Footnotes

1.

The majority of the Pandits know nothing of the Esoteric Philosophy now, because they have lost the key to it; yet not one of these, if honest, would deny that the Upanishads, and especially the Purânas, are allegorical and symbolical; nor that there still remain in India a few great scholars who could, if they would, give them the key to such interpretations. Nor do they reject the actual existence of Mahâtmâs—initiated Yogis and Adepts—even in this age of Kali Yuga.

2.

This assertion is clearly corroborated by Plato himself, who writes: “You say that in my former discourse I have not sufficiently explained to you the nature of the First. I purposely spoke enigmatically, that in case the tablet should have happened with any accident, either by sea or land, a person without some previous knowledge of the subject might not be able to understand its contents.” (Plato, Ep., ii. 312; Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 304.)

3.

Isis Unveiled, i. 287, 288.

4.

The Dialogues of Plato, translated by B. Jowett, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, iii. 523.

5.

Op. cit., p. 561.

6.

Op. cit., p. 591.

7.

This definition places (unwittingly, of course), the ancient “physical philosopher” many cubits higher than his modern “physical” confrère, since the ultima thule of the latter is to lead mankind to believe that neither universe nor man have any cause at all—not an intelligent one at all events—and that they have sprung into existence owing to blind chance and a senseless whirling of atoms. Which of the two hypotheses is the more rational and logical is left to the impartial reader to decide.

8.

Italics are mine. Every tyro in Eastern Philosophy, every Kabalist, will see the reason for such an association of persons with ideas, numbers, and geometrical figures. For number, says Philolaus, “is the dominant and self-produced bond of the eternal continuance of things.” Alone the modern Scholar remains blind to the grand truth.

9.

Here again the ancient Philosopher seems to be ahead of the modern. For he only “confuses ... first and final causes” (which confusion is denied by those who know the spirit of ancient scholarship), whereas his modern successor is confessedly and absolutely ignorant of both. Mr. Tyndall shows Science “powerless” to solve a single one of the final problems of Nature and “disciplined [read, modern materialistic], imagination retiring in bewilderment from the contemplation of the problems” of the world of matter. He even doubts whether the men of present Science possess “the intellectual elements which would enable them to grapple with the ultimate structural energies of Nature.” But for Plato and his disciples, the lower types were but the concrete images of the higher abstract ones; the immortal Soul has an arithmetical, as the body has a geometrical, beginning. This beginning, as the reflection of the great universal Archæus (Anima Mundi), is self-moving, and from the centre diffuses itself over the whole body of the Macrocosm.

10.

Op. cit., p. 523.

11.

Nowhere are the Neoplatonists guilty of such an absurdity. The learned Professor of Greek must have been thinking of two spurious works attributed by Eusebius and St. Jerome to Ammonius Saccas, who wrote nothing; or must have confused the Neoplatonists with Philo Judæus. But then Philo lived over 130 years before the birth of the founder of Neoplatonism. He belonged to the School of Aristobulus the Jew, who lived under Ptolemy Philometer (150 years b.c.), and is credited with having inaugurated the movement which tended to prove that Plato and even the Peripatetic Philosophy were derived from the “revealed” Mosaic Books. Valckenaer tries to show that the author of the Commentaries on the Books of Moses, was not Aristobulus, the sycophant of Ptolemy. But whatever he was, he was not a Neoplatonist, but lived before, or during the days of Philo Judæus, since the latter seems to know his works and follow his methods.

12.

Only Clemens Alexandrinus, a Christian Neoplatonist and a very fantastic writer.

13.

The labour of reconciling the different systems of religion.

14.

New Platonism and Alchemy, by Alex. Wilder, M.D. pp. 7, 4.

15.

It is well-known that, though born of Christian parents, Ammonius had renounced the tenets of the Church—Eusebius and Jerome notwithstanding. Porphyry, the disciple of Plotinus, who had lived with Ammonius for eleven years together, and who had no interest for stating an untruth, positively declares that he had renounced Christianity entirely. On the other hand, we know that Ammonius believed in the bright Gods, Protectors, and that the Neoplatonic Philosophy was as “pagan” as it was mystical. But Eusebius, the most unscrupulous forger and falsifier of old texts, and St. Jerome, an out-and-out fanatic, who had both an interest in denying the fact, contradict Porphyry. We prefer to believe the latter, who has left to posterity an unblemished name and a great reputation for honesty.

16.

Two works are falsely attributed to Ammonius. One, now lost, called De Consensu Moysis et Jesu, is mentioned by the same “trustworthy” Eusebius, the Bishop of Cæsaræa, and the friend of the Christian Emperor Constantine, who died, however, a heathen. All that is known of this pseudo-work is that Jerome bestows great praise upon it (Vir. Illust., § 55; and Euseb., H. E., vi. 19). The other spurious production is called the Diatesseron (or the “Harmony of the Gospels”). This is partially extant. But then, again, it exists only in the Latin version of Victor, Bishop of Capua (sixth century), who attributed it himself to Tatian, and as wrongly, probably, as later scholars attributed the Diatesseron to Ammonius. Therefore no great reliance can be placed upon it, nor on its “esoteric” interpretation of the Gospels. Is it this work, we wonder, which led Prof. Jowett to regard the Neo-platonic interpretations as “absurdities”?

17.

Op. cit., p. 7.

18.

Op. cit., iii, 524.

19.

“Imperfect knowledge” of what? That Plato was ignorant of many of the modern “working hypotheses”—as ignorant as our immediate posterity is sure to be of the said hypotheses when they in their turn after exploding join the “great majority”—is perhaps a blessing in disguise.

20.

Op. cit., p. 524.

21.

Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme, by M. J. Matter, Professor of the Royal Academy of Strasburg, “It is in Pythagoras and Plato that we find, in Greece, the first elements of [Oriental] Gnosticism,” he says. (Vol. i, pp. 48 and 50.)

22.

Asiat. Trans., i, 579.

23.

New Platonism and Alchemy, p. 4.

24.

This fact and others may be found in Chinese Missionary Reports, and in a work by Monseigneur Delaplace, a Bishop in China. Annales de la Propagation de la Foi.

25.

The regions somewhere about Udyana and Kashmir, as the translator and editor of Marco Polo (Colonel Yule) believes (i. 175).

26.

Voyage des Pélerins Bouddhistes, Vol. I.; Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen-Thsang, etc., traduit du chinois en français, par Stanislas Julien.

27.

Lao-tse, the Chinese philosopher.

28.

The Book of Ser Marco Polo, i. 318.

29.

Isis Unveiled, i. 599-601, 603, 598.

30.

Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 6.

31.

The Rishis—the first group of seven in number—lived in days preceding the Vedic period. They are now known as Sages and held in reverence like demigods. But they may now be shown as something more than merely mortal Philosophers. There are other groups of ten, twelve and even twenty-one in number. Haug shows that they occupy in the Brâhmanical religion a position answering to that of the twelve sons of Jacob in the Jewish Bible. The Brâhmans claim to descend directly from the Rishis.

32.

Isis Unveiled, i. 90.

33.

See Münter “On the most Ancient Religions of the North before Odin.” Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de France, ii. 230.

34.

Ammianus Marcellinus, xxvi. 6.

35.

“The date of the hundreds of pyramids in the Valley of the Nile is impossible to fix by any of the rules of modern science; Herodotus informs us that each successive king erected one to commemorate his reign, and serve as his sepulchre. But, Herodotus did not tell all, although he knew that the real purpose of the pyramid was very different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his religious scruples, he might have added that, externally, it symbolized the creative principle of Nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries, and whose walls had often witnessed the initiation scenes of members of the royal family. The porphyry sarcophagus, which Professor Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal of Scotland, degrades into a corn-bin, was the baptismal font, upon emerging from which, the neophyte was ‘born again,’ and became an adept.” (Isis Unveiled, i. 518, 519.)

36.

Diog. Laërt., in “Democrit. Vit.”

37.

Satyric, ix. 3.

38.

Pliny, Hist. Nat.

39.

Isis Unveiled, i. 512.

40.

Op. cit., ii. 403.

41.

This is precisely what some of them are preparing to do, and many a “mysterious page” in sacred and profane history are touched on in these pages. Whether or not their explanations will be accepted—is another question.

42.

Ibid.

43.

This is incorrectly expressed. The true Adept of the “Right Hand” never punishes anyone, not even his bitterest and most dangerous enemy; he simply leaves the latter to his Karma, and Karma never fails to do so, sooner or later.

44.

Op. cit., ii. 239, 241, 240.

45.

See, in this connection, Pneumatologie des Esprits, by the Marquis de Mirville, who devotes six enormous volumes to show the absurdity of those who deny the reality of Satan and Magic, or the Occult Sciences—the two being with him synonymous.

46.

We think we see the sidereal phantom of the old Philosopher and Mystic—once of Cambridge University—Henry More, moving about in the astral mist over the old moss-covered roofs of the ancient town in which he wrote his famous letter to Glanvil about “witches.” The “soul” seems restless and indignant, as on that day of May, 1678, when the doctor complained so bitterly to the author of Sadducismus Triumphatus of Scot, Adie and Webster. “Our new inspired saints,” the soul is heard to mutter, “sworn advocates of the witches ... who against all sense and reason ... will have no Samuel but a confederate knave ... these in-blown buffoons, puffed up with ... ignorance, vanity and stupid infidelity!” (See “Letter to Glanvil,” and Isis Unveiled, i. 205, 206.)

47.

Études Religieuses.

48.

Études Historiques.

49.

Mémoire read at the Académie des Inscriptions des Belles Lettres, in 1859.

50.

See Alfred Maury's Histoire des Religions de la Grèce, i. 248; and the speculations of Holzmann in Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprach forschung, ann. 1852, p. 487, sq.

51.

Creuzer's Introduction des Mystères, iii. 456.

52.

The later Nabathæans adhered to the same belief as the Nazarenes and the Sabæans, honoured John the Baptist, and used Baptism. (See Isis Unveiled, ii. 127; Munck, Palestine, p. 525; Dunlap, Sod, the Son of Man, etc.)

53.

i. 535.

54.

By Hargrave Jennings.

55.

See De Mirville's Pneumatologie, iii. 267 et seq.

56.

Psellus, 4: in Cory's Ancient Fragments, 269.

57.

Isis Unveiled, i, 535, 536.

58.

