All of these Logoi strove to endow man with the immortal spirit, failed, and nearly all are represented as being punished for the attempt by severe sentences. Those of the early Christian Fathers who like Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus, were well versed in Pagan symbology, having begun their careers as philosophers, felt very much embarrassed. They could not deny the anticipation of their doctrines in the oldest myths. The latest Logos, according to their teachings, had also appeared in order to show mankind the way to immortality; and in his desire to endow the world with eternal life through the Pentecostal fire, had lost his life agreeably to the traditional programme. Thus was originated the very awkward explanation of which our modern clergy freely avail themselves, that all these mythic types show the prophetic spirit which, through the Lord’s mercy, was afforded even to the heathen idolaters! The Pagans, they assert, had presented in their imagery the great drama of Calvary—hence the resemblance. On the other hand, the philosophers maintained, with unassailable logic, that the pious fathers had simply helped themselves to a ready-made groundwork, either finding it easier than to exert their own imagination, or because of the greater number of ignorant proselytes who were attracted to the new doctrine by such an extraordinary resemblance with their mythologies, at least as far as the outward form of the most fundamental doctrines goes.
The allegory of the Fall of man and the fire of Prometheus is also another version of the myth of the rebellion of the proud Lucifer, hurled down to the bottomless pit—Orcus. In the religion of the Brahmans, Moisasure, the Hindu Lucifer, becomes envious of the Creator’s resplendent light, and at the head of a legion of inferior spirits rebels against Brahma, and declares war against him. Like Hercules, the faithful Titan, who helps Jupiter and restores to him his throne, Siva, the third person of the Hindu trinity, hurls them all from the celestial abode in Honderah, the region of eternal darkness. But here the fallen angels are made to repent of their evil deed, and in the Hindu doctrine they are all afforded the opportunity to progress. In the Greek fiction, Hercules, the Sun-god, descends to Hades to deliver the victims from their tortures; and the Christian Church also makes her incarnate god descend to the dreary Plutonic regions and overcome the rebellious ex-archangel. In their turn the kabalists explain the allegory in a semi-scientific way. Adam the second, or the first-created race which Plato calls gods, and the Bible the Elohim, was not triple in his nature like the earthly man: i.e., he was not composed of soul, spirit, and body, but was a compound of sublimated astral elements into which the “Father” had breathed an immortal, divine spirit. The latter, by reason of its godlike essence, was ever struggling to liberate itself from the bonds of even that flimsy prison; hence the “sons of God,” in their imprudent efforts, were the first to trace a future model for the cyclic law. But, man must not be “like one of us,” says the Creative Deity, one of the Elohim “intrusted with the fabrication of the lower animal.”[488] And thus it was, when the men of the first race had reached the summit of the first cycle, they lost their balance, and their second envelope, the grosser clothing (astral body), dragged them down the opposite arc.
This kabalistic version of the sons of God (or of light) is given in the Codex Nazaræus. Bahak-Zivo, the “father of genii, is ordered to ‘construct creatures.’” But, as he is “ignorant of Orcus,” he fails to do so and calls in Fetahil a still purer spirit to his aid, who fails still worse.
