Note 402 — Chapter V

We are fully aware that some Christian kabalists term En-Soph the “Crown,” identify him with Sephira; call En-Soph “an emanation from God,” and make the ten Sephiroth comprise “En-Soph” as a unity. They also very erroneously reverse the first two emanations of Sephira—Chochma and Binah. The greatest kabalists have always held Chochma (Wisdom) as a male and active intelligence, Jah יה, and placed it under the No. 2 on the right side of the triangle, whose apex is the crown, while Binah (Intelligence) or בינה, is under No. 3 on the left hand. But the latter, being represented by its divine name as Jehovah יהוה, very naturally showed the God of Israel as only a third emanation, as well as a feminine, passive principle. Hence when the time came for the Talmudists to transform their multifarious deities into one living God, they resorted to their Masoretic points and combined to transform Jehovah into Adonai, “the Lord.” This, under the persecution of the Mediæval kabalists by the Church, also forced some of the former to change their female Sephiroth into male, and _vice versa_, so as to avoid being accused of disrespect and blasphemy to Jehovah; whose name, moreover, by mutual and secret agreement they accepted as a _substitute_ for Jah, or the mystery name IAO. Alone the _initiated_ knew of it, but later it gave rise to a great confusion among the _uninitiated_. It would be worth while—were it not for lack of space—to quote a few of the many passages in the oldest Jewish authorities, such as Rabbi Akiba, and the “Sohar,” which corroborate our assertion. Chochma-Wisdom is a male principle everywhere, and Binah-Jehovah, a female potency. The writings of Irenæus, Theodoret, and Epiphanius, teeming with accusations against the Gnostics and “Hæresies,” repeatedly show Simon Magus and Cerenthus making of Binah the feminine divine Spirit which inspired Simon. Binah is Sophia, and the Sophia of the Gnostics is surely not a male potency, but simply the feminine Wisdom, or Intelligence. (See any ancient “Arbor Kabbalistica,” or Tree of the Sephiroth.) Eliphas Levi, in the “Rituel de la Haute Magie,” vol. i., pp. 223 and 231, places Chochma as No. 2 and as a male Sephiroth on the right hand of the Tree. In the “Kabala” the three male Sephiroth—Chochma, Chesed, Netsah—are known as the Pillar of Mercy; and the three feminine on the left, namely, Binah, Geburah, Hod, are named the Pillar of Judgment; while the four Sephiroth of the centre—Kether, Tiphereth, Jesod, and Malchuth—are called the Middle Pillar. And, as Mackenzie, in the “Royal Masonic Cyclopædia,” shows, “there is an analogy in these three pillars to the three Pillars of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty in a Craft Lodge of Masonry, while the En-Soph forms the mysterious blazing star, or mystic light of the East.” (p. 407).