[499] “Codex Nazaræus,” iii. 61.
[500] The Astral Light, or anima mundi, is dual and bi-sexual. The male part of it is purely divine and spiritual; it is the Wisdom; while the female portion (the spiritus of the Nazarenes) is tainted, in one sense, with matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the life-principle of every living creature, and furnishes the astral soul, the fluidic perisprit to men, animals, fowls of the air, and everything living. Animals have only the germ of the highest immortal soul as a third principle. It will develop but through a series of countless evolutions; the doctrine of which evolution is contained in the kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant a beast; a beast a man; a man a spirit; and the spirit a god.”
[501] See Commentary on “Idra Suta,” by Rabbi Eleashar.
[502] Sod means a religious Mystery. Cicero mentions the sod, as constituting a portion of the Idean Mysteries. “The members of the Priest-Colleges were called Sodales,” says Dunlap, quoting Freund’s “Latin Lexicon,” iv. 448.
[503] The author of the “Sohar,” the great kabalistic work of the first century B.C.
[504] See Abbé Huc’s works.
[505] “The Sohar,” iii. 288; “Idra Suta.”
[506] Everard: “Mystères Physiologiques,” p. 132.
[507] See Plato’s “Timæus.”
[508] “Supernatural Religion; an Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation,” vol. ii. London, 1875.