth, of the celestial bodies, etc., belongs to the work of the “Seven Angels of the Presence.” St. Denys calls the “Builders” “the coöperators of God,” and St. Augustine goes even farther, and credits the Angels with the possession of the divine thought, the prototype, as he says, of everything created.(385) And, finally, St. Thomas Aquinas has a long dissertation upon this topic, calling God the primary, and the Angels the secondary, cause of all visible effects. In this, with some dogmatic differences of form, the “Angelic Doctor” approaches very nearly the Gnostic ideas. Basilides speaks of the lowest order of Angels as the Builders of our material world, and Saturnilus held, as did the Sabæans, that the Seven Angels who preside over the planets are the real creators of the world; the Kabalist‐monk, Trithemius, in his De Secundis Deis, taught the same.

The eternal Kosmos, the Macrocosm, is divided in the Secret Doctrine, like man, the Microcosm, into three Principles and four Vehicles,(386) which in their collectivity are the seven Principles. In the Chaldæan or Jewish Kabalah, the Kosmos is divided into seven worlds: the Original, the Intelligible, the Celestial, the Elementary, the Lesser (Astral), the Infernal (Kâma‐loka or Hades), and the Temporal (of man). In the Chaldæan system it is in the Intelligible World, the second, that appear the “Seven Angels of the Presence,” or the Sephiroth (the three higher ones being, in fact, one, and also the sum total of all). They are also the “Builders” of the Eastern Doctrine: and it is only in the third, the celestial world, that the seven planets and our solar system are built by the seven Planetary Angels, the planets becoming their visible bodies. Hence—as correctly stated—if the universe as a whole is formed out of the Eternal One Substance or Essence, it is not that everlasting Essence, the Absolute Deity, that builds it into shape; this is done by the first Rays, the Angels or Dhyân Chohans, that emanate from the One Element, which becoming periodically Light and Darkness, remains eternally, in its Root‐ Principle, the one unknown yet existing Reality.

A learned Western Kabalist, Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, whose reasoning and conclusions will be the more above suspicion since he is untrained in Eastern Philosophy and unacquainted with its Secret Teachings, writes on the first verse of Genesis in an unpublished essay: Berashith Bara Elohim—“In the beginning the Elohim created!” Who are these Elohim of Genesis? Va‐Yivra Elohim Ath Ha‐Adam Be‐Tzalmo, Be‐Tzelem Elohim Bara Otho, Zakhar Vingebah Bara Otham—“And the Elohim created the Adam in Their own Image, in the Image of the Elohim created They them, Male and Female created They them!” Who are they, the Elohim? The ordinary English translation of the Bible renders the word Elohim by “God:” it translates a plural noun by a singular one. The only excuse brought forward for this is the somewhat lame one that the word is certainly plural, but is not to be used in a plural sense: that it is “a plural denoting excellence.” But this is only an assumption whose value may be justly gauged by Genesis i. 26, translated in the orthodox Biblical version thus: “And God [Elohim] said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.’ ” Here is a distinct admission of the fact that “Elohim” is not a “plural of excellence,” but a plural noun denoting more than one being.(387)

What, then, is the proper translation of “Elohim,” and to whom is it referable? “Elohim” is not only a plural, but a feminine plural! And yet the translators of the Bible have rendered it by a masculine singular! Elohim is the plural of the feminine noun El‐h, for the final letter, ‐h, marks the gender. It, however, instead of forming the plural in ‐oth, takes the usual termination of the masculine plural, which is ‐im. Although in the great majority of cases the nouns of both genders take the terminations appropriated to them respectively, there are yet many masculines which form the plural in ‐oth, as well as feminine which form it in ‐im while some nouns of each gender take alternately both. It must be observed, however, that the termination of the plural does not affect its gender, which remains the same as in the singular....

To find the real meaning of the symbolism involved in this word Elohim we must go to that key of Jewish Esoteric Doctrine, the little‐known and less‐understood Kabalah. There we shall find that this word represents two united masculine and feminine Potencies, co‐equal and co‐eternal, conjoined in everlasting union for the maintenance of the Universe—the great Father and Mother of Nature, into whom the Eternal One conforms himself before the Universe can subsist. For the teaching of the Kabalah is that before the Deity conformed himself thus—i.e. as male and female—the Worlds of the Universe could not subsist; or in the words of Genesis, that “the earth was formless and void.” Thus, then, is the conformation of the Elohim, the end of the Formless and the Void and the Darkness, for only after that conformation can the Ruach Elohim—the “Spirit of the Elohim”—vibrate upon the countenance of the Waters. But this is a very small part of the information which the Initiate can derive from the Kabalah concerning this word Elohim.

Attention must here be called to the confusion—if not worse—which reigns in the Western interpretations of the Kabalah. The Eternal One is said to conform himself into two: the Great Father and Mother of Nature. To begin with, it is a horribly anthropomorphic conception to apply terms implying sexual distinction to the earliest and first differentiations of the One. And it is even more erroneous to identify these first differentiations—the Purusha and Prakriti of Indian Philosophy—with the Elohim, the creative powers here spoken of; and to ascribe to these (to our intellects) unimaginable abstractions, the formation and construction of this visible world, full of pain, sin, and sorrow. In truth, the “creation by the Elohim” spoken of here is but a much later “creation,” and the Elohim far from being supreme, or even exalted powers in Nature, are only lower Angels. This was the teaching of the Gnostics, the most philosophical of all the early Christian Churches. They taught that the imperfections of the world were due to the imperfection of its Architects or Builders—the imperfect, and therefore inferior, Angels. The Hebrew Elohim correspond to the Prajâpati of the Hindus, and it is shown elsewhere from the Esoteric interpretation of the Purânas that the Prajâpati were the fashioners of man’s material and astral form only: that they could not give him intelligence or reason, and therefore in symbolical language they “failed to create man.” But, not to repeat what the reader can find elsewhere in this work, his attention needs only to be called to the fact that “creation” in this passage is not the Primary Creation, and that the Elohim are not “God,” nor even the higher Planetary Spirits, but the Architects of this visible physical planet and of man’s material body, or encasement.

A fundamental doctrine of the Kabalah is that the gradual development of the Deity from negative to positive Existence is symbolized by the gradual development of the Ten Numbers of the denary scale of numeration, from the Zero, through the Unity, into the Plurality. This is the doctrine of the Sephiroth, or Emanations. For the inward and concealed Negative Form concentrates a centre which is the primal Unity. But the Unity is one and indivisible: it can neither be increased by multiplication nor decreased by division, for 1 × 1 = 1, and no more; and 1 ÷ 1 = 1, and no less. And it is this changelessness of the Unity, or Monad, which makes it a fitting type of the One and Changeless Deity. It answers thus to the Christian idea of God the Father, for as the Unity is the parent of the other numbers, so is the Deity the Father of All.

The philosophical Eastern mind would never fall into the error which the connotation of these words implies. With them the “One and Changeless”—Parabrahman—the Absolute All and One, cannot be conceived as standing in any relation to things finite and conditioned, and hence they would never use such terms as these, which in their very essence imply such a relation. Do they, then, absolutely sever man from God? On the contrary. They feel a closer union than the Western mind has done in calling God the “Father of All,” for they know that in his immortal essence man is himself the Changeless, Secondless One.

But we have just said that the Unity is one and changeless by either multiplication or division; how then is two, the Duad, formed? By reflection. For, unlike Zero, the Unity is partly definable—that is, in its positive aspect; and the definition creates an Eikon or Eidolon of itself which, together with itself, forms a Duad; and thus the number two is to a certain extent analogous to the Christian idea of the Son as the Second Person. And as the Monad vibrates, and recoils into the Darkness of the Primary Thought, so is the Duad left as its vice‐gerent and representative, and thus co‐equal with the Positive Duad is the Triune Idea, the number three, co‐equal and co‐eternal with the Duad in the bosom of the Unity, yet, as it were, proceeding therefrom in the numerical conception of its sequence. This explanation would seem to imply that Mr. Mathers is aware that this “creation” is not the truly divine or primary one, since the Monad—the first manifestation on our plane of objectivity—“recoils into the Darkness of the Primal Thought,” i.e., into the subjectivity of the first divine Creation.

