Chapter i

.), or Adam Kadmon, one can see for oneself that God—the God of the Christians at any rate—was created by man in his own image, amid the kicks, blows and murders of the early Councils.

A curious fact, one that throws a flood of light on the claim that Jesus was an Initiate and a martyred Adept, is given in the work, (already so often referred to) which may be called “a mathematical revelation”.—_The Source of Measures._

Attention is called to the part of the 46th verse of the 27th Chapter of Matthew, as follows: “Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani?—that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Of course, our versions are taken from the original _Greek_ manuscripts (the reason why we have no original Hebrew manuscripts concerning these occurrences being because the enigmas in Hebrew would betray themselves on comparison with the sources of their derivation, the _Old Testament_). The Greek manuscripts, without exception, give these words as—

Ἠλί Ἠλί λαμὰ σαβαχθανί

They are _Hebrew words_, rendered into the _Greek_, and in Hebrew are as follows:

אלי אלי למח שבחתני

The Scripture of these words says, “that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” as their proper translation. Here then are the words, beyond all dispute; and beyond all question, such is the interpretation given of them by Scripture. Now the words will not bear this interpretation, and it is a false rendering. The true meaning is _just the opposite of the one given_, and is—

_My God, my God, how thou dost glorify me!_

But even more, for while _lama_ is _why_, or _how_, as a verbal it connects the idea of _to dazzle_, or adverbially, it could run “_how dazzlingly_,” and so on. To the unwary reader this interpretation is enforced, and made to answer, as it were, to the fulfilment of a prophetic utterance, by a marginal reference to the _first_ verse of the _twenty‐second_ Psalm, which reads:

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

The Hebrew of this verse for these words is—

אלי אלי למה עזבתני

as to which the reference is correct, and the interpretation sound and good, but with an utterly different word. The words are—

_Eli, Eli, lamah azabvtha‐ni?_

No wit of man, however scholarly, can save this passage from _falseness of rendering_ on its face; and as so, it becomes a most terrible blow upon the proper first‐face sacredness of the recital.(258)

For ten years or more, sat the revisers (?) of the _Bible_, a most imposing and solemn array of the learned of the land, the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars of England, purporting to correct the mistakes and blunders, the sins of omission and of commission of their less learned predecessors, the translators of the Bible. Are we going to be told that none of them saw the glaring difference between the Hebrew words in _Psalm_ xxii., _azabvtha‐ni_, and _sabachthani_ in _Matthew_; that they were not aware of the deliberate falsification?

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

The assessor of Osiris‐Sol, as St. Michael is the assessor, Ferouer, of the Word.

The monogram of Chrestos and the Labarum, the standard of Constantine—who, by the by, died a Pagan and was never baptised—is a symbol derived from the above rite and also denotes “life and death.” Long before the sign of the Cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, it was employed as a secret sign of recognition among Neophytes and Adepts. Say Éliphas Lévi:

The sign of the cross adopted by the Christians does not belong exclusively to them. It is kabalistic, and represents the oppositions and quaternary equilibrium of the elements. We see by the occult verse of the _Pater_, to which we have called attention in another work, that there were originally two ways of making it, or, at least, two very different formulas to express its meaning: one reserved for priests and initiates; the other given to neophytes and the profane.(259)

One can understand now why the _Gospel of Matthew_, the Evangel of the Ebionites, has been for ever excluded in its Hebrew form from the world’s curious gaze.

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

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

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

The Ebionites were the first, the earliest Christians, whose representative was the Gnostic author of the _Clementine Homilies_, and as the author of _Supernatural Religion_ shows,(265) Ebionitic Gnosticism had once been the purest form of Christianity. They were the pupils and followers of the early Nazarenes—the kabalistic Gnostics. They believed in the Æons, as the Cerinthians did, and that “the world was put together by Angels” (Dhyân Chohans), as Epiphanius complains (_Contra Ebionitas_): “Ebion had the opinion of the Nazarenes, the form of Cerinthians.” “They decided that Christ was of the seed of a man,” he laments.(266) Thus again:

The badge of Dan‐Scorpio is _death‐life_, in the symbol ☧ as _cross‐bones and skull_, ... or _life‐death_ ... the standard of Constantine, the Roman Emperor. Abel has been shown to be Jesus, and Cain‐Vulcain, or Mars, pierced him. Constantine was the Roman Emperor, whose warlike god was Mars, and a Roman soldier pierced Jesus on the cross....

But the piercing of Abel was the consummation of his marriage with Cain, and this was proper under the form of Mars Generator; hence the double glyph, one of Mars‐Generator [Osiris‐Sun] and Mars‐ Destroyer [Mercury the God of Death in the Egyptian _basso‐ relievo_] in one; significant, again, of the primal idea of the living cosmos, or of birth and death, as necessary to the continuation of the stream of life.(267)

To quote once more from _Isis Unveiled_:

A Latin cross of a perfect Christian shape was found hewn upon the granite slabs of the Adytum of the Serapeum; and the monks did not fail to claim that the cross had been hallowed by the Pagans in a “spirit of prophecy.” At least, Sozomen, with an air of triumph, records the fact.(268) But archæology and symbolism, those tireless and implacable enemies of clerical false pretences, have found in the hieroglyphics of the legend running round the design at least a partial interpretation of its meaning.