The forty-two Sacred Books of the Egyptians, mentioned by Clement of Alexandria as having existed in his time, were but a portion of the Books of Hermes. Iamblichus, on the authority of the Egyptian priest Abammon, attributes 1,200 of such books to Hermes, and Manetho 36,000. But the testimony of Iamblichus as a Neoplatonist and Theurgist is of course rejected by modern critics. Manetho, who is held by Bunsen in the highest consideration as a “purely historical personage,” with whom “none of the later native historians can be compared” (see Égypte, i. 97), suddenly becomes a Pseudo-Manetho, as soon as the ideas propounded by him clash with the scientific prejudices against Magic and the Occult knowledge claimed by the ancient priests. However, none of the Archæologists doubt for a moment the almost incredible antiquity of the Hermetic books. Champollion shows the greatest regard for their authenticity and truthfulness, corroborated as it is by many of the oldest monuments. And Bunsen brings irrefutable proofs of their age. From his researches, for instance, we learn that there was a line of sixty-one kings before the days of Moses, who preceded the Mosaic period by a clearly-traceable civilization of several thousand years. Thus we are warranted in believing that the works of Hermes Trismegistus were extant many ages before the birth of the Jewish law-giver. “Styli and inkstands were found on monuments of the fourth Dynasty, the oldest in the world,” says Bunsen. If the eminent Egyptologist rejects the period of 48,863 years before Alexander, to which Diogenes Laërtius carries back the records of the priests, he is evidently more embarrassed with the ten thousand of astronomical observations, and remarks that “if they were actual observations, they must have extended over 10,000 years” (p. 14). “We learn, however,” he adds, “from one of their own old chronological works ... that the genuine Egyptian traditions concerning the mythological period treated of myriads of years.” (Égypte, i. 15; Isis Unveiled, i. 33.)

59.

These details are taken from Pneumatologie, iii. pp. 204, 205.

60.

Égypte, p. 143; Isis Unveiled, i. 625.

61.

Strom., VI. vii. The following paragraph is paraphrased from the same chapter.

62.

See Pneumatologie, iii. 207. Therefore Empedocles is called κωλυθάνεμος, the “dominator of the wind.” Strom., VI. iii.

63.

Ibid., iv.

64.

Summarised from Pneumatologie, iii. 209.

65.

Loc. cit.

66.

Op. cit., iii. 208.

67.

The English speaking people who spell the name of Noah's disrespectful son “Ham” have to be reminded that the right spelling is “Kham” or “Cham.”

68.

Black Magic, or Sorcery, is the evil result obtained in any shape or way through the practice of Occult Arts; hence it has to be judged only by its effects. The name of neither Ham nor Cain, when pronounced, has ever killed any one; whereas, if we have to believe that same Clemens Alexandrinus who traces the teacher of every Occultist, outside of Christianity, to the Devil, the name of Jehovah (pronounced Jevo and in a peculiar way) had the effect of killing a man at a distance. The mysterious Schemham-phorasch was not always used for holy purposes by the Kabalists, especially since the Sabbath or Saturday, sacred to Saturn or the evil Shani, became—with the Jews—sacred to “Jehovah.”

69.

Khoemnis, the pre-historic city, may or may not have been built by Noah's son, but it was not his name that was given to the town, but that of the Mystery Goddess Khoemnu or Khoemnis (Greek form); the deity that was created by the ardent fancy of the neophyte, who was thus tantalised during his “twelve labours” of probation before his final initiation. Her male counterpart is Khem. The city of Choemnis or Khemmis (to-day Akhmem) was the chief seat of the God Khem. The Greeks identifying Khem with Pan, called this city “Panopolis.”

70.

Pneumatologie, iii. 210. This looks more like pious vengeance than philology. The picture, however, seems incomplete, as the author ought to have added to the “chimney” a witch flying out of it on a broomstick.

71.

How could they escape from the Deluge unless God so willed it? This is scarcely logical.

72.

Loc. cit., p. 210.

73.

Matthew, xvi. 20.

74.

Mark, v. 43.

75.

Mark, iv. 11, 12.

76.

Is it not evident that the words: “lest at any time they should be converted (or: ‘lest haply they should turn again’—as in the revised version) and their sins be forgiven them”—do not at all mean to imply that Jesus feared that through repentance any outsider, or “them that are without,” should escape damnation, as the literal dead-letter sense plainly shows—but quite a different thing? Namely, “lest any of the profane should by understanding his preaching, undisguised by parable, get hold of some of the secret teachings and mysteries of Initiation—and even of Occult powers? ‘Be converted’ is, in other words, to obtain a knowledge belonging exclusively to the Initiated: ‘and their sins be forgiven them,’ that is, their sins would fall upon the illegal revealer, on those who had helped the unworthy to reap there where they have never laboured to sow, and had given them, thereby, the means of escaping on this earth their deserved Karma, which must thus re-act on the revealer, who, instead of good, did harm and failed.”

77.

New Platonism and Alchemy, 1869, pp. 7, 9.

78.

vii. 6.

79.

History is full of proofs of the same. Had not Anaxagoras enunciated the great truth taught in the Mysteries, viz., that the sun was surely larger than the Peloponnesus, he would not have been persecuted and nearly put to death by the fanatical mob. Had that other rabble which was raised against Pythagoras understood what the mysterious Sage of Crotona meant by giving out his remembrance of having been the “Son of Mercury”—God of the Secret Wisdom—he would not have been forced to fly for his life; nor would Socrates have been put to death, had he kept secret the revelations of his divine Daimon. He knew how little his century—save those initiated—would understand his meaning, had he given out all he knew of the moon. Thus he limited his statement to an allegory, which is now proven to have been more scientific than was hitherto believed. He maintained that the moon was inhabited and that the lunar beings lived in profound, vast and dark valleys, our satellite being airless and without any atmosphere outside such profound valleys; this, disregarding the revelation full of meaning for the few only, must be so of necessity, if there is any atmosphere on our bright Selene at all. The facts recorded in the secret annals of the Mysteries had to remain veiled under penalty of death.

80.

Stromateis, xii.

81.

See Homilies 7, in Levit., quoted in the Source of Measures, p. 307.

82.

Origen: Huet., Origeniana, 167; Franck, 121; quoted from Dunlap's Sôd, p. 176.

83.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 350.

84.

The materialistic “law-givers,” the critics and Sadducees who have tried to tear to shreds the doctrines and teachings of the great Asiatic Masters past and present—no scholars in the modern sense of the word—would do well to ponder over these words. No doubt that doctrines and secret teachings had they been invented and written in Oxford and Cambridge would be more brilliant outwardly. Would they equally answer to universal truths and facts, is the next question however.

85.

iii. fol. 1526, quoted in Myer's Qabbalah, p. 102.

86.

New-Platonism and Alchemy, p. 6.

87.

i. 2.

88.

lxiv. 10.

89.

The key is shown to be “in the source of measures originating the British inch and the ancient cubit” as the author tries to prove.

90.

The word as a plural might have better solved the mystery. God is ever-present; if he were ever-active he could no longer be an infinite God—nor ever-present in his limitation.

91.

The author is evidently a Mason of the way of thinking of General Pike. So long as the American and English Masons will reject the “Creative Principle” of the “Grand Orient” of France they will remain in the dark.

92.

Source of Measures, pp. 308, 309.

93.

In his Pneumatologie, in Vol. iv., pp. 105-112, the Marquis de Mirville claims the knowledge of the heliocentric system—earlier than Galileo—for Pope Urban VIII. The author goes further. He tries to show that famous Pope, not as the persecutor but as one persecuted by Galileo, and calumniated by the Florentine Astronomer into the bargain. If so, so much the worse for the Latin Church, since her Popes, knowing of it, still preserved silence upon this most important fact, either to screen Joshua or their own infallibility. One can understand well that the Bible having been so exalted over all the other systems, and its alleged monotheism depending upon the silence preserved, nothing remained of course but to keep quiet over its symbolism, thus allowing all its blunders to be fathered on its God.

94.

Op. cit., App. vii. p. 296. The writer feels happy to find this fact now mathematically demonstrated. When it was stated in Isis Unveiled that Jehovah and Saturn were one and the same with Adam Kadmon, Cain, Adam and Eve, Abel, Seth, etc., and that all were convertible symbols in the Secret Doctrine (see Vol. ii. pp. 446, 448, 464 et seq.); that they answered, in short, to secret numerals and stood for more than one meaning in the Bible as in other doctrines—the author's statements remained unnoticed. Isis had failed to appear under a scientific form, and by giving too much, in fact, gave very little to satisfy the enquirer. But now, if mathematics and geometry, besides the evidence of the Bible and Kabalah are good for anything, the public must find itself satisfied. No fuller, more scientifically given proof can be found to show that Cain is the transformation of an Elohim (the Sephira Binah) into Jah-Veh (or God-Eve) androgyne, and that Seth is the Jehovah male, than in the combined discoveries of Seyffarth, Knight, etc., and finally in Mr. Ralston Skinner's most erudite work. The further relations of these personifications of the first human races, in their gradual development, will be given later on in the text.

95.

The writings extant in olden times often personified Wisdom as an emanation and associate of the Creator. Thus we have the Hindu Buddha, the Babylonian Nebo, the Thoth of Memphis, the Hermes of Greece; also the female divinities, Neïtha, Metis, Athena, and the Gnostic potency Achamoth or Sophia. The Samaritan Pentateuch denominated the Book of Genesis, Akamouth, or Wisdom, and two remnants of old treatises, the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus, relate to the same matters. The Book of Mashalim—the Discourses or Proverbs of Solomon—thus personifies Wisdom as the auxiliary of the Creator. In the Secret Wisdom of the East that auxiliary is found collectively in the first emanations of Primeval Light, the Seven Dhyáni-Chohans, who have been shown to be identical with the “Seven Spirits of the Presence” of the Roman Catholics.

96.

New Platonism and Alchemy, p. 6.

97.

ii. 317. 318. Many verbal alterations from the original text of Isis Unveiled were made by H. P. B. in her quotations therefrom, and these are followed throughout.

98.

Proclus claims to have experienced this sublime ecstasy six times during his mystic life; Porphyry asserts that Apollonius of Tyana was thus united four times to his deity—a statement which we believe to be a mistake, since Apollonius was a Nirmânakâya (divine incarnation—not Avatâra)—and he (Porphyry) only once, when over sixty years of age. Theophany (or the actual appearance of a God to man), Theopathy (or “assimilation of divine nature”), and Theopneusty (inspiration, or rather the mysterious power to hear orally the teachings of a God) have never been rightly understood.

99.

Kârana Sharîra is the “causal” body and is sometimes said to be the “personal God.” And so it is, in one sense.

100.

This would be in one sense Self-worship.

101.

“The Gods exist,” said Epicurus, “but they are not what the hoi polloi [the multitude] suppose them to be. He is not an infidel or atheist who denies the existence of Gods whom the multitude worship, but he is such who fastens on the Gods the opinions of the multitude.”

102.

Esoteric, as exoteric, Buddhism rejects the theory that Gautama was an incarnation or Avatâra of Vishnu, but teaches the doctrine as herein explained. Every man has in him the materials, if not the conditions, for theophanic intercourse and Theopneusty, the inspiring “God” being, however, in every case, his own Higher Self, or divine prototype.

103.

One entirely and absolutely purified, and having nothing in common with earth except his body.

104.

Mândûkyopanishad, 4.

105.

Acts, viii. 10 (Revised Version).

106.

See the explanations given on the subject in “The Elixir of Life,” by G. M. (From a Chelâ's Diary), Five Years of Theosophy.

107.

I. Cor., xv. 47, 50.

108.

