SECTION IX. HERMETIC AND KABALISTIC DOCTRINES.

The cosmogony of Hermes is as veiled as the Mosaic system, only it is upon its face far more in harmony with the doctrines of the Secret Sciences and even of Modern Science. Says the thrice great Trismegistus, “the hand that shaped the world out of formless pre‐existent matter is no hand”; to which _Genesis_ is made to reply, “The world was created out of nothing,” although the _Kabalah_ denies such a meaning in its opening sentences. The Kabalists have never, any more than have the Indian Âryans, admitted such an absurdity. With them, Fire, or Heat, and Motion(163) were chiefly instrumental in the formation of the world out of preëxisting Matter. The Parabrahman and Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântins are the prototypes of the En Suph and Shekinah of the Kabalists. Aditi is the original of Sephira, and the Prajâpatis are the elder brothers of the Sephiroth. The nebular theory of Modern Science, with all its mysteries, is solved in the cosmogony of the Archaic Doctrine; and the paradoxical though very scientific enunciation, that “cooling causes contraction and contraction causes heat; therefore cooling causes heat,” is shown as the chief agency in the formation of the worlds, and especially of our sun and solar system. All this is contained within the small compass of _Sepher Jetzirah_ in its thirty‐two wonderful Ways of Wisdom, signed “Jah Jehovah Sabaoth,” for whomsoever has the key to its hidden meaning. As to the dogmatic or theological interpretation of the first verses in _Genesis_ it is pertinently answered in the same book, where speaking of the Three Mothers, Air, Water and Fire, the writer describes them as a balance with The good in one scale, the evil in the other, and the oscillating tongue of the Balance between them.(164) One of the secret names of the One Eternal and Ever‐Present Deity, was in every country the same, and it has preserved to this day a phonetic likeness in the various languages. The Aum of the Hindus, the sacred syllable, had become the Ἀιών with the Greeks, and the Ævum with the Romans—the Pan or All. The “thirtieth way” is called in the _Sepher Jetzirah_ the “gathering understanding,” because Thereby gather the celestial adepts judgments of the stars and celestial signs, and their observations of the orbits are the perfection of science.(165) The thirty‐second and last is called therein the “serving understanding,” and it is so‐called because it is A disposer of all those that are serving in the work of the Seven Planets, according to their Hosts.(166) The “work” was Initiation, during which all the mysteries connected with the “Seven Planets” were divulged, and also the mystery of the “Sun‐ Initiate” with his seven radiances or beams cut off—the glory and triumph of the anointed, the Christos; a mystery that makes plain the rather puzzling expression of Clemens: For we shall find that very many of the dogmas that are held by such sects [of Barbarian and Hellenic Philosophy] as have not become utterly senseless, and are not cut out from the order of nature [“by cutting off Christ,”(167) or rather Chrestos] ... correspond in their origin and with the truth as a whole.(168) In _Isis Unveiled_,(169) the reader will find fuller information than can be given here on the _Zohar_ and its author, the great Kabalist, Simeon Ben Jochai. It is said there that on account of his being known to be in possession of the secret knowledge and of the Mercaba, which insured the reception of the “Word,” his very life was endangered, and he had to fly to the wilderness, where he lived in a cave for twelve years surrounded by faithful disciples, and finally died there amid signs and wonders.(170) His teachings on the origin of the Secret Doctrine, or, as he also calls it, the Secret Wisdom, are the same as those found in the East, with the exception that in place of the Chief of a Host of Planetary Spirits he puts “God,” saying that this Wisdom was first taught by God himself to a certain number of Elect Angels; whereas in the Eastern Doctrine the saying is different, as will be seen. Some synthetic and kabalistic studies on the sacred _Book of Enoch_ and the Taro (Rota) are before us. We quote from the MS. copy of a Western Occultist, which is prefaced by these words: There is but one Law, one Principle, one Agent, one Truth and one Word. That which is above is analogically as that which is below. All that which is, is the result of quantities and of equilibriums. The axiom of Éliphas Lévi and this triple epigraph show the identity of thought between the East and the West with regard to the Secret Science which, as the same MS. tells us, is: The key of things concealed, the key of the sanctuary. This is the Sacred Word which gives to the Adept the supreme reason of Occultism and its Mysteries. It is the Quintessence of Philosophies and of Dogmas; it is the Alpha and Omega; it is the Light, Life and Wisdom Universal. The Taro of the sacred _Book of Enoch_, or Rota, is prefaced, moreover, with this explanation: The antiquity of this Book is lost in the night of time. It is of _Indian origin_, and goes back to an epoch long before Moses.... It is written upon detached leaves, which at the first were of fine gold and precious metals.... It is symbolical, and its combinations adapt themselves to all the wonders of the Spirit. Altered by its passage across the Ages, it is nevertheless preserved—thanks to the ignorance of the curious—in its types and its most important primitive figures. This is the Rota of Enoch, now called Taro of Enoch, to which De Mirville alludes, as we saw, as the means used for “evil Magic,” the “metallic plates [or leaves] escaped from destruction during the Deluge” and which are attributed by him to Cain. They have escaped the Deluge for the simple reason that this Flood was not “Universal.” And it is said to be “of Indian origin,” because its origin is with the Indian Âryans of the first Sub‐Race of the Fifth Root‐Race, before the final destruction of the last stronghold of Atlantis. But, if it originated with the forefathers of the primitive Hindus, it was not in India that it was first used. Its