According to King and other numismatists and archæologists, the cross was placed there as the symbol of eternal life. Such a Tau, or Egyptian cross, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries. Symbol of the dual generative power, it was laid upon the breast of the Initiate, after his “new birth” was accomplished, and the Mystæ had returned from their baptism in the sea. It was a mystic sign that his spiritual birth had regenerated and united his astral soul with his divine spirit, and that he was ready to ascend in spirit to the blessed abodes of light and glory—the Eleusinia. The Tau was a magic talisman at the same time as a religious emblem. It was adopted by the Christians through the Gnostics and Kabalists, who used it largely, as their numerous gems testify. These in turn had the Tau (or handled cross) from the Egyptians, and the Latin Cross from the Buddhist missionaries, who brought it from India (where it can be found even now) two or three centuries B.C. The Assyrians, Egyptians, ancient Americans, Hindus and Romans had it in various, but very slight modifications of shape. Till very late in the middle ages, it was considered a potent spell again at epilepsy and demoniacal possession, and the “signet of the living God” brought down in St. John’s vision by the angel ascending from the east to “seal the servants of our God in the foreheads,” was but the same mystic Tau—the Egyptian Cross. In the painted glass of St. Denis (France) this angel is represented as stamping this sign on the forehead of the elect; the legend reads, SIGNUM TAY. In King’s _Gnostics_, the author reminds us that “this mark is commonly borne by St. Anthony, an _Egyptian_ recluse.”(269) What the real meaning of the Tau was, is explained to us by the Christian St. John, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Hindu Brahmans. It is but too evident that, with the Apostle at least, it meant the “Ineffable Name,” as he calls this “signet of the living God” a few chapters further on(270) the “_Father’s name written in their foreheads_.”

The Brahmâtmâ, the chief of the Hindu Initiates, had on his head‐ gear two keys, symbol of the revealed mystery of life and death, placed cross‐like; and in some Buddhist pagodas of Tartary and Mongolia, the entrance of a chamber within the temple, generally containing the staircase which leads to the inner dagoba,(271) and the porticos of some _Prachidas_(272) are ornamented with a cross formed of two fishes, as found on some of the zodiacs of the Buddhists. We should not wonder at all at learning that the sacred device in the tombs in the catacombs at Rome, the “Vesica Piscis,” was derived from the said Buddhist zodiacal sign. How general must have been that geometrical figure in the world‐symbols, may be inferred from the fact that there is a Masonic tradition that Solomon’s temple was built on three foundations, forming the “triple Tau” or three crosses.

In its mystical sense, the Egyptian cross owes its origin, as an emblem, to the realisation by the earliest philosophy of an _androgynous dualism of every manifestation in nature_, which proceeds from the abstract ideal of a likewise androgynous deity, while the Christian emblem is simply due to chance. Had the Mosaic law prevailed, Jesus should have been lapidated.(273) The crucifix was an instrument of torture, and utterly common among Romans as it was unknown among Semitic nations. It was called the “Tree of Infamy.” It is but later that it was adopted as a Christian symbol; but during the first two decades the apostles looked upon it with horror.(274) It is certainly not the Christian Cross that John had in mind when speaking of the “signet of the living God,” but the _mystic_ Tau—the Tetragrammaton, or mighty name, which, on the most ancient Kabalistic talismans, was represented by the four Hebrew letters composing the Holy Word.

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

It is well known that the earliest Christian emblems—before it was ever attempted to represent the bodily appearance of Jesus—were the Lamb, the Good Shepherd, and _The Fish_. The origin of the latter emblem, which has so puzzled the archæologists, thus becomes comprehensible. The whole secret lies in the easily ascertained fact that, while in the _Kabalah_ the King Messiah is called “Interpreter,” or Revealer of the Mystery, and shown to be the _fifth_ emanation, in the _Talmud_—for reasons we will now explain—the Messiah is very often designated as “DAG,” or the Fish. This is an inheritance from the Chaldees, and relates—as the very name indicates—to the Babylonian Dagon, the man‐fish, who was the instructor and interpreter of the people, to whom he appeared. Abarbanel explains the name, by stating that the sign of his (Messiah’s) coming is the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the sign _Pisces_.(276) Therefore, as the Christians were intent upon identifying their Christos with the Messiah of the _Old Testament_, they adopted it so readily as to forget that its true origin might be traced still further back than the Babylonian Dagon. How eagerly and closely the ideal of Jesus was united, by the early Christians, with every imaginable kabalistic and pagan tenet, may be inferred from the language of Clemens, of Alexandria, addressed to his co‐religionists.

When they were debating upon the choice of the most appropriate symbol to remind them of Jesus, Clemens advised them in the following words: “Let the engraving upon the gem of your ring be either _a dove_, or _a ship running before the wind_ (the Argha), or a _fish_.” Was the good father, when writing this sentence, labouring under the recollection of Joshua, son of Nun (called _Jesus_ in the Greek and Slavonian versions); or had he forgotten the real interpretation of these pagan symbols?(277)

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

As an emblem of death, being placed over the door of life and signifying _birth_, or of the intercontainment of two opposite principles in one, just as, mystically, the Saviour was held to be man‐woman.(278)

The author’s idea is to show the mystic blending by the Gospel writers of Jehovah, Cain, Abel, etc., with Jesus (in accordance with Jewish kabalistic numeration); the better he succeeds, the more clearly he shows that it was a _forced_ blending, and that we have not a record of the real events of the life of Jesus, narrated by eye‐witnesses or the Apostles. The narrative is all based on the signs of the Zodiac:

Each a double sign or male‐female [in ancient astrological Magic]—viz: it was Taurus‐Eve, and Scorpio was Mars‐Lupa, or Mars with the female wolf [in relation to Romulus]. So, as these signs were opposites of each other, yet _met in the centre_, they were connected; and so in fact it was, and in a double sense, the conception of the year was in Taurus, as the conception of Eve by Mars, her opposite, in Scorpio. The birth would be at the winter solstice, or Christmas. On the contrary, by conception in Scorpio—_viz._, of Lupa by Taurus—birth would be in Leo. Scorpio was Chrēstos in _humiliation_, while Leo was Christos in _triumph_. While Taurus‐Eve fulfilled astronomical functions, Mars‐Lupa fulfilled spiritual ones by type.(279)

The author bases all this on Egyptian correlations and meanings of Gods and Goddesses, but ignores the Âryan, which are far earlier.