I. Cor., iii. 16. Has the reader ever meditated upon the suggestive words, often pronounced by Jesus and his Apostles? “Be ye therefore perfect as your Father ... is perfect” (Matt., v. 48), says the Great Master. The words are, “as perfect as your Father which is in heaven,” being interpreted as meaning God. Now the utter absurdity of any man becoming as perfect as the infinite, all-perfect omniscient and omnipresent Deity, is too apparent. If you accept it in such a sense, Jesus is made to utter the greatest fallacy. What was Esoterically meant is, “Your Father who is above the material and astral man, the highest Principle (save the Monad) within man, his own personal God, or the God of his own personality, of whom he is the ‘prison’ and the ‘temple.’ ” “If thou wilt be perfect (i.e., an Adept and Initiate) go and sell that thou hast” (Matt., xix. 21). Every man who desired to become a neophyte, a chelâ, then, as now, had to take the vow of poverty. The “Perfect,” was the name given to the Initiates of every denomination. Plato calls them by that term. The Essenes had their “Perfect,” and Paul plainly states that they, the Initiates, can only speak before other Adepts. “We speak wisdom among them [only] that are perfect” (I. Cor. ii. 6.)

109.

John, i. 21.

110.

John, iii. “Born” from above, viz., from his Monad or divine Ego, the seventh Principle, which remains till the end of the Kalpa, the nucleus of, and at the same time the overshadowing Principle, as the Kâranâtmâ (Causal Soul) of the personality in every rebirth. In this sense, the sentence “born anew” means “descends from above,” the last two words having no reference to heaven or space, neither of which can be limited or located, since one is a state and the other infinite, hence having no cardinal points. (See New Testament, Revised Version, loc. cit.)

111.

This can have no reference to Christian Baptism, since there was none in the days of Nicodemus and he could not therefore know anything of it, even though a “Master.”

112.

This word, translated in the New Testament “world” to suit the official interpretation, means rather an “age” (as shown in the Revised Version) or one of the periods during the Manvantara, a Kalpa, or Æon. Esoterically the sentence would read: “He who shall reach, through a series of births and Karmic law, that state in which Humanity shall find itself after the Seventh Round and the Seventh Race, when comes Nirvâna, Moksha, and when man becomes ‘equal unto the Angels’ or Dhyân Chohans, is a ‘son of the resurrection’ and ‘can die no more’; then there will be no marriage, as there will be no difference of sexes”—a result of our present materiality and animalism.

113.

Luke, xx. 27-38.

114.

John, ix. 2, 3.

115.

The conscious Ego, or Fifth Principle Manas, the vehicle of the divine Monad or “God.”

116.

Some Symbologists, relying on the correspondence of numbers and the symbols of certain things and personages, refer these “secrets” to the mystery of generation. But it is more than this. The glyph of the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil” has no doubt a phallic and sexual element in it, as has the “Woman and the Serpent”; but it has also a psychical and spiritual significance. Symbols are meant to yield more than one meaning.

117.

Wisdom, xi. 21. Douay version.

118.

Ecclesiasticus, i. 9. Douay version.

119.

Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, i. 361.

120.

Isis Unveiled, i. 6, 7.

121.

“Synesius mentions books of stone which he found in the temple of Memphis, on one of which was engraved the following sentence: ‘One nature delights in another, one nature overcomes another, one nature overrules another, and the whole of them are one’.” “The inherent restlessness of matter is embodied in the saying of Hermes: ‘Action is the life of Phta’; and Orpheus calls nature πολυμήχανος μάτηρ, ‘the mother that makes many things,’ or the ingenious, the contriving, the inventive mother.”—Isis Unveiled, i. 257.

122.

Source of Measures, p. x.

123.

Masonic Review, July, 1886.

124.

See Source of Measures, pp. 47-50, et pass.

125.

See Cary's translation, pp. 322, 323.

126.

Exodus, xxxiv. 29, 33.

127.

Op. cit., V. vii.

128.

The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, under “Gnosticism.”

129.

In the Ferouers and Devs of Jacobi (Letters F. and D.) the word “ferouer” is explained in the following manner: The Ferouer is a part of the creature (whether man or animal) of which it is the type and which it survives. It is the Nous of the Greeks, therefore divine and immortal, and thus can hardly be the Devil or the satanic copy De Mirville would represent it (see Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, Vol. XXXVII. p. 623, and chap. xxxix. p. 749). Foucher contradicts him entirely. The Ferouer was never the “principle of sensations,” but always referred to the most divine and pure portion of Man's Ego—the spiritual principle. Anquetil says that the Ferouer is the purest portion of man's soul. The Persian Dev is the antithesis of the Ferouer, for the Dev has been transformed by Zoroaster into the Genius of Evil (whence the Christian Devil), but even the Dev is only finite; for having become possessed of the soul of man by usurpation, it will have to leave it at the great day of Retribution. The Dev obsesses the soul of the defunct for three days, during which the soul wanders about the spot at which it was forcibly separated from its body; the Ferouer ascends to the region of eternal Light. It was an unfortunate idea that made the noble Marquis de Mirville imagine the Ferouer to be a “satanic copy” of a divine original. By calling all the Gods of the Pagans—Apollo, Osiris, Brahmâ, Ormazd, Bel, etc., the “Ferouers of Christ and of the chief Angels,” he merely exhibits the God and the Angels he would honour as inferior to the Pagan Gods, as man is inferior to his Soul and Spirit; since the Ferouer is the immortal part of the mortal being of which it is the type and which it survives. Perchance the poor author is unconsciously prophetic; and Apollo, Brahmâ, Ormazd, Osiris, etc., are destined to survive and replace—as eternal cosmic verities—the evanescent fictions about the God, Christ and Angels of the Latin Church!

130.

See George Smith's Babylon and other works.

131.

This is as fanciful as it is arbitrary. Where is the Hindu or Buddhist who would speak of his “Crucified”?

132.

Op. cit., iv. 237.

133.

Loc. cit., 250.

134.

“Q.: Who knocks at the door? A.: The good cowherd. Q.: Who preceded thee? A.: The three robbers. Q.: Who follows thee? A.: The three murderers,” etc., etc. Now this is the conversation that took place between the priest-initiators and the candidates for initiation during the mysteries enacted in the oldest sanctuaries of the Himâlayan fastnesses. The ceremony is still performed to this day in one of the most ancient temples in a secluded spot of Nepaul. It originated with the Mysteries of the first Krishna, passed to the First Tirthankara and ended with Buddha, and is called the Kurukshetra rite, being enacted as a memorial of the great battle and death of the divine Adept. It is not Masonry, but an initiation into the Occult teachings of that Hero—Occultism, pure and simple.

135.

Book of Enoch, Archbishop Laurence's translation. Introduction, p. v.

136.

The Book of Enoch was unknown to Europe for a thousand years, when Bruce found in Abyssinia some copies of it in Ethiopic; it was translated by Archbishop Laurence in 1821, from the text in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

137.

Op. cit., p. xx.

138.

Loc. cit.

139.

Op. cit., p. xiv., note.

140.

Op. cit., p. xxxv.

141.

Op. cit., p. xiii.

142.

The Seventh Principle, the First Emanation.

143.

Op. cit., pp. xxxvii. and xl.

144.

Op. cit., pp. xl. and li.

145.

Who stands for the “Solar” or Manvantaric Year.

146.

Op. cit., pp. xli., xlii.

147.

Op. cit., p. xlviii.

148.

Op. cit., p. xxiii.

149.

Loc. cit.

150.

xcii. 9.

151.

Op. cit., xcii. 4.

152.

Op. cit., xcii. 4-7.

153.

At the close of every Root-Race there comes a cataclysm, in turn by fire or water. Immediately after the “Fall into generation” the dross of the third Root-Race—those who fell into sensuality by falling off from the teaching of the Divine Instructors—were destroyed, after which the Fourth Root-Race originated, at the end of which took place the last Deluge. (See the “Sons of God” mentioned in Isis Unveiled, 593 et seq.)

154.

Op. cit., xcii. 11.

155.

Op. cit., xcii. 7, 11, 13, 15.

156.

Op. cit., note, p. 152.

157.

Those interpolations and alterations are found almost in every case where figures are given—especially whenever the numbers eleven and twelve come in—as these are all made (by the Christians) to relate to the numbers of Apostles, and Tribes, and Patriarchs. The translator of the Ethiopic text—Archbishop Laurence—attributes them generally to “mistakes of the transcriber” whenever the two texts, the Paris and the Bodleian MSS., differ. We fear it is no mistake, in most cases.

158.

Op. cit., lxxxviii. 99, 100.

159.

Loc. cit., 94. This passage, as will be presently shown, has led to a very curious discovery.

160.

In the profane history of Gautama Buddha he dies at the good old age of eighty, and passes off from life to death peacefully with all the serenity of a great saint, as Barthélemy St. Hilaire has it. Not so in the Esoteric and true interpretation which reveals the real sense of the profane and allegorical statement that makes Gautama, the Buddha, die very unpoetically from the effects of too much pork, prepared for him by Tsonda. How one who preached that the killing of animals was the greatest sin, and who was a perfect vegetarian, could die from eating pork, is a question that is never asked by our Orientalists, some of whom made (as now do many charitable missionaries in Ceylon) great fun at the alleged occurrence. The simple truth is that the said rice and pork are purely allegorical. Rice stands for “forbidden fruit,” like Eve's “apple,” and means Occult knowledge with the Chinese and Tibetans; and “pork” for Brâhmanical teachings—Vishnu having assumed in his first Avatâra the form of a boar, in order to raise the earth on the surface of the waters of space. It is not, therefore, from “pork” that Buddha died, but for having divulged some of the Brâhmanical mysteries, after which, seeing the bad effects brought on some unworthy people by the revelation, he preferred, instead of availing himself of Nirvâna, to leave his earthly form, remaining still in the sphere of the living, in order to help humanity to progress. Hence his constant reincarnations in the hierarchy of the Dalai and Teshu Lamas, among other bounties. Such is the Esoteric explanation. The life of Gautama will be more fully discussed later on.

161.

Op. cit., cv. 21.

162.

In the Bible (Genesis, iv and v) there are three distinct Enochs (Kanoch or Chanoch)—the son of Cain, the son of Seth, and the son of Jared; but they are all identical, and two of them are mentioned for purposes of misleading. The years of only the last two are given, the first one being left without further notice.

163.

The eternal and incessant “in-breathing and out-breathing of Parabrahman” or Nature, the Universe in Space, whether during Manvantara or Pralaya.

164.

Op. cit., iii. 1.

165.

Op. cit., 30.

166.

Op. cit., 32.

167.

Those who are aware that the term Christos was applied by the Gnostics to the Higher Ego (the ancient Pagan Greek Initiates doing the same), will readily understand the allusion. Christos was said to be cut off from the lower Ego, Chrestos, after the final and supreme Initiation, when the two became blended in one; Chrestos being conquered and resurrected in the glorified Christos.—Franck, Die Kabbala, 75; Dunlap, Sôd, Vol. II.