And this, again, also partly answers to the Christian idea of the Holy Ghost, and of the whole three forming a Trinity in unity. This also explains the fact in geometry of the three right lines being the smallest number which will make a plane rectilineal figure, while two can never enclose a space, being powerless and without effect till completed by the number Three. These three first numbers of the decimal scale the Qabalists call by the names of Kether, the Crown, Chokmah, Wisdom, and Binah, Understanding; and they furthermore associate with them these divine names: with the Unity, Eheich, “I exist;” with the Duad, Yah; and with the Triad, Elohim; they especially also call the Duad, Abba—the Father, and the Triad, Aima—the Mother, whose eternal conjunction is symbolized in the word Elohim.

But what especially strikes the student of the Kabalah is the malicious persistency with which the translators of the Bible have jealously crowded out of sight and suppressed every reference to the feminine form of the Deity. They have, as we have just seen, translated the feminine plural “Elohim,” by the masculine singular, “God.” But they have done more than this: they have carefully hidden the fact that the word Ruach—the “Spirit”—is feminine, and that consequently the Holy Ghost of the New Testament is a feminine Potency. How many Christians are cognizant of the fact that in the account of the Incarnation in Luke (i. 35) two divine Potencies are mentioned? “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the Power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” The Holy Ghost (the feminine Potency) descends, and the Power of the Highest (the masculine Potency) is united therewith. “Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”—of the Elohim namely, seeing that these two Potencies descend. In the Sepher Yetzirah, or Book of Formation, we read:

“One is She the Ruach Elohim Chüm—(Spirit of the Living Elohim).... Voice, Spirit, and Word; and this is She, the Spirit of the Holy One.” Here again we see the intimate connection which exists between the Holy Spirit and the Elohim. Furthermore, farther on in this same Book of Formation—which, is, be it remembered, one of the oldest of the Kabalistical Books, and whose authorship is ascribed to Abraham the Patriarch—we shall find the idea of a Feminine Trinity in the first place, from whom a masculine Trinity proceeds; or, as it is said in the text: “Three Mothers whence proceed three Fathers.” And yet this double Triad forms, as it were, but one complete Trinity. Again it is worthy of note that the Second and Third Sephiroth (Wisdom and Understanding) are both distinguished by feminine names, Chokmah and Binah, notwithstanding that to the former more particularly the masculine idea, and to the latter the feminine, are attributed, under the titles of Abba and Aima (or Father and Mother). This Aima (the Great Mother) is magnificently symbolized in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse, which is undoubtedly one of the most Kabalistical books in the Bible. In fact, without the Kabalistical keys its meaning is utterly unintelligible.

Now, in the Hebrew, as in the Greek, alphabet, there are no distinct numeral characters, and consequently each letter has a certain numerical value attached to it. From this circumstance results the important fact that every Hebrew word constitutes a number, and every number a word. This is referred to in the Revelations (xiii. 18) in mentioning the “number of the beast”! In the Kabalah words of equal numerical values are supposed to have a certain explanatory connection with each other. This forms the science of Gematria, which is the first division of the Literal Kabalah. Furthermore, each letter of the Hebrew alphabet had for the Initiates of the Kabalah a certain hieroglyphical value and meaning which, rightly applied, gave to each word the value of a mystical sentence; and this again was variable according to the relative positions of the letters with regard to each other. From these various Kabalistical points of view let us now examine this word Elohim.

First then we can divide the word into the two words, which signify “The Feminine Divinity of the Waters;” compare with the Greek Aphrodite. “sprung from the foam of the sea.” Again it is divisible into the “Mighty One, Star of the Sea,” or “the Mighty One breathing forth the Spirit upon the Waters.” Also by combination of the letters we get “the Silent Power of Iah.” And again, “My God, the Former of the Universe,” for Mah is a secret Kabalistical name applied to the idea of Formation. Also we obtain “Who is my God.” Furthermore “the Mother in Iah.” The total number is 1 + 30 + 5 + 10 + 40 = 86 = “Violent heat,” or “the Power of Fire.” If we add together the three middle letters we obtain 45, and the first and last letters yield 41, making thus “the Mother of Formation.” Lastly, we shall find the two divine names “El” and “Yah,” together with the letter m, which signifies “Water,” for Mem, the name of this letter, means “water.” If we divide it into its component letters and take them as hieroglyphical signs we shall have: “Will perfected through Sacrifice progressing through successive Transformation by Inspiration.”

The last few paragraphs of the above, in which the word “Elohim” is Kabalistically analyzed, show conclusively enough that the Elohim are not one, nor two, nor even a trinity, but a Host—the army of the creative powers. The Christian Church, in making of Jehovah—one of these very Elohim—the one Supreme God, has introduced hopeless confusion into the celestial hierarchy, in spite of the volumes written by Thomas Aquinas and his school on the subject. The only explanation to be found in all their treatises on the nature and essence of the numberless classes of celestial beings mentioned in the Bible—Archangels, Thrones, Seraphim, Cherubim, Messengers, etc.—is that “The angelic host is God’s militia.” They are “Gods the creatures,” while he is “God the Creator;” but of their true functions—of their actual place in the economy of Nature—not one word is said. They are

More brilliant than the flames, more rapid than the wind, and they live in love and harmony, mutually enlightening each other, feeding on bread and a mystic beverage—the communion wine and water?—surrounding as with a river of fire the throne of the Lamb, and veiling their faces with their wings. This throne of love and glory they leave only to carry to the stars, the earth, the kingdoms and all the sons of God, their brothers and pupils, in short, to all creatures like themselves the divine influence.... As to their number, it is that of the great army of Heaven (Sabaoth), more numerous than the stars.... Theology shows us these rational luminaries, each constituting a species, and containing in their natures such or another position of Nature: covering immense space, though of a determined area; residing—incorporeal though they are—within circumscribed limits; ... more rapid than light or thunderbolt, disposing of all the elements of Nature, providing at will inexplicable mirages [illusions?], objective and subjective in turn, speaking to men a language at one time articulate, at another purely spiritual.(388)

We learn farther on in the same work that it is these Angels and their hosts who are referred to in the sentence of verse I, chapter ii, of Genesis: “Igitur perfecti sunt cœli et terra et omnis ornatus eorum:” and that the Vulgate has peremptorily substituted for the Hebrew word “tsaba” (“host”) that of “ornament;” Munck shows the mistake of substitution and the derivation of the compound title, “Tsabaoth‐Elohim,” from “tsaba.” Moreover, Cornelius à Lapide, “the master of all Biblical commentators,” says de Mirville, shows us that such was the real meaning. Those Angels are stars. All this, however, teaches us very little as to the true functions of this celestial army, and nothing at all as to its place in evolution and its relation to the earth we live on. For an answer to the question, “Who are the true Creators?” we must go to the Esoteric Doctrine, since there only can the key be found which will render intelligible the Theogonies of the various world‐religions. There we find that the real creator of the Kosmos, as of all visible Nature—if not of all the invisible hosts of Spirits not yet drawn into the “Cycle of Necessity,” or evolution—is “the Lord—the Gods,” or the “Working Host,” the “Army” collectively taken, the “One in many.”

The One is infinite and unconditioned. It cannot create, for It can have no relation to the finite and conditioned. If everything we see, from the glorious suns and planets down to the blades of grass and the specks of dust, had been created by the Absolute Perfection and were the direct work of even the First Energy that proceeded from It,(389) then every such thing would have been perfect, eternal, and unconditioned, like its author. The millions upon millions of imperfect works found in Nature testify loudly that they are the products of finite, conditioned beings—though the latter were and are Dhyân Chohans, Archangels, or what ever else they may be named. In short, these imperfect works are the unfinished production of evolution, under the guidance of the imperfect Gods. The Zohar gives us this assurance as well as the Secret Doctrine. It speaks of the auxiliaries of the “Ancient of Days,” the “Sacred Aged,” and calls them Auphanim, or the living Wheels of the celestial orbs, who participate in the work of the creation of the Universe.