Then steps on the stage of creation the “spirit”[489] (which properly ought to be translated “soul,” for it is the anima mundi, and which with the Nazarenes and the Gnostics was feminine), and perceiving that for Fetahil,[490] the newest man (the latest), the splendor was “changed,” and that for splendor existed “decrease and damage,” awakes Karabtanos,[491] “who was frantic and without sense and judgment,” and says to him: “Arise; see, the splendor (light) of the newest man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce or create men), the decrease of this splendor is visible. Rise up, come with thy MOTHER (the spiritus) and free thee from limits by which thou art held, and those more ample than the whole world.” After which follows the union of the frantic and blind matter, guided by the insinuations of the spirit (not the Divine breath, but the Astral spirit, which by its double essence is already tainted with matter) and the offer of the MOTHER being accepted the Spiritus conceives “Seven Figures,” which Irenæus is disposed to take for the seven stellars (planets) but which represent the seven capital sins, the progeny of an astral soul separated from its divine source (spirit) and matter, the blind demon of concupiscence. Seeing this, Fetahil extends his hand toward the abyss of matter, and says: ‘Let the earth exist, just as the abode of the powers has existed.’” Dipping his hand in the chaos, which he condenses, he creates our planet.[492]
Then the Codex proceeds to tell how Bahak-Zivo was separated from the Spiritus, and the genii, or angels, from the rebels.[493] Then Mano[494] (the greatest), who dwells with the greatest Ferho, calls Kebar-Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat-Iavar bar Iufin-Ifafin), Helm and Vine of the food of life,[495] he being the third life, and, commiserating the rebellious and foolish genii, on account of the magnitude of their ambition, says: “Lord of the genii[496] (Æons), see what the genii, the rebellious angels do, and about what they are consulting.[497] They say, “Let us call forth the world, and let us call the ‘powers’ into existence. The genii are the Principes, the ‘sons of Light,’ but thou art the ‘Messenger of Life.’”[498]
And in order to counteract the influence of the seven “badly disposed” principles, the progeny of Spiritus, Cabar Zio, the mighty Lord of Splendor, procreates seven other lives (the cardinal virtues) who shine in their own form and light “from on high”[499] and thus reëstablishes the balance between good and evil, light and darkness.
But this creation of beings, without the requisite influx of divine pure breath in them, which was known among the kabalists as the “Living Fire,” produced but creatures of matter and astral light.[500] Thus were generated the animals which preceded man on this earth. The spiritual beings, the “sons of light,” those who remained faithful to the great Ferho (the First Cause of all), constitute the celestial or angelic hierarchy, the Adonim, and the legions of the never-embodied spiritual men. The followers of the rebellious and foolish genii, and the descendants of the “witless” seven spirits begotten by “Karabtanos” and the “spiritus,” became, in course of time, the “men of our planet,”[501] after having previously passed through every “creation” of every one of the elements. From this stage of life they have been traced by Darwin, who shows us how our highest forms have been evolved out of the lowest. Anthropology dares not follow the kabalist in his metaphysical flights beyond this planet, and it is doubtful if its teachers have the courage to search for the missing link in the old kabalistic manuscripts.
Thus was set in motion the first cycle, which in its rotations downward, brought an infinitesimal part of the created lives to our planet of mud. Arrived at the lowest point of the arc of the cycle which directly preceded life on this earth, the pure divine spark still lingering in the Adam made an effort to separate itself from the astral spirit, for “man was falling gradually into generation,” and the fleshy coat was becoming with every action more and more dense.
And now comes a mystery, a Sod;[502] a secret which Rabbi Simeon[503] imparted but to very few initiates. It was enacted once every seven years during the Mysteries of Samothrace, and the records of it are found self-printed on the leaves of the Thibetan sacred tree, the mysterious Kounboum, in the Lamasery of the holy adepts.[504]
In the shoreless ocean of space radiates the central, spiritual, and Invisible sun. The universe is his body, spirit and soul; and after this ideal model are framed ALL THINGS. These three emanations are the three lives, the three degrees of the gnostic Pleroma, the three “Kabalistic Faces,” for the Ancient of the ancient, the holy of the aged, the great En-Soph, “has a form and then he has no form.” The invisible “assumed a form when he called the universe into existence,”[505] says the Sohar, the Book of splendor. The first light is His soul, the Infinite, Boundless, and Immortal breath; under the efflux of which the universe heaves its mighty bosom, infusing Intelligent life throughout creation. The second emanation condenses cometary matter and produces forms within the cosmic circle; sets the countless worlds floating in the electric space, and infuses the unintelligent, blind life-principle into every form. The third, produces the whole universe of physical matter; and as it keeps gradually receding from the Central Divine Light its brightness wanes and it becomes Darkness and the Bad—pure matter, the “gross purgations of the celestial fire” of the Hermetists.