168.

Stromateis, I. xiii.

169.

Op. cit., II. viii.

170.

Many are the marvels recorded as having taken place at his death, or we should rather say his translation; for he did not die as others do, but having suddenly disappeared, while a dazzling light filled the cavern with glory, his body was again seen upon its subsidence. When this heavenly light gave place to the habitual semi-darkness of the gloomy cave—then only, says Ginsburg, “the disciples of Israel perceived that the lamp of Israel was extinguished.” His biographers tell us that there were voices heard from Heaven during the preparation for his funeral, and at his interment, when the coffin was lowered into the deep cave prepared for it, a flame broke forth and a voice mighty and majestic pronounced these words: “This is he who caused the earth to quake, and the kingdoms to shake!”

171.

Pockocke, maybe, was not altogether wrong in deriving the German Heaven, Himmel, from Himâlaya; nor can it be denied that it is the Hindu Kailâsa (Heaven) that is the father of the Greek Heaven (Koilon), and of the Latin Cœlum.

172.

See Pockocke's India in Greece, and his derivation of Mount Parnassus from Parnasa, the leaf and branch huts of the Hindu ascetics, half shrine and half habitation. “Part of the Par-o-Pamisus (the hill of Bamian), is called Parnassus. ‘These mountains are called Devanica, because they are so full of Devas or Gods, called “Gods of the Earth,” Bhu Devas. They lived, according to the Purânas, in bowers or huts, called Parnasas, because they were made of leaves’ (Parnas),” p. 302.

173.

Rawlinson is justly very confident of an Âryan and Vedic influence on the early mythology and history of Babylon and Chaldæa.

174.

This is a Secret Doctrine affirmation, and may or may not be accepted. Only Abrahm, Isaac and Judah resemble terribly the Hindu Brahmâ Ikshvâku and Yadu.

175.

It is said in The Gnostics and their Remains, by C. W. King (p. 13), with regard to the names of Brahmâ and Abram; “This figure of the man, Seir Aupin, consists of 243 numbers, being the numerical value of the letters in the name ‘Abram’ signifying the different orders in the celestial Hierarchies. In fact the names Abram and Brahmâ are equivalent in numerical value.” Thus to one acquainted with Esoteric Symbolism, it does not seem at all strange to find in the Loka-pâlas (the four cardinal and intermediate points of the compass personified by eight Hindu Gods) Indra's elephant, named Abhra—(mâtanga) and his wife Abhramu. Abhra is in a way a Wisdom Deity, since it is this elephant's head that replaced that of Ganesha (Ganapati) the God of Wisdom, cut off by Shiva. Now Abhra means “cloud,” and it is also the name of the city where Abram is supposed to have resided—when read backwards—“Arba (Kirjath) the city of four ... Abram is Abra with an appended m final, and Abra read backward is Arba” (Key to the Hebrew Egyptian Mystery). The author might have added that Abra meaning in Sanskrit “in, or of, the clouds,” the cosmo-astronomical symbol of Abram becomes still plainer. All of these ought to be read in their originals, in Sanskrit.

176.

Before these theories and speculations—we are willing to admit they are such—are rejected, the following few points ought to be explained, (1) Why, after leaving Egypt, was the patriarch's name changed by Jehovah from Abram to Abraham. (2) Why Sarai becomes on the same principle Sarah (Gen., xvii.). (3) Whence the strange coincidence of names? (4) Why should Alexander Polyhistor say that Abraham was born at Kamarina or Uria, a city of soothsayers, and invented Astronomy? (5) “The Abrahamic recollections go back at least three millenniums beyond the grandfather of Jacob,” says Bunsen (Egypt's Place in History, v. 35.)

177.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 35.

178.

See Isis Unveiled, ii. 218-300. Gematria is formed by a metathesis from the Greek word γραμματεία; Notaricon may be compared to stenography; Temura is permutation—a way of dividing the alphabet and shifting letters.

179.

De Vita Pythag.

180.

We are not aware that a copy of this ancient work is embraced in the catalogue of any European library; but it is one of the “Books of Hermes,” and it is referred to and quotations are made from it in the works of a number of ancient and mediæval philosophical authors. Among these authorities are Arnoldo di Villanova's Rosarium Philosoph., Francesco Arnuphi's Opus de Lapide, Hermes Trismegistus' Tractatus de Transmutatione Metallorum and Tabula Smaragdina, and above all the treatise of Raymond Lully, Ab Angelis Opus Divinum de Quinta Essentia.

181.

Exodus, xxv. 40.

182.

Sub voce “Numbers.”

183.

See Johannes Meursius, Denarius Pythagoricus.

184.

Ragon, Maçonnerie Occulte, p. 426, note.

185.

Ibid., p. 432, note.

186.

Extracted from Ragon, Maçonnerie Occulte, p. 427, note.

187.

Summarised from Ragon, ibid., p. 428, note.

188.

Ragon mentions the curious fact that the first four numbers in German are named after the elements. “Ein, or one, means the air, the element which, ever in motion, penetrates matter throughout, and whose continual ebb and tide is the universal vehicle of life. “Zwei, two, is derived from the old German Zweig, signifying germ, fecundity; it stands for earth the fecund mother of all. “Drei, three, is the trienos of the Greeks, standing for water, whence the Sea-gods, Tritons; and trident, the emblem of Neptune—the water, or sea, in general being called Amphitrite (surrounding water). “Vier, four, a number meaning in Belgian fire.... It is in the quaternary that the first solid figure is found, the universal symbol of immortality, the Pyramid, ‘whose first syllable means fire.’ Lysis and Timæus of Locris claimed that there was not a thing one could name that had not the quaternary for its root.... The ingenious and mystical idea which led to the veneration of the ternary and the triangle was applied to number four and its figure: it was said to express a living being, 1, the vehicle of the triangle 4, vehicle of God, or man carrying in him the divine principle.” Finally, “the Ancients represented the world by the number five. Diodorus explains it by saying that this number represents earth, fire, water, air and ether or spiritus. Hence, the origin of Pente (five) and of Pan (the God) meaning in Greek all.” (Compare Ragon, op. cit., pp. 428-430.) It is left with the Hindu Occultists to explain the relation this Sanskrit word Pancha (five) has to the elements, the Greek Pente having for its root the Sanskrit term.

189.

The system of the so-called Senzar characters is still more wonderful and difficult, since each letter is made to yield several meanings, a sign placed at the commencement showing the true meaning.

190.

Ragon, op. cit., p. 431, note.

191.

The Y exoterically signifies only the two paths of virtue or vice, and stands also for the numeral 150 and with a dash over the letter Y for 150,000.

192.

Tradition, chap. on “Numbers.”

193.

This is a kind of magical bow and arrow calculated to destroy in one moment whole armies; it is mentioned in the Râmâyana, the Purânas and elsewhere.

194.

Matthew, viii. 30-34.

195.

Dogmatic Theology, iii. 345.

196.

viii. 9, 10.

197.

Adv. Celsum.

198.

Eccles. Hist., i. 140.

199.

Contra Hæreses, I. xxiii. 1-4.

200.

Contra Hæreses, ii. 1-6.

201.

Op. cit., ii. 337.

202.

Ten is the perfect number of the Supreme God among the “manifested” deities, for number 1 is the symbol of the Universal Unit, or male principle in Nature, and number O the feminine symbol Chaos, the Deep, the two forming thus the symbol of Androgyne nature as well as the full value of the solar year, which was also the value of Jehovah and Enoch. Ten, with Pythagoras, was the symbol of the Universe; also of Enos, the Son of Seth, or the “Son of Man” who stands as the symbol of the solar year of 365 days, and whose years are therefore given as 365 also. In the Egyptian Symbology Abraxas was the Sun, the “Lord of the Heavens.” The circle is the symbol of the one Unmanifesting Principle, the plane of whose figure is infinitude eternally, and this is crossed by a diameter only during Manvantaras.

203.

I. Cor., ii. 6-8.

204.

Compare Taylor's Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries.

205.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 89.

206.

Op. cit., ii. 395.

207.

Quoted by De Mirville, Op. cit., vi. 41 and 42.

208.

Mr. St. George Lane-Fox has admirably expressed the idea in his eloquent appeal to the many rival schools and societies in India. “I feel sure,” he said, “that the prime motive, however dimly perceived, by which you, as the promoters of these movements, were actuated, was a revolt against the tyrannical and almost universal establishment throughout all existing social and so-called religious institutions of a usurped authority in some external form supplanting and obscuring the only real and ultimate authority, the indwelling spirit of truth revealed to each individual soul, true conscience in fact, that supreme source of all human wisdom and power which elevates man above the level of the brute.” (To the Members of the Ârya Samâj, the Theosophical Society, Brahmo and Hindu Samâj and other Religious and Progressive Societies in India.)

209.

Revelation, ii. 6.

210.

This “art” is not common jugglery, as some define it now: it is a kind of psychological jugglery, if jugglery at all, where fascination and glamour are used as means of producing illusions. It is hypnotism on a large scale.

211.

The author asserts in this his Christian persuasion.

212.

Magnetic passes, evidently, followed by a trance and sleep.

213.

“Elementals” used by the highest Adept to do mechanical, not intellectual work, as a physicist uses gases and other compounds.

214.

Quoted from De Mirville, op. cit., vi. 43.

215.

Ibid., vi. 45.

216.

Ibid., p. 46.

217.

Amédée Fleury, Rapports de St. Paul avec Sénèque, ii. 100. The whole of this is summarised from De Mirville.

218.

But we can never agree with the author “that rites and ritual and formal worship and prayers are of the absolute necessity of things,” for the external can develop and grow and receive worship only at the expense of, and to the detriment of, the internal, the only real and true.

219.

H. Jennings, op. cit., pp. 37, 38.

220.

See Isis Unveiled, ii. 574.

221.

xi. 26.

222.

Art., by Dr. A. Wilder, in Evolution.

223.

Op. cit., p. 262.

224.

In its most extensive meaning, the Sanskrit word has the same literal sense as the Greek term; both imply “revelation,” by no human agent, but through the “receiving of the sacred drink.” In India the initiated received the “Soma,” sacred drink, which helped to liberate his soul from the body; and in the Eleusinian Mysteries it was the sacred drink offered at the Epopteia. The Grecian Mysteries are wholly derived from the Brâhmanical Vaidic rites, and the latter from the Ante-Vaidic religious Mysteries—primitive Wisdom Philosophy.

225.

It is needless to state that the Gospel according to John was not written by John, but by a Platonist or a Gnostic belonging to the Neoplatonic school.

226.

Ibid., loc. cit. The fact that Peter persecuted the “Apostle to the Gentiles” under that name, does not necessarily imply that there was no Simon Magus individually distinct from Paul. It may have become a generic name of abuse. Theodoret and Chrysostom, the earliest and most prolific commentators on the Gnosticism of those days, seem actually to make of Simon a rival of Paul and to state that between them passed frequent messages. The former, as a diligent propagandist of what Paul terms the “antithesis of the Gnosis” (1. Epistle to Timothy), must have been a sore thorn in the side of the apostle. There are sufficient proofs of the actual existence of Simon Magus.