Thus it is not the “Principle,” One and Unconditioned, nor even Its reflection, that creates, but only the “Seven Gods” who fashion the Universe out of the eternal Matter, vivified into objective life by the reflection into it of the One Reality. The Creator is they—“God the Host”—called in the Secret Doctrine the Dhyân Chohans; with the Hindus the Prajâpatis; with the Western Kabalists the Sephiroth; and with the Buddhist the Devas—impersonal because blind forces. They are the Amshaspends with the Zoroastrians, and while with the Christian Mystic the “Creator” is the “Gods of the God,” with the dogmatic Churchman he is the “God of the Gods,” the “Lord of lords,” etc. “Jehovah” is only the God who is greater than all Gods in the eyes of Israel. I know, that the Lord [of Israel] is great and that our Lord is above all gods.(390) And again: For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens.(391)

The Egyptian Neteroo, translated by Champollion “the other Gods” are the Elohim of the Biblical writers, behind which stands concealed the One God, considered in the diversity of his powers.(392) This One is not Parabrahman, but the Unmanifested Logos, the Demiurgos, the real Creator or Fashioner, that follows him, standing for the Demiurgi collectively taken. Further on the great Egyptologist adds: We see Egypt concealing and hiding, so to say, the God of Gods behind the agents she surrounds him with; she gives the precedence to her great gods before the one and sole Deity, so that the attributes of that God become their property. Those great Gods proclaim themselves uncreate.... Neith is “that which is,” as Jehovah;(393) Thoth is self‐created(394) without having been begotten, etc. Judaism annihilating these potencies before the grandeur of its God, they cease to be simply Powers, like Philo’s Archangels, like the Sephiroth of the Kabalah, like the Ogdoades of the Gnostics—they merge together and become transformed into God himself.(395) Jehovah is thus, as the Kabalah teaches, at best but the “Heavenly Man,” Adam Kadmon, used by the self‐created Spirit, the Logos, as a chariot, a vehicle in His descent towards manifestation in the phenomenal world.

Such are the teachings of the Archaic Wisdom, nor can they be repudiated even by the orthodox Christian, if he be sincere and open‐minded in the study of his own Scripture. For if he reads St. Paul’s Epistles carefully he will find that the Secret Doctrine and the Kabalah are fully admitted by the “Apostle of the Gentiles.” The Gnosis which he appears to condemn is no less for him than for Plato “the supreme knowledge of the truth and of the One Being;”(396) for what St. Paul condemns is not the true, but only the false, Gnosis and its abuses: otherwise how could he use the language of a Platonist pur sang? The Ideas, types (Archai), of the Greek Philosopher; the Intelligences of Pythagoras; the Æons or Emanations of the Pantheist; the Logos or Word, Chief of these Intelligences; the Sophia or Wisdom; the Demiurgos, the Builder of the world under the direction of the Father, the Unmanifested Logos, from which He emanates; Ain‐Suph, the Unknown of the Infinite; the angelic Periods; the Seven Spirits who are the representatives of the Seven of all the older cosmogonies—are all to be found in his writings, recognized by the Church as canonical and divinely inspired. Therein, too, may be recognized the Depths of Ahriman, Rector of this our World, the “God of this World;” the Pleroma of the Intelligences; the Archontes of the air; the Principalities, the Kabalistic Metatron; and they can easily be identified again in the Roman Catholic writers when read in the original Greek and Latin texts, English translations giving but a very poor idea of the real contents of these.

The Zohar, an unfathomable store of hidden wisdom and mystery, is very often appealed to by Roman Catholic writers. A very learned Rabbi, now the Chevalier Drach, having been converted to Roman Catholicism, and being a great Hebraist, thought fit to step into the shoes of Picus de Mirandola and John Reuchlin, and to assure his new co‐religionists that the Zohar contained in it pretty nearly all the dogmas of Catholicism. It is not our province to show here how far he has succeeded or failed; only to bring one instance of his explanations and preface it with the following:

The Zohar, as already shown, is not a genuine production of the Hebrew mind. It is the repository and compendium of the oldest doctrines of the East, transmitted orally at first, and then written down in independent treatises during the Captivity at Babylon, and finally brought together by Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, toward the beginning of the Christian era. As Mosaic cosmogony was born under a new form in Mesopotamian countries, so the Zohar was a vehicle in which were focussed rays from the light of Universal Wisdom. Whatever likenesses are found between it and the Christian teachings, the compilers of the Zohar never had Christ in their minds. Were it otherwise there would not be one single Jew of the Mosaic law left in the world by this time. Again, if one is to accept literally what the Zohar says, then any religion under the sun may find corroboration in its symbols and allegorical sayings; and this, simply because this work is the echo of the primitive truths, and every creed is founded on some of these; the Zohar being but a veil of the Secret Doctrine. This is so evident that we have only to point to the said ex‐ Rabbi, the Chevalier Drach, to prove the fact.

In Part III, fol. 87 (col. 346th) the Zohar treats of the Spirit guiding the Sun, its Rector, explaining that it is not the Sun itself that is meant thereby, but the Spirit “on, or under” the Sun. Drach is anxious to show that it was Christ who was meant by that “Sun,” or the Solar Spirit therein. In his comment upon that passage which refers to the Solar Spirit as “that stone which the builders rejected,” he asserts most positively that this Sun‐stone (pierre soleil) is identical with Christ, who was that stone, and that therefore The sun is undeniably (sans contredit) the second hypostasis of the Deity,(397) or Christ. If this be true, then the Vaidic or pre‐Vaidic Âryans, Chaldæans and Egyptians, like all Occultists past, present, and future, Jews included, have been Christians from all eternity. If this be not so, then modern Church Christianity is Paganism pure and simple exoterically, and transcendental and practical Magic, or Occultism, Esoterically. For this “stone” has a manifold significance, a dual existence, with gradations, a regular progression and retrogression. It is a “mystery” indeed. The Occultists are quite ready to agree with St. Chrysostom, that the infidels—the profane, rather— Being blinded by sun‐light, thus lose sight of the true Sun in the contemplation of the false one.

But if that Saint, and along with him now the Hebraist Drach, chose to see in the Zohar and the Kabalistic Sun “the second hypostasis,” this is no reason why all others should be blinded by them. The mystery of the Sun is the grandest perhaps, of all the innumerable mysteries of Occultism. A Gordian knot, truly, but one that cannot be severed with the double‐edged sword of scholastic casuistry. It is a true deo dignus vindice nodus, and can be untied only by the Gods. The meaning of this is plain, and every Kabalist will understand it. Contra solem ne loquaris was not said by Pythagoras with regard to the visible Sun. It was the “Sun of Initiation” that was meant, in its triple form—two of which are the “Day‐Sun” and the “Night‐Sun.”

If behind the physical luminary there were no mystery that people sensed instinctively, why should every nation, from the primitive peoples down to the Parsîs of to‐day, have turned towards the Sun during prayers? The Solar Trinity is not Mazdean, but is universal, and is as old as man. All the temples in Antiquity were invariably made to face the Sun, their portals to open to the East. See the old temples of Memphis and Baalbec, the Pyramids of the Old and of the New (?) Worlds, the Round Towers of Ireland, and the Serapeum of Egypt. The Initiates alone could give a philosophical explanation of this, and a reason for it—its mysticism notwithstanding—were only the world ready to receive it, which alas! it is not. The last of the Solar Priests in Europe was the Imperial Initiate, Julian, now called the Apostate.(398) He tried to benefit the world by revealing at least a portion of the great mystery of the τρεπλασιος and—he died. “There are three in one,” he said of the Sun—the central Sun(399) being a precaution of Nature: the first is the universal cause of all, Sovereign Good and perfection; the Second Power is paramount Intelligence, having dominion over all reasonable beings, νοεροῖς; the third is the visible Sun. The pure energy of solar intelligence proceeds from the luminous seat occupied by our Sun in the centre of heaven, that pure energy being the Logos of our system;

the “Mysterious Word Spirit produces all through the Sun, and never operates through any other medium,” says Hermes Trismegistus. For it is in the Sun, more than in any other heavenly body that the [unknown] Power placed the seat of its habitation. Only neither Hermes Trismegistus nor Julian (an initiated Occultist), nor any other, meant by this Unknown Cause Jehovah, or Jupiter. They referred to the cause that produced all the manifested “great Gods” or Demiurgi (the Hebrew God included) of our system. Nor was our visible, material Sun meant, for the latter was only the manifested symbol. Philolaus the Pythagorean, explains and completes Trismegistus by saying:

