M. Renan, who in the Rrvue Germanique] asks him to show reason why

his Nabathean Agriculture should not be the fraudulent work of some Jew of the third or fourth century of our era? It can hardly be other- wise— argues the romancer of the Vie de Jesus ^ since, in this in-folio on Astrology and Sorcery:
We recognize in the personages introduced by Qft-tAmy, all the patriarchs of the biblical legends, such as Adam-Adami» Aaoaka-Noah, and his Ibrahim-Abraham, etc.
But this is no reason, since Adam and others are generic names. Mean- while it is humbly submitted that, all things considered, an apocryphon — if even of the third centur>^ a.d., instead of the thirteenth century B.C., is old enough to appear genuine as a document, and so satisfy the demands of the most exacting archaeologist and critic. For even admitting, for argument's sake, that this literary relic has been com- piled by '*some Jew of the third century of our era'* — what of that? Leaving the credibility of its doctrines for a moment aside, why should
* Annates de Fhilotophi€ rAr^/w/ifw, Juiie, ie6o,p. 41^
t April y>, 1B60.
476
THE SECRBT DOCTRINE.
it be less entitled to a hearing, or less instructive as reflecting older opinions, than any other religious work, also a "compilation from old texts*' or oral tradition — of the same or even a later age? In such case we should have to reject and call '*apocr>'phar' the Kuran — three cen- turies later, though we know it to have sprung, Minerva-like, direct from the brain of the Arabian prophet; and we should have to pooh- pooh all the information we can get from the Talmud^ which, in its present form, was also compiled from older materials, and is not earlier than the ninth centur>' of our era.
This curious "Bible" of the Chaldcean Adept and the various criti- cisms upon it (as in Chwolsohn's translation) are noticed, because it has an important bearing upon a great portion of the present work. With the exception of the contention of M. Renan, an iconoclast on principle — so pointedlj^ called by Jules Lemaitre "/^ Pagantni du n/an/" — the worst fault found with the work is, it would seem, that the apocry^ pkon pretends to have been communicated as a revelation to an Adept by, and from, the "idol of the Moon," who received it from "Saturn." Hence, ver>' naturally, it is "a fairy tale all round." To this there is but one answer: It is no more a fairy tale than the BibU^ and if one falls, the other must follow it. Even the mode of divination through "the idol of the Moon" is the same as that practised by David, Saul and the High Priests of the Jewish Tabernacle by means of the Teraphim.
The Nabaihcan Agriculture is a compilation indeed; it is no apocry- phoHy but the repetition of the tenets of the Secret Doctrine under the exoteric Chaldasan form of national symbols, for the purpose of '*cloak- ing" the tenets, just as the Books of Hermes and the Puranas are like attempts by Egyptians and Hindus. The work was as well known in antiquity as it was during the Middle Ages. Maimonides speaks of it, and refers more than once to this Chaldaeo-Arabic MS., calling the Nabatheans by the name of their co-religionists, the "star- worship- pers," or Sabaeans, but yet failing to see in the disfigured word "Naba- thean" the mystic name of the caste devoted to Nebo, the God of Secret Wisdom, which shows on its face that the Nabatheans were aa Occult Brotherhood.* The Nabatheans who, according to the Persian
* "I wlU mcntiou to tbee the writine^ . . . rrspecdog^ the belief and Institutions of tlM Sabceaos." he says. "The most famous is the Book, Tkt AgHculture ^/ Ike JVaiatAtams, which hu been traaslated by Ibu Wahohijah. This iKxik is full of heathenish fooliAhncai. . . . It speaks or preparations of TaUsmana. the drawinir down of the powers of the Spirits. Magic. Demons, and Ghouls, which make their abode in the de»ert." (Maimonidcn, quoted by Dr. D. Chwolsohn; Ih€ Ssahier mud drr Ssabismus. U. 458.) The Nabathenna of Mount Ixbanon bcUcred in the •eren Arch- angela, aa their forefathers had belie^Td in the seven Great Stars, the abodes and bodies of these Archangels, which are believed in to this day by the Roman CalhoHcs, as 1* shown elsewhere.
NEBO, TBnS GOD OF WISDOM.
