Isis Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Vol. 2, Page 212]]
CHAPTER V.
"Learn to know all, but keep thyself unknown." -- GNOSTIC
MAXIM.
"There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals,
Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten
With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members."
-- XENOPHANES: Clem. Al. Strom., v.
14, § 110.
"TYCHIADES. -- Can you tell me the reason,
Philocles, why most men desire to lye, and delight not only to
speak fictions themselves, but give busie attention to others
who do?
"PHILOCLES. -- There be many reasons, Tychiades,
which compell some to speak lyes, because they see 'tis profitable."
-- A Dialogue of Lucian.
"SPARTAN. -- Is it to thee, or to God, that
I must confess?
"PRIEST. -- To God.
"SPARTAN. -- Then, MAN, stand back!"
-- PLUTARCH: Remarkable Lacedemonian Sayings.
WE will now give attention to some of the most
important Mysteries of the Kabala, and trace their relations
to the philosophical myths of various nations.
In the oldest Oriental Kabala, the Deity is represented
as three circles in one, shrouded in a certain smoke or chaotic
exhalation. In the preface to the Sohar, which transforms
the three primordial circles into THREE HEADS,
over these is described an exhalation or smoke, neither black
nor white, but colorless, and circumscribed within a circle. This
is the unknown Essence.* The origin of the Jewish image may, perhaps,
be traced to Hermes' Pimander, the Egyptian Logos,
who appears within a cloud of a humid nature, with a smoke
escaping from it.** In the Sohar the highest God is,
as we have shown in the preceding chapter, and as in the case
of the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, a pure abstraction, whose
objective existence is denied by the latter. It is Hakama, the
"SUPREME WISDOM, that cannot
be understood by reflection," and that lies within and without
the CRANIUM of LONG
FACE*** (Sephira), the uppermost of the three "Heads."
It is the "boundless and the infinite En-Soph," the
No-Thing.
The "three Heads," superposed above each other, are
evidently taken from the three mystic triangles of the Hindus,
which also superpose each other. The highest "head"
contains the Trinity in Chaos, out of which springs the
manifested trinity. En-Soph, the unrevealed forever, who is
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Kabbala Denudata"; preface to the "Sohar,"
ii., p. 242.
** See Champollion's "Egypte."
*** "Idra Rabba," vi., p. 58.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 213 THE SUPREME ESSENCE NOT THE CREATOR.
boundless and unconditioned, cannot create, and therefore it seems
to us a great error to attribute to him a "creative thought,"
as is commonly done by the interpreters. In every cosmogony this
supreme Essence is passive; if boundless, infinite, and
unconditioned, it can have no thought nor idea. It
acts not as the result of volition, but in obedience to its own
nature, and according to the fatality of the law of which
it is itself the embodiment. Thus, with the Hebrew kabalists,
En-Soph is non-existent 
,
for it is incomprehensible to our finite intellects, and therefore
cannot exist to our minds. Its first emanation was Sephira, the
crown 
. When the time for
an active period had come, then was produced a natural expansion
of this Divine essence from within outwardly, obedient to eternal
and immutable law; and from this eternal and infinite light (which
to us is darkness) was emitted a spiritual substance.* This was
the First Sephiroth, containing in herself the other nine 
Sephiroth, or intelligences. In their totality and unity they
represent the archetypal man, Adam Kadmon, the [[protogonos]],
who in his individuality or unity is yet dual, or bisexual, the
Greek Didumos, for he is the prototype of all humanity.
Thus we obtain three trinities, each contained in a "head."
In the first head, or face (the three-faced Hindu Trimurti), we
find Sephira, the first androgyne, at the apex of the
upper triangle, emitting Hackama, or Wisdom, a masculine
and active potency -- also called Jah, 
-- and Binah, 
, or Intelligence,
a female and passive potency, also represented by the name Jehovah
. These three form the
first trinity or "face" of the Sephiroth. This triad
emanated Hesed, 
, or Mercy,
a masculine active potency, also called El, from which emanated
Geburah 
, or Justice,
also called Eloha, a feminine passive potency; from the union
of these two was produced Tiphereth 
,
Beauty, Clemency, the Spiritual Sun, known by the divine name
Elohim; and the second triad, "face," or "head,"
was formed. These emanating, in their turn, the masculine potency
Netzah, 
, Firmness,
or Jehovah Sabaoth, who issued the feminine passive potency Hod,
, Splendor, or Elohim Sabaoth;
the two produced Jesod, 
,
Foundation, who is the mighty living one El-Chai, thus yielding
the third trinity or "head." The tenth Sephiroth is
rather a duad, and is represented on the diagrams as the lowest
circle. It is Malchuth or Kingdom, 
,
and Shekinah 
, also called
Adonai, and Cherubim among the angelic hosts. The first
"Head" is called the Intellectual world; the second
"Head" is the Sensuous, or the world of Perception,
and the third is the Material or Physical world.
"Before he gave any shape to the universe," says the
Kabala, "before
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta: "Sohar," ii.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 214 ISIS UNVEILED.
he produced any form, he was alone without any form and resemblance
to anything else. Who, then, can comprehend him, how he was before
the creation, since he was formless? Hence, it is forbidden to
represent him by any form, similitude, or even by his sacred name,
by a single letter, or a single point. . . . The Aged of the Aged,
the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, and yet no form. He has
a form whereby the universe is preserved, and yet has no form,
because he cannot be comprehended. When he first assumed a form
(in Sephira, his first emanation), he caused nine splendid lights
to emanate from it."*
And now we will turn to the Hindu esoteric Cosmogony and definition
of "Him who is, and yet is not."
"From him who is,** from this immortal Principle which exists
in our minds but cannot be perceived by the senses, is born Purusha,
the Divine male and female, who became Narayana, or the
Divine Spirit moving on the water."
Swayambhuva, the unknown essence of the Brahmans, is identical
with En-Soph, the unknown essence of the kabalists. As with the
latter, the ineffable name could not be pronounced by the Hindus,
under the penalty of death. In the ancient primitive trinity of
India, that which may be certainly considered as pre-Vedic, the
germ which fecundates the mother-principle, the
mundane egg, or the universal womb, is called Nara, the
Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, which emanates from the primordial
essence. It is like Sephira, the oldest emanation, called the
primordial point, and the White Head, for it
is the point of divine light appearing from within the fathomless
and boundless darkness. In Manu it is "NARA,
or the Spirit of God, which moves on Ayana (Chaos, or place of
motion), and is called NARAYANA, or moving on
the waters."*** In Hermes, the Egyptian, we read: "In
the beginning of the time there was naught in the chaos."
But when the "verbum," issuing from
the void like a "colorless smoke," makes its appearance,
then "this verbum moved on the humid principle."****
And in Genesis we find: "And darkness was upon the
face of the deep (chaos). And the Spirit of God moved upon the
face of the waters." In the Kabala, the emanation
of the primordial passive principle (Sephira), by dividing itself
into two parts, active and passive, emits Chochma-Wisdom and Binah-Jehovah,
and in conjunction with these two acolytes, which complete the
trinity, becomes the Creator of the abstract Universe; the physical
world being the production of later and still more material powers.*****
In the Hindu Cosmogony, Swayambhuva emits
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta: "Sohar," iii., p. 288 a.
** Ego sum qui sum (see "Bible").
*** See "Institutes of Manu," translated by Sir William
Jones.
**** Champollion.
***** We are fully aware that some Christian kabalists term En-Soph
the "Crown," [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 215 ALL WORLD-RELIGIONS FUNDAMENTALLY IDENTICAL.
Nara and Nari, its bisexual emanation, and dividing its parts
into two halves, male and female, these fecundate the mundane
egg, within which develops Brahma, or rather Viradj, the Creator.
"The starting-point of the Egyptian mythology," says
Champollion, "is a triad . . . namely, Kneph, Neith, and
Phtah; and Ammon, the male, the father; Muth, the female and mother;
and Khons, the son."
The ten Sephiroth are copies taken from the ten Pradjapatis created
by Viradj, called the "Lords of all beings," and answering
to the biblical Patriarchs.
Justin Martyr explains some of the "heresies" of the
day, but in a very unsatisfactory manner. He shows, however,
the identity of all the world-religions at their starting-points.
The first beginning opens invariably with the unknown
and passive deity, producing from himself a
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] identify him with Sephira;
call En-Soph "an emanation from God," and make the ten
Sephiroth comprise "En-Soph" as a unity. They also very
erroneously reverse the first two emanations of Sephira -- Chochma
and Binah. The greatest kabalists have always held Chochma (Wisdom)
as a male and active intelligence, Jah ,
and placed it under the No. 2 on the right side of the triangle,
whose apex is the crown, while Binah (Intelligence) or ,
is under No. 3 on the left hand. But the latter, being represented
by its divine name as Jehovah ,
very naturally showed the God of Israel as only a third emanation,
as well as a feminine, passive principle. Hence when the time
came for the Talmudists to transform their multifarious deities
into one living God, they resorted to their Masoretic points and
combined to transform Jehovah into Adonai, "the Lord."
This, under the persecution of the Mediaeval kabalists by the
Church, also forced some of the former to change their female
Sephiroth into male, and vice versa, so as to avoid being
accused of disrespect and blasphemy to Jehovah; whose name, moreover,
by mutual and secret agreement they accepted as a substitute
for Jah, or the mystery name IAO. Alone the initiated
knew of it, but later it gave rise to a great confusion among
the uninitiated. It would be worth while -- were it not
for lack of space -- to quote a few of the many passages in the
oldest Jewish authorities, such as Rabbi Akiba, and the "Sohar,"
which corroborate our assertion. Chochma-Wisdom is a male principle
everywhere, and Binah-Jehovah, a female potency. The writings
of Irenaeus, Theodoret, and Epiphanius, teeming with accusations
against the Gnostics and "Haeresies," repeatedly show
Simon Magus and Cerinthus making of Binah the feminine divine
Spirit which inspired Simon. Binah is Sophia, and the Sophia of
the Gnostics is surely not a male potency, but simply the feminine
Wisdom, or Intelligence. (See any ancient "Arbor Kabbalistica,"
or Tree of the Sephiroth.) Eliphas Levi, in the "Rituel de
la Haute Magie," vol. i., pp. 223 and 231, places Chochma
as No. 2 and as a male Sephiroth on the right hand of the Tree.