The Sun is a mirror of fire, the splendour of whose flames by their reflection in that mirror [the Sun] is poured upon us, and that splendour we call image. It is evident that Philolaus referred to the central spiritual Sun, whose beams and effulgence are only mirrored by our central Star, the Sun. This is as clear to the Occultists as it was to the Pythagoreans. As for the profane of pagan antiquity, it was, of course, the physical Sun that was the “highest God” for them, as it seems—if Chevalier Drach’s view be accepted—to have now virtually become for the modern Roman Catholics. If words mean anything, the statement made by the Chevalier Drach that “this sun is, undeniably, the second hypostasis of the Deity,” imply what we say; as “this Sun” refers to the Kabalistic Sun, and “hypostasis” means substance or subsistence of the Godhead or Trinity—distinctly personal. As the author, being an ex‐Rabbi, thoroughly versed in Hebrew, and in the mysteries of the Zohar, ought to know the value of words; and as, moreover, in writing this, he was bent upon reconciling “the seeming contradictions,” as he puts it, between Judaism and Christianity—the fact becomes quite evident.

But all this pertains to questions and problems which will be solved naturally and in the course of the development of the doctrine. The Roman Catholic Church stands accused, not of worshipping under other names the Divine Beings worshipped by all nations in antiquity, but of declaring idolatrous, not only the Pagans ancient and modern, but every Christian nation that has freed itself from the Roman yoke. The accusation brought against herself by more than one man of Science, of worshipping the stars like true Sabæans of old, stands to this day uncontradicted, yet no star‐ worshipper has ever addressed his adoration to the material stars and planets, as will be shown before the last page of this work is written; none the less is it true that those Philosophers alone who studied Astrology and Magic knew that the last word of those sciences was to be sought in, and expected from, the Occult forces emanating from those constellations.

There is a physical, an astral, and a super‐astral Universe in the three chief divisions of the Kabalah; as there are terrestrial, super‐ terrestrial, and spiritual Beings. The “Seven Planetary Spirits” may be ridiculed by Scientists to their hearts’ content, yet the need of intelligent ruling and guiding Forces is so much felt to this day that scientific men and specialists, who will not hear of Occultism or of ancient systems, find themselves obliged to generate in their inner consciousness some kind of semi‐mystical system. Metcalf’s “sun‐force” theory, and that of Zaliwsky, a learned Pole, which made Electricity the Universal Force and placed its storehouse in the Sun,(400) were revivals of the Kabalistic teachings. Zaliwsky tried to prove that Electricity, producing “the most powerful, attractive, calorific, and luminous effects,” was present in the physical constitution of the Sun and explained its peculiarities. This is very near the Occult teaching. It is only by admitting the gaseous nature of the Sun‐reflector, and the powerful Magnetism and Electricity of the solar attraction and repulsion, that one can explain (a) the evident absence of any waste of power and luminosity in the Sun—inexplicable by the ordinary laws of combustion; and (b) the behaviour of the planets, so often contradicting every accepted rule of weight and gravity. And Zaliwsky makes this “solar electricity” “differ from anything known on earth.”

Father Secchi may be suspected of having sought to introduce Forces of quite a new order and quite foreign to gravitation, which he had discovered in Space,(401) in order to reconcile Astronomy with theological Astronomy. But Nagy, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was no clerical, and yet he develops a theory on the necessity of intelligent Forces whose complacency “would lend itself to all the whims of the comets.” He suspects that: Notwithstanding all the actual researches on the rapidity of light—that dazzling product of an unknown force ... which we see too frequently to understand—that light is motionless in reality.(402) C. E. Love, the well‐known railway builder and engineer in France, tired of blind forces, made all the (then) “imponderable agents”—now called “forces”—subordinates of Electricity, and declares the latter to be an Intelligence—albeit molecular in nature and material.(403)

In the author’s opinion these Forces are atomistic agents, endowed with intelligence, spontaneous will, and motion,(404) and he thus, like the Kabalists, makes the causal Forces substantial, while the Forces that act on this plane are only the effects of the former, as with him matter is eternal, and the Gods also;(405) so is the Soul likewise, though it has inherent in itself a still higher Soul [Spirit], preëxistent, endowed with memory, and superior to Electric Force; the latter is subservient to the higher Souls, those superior Souls forcing it to act according to the eternal laws. The concept is rather hazy, but is evidently on the Occult lines. Moreover, the system proposed is entirely pantheistic, and is worked out in a purely scientific volume. Monotheists and Roman Catholics fall foul of it, of course; but one who believes in the Planetary Spirits and who endows Nature with living Intelligences, must always expect this. In this connection, however, it is curious that after the moderns have so laughed at the ignorance of the ancients, Who, knowing only of seven planets [yet having an ogdoad which did not include the earth!], invented therefore seven Spirits to fit in with the number, Babinet should have vindicated the “superstition” unconsciously to himself. In the Revue des Deux Mondes this eminent French Astronomer writes:

The ogdoad of the Ancients included the earth [which is an error], i.e., eight or seven according to whether or not the earth was comprised in the number.(406) De Mirville assures his readers that: M. Babinet was telling me but a few days ago that we had in reality only eight big planets, including the earth, and so many small ones between Mars and Jupiter.... Herschel offering to call all those beyond the seven primary planets asteroids!(407) There is a problem to be solved in this connection. How do Astronomers know that Neptune is a planet, or even that it is a body belonging to our system? Being found on the very confines of our Planetary World, so called, the latter was arbitrarily expanded to receive it; but what really mathematical and infallible proof have Astronomers that it is (a) a planet, and (b) one of our planets? None at all! It is at such an immeasurable distance from us, the Apparent diameter of the sun being to Neptune but one‐fortieth of the sun’s apparent diameter to us,

and it is so dim and hazy when seen through the best telescope that it looks like an astronomical romance to call it one of our planets. Neptune’s heat and light are reduced to 1/900 part of the heat and light received by the earth. His motion and that of his satellites have always looked suspicious. They do not agree—in appearance, at least—with those of the other planets. His system is retrograde, etc. But even the latter abnormal fact resulted only in the creation of new hypotheses by our Astronomers, who forthwith suggested a probable overturn of Neptune, his collision with another body, etc. Was Adams’ and Leverrier’s discovery so welcomed because Neptune was as necessary as was Ether to throw a new glory upon astronomical prevision, upon the certitude of modern scientific data, and principally upon the power of mathematical analysis? It would so appear. A new planet that widens our planetary domain by more than four hundred million leagues is worthy of annexation. Yet, as in the case of terrestrial annexation, scientific authority may be proved “right” only because it has “might.” Neptune’s motion happens to be dimly perceived: Eureka! it is a planet! A mere motion, however, proves very little. It is now an ascertained fact in Astronomy that there are no absolutely fixed stars in Nature,(408) even though such stars should continue to exist in astronomical parlance, while they have passed from the scientific imagination. Occultism, however, has a strange theory of its own with regard to Neptune.

Occultism says that if several hypotheses resting on mere assumption—which have been accepted only because they have been taught by eminent men of learning—are taken away from the Science of Modern Astronomy, to which they serve as props, then even the presumably universal law of gravitation will be found to be contrary to the most ordinary truths of mechanics. And really one can hardly blame Christians—foremost of all the Roman Catholics—however scientific some of these may themselves be, for refusing to quarrel with their Church for the sake of scientific beliefs. Nor can we even blame them for accepting in the secresy of their hearts—as some of them do—the theological “Virtues” and “Archons” of Darkness, instead of all the blind forces offered them by Science.