477
Yezidi, originally came to Syria from Busrah, were the degenerate members of that fraternity; still their religion, even at that late day, was purely kabalistic • Nebo is the Deity of the Planet Mercury, and Mercury is the God of Wisdom, or Hermes, or Budha, which the Jews called Kokab (333), "the I Greeks Nabo (Na)5w), hence Nabatheans. Notwithstanding that Mai- monides calls their doctrines "heathenish foolishness" and their archaic literature ^* Sabtrorum foeiunt" he places their "agriculture," the Bible of Qu-tamy, in the first rank of archaic literature; and Abarbanel praises it in unmeasured terms. Spencer.t quoting the latter, speaks of it as that "most excellent oriental work," adding that by Naba- theans, the Sabaeans. the Chaldaeans, and the Eg\'ptians, in short all those nations against whom the laws of Moses were most severely enacted, have to be understood.
Nebo, the oldest God of Wisdom of Babylonia and Mesopotamia, was identical with the Hindu Budha and the Hermes- Mercur>' of the Greeks. A slight change in the sexes of the parents is the only alteration. As Budha was the Son of Soma (the Moon) in India, and of the wife of Brihaspati (Jupiter), so Nebo was the son of Zarpanitu (the Moon) and of Merodach, who became Jupiter, after having been a Suu-god. As Mercury the Planet, Nebo was the "overseer" among the seven Gods of the Planets; and as the personification of the Secret Wisdom he was Nabin, a seer and a prophet, Moses is made to die and dis- appear on the mount sacred to Nebo. This shows him to have been an Initiate, and a priest of that God under another name; for this God of Wisdom was the great Creative Deity, and was worshipped as such. And this not only at Borsippa in his gorgeous Temple, or Planet-tower; he was likewise adored by the Moabites, the Canaanites, the Assyrians, and throughout the whole of Palestine. Then why not by the Israel- ites? "The planetary temple of Babylon" had its "Holy of Holies" within the shrine of Nebo. the Prophet-God of Wisdom. We are told in the Hibbert Lectures:
The ancient nabylonianii had an interceiuor between men and the gods .... and Nebo, was the "proclaimer" or "prophet," as he made known the desire of his father Merodach. J
Nebo is a Creator, like Budha, of the Fourth, and also of the Fifth, Race. For the former starts a new race of Adepts, and the latter, the Solar-Lunar Dynasty, or the men of these Races and Round. Both arc
Sec Isii UnveiJed, ii. 197.
f I- 354-
Saycc; c/., p. 115, ^nd cd-
4T8
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
the Adams of their respective creatures. Adam*Adami is a persona- tion of the dual Adam: of the paradigmatic Adatn-Kadmou, the Creator, and of the lower Adam, the terrestrial* who. as the Syrian Kabalists have it. had only Nephesh. the "breath of life." but na Living Soui, until after his Fajl.
If, therefore. Rcnau persists in regarding the Chaldacan Scriptures — or what remains of them — as apocryphal, it is quite immaterial to truth and fact. There are other Orientalists who may be of a different opinion; and even were they not, it would still really matter ver>* little. These doctrines contain the teachings of Esoteric Philosophy, and this must suffice. To those who understand nothing of symbology it may appear astrolatry, pure and simple, or to him who would conceal the Esoteric Truth, even "heathenish foolishness." Maimonides, how- ever, while expressing scorn for the Esotericism in the religion of other nations, confessed Esotericism and Symbology in his own, preached silence and secresy upon the true meaning of Mosaic say- ings, and thus came to grief. The Doctrines of Qu-t5my, the Chal- dsean, are, in short, the allegorical rendering of the religion of the earliest nations of the Fifth Race.
Why then should M. Reuan treat the name "Adam-Adami" with such academical contempt? The author of the Origins of Christianity evidently kuows nothing of the origins of Pagan symbolism or of Esotericism either, otherwise he would have known that the name Adam-Adami was a form of a universal symbol, referring, even with ike Jnvs, not to one man, but to four distinct humanities or mankinds. This is very easily proven.