In the "Kabala" the three male Sephiroth -- Chochma,
Chesed, Netsah -- are known as the Pillar of Mercy; and the three
feminine on the left, namely, Binah, Geburah, Hod, are named the
Pillar of Judgment; while the four Sephiroth of the centre --
Kether, Tiphereth, Jesod, and Malchuth -- are called the Middle
Pillar. And, as Mackenzie, in the "Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia,"
shows, "there is an analogy in these three pillars to the
three Pillars of Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty in a Craft Lodge
of Masonry, while the En-Soph forms the mysterious blazing star,
or mystic light of the East" (p. 407).
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 216 ISIS UNVEILED.
certain active power or virtue, "Rational," which is
sometimes called WISDOM, sometimes the SON,
very often God, Angel, Lord, and LOGOS.* The
latter is sometimes applied to the very first emanation, but in
several systems it proceeds from the first androgyne or double
ray produced at the beginning by the unseen. Philo depicts this
wisdom as male and female. But though its first manifestation
had a beginning, for it proceeded from Oulom** (Aion,
time), the highest of the AEons, when emitted from the Fathers,
it had remained with him before all creations, for it
is part of him.*** Therefore, Philo Judaeus calls Adam Kadmon
"mind" (the Ennoia of Bythos in the
Gnostic system). "The mind, let it be named Adam."****
Strictly speaking, it is difficult to view the Jewish Book
of Genesis otherwise than as a chip from the trunk of the
mundane tree of universal Cosmogony, rendered in Oriental allegories.
As cycle succeeded cycle, and one nation after another came upon
the world's stage to play its brief part in the majestic drama
of human life, each new people evolved from ancestral traditions
its own religion, giving it a local color, and stamping it with
its individual characteristics. While each of these religions
had its distinguishing traits, by which, were there no other archaic
vestiges, the physical and psychological status of its creators
could be estimated, all preserved a common likeness to one prototype.
This parent cult was none other than the primitive "wisdom-religion."
The Israelitish Scriptures are no exception. Their national
history -- if they can claim any autonomy before the return from
Babylon, and were anything more than migratory septs of Hindu
pariahs, cannot be carried back a day beyond Moses; and if this
ex-Egyptian priest must, from theological necessity, be transformed
into a Hebrew patriarch, we must insist that the Jewish nation
was lifted with that smiling infant out of the bulrushes of Lake
Moeris. Abraham, their alleged father, belongs to the universal
mythology. Most likely he is but one of the numerous aliases of
Zeruan (Saturn), the king of the golden age, who is also
called the old man (emblem of time).***** It is now demonstrated
by Assyriologists that in the old Chaldean books Abraham is called
Zeru-an, or Zerb-an -- meaning one very rich in gold and silver,
and a mighty prince.****** He is also called Zarouan and Zarman
-- a decrepit old man.*******
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Justin: "Cum. Trypho," p. 284.
** A division indicative of time.
*** Sanchoniathon calls time the oldest AEon, Protogonos,
the "first-born."
**** Philo Judaeus: "Cain and his Birth," p. xvii.
***** Azrael, angel of death, is also Israel. Ab-ram
means father of elevation, high-placed father, for Saturn is the
highest or outmost planet.
****** See Genesis xiii. 2.
******* Saturn is generally represented as a very old man, with
a sickle in his hand.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 217 THE BABYLONIAN LEGEND OF XISUTHRUS.
The ancient Babylonian legend is that Xisuthrus (Hasisadra of
the Tablets, or Xisuthrus) sailed with his ark to Armenia, and
his son Sim became supreme king. Pliny says that Sim was called
Zeruan; and Sim is Shem. In Hebrew, his name writes 
,
Shem -- a sign. Assyria is held by the ethnologists to
be the land of Shem, and Egypt called that of Ham, Shem, in the
tenth chapter of Genesis is made the father of all the
children of Eber, of Elam (Oulam or Eilam), and Ashur (Assur or
Assyria). The "nephelim," or fallen
men, Gebers, mighty men spoken of in Genesis (vi.
4), come from Oulam, "men of Shem."
Even Ophir, which is evidently to be sought for in the India
of the days of Hiram, is made a descendant of Shem. The records
are purposely mixed up to make them fit into the frame of the
Mosaic Bible. But Genesis, from its first verse
down to the last, has naught to do with the "chosen people";
it belongs to the world's history. Its appropriation by the Jewish
authors in the days of the so-called restoration of the
destroyed books of the Israelites, by Ezra, proves nothing, and,
until now, has been self-propped on an alleged divine revelation.
It is simply a compilation of the universal legends of the universal
humanity. Bunsen says that in the "Chaldean tribe immediately
connected with Abraham, we find reminiscences of dates disfigured
and misunderstood, as genealogies of single men, or indications
of epochs. The Abrahamic recollections go back at least three
millennia beyond the grandfather of Jacob."*
Alexander Polyhistor says that Abraham was born at Kamarina or
Uria, a city of soothsayers, and invented astronomy.
Josephus claims the same for Terah, Abraham's father. The
tower of Babel was built as much by the direct descendants of
Shem as by those of the "accursed" Ham and Canaan, for
the people in those days were "one," and the "whole
earth was of one language"; and Babel was simply an astrological
tower, and its builders were astrologers and adepts of the primitive
Wisdom-Religion, or, again, what we term Secret Doctrine.
The Berosian Sibyl says: Before the Tower, Zeru-an, Titan, and
Yapetosthe governed the earth, Zeru-an wished to be supreme, but
his two brothers resisted, when their sister, Astlik, intervened
and appeased them. It was agreed that Zeru-an should rule, but
his male children should be put to death; and strong Titans were
appointed to carry this into effect.
Sar (circle, saros) is the Babylonian god of the sky. He is also
Assaros or Asshur (the son of Shem), and Zero -- Zero-ana, the
chakkra, or wheel, boundless time. Hence, as the first step taken
by Zoroaster, while founding his new religion, was to change the
most sacred deities
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Bunsen: "Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol.
v., p. 85.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 218 ISIS UNVEILED.
of the Sanscrit Veda into names of evil spirits, in his
Zend Scriptures, and even to reject a number of them,
we find no traces in the Avesta of Chakkra --
the symbolic circle of the sky.
Elam, another of the sons of Shem, is Oulam 
and refers to an order or cycle of events. In Ecclesiastes
iii. 11, it is termed "world." In Ezekiel
xxvi. 20, "of old time." In Genesis
iii. 22, the word stands as "forever"; and
in chapter ix. 16, "eternal." Finally, the term is completely
defined in Genesis vi. 4, in the following words: "There
were nephelim (giants, fallen men, or Titans) on the
earth." The word is synonymous with AEon, [[aion]].
In Proverbs viii. 23, it reads: "I was
effused from Oulam, from Ras" (wisdom).
By this sentence, the wise king-kabalist refers to one of the
mysteries of the human spirit -- the immortal crown of the man-trinity.
While it ought to read as above, and be interpreted kabalistically
to mean that the I (or my eternal, immortal Ego),
the spiritual entity, was effused from the boundless and nameless
eternity, through the creative wisdom of the unknown God, it reads
in the canonical translation: "The Lord possessed me in the
beginning of his way, before his works of old"! which is
unintelligible nonsense, without the kabalistic interpretation.
When Solomon is made to say that I was "from the
beginning . . . while, as yet, he (the Supreme Deity) had not
made the earth nor the highest part of the dust of the world .
. . I was there," and "when he appointed the foundations
of the earth . . . then I was by him, as one brought up with
him," what can the kabalist mean by the "I,"
but his own divine spirit, a drop effused from that eternal fountain
of light and wisdom -- the universal spirit of the Deity?
The thread of glory emitted by En-Soph from the highest of the
three kabalistic heads, through which "all things shine with
light," the thread which makes its exit through Adam Primus,
is the individual spirit of every man. "I was daily
his (En-Soph's) delight, rejoicing always before him . . . and
my delights were with the sons of men," adds
Solomon, in the same chapter of the Proverbs. The immortal
spirit delights in the sons of men, who, without this
spirit, are but dualities (physical body and astral soul, or that
life-principle which animates even the lowest of the
animal kingdom). But, we have seen that the doctrine teaches that
this spirit cannot unite itself with that man in whom matter and
the grossest propensities of his animal soul will be ever crowding
it out. Therefore, Solomon, who is made to speak under the inspiration
of his own spirit, that possesses him for the time being, utters
the following words of wisdom: "Hearken unto me, my son"
(the dual man), "blessed are they who keep my ways. . . .
Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates.
. . . For whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obtain
favor of the Lord. . . . But he that
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 219 MEANING OF THE GNOSTIC AEON.
sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul . .
. and loves death" (Proverbs vii.
1-36).
This chapter, as interpreted, is made by some theologians, like
everything else, to apply to Christ, the "Son of God,"
who states repeatedly, that he who follows him obtains eternal
life, and conquers death. But even in its distorted translation
it can be demonstrated that it referred to anything but to the
alleged Saviour. Were we to accept it in this sense, then, the
Christian theology would have to return, nolens volens, to
Averroism and Buddhism; to the doctrine of emanation, in short;
for Solomon says: "I was effused" from Oulam and Rasit,
both of which are a part of the Deity; and thus Christ would not
be as their doctrine claims, God himself, but only an emanation
of Him, like the Christos of the Gnostics. Hence, the meaning
of the personified Gnostic AEon, the word signifying cycles or
determined periods in the eternity and at the same time, representing
a hierarchy of celestial beings -- spirits. Thus Christ is sometimes
termed the "Eternal AEon." But the word "eternal"
is erroneous in relation to the AEons. Eternal is that which has
neither beginning nor end; but the "Emanations" or AEons,
although having lived as absorbed in the divine essence from the
eternity, when once individually emanated, must be said to have
a beginning. They may be therefore endless in this spiritual
life, never eternal.
