part in it. How could these tribes, lost between 700 and 900 B.C., each

send six men some centuries later, to satisfy the whim of Ptolemy, and to disappear once more immediately afterwards from the horizon? A miracle, verily. We are expected, nevertheless, to regard such documents as the _Septuagint_ as containing direct divine revelation: Documents originally written in a tongue about which nobody now knows anything; written by authors that are practically mythical, and at dates as to which no one is able even to make a defensible surmise; documents of the original copies of which there does not now remain a shred. Yet people will persist in talking of the ancient Hebrew, as if there were any man left in the world who now knows one word of it. So little, indeed, was Hebrew known that both the Septuagint and the _New Testament_ had to be written in a _heathen_ language (the Greek), and no better reasons for it given than what Hutchinson says, namely, that the Holy Ghost chose to write the New Testament in Greek. The Hebrew language is considered to be very old, and yet there exists no trace of it anywhere on the old monuments, not even in Chaldæa. Among the great number of inscriptions of various kinds found in the ruins of that country: One in the Hebrew Chaldee letter and language _has never been found_; nor has a single authentic medal or gem in this new‐ fangled character been ever discovered, which could carry it even to the days of Jesus.(333) The original _Book of Daniel_ is written in a dialect which is a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic; it is not even in Chaldaic, with the exception of a few verses interpolated later on. According to Sir W. Jones and other Orientalists, the oldest discoverable languages of Persia are the Chaldaic and Sanskrit, and there is no trace of the “Hebrew” in these. It would be very surprising if there were, since the Hebrew known to the Philologists does not date earlier than 500 B.C., and its characters belong to a far later period still. Thus, while the real Hebrew characters, if not altogether lost are nevertheless so hopelessly transformed— A mere inspection of the alphabet showing that it has been shaped and made regular, in doing which the characteristic marks of some of the letters _have been retrenched_ in order to make them more square and uniform—(334) that no one but an initiated Rabbi of Samaria or a “Jain” could read them, the new system of the masoretic points has made them a sphinx‐riddle for all. Punctuation is now to be found everywhere in all the later manuscripts, and by means of it anything can be made of a text; a Hebrew scholar can put on the texts any interpretation he likes. Two instances given by Kenealy will suffice: In _Genesis_, xlix. 21, we read: Naphtali is a _hind let loose_; he _giveth goodly words_. By only a slight alteration of the points Bochart changes this into: Naphtali is a _spreading tree, shooting forth beautiful branches_. So again, in _Psalms_ (xxix. 9), instead of: The voice of the Lord _maketh the hind to calve_, and discovereth the forests; Bishop Lowth gives: The voice of the Lord _striketh the oak_, and discovereth the forests. The same word in Hebrew signifies “God” and “nothing,” etc.(335) With regard to the claim made by some Kabalists that there was in antiquity one knowledge and one language, this claim is also our own, and it is very just. Only it must be added, to make the thing clear, that this knowledge and language have both been esoteric ever since the submersion of the Atlanteans. The Tower of Babel myth relates to that enforced secrecy. Men falling into sin were regarded as no longer trustworthy for the reception of such knowledge, and, from being universal, it became limited to the few. Thus, the “one‐lip”—or the Mystery‐language—being gradually denied to subsequent generations, all the nations became severally restricted to their own national tongue; and forgetting the primeval Wisdom‐language, they stated that the Lord—one of the chief Lords or Hierophants of the Mysteries of the Java Aleim—had confounded the languages of all the earth, so that the sinners could understand one another’s speech no longer. But Initiates remained in every land and nation, and the Israelites, like all others, had their learned Adepts. One of the keys to this Universal Knowledge is a pure geometrical and numerical system, the alphabet of every great nation having a numerical value for every letter,(336) and, moreover, a system of permutation of syllables and synonyms which is carried to