The Kabalistic idea is identical with the Esotericism of the archaic period. This Esotericism is the common property of all, and belongs neither to the Âryan Fifth Race, nor to any of its numerous sub-races. It cannot be claimed by the Turanians, so-called, the Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, or by any of the seven divisions of the Fifth Root Race, but really belongs to the Third and Fourth Root Races, [pg 139] whose descendants we find in the Seed of the Fifth, the earliest Âryans. The Circle was with every nation the symbol of the Unknown—“Boundless Space,” the abstract garb of an ever present abstraction—the Incognizable Deity. It represents limitless Time in Eternity. The Zeroâna Akerne is also the “Boundless Circle of Unknown Time,” from which Circle issues the radiant Light—the Universal Sun, or Ormazd[203]—and the latter is identical with Cronus, in his Æolian form, that of a Circle. For the Circle is Sar and Saros, or Cycle. It was the Babylonian God whose circular horizon was the visible symbol of the invisible, while the Sun was the One Circle from which proceeded the cosmic orbs, of which he was considered the leader. Zeroâna, is the Chakra, or Circle, of Vishnu, the mysterious emblem which is, according to the definition of a Mystic, “a curve of such a nature that as to any, the least possible, part thereof, if the curve be protracted either way, it will proceed and finally reënter upon itself, and form one and the same curve—or that which we call the circle.” No better definition could thus be given of the natural symbol and the evident nature of Deity, which having its circumference everywhere (the boundless) has, therefore, its central point also everywhere; in other words, is in every point of the Universe. The invisible Deity is thus also the Dhyân Chohans, or the Rishis, the primitive seven, and the nine, without, and ten, including, their synthetical unit, from which It steps into Man.
Returning to Commentary 4 of Stanza IV, the reader now will understand why, while the Trans-Himâlayan Chakra has inscribed within it [triangle] [square] [5-point star with middle dot]—triangle, first line, square, second line, and a pentacle with a point in the centre, either thus [5-point star with middle dot] or some other variation—the Kabalistic Circle of the Elohim reveals, when the letters of the word אלהים (Alhim or Elohim) are read numerically, the famous numerals 13514, or anagrammatically 31415—the astronomical π (pi), or the hidden meaning of the Dhyâni-Buddhas, of the Gebers, the Giburim, the Kabeiri, and the Elohim, all signifying “Great Men,” “Titans,” “Heavenly Men,” and, on earth, “Giants.”
The Seven was a Sacred Number with every nation; but none applied it to more physiologically materialistic uses than the Hebrews. With them 7 was preëminently the generative number, and 9 the male causative one, forming as shown by the Kabalists the otz, עצ (90, 70), or “the Tree of the Garden of Eden,” the “double hermaphrodite rod” [pg 140] of the Fourth Race. This was the symbol of the “Holy of Holies,” the 3 and the 4 of sexual separation. Nearly every one of the 22 Hebrew letters are merely phallic symbols. Of the two letters—as shown above—one, the ayin, is a negative female letter, symbolically an eye; the the other a male letter, tzâ, a fish-hook or dart. Whereas with the Hindûs and Âryans generally, the significance was manifold, and related almost entirely to purely metaphysical and astronomical truths. Their Rishis and Gods, their Demons and Heroes, have historical and ethical meanings.
Yet we are told by a Kabalist, who, in a work not yet published, contrasts the Kabalah and Zohar with Âryan Esotericism, that:
The Hebrew clear, short, terse and exact, modes far and beyond measure surpass the toddling word-talk of the Hindûs—just as by parallelisms the Psalmist says, “My mouth speaks with my tongue, I know not thy numbers” (lxxi., 15).... The Hindû glyph shows by its insufficiency in the large admixture of adventitious sides the same borrowed plumage that the Greeks (the lying Greeks) had, and that Masonry has: which, in the rough monosyllabic (and apparent) poverty of the Hebrew, shows the latter to have come down from a far more remote antiquity than any of these, and to have been the source [! ?], or nearer the old original source than any of them.
