SECTION III

The ^'Holy of Holies." Its Degradation.
The Sanctum Sanctorum of the Ancients, also called the Adytum— the recess at the West end of the Temple which was enclosed on three sides by blank walls and had its only aperture or door hung over with a curtain — was common to all ancient nations.
A great difference is now found between the secret meaning of this symbolical place as given in the Esotericism of the Pagans and in that of the later Jews, though its symbology was originally identical throughout the ancient races and nations. The Gentiles placed in the Adytum a sarcophagus, or a tomb {taphos), in which was the Solar God to whom the temple was consecrated, holding it, as Pantheists, in the greatest veneration. They regarded it, in its Esoteric meaning, as the symbol of resurrection^ cosmic, solar, or diurnal, and human. It embraced the wide range of periodical, and (in time) punctual, Man- vantaras, or the reawakenings of Kosmos, Earth, and Man to new existences ; the Sun being the most poetical and also the most grandiose symbol of such Cycles in Heaven, and man — in his reincar- nations—on Earth. The Jervs — whose realism, if judged by the dead- letter, was as practical and gross in the days of Moses as it is now* — in the course of their estrangement from the Gods of their Pagan neighbours, consummated a national and levitical polity, by the device of setting forth their Holy of Holies as the most solemn sign of their Monotheism— exoterically, while seeing in it but a universal phallic symbol — esoterically. While the Kabalists knew but Ain Suph and the "Gods" of the Mysteries, the Levites had no tomb, no God in their Adytum but the "Sacred" Ark of the Covenant— their " Holy of Holies."
* But it was not so in rrality, as witness tbeir prophets. U is the later Rabbis and the Tftlmudic scheme thnt killed out all Kpirituality frani the body of their symbols : leaving only tbeir Scriptui a dead shell, from which the soul has departed.
THE SBCRKT DOCTJONH.
When the esoteric meaning of this recess is made clear, how the profane will be better able to understand why David dancdl "uncovered" before the Ark of the Covenant, and was so anadous appear vr/g for the sake of his *'Lord." and dose in his own sight.*
The Ark is the navi-forui Argha of the Mysteries. Parkhurst, w has a long dissertation upon it in his Greek dictionary, and who nev breathes a word about it in his Hebrew lexicon, explains it thus:
Archd C^PXV) in t*iis application answers to the Hebrew Rasit or wi!»dotn. . . a word which bad the meaning of the emblem of the female generative power, Ihl Arg or Area, in which the germ of all nature was supposed to float or brood on thi great abyss during the inlerral which took place after every mundane cycle- Quite so; and the Jewish Ark of the Covenant had precisely the sam significance ; with the supplementary addition that, instead of a beautiful and chaste sarcophagus (the symbol of the Matrix of Nature and Resur-? rection), as in the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Pagans, they had the Ark made still more realistic in its construction by the two Cherubs set t^ on the coffer or Ark of the Covenant, facing each other, with theti wings spread in such a manner as to form a perfect Yoni (as now seea in India). Besides which, this generative symbol had its significance enforced by the four mystic letters of Jehovah's name, namely, IHVH (mm); Jod (■ (1), a crook or a hook, a nail, and He (n) again, meaning also ' opening"; the whole forming the perfect bisexttal emblem or sym or I (e) H (o) V (a) H, the male and female symbol.
Perhaps also, when people realize the true meaning of the office and title of the Kadesh Kadeshim, the "holy ones," or "the consecrated to the Temple of the Lord"— the "Holy of Holies" of these "holy ones may assume an aspect far from edifying.
lacchus again is lao or Jehovah; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchos* was a phallic God.
"Who shall ascend into the hill [the high place] of the Lord?" asks the holf king David, "Who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu (1tZrrp)?'*t Kaikftk] may mean in one sense to "devote," "hallow," "sanctify,'* and even to 'initiate or to *'8et apart"; but it also means the ministry of lascivious rites — the Venu>« worship— and the true interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly rendered in Deuteronomy, xxiii. 17; HoseiL, iv. 14; and Genesis, xxxviii. 15-22. The "holt" Kedeshim of the Bible were identical, as to the duties of their office, with the Nautch-girls of the later HindQ. pagodas. The Hebrew Kadeshim, or G&lli, liftd
* Sec //Samtut, vi. x6-M.
t /iaimt, XMtr, y
WHAT WAS THK CIRCLE-DAN^?