The Kabalists teach the existence of four distinct Adams, or the transformation of four consecutive Adams, the emanations from the Dyooknah, or Divine Phantom, of the Heavenly Man. an ethereal com- bination of Neshamah, the highest Soul or Spirit; this Adam having, of course, neither a gross human bodj*. nor a body of desire. This Adam is the Prototype (Tzure) of the second Adam. That they represent our Five Races, is certain, as everyone can see by their description in the Kabalah. The first is the Perfect Holy Adam, "a shadow that dis- appeared" (the Kings of Edom), produced from the divine Tzelem (Image); the second is called the Protoplastic Androgyne Adam of the future terrestrial and separated Adam; the third Adam is the man made of "dust" (the first. Innocent Adam); and the fourth, is the supposed forefather of our own race — the Fallen Adam. See, however.
TOE KABALISTIC FOUR ADAMS.
479
tlie admirably clear description of these in Isaac Myer's Qabbalah. He gives only four Adams, because of the Kings of Edom, no doubt» and adds:
The fonrth Adam .... was clothed with skin, flesh, nerves, etc. This answers to the Lower Nephrsk and Gu^, i.e., body, united. He has the animal power of reproduction and continuance of species.*
This is the human Root- Race.
It is just at this point that the modem Kabalists — led into error by the long generations of Christian Mystics who have tampered with the kabalistic records wherever they could — diverge from the Occultists in their interpretations, and take the later thought for the earlier idea. The original Kabalah was entirely metaphysical, and had no concern with animal, or terrestrial, sexes; the later Kabalah has suffocated the divine ideal under the hea\'y phallic element. The Kabalists say: ''God made man male and female.*' Says the author of the Qabbaiah:
Among the Qabbalisls, the necessdty to continued creation and existence is called the Balancc.t
And being without this ''Balance," connected with Maqom (the mysterious "Place"),! even the First Race is not, as we have seen, recognized by the Sons of the Fifth Adam. From the highest Heavenly Man, the Upper Adam who is "male-female" or Androgyne, down to the Adam of dust, these personified symbols are all connected with sex and procreation. With the Eastern Occultists it is entirely the reverse. The sexual relation they consider as a "Karma" pertain- ing only to the mundane relation of man, who is domiuated by Illusion, a thing to be put aside, the moment that the person becomes "wise." They considered it a most fortunate circumstance if the Guru (teacher) found in his pupil an aptitude for the pure life of Brahmacharya. Their dual symbols were to them but the poetical imager>' of the sub- lime correlation of creative cosmic forces. And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the sombre fanes of India and other mother-lands of cults.
This will be demonstrated in the following Section.
Meanwhile, it may be added that, with the Gnostics, the second Adam also emanates from the Primeval Man, the Ophite Adamas, in
• op. cit., pp. 418. 419.
t /bid., p. 118.
\ Simply, Uic womb, Uie " Holy of Holies " with the Semites.
48o
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
*' whose image he is made" ; the third, from this second — an Androgyne. The latter is symbolized in the sixth and seventh pairs of the male- female iEous» Amphain-Essumen CA^ alv 'Eo-o-ou/iiv), and Vananin- Lamertade (Ovamwy Aa^tpraBt) — Father and Mother* — while the fourth Adam, or Race, is represented by a Priapean monster The latter — a Post- Christian fancy — is the degraded copy of the Ante-Christian Gnostic symbol of the ''Good One." or "He, who created be/ore anything- existed" the Celestial Priapus — truly bom from Venus and Bacchus when that God returned from his expedition into India, for Venus and Bacchus are the post-types of Aditi and the Spirit. The later Priapus, one, however, with Agathodaemon. the Gnostic Saviour, and even with Abraxas, is no longer the glyph for abstract creative Power, but symbo- lizes the four Adams, or Races, the fifth being represented by the five branches cut off from the Tree of Life on which the old man stands in the Gnostic gems. The number of the Root- Races was recorded in the ancient Greek temples by the seven vowels, of which five were framed in a panel in the Initiation Halls of the Adyta. The Egyptian glyph for it was a hand w4th five fingers spread out. the fifth or little finger being only half-grown, and oXso five *'N's*' — hieroglyphs standing for that letter. The Romans used the five vowels A E I O V in their fanes; and this archaic symbol was adopted during the Middle Ages as a motto by the House of the Hapsburgs. Sic transit gloria /
• SeeUie Valentinian Teblc In Hpipbatrius, Adv. H^r., I. yxA. >.