Chapter v

. God is mentioned as speaking “face to face” with the people, is very clumsy.

Not one of the names given to Jehovah in the _Bible_ has any reference whatever to either Ain‐Suph or the Impersonal First‐Cause (which is the Logos) of the _Kabalah_; but they all refer to the _Emanations_.

It says

For although to reveal itself to us, the concealed of all the concealed sent forth the Ten Emanations [Sephiroth] called the Form of God, Form of the Heavenly Man, yet since even this luminous form was too dazzling for our vision, it had to assume another form, or had to put on another garment, _which is the Universe_. The Universe, therefore, or the visible world, is a farther expansion of the Divine Substance, and is called in the Kabalah “The Garment of God.”(342)

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

The _Zohar_ premises, as does the Secret Doctrine, a universal, eternal Essence, passive—because absolute—in all that men call attributes. The pregenetic or pre‐cosmical Triad is a pure metaphysical abstraction. The notion of a triple hypostasis in one Unknown Divine Essence is as old as speech and thought. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Shankara—the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer—are the three manifested attributes of it, appearing and disappearing with Kosmos; the visible Triangle, so to speak, on the plane of the ever‐invisible Circle. This is the primeval root‐ thought of thinking Humanity; the Pythagorean Triangle emanating from the ever‐concealed Monad, or the Central Point.

Plato speaks of it and Plotinus calls it an ancient doctrine, on which Cudworth remarks that:

Since Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato, who all of them asserted a Trinity of divine hypostases, unquestionably derived their doctrine from the Egyptians, it may be reasonably suspected that the Egyptians did the like before them.(343)

The Egyptians certainly derived their Trinity from the Indians. Wilson justly observes:

As, however, the Grecian accounts and those of the Egyptians are much more perplexed and unsatisfactory than those of the Hindus, it is most probable that we find amongst them the doctrine in its most original, as well as most methodical and significant form.(344)

This, then, is the meaning:

“_Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were once more One._”(345)

Space was, and is ever, as it is between the Manvantaras. The Universe in its pre‐kosmic state was once more homogeneous and one—outside its aspects. This was a Kabalistic, and is now a Christian teaching.

As is constantly shown in the _Zohar_, the Infinite Unity, or Ain‐Suph, is ever placed outside human thought and appreciation; and in _Sepher Jetzirah_ we see the Spirit of God—the Logos, not the Deity itself—called One.

One is the Spirit of the living God, ... who liveth for ever. Voice, Spirit, [of the Spirit], and Word: this is the Holy Spirit,(346)

—and the Quaternary. From this Cube emanates the whole Kosmos.

Says the Secret Doctrine:

“_It is called to life. The mystic Cube in which rests the Creative Idea, the manifesting Mantra_ [or articulate speech—Vâch] _and the holy Purusha_ [both radiations of prima materia] _exist in the Eternity in the Divine Substance in their latent state_”

—during Pralaya.

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

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

Thus the term of Jhvh alone—now accepted as the name of “One living [male] God”—will yield, if seriously studied, not only the whole mystery of _Being_ (in the Biblical sense,) but also that of the Occult Theogony, from the highest divine Being, the third in order, down to man. As shown by the best Hebraists:

The verbal היה, or Hâyâh, or E‐y‐e, means _to be_, _to exist_, while חיה or Châyâh, or H‐y‐e, means _to live_, as _motion of existence_.(349)

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

There are three groups (or orders) of Sephiroth: 1. The Sephiroth called “divine attributes” (the Triad in the Holy Quaternary); 2. the sidereal (personal) Sephiroth; 3. the metaphysical Sephiroth, or a periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth (Kether, Chokmah and Binah), the rest of the seven being the personal “Seven Spirits of the Presence” (also of the planets, therefore). Speaking of these, the angels are meant, though not because they are seven, but because they represent the seven Sephiroth which contain in them the universality of the Angels.

This shows (_a_) that, when the first four Sephiroth are separated, as a Triad‐Quaternary—Sephira being its synthesis—there remain only seven Sephiroth, as there are seven Rishis; these become ten when the Quaternary, or the first divine Cube, is scattered into units; and (_b_) that while Jehovah might have been viewed as the Deity, if he be included in the three divine groups or orders of the Sephiroth, the collective Elohim, or the quaternary indivisible Kether, once that he becomes a male God, he is no more than one of the Builders of the lower group—a Jewish Brahmâ.(351) A demonstration is now attempted.