These endless emanations of the one First Cause, all of which
were gradually transformed by the popular fancy into distinct
gods, spirits, angels, and demons, were so little considered immortal,
that all were assigned a limited existence. And this belief, common
to all the peoples of antiquity, to the Chaldean Magi as well
as to the Egyptians and even in our day held by the Brahmanists
and Buddhists, most triumphantly evidences the monotheism of the
ancient religious systems. This doctrine calls the life-period
of all the inferior divinities, "one day of Parabrahma."
After a cycle of fourteen milliards, three hundred and twenty-millions
of human years -- the tradition says -- the trinity itself, with
all the lesser divinities, will be annihilated, together with
the universe, and cease to exist. Then another universe will gradually
emerge from the pralaya (dissolution), and men on earth will be
enabled to comprehend SWAYAMBHUVA as he is. Alone,
this primal cause will exist forever, in all his glory, filling
the infinite space. What better proof could be adduced of the
deep reverential feeling with which the "heathen" regard
the one Supreme eternal cause of all things visible and invisible.
This is again the source from which the ancient kabalists derived
identical doctrines. If the Christians understood Genesis
in their own way, and, if accepting the texts literally,
they enforced upon the uneducated masses the belief in a creation
of our world out of nothing; and
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 220 ISIS UNVEILED.
moreover assigned to it a beginning, it is surely not
the Tanaim, the sole expounders of the hidden meaning contained
in the Bible, who are to be blamed. No more than any
other philosophers had they ever believed either in spontaneous,
limited, or ex nihilo creations. The Kabala has
survived to show that their philosophy was precisely that of the
modern Nepal Buddhists, the Svabhavikas. They believed in
the eternity and the indestructibility of matter, and hence
in many prior creations and destructions of worlds, before our
own. "There were old worlds which perished."* "From
this we see that the Holy One, blessed be His name, had successively
created and destroyed sundry worlds, before he created the present
world; and when he created this world he said: 'This pleases me;
the previous ones did not please me.' "** Moreover, they
believed, again like the Svabhavikas, now termed Atheists, that
every thing proceeds (is created) from its own nature and that
once that the first impulse is given by that Creative Force inherent
in the "Self-created substance," or Sephira, everything
evolves out of itself, following its pattern, the more spiritual
prototype which precedes it in the scale of infinite creation.
"The indivisible point which has no limit, and cannot be
comprehended (for it is absolute), expanded from within, and formed
a brightness which served as a garment (a veil) to the indivisible
points. . . . It, too, expanded from within. . . . Thus, everything
originated through a constant upheaving agitation, and thus
finally the world originated."***
In the later Zoroastrian books, after that Darius had restored
both the worship of Ormazd and added to it the purer Magianism
of the primitive Secret Wisdom -- 
,
of which, as the inscription tells us, he was himself a hierophant,
we see again reappearing the Zeru-ana, or boundless time, represented
by the Brahmans in the chakkra, or a circle; that we see
figuring on the uplifted finger of the principal deities. Further
on, we will show the relation in which it stands to the Pythagorean,
mystical numbers -- the first and the last -- which is a zero
(0), and to the greatest of the Mystery-Gods IAO.
The identity of this symbol alone, in all the old religions, is
sufficient to show their common descent from one primitive Faith.****
This term of "boundless time," which can be applied
but to the ONE who has neither beginning nor end, is
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta: "Sohar," iii., p. 292 b.
** Bereshith Rabba: "Parsha," ix.
*** "Sohar," i., p. 20 a.
**** "The Sanscrit s," says Max Muller, "is
represented by the z and h. Thus the geographical
name 'hapta hendu,' which occurs in the 'Avesta,' becomes intelligible,
if we retranslate the z and h into the Sanscrit
s. For 'Sapta Sindhu,' or the seven rivers, is the old
Vaidic name for India itself" ("Chips," vol. i.,
p. 81). The "Avesta" is the spirit of the "Vedas"
-- the esoteric meaning made partially known.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 221 ZOROASTRIAN COSMOGONY AND ITS DERIVATIVES.
called by the Zoroastrians Zeruana-Akarene, because he has always
existed. "His glory," they say, is too exalted, his
light too resplendent for either human intellect or mortal eyes
to grasp and see. His primal emanation is eternal light which,
from having been previously concealed in darkness, was called
out to manifest itself, and thus was formed Ormazd, "the
King of Life." He is the first-born of boundless time, but
like his own antitype, or preexisting spiritual idea, has lived
within primitive darkness from all eternity. His Logos created
the pure intellectual world. After the lapse of three grand cycles*
he created the material world in six periods. The six Amshaspands,
or primitive spiritual men, whom Ormazd created in his
own image, are the mediators between this world and himself. Mithras
is an emanation of the Logos and the chief of the twenty-eight
izeds, who are the tutelary angels over the spiritual
portion of mankind -- the souls of men. The Ferouers are
infinite in number. They are the ideas or rather the ideal conceptions
of things which formed themselves in the mind of Ormazd or Ahuramazda
before he willed them to assume a concrete form. They are what
Aristotle terms "privations" of forms and substances.
The religion of Zarathustra, as he is always called in the Avesta,
is one from which the ancient Jews have the most borrowed.
In one of the Yashts, Ahuramazda, the Supreme, gives to the seer
as one of his sacred names, Ahmi, "I am"; and
in another place, ahmi yat ahmi, "I am that I am,"
as Jehovah is alleged to have given it to Moses.
This Cosmogony, adopted with a change of names in the Rabbinical
Kabala, found its way, later, with some additional speculations
of Manes, the half-Magus, half-Platonist, into the great body
of Gnosticism. The real doctrines of the Basilideans, Valentinians,
and the Marcionites cannot be correctly ascertained in the prejudiced
and calumnious writings of the Fathers of the Church; but rather
in what remains of the works of the Bardesanesians, known as the
Nazarenes. It is next to impossible, now that all their manuscripts
and books are destroyed, to assign to any of these sects its due
part in dissenting views. But there are a few men still living
who have preserved books and direct traditions about the Ophites,
although they care little to impart them to the world. Among the
unknown sects of Mount Lebanon and Palestine the truth has been
concealed for more than a thousand years. And their diagram
of the Ophite scheme differs with the description of it given
by Origen and hence with the diagram of Matter.**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* What is generally understood in the "Avesta" system
as a thousand years, means, in the esoteric doctrine,
a cycle of a duration known but to the initiates and which has
an allegorical sense.
** Matter: "Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme," pl. x.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 222 ISIS UNVEILED.
The kabalistic trinity is one of the models of the Christian one.
"The ANCIENT whose name be sanctified, is with three heads,
but which make only one."* Tria capita exsculpa sunt,
unum intra alterum, et alterum supra alterum. "Three
heads are inserted in one another, and one over the other. The
first head is the Concealed Wisdom (Sapientia Abscondita).
Under this head is the ANCIENT (Pythagorean Monad),
the most hidden of mysteries; a head which is no head (caput
quod non est caput); no one can know what that is in this
head. No intellect is able to comprehend this wisdom.** This Senior
Sanctissimus is surrounded by the three heads. He is the
eternal LIGHT of the wisdom; and the wisdom is the source from
which all the manifestations have begun. These three heads, included
in ONE HEAD (which is no head); and these three are bent down
(overshadow) SHORT-FACE (the son) and through them all things
shine with light."*** "En-Soph emits a thread from El
or Al (the highest God of the Trinity), and the light
follows the thread and enters, and passing through makes its exit
through Adam Primus (Kadmon), who is concealed until
the plan for arranging (statum dispositionis) is
ready; it threads through him from his head to his feet;
and in him (in the concealed Adam) is the figure of A MAN."****
"Whoso wishes to have an insight into the sacred unity, let
him consider a flame rising from a burning coal or a burning lamp.
He will see first a two-fold light -- a bright white, and a black
or blue light; the white light is above, and ascends
in a direct light, while the blue, or dark light, is below,
and seems as the chair of the former, yet both are so intimately
connected together that they constitute only one flame. The seat,
however, formed by the blue or dark light, is again connected
with the burning matter which is under it again. The
white light never changes its color, it always remains white;
but various shades are observed in the lower light, whilst the
lowest light, moreover, takes two directions; above, it
is connected with the white light, and below with the
burning matter. Now, this is constantly consuming itself, and
perpetually ascends to the upper light, and thus everything merges
into a single unity."*****
Such were the ancient ideas of the trinity in the unity, as an
abstraction. Man, who is the microcosmos of the macrocosmos, or
of the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Idra Suta: "Sohar," iii., p. 288.
** Ibid., sect. ii.
*** Ibid., vii.
**** Jam vero quoniam hoc in loco recondita est illa plane non
utuntur, et tantum de parte lucis ejus particepant quae demittitur
et ingreditur intra filum Ain Soph protensum e Persona 
(Al-God) deorum: intratque et perrumpit et transit per
Adam primum occultum usque in statum dispositionis transitque
per eum a capite usque ad pedes ejus: et in eo est figura
hominis ("Kabbala Denudata," ii., p. 246).
***** "Sohar," i., p. 51 a.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 223 THE KABALISTIC SHEKINAH.
archetypal heavenly man, Adam Kadmon, is likewise a trinity; for
he is body, soul, and spirit.
"All that is created by the 'Ancient of the Ancients' can
live and exist only by a male and a female," says the Sohar.*
He alone, to whom no one can say, "Thou," for he is
the spirit of the WHITE-HEAD
in whom the "THREE HEADS"
are united, is uncreated. Out of the subtile fire, on one side
of the White Head, and of the "subtile air," on the
other, emanates Shekinah, his veil (the femininized Holy Ghost).
"This air," says Idra Rabba, "is the most occult
(occultissimus) attribute of the Ancient of the Days.** The Ancienter
of the Ancienter is the Concealed of the Concealed.***
All things are Himself, and Himself is concealed on every way.****
The cranium of the WHITE-HEAD
has no beginning, but its end has a shining reflection and a roundness
which is our universe."
"They regard," says Klenker, "the first-born as
man and wife, in so far as his light includes in itself all other
lights, and in so far as his spirit of life or breath of life
includes all other life spirits in itself."***** The kabalistic
Shekinah answers to the Ophite Sophia. Properly speaking, Adam
Kadmon is the Bythos, but in this emanation-system, where everything
is calculated to perplex and place an obstacle to inquiry, he
is the Source of Light, the first "primitive man,"
and at the same time Ennoia, the Thought of Bythos, the
Depth, for he is Pimander.