_Mooth_ or _Mouth_, was the Egyptian cognomen of Venus, (Eve, mother of all living) [as _Vach_, mother of all living, a permutation of _Aditi_, as Eve was one of Sephira] _or the moon_. Plutarch (_Isis_, 374) hands it down that Isis was sometimes called _Muth_, which word means _mother_ ... (Issa, אשה, woman). (_Isis_, p. 372). Isis, he says is that part of Nature, which, as feminine, contains in herself, as (nutrix) nurse, all things to be born.... “Certainly the moon,” speaking astronomically, “chiefly exercises this function in Taurus, Venus being the house (in opposition to Mars, _generator_, in Scorpio), because the sign is luna, hypsoma. Since ... Isis Metheur differs from Isis _Muth_ and that in the vocable _Muth_ the _notion of bringing forth_ may be concealed, and since fructification must take place, _Sol_ being joined with _Luna_ in _Libra_, it is not improbable that Muth first indeed signifies Venus in Libra; hence Luna in Libra.” (Beiträge zur Kenntniss, pars. 11, S. 9, under _Muth_.)(280)

Then Fuerst, under _Bohu_, is quoted to show

The double play upon the word _Muth_ by help of which the real intent is produced in the occult way ... _sin_, _death_, and _woman_ are one in the glyph, and correlatively connected with _intercourse_ and _death_.(281)

All this is applied by the author _only_ to the exoteric and Jewish euhemerised symbols, whereas they were meant, first of all, to conceal cosmogonical mysteries, and then, those of anthropological evolution with reference to the Seven Races, already evoluted and to come, and especially as regards the last branch races of the third Root‐Race. However, the word _void_ (primeval Chaos) is shown to be taken for Eve‐Venus‐Naamah, agreeably with Fuerst’s definition; for as he says:

In this primitive signification [of void] was בהו [bohu] taken in the Biblical cosmogony, and used in establishing the dogma יש מאין _Jes_ (us) _m’aven_, (_Jes‐us from nothing_), respecting creation. [Which shows the writers of the _New Testament_ considerably skilled in the _Kabalah_ and Occult Sciences, and corroborates still more our assertion.] Hence Aquila translates οὔδεν vulg. vacua (hence _vacca_, _cow_) [hence also the horns of Isis—Nature, Earth, and the Moon—taken from Vâch, the Hindu “Mother of all that lives,” identified with Virâj and called in Atharvaveda the daughter of Kâma, the _first_ desires: “That daughter of thine, O Kâma, is _called __ the cow_, she whom Sages name _Vâch‐Virâj_,” who was _milked_ by Brihaspati, the Rishi, which is another mystery] Onkelos and Samarit. ריקבי.

The Phœnician cosmogony has connected _Bohu_ בהו Βααυ into a personified expression denoting the _primitive substance_, and as a deity, the _mother of races of the gods_ [which is Aditi and Vâch]. The Aramean name בהו‐תא, בהו‐ת, בהו‐ת, Βαώθ, Βυθ‐ός, Buto, for the _mother of the gods_, which passed over to the Gnostics, Babylonians and Egyptians, _is identical then with Môt_ (מות, our _Muth_) properly, (Βώθ) _originated in Phœnician_ from an interchange of _b_ with _m_.(282)

Rather, one would say, go to the origin. The mystic euhemerisation of Wisdom and Intelligence, operating in the work of cosmic evolution, or _Buddhi_ under the names of Brahmâ, Purusha, etc., as male power, and Aditi‐Vâch, etc., as female, whence Sarasvatî, Goddess of Wisdom, who became under the veils of Esoteric concealment, Butos, _Bythos_—Depth, the grossly material, personal female, called Eve, the “primitive woman” of Irenæus, and the world springing out of _Nothing_.

The workings out of this glyph of 4th _Genesis_ help to the comprehension of the division of one character into the forms of two persons; as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abram and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and so on [all male and female].... Now, as linking together several great salient points in the Biblical structure: (_1_) as to the _Old_ and _New Testaments_; with also (_2_) as to the Roman Empire; (_3_) as to confirming the meanings and uses of symbols; and (_4_) as to confirming the entire explanation and reading of the glyphs; as (_5_) recognising and laying down the base of the great pyramid as the _foundation square_ of the Bible construction; (_6_) as well as the new Roman adoption under Constantine—the following given:(283)

Cain has been shown to be ... the 360 circle of the Zodiac, the perfect and exact standard, by a squared division; hence his name of Melchizadik.... [The geometrical and numerical demonstrations here follow.] It has been repeatedly stated that the object of the Great Pyramid construction was to measure the _heavens and the earth_ ... [the objective spheres as evoluting from the subjective, purely spiritual Kosmos, we beg leave to add]; therefore, its measuring containment would indicate all the substance of measure of _the heavens and the earth_, or agreeably to ancient recognition, _Earth_, _Air_, _Water_ and _Fire_.(284) (The base side of this pyramid was diameter to a circumference _in feet_ of 2400. The characteristic of this is 24 feet, or 6 × 4 = 24, or this very Cain‐Adam square.) Now, by the restoration of the encampment of the Israelites, as initiated by Moses, by the great scholar, Father Athanasius Kircher, the Jesuit priest, the above is precisely, by Biblical record and traditionary sources, the method of laying off this encampment. The _four interior squares_ were devoted to (1) Moses and Aaron; (2) Kohath; (3) Gershom; and (4) Merari—the last three being the heads of the Levites. The attributes of these squares were the _primal_ attributes of Adam‐ Mars and were concreted of the elements, _Earth_, _Air_, _Fire_, _Water_, or ים = Iam = _Water_, נור = Nour = _Fire_, רוח = Rouach = _Air_, and יבשׂׂשׂה = Iābeshah = _Earth_. The initial letters of these words are INRI—the symbol usually translated as _I_esus _N_azarenus _R_ex _I_udæorum—“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” This square of INRI is the _Adam square_, which was extended from, as a foundation, into four others of 144 × 2 = 288, to the side of the large square of 288 × 4 = 1152, = the whole circumference. But this square is the display of also circular elements and 115·2 can denote this. Put _INRI_ into a circle, or read it as the letters stand in the square, as to its values of 1521, and we have [Symbol: circle with numbers inside: 1, 1, 2, 5] which reads 115·2.

