chapter i

of _Hebrews_, that speaks of the creation of “worlds”—in the plural. It is very singular, he adds, that all the cosmogonies should agree to suggest the same idea, and preserve the tradition of a first series of revolutions, owing to which the world was destroyed and again renewed.

Had the Cardinal studied the _Zohar_ his doubts would have been changed into certainties. Thus saith the “Idra Suta”:

There were old worlds which perished as soon as they came into existence; worlds with and without form called Scintillas—for they were like the sparks under the smith’s hammer, flying in all directions. Some were the primordial worlds which could not continue long, because the “Aged”—his name be sanctified—had not as yet assumed his form,(1657) the workman was not yet the “Heavenly Man.”(1658)

Again in the _Midrash_, written long before the _Kabalah_ of Simeon Ben Iochai, Rabbi Abahu explains:

The Holy One, blessed be his name, has successively formed and destroyed sundry worlds before this one(1659).... Now this refers both to the first races [the “Kings of Edom”] and to the worlds destroyed.(1660)

“Destroyed” means here what we call “obscuration.” This becomes evident when we read the explanation given further on:

Still when it is said that they [the worlds] _perished_, it is only meant thereby that they [their humanities] lacked the true form, till the human [our] form came into being, in which all things are comprised and which contains all forms ...—it does not mean death, but only denotes a sinking down from their status [that of worlds in activity].(1661)

When, therefore, we read of the “destruction” of the Worlds, the word has many meanings, which are very clear in several of the Commentaries on the _Zohar_ and in Kabalistic treatises. As said elsewhere, it means not only the destruction of many Worlds which have ended their life‐career, but also that of the several Continents which have disappeared, as also their decline and geographical change of place.

The mysterious “Kings of Edom” are sometimes referred to as the “Worlds” that had been destroyed; but it is a “cloak.” The Kings who reigned in Edom before there reigned a King in Israel, or the “Edomite Kings,” could never symbolize the “prior worlds,” but only the “attempts at men” on this Globe—the Pre‐Adamite Races, of which the _Zohar_ speaks, and which we explain as the First Root‐Race. For as, speaking of the six Earths (the six “Limbs” of Microprosopus), it is said that the seventh (our Earth) came not into the computation when the six were created (the six Spheres above our Globe in the Terrestrial Chain), so the first seven Kings of Edom are left out of calculation in _Genesis_. By the law of analogy and permutation, in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_, as also in the _Books of Knowledge_ and of _Wisdom_, the “seven primordial worlds” mean also the “seven primordial” races (sub‐races of the First Root‐Race of the Shadows); and, again, the Kings of Edom are the sons of “Esau, the father of the Edomites”;(1662) _i.e._, Esau represents in the _Bible_ the race which stands between the Fourth and the Fifth, the Atlantean and the Âryan. “Two _nations_ are in thy womb,” said the Lord to Rebekah; and Esau was _red_ and _hairy_. From verse 24 to 34,