that is, the divine Host of the Sephiroth, who have constructed the Universe out of the Deep, the Waters of Chaos. Moses and Thales were right in saying that only earth and water can bring forth a living Soul, water being on this plane the principle of all things. Moses was an Initiate, Thales a Philosopher—i.e., a Scientist, for the words were synonymous in his day.
The secret meaning of this is that water and earth stand in the Mosaic Books for the prima materia and the creative (feminine) Principle on our plane. In Egypt Osiris was Fire, and Isis was the Earth or its synonym Water; the two opposing elements—just because of their opposite properties—being necessary to each other for a common object: that of procreation. The earth needs solar heat and rain to make her throw out her germs. But these procreative properties of Fire and Water, or Spirit and Matter, are symbols but of physical generation. While the Jewish Kabalists symbolized these elements only in their application to manifested things, and reverenced them as the emblems for the production of terrestrial life, the Eastern Philosophy noticed them only as an illusive emanation from their spiritual prototypes, and no unclean or unholy thought marred its Esoteric religious symbology.
Chaos, as shown elsewhere, is Theos, which becomes Kosmos: it is Space, the container of everything in the Universe. As Occult Teachings assert, it is called by the Chaldæans, Egyptians, and every other nation Tohu-vah-bohu, or Chaos, Confusion, because Space is the great storehouse of Creation, whence proceed not forms alone, but also ideas, which could receive their expression only through the Logos, the Word, Verbum, or Sound.
The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 are the successive emanations from Mother [Space] as she forms running downward her garment, spreading it upon the seven steps of Creation.[432] The roller returns upon itself, as one end joins the other [pg 232]in infinitude, and the numbers 4, 3, and 2 are displayed, as it is the only side of the veil that we can perceive, the first number being lost in its inaccessible solitude.
... Father, which is Boundless Time, generates Mother, which is infinite Space, in Eternity; and Mother generates Father in Manvantaras, which are divisions of durations, that Day when that world becomes one ocean. Then the Mother becomes Nârâ [Waters—the Great Deep] for Nara [the Supreme Spirit] to rest—or move—upon, when, it is said, that 1, 2, 3, 4 descend and abide in the world of the unseen, while the 4, 3, 2, become the limits in the visible world to deal with the manifestations of Father [Time].[433]
This relates to the Mahâyugas which in figures become 432, and with the addition of noughts, 4,320,000.
Now it is surpassingly strange, if it be a mere coincidence, that the numerical value of Tohu-vah-bohu, or “Chaos,” in the Bible—which Chaos, of course, is the “Mother” Deep, or the Waters of Space—should yield the same figures. For this is what is found in a Kabalist manuscript:
It is said of the Heavens and the Earth in the second verse of Genesis that they were “Chaos and Confusion”—that is, they were “Tohu-vah-bohu;” “and darknesswas upon the face of the deep,” i.e., “the perfect material out of which construction was to be made lacked organization.” The order of the digits of these words as they stand—i.e.,[434] the letters rendered by their numerical value—is 6,526,654 and 2,386. By art speech these are key-working numbers loosely shuffled together, the germs and keys of construction, but to be recognized, one by one, as used and required. They follow symmetrically in the work as immediately following the first sentence of grand enunciation: “In Rash developed itself Gods, the heavens and the earth.”
Multiply the numbers of the letters of “Tohu-vah-bohu” together continuously from right to left, placing the consecutive single products as we go, and we will have the following series of values, viz., (a) 30, 60, 360, 2,160, 10,800, 43,200, or as by the characterizing digits; 3, 6, 36, 216, 108, and 432; (b) 20, 120, 720, 1,440, 7,200, or 2, 12, 72, 144, 72, 432, the series closing in 432, one of the most famous numbers of antiquity, and which, though obscured, crops out in the chronology up to the Flood.[435]...
This shows that the Hebrew usage of play upon the numbers must have come to the Jews from India. As we have seen, the final series yields, besides many another combination, the figures 108 and 1008—the number of the names of Vishnu, whence the 108 grains of the Yogî's rosary—and close with 432, the truly “famous” number in Indian and Chaldæan antiquity, appearing in the cycle of 4,320,000 years in the former, and in the 432,000 years, the duration of the Chaldæan divine dynasties.