The Gnostics, as well as the Nazarenes, allegorizing on the personification,
said that the First and Second man loved the
beauty of Sophia, (Sephira) the first woman, and thus the Father
and the Son fecundated the heavenly "Woman" and, from
primal darkness procreated the visible light (Sephira is the Invisible,
or Spiritual Light), "whom they called the ANOINTED
CHRISTUM, or King Messiah."****** This Christus
is the Adam of Dust before his fall, with the spirit
of the Adonai, his Father, and Shekinah Adonai, his mother, upon
him; for Adam Primus is Adon, Adonai, or Adonis. The primal existence
manifests itself by its wisdom, and produces the Intelligible
LOGOS (all visible creation). This wisdom
was venerated by the Ophites under the form of a serpent. So far
we see that the first and second life are the two Adams, or the
first and the second man. In the former lies Eva, or
the yet unborn spiritual Eve, and she is within Adam Primus,
for she is a part of himself, who is androgyne. The Eva of
dust, she who will be called in
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Book iii., p. 290.
** "Idra Rabba," §§ 541, 542.
*** Ibid., iii., p. 36.
**** Ibid., p. 171.
***** "Nat. und Urspr. d. Emanationslehre b. d. Kabbalisten,"
p. ii.
****** "Irenaeus," p. 637.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 224 ISIS UNVEILED.
Genesis "the mother of all that live," is within
Adam the Second. And now, from the moment of its first manifestation,
the LORD MANO, the Unintelligible
Wisdom, disappears from the scene of action. It will manifest
itself only as Shekinah, the GRACE; for the CORONA
is "the innermost Light of all Lights," and hence it
is darkness's own substance.*
In the Kabala, Shekinah is the ninth emanation of Sephira,
which contains the whole of the ten Sephiroth within herself.
She belongs to the third triad and is produced together with Malchuth
or "Kingdom," of which she is the female counterpart.
Otherwise she is held to be higher than any of these; for she
is the "Divine Glory," the "veil," or "garment,"
of En-Soph. The Jews, whenever she is mentioned in the Targum,
say that she is the glory of Jehovah, which dwelt in the
tabernacle, manifesting herself like a visible cloud; the "Glory"
rested over the Mercy-Seat in the Sanctum Sanctorum.
In the Nazarene or Bardesanian System, which may be termed the
Kabala within the Kabala, the Ancient of Days -- Antiquus
Altus, who is the Father of the Demiurgus of the universe,
is called the Third Life, or Abatur; and he
is the Father of Fetahil, who is the architect of the visible
universe, which he calls into existence by the powers of his genii,
at the order of the "Greatest"; the Abatur answering
to the "Father" of Jesus in the later Christian theology.
These two superior Lives then, are the crown within which
dwells the greatest Ferho. "Before any creature
came into existence the Lord Ferho existed."** This one is
the First Life, formless and invisible; in whom the living Spirit
of LIFE exists, the Highest GRACE.
The two are ONE from eternity, for they are the Light and the
CAUSE of the Light. Therefore, they answer to the kabalistic concealed
wisdom, and to the concealed Shekinah -- the Holy Ghost.
"This light, which is manifested, is the garment of the Heavenly
Concealed," says Idra Suta. And the "heavenly man"
is the superior Adam. "No one knows his paths except Macroprosopus"
(Long-face) -- the Superior active god.*** "Not
as I am written will I be read; in this world my name
will be written Jehovah and read Adonai,"**** say the Rabbins,
very correctly. Adonai is the Adam Kadmon; he is FATHER
and MOTHER both. By this double mediatorship
the Spirit of the "Ancient of the Ancient" descends
upon the Microprosopus (Short-face) or the Adam of Eden.
And the "Lord God breathes into his nostrils the breath of
life."
When the woman separates herself from her androgyne, and becomes
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Idra Suta," ix.; "Kabbala Denudata"; see
Pythagoras: "Monad."
** "Codex Nazaraeus," i., p. 145.
*** "Idra Rabba," viii., pp. 107-109.
**** "Auszuge aus dem Sohar," p. 11.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 225 GNOSTIC, OPHITE, AND NAZARENE IDEAS.
a distinct individuality, the first story is repeated over again.
Both the Father and Son, the two Adams, love her beauty; and then
follows the allegory of the temptation and fall. It is in the
Kabala, as in the Ophite system, in which both the Ophis
and the Ophiomorphos are emanations emblematized as serpents,
the former representing Eternity, Wisdom, and Spirit (as in the
Chaldean Magism of Aspic-worship and Wisdom-Doctrine in the olden
times), and the latter Cunning, Envy, and Matter. Both spirit
and matter are serpents; and Adam Kadmon becomes the Ophis who
tempts himself -- man and woman -- to taste of the "Tree
of Good and Evil," in order to teach them the mysteries of
spiritual wisdom. Light tempts Darkness, and Darkness attracts
Light, for Darkness is matter, and "the Highest
Light shines not in its Tenebrae." With
knowledge comes the temptation of the Ophiomorphos, and he prevails.
The dualism of every existing religion is shown forth by the fall.
"I have gotten a man from the Lord," exclaims
Eve, when the Dualism, Cain and Abel -- evil and good -- is born.
"And the Adam knew Hua, his woman (astu), and she
became pregnant and bore Kin, and she said: 
:
Kiniti ais Yava. -- I have gained or obtained a husband,
even Yava -- Is, Ais -- man." "Cum arbore
peccati Deus creavit seculum."
And now we will compare this system with that of the Jewish Gnostics
-- the Nazarenes, as well as with other philosophies.
The ISH AMON, the pleroma, or
the boundless circle within which lie "all forms," is
the THOUGHT of the power divine; it works in SILENCE, and suddenly
light is begotten by darkness; it is called the SECOND life; and
this one produces, or generates the THIRD. This third light is
"the FATHER of all things that live," as EUA
is the "mother of all that live." He is the Creator
who calls inert matter into life, through his vivifying spirit,
and, therefore, is called the ancient of the world. Abatur is
the Father who creates the first Adam, who creates in his turn
the second. Abatur opens a gate and walks to the dark water (chaos),
and looking down into it, the darkness reflects the image of Himself
. . . and lo! a SON is formed -- the Logos or
Demiurge; Fetahil, who is the builder of the material world,
is called into existence. According to the Gnostic dogma, this
was the Metatron, the Archangel Gabriel, or messenger
of life; or, as the biblical allegory has it, the androgynous
Adam-Kadmon again, the SON, who, with his Father's spirit, produces
the ANOINTED, or Adam before his fall.
When Swayambhuva, the "Lord who exists through himself,"
feels impelled to manifest himself, he is thus described in the
Hindu sacred books.
Having been impelled to produce various beings from his own divine
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 226 ISIS UNVEILED.
substance, he first manifested the waters which developed within
themselves a productive seed.
The seed became a germ bright as gold, blazing like the luminary
with a thousand beams; and in that egg he was born himself, in
the form of BRAHMA, the great principle of all
the beings (Manu, book i., slokas 8, 9).
The Egyptian Kneph, or Chnuphis, Divine Wisdom, represented by
a serpent, produces an egg from his mouth, from which issues Phtha.
In this case Phtha represents the universal germ, as well as Brahma,
who is of the neuter gender, when the final a has a diaresis
on it;* otherwise it becomes simply one of the names of the Deity.
The former was the model of the THREE LIVES
of the Nazarenes, as that of the kabalistic "Faces,"
PHARAZUPHA, which, in its turn, furnished the
model for the Christian Trinity of Irenaeus and his followers.
The egg was the primitive matter which served as a material for
the building of the visible universe; it contained, as well as
the Gnostic Pleroma, the kabalistic Shekinah, the man and wife,
the spirit and life, "whose light includes all other lights"
or life-spirits. This first manifestation was symbolized by a
serpent, which is at first divine wisdom, but, falling
into generation, becomes polluted. Phtha is the heavenly
man, the Egyptian Adam-Kadmon, or Christ, who, in conjunction
with the female Holy Ghost, the ZOE, produces the five
elements, air, water, fire, earth, and ether; the latter being
a servile copy from the Buddhist A'd, and his five Dhyana Buddhas,
as we have shown in the preceding chapter. The Hindu Swayambhuva-Nara,
develops from himself the mother-principle, enclosed
within his own divine essence -- Nari, the immortal Virgin, who,
when impregnated by his spirit, becomes Tanmatra, the mother of
the five elements -- air, water, fire, earth, and ether. Thus
may be shown how from the Hindu cosmogony all others proceed.
Knorr von Rosenroth, busying himself with the interpretation of
the Kabala, argues that, "In this first state (of
secret wisdom), the infinite God Himself can be understood as
'Father' (of the new covenant). But the Light being let
down by the Infinite through a canal into the 'primal Adam,' or
Messiah, and joined with him, can be applied to the name
SON. And the influx emitted down from him (the Son) to the lower
parts (of the universe), can be applied to the character of the
Holy Ghost."** Sophia-Achamoth, the half-spiritual, half-material
LIFE, which vivifies the inert matter in the
depths of chaos, is the Holy Ghost of the Gnostics, and the Spiritus
(female) of the Nazarenes. She is -- be it re-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* He is the universal and spiritual germ of all things.
** "Ad. Kabb. Chr.," p. 6.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 227 COMPARISON WITH HINDU MYTHS.
membered -- the sister of Christos, the perfect
emanation, and both are children or emanations of Sophia, the
purely spiritual and intellectual daughter of Bythos, the Depth.
For the elder Sophia is Shekinah, the Face of God, "God's
Shekinah, which is his image."*
"The Son Zeus-Belus, or Sol-Mithra is an image of
the Father, an emanation from the Supreme Light,"
says Movers. "He passed for Creator."**
"Philosophers say the first air is anima mundi. But
the garment (Shekinah) is higher than the first air, since it
is joined closer to the En-Soph, the Boundless."*** Thus
Sophia is Shekinah, and Sophia-Achamoth the anima
mundi, the astral light of the kabalists, which contains
the spiritual and material germs of all that is. For
the Sophia-Achamoth, like Eve, of whom she is the prototype,
is "the mother of all that live."
