Anyone acquainted with the symbolical and numerical value of the Hebrew letters will see at a glance that this glyph and the letters of “B'rasith' raalaim” are identical in meaning. “Beth” is “abode” or “region;” “Resh,” a “circle” or “head;” “Aleph,” “bull” (the symbol of generative or creative power[382]); “Shin,” a “tooth” (300 exoterically—a trident or three in one in its Occult meaning); “Jodh,” the perfect unity or “one”[383]; “Tau,” the “root” or “foundation” (the same as the cross with the Egyptians and Âryans): again, “Beth,” “Resh,” and “Aleph.” Then “Aleph,” or seven bulls for the seven Alaim; an ox-goad, “Lamedh,” active procreation; “He,” the “opening” or “matrix;” “Yodh,” the organ of procreation; and “Mem,” “water” or “chaos,” the female Power near the male that precedes it.
The most satisfactory and scientific exoteric rendering of the opening sentence of Genesis—on which was hung in blind faith the whole Christian religion, synthesized by its fundamental dogmas—is undeniably the one given in the Appendix to The Source of Measures by Mr. Ralston Skinner. He gives, and we must admit in the ablest, clearest, and most scientific way, the numerical reading of this first [pg 201] sentence and chapter in Genesis. By the means of number 31, or the word “El” (1 for “Aleph” and 30 for “Lamedh”), and other numerical Bible symbols, compared with the measures used in the great pyramid of Egypt, he shows the perfect identity between its measurements—inches, cubits, and plan—and the numerical values of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, and the Patriarchs. In short, the author shows that the pyramid contains in itself architecturally the whole of Genesis, and discloses the astronomical, and even the physiological, secrets in its symbols and glyphs; yet he will not admit, it would seem, the psycho-cosmical and spiritual mysteries involved in these. Nor does the author apparently see that the root of all this has to be sought in the archaic legends and the Pantheon of India.[384] Failing this, whither does his great and admirable labour lead him? Not further than to find out that Adam, the earth, and Moses or Jehovah “are the same”—or to the a-b-c of comparative Occult Symbology—and that the days in Genesis being “circles” “displayed by the Hebrews as squares,” the result of the sixth-day's labour culminates in the fructifying principle. Thus the Bible is made to yield Phallicism, and that alone.
Nor—read in this light, and as its Hebrew texts are interpreted by Western scholars—can it ever yield anything higher or more sublime than such phallic elements, the root and the corner-stone of its dead-letter meaning. Anthropomorphism and Revelation dig the impassable chasm between the material world and the ultimate spiritual truths. That creation is not thus described in the Esoteric Doctrine is easily shown. The Roman Catholics give a reading far more approaching the true Esoteric meaning than that of the Protestant. For several of their saints and doctors admit that the formation of heaven and earth, of the celestial bodies, etc., belongs to the work of the “Seven Angels of the Presence.” St. Denys calls the “Builders” “the coöperators of God,” and St. Augustine goes even farther, and credits the Angels with the possession of the divine thought, the prototype, as he says, of everything created.[385] And, finally, St. Thomas Aquinas has a long [pg 202] dissertation upon this topic, calling God the primary, and the Angels the secondary, cause of all visible effects. In this, with some dogmatic differences of form, the “Angelic Doctor” approaches very nearly the Gnostic ideas. Basilides speaks of the lowest order of Angels as the Builders of our material world, and Saturnilus held, as did the Sabæans, that the Seven Angels who preside over the planets are the real creators of the world; the Kabalist-monk, Trithemius, in his De Secundis Deis, taught the same.
The eternal Kosmos, the Macrocosm, is divided in the Secret Doctrine, like man, the Microcosm, into three Principles and four Vehicles,[386] which in their collectivity are the seven Principles. In the Chaldæan or Jewish Kabalah, the Kosmos is divided into seven worlds: the Original, the Intelligible, the Celestial, the Elementary, the Lesser (Astral), the Infernal (Kâma-loka or Hades), and the Temporal (of man). In the Chaldæan system it is in the Intelligible World, the second, that appear the “Seven Angels of the Presence,” or the Sephiroth (the three higher ones being, in fact, one, and also the sum total of all). They are also the “Builders” of the Eastern Doctrine: and it is only in the third, the celestial world, that the seven planets and our solar system are built by the seven Planetary Angels, the planets becoming their visible bodies. Hence—as correctly stated—if the universe as a whole is formed out of the Eternal One Substance or Essence, it is not that everlasting Essence, the Absolute Deity, that builds it into shape; this is done by the first Rays, the Angels or Dhyân Chohans, that emanate from the One Element, which becoming periodically Light and Darkness, remains eternally, in its Root-Principle, the one unknown yet existing Reality.
A learned Western Kabalist, Mr. S. L. MacGregor Mathers, whose reasoning and conclusions will be the more above suspicion since he is untrained in Eastern Philosophy and unacquainted with its Secret Teachings, writes on the first verse of Genesis in an unpublished essay:
Berashith Bara Elohim—“In the beginning the Elohim created!” Who are these Elohim of Genesis?
Va-Yivra Elohim Ath Ha-Adam Be-Tzalmo, Be-Tzelem Elohim Bara Otho, Zakhar Vingebah Bara Otham—“And the Elohim created the Adam in Their own Image, in the Image of the Elohim created They them, Male and Female created They them!” Who are they, the Elohim? The ordinary English translation of the Bible renders the word Elohim by “God:” it translates a plural noun by a singularone. The only excuse brought forward for this is the somewhat lame one that the word is certainly plural, but is not to be used in a plural sense: that it is “a plural denoting excellence.” But this is only an assumption whose value may be justly gauged by Genesis i. 26, translated in the orthodox Biblical version thus: “And God [Elohim] said, ‘Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.’ ”Here is a distinct admission of the fact that “Elohim” is not a “plural of excellence,”but a plural noun denoting more than one being.[387]
What, then, is the proper translation of “Elohim,” and to whom is it referable? “Elohim” is not only a plural, but a feminine plural! And yet the translators of the Bible have rendered it by a masculine singular! Elohim is the plural of the feminine noun El-h, for the final letter, -h, marks the gender. It, however, instead of forming the plural in -oth, takes the usual termination of the masculine plural, which is -im.
Although in the great majority of cases the nouns of both genders take the terminations appropriated to them respectively, there are yet many masculines which form the plural in -oth, as well as feminine which form it in -im while some nouns of each gender take alternately both. It must be observed, however, that the termination of the plural does not affect its gender, which remains the same as in the singular....
To find the real meaning of the symbolism involved in this word Elohim we must go to that key of Jewish Esoteric Doctrine, the little-known and less-understood Kabalah. There we shall find that this word represents two united masculine and feminine Potencies, co-equal and co-eternal, conjoined in everlasting union for the maintenance of the Universe—the great Father and Mother of Nature, into whom the Eternal One conforms himself before the Universe can subsist. For the teaching of the Kabalah is that before the Deity conformed himself thus—i.e. as [pg 204]male and female—the Worlds of the Universe could not subsist; or in the words of Genesis, that “the earth was formless and void.” Thus, then, is the conformation of the Elohim, the end of the Formless and the Void and the Darkness, for only after that conformation can the Ruach Elohim—the “Spirit of the Elohim”—vibrate upon the countenance of the Waters. But this is a very small part of the information which the Initiate can derive from the Kabalah concerning this word Elohim.