4«3
"by the honse of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove," or the bust of Venus-Astarte.*
The dance performed by David round the Ark was the "circle-dance," said to have been prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries. Such was the dance of the daughters of Shiloh.t and the leaping of the prophets of Baal.^ It was simply a characteristic of the Sabtean worship, for it denoted the motion of the Planets round the Sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is apparent. Sistra were nsed on the occasion, and the taunt of Michal and the King's reply are very expressive.}
The Ark, in which 2jre preserved the germs of all living things necessary to re- people the Earth, represents the survival of life, and the supremacy of Spirit over Matter, through the conflict of the opposing powers of Nature. In the Astro- theoaophic chart of the Western Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is placed at the sinister side, the side of the woman (the Moon), one of whose symbols is the left pillar of Solomon's Temple — Boaz. The umbilicus is connected (through the placenta) with the receptacle in which are fructified the embryos of the race. The Ark is the sacred Argha of the Hindils, and thus the relation in which it stands to Noah's Ark may be easily inferred when we learn that the Argha was an oblong vessel, used by the high priests as a sacrificial chalice in the worship of Tsis, Astarte, and Venus- Aphrodite, all of whom were Goddesses of the generative powers of Nature, or of Matter— hence renresenting symbolically the Ark contain- ing the germs of all living things.]}
Mistaken is he who accepts the kibalistic works of to-day, and the interpretations of the "^ohar by the Rabbis, for the genuine kabalistic lore of old!*I For no more to-day than in the day of Frederick von Schelling does the Kabalah accessible to Europe and America contain much more than
* ///finri. xxiil. 7; see Duulap. 50tf; Tht MysUries cf Adoni, ^. ^i. 1 Judges^ xxi. St, 33 €i p€un'm, t i Kings, xviii. s6. I Ixii Unv^Ud, ti. 49.
R rbid,, li. «4.
^ The author of the Qabbaiah tniikc« Mvpnil attempts to prove conclusively the antiquity of the Zohar. Thu» he shows that Moses dc Leon could not t>e the author or the former of the Zoharic fvork^ in ihe ihirtecntb centttr>, as he {b accused of being, since Ibn Gcbirol grave out the same philo- sophical teaching 225 years before the day of Moses dc Leon. No true Kabalist or scholar will ever deny the facL It is certain that Ibn Gebirol based his doctrines upon the oldest Kabalistic sources, namely, the Chaldoean Book of Numbers, as well as some no longer extant Mldnuhim, the same, no doubt, as those used by Moses dc Leon. But it is just the difference between the two ways of treating tlie some Esoteric subjects, which— while proving the enormous antiquity of tlic Esoteric System- points to a decided ring of Tatmudistic and even Christian sectarianism in the compilation and gloa- ttaries of the Zoharic system by Rabbi Moses. Ibn Gebirol nevev quotfd from the Scriptures to enforce Ihe teachings (Myer's Qabbaiah, p. ?). Whereas Moacs de I^eon has made of the Zohar thai which it has remained to this day, "a running commentary on the Five Books, or Pentateuch" {ibid.), with a few later additions made by Christian hands. One follows the Archaic Bsoteric Philosophy; the other, only that portion which was adapted to the lost Books of Moses restored by £zra. Thus, while the s>-Ktcm. or the trunk, on which the primitU-e original Zohar was engrafted, is of an immense antiquity, many of the (later) Zoharic offshoots are strongly coloured by the peculiar views held by Christian Gnostics (Sj-rian and Chaldscan), the friends and co-workers of Mosca de Leon who, cj «bown by Mnnk, accepted their interpretatiooa.
472
THE SECRET DOCTRtXE.
of
Theosophists to learn, on good proof, that the speculation; Psychologists — whether serious Idealists, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, or wool-gathering Pseudo-idealists — are far more chimerical. Indeed, in- stead of resting on the firm foundation of facts in Nature, they are the unhealthy will-o*-the-wisps of materialistic imagination, of the brains that evolved them — and no more. While they deny, we affirm; and our affirmation is corroborated by almost all the Sages of antiquity. Believing in Occultism and a host of invisible Potencies for good reasons, we say. Cerius sum, scio quod credid'i; to which our critics reply, Credat Juda^us Apella. Neither is converted by the other, nor does such result affect even our little planet. E pur se tnttovef
Nor is there any need of proselytizing. As remarked by the wise Cicero :
Time destroys the speculations of man. but it confirms the judgment of nature.
Let US bide our time. Meanwhile, it is not in the human constitution to witness in silence the destruction of one's Gods, whether they be true or false. And as Theology and Materialism have combined together to destroy the old Gods of antiquity and seek to disfi^re every old philosophical conception, it is but just that the lovers of the Old Wisdom should defend their position, by proving that the whole arsenal of the two is, at best, formed of new weapons made out of very old material.