SECTION XX. THE EASTERN GUPTA VIDYA & THE KABALAH.

We now return to the consideration of the essential identity between the Eastern Gupta Vidyâ and the Kabalah as a system, while we must also show the dissimilarity in their philosophical interpretations since the Middle Ages. It must be confessed that the views of the Kabalists—meaning by the word those students of Occultism who study the Jewish _Kabalah_ and who know little, if anything, of any other Esoteric literature or of its teachings—are as varied in their synthetic conclusions upon the nature of the mysteries taught even in the _Zohar_ alone, and are as wide of the true mark, as are the _dicta_ upon it of exact Science itself. Like the mediæval Rosicrucian and the Alchemist—like the Abbot Trithemius, John Reuchlin, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, Philalethes, etc.—by whom they swear, the continental Occultists see in the Jewish _Kabalah_ alone the universal well of wisdom; they find in it the secret lore of nearly all the mysteries of Nature—metaphysical and divine—some of them including herein, as did Reuchlin, those of the Christian _Bible_. For them the _Zohar_ is an Esoteric Thesaurus of all the mysteries of the Christian Gospel; and the _Sepher Yetzirah_ is the light that shines in every darkness, and the container of the keys to open every secret in Nature. Whether many of our modern followers of the mediæval Kabalists have an idea of the real meaning of the symbology of their chosen Masters is another question. Most of them have probably never given even a passing thought to the fact that the Esoteric language used by the Alchemists was their own, and that it was given out as a blind, necessitated by the dangers of the epoch they lived in, and not as the Mystery‐language, used by the Pagan Initiates, which the Alchemists had re‐translated and re‐ veiled once more. And now the situation stands thus: as the old Alchemists have not left a key to their writings, the latter have become a mystery within an older mystery. The _Kabalah_ is interpreted and checked only by the light which mediæval Mystics have thrown upon it, and they, in their forced Christology, had to put a theological dogmatic mask on every ancient teaching, the result being that each Mystic among our modern European and American Kabalists interprets the old symbols in his own way, and each refers his opponents to the Rosicrucian and the Alchemist of three and four hundred years ago. Mystic Christian dogma is the central maëlstrom that engulfs every old Pagan symbol, and Christianity—Anti‐Gnostic Christianity, the modern retort that has replaced the alembic of the Alchemists—has distilled out of all recognition the _Kabalah_, _i.e._, the Hebrew _Zohar_ and other rabbinical mystic works. And now it has come to this: The student interested in the Secret Sciences has to believe that the whole cycle of the symbolical “Ancient of Days,” every hair of the mighty beard of Macroprosopos, refers only to the history of the earthly career of Jesus of Nazareth! And we are told that the _Kabalah_ “was first taught to a select company of angels” by Jehovah himself—who, out of modesty, one must think, made himself only the third Sephiroth in it, and a female one into the bargain. So many Kabalists, so many explanations. Some believe—perchance with more reason than the rest—that the substance of the _Kabalah_ is the basis upon which Masonry is built, since modern Masonry is undeniably the dim and hazy reflection of primeval Occult Masonry, of the teaching of those divine Masons who established the Mysteries of the prehistoric and prediluvian Temples of Initiation, raised by truly superhuman Builders. Others declare that the tenets expounded in the _Zohar_ relate merely to mysteries terrestrial and profane, having no more concern with metaphysical speculations—such as the soul, or the _post‐mortem_ life of man—than have the Mosaic books. Others, again—and these are the real, genuine Kabalists, who had their instructions from initiated Jewish Rabbis—affirm that if the two most learned Kabalists of the mediæval period, John Reuchlin and Paracelsus, differed in their religious professions—the former being the Father of the Reformation and the latter a Roman Catholic, at least in appearance—the _Zohar_ cannot contain much of Christian dogma or tenet, one way or the other. In other words, they maintain that the numerical language of the Kabalistic works teaches universal truths—and not any one Religion in particular. Those who make this statement are perfectly right in saying that the Mystery‐ language used in the _Zohar_ and in other Kabalistic literature was once, in a time of unfathomable antiquity, the universal language of Humanity. But they become entirely wrong if to this fact they add the untenable theory that _this language was invented by, or was the