There are three groups (or orders) of Sephiroth: 1. The Sephiroth called “divine attributes” (the Triad in the Holy Quaternary); 2. the sidereal (personal) Sephiroth; 3. the metaphysical Sephiroth, or a periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephiroth (Kether, Chokmah and Binah), the rest of the seven being the personal “Seven Spirits of the Presence” (also of the planets, therefore). Speaking of these, the angels are meant, though not because they are seven, but because they represent the seven Sephiroth which contain in them the universality of the Angels.
This shows (a) that, when the first four Sephiroth are separated, as a Triad-Quaternary—Sephira being its synthesis—there remain only seven Sephiroth, as there are seven Rishis; these become ten when the Quaternary, or the first divine Cube, is scattered into units; and (b) that while Jehovah might have been viewed as the Deity, if he be included in the three divine groups or orders of the Sephiroth, the collective Elohim, or the quaternary indivisible Kether, once that he becomes a male God, he is no more than one of the Builders of the lower group—a Jewish Brahmâ.[351] A demonstration is now attempted.
The first Sephira, containing the other nine, brought them forth in [pg 184] this order: (2) Hokmah (Chokmah, or Wisdom), a masculine active potency represented among the divine names as Jah; and, as a permutation or an evolution into lower forms in this instance—becoming the Auphanim (or the Wheels—cosmic rotation of matter) among the army, or the angelic hosts. From this Chokmah emanated a feminine passive potency called (3) Intelligence, Binah, whose divine name is Jehovah, and whose angelic name, among the Builders and Hosts, is Arelim.[352] It is from the union of these two potencies, male and female (or Chokmah and Binah) that emanated all the other Sephiroth, the seven orders of the Builders. Now if we call Jehovah by his divine name, then he becomes at best and forthwith “a female passive” potency in Chaos. And if we view him as a male God, he is no more than one of many, an Angel, Arelim. But straining the analysis to its highest point, and if his male name Jah, that of Wisdom, be allowed to him, still he is not the “Highest and the one Living God;” for he is contained with many others within Sephira, and Sephira herself is a third Potency in Occultism, though regarded as the first in the exoteric Kabalah—and is one, moreover, of lesser importance than the Vaidic Aditi, or the Primordial Water of Space, which becomes after many a permutation the Astral Light of the Kabalist.
Thus the Kabalah, as we have it now, is shown to be of the greatest importance in explaining the allegories and “dark sayings” of the Bible. As an Esoteric work upon the mysteries of creation, however, it is almost worthless as it is now disfigured, unless checked by the Chaldæan Book of Numbers or by the tenets of the Eastern Secret Science, or Esoteric Wisdom. The Western nations have neither the original Kabalah, nor yet the Mosaic Bible.
Finally, it is demonstrated by internal as well as by external evidence, on the testimony of the best European Hebraists, and the confessions of the learned Jewish Rabbis themselves, that “an ancient document forms the essential basis of the Bible, which received very considerable insertions and supplements;” and that “the Pentateuch arose out of the primitive or older document by means of a supplementary one.” Therefore in the absence of the Book of Numbers,[353] the Kabalists of the West are only entitled to come to definite conclusions, when they have at hand some data at least from that “ancient document”—data [pg 185] now found scattered throughout Egyptian papyri, Assyrian tiles, and the traditions preserved by the descendants of the disciples of the last Nazars. Instead of that, most of them accept as their authorities and infallible guides Sabre d'Olivet—who was a man of immense erudition and of speculative mind, but neither a Kabalist nor an Occultist, either Western or Eastern—and the Mason Ragon, the greatest of the “Widow's sons,” who was even less of an Orientalist than d'Olivet, for Sanskrit learning was almost unknown in the days of both these eminent scholars.
Section XXI. Hebrew Allegories.
How can any Kabalist, acquainted with the foregoing, deduce his conclusions with regard to the true Esoteric beliefs of the primitive Jews, from that only which he now finds in the Jewish scrolls? How can any scholar—even though one of the keys to the universal language be now positively discovered, the true key to the numerical reading of a pure geometrical system—give out anything as his final conclusion? Modern Kabalistic speculation is on a par now with modern “speculative Masonry;” for as the latter tries vainly to link itself with the ancient—or rather the archaic—Masonry of the Temples, failing to make the link because all its claims have been shown to be inaccurate from an archæological standpoint, so fares it also with Kabalistic speculation. As no mystery of Nature worth running after can be revealed to humanity by settling whether Hiram Abif was a living Sidonian builder, or a solar myth, so no fresh information will be added to Occult Lore by the details of the exoteric privileges conferred on the Collegia Fabrorum by Numa Pompilius. Rather must the symbols used in it be studied in the Âryan light, since all the Symbolism of the ancient Initiations came to the West with the light of the Eastern Sun. Nevertheless, we find the most learned Masons and Symbologists declaring that all these weird symbols and glyphs, that run back to a common origin of immense antiquity, were nothing more than a display of cunning natural phallicism, or emblems of primitive typology. How much nearer the truth is the author of The Source of Measures, who declares that the elements of human and numerical construction in the Bible do not shut out the spiritual elements in it, albeit so few now understand them. The words we quote are as suggestive as they are true:
How desperately blinding becomes a superstitious use, through ignorance, of such emblems, when they are made to possess the power of bloodshed and torture, [pg 187]through orders of propaganda of any species of religious cultus. When one thinks of the horrors of a Moloch, or Baal, or Dagon worship; of the correlated blood-deluges under the Cross baptized in gore by Constantine, at the initiative of the secular Church; ... when one thinks of all this and then that the cause of all has been simply ignorance of the real radical reading of the Moloch, and Baal, and Dagon, and the Cross and the T'phillin, all running back to a common origin, and after all being nothing more than a display of pure and natural mathematics, ... one is apt to feel like cursing ignorance, and to lose confidence in what are called intuitions of religion; one is apt to wish for a return of the day when all the world was of one lip and of one knowledge.... But while these elements [of the construction of the pyramid] are rational and scientific, ... let no man consider that with this discovery comes a cutting-off of the spirituality[354] of the Bibleintention, or of man's relation to this spiritual foundation. Does one wish to build a house? No house was ever actually built with tangible material until first the architectural design of building had been accomplished, no matter whether the structure was palace or hovel. So with these elements and numbers. They are not of man, nor are they of his invention. They have been revealed to him to the extent of his ability to realize a system, which is the creative system of the eternal God.... But spiritually, to man the value of this matter is that he can actually in contemplation, bridge over all material construction of the cosmos, and pass into the very thought and mind of God, to the extent of recognizing this system of design for cosmic creation—yea, even before the words went forth: “Let there be.”[355]