There are three trinities in the Nazarene system as well as in
the Hindu philosophy of the ante and early Vedic period. While
we see the few translators of the Kabala, the Nazarene
Codex, and other abstruse works, hopelessly floundering
amid the interminable pantheon of names, unable to agree as to
a system in which to classify them, for the one hypothesis contradicts
and overturns the other, we can but wonder at all this trouble,
which could be so easily overcome. But even now, when the translation,
and even the perusal of the ancient Sanscrit has become so easy
as a point of comparison, they would never think it possible that
every philosophy -- whether Semitic, Hamitic, or Turanian, as
they call it, has its key in the Hindu sacred works. Still facts
are there, and facts are not easily destroyed. Thus, while we
find the Hindu trimurti triply manifested as
Nara (or Para-Pouroucha), Agni, Brahma, the Father,
Nari (Mariama), Vaya, Vishnu, the Mother,
Viradj (Brahma), Surya, Siva, the Son,
and the Egyptian trinity as follows:
Kneph (or Amon), Osiris, Ra (Horus), the Father,
Maut (or Mut), Isis, Isis, the Mother,
Khons, Horus, Malouli, the Son;****
the Nazarene System runs,
Ferho (Ish-Amon), Mano, Abatur, the Father,
Chaos (dark water), Spiritus (female), Netubto, the Mother,
Fetahil, Ledhaio, Lord Jordan, the Son.
The first is the concealed or non-manifested trinity -- a pure
abstraction. The other the active or the one revealed in the results
of creation,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Sohar," p. 93.
** "Movers," p. 265.
*** "Kabbala Denudata," vol. ii., p. 236.
**** Champollion, Junior: "Lettres."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 228 ISIS UNVEILED.
proceeding out of the former -- its spiritual prototype. The third
is the mutilated image of both the others, crystallized in the
form of human dogmas, which vary according to the exuberance of
the national materialistic fancy.
The Supreme Lord of splendor and of light, luminous and refulgent,
before which no other existed, is called Corona (the crown); Lord
Ferho, the unrevealed life which existed in the former from eternity;
and Lord Jordan -- the spirit, the living water of grace.* He
is the one through whom alone we can be saved; and thus he answers
to the Shekinah, the spiritual garment of En-Soph, or the Holy
Ghost. These three constitute the trinity abscondito. The
second trinity is composed of the three lives. The first is the
similitude of Lord Ferho, through whom he has proceeded forth;
and the second Ferho is the King of Light -- MANO (Rex
Lucis). He is the heavenly life and light, and older
than the Architect of heaven and earth.** The second life is Ish
Amon (Pleroma), the vase of election, containing the visible
thought of the Iordanus Maximus -- the type (or
its intelligible reflection), the prototype of the living water,
who is the "spiritual Jordan."*** Third life, which
is produced by the other two, is ABATUR (Ab,
the Parent or Father). This is the mysterious and decrepit "Aged
of the Aged," the "Ancient Senem sui obtegentem
et grandaevum mundi." This latter third Life is the
Father of the Demiurge Fetahil, the Creator of the world, whom
the Ophites call Ilda-Baoth,**** though Fetahil is the only-begotten
one, the reflection of the Father, Abatur, who begets him
by looking into the "dark water"; ***** but the Lord
Mano, "the Lord of loftiness, the Lord of all genii,"
is higher than the Father, in this kabalistic Codex -- one
is purely spiritual, the other material. So, for instance, while
Abatur's "only begotten" one is the genius Fetahil,
the Creator of the physical world, Lord Mano, the "Lord of
Celsitude," who is the son of Him, who is "the Father
of all who preach the Gospel," produces also an "only-begotten"
one, the Lord Lehdaio, "a just Lord." He is the Christos,
the anointed, who pours out the "grace" of the Invisible
Jordan, the Spirit of the Highest Crown.
In the Arcanum, "in the assembly of splendor, lighted by
MANO, to whom the scintillas of splendor owe their origin,"
the genii who live in light "rose, they went to the visible
Jordan, and flowing water . . . they assembled for a counsel .
. . and called forth the Only-Begotten Son
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. ii., pp. 47-57.
** Ibid., vol. i., p. 145.
*** Ibid., vol. ii., p. 211.
**** Ibid., vol. i., p. 308.
***** Sophia-Achamoth also begets her son Ilda-Baoth, the Demiurge,
by looking into chaos or matter, and by coming in contact
with it.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 229 AN APOCALYPTIC ALLEGORY EXPLAINED.
of an imperishable image, and who cannot be conceived by reflection,
Lebdaio, the just Lord, and sprung from Lebdaio, the just lord,
whom the life had produced by his word."*
Mano is the chief of the seven AEons, who are Mano (Rex Lucis),
Aiar Zivo, Ignis Vivus, Lux, Vita, Aqua Viva (the living
water of baptism, the genius of the Jordan), and Ipsa Vita, the
chief of the six genii, which form with him the mystic seven.
The Nazarene Mano is simply the copy of the Hindu first Manu
-- the emanation of Manu Swayambhuva -- from whom evolve in succession
the six other Manus, types of the subsequent races of men. We
find them all represented by the apostle-kabalist John in the
"seven lamps of fire" burning before the throne, which
are the seven spirits of God,"** and in the seven angels
bearing the seven vials. Again in Fetahil we recognize the original
of the Christian doctrine.
In the Revelation of Joannes Theologos it is said: "I
turned and saw in the midst of the seven candlesticks
one like unto the Son of man . . . his head and his hairs were
white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame
of fire . . . and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned
in a furnace" (i. 13, 14, 15). John here repeats,
as is well known, the words of Daniel and Ezekiel. "The Ancient
of Days . . . whose hair was white as pure wool . . . etc."
And "the appearance of a man . . . above the throne
. . . and the appearance of fire, and it had brightness round
about."*** The fire being "the glory of the Lord."
Fetahil is son of the man, the Third Life, and his upper part
is represented as white as snow, while standing near the throne
of the living fire he has the appearance of a flame.
All these "apocalyptic" visions are based on the description
of the "white head" of the Sohar, in whom the kabalistic
trinity is united. The white head, "which conceals in its
cranium the spirit," and which is environed by subtile fire.
The "appearance of a man" is that of Adam Kadmon, through
which passes the thread of light represented by the fire. Fetahil
is the Vir Novissimus (the newest man), the son of Abatur,****
the latter being the "man," or the third life,*****
now the third personage of the trinity. John sees "one
like unto the son of man," holding in his right hand seven
stars, and standing between "seven golden candlesticks"
(Revelation i.). Fetahil takes his "stand on high,"
according to the will of his father, "the highest AEon who
has seven sceptres," and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. ii., p. 109. See "Sod,
the Son of the Man," for translation.
** Revelation iv. 5.
*** Ezekiel.
**** "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. ii., p. 127.
***** The first androgyne duad being considered a unit in
all the secret computations, is, therefore, the Holy Ghost.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 230 ISIS UNVEILED.
seven genii, who astronomically represent the seven planets or
stars. He stands "shining in the garment of the Lord's, resplendent
by the agency of the genii."* He is the Son of his Father,
Life, and his mother, Spirit, or Light.** The Logos is represented
in the Gospel according to John as one in whom was "Life,
and the life was the light of men" (i. 4). Fetahil
is the Demiurge, and his father created the visible universe of
matter through him.*** In the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians
(iii. 9), God is said to have "created all things
by Jesus." In the Codex the Parent-LIFE
says: "Arise, go, our son first-begotten, ordained for all
creatures."**** "As the living father hath sent me,"
says Christ, "God sent his only-begotten son that we might
live."***** Finally, having performed his work on earth,
Fetahil reascends to his father Abatur. "Et qui,
relicto quem procreavit mundo, ad Abatur suum patrem contendit,"******
"My father sent me . . . I go to the Father," repeats
Jesus.
Laying aside the theological disputes of Christianity which try
to blend together the Jewish Creator of the first chapter of Genesis
with the "Father" of the New Testament, Jesus
states repeatedly of his Father that "He is in secret."
Surely he would not have so termed the ever-present "Lord
God" of the Mosaic books, who showed Himself to Moses and
the Patriarchs, and finally allowed all the elders of Israel to
look on Himself.******* When Jesus is made to speak of the temple
at Jerusalem as of his "Father's house," he does not
mean the physical building, which he maintains he can destroy
and then again rebuild in three days, but of the temple of Solomon;
the wise kabalist, who indicates in his Proverbs that
every man is the temple of God, or of his own divine spirit. This
term of the "Father who is in secret," we find used
as much in the Kabala as in the Codex Nazaraeus,
and elsewhere. No one has ever seen the wisdom concealed
in the "Cranium," and no one has beheld the "Depth"
(Bythos). Simon, the Magician, preached "one Father
unknown to all."********
We can trace this appellation of a "secret" God still
farther back. In the Kabala the "Son" of the
concealed Father who dwells in light and glory, is the
"Anointed," the Seir-Anpin, who unites in himself
all the Sephiroth, he is Christos, or the Heavenly man. It is
through Christ that the Pneuma, or the Holy Ghost, creates "all
things"
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. iii., p. 59.
** Ibid., vol. i., p. 285.
*** Ibid., vol. i., p. 309,
**** Ibid., vol. i., p. 287. See "Sod, the Son of the Man,"
p. 101.
***** John iv. 9.
****** "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. ii., p. 123.
******* "Then went up Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and
seventy of the elders of Israel. And they saw the God of Israel,"
Exodus xxiv. 9, 10.
******** Irenaeus: "Clementine Homilies," I., xxii.,
p. 118.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 231 WHAT ARE THE CHERUBIM AND SERAPHIM?
(Ephesians iii. 9), and produces the four elements, air,
water, fire, and earth. This assertion is unquestionable, for
we find Irenaeus basing on this fact his best argument for the
necessity of there being four gospels. There can be neither more
nor fewer than four -- he argues. "For as there are four
quarters of the world, and four general winds [[(Katholica
Pneumata)]] . . . it is right that she (the Church) should
have four pillars. From which it is manifest that the Word, the
maker of all, he who sitteth upon the Cherubim .