perfection in the Indian Occult methods, and which the Hebrew certainly has not. This one system, containing the elements of Geometry and Numeration, was used by the Jews for the purpose of concealing their Esoteric creed under the mask of a popular and national monotheistic Religion. The last who knew the system to perfection were the learned and “atheistical” Sadducees, the greatest enemies of the pretensions of the Pharisees and of their confused notions brought from Babylon. Yes, the Sadducees, the Illusionists, who maintained that the Soul, the Angels, and all similar Beings, were illusions because they were temporary—thus showing themselves at one with Eastern Esotericism. And since they rejected every book and Scripture, with the exception of the Law of Moses, it seems that the latter must have been very different from what it is now.(337) The whole of the foregoing is written with an eye to our Kabalists. Great scholars as some of them undoubtedly are, they are nevertheless wrong to hang the harps of their faith on the willows of Talmudic growth—on the Hebrew scrolls, whether in square or pointed characters, now in our public libraries, museums, or even in the collections of Paleographers. There do not remain half‐a‐dozen copies from the true Mosaic Hebrew scrolls in the whole world. And those who are in possession of these—as we indicated a few pages back—would not part with them, or even allow them to be examined, on any consideration whatever. How then can any Kabalist claim priority for Hebrew Esotericism, and say, as does one of our correspondents, that “the Hebrew has come down from a far remoter antiquity than any of them [whether Egyptian or even Sanskrit!], and that it was the source, or nearer to the old original source, than any of them”?(338) As our correspondent says: “It becomes more convincing to me every day that in a far past time there was _a mighty civilization with __ enormous learning, which had a common language over the earth, as to which its essence can be recovered from the fragments which now exist_.” Aye, there existed indeed a mighty civilization, and a still mightier secret learning and knowledge, the entire scope of which can never be discovered by Geometry and the _Kabalah_ alone: for there are seven keys to the large entrance‐door, and not one, nor even two, keys can ever open it sufficiently to allow more than glimpses of what lies within. Every scholar must be aware that there are two distinct styles—_two schools_, so to speak—plainly traceable in the Hebrew Scriptures: the Elohistic and the Jehovistic. The portions belonging to these respectively are so blended together, so completely mixed up by later hands, that often all external characteristics are lost. Yet it is also known that the two schools were antagonistic; that the one taught esoteric, the other exoteric, or theological doctrines; that the one, the Elohists, were Seers (Roch), whereas the other, the Jehovists, were prophets (Nabhi),(339) and that the latter—who later became Rabbis—were generally only nominally prophets by virtue of their official position, as the Pope is called the infallible and inspired vicegerent of God. That, again, the Elohists meant by “Elohim” “forces,” identifying their Deity, as in the Secret Doctrine, with Nature; while the Jehovists made of Jehovah a personal God externally, and used the term simply as a phallic symbol—a number of them secretly disbelieving even in metaphysical, abstract Nature, and synthesizing all on the terrestrial scale. Finally, the Elohists made of man the divine incarnate image of the Elohim, emanated first in all Creation; and the Jehovists show him as the last, the crowning glory of the animal creation, instead of his being the head of all the sensible beings on earth. (This is reversed by some Kabalists, but the reversion is due to the designedly‐produced confusion in the texts, especially in the first four chapters of _Genesis_.) Take the _Zohar_ and find in it the description relating to Ain‐Suph, the Western or Semitic Parabrahman. What passages have come so nearly up to the Vedântic ideal as the following: The creation [the evolved Universe] is the garment of that which has no name, the garment _woven from the Deity’s own substance_.(340) Between that which is Ain or “nothing,” and the Heavenly Man, there is an Impersonal First Cause, however, of which it is said: Before It gave any shape to this world, before It produced any form, It was alone, without form or similitude to anything else. Who, then, can comprehend It, how It was before the creation, since It was formless? Hence it is forbidden to represent It by any form, similitude, or even by Its sacred name, by a single letter or a single point.