original property of, the Hebrews, from whom all the other nations borrowed it_. They are wrong, because, although the _Zohar_ (זהר ZHR), _The Book of Splendour_ of Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, did indeed originate with him—his son, Rabbi Eleazar, helped by his secretary, Rabbi Abba, compiling the Kabalistic teachings of his deceased father into a work called the _Zohar_—those teachings were not Rabbi Simeon’s, as the Gupta Vidyâ shows. They are as old as the Jewish nation itself, and far older. In short, the writings which pass at present under the title of the _Zohar_ of Rabbi Simeon are about as original as were the Egyptian synchronistic Tables after being handled by Eusebius, or as St. Paul’s _Epistles_ after their revision and correction by the “Holy Church.”(315) Let us throw a rapid retrospective glance at the history and the tribulations of that very same _Zohar_, as we know of them from trustworthy tradition and documents. We need not stop to discuss whether it was written in the first century B.C. or in the first century A.D. Suffice it for us to know that there was at all times a Kabalistic literature among the Jews; that though historically it can be traced only from the time of the Captivity, yet from the _Pentateuch_ down to the _Talmud_ the documents of that literature were ever written in a kind of Mystery‐language, were, in fact, a series of symbolical records which the Jews had copied from the Egyptian and the Chaldæan Sanctuaries, only adapting them to their own national history—if history it can be called. Now that which we claim—and it is not denied even by the most prejudiced Kabalist, is that although Kabalistic lore had passed orally through long ages down to the latest Pre‐Christian Tanaim, and although David and Solomon may have been great Adepts in it, as is claimed, yet no one dared to write it down till the days of Simeon Ben Iochai. In short, the lore found in Kabalistic literature was never recorded in writing before the first century of the modern era. This brings the critic to the following reflection: While in India we find the _Vedas_ and the Brâhmanical literature written down and edited ages before the Christian era—the Orientalists themselves being obliged to concede a couple of millenniums of antiquity to the older manuscripts; while the most important allegories in _Genesis_ are found recorded on Babylonian tiles centuries B.C.; while the Egyptian sarcophagi yearly yield proofs of the origin of the doctrines borrowed and copied by the Jews; yet the Monotheism of the Jews is exalted and thrown into the teeth of all the Pagan nations, and the so‐called Christian Revelation is placed above all others, like the sun above a row of street gas‐lamps. Yet it is perfectly well known, having been ascertained beyond doubt or cavil, that no manuscript, whether Kabalistic, Talmudistic, or Christian, which has reached our present generation, is of earlier date than the first centuries of our era, whereas this can certainly never be said of the Egyptian papyri or the Chaldæan tiles, or even of some Eastern writings. But let us limit our present research to the _Kabalah_, and chiefly to the _Zohar_—called also the _Midrash_. This book, whose teachings were edited for the first time between 70 and 110 A.D., is known to have been lost, and its contents to have been scattered throughout a number of minor manuscripts, until the thirteenth century. The idea that it was the composition of Moses de Leon of Valladolid, in Spain who passed it off as a pseudograph of Simeon Ben Iochai, is ridiculous and was well disposed of by Munk—though he does point to more than one modern interpolation in the _Zohar_. At the same time it is more than certain that the present _Book of Zohar_ was written by Moses de Leon, and, owing to joint editorship, is more Christian in its colouring than is many a genuine Christian volume. Munk gives the reason why, saying that it appears evident that the author made use of ancient documents, and among these of certain _Midraschim_, or collections of traditions and Biblical expositions, which we do not now possess. As a proof, also, that the knowledge of the Esoteric system taught in the _Zohar_ came to the Jews very late indeed—at any rate, that they had so far forgotten it that the innovations and additions made by de Leon provoked no criticism, but were thankfully received—Munk quotes from Tholuck, a Jewish authority, the following information: Haya Gaon, who died in 1038, is to our knowledge the first author who developed (and perfected) the theory of the Sephiroth, and he gave them names which we find again among the Kabalistic names used by Dr. Jellinek. Moses Ben Schem‐Tob de Leon, who held intimate intercourse with the Syrian and Chaldæan Christian learned scribes, was enabled through the latter to acquire a knowledge of some of the Gnostic writings.