. . as David says, supplicating his advent, 'Thou that sittest
between the Cherubim, shine forth!' For the Cherubim also are
four-faced and their faces are symbols of the working of
the Son of God."*
We will not stop to discuss at length the special holiness of
the four-faced Cherubim, although we might, perhaps, show their
origin in all the ancient pagodas of India, in the vehans
(or vehicles) of their chief gods; as likewise we might easily
attribute the respect paid to them to the kabalistic wisdom, which,
nevertheless, the Church rejects with great horror. But, we cannot
resist the temptation to remind the reader that he may easily
ascertain the several significances attributed to these Cherubs
by reading the Kabala. "When the souls are to leave
their abode," says the Sohar, holding to the doctrine
of the pre-existence of souls in the world of emanations, "each
soul separately appears before the Holy King, dressed in a sublime
form, with the features in which it is to appear in this world.
It is from this sublime form that the image proceeds" (Sohar,
iii., p. 104 ab). Then it goes on to say that the types or
forms of these faces "are four in number -- those of the
angel or man, of the lion, the bull, and the eagle." Furthermore,
we may well express our wonder that Irenaeus should not have re-enforced
his argument for the four gospels -- by citing the whole Pantheon
of the four-armed Hindu gods!
Ezekiel in representing his four animals, now called Cherubim,
as types of the four symbolical beings, which, in his visions
support the throne of Jehovah, had not far to go for his models.
The Chaldeo-Babylonian protecting genii were familiar to him;
the Sed, Alap or Kirub (Cherubim), the bull, with the
human face; the Nirgal, human-headed lion; Oustour the Sphinx-man;
and the Nathga, with its eagle's head. The religion of the masters
-- the idolatrous Babylonians and Assyrians -- was transferred
almost bodily into the revealed Scripture of the Captives, and
from thence came into Christianity.
Already, we find Ezekiel addressed by the likeness of the glory
of the Lord, "as Son of man." This peculiar title is
used repeatedly
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Adv. Haes.," III., ii., 18.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 232 ISIS UNVEILED.
throughout the whole book of this prophet, which is as kabalistic
as the "roll of a book" which the "Glory"
causes him to eat. It is written within and without;
and its real meaning is identical with that of the Apocalypse.
It appears strange that so much stress should be laid on
this peculiar appellation, said to have been applied by Jesus
to himself, when, in the symbolical or kabalistic language, a
prophet is so addressed. It is as extraordinary to see Irenaeus
indulging in such graphic descriptions of Jesus as to show him,
"the maker of all, sitting upon a Cherubim," unless
he identifies him with Shekinah, whose usual place was among the
Charoubs of the Mercy Seat. We also know that the Cherubim and
Seraphim are titles of the "Old Serpent" (the orthodox
Devil) the Seraphs being the burning or fiery serpents, in kabalistic
symbolism. The ten emanations of Adam Kadmon, called the Sephiroth,
have all emblems and titles corresponding to each. So, for instance,
the last two are Victory, or Jehovah-Sabaoth, whose symbol is
the right column of Solomon, the Pillar Jachin; while
GLORY is the left Pillar, or Boaz, and its name is "the Old
Serpent," and also "Seraphim and Cherubim."*
The "Son of man" is an appellation which could not be
assumed by any one but a kabalist. Except, as shown above, in
the Old Testament, it is used but by one prophet -- Ezekiel,
the kabalist. In their mysterious and mutual relations, the AEons
or Sephiroth are represented in the Kabala by a great
number of circles, and sometimes by the figure of a MAN, which
is symbolically formed out of such circles. This man is Seir-Anpin,
and the 243 numbers of which his figure consists relate to the
different orders of the celestial hierarchy. The original idea
of this figure, or rather the model, may have been taken from
the Hindu Brahma, and the various castes typified by the several
parts of his body, as King suggests in his Gnostics. In
one of the grandest and most beautiful cave-temples at Ellora,
Nasak, dedicated to Vishvakarma, son of Brahma, is a representation
of this God and his attributes. To one acquainted with Ezekiel's
description of the "likeness of four living creatures,"
every one of which had four faces and the hands of a man under
its wings, etc.,** this figure at Ellora must certainly appear
absolutely biblical. Brahma is called the father of "man,"
as well as Jupiter and other highest gods.
It is in the Buddhistic representations of Mount Meru, called
by the Burmese Mye-nmo, and by the Siamese Sineru,
that we find one of the originals of the Adam Kadmon, Seir-Anpin,
the "heavenly man," and of all the AEons, Sephiroth,
Powers, Dominions, Thrones, Virtues, and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See King's "Gnostics."
** Ezekiel i.-ii.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 233 THE INDIAN MERU-GODS, SEPHIROTH.
Dignities of the Kabala. Between two pillars, which are
connected by an arch, the key-stone of the latter is represented
by a crescent. This is the domain in which dwells the
Supreme Wisdom of A'di Buddha, the Supreme and invisible Deity.
Beneath this highest central point comes the circle of the direct
emanation of the Unknown -- the circle of Brahma with some Hindus,
of the first avatar of Buddha, according to others. This
answers to Adam Kadmon and the ten Sephiroth. Nine of the emanations
are encircled by the tenth, and occasionally represented by pagodas,
each of which bears a name which expresses one of the chief attributes
of the manifested Deity. Then below come the seven stages, or
heavenly spheres, each sphere being encircled by a sea. These
are the celestial mansions of the devatas, or gods, each
losing somewhat in holiness and purity as it approaches the earth.
Then comes Meru itself, formed of numberless circles within three
large ones, typifying the trinity of man; and for one acquainted
with the numerical value of the letters in biblical names, like
that of the "Great Beast," or that of Mithra [[Mithras
abraxas]], and others, it is an easy matter to establish
the identity of the Meru-gods with the emanations or Sephiroth
of the kabalists. Also the genii of the Nazarenes, with their
special missions, are all found on this most ancient mythos, a
most perfect representation of the symbolism of the "secret
doctrine," as taught in archaic ages.
King gives a few hints -- though doubtless too insufficient to
teach anything important, for they are based upon the calculations
of Bishop Newton* -- as to this mode of finding out mysteries
in the value of letters. However, we find this great archaeologist,
who has devoted so much time and labor to the study of Gnostic
gems, corroborating our assertion. He shows that the entire theory
is Hindu, and points out that the durga, or female counterpart
of each Asiatic god, is what the kabalists term active Virtue**
in the celestial hierarchy, a term which the Christian Fathers
adopted and repeated, without fully appreciating, and the meaning
of which the later theology has utterly disfigured. But to return
to Meru.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Gnostics and their Remains."
** "Although this science is commonly supposed to be peculiar
to the Jewish Talmudists, there is no doubt that they borrowed
the idea from a foreign source, and that from the Chaldeans, the
founders of magic art," says King, in the "Gnostics."
The titles Iao and Abraxas, etc., instead of
being recent Gnostic figments, were indeed holy names, borrowed
from the most ancient formulae of the East. Pliny must allude
to them when he mentions the virtues ascribed by the Magi to amethysts
engraved with the names of the sun and moon, names not expressed
in either the Greek or Latin tongues. In the "Eternal
Sun," the "Abraxas,"
the "Adonai," of these
gems, we recognize the very amulets ridiculed by the philosophic
Pliny ("Gnostics," pp. 79, 80); Virtutes (miracles)
as employed by Irenaeus.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 234 ISIS UNVEILED.
The whole is surrounded by the Maha Samut, or the great sea --
the astral light and ether of the kabalists and scientists; and
within the central circles appears "the likeness of a man."
He is the Achadoth of the Nazarenes, the twofold unity, or the
androgyne man; the heavenly incarnation, and a perfect representation
of Seir-Anpin (short-face), the son, of Arich Anpin (long-face).*
This likeness is now represented in many lamaseries by Gautama-Buddha,
the last of the incarnated avatars. Still lower, under the Meru,
is the dwelling of the great Naga, who is called Rajah Naga,
the king-serpent -- the serpent of Genesis, the
Gnostic Ophis -- and the goddess of the earth, Bhumay Nari, or
Yama, who waits upon the great dragon, for she is Eve, "the
mother of all that live." Still lower is the eighth sphere,
the infernal regions. The uppermost regions of Brahma are surrounded
by the sun, moon, and planets, the seven stellars of the Nazarenes,
and just as they are described in the Codex.
"The seven impostor-Daemons who deceive the sons of Adam.
The name of one is Sol; of another Spiritus Venereus,
Astro; of the third Nebu, Mercurius a false
Messiah; . . . the name of a fourth is Sin Luna; the
fifth is Kiun, Saturnus; the sixth, Bel-Zeus; the seventh,
Nerig-Mars."** Then there are "Seven
Lives procreated," seven good Stellars, "which
are from Cabar Zio, and are those bright ones who shine in their
own form and splendor that pours from on high. . . . At the gate
of the HOUSE OF LIFE the throne
is fitly placed for the Lord of Splendor, and there are THREE
habitations."*** The habitations of the Trimurti, the
Hindu trinity, are placed beneath the key-stone -- the golden
crescent, in the representation of Meru. "And there was under
his feet (of the God of Israel) as it were a paved work of a sapphire-stone"
(Exodus xxiv. 10). Under the crescent is the heaven of
Brahma, all paved with sapphires. The paradise of Indra is resplendent
with a thousand suns; that of Siva (Saturn), is in the northeast;
his throne is formed of lapis-lazuli and the floor of heaven is
of fervid gold. "When he sits on the throne he blazes with
fire up to the loins." At Hurdwar, during
the fair, in which he is more than ever Mahadeva, the highest
god, the attributes and emblems sacred to the Jewish "Lord
God," may be recognized one by one in those of Siva. The
Binlang stone,**** sacred to this Hindu deity, is an unhewn stone
like the Beth-el, consecrated by the Patriarch Jacob, and set
up by him "for a pillar," and like the latter
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* So called to distinguish the short-face, who is exterior,
"from the venerable sacred ancient" (the "Idra
Rabba," iii., 36; v 54). Seir-Anpin is the "image of
the Father." "He that hath seen me hath seen my Father"
(John xiv. 9).
