[135] In the Golden Legend the story is entitled “Of St. Justina,” whose festival is on September 26. St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, is entirely distinct from the Cyprian of legend.
[136] This pictorial sign appears in an old Grimoire.
[137] With this reverie of Éliphas Lévi on the subject of the mystic ass let us compare another which is of an entirely different order, though it belongs to the same category, (1) It is recorded by Josephus that a certain Jew named Onias obtained leave from Ptolemy Philometor to build a temple in honour of God at a certain place in Arabia which was subsequently called Onium, after the founder. (2) This Onium was not Heliopolis, as supposed commonly. (3) The Temple at Onium, on account of a similitude of sound, was connected with the Greek word ονος, signifying Ass. (4) The Greeks in consequence believed themselves to have discovered the secret object of Jewish worship, being the animal in question. (5) It was asserted that there was an ass’s head in the vestibule of every Jewish temple. (6) As the Greeks did not closely distinguish between Jews and Christians, the ass came also to be called the god of the Christians.—Jacob Bryant: Analysis of Antient Mythology, 3rd edition, vol. vi. pp. 82 et seq.
[138] The commentary of the Zohar on Genesis ii. 22, says that the words—“which the Lord God had taken from man”—signify that the Tradition has issued from the Written Doctrine. The words “and brought him to man” indicate that the Traditional Law must not remain isolated: it can only exist in union with the Written Law. Part I, Fol. 48b. It follows, and is made plain elsewhere, that man is the Written Law and woman the Secret Doctrine.
[139] In one of the pictorial symbols of Alchemy the head of the winged solar man is represented rising from a chest. It is a recurring image.
[140] It is obvious that Éliphas Lévi pictures only the dark side of Gnosticism; he says nothing and perhaps knew nothing of the higher aspects. His stricture on the copulation of Eons reads strangely for a defender of Kabalism, seeing that the Zohar abounds in similar images.
[141] This statement requires to be checked by a French authority of the period, with whom Éliphas Lévi could not fail to be acquainted. I refer to Jacques Matter and his Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, a second and enlarged edition of which was published in 1843. According to the testimony of this writer: (a) Some Gnostics rejected the Eucharist entirely; (b) Those who preserved it never taught the real communication of man in the flesh and blood of the Saviour; (c) for them it was an emblem of their mystic union with a being belonging to the Pleroma; (d) The wonder-working Eucharist was particular to Marcos, but according to St. Irenæus it was the result of trickery; (e) He filled chalices with wine and water, pronounced over them a formula of his own, and caused these liquids to appear purple and ruby in colour. Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 344-346.
[142] This assertion is merely a matter of inference.
[143] The materials here embodied come direct from Matter, and the last sentence is almost in his own words. The earlier writer says that he caused women to bless the chalice. Nothing is said as to the intervention of men, other than Marcos, in the celebration.
[144] The dream ascribed to Marcos and his followers is that, however, of the Zohar, the opening section of which describes the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as coming before God in succession, praying to be used in the work of creation which was about to begin. They were set aside in their turn for the reason applying to each, with the exception of Beth, which was taken as the basis of the work, while Aleph was installed as the first of all the letters, the Master of the Universe affirming that His own Divine Unity was in virtue of this letter. The meaning was that Aleph corresponds to the No. 1. This, says the Zohar, with ingenuous subtlety, is why the two first words of Scripture have Beth as their initial and the two next words have Aleph.—Zohar, Part I, Fols. 2b-3b.