But as seen Cain denotes this as, or in, the 115 of his name: which 115 was the very complement to make up the 360 day year, to agree with the balances of the standard circle, which were Cain. The corner squares of the larger square are, A = Leo, and B = Dan Scorpio; and it is seen that Cain pierces Abel at the intersection of the equinoctial with the solstice cross lines, referred to from Dan‐Scorpio on the celestial circle. But Dan‐Scorpio borders on Libra, the scales, whose sign is ♎ (which sign is that of the ancient _pillow_ on which _the back of the head to the ears_(285) rested, the pillow of Jacob), and is represented for one symbol as [Symbol: Letters X, P, and S, with Libra symbol atop them].... Also the badge of Dan‐Scorpio is death‐life, in the symbol ☧. Now the cross is the emblem of the _origin of measures_, in the _Jehovah_ form of a _straight line one of a denomination of 20612, the perfect circumference_; hence Cain was this as Jehovah, for the text says that _he was_ Jehovah. But the attachment of a man to this cross was that of 113: 355 to 6561: 5153 × 4 = 20612, as shown. Now, over the _head_ of Jesus crucified was placed the inscription, of which the initial letters of the words have always been retained as symbolic, and handed down and used as a monogram of Jesus Chrestos—_viz._, INRI or _Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judæorum_; but they are located on the _Cross_, or the cubed _form_ of the circular origin of measures which measure the substance of _Earth_, _Air_, _Fire_ and _Water_, or INRI = 1152, as shown. Here is the _man_ on the _cross_, or 113: 355 combined with 6561: 5153 × 4 = 20612. These are the _pyramid‐base_ numbers as coming from 113: 355 as the Hebrew source; whence the Adam‐square, which is the pyramid base, and the centre one to the larger square of the _encampment_. Bend INRI into a circle, and we have 1152, or the circumference of the latter. But Jesus dying (or Abel married) made use of the very words needed to set forth all. He says, _Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani_.... Read them by their power values, in _circular form_, as produced from the Adam form as shown, and we have אלי = 113, אלי = 113, or 113—311: לפה = 345, or Moses in the Cain‐Adam pyramid circle: שכחת = 710, equals Dove, or Jonah and 710 ÷ 2 = 355, or 355—553; and finally, as determinative of all יב or _ni_, where ב = _nun_, fish = 565, and י = 1 or 10; together 565 י = יהוה or the Christ value....

[All of the above] throws light on the transfiguration scene on the mount. There were present there Peter and James and John with Jesus; or ים Iami, James, _Water_; יבשה, Peter, _Earth_; דרה, John, _Spirit_, _Air_, and יבור Jesus, _Fire_, _Life_—together INRI. But behold Eli and Moses met them there, or אלי and למה or _Eli_ and _Lamah_, or 113 and 345. And this shows that the scene of transfiguration was connected with the one above set forth.(286)

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

Nothing can impose better on a people than verbiage; the less they understand the more they admire.... Our fathers and doctors have often said, not what they thought, but that to which circumstances and necessity forced them.

Which then of the two—the clergy, or the Occultists and Theosophists—are the more blasphemous and dangerous? Is it those who would impose upon the world’s acceptance a Saviour of their own fashioning, a God with human shortcomings, and who therefore is certainly not a perfect divine Being; or those others who say: Jesus of Nazareth was an Initiate, a holy, grand and noble character, but withal human, though truly “a Son of God”?

If Humanity is to accept a so‐called supernatural Religion, how far more logical to the Occultist and the Psychologist seems the transparent allegory given of Jesus by the Gnostics. They, as Occultists, and with Initiates for their Chiefs, differed only in their renderings of the story and in their symbols, and not at all in substance. What say the Ophites, the Nazarenes, and other “heretics”? Sophia, “the Celestial Virgin,” is prevailed upon to send Christos, her emanation, to the help of perishing humanity, from whom Ilda‐Baoth (the Jehovah of the Jews) and his six Sons of Matter (the lower terrestrial Angels) are shutting out the divine light. Therefore, Christos, the perfect,(287)

Uniting himself with Sophia [divine wisdom] descended through the seven planetary regions, assuming in each an analogous form ... [and] entered into the man Jesus at the moment of his baptism in the Jordan. From this time forth Jesus began to work miracles; before that he had been entirely ignorant of his own mission.

Ilda‐Baoth, discovering that Christos was bringing to an end his kingdom of Matter, stirred up the Jews, his own people, against Him, and Jesus was put to death. When Jesus was on the Cross Christos and Sophia left His body, and returned to Their own sphere. The material body of Jesus was abandoned to the earth, but He Himself, the Inner Man, was clothed with a body made up of _æther_.(288)

Thenceforth he consisted merely of soul and spirit.... During his sojourn upon earth of _eighteen_ months after he had risen, he received from Sophia that perfect knowledge, that true Gnosis, which he communicated to the small portion of the Apostles who were capable of receiving the same.(289)

The above is transparently Eastern and Hindu; it is the Esoteric Doctrine pure and simple, save for the names and the allegory. It is, more or less, the history of every Adept who obtains Initiation. The Baptism in the Jordan is the Rite of Initiation, the final purification; whether in sacred pagoda, tank, river, or temple lake in Egypt or Mexico. The perfect Christos and Sophia—divine Wisdom and Intelligence—enter the Initiate at the moment of the mystic rite, by transference from Guru to Chelâ, and leave the physical body, at the moment of the death of the latter, to re‐ enter the Nirmânakâya, or the astral Ego of the Adept.

The spirit of Buddha [collectively] overshadows the Bodhisattvas of his Church

says the Buddhist Ritual of Âryâsangha.