(341) The sentence that follows, however, is an evident later interpolation; for it draws attention to a complete contradiction: And to this the words (_Deut._ iv. 15), refer—“Ye saw no manner of similitude on the day the Lord spake unto you.” But this reference to Chapter iv. of _Deuteronomy_, when in Chapter v. God is mentioned as speaking “face to face” with the people, is very clumsy. Not one of the names given to Jehovah in the _Bible_ has any reference whatever to either Ain‐Suph or the Impersonal First‐Cause (which is the Logos) of the _Kabalah_; but they all refer to the _Emanations_. It says For although to reveal itself to us, the concealed of all the concealed sent forth the Ten Emanations [Sephiroth] called the Form of God, Form of the Heavenly Man, yet since even this luminous form was too dazzling for our vision, it had to assume another form, or had to put on another garment, _which is the Universe_. The Universe, therefore, or the visible world, is a farther expansion of the Divine Substance, and is called in the Kabalah “The Garment of God.”(342) This is the doctrine of all the Hindu Purânas, especially that of the _Vishnu Purâna_. Vishnu pervades the Universe and is that Universe; Brahmâ enters the Mundane Egg, and issues from it as the Universe; Brahmâ even dies with it and there remains only Brahman, the impersonal, the eternal, the unborn, and the unqualifiable. The Ain‐Suph of the Chaldæans and later of the Jews is assuredly a copy of the Vaidic Deity; while the “Heavenly Adam,” the Macrocosm which unites in itself the totality of beings and is the _Esse_ of the visible Universe, finds his original in the Purânic Brahmâ. In _Sôd_, “the Secret of the Law,” one recognizes the expressions used in the oldest fragments of the Gupta Vidyâ, the Secret Knowledge. And it is not venturing too much to say that even a Rabbi quite familiar with his own special Rabbinical _Hebrew_ would only comprehend its secrets thoroughly if he added to his learning a serious knowledge of the Hindu philosophies. Let us turn to Stanza I. of the _Book of Dzyan_ for an example. The _Zohar_ premises, as does the Secret Doctrine, a universal, eternal Essence, passive—because absolute—in all that men call attributes. The pregenetic or pre‐cosmical Triad is a pure metaphysical abstraction. The notion of a triple hypostasis in one Unknown Divine Essence is as old as speech and thought. Hiranyagarbha, Hari, and Shankara—the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer—are the three manifested attributes of it, appearing and disappearing with Kosmos; the visible Triangle, so to speak, on the plane of the ever‐invisible Circle. This is the primeval root‐ thought of thinking Humanity; the Pythagorean Triangle emanating from the ever‐concealed Monad, or the Central Point. Plato speaks of it and Plotinus calls it an ancient doctrine, on which Cudworth remarks that: Since Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato, who all of them asserted a Trinity of divine hypostases, unquestionably derived their doctrine from the Egyptians, it may be reasonably suspected that the Egyptians did the like before them.(343) The Egyptians certainly derived their Trinity from the Indians. Wilson justly observes: As, however, the Grecian accounts and those of the Egyptians are much more perplexed and unsatisfactory than those of the Hindus, it is most probable that we find amongst them the doctrine in its most original, as well as most methodical and significant form.(344) This, then, is the meaning: “_Darkness alone filled the Boundless All, for Father, Mother and Son were once more One._”(345) Space was, and is ever, as it is between the Manvantaras. The Universe in its pre‐kosmic state was once more homogeneous and one—outside its aspects. This was a Kabalistic, and is now a Christian teaching. As is constantly shown in the _Zohar_, the Infinite Unity, or Ain‐Suph, is ever placed outside human thought and appreciation; and in _Sepher Jetzirah_ we see the Spirit of God—the Logos, not the Deity itself—called One. One is the Spirit of the living God, ... who liveth for ever. Voice, Spirit, [of the Spirit], and Word: this is the Holy Spirit,(346) —and the Quaternary. From this Cube emanates the whole Kosmos. Says the Secret Doctrine: “_It is called to life. The mystic Cube in which rests the Creative Idea, the manifesting Mantra_ [or