II. Mystical Rose.

12. House of Gold.
13. Morning Star.
14. Ark of the Covenant.
15. Queen of Heaven.
16. Mater Dolorosa.
17. Mary conceived with« out sin. (In accordance with later orders.)
2IO ISIS UNVEILED.
If the Virgin Mary has her nuns, who are consecrated to her and bound to live in chastity, so had Isis her nuns in Egypt, as Vesta had hers at Rome, and the Hindu Nari, " mother of the world hers." The virgins consecrated to her cultus — the Devadasi of the temples, who were the nuns of the days of old — lived in great chastity, and were objects of the most extraordinary veneration, as the holy women of the goddess. Would the missionaries and some travellers reproachfully point to the modem Devadasis, or Nautch-girls ? P'or all response, we would beg them to consult the official reports of the last quarter century, cited in chapter II., as to certain discoveries made at the razing of convents, in Austria and Italy. Thousands of infants' skulls were exhumed from ponds, subterranean vaults, and gardens of convents. Nothing to match this was ever found in heathen lands.
Christian theology, getting the doctrine of the archangels and angels directly from the Oriental Kabaia^ of which the Mosaic Bible is but an allegorical screen, ought at least to remember the hierarchy invented by the former for these personified emanations. The hosts of the Cherubim and Seraphim, with which we generally see the Catholic Madonnas sur- rounded in their pictures, belong, together with the Elohim and Beni Elohim of the Hebrews, to the third kabalistic world, Jezirah. This world is but one remove higher than Asiah, the fourth and lowest world, in which dwell the grossest and most material beings — the klippoth^ who delight in evil and mischief, and whose chief is Belial !
Explaining, in his way, of course, the various " heresies " of the first two centuries, Irehaeus says ; " Our Haeretics hold . . . that Propator is known but to the only-begotten son, that is to the mind'^ (the nous). It was the Valentinians, the followers of the " profoundest doctor of the Gnosis," Valentinus, who held that ** there was a perfect Ai6n, who existed before Bythos, or Buthon (the Depth), called Propator. This is again kabalistic, for in the Sohar of Simon Ben lochal, we read the fol- lowing : " Senior occultatus est et absconditus ; Microprosopus manifestus esty et nan manifestus*^ (Rosenroth : The Sohar Liber Mysteries^ iv., i).
In the religious metaphysics of the Hebrews, fhe Highest One is an abstraction ; he is "without form or being," "with no likeness with any- thing else." ♦ And even Philo calls the Creator, the Logos who stands next God, " the second God." '* The second God who is his wisdom." f God is NOTHING, he is nameless, and therefore called AinSoph — the word Ain meaning nothing, J But if, according to the older Jews, Jehovah is the God, and He manifested Himself several times to Moses and the
♦ Franck : " Die Kabbala," p. 126. \ PhUo : •* Qu«st et Solut."
X See Franck : " Die Kabbaia," p. 153 ff.
THE FOURTH GOSPEL NOT WRITTEN BY JOHN. 211
prophets, and the Christian Church anathematized the Gnostics who denied the fact — how comes it, then, that we read in the fourth gospel that *'*' No man hath seen God at any time, but the only-begotten Son ... he hath declared him ? '* The very words of the Gnostics, in spirit and substance. This sentence of St, John — or rather whoever wrote the gospel now bearing his name — ^floors all the Petrine arguments against Simon Magus, without appeal. The words are repeated and emphasized in chapter vi. : " Not tlujU any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he (Jesus) hath seen the Father** (46) — the very objection brought forward by Simon in the Homilies, These words prove that either the author of the fourth evangel had no idea of the existence of the Homilies, or that he was not John, the friend and companion of Peter, whom he contradicts point-blank with this emphatic assertion. Be it as it may, this sentence, like many more that might be profitably cited, blends Christianity com- pletely with the Oriental Gnosis, and hence with the kabala.
While the doctrines, ethical code, and observances of the Christian religion were all appropriated from Brahmanism and Buddhism, its cere- monials, vestments, and pageantry were taken bodily from Lamaisra. The Romish monastery and nunnery are almost servile copies of similar religious houses in Thibet and Mongolia, and interested explorers of Budd- hist lands, when obliged to mention the unwelcome fact, have had no other alternative left them but, with an anachronism imsurpassed in reck- lessness, to charge the offense of plagiarism upon the religious system their own mother Church had despoiled. This makeshift has served its purpose and had its day. The time has at last come when this page of history must be written.