Says the Gnostic teaching:

When he [the spirit of Christos] shall have collected all the Spiritual, all the Light [that exists in matter], out of Ilbadaoth’s empire, Redemption is accomplished and the end of the world arrived.(290)

Say the Buddhists:

When Buddha [the Spirit of the Church] hears the hour strike, he will send Maitreya Buddha—after whom the old world wall be destroyed.

That which is said of Basilides by King may be applied as truthfully to every innovator, so called, whether of a Buddhist or of a Christian Church. In the eyes of Clemens Alexandrinus, he says, the Gnostics taught very little that was blameable in their mystical transcendental views.

In his eyes the latter [Basilides], was not a _heretic_, that is an innovator upon the accepted doctrines of the Catholic Church, but only a theosophic speculator who sought to express old truths by new formulæ.(291)

There was a Secret Doctrine preached by Jesus; and “secresy” in those days meant Secrets, or Mysteries of Initiation, all of which have been either rejected or disfigured by the Church. In the Clementine _Homilies_ we read:

And Peter said: “We remember that our Lord and Teacher, commanding us, said ‘Guard the mysteries for me and the sons of my house.’ ” Wherefore also he explained to His disciples privately the Mysteries of the Kingdom of the Heavens.(292)

SECTION XIX. ST. CYPRIAN OF ANTIOCH.

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

What history knows of him is not much, and it is mostly based on his own confession, the truthfulness of which is warranted, we are told, by St. Gregory, the Empress Eudoxia, Photius and the Holy Church. This curious document was ferreted out by the Marquis de Mirville,(295) in the Vatican, and by him translated into French for the first time, as he assures the reader. We beg his permission to re‐translate a few pages, not for the sake of the penitent Sorcerer, but for that of some students of Occultism, who will thus have an opportunity of comparing the methods of ancient Magic (or as the Church calls it, Demonism) with those of modern Theurgy and Occultism.

The scenes described took place at Antioch about the middle of the third century, 252 A.D., says the translator. This Confession was written by the penitent Sorcerer after his conversion; therefore, we are not surprised to find how much room he gives in his lamentations to reviling his Initiator “Satan,” or the “Serpent Dragon,” as he calls him. There are other and more modern instances of the same trait in human nature. Converted Hindus, Pârsîs and other “heathen” of India are apt to denounce their forefathers’ religions at every opportunity. Thus runs the Confession:

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

Ascending after that to the summit of Mount Olympus, the Seat of the Gods, as it is called, there too I was initiated into the sense, and the _real_ meaning of their [the Gods’] speeches and their clamorous manifestations (_strepituum_). It is there that I was made to see in imagination (_phantasia_) [or _mâyâ_] those trees and all those herbs that operate such prodigies with the help of demons; ... and I saw their dances, their warfares, their snares, illusions and promiscuities. I heard their singing.(298) I saw finally, for forty consecutive days, the phalanx of the Gods and Goddesses, sending from Olympus, as though they were Kings, spirits to represent them on earth and act in their name among all the nations.(299)

At that time I lived entirely on fruit, eaten only after sunset, the virtues of which were explained to me by the seven priests of the sacrifices.(300)

When I was fifteen my parents desired that I should be made acquainted, not only with all the natural laws in connection with the generation and corruption of bodies on earth, in the air and in the seas, but also with all the other forces _grafted_(301) (_insitas_) on these by the Prince of the World in order to counteract their primal and divine constitution.(302) At twenty I went to Memphis, where, penetrating into the Sanctuaries, I was taught to discern all that pertains to the communications of demons [Daimones or Spirits] with terrestrial matters, their aversion for certain places, their sympathy and attraction for others, their expulsion from certain planets, certain objects and laws, their persistence in preferring darkness and their resistance to light.(303) There I learned the number of the fallen Princes,(304) that which takes place in human souls and the bodies they enter into communication with.

I learnt the analogy that exists between earthquakes and the rains, between the motion of the earth(305) and the motion of the seas; I saw the spirits of the Giants plunged in subterranean darkness and seemingly supporting the earth like a man carrying a burden on his shoulders.(306)

When thirty I travelled to Chaldæa to study there the true power of the air, placed by some in the fire and by the more learned in light [Âkâsha]. I was taught to see that the planets were in their variety as dissimilar as the plants on earth, and the stars were like armies ranged in battle order. I knew the Chaldæan division of Ether into 365 parts,(307) and I perceived that every one of the demons who divide it among themselves(308) was endowed with that material force that permitted him to execute the orders of the Prince and guide all the movements therein [in the Ether].(309) They [the Chaldees] explained to me how those Princes had become participants in the Council of Darkness, ever in opposition to the Council of Light.

I got acquainted with the Mediatores [surely not mediums as De Mirville explains!],(310) and upon seeing the covenants they were mutually bound by, I was struck with wonder upon learning the nature of their oaths and observances.(311)

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

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

SECTION XX. THE EASTERN GUPTA VIDYA & THE KABALAH.