227.

Taylor's Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, Wilder's ed., p. x.

228.

ii. 91-94.

229.

Bunsen, Egypt's Place in History, v. 90.

230.

Ibid.

231.

Stele, p. 44.

232.

See Dowson's Hindu Classical Dict., sub voc., “Pîtha-sthânaru.”

233.

See Preface to St. Matthew's Gospel, Baronius, i. 752, quoted in De Mirville, vi. 63. Jerome is the Father who having found the authentic and original Evangel (the Hebrew text), by Matthew the Apostle-publican, in the library of Cæsarea, “written by the hand of Matthew” (Hieronymus: De Viris, Illust. Chap. iii.)—as he himself admits—set it down as heretical, and substituted for it his own Greek text. And it is also he who perverted the text in the Book of Job to enforce belief in the resurrection in flesh (see Isis Unveiled, Vol. ii. pp. 181 and 182, et seq.), quoting in support the most learned authorities.

234.

De Mirville gives the following thrilling account of the “contest.” “John, pressed, as St. Jerome tells us, by all the churches of Asia to proclaim more solemnly [in the face of the miracles of Apollonius] the divinity of Jesus Christ, after a long prayer with his disciples on the Mount of Patmos and being in ecstasy by the divine Spirit, made heard amid thunder and lightning his famous In Principio erat Verbum. When that sublime extasis, that caused him to be named the ‘Son of Thunder,’ had passed, Apollonius was compelled to retire and to disappear. Such was his defeat, less bloody but as hard as that of Simon, the Magician.” (“The Magician Theurgist,” vi. 63) For our part we have never heard of extasis producing thunder and lightning and we are at a loss to understand the meaning.

235.

This is the old, old story. Who of us, Theosophists, but knows by bitter personal experience what clerical hatred, malice and persecution can do in this direction; to what an extent of falsehood, calumny and cruelty these feelings can go, even in our modern day, and what exemplars of Christ-like charity His alleged and self-constituted servants have shown themselves to be!

236.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 342.

237.

Loc. cit., ii. 343, 344.

238.

Pneumatologie, vi. 62.

239.

Les Apologistes Chrétiens au Second Siècle, p. 106.

240.

Pneumatologie, vi, 62.

241.

Many are they who do not know: hence, they do not believe in them.

242.

Just so. Apollonius, during a lecture he was delivering at Ephesus before an audience of many thousands, perceived the murder of the Emperor Domitian in Rome and notified it at the very moment it was taking place, to the whole town; and Swedenborg, in the same manner, saw from Gothenburg the great fire at Stockholm and told it to his friends, no telegraph being in use in those days.

243.

No criterion at all. The Hindu Sâddhus and Adepts acquire the gift by the holiness of their lives. The Yoga-Vidyâ teaches it, and no “spirits” are required.

244.

As to the Pontiffs, the matter is rather doubtful.

245.

But this alone is no reason why people should believe in this class of spirits. There are better authorities for such belief.

246.

De Mirville's aim is to show that all such apparitions of the Manes or disembodied Spirits are the work of the Devil, “Satan's simulacra.”

247.

He might have added: like the great Shankarâchârya, Tsong-Kha-Pa, and so many other real Adepts—even his own Master, Jesus; for this is indeed a criterion of true Adeptship, though “to disappear” one need not fly up in the clouds.

248.

See Dion Cassius, XXVII. xviii. 2.

249.

Lampridius, Adrian, xxix. 2.

250.

The passage runs as follows: “Aurelian had determined to destroy Tyana, and the town owed its salvation only to a miracle of Apollonius; this man so famous and so wise, this great friend of the Gods, appeared suddenly before the Emperor, as he was returning to his tent, in his own figure and form, and said to him in the Pannonian language: ‘Aurelian, if thou wouldst conquer, abandon these evil designs against my fellow-citizens: if thou wouldst command, abstain from shedding innocent blood; and if thou wouldst live, abstain from injustice.’ Aurelian, familiar with the face of Apollonius, whose portraits he had seen in many temples, struck with wonder, immediately vowed to him (Apollonius) statue, portrait and temple, and returned completely to ideas of mercy.” And then Vopiscus adds: “If I have believed more and more in the virtues of the majestic Apollonius, it is because, after gathering my information from the most serious men, I have found all these facts corroborated in the Books of the Ulpian Library.” (See Flavius Vopiscus, Aurelianus). Vopiscus wrote in 250 and consequently preceded Philostratus by a century.

251.

Ep. ad Paulinum.

252.

The above is mostly summarised from De Mirville, loc. cit., pp. 66-69.

253.

A “true prophet” because an Initiate, one perfectly versed in Occult astronomy.

254.

Key to Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery, p. 259 et seq. Astronomy and physiology are the bodies, astrology and psychology their informing souls; the former being studied by the eye of sensual perception, the latter by the inner or “soul-eye”; and both are exact sciences.

255.

New Platonism and Alchemy, p. 12

256.

Heracles, 807.

257.

Æneid, viii., 274 ff.

258.

App., vii., p. 301.

259.

Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, ii. 88.

260.

(Hieronymus, De Viris Illust., iii.) “It is remarkable that, while all Church Fathers say that Matthew wrote in Hebrew, the whole of them use the Greek text as the genuine apostolic writing, without mentioning what relation the Hebrew Matthew has to our Greek one! It had many peculiar additions which are wanting in our (Greek) Evangel” (Olshausen, Nachweis der Echtheit der Sämmtlichen Schriften des Neuen Test., p. 32; Dunlap, Sôd, the Son of the Man, p. 44.)

261.

Commen. to Matthew (xii. 13) Book II. Jerome adds that it was written in the Chaldaic language, but with Hebrew letters.

262.

“St. Jerome,” v. 445; Dunlap, Sôd, the Son of Man, p. 46.

263.

This accounts also for the rejection of the works of Justin Martyr, who used only this “Gospel according to the Hebrews,” as also did most probably Tatian, his disciple. At what a late period the divinity of Christ was fully established we can judge by the mere fact that even in the fourth century Eusebius did not denounce this book as spurious, but only classed it with such as the Apocalypse of John; and Credner (Zur Gesch. des Kan, p. 120) shows Nicephorus inserting it, together with the Revelation, in his Stichometry, among the Antilegomena. The Ebionites, the genuine primitive Christians, rejecting the rest of the Apostolic writings, make use only of this Gospel (Adv. Hær., i. 26) and the Ebionites, as Epiphanius declares, firmly believed, with the Nazarenes, that Jesus was but a man, “of the seed of a man.”

264.

Isis Unveiled, ii. 182-3.

265.

Op. cit., ii. 5.

266.

See also Isis Unveiled, ii. 180, to end of chapter.

267.

Source of Measures, p. 299. This “stream of life” being emblematised in the Philloc basso-relievo just mentioned, by the water poured in the shape of a Cross on the initiated candidate by Osiris—Life and the Sun—and Mercury—Death. It was the finale of the rite of Initiation after the seven and the twelve tortures in the Crypts of Egypt were passed through successfully.

268.

Another untrustworthy, untruthful and ignorant writer, an ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century. His alleged history of the strife between the Pagans, Neoplatonists, and the Christians of Alexandria and Constantinople, which extends from the year 324 to 439, dedicated by him to Theodosius, the younger, is full of deliberate falsifications.

269.

Gems of the Orthodox Christians, vol. I., p. 135.

270.

Revelation, xiv. 1.

271.

A Dagoba is a small temple of globular form, in which are preserved the relics of Gautama.

272.

Prachidas are buildings of all sizes and forms, like our mausoleums, and are sacred to votive offerings to the dead.

273.

The Talmudistic records claim that, after having been hanged, he was lapidated and buried under the water at the junction of two streams. Mishna Sanhedrin, Vol. VI., p. 4; Talmud, of Babylon, same article, 43 a, 67 a.

274.

Coptic Legends of the Crucifixion, MSS. XI.

275.

We are at a loss to understand why King, in his Gnostic Gems, represents Solomon's Seal as a five-pointed star, whereas it is six-pointed, and is the signet of Vishnu in India.

276.

King (Gnostics) gives the figure of a Christian symbol, very common during the middle ages, of three fishes interlaced into a triangle, and having the FIVE letters (a most sacred Pythagorean number) ΙΧΘΥΣ engraved on it. The number five relates to the same kabalistic computation.

277.

Op. cit., ii., 253-256.

278.

Op. cit., 301. All this connects Jesus with great Initiates and solar heroes; all this is purely Pagan, under a newly-evolved variation, the Christian scheme.

279.

Op. cit., 296.

280.

Pp. 294, 295.

281.

P. 295

282.

Pp. 295, 296.

283.

Had we known the learned author before his book was printed, he might have been perchance prevailed upon to add a seventh link from which all others, far preceding those enumerated in point of time, and surpassing them in universally philosophical meaning, have been derived, aye, even to the great pyramid, whose foundation square was, in its turn, the great Âryan Mysteries.

284.

We would say cosmic Matter, Spirit, Chaos, and Divine Light, for the Egyptian idea was identical in this with the Âryan. However, the author is right with regard to the Occult Symbology of the Jews. They were a remarkably matter of fact, unspiritual people at all times; yet even with them “Ruach” was Divine Spirit, not “air.”

285.

Mr. Ralston Skinner shows that the symbol ☧, the crossed bones and skull, has the letter ק Koph, the half of the head behind the ears.

286.

Pp. 296-302. By these numbers, explains the author, “Eli is 113 (by placing the word in a circle); amah being 345, is by change of letters to suit the same value משת (in a circle) or Moses, while Sabachth is John or the dove, or Holy Spirit, because (in a circle) it is 710 (or 355 × 2). The termination ni, as meni or 5651, becomes Jehovah.”

287.

The Western personification of that power, which the Hindus call the Vija, the “one seed,” or Mahâ Vishnu—a power, not the God—or that mysterious Principle that contains in Itself the Seed of Avatârism.

288.

“Arise into Nervi from this decrepit body into which thou hast been sent. Ascend into thy former abode, O blessed Avatâr!”

289.

The Gnostics and their Remains, King, pp. 100, 101.

290.

Loc cit.

291.

Op. cit. 258.

292.

Homilies XIX., xx. 1.

293.

The Pleroma constituted the synthesis or entirety of all the spiritual entities. St. Paul still used the name in his Epistles.

294.

The “Comforter,” second Messiah, intercessor. “A term applied to the Holy Ghost.” Manes was the disciple of Terebinthus, an Egyptian Philosopher, who, according to the Christian Socrates (I. i., cited by Tillemont, iv. 584), “while invoking one day the demons of the air, fell from the roof of his house and was killed.”

295.

Cf. op. cit., vi. 169-183.

296.