** "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. iii., p. 57.
*** Ibid., vol. iii., p. 61.
**** This stone, of a sponge-like surface, is found in Narmada
and seldom to be seen in other places.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 235 THE EVANGELIST JOHN DESCRIBES SIVA.
Binlang is anointed. We need hardly remind the student
that the linga, the emblem sacred to Siva and whose temples
are modelled after this form, is identical in shape, meaning,
and purpose with the "pillars" set up by the several
patriarchs to mark their adoration of the Lord God. In fact, one
of these patriarchal lithoi might even now be carried in the Sivaitic
processions of Calcutta, without its Hebrew derivation being suspected.
The four arms of Siva are often represented with appendages like
wings; he has three eyes and a fourth in the
crescent, obtained by him at the churning of the ocean, as Pancha
Mukhti Siva has four heads.
In this god we recognize the description given by Ezekiel, in
the first chapter of his book, of his vision, in which he beholds
the "likeness of a man" in the four living creatures,
who had "four faces, four wings," who had one pair of
"straight feet . . . which sparkled like the color of
burnished brass . . . and their rings were full
of eyes round about them four." It is the throne and heaven
of Siva that the prophet describes in saying " . . . and
there was the likeness of a throne as the appearance of a sapphire
stone . . . and I saw as the color of amber (gold) as the appearance
of fire around about . . . from his loins even upward, and from
the appearance of his loins even downward, I saw as it were the
appearance of fire" (Ezekiel i. 27). "And his
feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace"
(Revelation i. 15). "As for their faces
. . . one had the face of a cherub, and the face of a lion . .
. they also had the face of an ox and the face of an
eagle" (Ezekiel i. 10, x. 14). This fourfold
appearance which we find in the two cherubims of
gold on the two ends of the ark; these symbolic four faces
being adopted, moreover, later, one by each evangelist, as
may be easily ascertained from the pictures of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John,* prefixed to their respective gospels in the Roman
Vulgate and Greek Bibles.
"Taaut, the great god of the Phoenicians," says Sanchoniathon,
"to express the character of Saturn or Kronos, made his image
having four eyes . . . two before, two behind, open and closed,
and four wings, two expanded, two folded. The eyes denote that
the god sees in sleep, and sleeps in waking; the position of the
wings that he flies in rest, and rests in flying."
The identity of Saturn with Siva is corroborated still more when
we consider the emblem of the latter, the damara, which
is an hour-glass, to show the progress of time, represented by
this god in his capacity of a destroyer. The bull Nardi, the vehan
of Siva and the most sacred em-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* John has an eagle near him; Luke, a bull; Mark, a lion; and
Matthew, an angel -- the kabalistic quaternary of the Egyptian
Tarot.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 236 ISIS UNVEILED.
blem of this god, is reproduced in the Egyptian Apis; and in the
bull created by Ormazd and killed by Ahriman. The religion of
Zoroaster, all based upon the "secret doctrine," is
found held by the people of Eritene; it was the religion of the
Persians when they conquered the Assyrians. From thence it is
easy to trace the introduction of this emblem of LIFE represented
by the Bull, in every religious system. The college of the Magians
had accepted it with the change of dynasty;* Daniel is described
as a Rabbi, the chief of the Babylonian astrologers and Magi;**
therefore we see the Assyrian little bulls and the attributes
of Siva reappearing under a hardly modified form in the cherubs
of the Talmudistic Jews, as we have traced the bull Apis in the
sphinxes or cherubs of the Mosaic Ark; and as we find it several
thousand years later in the company of one of the Christian evangelists,
Luke.
Whoever has lived in India long enough to acquaint himself even
superficially with the native deities, must detect the similarity
between Jehovah and other gods besides Siva. As Saturn, the latter
was always held in great respect by the Talmudists. He was held
in reverence by the Alexandrian kabalists as the direct inspirer
of the law and the prophets; one of the names of Saturn was Israel,
and we will show, in time, his identity in a certain way with
Abram, which Movers and others hinted at long since. Thus it cannot
be wondered at if Valentinus, Basilides, and the Ophite Gnostics
placed the dwelling of their Ilda-Baoth, also a destroyer as well
as a creator, in the planet Saturn; for it was he who gave the
law in the wilderness and spoke through the prophets. If more
proof should be required we will show it in the testimony of the
canonical Bible itself. In Amos the "Lord"
pours vials of wrath upon the people of Israel. He rejects their
burnt-offerings and will not listen to their prayers, but inquires
of Amos, "have ye offered unto me sacrifices and
offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel?"
"But ye have borne the tabernacles of your Moloch and Chiun
your images, the star of your god" (v.
25, 26). Who are Moloch and Chiun but Baal -- Saturn
-- Siva, and Chiun, Kivan, the same Saturn whose star
the Israelites had made to themselves? There seems no escape in
this case; all these deities are identical.
The same in the case of the numerous Logoi. While the Zoroastrian
Sosiosh is framed on that of the tenth Brahmanical Avatar, and
the fifth Buddha of the followers of Gautama; and we find the
former, after having passed part and parcel into the kabalistic
system of king Messiah, reflected in the Apostle Gabriel of the
Nazarenes, and AEbel-Zivo, the Legatus, sent on earth by the Lord
of Celsitude and Light; all of these --
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Matter, upon the subject.
** Consult Book of Daniel, iv., v.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 237 THE PERSIAN SOSIOSH IN THE APOCALYPSE.
Hindu and Persian, Buddhist and Jewish, the Christos of the Gnostics
and the Philonean Logos -- are found combined in "the Word
made flesh" of the fourth Gospel. Christianity includes
all these systems, patched and arranged to meet the occasion.
Do we take up the Avesta -- we find there the dual system
so prevalent in the Christian scheme. The struggle between Ahriman,*
Darkness, and Ormazd, Light, has been going on in the world continually
since the beginning of time. When the worst arrives and Ahriman
will seem to have conquered the world and corrupted all mankind,
then will appear the Saviour of mankind, Sosiosh. He
will come seated upon a white horse and followed by an army of
good genii equally mounted on milk-white steeds.** And this we
find faithfully copied in the Revelation: "I
saw heaven opened, and beheld a white horse; and
he that sat upon him was called faithful and true. . . . And the
armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses"
(Revelation xix. 11, 14). Sosiosh himself is but a later
Persian permutation of the Hindu Vishnu. The figure of
this god may be found unto this day representing him as the Saviour,
the "Preserver" (the preserving spirit of God), in the
temple of Rama. The picture shows him in his tenth incarnation
-- the Kalki avatar, which is yet to come -- as an armed
warrior mounted upon a white horse. Waving over his head the sword
destruction, he holds in his other hand a discus, made up of rings
encircled in one another, an emblem of the revolving cycles or
great ages,*** for Vishnu will thus appear but at the end of the
Kaliyug, answering to the end of the world expected by
our Adventists. "And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword
. . . on his head were many crowns" (Revelation xix.
12). Vishnu is often represented with several crowns superposed
on his head. "And I saw an angel standing on the Sun"
(17). The white horse is the horse of the Sun.**** Sosiosh,
the Persian Saviour, is also born of a virgin,***** and at the
end of days he will come as a Redeemer to regenerate the world,
but he will be preceded by two prophets, who will come to announce
him.****** Hence the Jews who had Moses and Elias, are now waiting
for the Messiah. "Then comes the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Ahriman, the production of Zoroaster, is so called in hatred
of the Arias or Aryas, the Brahmans against whose dominion the
Zoroastrians had revolted. Although an Arya (a noble, a sage)
himself, Zoroaster, as in the case of the Devas whom he disgraced
from gods to the position of devils, hesitated not to
designate this type of the spirit of evil under the name of his
enemies, the Brahman-Aryas. The whole struggle of Ahura-mazd and
Ahriman is but the allegory of the great religious and political
war between Brahmanism and Zoroastrianism.
** "Nork," ii., 146.
*** Rev. Mr. Maurice takes it also to mean the cycles.
**** "Duncker," ii., 363; Spiegel's "Avesta,"
i., 32, 34.
***** See the "Book of Dehesh," 47.
****** See King's translation of the "Zend Avesta,"
in his "Gnostics," p. 9.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 238 ISIS UNVEILED.
general resurrection, when the good will immediately
enter into this happy abode -- the regenerated earth; and Ahriman
and his angels (the devils),* and the wicked, be purified by immersion
in a lake of molten metal. . . . Henceforward, all will enjoy
unchangeable happiness, and, headed by Sosiosh, ever sing the
praises of the Eternal One."** The above is a perfect repetition
of Vishnu in his tenth avatar, for he will then throw the wicked
into the infernal abodes in which, after purifying themselves,
they will be pardoned -- even those devils which rebelled against
Brahma, and were hurled into the bottomless pit by Siva,*** as
also the "blessed ones" will go to dwell with the gods,
over the Mount Meru.
Having thus traced the similarity of views respecting the Logos,
Metatron, and Mediator, as found in the Kabala and the
Codex of the Christian Nazarenes and Gnostics, the reader
is prepared to appreciate the audacity of the Patristic scheme
to reduce a purely metaphysical figure into concrete form, and
make it appear as if the finger of prophecy had from time immemorial
been pointing down the vista of ages to Jesus as the coming Messiah.
A theomythos intended to symbolize the coming day, near the close
of the great cycle, when the "glad tidings" from heaven
should proclaim the universal brotherhood and common faith of
humanity, the day of regeneration -- was violently distorted into
an accomplished fact.
"Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one,
that is God," says Jesus. Is this the language
of a God? of the second person in the Trinity, who is identical
with the First? And if this Messiah, or Holy Ghost of the Gnostic
and Pagan Trinities, had come in his person, what did he mean
by distinguishing between himself the "Son of man,"
and the Holy Ghost? "And whosoever shall speak a word against
the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but unto him that blasphemeth
against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven," he says.****
And how account for the marvellous identity of this very language,
with the precepts enunciated, centuries before, by the Kabalists
and the "Pagan" initiates? The following are a few instances
out of many.