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

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

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

SECTION XXI. HEBREW ALLEGORIES.

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

How desperately blinding becomes a superstitious use, through ignorance, of such emblems, when they are made to possess the power of bloodshed and torture, through orders of propaganda of any species of religious cultus. When one thinks of the horrors of a _Moloch_, or _Baal_, or _Dagon_ worship; of the correlated blood‐deluges under the Cross baptized in gore by Constantine, at the initiative of the secular Church; ... when one thinks of all this and then that the cause of all has been simply ignorance of the real radical reading of the _Moloch_, and _Baal_, and _Dagon_, and the _Cross_ and the _T’phillin_, all running back to a common origin, and after all being nothing more than a display of pure and natural mathematics, ... one is apt to feel like cursing ignorance, and to lose confidence in what are called _intuitions_ of religion; one is apt to wish for a return of the day when all the world was of one _lip_ and of one _knowledge_.... But while these elements [of the construction of the pyramid] are rational and scientific, ... let no man consider that with this discovery comes a cutting‐off of the _spirituality_(354) of the _Bible_ intention, or of man’s relation to this spiritual foundation. Does one wish to build a house? No house was ever actually built with tangible material _until first the architectural design of building had been accomplished_, no matter whether the structure was palace or hovel. So with these elements and numbers. They are not of man, nor are they of his invention. They have been revealed to him to the extent of his ability to realize a system, which is _the creative system_ of the eternal God.... But _spiritually_, to man the value of this matter is that he can actually in contemplation, bridge over all material construction of the cosmos, and pass into the very _thought_ and _mind_ of God, to the extent of recognizing this _system of design_ for cosmic creation—yea, even before the words went forth: “_Let there be_.”(355)

But true as the above words may be, when coming from one who has re‐ discovered, more completely than anyone else has done during the past centuries, one of the keys to the universal Mystery Language, it is impossible for an Eastern Occultist to agree with the conclusion of the able author of _The Source of Measures_. He “has set out to find the truth,” and yet he still believes that:

The best and most authentic vehicle of communication from [the creative] God to man ... is to be found in the Hebrew Bible.

To this we must and shall demur, giving our reasons for it in a few words. The “Hebrew _Bible_” exists no more, as has been shown in the foregoing pages, and the garbled accounts, the falsified and pale copies we have of the real Mosaic _Bible_ of the Initiates, warrant the making of no such sweeping assertion and claim. All that the scholar can fairly claim is that the Jewish _Bible_, as now extant—in its latest and final interpretation, and according to the newly‐discovered key—may give a

## partial presentment of the truths it contained before it was mangled. But

how can he tell what the _Pentateuch_ contained before it had been re‐ composed by Esdras; then corrupted still more by the ambitious Rabbis in later times, and otherwise remodelled and interfered with? Leaving aside the opinion of the declared enemies of the Jewish Scriptures, one may quote simply what their most devoted followers say.

Two of these are Horne and Prideaux. The avowals of the former will be sufficient to show how much now remains of the original Mosaic books, unless indeed we accept his sublimely blind faith in the inspiration and editorship of the Holy Ghost. He writes that when a Hebrew scribe found a writing of any author he was entitled, if he thought fit, being “conscious of the aid of the Holy Spirit,” to do exactly as he pleased with it—to cut it up, or copy it, or use as much of it as he deemed right, and so to incorporate it with his own manuscript. Dr. Kenealy aptly remarks of Horne, that it is almost impossible to get any admission from him

That makes against his church, so remarkably guarded is he [Horne] in his phraseology and so wonderfully discreet in the use of words that his language, like a diplomatic letter, perpetually suggests to the mind ideas other than those which he really means; I defy any unlearned person to read his chapter on “Hebrew characters” and to derive _any knowledge_ from it whatever on the subject on which he professes to treat.(356)

And yet this same Horne writes:

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.

SECTION XXII. THE “ZOHAR” ON CREATION AND THE ELOHIM.

The opening sentence in _Genesis_, as every Hebrew scholar knows, is:

בראשית ברא אלהים את השמים ואת הארץ

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,