origin is still more ancient and must be traced beyond and into the Himaleh,(171) the Snowy Range. It was born in that mysterious locality which no one is able to locate, and which is the despair of both Geographers and Christian Theologians—the region in which the Brâhman places his Kailâsa, the Mount Sumeru, and the Pârvatî Pamîr, transformed by the Greeks into Paropamisus. Round this locality, which still exists, the traditions of the Garden of Eden were built. From these regions the Greeks obtained their Parnassus(172); and thence proceeded most of the biblical personages, some of them in their day men, some demi‐gods and heroes, some—though very few—myths, the astronomical doubles of the former. Abram was one of them—a Chaldæan Brâhman,(173) says the legend, transformed later, after he had repudiated his Gods and left his Ur (_pur_, “town”?) in Chaldæa, into A‐ brahm(174) (or A‐braham) “no‐brâhman” who emigrated. Abram becoming the “father of many nations” is thus explained. The student of Occultism has to bear in mind that every God and hero in ancient Pantheons (that of the _Bible_ included), has three biographies in the narrative, so to say, running parallel with each other and each connected with one of the aspects of the hero—historical, astronomical and perfectly mythical, the last serving to connect the other two together and smooth away the asperities and discordancies in the narrative, and gathering into one or more symbols the verities of the first two. Localities are made to correspond with astronomical and even with psychic events. History was thus made captive by ancient Mystery, to become later on the great Sphynx of the nineteenth century. Only, instead of devouring her too dull querists who will unriddle her whether she acknowledges it or not, she is desecrated and mangled by the modern Œdipus, before he forces her into the sea of speculations in which the Sphynx is drowned and perishes. This has now become self‐evident, not only through the Secret Teachings, parsimoniously as they may be given, but by earnest and learned Symbologists and even Geometricians. The _Key to the Hebrew Egyptian Mystery_, in which a learned Mason of Cincinnati, Mr. Ralston Skinner, unveils the riddle of a God, with such ungodly ways about him as the Biblical Jah‐ve, is followed by the establishment of a learned society under the presidentship of a gentleman from Ohio and four vice‐presidents, one of whom is Piazzi Smyth, the well‐known Astronomer and Egyptologist. The Director of the Royal Observatory in Scotland and author of _The Great Pyramid, Pharaonic by name, Humanitarian by fact, its Marvels, Mysteries, and its Teachings_, is seeking to prove the same problem as the American author and Mason: namely, that the English system of measurement is the same as that used by the ancient Egyptians in the construction of their Pyramid, or in Mr. Skinner’s own words that the Pharaonic “source of measures” originated the “British inch and the ancient cubit.” It “originated” much more than this, as will be fully demonstrated before the end of the next century. Not only is everything in Western religion related to measures, geometrical figures, and time‐calculations, the principal period‐durations being founded on most of the historical personages,(175) but the latter are also connected with heaven and earth truly, only with the Indo‐Âryan heaven and earth, not with those of Palestine. The prototypes of nearly all the biblical personages are to be sought for in the early Pantheon of India. It is the “Mind‐born” Sons of Brahmâ, or rather of the Dhyâni‐Pitara (the “Father‐Gods”), the “Sons of Light,” who have given birth to the “Sons of Earth”—the Patriarchs. For if the _Rig Veda_ and its three sister _Vedas_ have been “milked out from fire, air and sun,” or Agni, Indra, and Sûrya, as _Manu‐Smriti_ tells us, the _Old Testament_ was most undeniably “milked out” of the most ingenious brains of Hebrew Kabalists, partly in Egypt and partly in Babylonia—“the seat of Sanskrit literature and Brâhman learning from her origin,” as Colonel Vans Kennedy truly declared. One of such copies was Abram or Abraham, into whose bosom every orthodox Jew hopes to be gathered after death, that bosom being localised as “heaven in the clouds” or Abhra.(176) From Abraham to Enoch’s Taro there seems to be a considerable distance, yet the two are closely related by more than one link. Gaffarel has shown that the four symbolical animals on the twenty‐first key of the Taro, at the third septenary, are the Teraphim of the Jews invented and worshipped by Abram’s father Terah, and used in the oracles of the Urim and Thummim. Moreover, astronomically Abraham is the sun‐measure and a portion of the sun, while Enoch is the solar year, as much as are Hermes or Thot; and Thot, numerically, “was the equivalent of Moses, or Hermes,” “the lord of the lower realms, also esteemed as a teacher of wisdom,” the same Mason‐ mathematician tells us; and the Taro being, according to one of the latest bulls of the Pope, “an invention of Hell,” the same “as Masonry and Occultism,” the relation is evident. The Taro contains indeed the mystery of all such transmutations of personages into sidereal bodies and _vice versâ_. The “wheel of Enoch” is an archaic invention, the most ancient of all, for it is found in China. Éliphas Lévi says there was not a nation but had it, its real meaning being preserved in the greatest secresy. It was a universal heirloom. As we see, neither the _Book of Enoch_ (his “Wheel”), nor the _Zohar_, nor any other kabalistic volume, contains merely Jewish wisdom. The doctrine itself being the result of whole millenniums of thought, is therefore the joint property of Adepts of every nation under the sun. Nevertheless, the _Zohar_ teaches practical Occultism more than any other work on that subject; not as it is translated and commented upon by its various critics though, but with the secret signs on its margins. These signs contain the hidden instructions, apart from the metaphysical interpretations and apparent absurdities so fully credited by Josephus, who was never initiated and gave out the _dead letter_ as he had received it.(177)