On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Thus, geometrically, [pg 573] and according to the reading of the Bible by means of the numerical method, the author of The Source of Measures is quite correct.
The entire [Jewish] system seems to have been anciently regarded as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or God, as the basis or law of the exertion practically of creative power—i.e., it was the creative design, of which creation was practically the application. This seems to be established by the fact that, under the system set forth, measures of planetary times serve coördinately as measures of the size of planets, and of the peculiarity of their shapes—i.e., in the extension of their equatorial and polar diameters.... This system [that of creative design] seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure, as a foundation for its ritualism and for its display of the works of the Deity in the way of architecture, by use of the sacred unit of measure in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon.[1279]
Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system, the Jewish Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested Duad, never the One Absolute All. Geometrically demonstrated, he is a number; symbolically, a euhemerized Priapus; and this can hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting after the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the possession of a God with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most learned of modern Kabalists can see in the cross and circle nothing but a symbol of the manifested creative and androgyne Deity in its relation to, and interference with, this phenomenal world.[1280] One author believes that:
However man [read, the Jew and Rabbi] obtained knowledge of the practical measure, ... by which nature was thought to adjust the planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements, it seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the means of his realization of the Deity—that is, he approached so nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his own, only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize a law of creation established by that Being, which must have existed prior to any creation (kabalistically called the Word).[1281]
This may have satisfied the practical Semite mind, but the Eastern Occultist has to decline the offer of such a God; indeed, a Deity, a Being, “having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,” is no God that has any room beyond the cycle of creation. He has nought to do with the ideal conception of the Eternal Universe. He is, at best, one of the subordinate creative powers, the Totality of which [pg 574] is called the Sephiroth, the Heavenly Man, and Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos of the Platonists.
This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest definitions of the Kabalah and its mysteries, e.g., by John A. Parker, as quoted in the same work:
The key of the Kabala is thought to be the geometrical relation of the area of the circle inscribed in the square, or of the cube to the sphere, giving rise to the relation of diameter to circumference of a circle, with the numerical value of this relation expressed in integrals. The relation of diameter to circumference, being a supreme one connected with the god-names Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of these relations, respectively—the first being of circumference, the latter of diameter), embraces all other subordinations under it. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are used in the Bible: (1) The perfect, and (2) The imperfect. One of the relations between these is such that (2) subtracted from (1) will leave a unit of a diameter value in terms, or in the denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or a unit straight line having a perfect circular value, or a factor of circular value.[1282]
Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries of the third stage of Evolution, or the “Third Creation of Brahmâ.” The initiated Hindûs know how to “square the circle” far better than any European. But of this more anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the Universe “falls into matter,” as the Occultists say. Throughout the whole series of kabalistic books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the remotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at the mechanical and physiological secrets of “creation.” Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe as simply a prototype, on a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation; as “divine” phallicism, and rhapsodize on it as the evilly-inspired author of a late work of this name has done? The writer does not think so. And she feels justified in saying so, since the most careful reading of the Old Testament—esoterically, as well as exoterically—seems to have carried the most enthusiastic enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the first to the last chapter of the Pentateuch every scene, every character or event are shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the origin of birth in its crudest and most brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious the rabbinical methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern Occultists, must prefer those of the Pagans.
It is not, then, in the Bible that we have to search for the origin of the cross and circle, but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning to Éliphas Lévi and the Zohar, we answer for the Eastern Occultists and say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely with Pascal, who says that:
God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.