Never can there be intervention of any sort in the marshalling and the regular precession of the celestial bodies! The law of gravitation is the law of laws; who ever witnessed a stone rising in the air against gravitation? The permanence of the universal law is shown in the behaviour of the sidereal worlds and globes eternally faithful to their primitive orbits; never wandering beyond their respective paths. Nor is there any intervention needed, as it could only be disastrous. Whether the first sidereal incipient rotation took place owing to an intercosmic chance, or to the spontaneous development of latent primordial forces; or again, whether that impulse was given once for all by God or Gods—it does not make the slightest difference. At this stage of cosmic evolution no intervention, superior or inferior, is admissible. Were any to take place, the universal clock‐work would stop, and Kosmos would fall into pieces.

Such are stray sentences, pearls of wisdom, fallen from time to time from scientific lips, and now chosen at random to illustrate a query. We lift our diminished heads and look heavenward. Such seems to be the fact: worlds, suns, and stars, the shining myriads of the heavenly hosts, remind the Poet of an infinite, shoreless ocean, whereon move swiftly numberless squadrons of ships, millions upon millions of cruisers, large and small, crossing each other, whirling and gyrating in every direction; and Science teaches us, that though they be without rudder or compass or any beacon to guide them, they are nevertheless secure from collision—almost secure, at any rate, save in chance accidents—as the whole celestial machine is built upon and guided by an immutable, albeit blind, law, and by constant and accelerating force or forces. “Built upon” by whom? “By self‐evolution,” is the answer. Moreover, as dynamics teach that A body in motion tends to continue in the same state of relative rest or motion unless acted upon by some external force,

this force has to be regarded as self‐generated—even if not eternal, since this would amount to the recognition of perpetual motion—and so well self‐ calculated and self‐adjusted as to last from the beginning to the end of Kosmos. But “self‐generation” has still to generate from something, generation ex‐nihilo being as contrary to reason as it is to Science. Thus we are placed once more between the horns of a dilemma: are we to believe in perpetual motion or in self‐generation ex‐nihilo? And if in neither, who or what is that something, which first produced that force or those forces? There are such things in mechanics as superior levers, which give the impulse and act upon secondary or inferior levers. The former, however, need an impulse and occasional renovation, otherwise they would themselves very soon stop and fall back into their original status. What is the external force which puts and retains them in motion? Another dilemma!

As to the law of cosmical non‐intervention, it could be justified only in one case, namely, if the celestial mechanism were perfect; but it is not. The so‐called unalterable motions of celestial bodies alter and change incessantly; they are very often disturbed, and the wheels of even the sidereal locomotive itself occasionally jump off their invisible rails, as may be easily proved. Otherwise why should Laplace speak of the probable occurrence at some future time of an out‐and‐out reform in the arrangement of the planets;(409) or Lagrange maintain the gradual narrowing of the orbits; or our modern Astronomers, again, declare that the fuel in the sun is slowly disappearing? If the laws and forces which govern the behaviour of the celestial bodies are immutable, such modifications and wearing‐out of substance or fuel, of force and fluids, would be impossible; yet they are not denied. Therefore one has to suppose that such modifications will have to rely upon the laws of forces, which will have to self‐regenerate themselves once more on such occasions, thus producing an astral antinomy, and a kind of physical palinomy, since, as Laplace says, one would then see fluids disobeying themselves and reäcting in a way contrary to all their attributes and properties.

Newton felt very uncomfortable about the moon. Her behaviour in progressively narrowing the circumference of her orbit around the earth made him nervous, lest it should end one day in our satellite falling upon the earth. The world, he confessed, needed repairing, and that very often.(410) In this he was corroborated by Herschel.(411) He speaks of real and quite considerable deviations, besides those which are only apparent, but gets some consolation from his conviction that somebody or something will probably see to things. We may be answered that the personal beliefs of some pious Astronomers, however great they may be as scientific characters, are no proofs of the actual existence and presence in space of intelligent supramundane Beings, of either Gods or Angels. It is the behaviour of the stars and planets themselves that has to be analysed and inferences must be drawn therefrom. Renan asserts that nothing that we know of the sidereal bodies warrants the idea of the presence of any Intelligence, whether internal or external to them. Let us see, says Reynaud, if this is a fact, or only one more empty scientific assumption.

The orbits traversed by the planets are far from being immutable. They are, on the contrary, subject to perpetual mutation in position, as in form. Elongations, contractions, and orbital widenings, oscillations from right to left, slackening and quickening of speed ... and all this on a plane which seems to vacillate.(412) As is very pertinently observed by des Mousseux: Here is a path having little of the mathematical and mechanical precision claimed for it; for we know of no clock which, having gone slow for several minutes should catch up the right time of itself and without a turn of the key. So much for blind law and force. As for the physical impossibility—a miracle indeed in the sight of Science—of a stone raised in the air against the law of gravitation, this is what Babinet—the deadliest enemy and opponent of the phenomena of levitation—(cited by Arago) says: Everyone knows the theory of bolides [meteors] and aerolithes.... In Connecticut an immense aerolith was seen [a mass of eighteen hundred feet in diameter], bombarding a whole American zone and returning to the spot [in mid‐air] from which it had started.(413)

Thus we find in both of the cases above cited—that of self‐correcting planets and of meteors of gigantic size flying back into the air—a “blind force” regulating and resisting the natural tendencies of “blind matter,” and even occasionally repairing its mistakes and correcting its failures. This is far more miraculous and even “extravagant,” one would say, than any “Angel‐guided” Element. Bold is he who laughs at the idea of Von Haller, who declares that: The stars are perhaps an abode of glorious Spirits; as here Vice reigns, there is Virtue master.(414)

In The Theosophist for March, 1886,(415) in an answer to the “Solar Sphinx,” a member of the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society wrote as follows: We hold and believe that the revival of Occult Knowledge now in progress will some day demonstrate that the Western system represents ranges of perceptions which the Eastern—at least as expounded in the pages of The Theosophist—has yet to attain.(416) The writer is not the only person labouring under this erroneous impression. Greater Kabalists than he had said the same in the United States. This only proves that the knowledge possessed by Western Occultists of the true Philosophy, and the “ranges of perceptions” and thought of the Eastern doctrines, is very superficial. This assertion will be easily demonstrated by giving a few instances, instituting comparisons between the two interpretations of one and the same doctrine—the Hermetic Universal Doctrine. It is the more needed since, were we to neglect bringing forward such comparisons, our work would be left incomplete.

We may take the late Éliphas Lévi, rightly referred to by another Western Mystic, Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, as “one of the greatest representatives of modern Occult Philosophy,”(417) as presumably the best and most learned expounder of the Chaldæan Kabalah, and compare his teaching with that of Eastern Occultists. In his unpublished manuscripts and letters, lent to us by a Theosophist, who was for fifteen years his pupil, we had hoped to find that which he was unwilling to publish. What we do find, however, disappoints us greatly. We will take these teachings, then, as containing the essence of Western or Kabalistic Occultism, analyzing and comparing them with the Eastern interpretation as we go on. Éliphas Lévi teaches correctly, though in language rather too rhapsodically rhetorical to be sufficiently clear to the beginner, that Eternal life is Motion equilibrated by the alternate manifestations of force. But why does he not add that this perpetual motion is independent of the manifested Forces at work? He says: Chaos is the Tohu‐vah‐bohu of perpetual motion and the sum total of primordial matter;

and he fails to add that Matter is “primordial” only at the beginning of every new reconstruction of the Universe, matter in abscondito, as it is called by the Alchemists, is eternal, indestructible, without beginning or end. It is regarded by Eastern Occultists as the eternal Root of all, the Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântin, and the Svabhâvat of the Buddhist, the Divine Essence, in short, or Substance; the radiations from This are periodically aggregated into graduated forms, from pure Spirit to gross Matter; the Root, or Space, is in its abstract presence the Deity Itself, the Ineffable and Unknown One Cause.