articulate speech—Vâch] _and the holy Purusha_ [both radiations of prima materia] _exist in the Eternity in the Divine Substance in their latent state_” —during Pralaya. And in the _Sepher Jetzirah_, when the Three‐in‐One are to be called into being—by the manifestation of Shekinah, the first effulgency or radiation in the manifesting Kosmos—the “Spirit of God,” or Number One,(347) fructifies and awakens the dual Potency, Number Two, Air, and Number Three, Water; in these “are darkness and emptiness, slime and dung”—which is Chaos, the Tohu‐Vah‐Bohu. The Air and Water emanate Number Four, Ether or Fire, the Son. This is the Kabalistic Quaternary. This Fourth Number, which in the manifested Kosmos is the One, or the Creative God, is with the Hindus the “Ancient,” Sanat, the Prajâpati of the _Vedas_ and the Brahmâ of the Brâhmans—the heavenly Androgyne, as he becomes the male only after separating himself into two bodies, Vâch and Virâj. With the Kabalists, he is at first the Jah‐Havah, only later becoming Jehovah, like Virâj, his prototype; after separating himself as Adam‐Kadmon into Adam and Eve in the formless, and into Cain‐Abel in the semi‐objective, world, he became finally the Jah‐Havah, or man and woman, in Enoch, the son of Seth. For, the true meaning of the compound name of Jehovah—of which, unvoweled, you can make almost anything—is: men and women, or humanity composed of its two sexes. From the first chapter to the end of the fourth chapter of _Genesis_ every name is a permutation of another name, and every personage is at the same time somebody else. A Kabalist traces Jehovah from the Adam of earth to Seth, the third son—or rather race—of Adam.(348) Thus Seth is Jehovah male; and Enos, being a permutation of Cain and Abel, is Jehovah male and female, or our mankind. The Hindu Brahmâ‐Virâj, Virâj‐Manu, and Manu‐Vaivasvata, with his daughter and wife, Vâch, present the greatest analogy with these personages—for anyone who will take the trouble of studying the subject in both the _Bible_ and the _Purânas_. It is said of Brahmâ that he created himself as Manu, and that he was born of, and was identical with, his original self, while he constituted the female portion “Shata‐rûpâ” (hundred‐formed). In this Hindu Eve, “the mother of all living beings,” Brahmâ created Virâj, who is himself, but on a lower scale, as Cain is Jehovah on an inferior scale: both are the first males of the Third Race. The same idea is illustrated in the Hebrew name of God (יהוה) Read from right to left “Jod” (י) is the father, “He” (ה) the mother, “Vau” (ו) the son, and “He” (ה), repeated at the end of the word, is generation, the act of birth, materiality. This is surely a sufficient reason why the God of the Jews and Christians should be personal, as much as the male Brahmâ, Vishnu, or Shiva of the orthodox, exoteric Hindu. Thus the term of Jhvh alone—now accepted as the name of “One living [male] God”—will yield, if seriously studied, not only the whole mystery of _Being_ (in the Biblical sense,) but also that of the Occult Theogony, from the highest divine Being, the third in order, down to man. As shown by the best Hebraists: The verbal היה, or Hâyâh, or E‐y‐e, means _to be_, _to exist_, while חיה or Châyâh, or H‐y‐e, means _to live_, as _motion of existence_.(349) Hence Eve stands as the evolution and the never‐ceasing “becoming” of Nature. Now if we take the almost untranslatable Sanskrit word Sat, which means the quintessence of absolute immutable Being, or Be‐ness—as it has been rendered by an able Hindu Occultist—we shall find no equivalent for it in any language; but it may be regarded as most closely resembling “Ain,” or “En‐Suph,” Boundless Being. Then the term Hâyâh, “to be,” as passive, changeless, yet manifested existence may perhaps be rendered by the Sanskrit Jîvâtmâ, universal life or soul, in its secondary and cosmic meaning; while “Châyâh,” “to live,” as “motion of existence,” is simply Prâna, the ever‐changing life in its objective sense. It is at the head of this third category that the Occultist finds Jehovah—the Mother, Binah, and the Father, Arelim. This is made plain in the _Zohar_, when the emanation and evolution of the Sephiroth are explained: First, Ain‐Suph, then Shekinah, the Garment or Veil of Infinite Light, then Sephira or the Kadmon, and, thus making the fourth, the spiritual Substance sent forth from the Infinite Light. This Sephira is called the Crown, Kether, and has besides, six other names—in all seven. These names are: 1. Kether; 2. the Aged; 3. the Primordial Point; 4. the White Head; 5. the Long Face; 6. the Inscrutable Height; and 7. Ehejeh (“I am”.)