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

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

And now the situation stands thus: as the old Alchemists have not left a key to their writings, the latter have become a mystery within an older mystery. The _Kabalah_ is interpreted and checked only by the light which mediæval Mystics have thrown upon it, and they, in their forced Christology, had to put a theological dogmatic mask on every ancient teaching, the result being that each Mystic among our modern European and American Kabalists interprets the old symbols in his own way, and each refers his opponents to the Rosicrucian and the Alchemist of three and four hundred years ago. Mystic Christian dogma is the central maëlstrom that engulfs every old Pagan symbol, and Christianity—Anti‐Gnostic Christianity, the modern retort that has replaced the alembic of the Alchemists—has distilled out of all recognition the _Kabalah_, _i.e._, the Hebrew _Zohar_ and other rabbinical mystic works. And now it has come to this: The student interested in the Secret Sciences has to believe that the whole cycle of the symbolical “Ancient of Days,” every hair of the mighty beard of Macroprosopos, refers only to the history of the earthly career of Jesus of Nazareth! And we are told that the _Kabalah_ “was first taught to a select company of angels” by Jehovah himself—who, out of modesty, one must think, made himself only the third Sephiroth in it, and a female one into the bargain. So many Kabalists, so many explanations. Some believe—perchance with more reason than the rest—that the substance of the _Kabalah_ is the basis upon which Masonry is built, since modern Masonry is undeniably the dim and hazy reflection of primeval Occult Masonry, of the teaching of those divine Masons who established the Mysteries of the prehistoric and prediluvian Temples of Initiation, raised by truly superhuman Builders. Others declare that the tenets expounded in the _Zohar_ relate merely to mysteries terrestrial and profane, having no more concern with metaphysical speculations—such as the soul, or the _post‐mortem_ life of man—than have the Mosaic books. Others, again—and these are the real, genuine Kabalists, who had their instructions from initiated Jewish Rabbis—affirm that if the two most learned Kabalists of the mediæval period, John Reuchlin and Paracelsus, differed in their religious professions—the former being the Father of the Reformation and the latter a Roman Catholic, at least in appearance—the _Zohar_ cannot contain much of Christian dogma or tenet, one way or the other. In other words, they maintain that the numerical language of the Kabalistic works teaches universal truths—and not any one Religion in particular. Those who make this statement are perfectly right in saying that the Mystery‐ language used in the _Zohar_ and in other Kabalistic literature was once, in a time of unfathomable antiquity, the universal language of Humanity. But they become entirely wrong if to this fact they add the untenable theory that _this language was invented by, or was the original property of, the Hebrews, from whom all the other nations borrowed it_.

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

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

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

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

As a proof, also, that the knowledge of the Esoteric system taught in the _Zohar_ came to the Jews very late indeed—at any rate, that they had so far forgotten it that the innovations and additions made by de Leon provoked no criticism, but were thankfully received—Munk quotes from Tholuck, a Jewish authority, the following information: Haya Gaon, who died in 1038, is to our knowledge the first author who developed (and perfected) the theory of the Sephiroth, and he gave them names which we find again among the Kabalistic names used by Dr. Jellinek. Moses Ben Schem‐Tob de Leon, who held intimate intercourse with the Syrian and Chaldæan Christian learned scribes, was enabled through the latter to acquire a knowledge of some of the Gnostic writings.(316)

Again, the _Sepher Jetzirah_ (_Book of Creation_)—though attributed to Abraham and though very archaic as to its contents—is first mentioned in the eleventh century by Jehuda Ho Levi (Chazari). And these two, the _Zohar_ and _Jetzirah_, are the storehouse of all the subsequent Kabalistic works. Now let us see how far the Hebrew sacred canon itself is to be trusted.

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

As no statements contained in the records of the Secret Doctrine of the East are regarded as of any value by the world in general, and since to be understood by and convince the reader one has to quote names familiar to him, and use arguments and proofs out of documents which are accessible to all, the following facts may perhaps demonstrate that our assertions are not merely based on the teachings of Occult Records:

(1) The great Orientalist and scholar, Klaproth, denied positively the antiquity of the so‐called Hebrew alphabet, on the ground that the square Hebrew characters in which the Biblical manuscripts are written, and which we use in printing, were probably derived from the Palmyrene writing, or some other Semitic alphabet, so that the Hebrew _Bible_ is written merely in the Chaldaic phonographs of Hebrew words.

The late Dr. Kenealy pertinently remarked that the Jews and Christians rely on

A phonograph of a dead and almost unknown language, as abstruse as the cuneiform letters on the mountains of Assyria.(318)

(2) The attempts made to carry back the square Hebrew character to the time of Esdras (B.C. 458) have all failed.

(3) It is asserted that the Jews took their alphabet from the Babylonians during their captivity. But there are scholars who do not carry the now‐ known Hebrew square letters beyond the late period of the fourth century, A.D.(319)

The Hebrew Bible is precisely as if Homer were printed, not in Greek, but in English letters; or as if Shakespeare’s works were phonographed in Burmese.(320)

(4) Those who maintain that the ancient Hebrew is the same as the Syraic or Chaldaic have to see what is said in _Jeremiah_, wherein the Lord is made to threaten the house of Israel with bringing against it the mighty and ancient nation of the Chaldæans:

A nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.(321)

This is quoted by Bishop Walton(322) against the assumption of the identity of Chaldaic and Hebrew, and ought to settle the question.

(5) The real Hebrew of Moses was lost after the seventy years’ captivity, when the Israelites brought back Chaldaic with them and grafted it on their own language, the fusion resulting in a dialectical variety of Chaldaic, the Hebrew tincturing it very slightly and ceasing from that time to be a spoken language.(323)

As to our statement that the present _Old Testament_ does not contain the original Books of Moses, this is proven by the facts that:

(1) The Samaritans repudiated the Jewish canonical books and _their_ “Law of Moses.” They will have neither the _Psalms_ of David, nor the Prophets, nor the _Talmud_ and _Mishna_: nothing but the real Books of Moses, and in quite a different edition.(324) The Books of Moses and of Joshua are disfigured out of recognition by the Talmudists, they say.

(2) The “black Jews” of Cochin, Southern India—who know nothing of the Babylonian Captivity or of the _ten_ “lost tribes” (the latter a pure invention of the Rabbis), proving that these Jews must have come to India before the year 600 B.C.—have their Books of Moses which they will show to no one. And these Books and Laws differ greatly from the present scrolls. Nor are they written in the square Hebrew characters (semi‐Chaldaic and semi‐Palmyrean) but in the archaic letters, as we were assured by one of them—letters entirely unknown to all but themselves and a few Samaritans.

(3) The Karaim Jews of the Crimea—who call themselves the descendants of the true children of Israel, _i.e._, of the Sadducees—reject the _Torah_ and the _Pentateuch_ of the Synagogue, reject the Sabbath of the Jews (keeping Friday), will have neither the Books of the Prophets nor the _Psalms_—nothing but their own Books of Moses and what they call his one and real Law.