(316) Again, the _Sepher Jetzirah_ (_Book of Creation_)—though attributed to Abraham and though very archaic as to its contents—is first mentioned in the eleventh century by Jehuda Ho Levi (Chazari). And these two, the _Zohar_ and _Jetzirah_, are the storehouse of all the subsequent Kabalistic works. Now let us see how far the Hebrew sacred canon itself is to be trusted. The word “Kabalah” comes from the root “to receive,” and has a meaning identical with the Sanskrit “Smriti” (“received by tradition”)—a system of oral teaching, passing from one generation of priests to another, as was the case with the Brâhmanical books before they were embodied in manuscript. The Kabalistic tenets came to the Jews from the Chaldæans; and if Moses knew the primitive and universal language of the Initiates, as did every Egyptian priest, and was thus acquainted with the numerical system on which it was based, he may have—and we say he has—written _Genesis_ and other “scrolls.” The five books that now pass current under his name, the _Pentateuch_, are _not_ withal the original Mosaic Records.(317) Nor were they written in the old Hebrew square letters, nor even in the Samaritan characters, for both alphabets belong to a date later than that of Moses, and Hebrew—as it is now known—did not exist in the days of the great lawgiver, either as a language or as an alphabet. As no statements contained in the records of the Secret Doctrine of the East are regarded as of any value by the world in general, and since to be understood by and convince the reader one has to quote names familiar to him, and use arguments and proofs out of documents which are accessible to all, the following facts may perhaps demonstrate that our assertions are not merely based on the teachings of Occult Records: (1) The great Orientalist and scholar, Klaproth, denied positively the antiquity of the so‐called Hebrew alphabet, on the ground that the square Hebrew characters in which the Biblical manuscripts are written, and which we use in printing, were probably derived from the Palmyrene writing, or some other Semitic alphabet, so that the Hebrew _Bible_ is written merely in the Chaldaic phonographs of Hebrew words. The late Dr. Kenealy pertinently remarked that the Jews and Christians rely on A phonograph of a dead and almost unknown language, as abstruse as the cuneiform letters on the mountains of Assyria.(318) (2) The attempts made to carry back the square Hebrew character to the time of Esdras (B.C. 458) have all failed. (3) It is asserted that the Jews took their alphabet from the Babylonians during their captivity. But there are scholars who do not carry the now‐ known Hebrew square letters beyond the late period of the fourth century, A.D.(319) The Hebrew Bible is precisely as if Homer were printed, not in Greek, but in English letters; or as if Shakespeare’s works were phonographed in Burmese.(320) (4) Those who maintain that the ancient Hebrew is the same as the Syraic or Chaldaic have to see what is said in _Jeremiah_, wherein the Lord is made to threaten the house of Israel with bringing against it the mighty and ancient nation of the Chaldæans: A nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.(321) This is quoted by Bishop Walton(322) against the assumption of the identity of Chaldaic and Hebrew, and ought to settle the question. (5) The real Hebrew of Moses was lost after the seventy years’ captivity, when the Israelites brought back Chaldaic with them and grafted it on their own language, the fusion resulting in a dialectical variety of Chaldaic, the Hebrew tincturing it very slightly and ceasing from that time to be a spoken language.(323) As to our statement that the present _Old Testament_ does not contain the original Books of Moses, this is proven by the facts that: (1) The Samaritans repudiated the Jewish canonical books and _their_ “Law of Moses.” They will have neither the _Psalms_ of David, nor the Prophets, nor the _Talmud_ and _Mishna_: nothing but the real Books of Moses, and in quite a different edition.(324) The Books of Moses and of Joshua are disfigured out of recognition by the Talmudists, they say. (2) The “black Jews” of Cochin, Southern India—who know nothing of the Babylonian Captivity or of the _ten_ “lost tribes” (the latter a pure invention of the Rabbis), proving that these Jews must have come to India before the year 600 B.C.