“The great serpent placed to watch the temple,” comments De Mirville. “How often have we repeated that it was no symbol, no personification but really a serpent occupied by a god!”—he exclaims; and we answer that at Cairo in a Mussulman, not a heathen temple, we have seen, as thousands of other visitors have also seen, a huge serpent that lived there for centuries, we were told, and was held in great respect. Was it also “occupied by a God,” or possessed, in other words?

297.

The Mysteries of Demeter, or the “afflicted mother.”

298.

By the satyrs.

299.

This looks rather suspicious and seems interpolated. De Mirville tries to have what he says of Satan and his Court sending their imps on earth to tempt humanity and masquerade at séances, corroborated by the ex-sorcerer.

300.

This does not look like sinful food. It is the diet of Chelâs to this day.

301.

“Grafted” is the correct expression. “The seven Builders graft the divine and the beneficent forces on to the gross material nature of the vegetable and mineral kingdoms every Second Round”—says the Catechism of Lanoos.

302.

Only the Prince of the World is not Satan, as the translator would make us believe, but the collective Host of the Planetary. This is a little theological back-biting.

303.

Here the Elemental and Elementary Spirits are evidently meant.

304.

The reader has already learned the truth about them in the course of the present work.

305.

Pity the penitent Saint had not imparted his knowledge of the rotation of the earth and helio-centric system earlier to his Church. That might have saved more than one human life—that of Bruno for one.

306.

Chelâs in their trials of initiation, also see in trances artificially generated for them, the vision of the Earth supported by an elephant on the top of a tortoise standing on nothing—and this, to teach them to discern the true from the false.

307.

Relating to the days of the year, also to 7 × 7 divisions of the earth's sublunary sphere, divided into seven upper and seven lower spheres with their respective Planetary Hosts or “armies.”

308.

Daimon is not “demon,” as translated by De Mirville, but Spirit.

309.

All this is to corroborate his dogmatic assertions that Pater Æther or Jupiter is Satan! and that pestilential diseases, cataclysms, and even thunderstorms that prove disastrous, come from the Satanic Host dwelling in Ether—a good warning to the men of Science!

310.

The translator replaces the word Mediators by mediums, excusing himself in a foot-note by saying that Cyprian must have meant modern mediums!

311.

Cyprianus simply meant to hint at the rites and mysteries of Initiation, and the pledge of secresy and oaths that bound the Initiates together. His translator, however, has made a Witches' Sabbath of it instead.

312.

“Twelve centuries later, in full renaissance and reform, the world saw Luther do the same [embrace the Devil he means?]—according to his own confession and in the same conditions,” explains De Mirville in a foot-note, showing thereby the brotherly love that binds Christians. Now Cyprianus meant by the Devil (if the word is really in the original text) his Initiator and Hierophant. No Saint—even a penitent Sorcerer—would be so silly as to speak of his (the Devil's) rising from his seat to see him to the door, were it otherwise.

313.

Every Adept has “a principality after his death.”

314.

Which shows that it was the Hierophant and his disciples. Cyprianus shows himself as grateful as most of the other converts (the modern included) to his Teachers and Instructors.

315.

This is proved if we take but a single recorded instance. J. Picus de Mirandola, finding that there was more Christianity than Judaism in the Kabalah, and discovering in it the doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Divinity of Jesus, etc., wound up his proofs of this with a challenge to the world at large from Rome. As Ginsburg shows: “In 1486, when only twenty-four years old, he [Picus] published nine hundred [Kabalistic] theses, which were placarded in Rome, and undertook to defend them in the presence of all European scholars whom he invited to the Eternal City, promising to defray their travelling expenses.”

316.

This account is summarised from Isaac Myer's Qabbalah, p. 10, et seq.

317.

There is not in the decalogue one idea that is not the counterpart, or the paraphrase, of the dogmas and ethics current among the Egyptians long before the time of Moses and Aaron. (The Mosaic Law a transcript from Egyptian Sources; vide Geometry in Religion, 1890.)

318.

Book of God. Kenealy, p. 383. The reference to Klaproth is also from this page.

319.

See Asiat. Jour., N.S. vii., p. 275, quoted by Kenealy.

320.

Book of God, loc. cit.

321.

Op. cit., v. 15.

322.

Prolegomena, iii. 13, quoted by Kenealy, p. 385.

323.

See Book of God, p. 385. “Care should be taken,” says Butler (quoted by Kenealy, p. 489), “to distinguish between the Pentateuch in the Hebrew language but in the letters of the Samaritan alphabet, and the version of the Pentateuch in the Samaritan language. One of the most important differences between the Samaritan and the Hebrew text respects the duration of the period between the deluge and the birth of Abraham. The Samaritan text makes it longer by some centuries than the Hebrew text; and the Septuagint makes it longer by some centuries than the Samaritan.” It is observable that in the authentic translation of the Latin Vulgate, the Roman Church follows the computation expressed in the Hebrew text; and in her Martyrology follows that of the Seventy, both texts being inspired, as she claims.

324.

See Rev. Joseph Wolff's Journal, p. 200.

325.

A tree is symbolically a book—as “pillar” is another synonym of the same.

326.

The wife of Moses, one of the seven daughters of a Midian priest, is called Zipora. It was Jethro, the priest of Midian, who initiated Moses, Zipora, one of the seven daughters, being simply one of the seven Occult powers that the Hierophant was and is supposed to pass to the initiated novice.

327.

See for these details the Book of God, pp. 244, 250.

328.

Op. cit. v. 85.

329.

As is fully shown in the Source of Measures and other works.

330.

Surely even Masons would never claim the actual existence of Solomon? As Kenealy shows, he is not noticed by Herodotus, nor by Plato, nor by any writer of standing. It is most extraordinary, he says, “that the Jewish nation, over whom but a few years before the mighty Solomon had reigned in all his glory, with a magnificence scarcely equalled by the greatest monarchs, spending nearly eight thousand millions of gold on a temple, was overlooked by the historian Herodotus, writing of Egypt on the one hand, and of Babylon on the other—visiting both places, and of course passing almost necessarily within a few miles of the splendid capital of the national Jerusalem? How can this be accounted for?” he asks (p. 457). Nay, not only are there no proofs of the twelve tribes of Israel having ever existed, but Herodotus, the most accurate of historians, who was in Assyria when Ezra flourished, never mentions the Israelites at all; and Herodotus was born in 484 b.c. How is this?

331.

Clement, Stromateis, xxii.

332.

Book of God, p. 408.

333.

Book of God, p. 453.

334.

Asiatic Journal, vii., p. 275, quoted by Kenealy.

335.

Book of God, p. 385.

336.

Speaking of the hidden meaning of the Sanskrit words, Mr. T. Subba Row, in his able article on “The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,” gives some advice as to the way in which one should proceed to find out “the deep significance of ancient Sanskrit nomenclature in the old Âryan myths. 1. Find out the synonyms of the word used which have other meanings. 2. Find out the numerical value of the letters composing the word according to the methods of the ancient Tântrik works [Tântrika Shâstra—works on Incantation and Magic]. 3. Examine the ancient myths or allegories, if there are any, which have any special connection with the word in question. 4. Permute the different syllables composing the word and examine the new combinations that will thus be formed and their meanings,” etc. But he does not give the principal rule. And no doubt he is quite right. The Tântrika Shâstras are as old as Magic itself. Have they also borrowed their Esotericism from the Hebrews?

337.

Their founder, Sadoc, was the pupil, through Antigonus Saccho, of Simon the Just. They had their own secret Book of the Law ever since the foundation of their sect (about 400 b.c.) and this volume was unknown to the masses. At the time of the Separation the Samaritans recognised only the Book of the Law of Moses and the Book of Joshua, and their Pentateuch is far older, and is different from the Septuagint. In 168 b.c. Jerusalem had its temple plundered, and its Sacred Books—namely, the Bible made up by Ezra and finished by Judas Maccabeus—were lost (see Burder's Josephus, vol. ii. pp. 331-335); after which the Massorah completed the work of destruction (even of Ezra's once-more adjusted Bible) begun by the change into square from horned letters. Therefore the later Pentateuch accepted by the Pharisees was rejected and laughed at by the Sadducees. They are generally called atheists; yet, since those learned men, who made no secret of their freethought, furnished from among their number the most eminent of the Jewish high-priests, this seems impossible. How could the Pharisees and the other two believing and pious sects allow notorious atheists to be selected for such posts? The answer is difficult to find for bigotry and for believers in a personal, anthropomorphic God, but very easy for those who accept facts. The Sadducees were called atheists because they believed as the initiated Moses believed, thus differing very widely from the latter made-up Jewish legislator and hero of Mount Sinai.

338.

The measurements of the Great Pyramid being those of the temple of Solomon, of the Ark of the Covenant, etc., according to Piazzi Smythe and the author of the Source of Measures, and the Pyramid of Gizeh being shown on astronomical calculations to have been built 4950 b.c., and Moses having written his books—for the sake of argument—not even half that time before our era, how can this be? Surely if any one borrowed from the other, it is not the Pharaohs from Moses. Even philology shows not only the Egyptian, but even the Mongolian, older than the Hebrew.

339.

This alone shows how the Books of Moses were tampered with. In Samuel (ix. 9), it is said: “He that is now a prophet [Nabhi] was beforetime called a Seer [Roch].” Now since before Samuel, the word “Roch” is met nowhere in the Pentateuch, but its place is always taken by that of “Nabhi,” this proves clearly that the Mosaic text has been replaced by that of the later Levites. (See for fuller details Jewish Antiquities, by the Rev. D. Jennings, D.D.)

340.

Zohar, i, 2a.

341.

Zohar, 42b.

342.

Zohar, i, 2a. See Dr. Ch. Ginsburg's essay on The Cabbalah, its Doctrines, Developments and Literature.

343.

Cudworth, I. iii, quoted by Wilson, Vishnu Purâna, i. 14, note.

344.

Vishnu Purâna, i. 14.

345.

Stanza i, 4.

346.

Mishna, i. 9.

347.

In its manifested state it becomes Ten, the Universe. In the Chaldæan Kabalah it is sexless. In the Jewish, Shekinah is female, and the early Christians and Gnostics regarded the Holy Ghost as a female potency. In the Book of Numbers “Shekina” is made to drop the final “h” that makes it a feminine name. Nârâyana, the Mover on the Waters, is also sexless; but it is our firm belief that Shekinah and Daiviprakriti, the “Light of the Logos,” are one and the same thing philosophically.

348.

The Elohim create the Adam of dust, and in him Jehovah-Binah separates himself into Eve, after which the male portion of God becomes the Serpent, tempts himself in Eve, then creates himself in her as Cain, passes into Seth, and scatters from Enoch, the Son of Man, or Humanity, as Jodheva.

349.

The Source of Measures, p. 8.

350.

This identifies Sephira, the third potency, with Jehovah the Lord, who says to Moses out of the burning bush: “(Here) I am.” (Exodus, iii, 4.) At this time the “Lord” had not yet become Jehovah. It was not the one Male God who spoke, but the Elohim manifested, or the Sephiroth in their manifested collectivity of seven, contained in the triple Sephira.

351.