This makes it plain that the _Kabalah_ of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldæans, and that the real _Kabalah_ is found only in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_ now in the possession of some Persian Sufis. Every nation in antiquity had its traditions based on those of the Âryan Secret Doctrine; and each nation points to this day to a Sage of its own race who had received the primordial revelation from, and had recorded it under the orders of, a more or less divine Being. Thus it was with the Jews, as with all others. They had received their Occult Cosmogony and Laws from their Initiate, Moses, and they have now entirely mutilated them.

Âdi is the generic name in our Doctrine of all the first men, _i.e._, the first speaking races, in each of the seven zones—hence probably “Ad‐am.” And such first men, in every nation, are credited with having been taught the divine mysteries of creation. Thus, the Sabæans (according to a tradition preserved in the Sufi works) say that when the “Third First Man” left the country adjacent to India for Babel, a tree(325) was given to him, then another and a third tree, whose leaves recorded the history of all the races; the “Third First Man” meant one who belonged to the Third Root‐Race, and yet the Sabæans call him Adam. The Arabs of Upper Egypt, and the Mohammedans generally, have recorded a tradition that the Angel Azaz‐el brings a message from the Wisdom‐Word of God to Adam whenever he is reborn; this the Sufis explain by adding that this book is given to every Seli‐Allah (“the chosen one of God”) for his wise men. The story narrated by the Kabalists—namely, that the book given to Adam before his Fall (a book full of mysteries and signs and events which either had been, were, or were to be) was taken away by the Angel Raziel after Adam’s Fall, but again restored to him lest men might lose its wisdom and instruction; that this book was delivered by Adam to Seth, who passed it to Enoch, and the latter to Abraham, and so on in succession to the most wise of every generation—relates to all nations, and not to the Jews alone. For Berosus narrates in his turn that Xisuthrus compiled a book, writing it at the command of his deity, which book was buried in Zipara(326) or Sippara, the City of the Sun, in Ba‐bel‐on‐ya, and was dug up long afterwards and deposited in the temple of Belos; it is from this book that Berosus took his history of the antediluvian dynasties of Gods and Heroes. Ælian (in _Nimrod_) speaks of a Hawk (emblem of the Sun), who in the days of the beginnings brought to the Egyptians a book containing the wisdom of their religion. The _Sam‐Sam_ of the Sabæans is also a _Kabalah_, as is the Arabic _Zem‐Zem_ (_Well of Wisdom_).(327)

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

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

The _Bible_ of the Jews has ever been an Esoteric Book in its hidden meaning, but this meaning has not remained one and the same throughout since the days of Moses. It is useless, considering the limited space we can give to this subject, to attempt anything like the detailed history of the vicissitudes of the so‐called _Pentateuch_, and besides, the history is too well known to need lengthy disquisitions. Whatever was, or was not, the Mosaic _Book of Creation_—from _Genesis_ down to the Prophets—the _Pentateuch_ of to‐day is not the same. It is sufficient to read the criticisms of Erasmus, and even of Sir Isaac Newton, to see clearly that the Hebrew Scriptures had been tampered with and remodelled, had been lost and rewritten, a dozen times before the days of Ezra. This Ezra himself may yet one day turn out to have been Azara, the Chaldæan priest of the Fire and Sun‐God, a renegade who, through his desire of becoming a ruler, and in order to create an Ethnarchy, restored the old lost Jewish Books in his own way. It was an easy thing for one versed in the secret system of Esoteric numerals, or Symbology, to put together events from the stray books that had been preserved by various tribes, and make of them an apparently harmonious narrative of creation and of the evolution of the Judæan race. But in its hidden meaning, from _Genesis_ to the last word of _Deuteronomy_, the Pentateuch is the symbolical narrative of the sexes, and is an apotheosis of Phallicism, under astronomical and physiological personations.(329) Its coördination, however, is only apparent; and the human hand appears at every moment, is found everywhere in the “Book of God.” Hence the Kings of Edom discuss in _Genesis_ before any king had reigned in Israel; Moses records his own death, and Aaron dies twice and is buried in two different places, to say nothing of other trifles. For the Kabalist they are trifles, for he knows that all these events are not history, but are simply the cloak designed to envelope and hide various physiological peculiarities; but for the sincere Christian, who accepts all these “dark sayings” in good faith, it matters a good deal. Solomon may very well be regarded as a myth(330) by the Masons, as they lose nothing by it, for all their secrets are Kabalistic and allegorical—for those few, at any rate, who understand them. For the Christian, however, to give up Solomon, the son of David—from whom Jesus is made to descend—involves a real loss. But how even the Kabalists can claim great antiquity for the Hebrew texts of the old Biblical scrolls now possessed by the scholars is not made at all apparent. For it is certainly a fact of history, based on the confessions of the Jews themselves, and of Christians likewise, that:

The Scriptures having perished in the captivity of Nabuchodonozar, Esdras, the Levite, the priest, in the times of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, having become inspired, in the exercise of prophecy restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures.(331)

One must have a strong belief in “Esdras,” and especially in his good faith, to accept the now‐existing copies as genuine Mosaic Books; for:

Assuming that the copies, or rather phonographs which had been made by Hilkiah and Esdras, and the various anonymous editors, were really true and genuine, they must have been wholly exterminated by Antiochus; and the versions of the Old Testament which now subsist must have been made by Judas, or by some unknown compilers, probably from the Greek of the Seventy, long after the appearance and death of Jesus.(332)

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

All this is very edifying, and one might have had very little reason to doubt the story, had not the “ten lost tribes” been made to play their

## part in it. How could these tribes, lost between 700 and 900 B.C., each

send six men some centuries later, to satisfy the whim of Ptolemy, and to disappear once more immediately afterwards from the horizon? A miracle, verily.