(350) This septenary Sephira is said to contain in itself the nine Sephiroth. But before showing how she brought them forth, let us read an explanation about the Sephiroth in the _Talmud_, which gives it as an archaic tradition, or Kabalah. There are three groups (or orders) of Sephiroth: 1. The Sephiroth called “divine attributes” (the Triad in the Holy Quaternary); 2. the sidereal (personal) Sephiroth; 3. the metaphysical Sephiroth, or a periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth (Kether, Chokmah and Binah), the rest of the seven being the personal “Seven Spirits of the Presence” (also of the planets, therefore). Speaking of these, the angels are meant, though not because they are seven, but because they represent the seven Sephiroth which contain in them the universality of the Angels. This shows (_a_) that, when the first four Sephiroth are separated, as a Triad‐Quaternary—Sephira being its synthesis—there remain only seven Sephiroth, as there are seven Rishis; these become ten when the Quaternary, or the first divine Cube, is scattered into units; and (_b_) that while Jehovah might have been viewed as the Deity, if he be included in the three divine groups or orders of the Sephiroth, the collective Elohim, or the quaternary indivisible Kether, once that he becomes a male God, he is no more than one of the Builders of the lower group—a Jewish Brahmâ.(351) A demonstration is now attempted. The first Sephira, containing the other nine, brought them forth in this order: (2) Hokmah (Chokmah, or Wisdom), a masculine active potency represented among the divine names as Jah; and, as a permutation or an evolution into lower forms in this instance—becoming the Auphanim (or the Wheels—cosmic rotation of matter) among the army, or the angelic hosts. From this Chokmah emanated a feminine passive potency called (3) Intelligence, Binah, whose divine name is Jehovah, and whose angelic name, among the Builders and Hosts, is _Arelim_.(352) It is from the union of these two potencies, male and female (or Chokmah and Binah) that emanated all the other Sephiroth, the seven orders of the Builders. Now if we call Jehovah by his divine name, then he becomes at best and forthwith “a female passive” potency in Chaos. And if we view him as a male God, he is no more than one of many, an Angel, Arelim. But straining the analysis to its highest point, and if his male name Jah, that of Wisdom, be allowed to him, still he is not the “Highest and the one Living God;” for he is contained with many others within Sephira, and Sephira herself is a third Potency in Occultism, though regarded as the first in the exoteric _Kabalah_—and is one, moreover, of lesser importance than the Vaidic Aditi, or the Primordial Water of Space, which becomes after many a permutation the Astral Light of the Kabalist. Thus the _Kabalah_, as we have it now, is shown to be of the greatest importance in explaining the allegories and “dark sayings” of the _Bible_. As an Esoteric work upon the mysteries of creation, however, it is almost worthless as it is now disfigured, unless checked by the Chaldæan _Book of Numbers_ or by the tenets of the Eastern Secret Science, or Esoteric Wisdom. The Western nations have neither the original _Kabalah_, nor yet the Mosaic _Bible_. Finally, it is demonstrated by internal as well as by external evidence, on the testimony of the best European Hebraists, and the confessions of the learned Jewish Rabbis themselves, that “an ancient document forms the essential basis of the _Bible_, which received very considerable insertions and supplements;” and that “the Pentateuch arose out of the primitive or older document by means of a supplementary one.” Therefore in the absence of the _Book of Numbers_,(353) the Kabalists of the West are only entitled to come to definite conclusions, when they have at hand some data at least from that “ancient document”—data now found scattered throughout Egyptian papyri, Assyrian tiles, and the traditions preserved by the descendants of the disciples of the last Nazars. Instead of that, most of them accept as their authorities and infallible guides Sabre d’Olivet—who was a man of immense erudition and of speculative mind, but neither a Kabalist nor an Occultist, either Western or Eastern—and the Mason Ragon, the greatest of the “Widow’s sons,” who was even less of an Orientalist than d’Olivet, for Sanskrit learning was almost unknown in the days of both these eminent scholars.