Ain‐Suph with him also is the Boundless, the infinite and One Unity, secondless and causeless as Parabrahman. Ain‐Suph is the indivisible point, and therefore, as “being everywhere and nowhere,” is the absolute All. It is also “Darkness” because it is absolute Light, and the Root of the seven fundamental Cosmic Principles. Yet Éliphas Lévi, by simply stating that “Darkness was upon the face of the Earth,” fails to show (a) that “Darkness” in this sense is Deity Itself, and he is therefore withholding the only philosophical solution of this problem for the human mind; and (b) he allows the unwary student to believe that by “Earth” our own little globe—an atom in the Universe—is meant. In short, this teaching does not embrace the Occult Cosmogony, but deals simply with Occult Geology and the formation of our cosmic speck. This is further shown by his making a résumé of the Sephirothal Tree in this wise: God is harmony, the astronomy of Powers and Unity outside of the World.

This seems to suggest (a) that he teaches the existence of an extra‐ cosmic God, thus limiting and conditioning both the Kosmos and the divine Infinity and Omnipresence, which cannot be extraneous to or outside of one single atom; and (b) that by skipping the whole of the pre‐cosmic period—the manifested Kosmos here being meant—the very root of Occult teaching, he explains only the Kabalistic meaning of the dead‐letter of the Bible and Genesis, leaving its spirit and essence untouched. Surely the “ranges of perception” of the Western mind will not be greatly enlarged by such a limited teaching. Having said a few words on Tohu‐vah‐bohu—the meaning of which Wordsworth rendered graphically as “higgledy‐piggledy”—and having explained that this term denoted Cosmos, he teaches that:

Above the dark abyss [Chaos] were the Waters; ... the earth [la terre!] was Tohu‐vah‐bohu, i.e., in confusion, and darkness covered the face of the Deep, and vehement Breath moved on the Waters when the Spirit exclaimed [?], “Let there be light,” and there was light. Thus the earth [our globe, of course] was in a state of cataclysm; thick vapours veiled the immensity of the sky, the earth was covered with waters and a violent wind was agitating this dark ocean, when at a given moment the equilibrium revealed itself and light reäppeared; the letters that compose the Hebrew word “Bereshith” (the first word of Genesis) are “Beth,” the binary, the verb manifested by the act, a feminine letter; then “Resch,” the Verbum and Life, number 20, the disc multiplied by 2; and “Aleph,” the spiritual principle, the Unit, a masculine letter. Place these letters in a triangle and you have the absolute Unity, that without being included into numbers creates the number, the first manifestation, which is 2, and these two united by harmony resulting from the analogy of contraries [opposites], make 1, only. This is why God is called Elohim (plural).

All this is very ingenious, but is very puzzling, besides being incorrect. For owing to the first sentence, “Above the dark abyss were the Waters,” the French Kabalist leads the student away from the right track. This an Eastern Chela will see at a glance, and even one of the profane may see it. For if the Tohu‐vah‐bohu is “under” and the Waters are “above,” then these two are quite distinct from each other, and this is not the case. This statement is a very important one, inasmuch as it entirely changes the spirit and nature of Cosmogony, and brings it down to a level with exoteric Genesis—perhaps it was so stated with an eye to this result. The Tohu‐vah‐bohu is the “Great Deep” and is identical with “the Waters of Chaos,” or the primordial Darkness. By stating the fact otherwise it makes both “the Great Deep” and the “Waters”—which cannot be separated except in the phenomenal world—limited as to space and conditioned as to their nature. Thus Éliphas in his desire to conceal the last word of Esoteric Philosophy, fails—whether intentionally or otherwise does not matter—to point out the fundamental principle of the one true Occult Philosophy, namely, the unity and absolute homogeneity of the One Eternal Divine Element, and he makes of the Deity a male God. Then he says:

Above the Waters was the powerful Breath of the Elohim [the creative Dhyân Chohans]. Above the Breath appeared the Light, and above the Light the Word ... that created it. Now the fact is quite the reverse of this: it is the Primeval Light that creates the Word or Logos, Who in His turn creates physical light. For the Secret Doctrine teaches us that the reconstruction of the Universe takes place in this wise: At the periods of new generation, perpetual Motion becomes Breath; from the Breath comes forth primordial Light, through whose radiance manifests the Eternal Thought concealed in darkness, and this becomes the Word (Mantra).(418) It is That (the Mantra or Word) from which all This (the Universe) sprang into being. Further on Éliphas Lévi says: This [the concealed Deity] radiated a ray into the Eternal Essence [Waters of Space] and, fructifying thereby the primordial germ, the Essence expanded,(419) giving birth to the Heavenly Man from whose mind were born all forms. The Kabalah states very nearly the same. To learn what it really teaches one has to reverse the order in which Éliphas Lévi gives it, replacing the word “above” by that of “in,” as there cannot surely be any “above” or “under” in the Absolute. This is what he says:

Above the waters the powerful breath of the Elohim; above the Breath the Light; above Light the Word, or the Speech that created it. We see here the spheres of evolution: the souls [?] driven from the dark centre (Darkness) toward the luminous circumference. At the bottom of the lowest circle is the Tohu‐vah‐bohu, or the chaos which precedes all manifestation [Naissances—generation]; then the region of Water; then Breath; then Light; and, lastly, the Word. The construction of the above sentences shows that the learned Abbé had a decided tendency to anthropomorphize creation, even though the latter has to be shaped out of preëxisting material, as the Zohar shows plainly enough. This is how the “great” Western Kabalist gets out of the difficulty: he keeps silent on the first stage of evolution and imagines a second Chaos. Thus he says:

The Tohu‐vah‐bohu is the Latin Limbus, or twilight of the morning and evening of life.(420) It is in perpetual motion,(421) it decomposes continually,(422) and the work of putrefaction accelerates, because the world is advancing towards regeneration.(423) The Tohu‐vah‐bohu of the Hebrews is not exactly the confusion of things called Chaos by the Greeks, and which is found described in the commencement of the Metamorphosis of Ovid; it is something greater and more profound; it is the foundation of religion, it is the philosophical affirmation of the immateriality of God. Rather an affirmation of the materiality of a personal God. If a man has to seek his Deity in the Hades of the ancients—for the Tohu‐vah‐bohu, or the Limbus of the Greeks, is the Hall of Hades—then one can wonder no longer at the accusations brought forward by the Church against the “witches” and sorcerers versed in Western Kabalism, that they adored the goat Mendes, or the devil personified by certain spooks and Elementals. But in face of the task Éliphas Lévi had set before himself—that of reconciling Jewish Magic with Roman ecclesiasticism—he could say nothing else. Then he explains the first sentence in Genesis: Let us put on one side the vulgar translation of the sacred texts and see what is hidden in the first chapter of Genesis.

He then gives the Hebrew text quite correctly, but transliterates it: Bereschith Bara Eloim uth aschamam ouatti aares ouares ayete Tohu‐ vah‐bohu.... Ouimas Eloim rai avur ouiai aour. And he then explains: The first word, “Bereschith,” signifies “genesis,” a word equivalent to “nature.” “The act of generation or production,” we maintain; not “nature.” He then continues: The phrase, then, is incorrectly translated in the Bible. It is not “in the beginning,” for it should be at the stage of the generating force,(424) which would thus exclude every idea of the ex‐nihilo ... as nothing cannot produce something. The word “Eloim” or “Elohim” signifies the generating Powers, and such is the Occult sense of the first verse.... “Bereschith” (“nature” or “genesis”), “Bara” (“created”) “Eloim” (“the forces”) “Athat‐ ashamaim” (“heavens”) “ouath” and “oaris” (“the earth”); that is to say, “The generative potencies created indefinitely (eternally(425)) those forces that are the equilibrated opposites that we call heaven and earth, meaning the space and the bodies, the volatile and the fixed, the movement and the weight.”

Now this, if it be correct, is too vague to be understood by any one ignorant of the Kabalistic teaching. Not only are his explanations unsatisfactory and misleading—in his published works they are still worse—but his Hebrew transliteration is entirely wrong: it precludes the student, who would compare it for himself with the equivalent symbols and numerals of the words and letters of the Hebrew alphabet, from finding anything of that he might have found were the words correctly spelt in the French transliteration. Compared even with exoteric Hindu Cosmogony, the philosophy which Éliphas Lévi gives out as Kabalistic is simply mystical Roman Catholicism adapted to the Christian Kabalah. His Histoire de la Magie shows it plainly, and reveals also his object, which he does not even care to conceal. For, while stating with his Church, that The Christian religion has imposed silence on the lying oracles of the Gentiles and put an end to the prestige of the false gods,(426) he promises to prove in his work that the real Sanctum Regnum, the great Magic Art, is in that Star of Bethlehem which led the three Magi to adore the Saviour of the World. He says:

We will prove that the study of the sacred Pentagram had to lead all the Magi to know the new name which should be raised above all names, and before which every being capable of worship has to bend his knee.(427) This shows that Lévi’s Kabalah is mystic Christianity, and not Occultism; for Occultism is universal and knows no difference between the “Saviours” (or great Avatâras) of the several old nations. Éliphas Lévi was not an exception in preaching Christianity under a disguise of Kabalism. He was undeniably “the greatest representative of modern Occult Philosophy,” as it is studied in Roman Catholic countries generally, where it is fitted to the preconceptions of Christian students. But he never taught the real universal Kabalah, and least of all did he teach Eastern Occultism. Let the student compare the Eastern and Western teaching, and see whether the philosophy of the Upanishads “has yet to attain the ranges of perception” of this Western system. Everyone has the right to defend the system he prefers, but in doing this, there is no need to throw slurs upon the system of one’s brother.

In view of the great resemblance between many of the fundamental “truths” of Christianity and the “myths” of Brâhmanism, there have been serious attempts made lately to prove that the Bhagavad Gîtâ and most of the Brâhmanas and the Purânas are of a far later date than the Mosaic Books and even than the Gospels. But were it possible that an enforced success should be obtained in this direction, such argument cannot achieve its object, since the Rig Veda remains. Brought down to the most modern limits of the age assigned to it, its date cannot be made to overlap that of the Pentateuch, which is admittedly later.

The Orientalists know well that they cannot make away with the landmarks, followed by all subsequent religions, set up in that “Bible of Humanity” called the Rig Veda. It is there that at the very dawn of intellectual humanity were laid the foundation‐stones of all the faiths and creeds, of every fane and church built from first to last; and they are still there. Universal “myths,” personifications of Powers divine and cosmic, primary and secondary, and historical personages of all the now‐existing as well as of extinct religions are to be found in the seven chief Deities and their 330,000,000 correlations of the Rig Veda, and those Seven, with the odd millions, are the Rays of the one boundless Unity. But to THIS can never be offered profane worship. It can only be the “object of the most abstract meditation, which Hindus practise in order to obtain absorption in it.” At the beginning of every “dawn” of “Creation,” eternal Light—which is darkness—assumes the aspect of so‐called Chaos: chaos to the human intellect; the eternal Root to the superhuman or spiritual sense.

“Osiris is a black God.” These were the words pronounced at “low breath” at Initiation in Egypt, because Osiris Noumenon is darkness to the mortal. In this Chaos are formed the “Waters,” Mother Isis, Aditi, etc. They are the “Waters of Life,” in which primordial germs are created—or rather reäwakened—by the primordial Light. It is Purushottama, or the Divine Spirit, which in its capacity of Nârâyana, the Mover on the Waters of Space, fructifies and infuses the Breath of life into that germ which becomes the “Golden Mundane Egg,” in which the male Brahmâ is created;(428) and from this the first Prajâpati, the Lord of Beings, emerges, and becomes the progenitor of mankind. And though it is not he, but the Absolute, that is said to contain the Universe in Itself, yet it is the duty of the male Brahmâ to manifest it in a visible form. Hence he has to be connected with the procreation of species, and assumes, like Jehovah and other male Gods in subsequent anthropomorphism, a phallic symbol. At best every such male God, the “Father” of all, becomes the “Archetypal Man.” Between him and the Infinite Deity stretches an abyss. In the theistic religions of personal Gods the latter are degraded from abstract Forces into physical potencies. The Water of Life—the “Deep” of Mother Nature—is viewed in its terrestrial aspect in anthropomorphic religions. Behold, how holy it has become by theological magic! It is held sacred and is deified now as of old in almost every religion.

But if Christians use it as a means of spiritual purification in baptism and prayer; if Hindus pay reverence to their sacred streams, tanks, and rivers; if Pârsî, Mahommedan and Christian alike believe in its efficacy, surely that element must have some great and Occult significance. In Occultism it stands for the Fifth Principle of Kosmos, in the lower septenary: for the whole visible Universe was built by Water, say the Kabalists who know the difference between the two waters—the “Waters of Life” and those of Salvation—so confused together in dogmatic religions. The “King‐Preacher” says of himself:

I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven.(429) Speaking of the great work and glory of the Elohim(430)—unified into the “Lord God” in the English Bible, whose garment, he tells us, is light and heaven the curtain—he refers to the builder Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters,(431) that is, the divine Host of the Sephiroth, who have constructed the Universe out of the Deep, the Waters of Chaos. Moses and Thales were right in saying that only earth and water can bring forth a living Soul, water being on this plane the principle of all things. Moses was an Initiate, Thales a Philosopher—i.e., a Scientist, for the words were synonymous in his day.

The secret meaning of this is that water and earth stand in the Mosaic Books for the prima materia and the creative (feminine) Principle on our plane. In Egypt Osiris was Fire, and Isis was the Earth or its synonym Water; the two opposing elements—just because of their opposite properties—being necessary to each other for a common object: that of procreation. The earth needs solar heat and rain to make her throw out her germs. But these procreative properties of Fire and Water, or Spirit and Matter, are symbols but of physical generation. While the Jewish Kabalists symbolized these elements only in their application to manifested things, and reverenced them as the emblems for the production of terrestrial life, the Eastern Philosophy noticed them only as an illusive emanation from their spiritual prototypes, and no unclean or unholy thought marred its Esoteric religious symbology. Chaos, as shown elsewhere, is Theos, which becomes Kosmos: it is Space, the container of everything in the Universe. As Occult Teachings assert, it is called by the Chaldæans, Egyptians, and every other nation Tohu‐vah‐ bohu, or Chaos, Confusion, because Space is the great storehouse of Creation, whence proceed not forms alone, but also ideas, which could receive their expression only through the Logos, the Word, Verbum, or Sound.

_The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 are the successive emanations from Mother [Space] as she forms running downward her garment, spreading it upon the seven steps of Creation._(432)_ The roller returns upon itself, as one end joins the other __ in infinitude, and the numbers 4, 3, and 2 are displayed, as it is the only side of the veil that we can perceive, the first number being lost in its inaccessible solitude._ ... _Father, which is Boundless Time, generates Mother, which is infinite Space, in Eternity; and Mother generates Father in Manvantaras, which are divisions of durations, that Day when that world becomes one ocean. Then the Mother becomes Nârâ [Waters—the Great Deep] for Nara [the Supreme Spirit] to rest—or move—upon, when, it is said, that 1, 2, 3, 4 descend and abide in the world of the unseen, while the 4, 3, 2, become the limits in the visible world to deal with the manifestations of Father [Time]._(433) This relates to the Mahâyugas which in figures become 432, and with the addition of noughts, 4,320,000.

Now it is surpassingly strange, if it be a mere coincidence, that the numerical value of Tohu‐vah‐bohu, or “Chaos,” in the Bible—which Chaos, of course, is the “Mother” Deep, or the Waters of Space—should yield the same figures. For this is what is found in a Kabalist manuscript: It is said of the Heavens and the Earth in the second verse of Genesis that they were “Chaos and Confusion”—that is, they were “Tohu‐vah‐bohu;” “and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” i.e., “the perfect material out of which construction was to be made lacked organization.” The order of the digits of these words as they stand—i.e.,(434) the letters rendered by their numerical value—is 6,526,654 and 2,386. By art speech these are key‐working numbers loosely shuffled together, the germs and keys of construction, but to be recognized, one by one, as used and required. They follow symmetrically in the work as immediately following the first sentence of grand enunciation: “In Rash developed itself Gods, the heavens and the earth.”