This is entirely erroneous. Our learned brother and correspondent judges the Hindû religious systems apparently by their Shâstras and Purânas, probably the latter, and in their modern translations moreover, which disfigure them out of all recognition. It is to their philosophical systems that we have to turn, to their esoteric teaching, if we would make a point of comparison. No doubt the symbology of the Pentateuch, and even of the New Testament, comes from the same source. But surely the Pyramid of Cheops, whose measurements are all found, by Professor Piazzi Smyth, repeated in Solomon's alleged and mythical Temple, is not of a later date than the Mosaic books? Hence, if there is any such great identity as is claimed, it must be due to servile copying on the part of the Jews, not on that of the Egyptians. The glyphs of the Jews—and even their language, the Hebrew—are not original. They are borrowed from the Egyptians, from whom Moses got his Wisdom; from the Coptic, the probable kinsman, if not parent, of the old Phœnician and from the Hyksos, their (alleged) ancestors, as Josephus shows.[204] Aye; but who are the Hyksos shepherds? And who the Egyptians? History knows nothing of the question, and speculates and theorizes out of the depths of the respective consciousnesses [pg 141] of her historians.[205] “Khamism, or old Coptic, is from Western Asia, and contains some germ of the Semitic, thus bearing witness to the primitive cognate unity of the Âryan and Semitic races,” says Bunsen, who places the great events in Egypt 9,000 years b.c. The fact is that in archaic Esotericism and Âryan thought we find a grand philosophy, whereas in the Hebrew records we find only the most surprising ingenuity in inventing apotheoses for phallic worship and sexual theogony.
That the Âryans never made their religion rest solely on physiological symbols, as the old Hebrews have done, may be seen in the exoteric Hindû Scriptures. That these accounts, also, are blinds is shown by their contradicting each other, a different explanation being found in almost every Purâna and epic poem. Read esoterically, however, they will all yield the same meaning. Thus one account enumerates seven worlds, exclusive of the nether worlds, also seven in number; these fourteen upper and nether worlds have nothing to do with the classification of the Septenary Chain and belong to the purely ethereal, invisible worlds. These will be noticed elsewhere. Suffice it for the present to show that they are purposely referred to as though they belonged to the Chain. “Another enumeration calls the seven worlds earth, sky, heaven, middle region, place of birth, mansion of the blest, and abode of truth; placing the Sons of Brahmâ in the sixth division, and stating the fifth, or Jana-loka, to be that where animals destroyed in the general conflagration are born again.”[206] Some real Esoteric teaching is given in the subsequent chapters on Symbolism. He who is prepared for it will understand the hidden meaning.
3. He is their guiding spirit and leader. When he commences work, he separates the Sparks of the Lower Kingdom,[207] That float and thrill with joy in their radiant dwellings,[208] and forms therewith the Germs of Wheels. He places them in the Six Directions of Space, and One in the middle—the Central Wheel.
“Wheels,” as already explained, are the centres of force, around which primordial cosmic matter expands, and, passing through all the [pg 142] six stages of consolidation, becomes spheroidal and ends by being transformed into globes or spheres. It is one of the fundamental dogmas of Esoteric cosmogony, that during the Kalpas (or Æons) of Life, Motion, which, during the periods of Rest, “pulsates and thrills through every slumbering atom”—assumes an evergrowing tendency, from the first awakening of Kosmos to a new “Day,” to circular movement. “The Deity becomes a Whirlwind.” It may be asked, as the writer has not failed to ask: Who is there to ascertain the difference in that Motion, since all Nature is reduced to its primal essence, and there can be no one—not even one of the Dhyâni-Chohans, who are all in Nirvâna—to see it? The answer to this is: Everything in Nature has to be judged by analogy. Though the highest Deities (Archangels or Dhyâni-Buddhas) are unable to penetrate the mysteries which lie too far beyond our Planetary System and the visible Cosmos, yet there were great seers and prophets in olden times who were enabled to perceive the mystery of Breath and Motion retrospectively, when the systems of Worlds were at rest and plunged in their periodic sleep.
The Wheels are also called Rotæ—the moving wheels of the celestial orbs participating in the world's creation—when the meaning refers to the animating principle of the stars and planets; for, in the Kabalah, they are represented by the Auphanim, the Angels of the Spheres and Stars, of which they are the informing Souls.[209]