—have their Books of Moses which they will show to no one. And these Books and Laws differ greatly from the present scrolls. Nor are they written in the square Hebrew characters (semi‐Chaldaic and semi‐Palmyrean) but in the archaic letters, as we were assured by one of them—letters entirely unknown to all but themselves and a few Samaritans. (3) The Karaim Jews of the Crimea—who call themselves the descendants of the true children of Israel, _i.e._, of the Sadducees—reject the _Torah_ and the _Pentateuch_ of the Synagogue, reject the Sabbath of the Jews (keeping Friday), will have neither the Books of the Prophets nor the _Psalms_—nothing but their own Books of Moses and what they call his one and real Law. This makes it plain that the _Kabalah_ of the Jews is but the distorted echo of the Secret Doctrine of the Chaldæans, and that the real _Kabalah_ is found only in the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_ now in the possession of some Persian Sufis. Every nation in antiquity had its traditions based on those of the Âryan Secret Doctrine; and each nation points to this day to a Sage of its own race who had received the primordial revelation from, and had recorded it under the orders of, a more or less divine Being. Thus it was with the Jews, as with all others. They had received their Occult Cosmogony and Laws from their Initiate, Moses, and they have now entirely mutilated them. Âdi is the generic name in our Doctrine of all the first men, _i.e._, the first speaking races, in each of the seven zones—hence probably “Ad‐am.” And such first men, in every nation, are credited with having been taught the divine mysteries of creation. Thus, the Sabæans (according to a tradition preserved in the Sufi works) say that when the “Third First Man” left the country adjacent to India for Babel, a tree(325) was given to him, then another and a third tree, whose leaves recorded the history of all the races; the “Third First Man” meant one who belonged to the Third Root‐Race, and yet the Sabæans call him Adam. The Arabs of Upper Egypt, and the Mohammedans generally, have recorded a tradition that the Angel Azaz‐el brings a message from the Wisdom‐Word of God to Adam whenever he is reborn; this the Sufis explain by adding that this book is given to every Seli‐Allah (“the chosen one of God”) for his wise men. The story narrated by the Kabalists—namely, that the book given to Adam before his Fall (a book full of mysteries and signs and events which either had been, were, or were to be) was taken away by the Angel Raziel after Adam’s Fall, but again restored to him lest men might lose its wisdom and instruction; that this book was delivered by Adam to Seth, who passed it to Enoch, and the latter to Abraham, and so on in succession to the most wise of every generation—relates to all nations, and not to the Jews alone. For Berosus narrates in his turn that Xisuthrus compiled a book, writing it at the command of his deity, which book was buried in Zipara(326) or Sippara, the City of the Sun, in Ba‐bel‐on‐ya, and was dug up long afterwards and deposited in the temple of Belos; it is from this book that Berosus took his history of the antediluvian dynasties of Gods and Heroes. Ælian (in _Nimrod_) speaks of a Hawk (emblem of the Sun), who in the days of the beginnings brought to the Egyptians a book containing the wisdom of their religion. The _Sam‐Sam_ of the Sabæans is also a _Kabalah_, as is the Arabic _Zem‐Zem_ (_Well of Wisdom_).(327) We are told by a very learned Kabalist that Seyffarth asserts that the old Egyptian tongue was only old Hebrew, or a Semitic dialect; and he proves this, our correspondent thinks, by sending him “some 500 words in common” in the two languages. This proves very little to our mind. It only shows that the two nations lived together for centuries, and that before adopting the Chaldæan for their phonetic tongue the Jews had adopted the old Coptic or Egyptian. The Israelitish Scriptures drew their hidden wisdom from the primeval Wisdom‐Religion that was the source of other Scriptures, only it was sadly degraded by being applied to things and mysteries of this Earth, instead of to those in the higher and ever‐ present, though invisible, spheres. Their national history, if they can claim any autonomy before their return from the Babylonian captivity, cannot be carried back one day earlier than the time of Moses. The language of Abraham—if Zeruan (Saturn, the emblem of time—the “Sar,” “Saros,” a “cycle”) can be said to have any language—was not Hebrew, but Chaldaic, perhaps Arabic, and still more likely some old Indian dialect. This is shown by numerous proofs, some of which we give here; and unless, indeed, to please the tenacious and stubborn believers in _Bible_ chronology, we cripple the years of our globe to the Procrustean bed of 7,000 years, it becomes self‐evident that the Hebrew cannot be called an old language, merely because Adam is supposed to have used it in the Garden of Eden. Bunsen says in _Egypt’s Place in Universal History_ that in the Chaldæan tribe immediately connected with Abraham, we find reminiscences of dates disfigured and misunderstood as genealogies of single men, or figures of epochs. The Abrahamic recollections go back at least three millennia beyond the grandfather of Jacob.