Heroes, moreover, whose number is found the same in every Deluge story—from the seven Rishis who were saved with Vaivasvata Manu, down to Noah's ark, into which beasts, fowls, and living creatures were taken by “sevens.” Thus we see the figures 1, 3, 5, 7, as perfect, because thoroughly mystic, numbers playing a prominent part in every Cosmogony and evolution of living Beings. In China, 1, 3, 5, 7, are called “celestial numbers” in the canonical “Book of Changes”—Yi King, or transformation, as in “evolution.”
The explanation of it becomes evident when one examines the ancient Symbols: all these are based upon and start from the figures given from the Archaic Manuscript in the Proem of Volume I. [Symbol: circle with horizontal line through it, and another from center to bottom], the symbol of evolution and fall into generation or Matter, is reflected in the old Mexican sculptures or paintings, as it is in the Kabalistic Sephiroth, and the Egyptian Tau. Examine the Mexican MS. (Add. MSS. Brit. Mus. 9789)[65]; you will find it in a tree whose trunk is covered with ten fruits ready to be plucked by a male and female, one on each side of it, while from the top of the trunk two branches shoot horizontally to the right and left, thus forming a perfect Τ (Tau), the ends of the two branches, moreover, each bearing a triple bunch, with a bird—the bird of immortality, Âtmâ or the Divine Spirit—sitting between the two, and thus making the seventh. This represents the same idea as the Sephirothal Tree, ten in all, yet, when separated from its upper triad, leaving seven. These are the celestial fruits, the ten, or [Symbol: circle with “i” inside], 10, born out of the two invisible male and female seeds, making up the 12, or the Dodecahedron of the Universe. The mystic system contains the ·, the central point; the 3, or [symbol: triangle]; the 5, [symbol: 5-point star]; and the 7, or [symbol: triangle in square]; or again [symbol: 6-point star]; the triangle in the square and the synthesizing point in the interlaced double triangles. This for the world of the archetypes. The phenomenal world receives its culmination and the reflex of all in Man. Therefore he is the mystic square—in his metaphysical aspect—the Tetraktys; and becomes the Cube on the creative plane. His symbol is the cube unfolded[66] and 6 becoming 7, or the [Symbol: cross], 3 crossways (the female) and 4 vertically; and this is man, the culmination of the deity on earth, whose body is the cross of flesh, on, through, and in which he is ever crucifying and [pg 040] putting to death the divine Logos, or his Higher Self. Says every Philosophy and Cosmogony:
The universe hath a Ruler [Rulers collectively] set over it, which is called the Word (Logos); the fabricating Spirit is its Queen: which two are the First Power after the One.
These are the Spirit and Nature, which two form our Illusory Universe. The two inseparables remain in the Universe of Ideas so long as it lasts, and then merge back into Parabrahman, the One ever changeless. “The Spirit, whose essence is eternal, one and self-existent,” emanates a pure ethereal Light—a dual light not perceptible to the elementary senses—according to the Purânas, the Bible, the Sepher Yetzirah, the Greek and Latin Hymns, the Book of Hermes, the Chaldæan Book of Numbers, the Esotericism of Lao-tse, and everywhere else. In the Kabalah, which explains the secret meaning of Genesis, this Light is the Dual-Man, or the Androgyne (rather Sexless) Angels, whose generic name is Adam Kadmon. It is they who complete man, whose ethereal form is emanated by other divine, but far lower Beings, who solidify the body with clay, or the “dust of the ground”—an allegory indeed, but as scientific as any Darwinian evolution and more true.
The author of the Source of Measures says that the foundation of the Kabalah and of all its mystic books is made to rest upon the ten Sephiroth; which is a fundamental truth. He shows these Ten Sephiroth or the 10 Numbers as follows:
The circle is the naught; its vertical diameter line is the first or primal One [the Word or Logos], from which spring the 2, the 3, and so on to 9, the limit of the digits. The 10 is the first Divine Manifestation,[67] which contains every possible power of exact expression of proportion—the sacred Jod. By this Cabbalah we are taught that these Sephiroth were the numbers or emanations of the heavenly Light (20612 to 6561), they were the 10 Words, DBRIM, 41224, the light of which they were the flux was the Heavenly man, the Adam-KDM (the 144-144); and the Light, by the New Testament or Covenant (41224) created God; just as by the Old Testament God (Alhim, 31415) creates Light (20612 to 6561).[68]
Now there are three kinds of Light in Occultism, as in the Kabalah. (1) The Abstract and Absolute Light, which is Darkness; (2) The Light of the Manifested-Unmanifested, called by some the Logos: and (3) The latter Light reflected in the Dhyân Chohans, the minor Logoi—the Elohim, collectively—who, in their turn, shed it on the objective Universe. But in the Kabalah—reëdited and carefully adjusted to fit the Christian tenets by the Kabalists of the thirteenth century—the three Lights are described as: (1) The clear and penetrating, that of Jehovah; (2) reflected light; and (3) light in the abstract.
This Light, abstractly taken, (in a metaphysical or symbolical sense) is Alhim (Elohim, God), while the clear penetrating Light is Jehovah. The light of Alhim belongs to the world in general, in its allness and general fulness, but the light of Jehovah is that pertaining to the chiefest production, man, whom this light penetrated to and made.[69]
The author of the Source of Measures pertinently refers the reader to Inman's Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names, ii. 648. There, an engraving of