The Brâhmans were wise in their generation when they gradually, for no other reason than this, abandoned Brahmâ, and paid less attention to him individually than to any other deity. As an abstract synthesis they worshipped him collectively and in every God, each of which represents him. As Brahmâ, the male, he is far lower than Shiva, the Lingam, who personates universal generation, or Vishnu, the preserver—both Shiva and Vishnu being the regenerators of life after destruction. The Christians might do worse than follow their example, and worship God in Spirit, and not in the male Creator.

352.

A plural word, signifying a collective host generically; literally, the “strong lion.”

353.

The writer possesses only a few extracts, some dozen pages in all, verbatim quotations from that priceless work, of which but two or three copies, perhaps, are still extant.

354.

Aye; but that spirituality can never be discovered, far less proved, unless we turn to the Âryan Scriptures and Symbology. For the Jews it was lost, save for the Sadducees, from the day that the “chosen people” reached the Promised Land, the national Karma preventing Moses from reaching it.

355.

Op. cit., pp. 317-319.

356.

The Book of God, pp. 388, 389.

357.

See Horne's Introduction (10th edition), vol. ii, p. 33, as quoted by Dr. Kenealy, p. 389.

358.

See Horne's Introduction (10th edition), vol. ii, p. 33, as quoted by Dr. Kenealy, p. 389.

359.

The author says that Parker's quadrature is “that identical measure which was used anciently as the perfect measure, by the Egyptians, in the construction of the Great Pyramid, which was built to monument it and its uses,” and that “from it the sacred cubit-value was derived, which was the cubit-value used in the construction of the Temple of Solomon, the Ark of Noah, and the Ark of the Covenant” (p. 22). This is a grand discovery, no doubt, but it only shows that the Jews profited well by their captivity in Egypt, and that Moses was a great Initiate.

360.

See Theosophist, November, 1879, art. “Hindu Music,” p. 47.

361.

The Sanskrit letters are far more numerous than the poor twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. They are all musical, and they are read—or rather chanted—according to a system given in very old Tântrika works, and are called Devanâgarî, the speech, or language, of the Gods. And since each letter answers to a numeral, the Sanskrit affords a far larger scope for expression, and it must necessarily be far more perfect than the Hebrew, which followed the same system but could apply it only in a very limited way. If either of these two languages, were taught to humanity by the Gods, surely it would more likely be the Sanskrit, the perfect form of the most perfect language on earth, than the Hebrew, the roughest and the poorest. For once anyone believes in a language of divine origin, he can hardly believe at the same time that Angels or Gods or any divine Messengers have had to develop it from a rough monosyllabic form into a perfect one, as we see in terrestrial linguistic evolution.

362.

In the first chapter of Genesis the word “God” represents the Elohim—Gods in the plural, not one God. This is a cunning and dishonest translation. For the whole Kabalah explains sufficiently that the Alhim (Elohim) are seven; each creates one of the seven things enumerated in the first chapter, and these answer allegorically to the seven creations. To make this clear, count the verses in which it is said “And God saw that it was good,” and you will find that this is said seven times—in verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, and 31. And though the compilers cunningly represent the creation of man as occurring on the sixth day, yet, having made man “male and female in the image of God,” the Seven Elohim repeat the sacramental sentence, “It was good,” for the seventh time, thus making of man the seventh creation, and showing the origin of this bit of cosmogony to be in the Hindu creations. The Elohim are, of course, the seven Egyptian Khnûmû, the “assistant-architects”; the seven Amshaspends of the Zoroastrians; the Seven Spirits subordinate to Ildabaoth of the Nazareans; the seven Prajâpati of the Hindus, etc.

363.

Gen., ii. 21, 22.

364.

Op. cit., p. 395, note.

365.

The seventh esoterically, exoterically the sixth.

366.

Contra Hereses, I, xviii, 2.

367.

Op. cit. by Gerald Massey, p. 19.

368.

Op cit., p. 278.

369.

The Hebrew and other Creations: with a reply to Professor A. H. Sayce, p. 19.

370.

Op. cit., p. 243.

371.

When they are the Anupâdakas (Parentless) of the Secret Doctrine. See Stanzas, i, 9, Vol. i, 56.

372.

These originated with the Âryans, who placed therein their “bright-crested” (Chitra-Shikhandan) Seven Rishis. But all this is far more Occult than appears on the surface.

373.

Op. cit., pp. 19-22.

374.

Vishnu Purâna, Wilson's Trans., i, 101. The period of these Kumâras is Pre-Adamic, i.e., before the separation of sexes, and before humanity had received the creative, or sacred, fire of Prometheus.

375.

The Secret Doctrine says that this was the second creation, not the first, and that it took place during the Third Race, when men separated, i.e., began to be born as distinct men and women. See Vol. ii. of this work, Stanzas and Commentaries.

376.

This is a Western mangling of the Indian doctrine of the Kumâras.

377.

He was regarded by several Gnostic sects as one with Jehovah. See Isis Unveiled, vol. ii. p. 184.

378.

Or “man, son of man.” The Church found in this a prophecy and a confession of Christ, the “Son of Man!”

379.

See Stanza ii. 5, Secret Doctrine, ii. 16.

380.

Op. cit., pp. 23, 24.

381.

The Sepher Jetzirah now known is but a portion of the original one incorporated in the Chaldæan Book of Numbers. The fragment now in possession of the Western Kabalists is one greatly tampered with by the Rabbis of the Middle Ages, as its masoretic points show. The “Masorah” scheme is a modern blind, dating after our era and perfected in Tiberias. (See Isis Unveiled, vol. ii, pp. 430-431.)

382.

In the oldest symbolism—that used in the Egyptian hieroglyphics—when the bull's head only is found it means the Deity, the Perfect Circle, with the procreative power latent in it. When the whole bull is represented, a solar God, a personal deity is meant, for it is then the symbol of the acting generative power.

383.

It took three Root-Races to degrade the symbol of the One Abstract Unity manifested in Nature as a Ray emanating from infinity (the Circle) into a phallic symbol of generation, as it was even in the Kabalah. This degradation began with the Fourth Race, and had its raison d'etre, in Polytheism, as the latter was invented to screen the One Universal Deity from profanation. The Christians may plead ignorance of its meaning as an excuse for its acceptance. But why sing never-ceasing laudations to the Mosaic Jews who repudiated all the other Gods, preserved the most phallic, and then most impudently proclaimed themselves Monotheists? Jesus ever steadily ignored Jehovah. He went against the Mosaic commandments. He recognized his Heavenly Father alone, and prohibited public worship.

384.

Is it everything to have found out that the celestial circle of 360° is determined by “the full word-form of Elohim,” and that this yields, when the word is placed in a circle, “3.1415, or the relation of circumference to a diameter of one.” This is only its astronomical or mathematical aspect. To know the full septenary significance of the “Primordial Circle,” the pyramid and the Kabalistic Bible must be read in the light of the figure on which the temples of India are built. The mathematical squaring of the circle is only the terrestrial résumé of the problem. The Jews were content with the six days of activity and the seventh of rest. The progenitors of mankind solved the greatest problems of the Universe with their seven Rays or Rishis.

385.

Genesis begins with the third stage of “creation,” skipping the preliminary two.

386.

The three root-principles are, exoterically: Man, Soul, and Spirit (meaning by “man” the intelligent personality), and esoterically: Life, Soul, and Spirit; the four vehicles are Body, Astral double, Animal (or human) Soul, and Divine Soul (Sthûla-Sharîra, Linga-Sharîra, Kâma-rûpa, and Buddhi, the vehicle of Âtma or Spirit). Or, to make it still clearer: (1) the Seventh Principle has for its vehicle the Sixth (Buddhi); (2) the vehicle of Manas is Kâma-rûpa; (3) that of Jîva or Prâna (life) is the Linga-Sharîra (the “double” of man; the Linga-Sharîra proper can never leave the body till death; that which appears is an astral body, reflecting the physical body and serving as a vehicle for the human soul, or intelligence); and (4) the Body, the physical vehicle of all the above collectively. The Occultist recognizes the same order as existing for the cosmical totality, the psycho-cosmical Universe.

387.

St. Denys, the Areopagite, the supposed contemporary of St. Paul, his co-disciple, and first Bishop of St. Denis, near Paris, teaches that the bulk of the “work of creation” was performed by the “Seven Spirits of the Presence”—God's co-operators, owing to a participation of the divinity in them. (Hierarch., p. 196.) And Saint Augustine also thinks that “things were rather created in the angelic minds than in Nature, that is to say, that the angels perceived and knew them (all things) in their thoughts before they could spring forth into actual existence.” (Vid. De Genesis ad Litteram p. II.) (Summarized from De Mirville, Vol. II., pp. 337-338.) Thus the early Christian Fathers, even a non-initiate like St. Augustine, ascribed the creation of the visible world to Angels, or Secondary Powers, while St. Denys not only specifies these as the “Seven Spirits of the Presence,” but shows them owing their power to the informing divine energy—Fohat in the Secret Doctrine. But the egotistical darkness which caused the Western races to cling so desperately to the Geo-centric System, made them also neglect and despise all those fragments of the true Religion which would have deprived them and the little globe they took for the centre of the Universe of the signal honour of having been expressly “created” by the One, Secondless, Infinite God!

388.

De Mirville, ii. 295.

389.

To the Occultist and Chelâ the difference made between Energy and Emanation need not be explained. The Sanskrit word “Sakti” is untranslatable. It may be Energy, but it is one that proceeds through itself, not being due to the active or conscious will of the one that produces it. The “First-Born,” or Logos, is not an Emanation, but an Energy inherent in and co-eternal with Parabrahman, the One. The Zohar speaks of emanations, but reserves the word for the seven Sephiroth emanated from the first three—which form one triad—Kether, Chokmah, and Binah. As for these three, it explains the difference by calling them “immanations,” something inherent to and coëval with the subject postulated, or in other words, “Energies.” It is these “Auxiliaries,” the Auphanim, the half-human Prajâpatis, the Angels, the Architects under the leadership of the “Angel of the Great Council,” with the rest of the Kosmos-Builders of other nations, that can alone explain the imperfection of the Universe. This imperfection is one of the arguments of the Secret Science in favour of the existence and activity of these “Powers.” And who know better than the few philosophers of our civilised lands how near the truth Philo was in ascribing the origin of evil to the admixture of inferior potencies in the arrangement of matter, and even in the formation of man—a task entrusted to the divine Logos.

390.

Psalms cxxxv. 5.

391.

Psalms xcvi. 5.

392.

Rather as Ormazd or Ahura-Mazda, Vit-nam-Ahmi, and all the unmanifested Logoi. Jehovah is the manifested Virâj, corresponding to Binah, the third Sephira in the Kabalah, a female Power which would find its prototype rather in the Prajâpati, than in Brahmâ, the Creator.

393.

Neith is Aditi, evidently.

394.

The Self-created Logos, Nârâyana, Purushottama, and others.

395.

Mère d'Apis, pp. 32-35. Quoted by De Mirville.

396.

See Republic, I. vi.

