[295] The Legend of Hiram has been told after several manners. English Masons will see that the present version is utterly incorrect, and it may be added further that it incorporates reveries borrowed from old High Grades.
[296] The names ascribed to the three assassins are High Grade inventions, and so also is all that follows concerning them.
[297] It is understood that Éliphas Lévi entered Masonry in the ordinary way, but it is quite true that vital integration therein and real understanding thereof are consequences of personal work.
[298] It has been called the most ancient of all the Chinese books, being ascribed to the year 3468 B.C. It consists of 10 chapters.
[299] See my translation of this work: Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, 1896.
[300] It will be observed and appreciated at its proper value that Éliphas Lévi does not attempt to elucidate the Chinese puzzle of which he claims to possess the key, and the explanation is that if he had known his subject critically he would not have attempted to create Zoharic analogies which in the nature of things are non-existent.
[301] The Book of Concealed Mystery is not a key to the Zohar; it is one of the tracts inserted therein and its influence on the text at large is almost nil.
[302] It will be noticed that this remark is not borne out by the instance which is supposed to illustrate it and that the lucubration on China is a curious preamble to a study of remarkable authors of the eighteenth century, who had nothing to do with China.
[303] Emmanuel Swedenborg never gave expression to this view, and in respect of the criticism as a whole, it must be remarked that the communications which came to him came unawares, his psychic states not being self-induced.
[304] The Kabalah has no principle of the hierarchy; its one counsel is the study of the Doctrine and that study continually brought forward new developments of the deep meanings which lay behind (a) the Law, (b) the prophets and (c) the historical books of the Old Testament. The Zohar presupposes throughout a widely diffused knowledge of its Secret Doctrine, as already intimated.