Multiply the numbers of the letters of “Tohu‐vah‐bohu” together continuously from right to left, placing the consecutive single products as we go, and we will have the following series of values, viz., (a) 30, 60, 360, 2,160, 10,800, 43,200, or as by the characterizing digits; 3, 6, 36, 216, 108, and 432; (b) 20, 120, 720, 1,440, 7,200, or 2, 12, 72, 144, 72, 432, the series closing in 432, one of the most famous numbers of antiquity, and which, though obscured, crops out in the chronology up to the Flood.(435)... This shows that the Hebrew usage of play upon the numbers must have come to the Jews from India. As we have seen, the final series yields, besides many another combination, the figures 108 and 1008—the number of the names of Vishnu, whence the 108 grains of the Yogî’s rosary—and close with 432, the truly “famous” number in Indian and Chaldæan antiquity, appearing in the cycle of 4,320,000 years in the former, and in the 432,000 years, the duration of the Chaldæan divine dynasties.

The meaning of the “fairy‐tale” told by the Chaldæan Qû‐tâmy is easily understood. His modus operandi with the “idol of the moon” was that of all the Semites, before Terah, Abraham’s father, made images—the Teraphim, called after him—or the “chosen people” of Israel ceased divining by them. These teraphim were just as much “idols” as is any pagan image or statue.(436) The injunction “Thou shalt not bow to a graven image,” or teraphim, must have either come at a later date, or have been disregarded, since the bowing‐down to and the divining by the teraphim seem to have been so orthodox and general that the “Lord” actually threatens the Israelites, through Hosea, to deprive them of their teraphim. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, ... without a sacrifice, and without an image. Matzebah, or statue, or pillar, is explained in the Bible to mean “without an ephod and without teraphim.”(437) Father Kircher supports very strongly the idea that the statue of the Egyptian Serapis was identical in every way with those of the seraphim, or teraphim, in the temple of Solomon. Says Louis de Dieu:

They were, perhaps, images of angels, or statues dedicated to the angels, the presence of one of these spirits being thus attracted into a teraphim and answering the inquirers [consultans]; and even in this hypothesis the word “teraphim” would become the equivalent of “seraphim” by changing the “t” into “s” in the manner of Syrians.(438) What says the Septuagint? The teraphim are translated successively by ἐίδωλα—forms in someone’s likeness; eidolon, an “astral body;” γλυπτὰ—the sculptured; κενοτάφια—sculptures in the sense of containing something hidden, or receptacles; θὴλους—manifestations; ἀλήθειας—truths or realities; μορφώματα or φωτισμοὺς—luminous, shining likenesses. The latter expression shows plainly what the teraphim were. The Vulgate translates the term by “annuntientes,” the “messengers who announce,” and it thus becomes certain that the teraphim were the oracles. They were the animated statues, the Gods who revealed themselves to the masses through the Initiated Priests and Adepts in the Egyptian, Chaldæan, Greek, and other temples. As to the way of divining, or learning one’s fate, and of being instructed by the teraphim,(439) it is explained quite plainly by Maimonides and Seldenus. The former says:

The worshippers of the teraphim claimed that the light of the principal stars [planets], penetrating into and filling the carved statue through and through, the angelic virtue [of the regents, or animating principle in the planets] conversed with them, teaching them many most useful arts and sciences.(440) In his turn Seldenus explains the same, adding that the teraphim(441) were built and fashioned in accordance with the position of their respective planets, each of the teraphim being consecrated to a special “star‐angel,” those that the Greeks called stoichæ, as also according to figures located in the sky and called the “tutelary Gods”: Those who traced out the στοιχεῖα were called στοιχειωματικοὶ [or the diviners by the planets] and the στοιχεῖα.(442) Ammianus Marcellinus states that the ancient divinations were always accomplished with the help of the “spirits” of the elements (spiritus elementorum), or as they are called in Greek πνεύματα τῶν στοιχείων. Now the latter are not the “spirits” of the stars (planets), nor are they divine Beings; they are simply the creatures inhabiting their respective elements, called by the Kabalists, elementary spirits, and by the Theosophists elementals.(443) Father Kircher, the Jesuit, tells the reader: Every god had such instruments of divination to speak through. Each had his speciality.

Serapis gave instruction on agriculture; Anubis taught sciences; Horus advised upon psychic and spiritual matters; Isis was consulted on the rising of the Nile, and so on.(444) This historical fact, furnished by one of the ablest and most erudite among the Jesuits, is unfortunate for the prestige of the “Lord God of Israel” with regard to his claims to priority and to his being the one living God. Jehovah, on the admission of the Old Testament itself, conversed with his elect in no other way, and this places him on a par with every other Pagan God, even of the inferior classes. In Judges, xvii., we read of Micah having an ephod and a teraphim fabricated, and consecrating them to Jehovah (see the Septuagint and the Vulgate); these objects were made by a founder from the two hundred shekels of silver given to him by his mother. True, King James’ “Holy Bible” explains this little bit of idolatry by saying: In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Yet the act must have been orthodox, since Micah, after hiring a priest, a diviner, for his ephod and teraphim, declares: “Now know I that the Lord will do me good.” And if Micah’s act—who

Had an house of Gods, and made an ephod and teraphim and consecrated one of his sons to their service, as also to that of the “graven image” dedicated “unto the Lord” by his mother—now seems prejudicial, it was not so in those days of one religion and one lip. How can the Latin Church blame the act, since Kircher, one of her best writers, calls the teraphim “the holy instruments of primitive revelations;” since Genesis shows us Rebecca going “to enquire of the Lord,”(445) and the Lord answering her (certainly through his teraphim), and delivering to her several prophecies? And if this be not sufficient, there is Saul, who deplores the silence of the ephod,(446) and David who consults the thummim, and receives oral advice from the Lord as to the best way of killing his enemies. The thummim and urim, however—the object in our days of so much conjecture and speculation—was not an invention of the Jews, nor had it originated with them, despite the minute instruction given about it by Jehovah to Moses. For the priest‐hierophant of the Egyptian temples wore a breastplate of precious stones, in every way similar to that of the high priest of the Israelites.

The high‐priests of Egypt wore suspended on their necks an image of sapphire, called Truth, the manifestation of truth becoming evident in it. Seldenus is not the only Christian writer who assimilates the Jewish to the Pagan teraphim, and expressed a conviction that the former had borrowed them from the Egyptians. Moreover, we are told by Döllinger, a preëminently Roman Catholic writer: The teraphim were used and remained in many Jewish families to the days of Josiah.(447) As to the personal opinion of Döllinger, a Papist, and of Seldenus, a Protestant—both of whom trace Jehovah in the teraphim of the Jews and “evil spirits” in those of the Pagans—it is the usual one‐sided judgment of odium theologicum and sectarianism. Seldenus is right, however, in arguing that in the days of old, all such modes of communication had been primarily established for purposes of divine and angelic communications only. But The holy Spirit (spirits, rather) spake [not] to the children of Israel [alone] by urim and thummim, while the tabernacle remained,

as Dr. A. Cruden would have people believe. Nor had the Jews alone need of a “tabernacle” for such a kind of theophanic, or divine communication; for no Bath‐Kol (or “Daughter of the divine Voice”), called thummim, could be heard whether by Jew, Pagan, or Christian, were there not a fit tabernacle for it. The “tabernacle” was simply the archaic telephone of those days of Magic when Occult powers were acquired by Initiation, just as they are now. The nineteenth century has replaced with an electric telephone the “tabernacle” of specified metals, wood, and special arrangements, and has natural mediums instead of high priests and hierophants. Why should people wonder, then, that instead of reaching Planetary Spirits and Gods, believers should now communicate with no greater beings than elementals and animated shells—the demons of Porphyry? Who these were, he tells us candidly in his work On the Good and Bad Demons: They whose ambition is to be taken for Gods, and whose leader demands to be recognized as the Supreme God.