397.

Harmonie entre l'Église et la Synagogue, t. II., p. 427, by the Chevalier Drach. See De Mirville iv. 38, 39.

398.

Julian died for the same crime as Socrates. Both divulged a portion of the solar mystery, the heliocentric system being only a part of what was given during Initiation—one consciously, the other unconsciously, the Greek Sage never having been initiated. It was not the real solar system that was preserved in such secrecy, but the mysteries connected with the Sun's constitution. Socrates was sentenced to death by earthly and worldly judges; Julian died a violent death because the hitherto protecting hand was withdrawn from him, and, no longer shielded by it, he was simply left to his destiny or Karma. For the student of Occultism there is a suggestive difference between the two kinds of death. Another memorable instance of the unconscious divulging of secrets pertaining to mysteries is that of the poet, P. Ovidius Naso, who, like Socrates, had not been initiated. In his case, the Emperor Augustus, who was an Initiate, mercifully changed the penalty of death into banishment to Tomos on the Euxine. This sudden change from unbounded royal favour to banishment has been a fruitful scheme of speculation to classical scholars not initiated into the Mysteries. They have quoted Ovid's own lines to show that it was some great and heinous immorality of the Emperor of which Ovid had become unwillingly cognizant. The inexorable law of the death penalty, always following upon the revelation of any portion of the Mysteries to the profane, was unknown to them. Instead of seeing the amiable and merciful act of the Emperor in its true light, they have made it an occasion for traducing his moral character. The poet's own words can be no evidence, because as he was not an Initiate, it could not be explained to him in what his offence consisted. There have been comparatively modern instances of poets unconsciously revealing in their verses so much of the hidden knowledge as to make even Initiates suppose them to be fellow-Initiates, and come to talk to them on the subject. This only shows that the sensitive poetic temperament is sometimes so far transported beyond the bounds of ordinary sense as to get glimpses into what has been impressed on the Astral Light. In the Light of Asia there are two passages that might make an Initiate of the first degree think that Mr. Edwin Arnold had been initiated himself in the Himâlyan âshrams, but this is not so.

399.

A proof that Julian was acquainted with the heliocentric system.

400.

La Gravitation par l'Electricité, p. 7, quoted by De Mirville; iv. 156.

401.

De Mirville, iv. 157.

402.

Memoir on the Solar System, p. 7, De Mirville, iv. 157.

403.

Essai sur l' Identité des Agents Producteurs du Son, de la Lumière, etc., p. 15, Ibid.

404.

Ibid., p. 218.

405.

Summarised from Ibid., p. 213. De Mirville, iv. 158.

406.

May, 1855. Ibid., p. 139.

407.

La Terre et notre Système solaire. De Mirville, iv. 139.

408.

If, as Sir W. Herschel thought, the so-called fixed stars have resulted from, and owe their origin to nebular combustion, they cannot be fixed any more than is our sun, which was believed to be motionless and is now found to rotate around its axis every twenty-five days. As the fixed star nearest to the sun, however, is eight-thousand times farther away from him than is Neptune, the illusions furnished by the telescopes must be also eight-thousand times as great. We will therefore leave the question at rest, repeating only what A. Maury said in his work (La Terre et l'Homme, published in 1858): “It is utterly impossible, so far, to decide anything concerning Neptune's constitution, analogy alone authorising us to ascribe to him a rotary motion like that of other planets” (De Mirville, iv. 140).

409.

Exposition du vrai Système du Monde, p. 282.

410.

See the passage quoted by Herschel in Natural Philosophy, p. 165. De Mirville, iv. 105.

411.

Loc. cit.

412.

Terre et Ciel, p. 28. Ibid.

413.

Œuvres d'Arago, vol. i., p. 219; quoted by De Mirville, iii. 462.

414.

“Die Sterne sind vielleicht ein Sitz verklarter Geister; Wie hier das Laster herrscht, ist dort die Tugend Meister.”

415.

Op. cit., p. 411.

416.

Whenever Occult doctrines were expounded in the pages of The Theosophist, care was taken each time to declare a subject incomplete when the whole could not be given in its fulness, and no writer has ever tried to mislead the reader. As to the Western “ranges of perception” concerning doctrines really Occult, the Eastern Occultists have been made acquainted with them for some time past. Thus they are enabled to assert with confidence that the West may be in possession of Hermetic philosophy as a speculative system of dialectics, the latter being used in the West admirably well, but it lacks entirely the knowledge of Occultism. The genuine Eastern Occultist keeps silent and unknown, never publishes what he knows, and rarely even speaks of it, as he knows too well the penalty of indiscretion.

417.

See The Royal Masonic Cyclopædia, art. “Sepher Jetzirah.”

418.

In the exoteric sense, the Mantra (or that psychic faculty or power that conveys perception or thought) is the older portion of the Vedas, the second part of which is composed of the Brâhmanas. In Esoteric phraseology Mantra is the Word made flesh, or rendered objective, through divine magic.

419.

The secret meaning of the word “Brahmâ” is “expansion,” “increase,” or “growth.”

420.

Why not give at once its theological meaning, as we find it in Webster? With the Roman Catholics it means simply “purgatory,” the borderland between heaven and hell (Limbus patrum and Limbus infantum), the one for all men, whether good, bad or indifferent; the other for the souls of unbaptized children! With the ancients it meant simply that which in Esoteric Buddhism is called the Kâma Loka, between Devachan and Avitchi.

421.

As Chaos, the eternal Element, not as the Kâma Loka surely.

422.

A proof that by this word Éliphas Lévi means the lowest region of the terrestrial Âkâsha.

423.

Evidently he is concerned only with our periodical world, or the terrestrial globe.

424.

In the “reäwakening” of the Forces would be more correct.

425.

An action which is incessant in eternity cannot be called “creation;” it is evolution, and the eternally or ever-becoming of the Greek Philosopher and the Hindu Vedântin; it is the Sat and the one Beingness of Parmenides, or the Being identical with Thought. Now how can the Potencies be said to “create movement,” once it is seen movement never had any beginning, but existed in the Eternity? Why not say that the reawakened Potencies transferred motion from the eternal to the temporal plane of being? Surely this is not Creation.

426.

Histoire de la Magie. Int., p. 1.

427.

Histoire de la Magie. Int., p. 2.

428.

The Vaishnavas, who regard Vishnu as the Supreme God and the fashioner of the Universe, claim that Brahmâ sprang from the navel of Vishnu, the “imperishable,” or rather from the lotus that grew from it. But the “navel” here means the Central Point, the mathematical symbol of infinitude, or Parabrahman, the One and the Secondless.

429.

Ecclesiastes, i. 12, 13.

430.

It is probably needless to say here what everyone knows. The translation of the Protestant Bible is not a word for word rendering of the earlier Greek and Latin Bibles: the sense is very often disfigured, and “God” is put where “Jahve” and “Elohim” stand.

431.

Psalms, civ. 2, 3.

432.

To avoid misunderstanding of the word “creation” so often used by us, the remarks of the author of Through the Gates of Gold may be quoted owing to their clearness and simplicity. “The words ‘to create’ are often understood by the ordinary mind to convey the idea of evolving something out of nothing. This is clearly not its meaning. We are mentally obliged to provide our Creator with chaos from which to produce the worlds. The tiller of the soil, who is the typical producer of social life, must have his material: his earth, his sky, rain and sun, and the seeds to place within the earth. Out of nothing he can produce nothing. Out of a void nature cannot arise; there is that material beyond, behind, or within, from which she is shaped by our desire for a Universe.” (P. 72.)

433.

Commentary on Stanza ix. on Cycles.

434.

Or, read from right to left, the letters and their corresponding numerals stand thus: “t,” 4; “h,” 5; “bh,” 2; “v,” 6; “v,” 6; “h,” 5; “v” or “w,” 6; which yields “thuvbhu,” 4566256, or “Tohu-vah-bohu.”

435.

Mr. Ralston Skinner's MSS.

436.

That the teraphim was a statue, and no small article either, is shown in Samuel xix., where Michal takes a teraphim (“image,” as it is translated) and puts it in bed to represent David, her husband, who ran away from Saul (see verse 13, et seq.). It was thus of the size and shape of a human figure—a statue or real idol.

437.

Op. cit., iii. 4

438.

Louis de Dieu, Genesis, xxxi. 19. See De Mirville, iii. 257.

439.

“The teraphim of Abram's father, Terah, the ‘maker of images,’ were the Kabeiri Gods, and we see them worshipped by Micah, by the Danites, and others. (Judges, xvii.-xviii., etc.) Teraphim were identical with seraphim, and these were serpent images, the origin of which is in the Sanskrit ‘Sarpa’ (the ‘serpent’) a symbol sacred to all the deities as a symbol of immortality. Kiyun, or the God Kivan, worshipped by the Hebrews in the wilderness, is Shiva, the Hindu Saturn. (The Zendic ‘h’ is ‘s’ in India; thus, ‘Hapta’ is ‘Sapta;’ ‘Hindu’ is ‘Sindbaya.’ (A. Wilder)) ‘The “s” continually softens to “h” from Greece to Calcutta, from the Caucasus to Egypt,’ says Dunlap. Therefore the letters ‘k,’ ‘h,’ and ‘s’ are interchangeable. The Greek story shows that Dardanus, the Arcadian, having received them as a dowry, carried them to Samothrace, and thence to Troy; and they were worshipped long before the days of glory of Tyre or Sidon, though the former had been built 2760 b.c. From where did Dardanus derive them?” Isis Unveiled, i. 570.

440.

Maimon, More Nevochim, III. xxx.

441.

Those dedicated to the sun were made in gold, and those to the moon in silver.

442.

De Diis Syriis, Teraph. II. Syat, p. 31.

443.

Those that the Kabalists call elementary spirits are sylphs, gnomes, undines and salamanders, nature-spirits, in short. The spirits of the angels formed a distinct class.

444.

Œdipus, ii. 444.

445.

Op. cit., xxv. 22 et seq.

446.

The ephod was a linen garment worn by the high priest, but as the thummim was attached to it, the entire paraphernalia of divination was often comprised in that single word, ephod. See I. Sam., xxviii. 6, and xxx. 7, 8.

447.

Paganism and Judaism, iv. 197.

448.

Op. cit., I. vi. 5.

449.

Discourse to the Gentiles, p. 146.

450.

De Gener., I, II. iv.

451.

See Cosmos, by Ménage, I., vi., § 101.

452.

Op. cit., I. ii.

453.

“The characters employed on those parchments,” writes De Mirville, “are sometimes hieroglyphics, placed perpendicularly, a kind of lineary tachygraphy (abridged characters), where the image is often reduced to a simple stroke; at other times placed in horizontal lines; then the hieratic or sacred writing, going from right to left as in all Semitic languages; lastly, the characters of the country, used for official documents, mostly contracts, etc., but which since the Ptolemies has been also adopted for the monuments,” v. 81, 82. A copy of the Harris papyrus, translated by Chabas—Papyrus magique—may be studied at the British Museum.