We are expected, nevertheless, to regard such documents as the _Septuagint_ as containing direct divine revelation: Documents originally written in a tongue about which nobody now knows anything; written by authors that are practically mythical, and at dates as to which no one is able even to make a defensible surmise; documents of the original copies of which there does not now remain a shred. Yet people will persist in talking of the ancient Hebrew, as if there were any man left in the world who now knows one word of it. So little, indeed, was Hebrew known that both the Septuagint and the _New Testament_ had to be written in a _heathen_ language (the Greek), and no better reasons for it given than what Hutchinson says, namely, that the Holy Ghost chose to write the New Testament in Greek.

The Hebrew language is considered to be very old, and yet there exists no trace of it anywhere on the old monuments, not even in Chaldæa. Among the great number of inscriptions of various kinds found in the ruins of that country:

One in the Hebrew Chaldee letter and language _has never been found_; nor has a single authentic medal or gem in this new‐ fangled character been ever discovered, which could carry it even to the days of Jesus.(333)

The original _Book of Daniel_ is written in a dialect which is a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic; it is not even in Chaldaic, with the exception of a few verses interpolated later on. According to Sir W. Jones and other Orientalists, the oldest discoverable languages of Persia are the Chaldaic and Sanskrit, and there is no trace of the “Hebrew” in these. It would be very surprising if there were, since the Hebrew known to the Philologists does not date earlier than 500 B.C., and its characters belong to a far later period still. Thus, while the real Hebrew characters, if not altogether lost are nevertheless so hopelessly transformed—

A mere inspection of the alphabet showing that it has been shaped and made regular, in doing which the characteristic marks of some of the letters _have been retrenched_ in order to make them more square and uniform—(334)

that no one but an initiated Rabbi of Samaria or a “Jain” could read them, the new system of the masoretic points has made them a sphinx‐riddle for all. Punctuation is now to be found everywhere in all the later manuscripts, and by means of it anything can be made of a text; a Hebrew scholar can put on the texts any interpretation he likes. Two instances given by Kenealy will suffice:

In _Genesis_, xlix. 21, we read:

Naphtali is a _hind let loose_; he _giveth goodly words_.

By only a slight alteration of the points Bochart changes this into:

Naphtali is a _spreading tree, shooting forth beautiful branches_.

So again, in _Psalms_ (xxix. 9), instead of:

The voice of the Lord _maketh the hind to calve_, and discovereth the forests;

Bishop Lowth gives:

The voice of the Lord _striketh the oak_, and discovereth the forests.

The same word in Hebrew signifies “God” and “nothing,” etc.(335)

With regard to the claim made by some Kabalists that there was in antiquity one knowledge and one language, this claim is also our own, and it is very just. Only it must be added, to make the thing clear, that this knowledge and language have both been esoteric ever since the submersion of the Atlanteans. The Tower of Babel myth relates to that enforced secrecy. Men falling into sin were regarded as no longer trustworthy for the reception of such knowledge, and, from being universal, it became limited to the few. Thus, the “one‐lip”—or the Mystery‐language—being gradually denied to subsequent generations, all the nations became severally restricted to their own national tongue; and forgetting the primeval Wisdom‐language, they stated that the Lord—one of the chief Lords or Hierophants of the Mysteries of the Java Aleim—had confounded the languages of all the earth, so that the sinners could understand one another’s speech no longer. But Initiates remained in every land and nation, and the Israelites, like all others, had their learned Adepts. One of the keys to this Universal Knowledge is a pure geometrical and numerical system, the alphabet of every great nation having a numerical value for every letter,(336) and, moreover, a system of permutation of syllables and synonyms which is carried to perfection in the Indian Occult methods, and which the Hebrew certainly has not. This one system, containing the elements of Geometry and Numeration, was used by the Jews for the purpose of concealing their Esoteric creed under the mask of a popular and national monotheistic Religion. The last who knew the system to perfection were the learned and “atheistical” Sadducees, the greatest enemies of the pretensions of the Pharisees and of their confused notions brought from Babylon. Yes, the Sadducees, the Illusionists, who maintained that the Soul, the Angels, and all similar Beings, were illusions because they were temporary—thus showing themselves at one with Eastern Esotericism. And since they rejected every book and Scripture, with the exception of the Law of Moses, it seems that the latter must have been very different from what it is now.(337)

The whole of the foregoing is written with an eye to our Kabalists. Great scholars as some of them undoubtedly are, they are nevertheless wrong to hang the harps of their faith on the willows of Talmudic growth—on the Hebrew scrolls, whether in square or pointed characters, now in our public libraries, museums, or even in the collections of Paleographers. There do not remain half‐a‐dozen copies from the true Mosaic Hebrew scrolls in the whole world. And those who are in possession of these—as we indicated a few pages back—would not part with them, or even allow them to be examined, on any consideration whatever. How then can any Kabalist claim priority for Hebrew Esotericism, and say, as does one of our correspondents, that “the Hebrew has come down from a far remoter antiquity than any of them [whether Egyptian or even Sanskrit!], and that it was the source, or nearer to the old original source, than any of them”?(338)

As our correspondent says: “It becomes more convincing to me every day that in a far past time there was _a mighty civilization with __ enormous learning, which had a common language over the earth, as to which its essence can be recovered from the fragments which now exist_.”

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

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

Take the _Zohar_ and find in it the description relating to Ain‐Suph, the Western or Semitic Parabrahman. What passages have come so nearly up to the Vedântic ideal as the following:

The creation [the evolved Universe] is the garment of that which has no name, the garment _woven from the Deity’s own substance_.(340)

Between that which is Ain or “nothing,” and the Heavenly Man, there is an Impersonal First Cause, however, of which it is said:

Before It gave any shape to this world, before It produced any form, It was alone, without form or similitude to anything else. Who, then, can comprehend It, how It was before the creation, since It was formless? Hence it is forbidden to represent It by any form, similitude, or even by Its sacred name, by a single letter or a single point.(341)

The sentence that follows, however, is an evident later interpolation; for it draws attention to a complete contradiction:

And to this the words (_Deut._ iv. 15), refer—“Ye saw no manner of similitude on the day the Lord spake unto you.”

But this reference to Chapter iv . of _Deuteronomy_, when in