Chaos is the Tohu-vah-bohu of perpetual motion and the sum total of primordial matter;
and he fails to add that Matter is “primordial” only at the beginning of every new reconstruction of the Universe, matter in abscondito, as it is called by the Alchemists, is eternal, indestructible, without beginning or end. It is regarded by Eastern Occultists as the eternal Root of all, the Mûlaprakriti of the Vedântin, and the Svabhâvat of the Buddhist, the Divine Essence, in short, or Substance; the radiations from This are periodically aggregated into graduated forms, from pure Spirit to gross Matter; the Root, or Space, is in its abstract presence the Deity Itself, the Ineffable and Unknown One Cause.
Ain-Suph with him also is the Boundless, the infinite and One Unity, secondless and causeless as Parabrahman. Ain-Suph is the indivisible point, and therefore, as “being everywhere and nowhere,” is the absolute All. It is also “Darkness” because it is absolute Light, and the Root of the seven fundamental Cosmic Principles. Yet Éliphas Lévi, by simply stating that “Darkness was upon the face of the Earth,” fails to show (a) that “Darkness” in this sense is Deity Itself, and he is [pg 224] therefore withholding the only philosophical solution of this problem for the human mind; and (b) he allows the unwary student to believe that by “Earth” our own little globe—an atom in the Universe—is meant. In short, this teaching does not embrace the Occult Cosmogony, but deals simply with Occult Geology and the formation of our cosmic speck. This is further shown by his making a résumé of the Sephirothal Tree in this wise:
God is harmony, the astronomy of Powers and Unity outside of the World.
This seems to suggest (a) that he teaches the existence of an extra-cosmic God, thus limiting and conditioning both the Kosmos and the divine Infinity and Omnipresence, which cannot be extraneous to or outside of one single atom; and (b) that by skipping the whole of the pre-cosmic period—the manifested Kosmos here being meant—the very root of Occult teaching, he explains only the Kabalistic meaning of the dead-letter of the Bible and Genesis, leaving its spirit and essence untouched. Surely the “ranges of perception” of the Western mind will not be greatly enlarged by such a limited teaching.
Having said a few words on Tohu-vah-bohu—the meaning of which Wordsworth rendered graphically as “higgledy-piggledy”—and having explained that this term denoted Cosmos, he teaches that:
Above the dark abyss [Chaos] were the Waters; ... the earth [la terre!] was Tohu-vah-bohu, i.e., in confusion, and darkness covered the face of the Deep, and vehement Breath moved on the Waters when the Spirit exclaimed [?], “Let there be light,” and there was light. Thus the earth [our globe, of course] was in a state of cataclysm; thick vapours veiled the immensity of the sky, the earth was covered with waters and a violent wind was agitating this dark ocean, when at a given moment the equilibrium revealed itself and light reäppeared; the letters that compose the Hebrew word “Bereshith” (the first word of Genesis) are “Beth,” the binary, the verb manifested by the act, a feminine letter; then “Resch,” the Verbum and Life, number 20, the disc multiplied by 2; and “Aleph,” the spiritual principle, the Unit, a masculine letter.
Place these letters in a triangle and you have the absolute Unity, that without being included into numbers creates the number, the first manifestation, which is 2, and these two united by harmony resulting from the analogy of contraries [opposites], make 1, only. This is why God is called Elohim (plural).
All this is very ingenious, but is very puzzling, besides being incorrect. For owing to the first sentence, “Above the dark abyss were the Waters,” the French Kabalist leads the student away from the right track. This an Eastern Chela will see at a glance, and even one of the profane may see it. For if the Tohu-vah-bohu is “under” and the Waters are [pg 225] “above,” then these two are quite distinct from each other, and this is not the case. This statement is a very important one, inasmuch as it entirely changes the spirit and nature of Cosmogony, and brings it down to a level with exoteric Genesis—perhaps it was so stated with an eye to this result. The Tohu-vah-bohu is the “Great Deep” and is identical with “the Waters of Chaos,” or the primordial Darkness. By stating the fact otherwise it makes both “the Great Deep” and the “Waters”—which cannot be separated except in the phenomenal world—limited as to space and conditioned as to their nature. Thus Éliphas in his desire to conceal the last word of Esoteric Philosophy, fails—whether intentionally or otherwise does not matter—to point out the fundamental principle of the one true Occult Philosophy, namely, the unity and absolute homogeneity of the One Eternal Divine Element, and he makes of the Deity a male God. Then he says:
Above the Waters was the powerful Breath of the Elohim [the creative Dhyân Chohans]. Above the Breath appeared the Light, and above the Light the Word ... that created it.