(328) The _Bible_ of the Jews has ever been an Esoteric Book in its hidden meaning, but this meaning has not remained one and the same throughout since the days of Moses. It is useless, considering the limited space we can give to this subject, to attempt anything like the detailed history of the vicissitudes of the so‐called _Pentateuch_, and besides, the history is too well known to need lengthy disquisitions. Whatever was, or was not, the Mosaic _Book of Creation_—from _Genesis_ down to the Prophets—the _Pentateuch_ of to‐day is not the same. It is sufficient to read the criticisms of Erasmus, and even of Sir Isaac Newton, to see clearly that the Hebrew Scriptures had been tampered with and remodelled, had been lost and rewritten, a dozen times before the days of Ezra. This Ezra himself may yet one day turn out to have been Azara, the Chaldæan priest of the Fire and Sun‐God, a renegade who, through his desire of becoming a ruler, and in order to create an Ethnarchy, restored the old lost Jewish Books in his own way. It was an easy thing for one versed in the secret system of Esoteric numerals, or Symbology, to put together events from the stray books that had been preserved by various tribes, and make of them an apparently harmonious narrative of creation and of the evolution of the Judæan race. But in its hidden meaning, from _Genesis_ to the last word of _Deuteronomy_, the Pentateuch is the symbolical narrative of the sexes, and is an apotheosis of Phallicism, under astronomical and physiological personations.(329) Its coördination, however, is only apparent; and the human hand appears at every moment, is found everywhere in the “Book of God.” Hence the Kings of Edom discuss in _Genesis_ before any king had reigned in Israel; Moses records his own death, and Aaron dies twice and is buried in two different places, to say nothing of other trifles. For the Kabalist they are trifles, for he knows that all these events are not history, but are simply the cloak designed to envelope and hide various physiological peculiarities; but for the sincere Christian, who accepts all these “dark sayings” in good faith, it matters a good deal. Solomon may very well be regarded as a myth(330) by the Masons, as they lose nothing by it, for all their secrets are Kabalistic and allegorical—for those few, at any rate, who understand them. For the Christian, however, to give up Solomon, the son of David—from whom Jesus is made to descend—involves a real loss. But how even the Kabalists can claim great antiquity for the Hebrew texts of the old Biblical scrolls now possessed by the scholars is not made at all apparent. For it is certainly a fact of history, based on the confessions of the Jews themselves, and of Christians likewise, that: The Scriptures having perished in the captivity of Nabuchodonozar, Esdras, the Levite, the priest, in the times of Artaxerxes, king of the Persians, having become inspired, in the exercise of prophecy restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures.(331) One must have a strong belief in “Esdras,” and especially in his good faith, to accept the now‐existing copies as genuine Mosaic Books; for: Assuming that the copies, or rather phonographs which had been made by Hilkiah and Esdras, and the various anonymous editors, were really true and genuine, they must have been wholly exterminated by Antiochus; and the versions of the Old Testament which now subsist must have been made by Judas, or by some unknown compilers, probably from the Greek of the Seventy, long after the appearance and death of Jesus.(332) The _Bible_, therefore, as it is now (the Hebrew texts, that is), depends for its accuracy on the genuineness of the _Septuagint_; this, we are again told, was written miraculously by the Seventy, in Greek, and the original copy having been lost since that time, our texts are re‐ translated back into Hebrew from that language. But in this vicious circle of proofs we once more have to rely upon the good faith of two Jews—Josephus and Philo Judæus of Alexandria—these two Historians being the only witnesses that the Septuagint was written under the circumstances narrated. And yet it is just these circumstances that are very little calculated to inspire one with confidence. For what does Josephus tell us? He says that Ptolemy Philadelphus, desiring to read the Hebrew Law in Greek, wrote to Eleazar, the high‐priest of the Jews, begging him _to send him six men from each of the twelve tribes_, who should make a translation for him. Then follows a truly miraculous story, vouchsafed by Aristeas, of these seventy‐two men from the twelve tribes of Israel, who, shut up in an island, compiled their translation in exactly seventy‐two days, etc. All this is very edifying, and one might have had very little reason to doubt the story, had not the “ten lost tribes” been made to play their