B—S'ph-r, V—S'ph-r, V—Siph-o-r.
Mr. Ralston Skinner goes on to say:
This comment sets forth the “hidden wisdom” of the original text by hidden wisdom, that is, by the use of words carrying a special set of numbers and a special phraseology, which will set forth the very explanatory system which we find to fit so accurately in the Hebrew Bible.... In setting forth his scheme, to enforce it, and to finish out his detailed exposition in a general postulate,—viz., the one word “Sephrim” (Sephiroth), of the Number Jezirah, the author explains the separation of this word in the three subordinate ones, a play upon a common word, s-ph-r, or number.
The prince Al-Chazari[73] says to the Rabbi: “I wish now that thou wouldest impart to me some of the chiefest or leading principles of Natural Philosophy, which, as thou sayest, were in former times worked out by them (the ancient wise ones);”—to which the Rabbi makes answer: “To such principles appertains the Number of Creation of our race-father Abraham” that is Abram and Abraham, or numbers 41224 and 41252. He then says that this book of number treats of teaching the “Alhim-ness and One-ness through (DBRIM)” viz., the numbers of the word “Words.” That is, it teaches the use of the ratio 31415 to One, through 41224, which last, in the description of the Ark of the Covenant, was divided into two parts by the two tables of stone, on which these DBRIM, or 41224, were written or engraved—or 20612 × 2. He then comments on these three subordinately used words, and takes care as to one of them to make the comment, “and Alhim (31415 to One) said let there be Light (20612 to 6561).”
The words as given in the text are:
ספר ספר סיפור
and the Rabbi, in commenting upon them, says: “It teaches the Alhim-ness (31415) and One-ness (the diameter to Alhim), through Words (DBRIM = 41224), by which on the one side there is infinite expression in heterogeneous creations, and on the other a final harmonic tendency to One-ness” (which, as everyone knows, is the mathematical function of pi of the schools, which measures, weighs, and numbers the stars of heaven, and yet resolves them back into the final oneness of the Uni-verse) “through Words. Their final accord perfects itself in that One-ness that ordains them, and which consists in
ספר ספר ספור ”
that is, the Rabbi, in his first comment, leaves the jod, or i, out of one of the words, whereas afterwards he restores it again. If we take the values of those subordinate [pg 044]words, we find them to be 340, 340 and 346;—together these are 1026, and the division of the general word into these has been to produce these numbers—which by T'mura may be changed in various ways, for various purposes.[74]
The reader is asked to turn to Stanza IV of Volume I, Shloka 3 and Commentary,[75] to find that the 3, 4, (7), and the thrice seven, or 1065, the number of Jehovah, is the number of the 21 Prajâpati mentioned in the Mahâbhârata, or the three Sephrim (words in ciphers or figures). And this comparison between the Creative Powers of Archaic Philosophy and the anthropomorphic Creator of exoteric Judaism (since the Esotericism of the Jews shows its identity with the Secret Doctrine) will lead the student to perceive and discover that, in truth, Jehovah is but a “lunar” and “generation” God. It is a fact well known to every conscientious student of the Kabalah, that the deeper he dives into it, the more he feels convinced that unless the Kabalah—or what is left of it—is read by the light of the Eastern Esoteric Philosophy, its study leads only to the discovery that, on the lines traced by exoteric Judaism and Christianity, the monotheism of both is nothing more exalted than ancient Astrolatry, now vindicated by modern Astronomy. The Kabalists never cease to repeat that Primal Intelligence can never be understood. It cannot be comprehended, nor can it be located, therefore it has to remain nameless and negative. Hence the Ain Suph—the “Unknowable” and “Unnameable”—as It could not be made manifest, was imagined as emanating Manifesting Powers. It is then with its Emanations alone that human intellect has to, and can, deal. Christian theology, having rejected the doctrine of Emanations and replaced them with direct, conscious Creations of Angels and the rest out of nothing, now finds itself hopelessly stranded between Supernaturalism, or Miracle, and Materialism. An extra-cosmic God is fatal to Philosophy: an intra-cosmic Deity—i.e., Spirit and Matter inseparable from each other—is a philosophical necessity. Separate them and that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of emotionalism. But why “geometrize,” as Plato has it, why represent these Emanations under the form of an immense arithmetical table? The question is well answered by the author just cited, who says: