Apart from this, every cosmogony, from the earliest to the latest, is based upon, interlinked with, and most closely related to, numerals and geometric figures. Questioned by an Initiate, these figures and numbers will yield numerical values based on the integral values of the Circle—“the secret habitat of the ever-invisible Deity” as the Alchemists have it—as they will yield every other Occult particular connected with such mysteries, whether anthropographical, anthropological, cosmic, or psychical. “In reuniting Ideas to Numbers, we can operate upon Ideas in the same way as upon Numbers, and arrive at the Mathematics of Truth,” writes an Occultist, who shows his great wisdom in desiring to remain unknown.
Any Kabalist well acquainted with the Pythagorean system of numerals and geometry can demonstrate that the metaphysical views of Plato were based upon the strictest mathematical principles. “True mathematics,” says the Magicon, “is something with which all higher sciences are connected; common mathematics is but a deceitful phantasmagoria, whose much praised infallibility only arises from this—that materials, conditions and references are made to foundation.”...
The cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned in India, and from the Egyptian Hierophants, is alone able to reconcile the two units, matter and spirit, and cause each to demonstrate the other mathematically. The sacred numbers of the universe in their esoteric combination can alone solve the great problem, and explain the theory of radiation and the cycle of the emanations. The lower orders, before they develop into higher ones, must emanate from the [pg 070]higher spiritual ones, and when arrived at the turning-point, be reäbsorbed into the infinite.[120]
It is upon these true Mathematics that the knowledge of the Kosmos and of all mysteries rests, and to one acquainted with them, it is the easiest thing possible to prove that both Vaidic and Biblical structures are based upon “God-in-Nature” and “Nature-in-God,” as the radical law. Therefore, this law—as everything else immutable and fixed in eternity—could find a correct expression only in those purest transcendental Mathematics referred to by Plato, especially in Geometry as transcendentally applied. Revealed to men—we fear not and will not retract the expression—in this geometrical and symbolical garb, Truth has grown and developed into additional symbology, invented by man for the wants and better comprehension of the masses of mankind that came too late in their cyclic development and evolution to have shared in the primitive knowledge, and would never have grasped it otherwise. If later on, the clergy—crafty and ambitious of power in every age—anthropomorphised and degraded abstract ideals, as well as the real and divine Beings who do exist in Nature, and are the Guardians and Protectors of our manvantaric world and period, the fault and guilt rests with those would-be leaders, not with the masses.
But the day has come when the gross conceptions of our forefathers during the Middle Ages can no longer satisfy the thoughtful religionist. The mediæval Alchemist and Mystic are now transformed into the sceptical Chemist and Physicist; and most of them are found to have turned away from truth, on account of the purely anthropomorphic ideas, the gross Materialism, of the forms in which it is presented to them. Therefore, future generations have either to be gradually initiated into the truths underlying Exoteric Religions, including their own, or be left to break the feet of clay of the last of the gilded idols. No educated man or woman would turn away from any of the now called “superstitions” which they believe to be based on nursery tales and ignorance, if they could only see the basis of fact that underlies every “superstition.” But let them once learn for a certainty that there is hardly a claim in the Occult Sciences that is not founded on philosophical and scientific facts in Nature, and they will pursue the study of those Sciences with the same, if not with greater, ardour than that they have expended in shunning them. This cannot be achieved at [pg 071] once, for to benefit mankind such truths have to be revealed gradually and with great caution, the public mind not being prepared for them. However much the Agnostics of our age may find themselves in the mental attitude demanded by Modern Science, people are always apt to cling to their old hobbies so long as the remembrance of them lasts. They are like the Emperor Julian—called the Apostate, because he loved truth too well to accept aught else—who, though in his last Theophany he beheld his beloved Gods as pale, worn-out, and hardly discernible shadows, nevertheless clung to them. Let, then, the world cling to its Gods, to whatever plane or realm they may belong. The true Occultist would be guilty of high treason to mankind, were he to break for ever the old deities before he could replace them with the whole and unadulterated truth—and this he cannot do as yet. Nevertheless, the reader may be allowed to learn at least the alphabet of that truth. He may be shown, at any rate, what the Gods and Goddesses of the Pagans, denounced as demons by the Church, are not, if he cannot learn the whole and final truth as to what they are. Let him assure himself that the Hermetic “Tres Matres,” and the “Three Mothers” of the Sepher Jetzirah are one and the same thing; that they are no Demon-Goddesses, but Light, Heat, and Electricity, and then, perchance, the learned classes will spurn them no longer. After this, the Rosicrucian Illuminati may find followers even in the Royal Academies, which will be more prepared, perhaps, than they are now, to admit the grand truths of archaic Natural Philosophy, especially when their learned members shall have assured themselves that, in the dialect of Hermes, the “Three Mothers” stand as symbols for the whole of the forces or agencies which have a place assigned to them in the modern system of the “correlation of forces.”[121] Even the polytheism of the “superstitious” Brâhman and idolater shows its raison d'être, since the three Shaktis of the three great Gods, Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Shiva, are identical with the “Three Mothers” of the monotheistic Jew.
The whole of the ancient religious and mystical literature is symbolical. The Books of Hermes, the Zohar, the Ya-Yakav, the Egyptian Book [pg 072]of the Dead, the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bible, are as full of symbolism as are the Nabathean revelations of the Chaldaic Qû-tâmy; it is a loss of time to ask which is the earliest; all are simply different versions of the one primeval Record of prehistoric knowledge and revelation.
The first four chapters of Genesis contain the synopsis of all the rest of the Pentateuch, being only the various versions of the same thing in different allegorical and symbolical applications. Having discovered that the Pyramid of Cheops with all its measurements is to be found contained in its minutest details in the structure of Solomon's Temple; and having ascertained that the biblical names Shem, Ham and Japhet are determinative
of pyramid measures, in connection with the 600-year period of Noah and the 500-year period of Shem, Ham and Japhet; ... the term “Sons of Elohim”and “Daughters” of H-Adam, [are] for one thing astronomical terms,[122]
the author of the very curious work already mentioned—a book very little known in Europe, we regret to say—seems to see nothing in his discovery beyond the presence of Mathematics and Metrology in the Bible. He also arrives at most unexpected and extraordinary conclusions, such as are very little warranted by the facts discovered. His impression seems to be that because the Jewish biblical names are all astronomical, therefore the Scriptures of all the other nations can be “only this and nothing more.” But this is a great mistake of the erudite and wonderfully acute author of The Source of Measures, if he really thinks so. The “Key to the Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery” unlocks but a certain portion of the hieratic writings of these two nations, and leaves those of other peoples untouched. His idea is that the Kabalah “is only that sublime Science upon which Masonry is based”; in fact he regards Masonry as the substance of the Kabalah, and the latter as the “rational basis of the Hebrew text of Holy Writ.” About this we will not argue with the author. But why should all those who may have found in the Kabalah something beyond “the sublime Science” upon which Masonry is alleged to have been built, be held up to public contempt?
In its exclusiveness and one-sidedness such a conclusion is pregnant with future misconceptions and is absolutely wrong. In its uncharitable criticism it throws a slur upon the “Divine Science” itself.