"No one of the gods, no man or Lord, can be good, but only
God alone," says Hermes.*****
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The daevas or devils of the Iranians contrast with the devas
or deities of India.
** "Nork," ii., 146.
*** The Bishop of Ephesus, 218 A.D.; Eusebius: "H. E."
iii., 31. Origen stoutly maintained the doctrine of eternal punishment
to be erroneous. He held that at the second advent of Christ even
the devils among the damned would be forgiven. The eternal damnation
is a later Christian thought.
**** Luke xii. 10.
***** "Hermes Trismegistus," vi. 55.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 239 JESUS ONLY CLAIMS TO BE MAN.
"To be a good man is impossible, God alone possesses this
privilege," repeats Plato, with a slight variation.*
Six centuries before Christ, the Chinese philosopher Confucius
said that his doctrine was simple and easy to comprehend (Lun-yu,
chap. 5, § 15). To which one of his disciples added:
"The doctrine of our Master consists in having an invariable
correctness of heart, and in doing toward others as we would that
they should do to us."**
"Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles,"***
exclaims Peter, long after the scene of Calvary. "There was
a man sent from God, whose name was John,"**** says
the fourth Gospel, thus placing the Baptist on an equality
with Jesus. John the Baptist, in one of the most solemn acts of
his life, that of baptizing Christ, thinks not that he is going
to baptize a God, but uses the word man. "This is
he of whom I said, after me cometh a man."*****
Speaking of himself, Jesus says, "You seek to kill me,
a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard
of God.****** Even the blind man of Jerusalem, healed
by the great thaumaturgist, full of gratitude and admiration for
his benefactor, in narrating the miracle does not call Jesus God,
but simply says, ". . . a man that is called Jesus,
made clay."*******
We do not close the list for lack of other instances and proofs,
but simply because what we now say has been repeated and demonstrated
by others, many times before us. But there is no more incurable
evil than blind and unreasoning fanaticism. Few are the men who,
like Dr. Priestley, have the courage to write, "We find nothing
like divinity ascribed to Christ before Justin Martyr (A. D. 141),
who, from being a philosopher, became a Christian."********
Mahomet appeared nearly six hundred years********* after the presumed
deicide. The Graeco-Roman world was still convulsed with religious
dissensions, withstanding all the past imperial edicts and forcible
Christianization. While the Council of Trent was disputing about
the Vulgate, the unity of God quietly superseded the
trinity, and soon the Mahometans outnumbered the Christians. Why?
Because their prophet never sought to identify himself with Allah.
Otherwise, it is safe to say, he would not have lived to see his
religion flourish. Till the present day Mahometanism has made
and is now making more proselytes than Christianity. Buddha Siddhartha
came as a simple mortal, centuries before Christ. The religious
ethics of this faith are now found to far exceed
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Plato Protogoras; "Cory," p. 274.
** Panthier: "La Chine," ii., 375; "Sod, the Son
of the Man," p. 97.
*** Acts ii. 22.
**** John i. 6.
***** Ibid., 30.
****** John viii. 40.
******* Ibid., ix. 11.
******** Priestley: "History of Early Christianity,"
p. 2, sect. 2.
********* Mahomet was born in 571 A. D.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 240 ISIS UNVEILED.
in moral beauty anything ever dreamed of by the Tertullians and
Augustines.
The true spirit of Christianity can alone be fully found in Buddhism;
partially, it shows itself in other "heathen" religions.
Buddha never made of himself a god, nor was he deified by his
followers. The Buddhists are now known to far outnumber Christians;
they are enumerated at nearly 500,000,000. While cases of conversion
among Buddhists, Brahmanists, Mahometans, and Jews become so rare
as to show how sterile are the attempts of our missionaries, atheism
and materialism spread their gangrenous ulcers and gnaw every
day deeper at the very heart of Christianity. There are no atheists
among heathen populations, and those few among the Buddhists and
Brahmans who have become infected with materialism may always
be found to belong to large cities densely thronged with Europeans,
and only among educated classes. Truly says Bishop Kidder: "Were
a wise man to choose his religion from those who profess it, perhaps
Christianity would be the last religion he would choose!"
In an able little pamphlet from the pen of the popular lecturer,
J. M. Peebles, M.D., the author quotes, from the London
Athenaeum, an article in which are described the welfare
and civilization of the inhabitants of Yarkand and Kashgar, "who
seem virtuous and happy." "Gracious Heavens!" fervently
exclaims the honest author, who himself was once a Universalist
clergyman, "Grant to keep Christian missionaries away
from 'happy' and heathen Tartary!"*
From the earliest days of Christianity, when Paul upbraided the
Church of Corinth for a crime "as is not so much
as named among the Gentiles -- that one should have his father's
wife"; and for their making a pretext of the "Lord's
Supper" for debauch and drunkenness (1 Corinthians,
v. 1), the profession of the name of Christ has ever been more
a pretext than the evidence of holy feeling. However, a correct
form of this verse is: "Everywhere the lewd practice among
you is heard about, such a lewd practice as is nowhere among the
heathen nations -- even the having or marrying of the father's
wife." The Persian influence would seem to be indicated in
this language. The practice existed "nowhere among the nations,"
except in Persia, where it was esteemed especially meritorious.
Hence, too, the Jewish stories of Abraham marrying his sister,
Nahor, his niece, Amram his father's sister, and Judah his son's
widow, whose children appear to have been legitimate. The Aryan
tribes esteemed endogamic marriages, while the Tartars and all
barbarous nations required all alliances to be exogamous.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* J. M. Peebles: "Jesus -- Man, Myth, or God?"
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 241 THE RAISING OF KALAVATTI.
There was but one apostle of Jesus worthy of that name, and that
was Paul. However disfigured were his Epistles by dogmatic
hands before being admitted into the Canon, his conception of
the great and divine figure of the philosopher who died for his
idea can still be traced in his addresses to the various Gentile
nations. Only, he who would understand him better yet must study
the Philonean Logos reflecting now and then the Hindu
Sabda (logos) of the Mimansa school.
As to the other apostles, those whose names are prefixed to the
Gospels -- we cannot well believe in their veracity when
we find them attributing to their Master miracles surrounded by
circumstances, recorded, if not in the oldest books of India,
at least in such as antedated Christianity, and in the very phraseology
of the traditions. Who, in his days of simple and blind credulity,
but marvelled at the touching narrative given in the Gospels
according to Mark and Luke of the resurrection of
the daughter of Jairus? Who has ever doubted its originality?
And yet the story is copied entirely from the Hari-Purana,
and is recorded among the miracles attributed to Christna.
We translate it from the French version:
"The King Angashuna caused the betrothal of his daughter,
the beautiful Kalavatti, with the young son of Vamadeva, the powerful
King of Antarvedi, named Govinda, to be celebrated with great
pomp.
"But as Kalavatti was amusing herself in the groves with
her companions, she was stung by a serpent and died. Angashuna
tore his clothes, covered himself with ashes, and cursed the day
when he was born.
"Suddenly, a great rumor spread through the palace, and the
following cries were heard, a thousand times repeated: 'Pacya
pitaram; pacya gurum!' 'The Father, the Master!' Then Christna
approached, smiling, leaning on the arm of Ardjuna. . . . 'Master!'
cried Angashuna, casting himself at his feet, and sprinkling them
with his tears, 'See my poor daughter!' and he showed him the
body of Kalavatti, stretched upon a mat. . . .
" 'Why do you weep?' replied Christna, in a gentle voice.
'Do you not see that she is sleeping? Listen to the sound
of her breathing, like the sigh of the night wind which rustles
the leaves of the trees. See, her cheeks resuming their color,
her eyes, whose lids tremble as if they were about to open; her
lips quiver as if about to speak; she is sleeping, I tell you;
and hold! see, she moves, Kalavatti! Rise and walk!'
"Hardly had Christna spoken, when the breathing, warmth,
movement, and life returned little by little, into the corpse,
and the young girl, obeying the injunction of the demi-god, rose
from her couch and
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 242 ISIS UNVEILED.
rejoined her companions. But the crowd marvelled and cried out:
'This is a god, since death is no more for him than sleep!' "*
All such parables are enforced upon Christians, with the addition
of dogmas which, in their extraordinary character, leave far behind
them the wildest conceptions of heathenism. The Christians, in
order to believe in a Deity, have found it necessary to kill their
God, that they themselves should live!
And now, the Supreme, unknown one, the Father of grace and mercy,
and his celestial hierarchy are managed by the Church as though
they were so many theatrical stars and supernumeraries under salary!
Six centuries before the Christian era, Xenophanes had disposed
of such anthropomorphism by an immortal satire, recorded and preserved
by Clement of Alexandria.
"There is one God Supreme. . . . . . . . .
Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten
With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members;
So if oxen or lions had hands and could work in man's fashion
And trace out with chisel or brush their conception of Godhead
Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen,
Each kind the Divine with its own form and nature endowing."**
And hear Vyasa -- the poet-pantheist of India, who, for all the
scientists can prove, may have lived, as Jacolliot has it, some
fifteen thousand years ago -- discoursing on Maya, the illusion
of the senses:
"All religious dogmas only serve to obscure the intelligence
of man. . . . Worship of divinities, under the allegories of which,
is hidden respect for natural laws, drives away truth to the profit
of the basest superstitions" (Vyasa Maya).
It was given to Christianity to paint us God Almighty after the
model of the kabalistic abstraction of the "Ancient of Days."
From old frescos on cathedral ceilings; Catholic missals, and
other icons and images, we now find him depicted by the poetic
brush of Gustave Dore. The awful, unknown majesty of Him, whom
no "heathen" dared to reproduce in concrete form, is
figuring in our own century in Dore's Illustrated Bible. Treading
upon clouds that float in mid-air, darkness and chaos behind him
and the world beneath his feet, a majestic old man stands, his
left hand gathering his flowing robes about him, and his right
raised in the gesture of command. He has spoken the Word, and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Translated from the "Hari-Purana," by Jacolliot: "Christna,
et le Christ."
** Clement: "Al. Strom.," v. 14, § 110; translation
given in "Supernatural Religion," vol. i, p. 77.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 243 EPISCOPAL PASSPORTS TO HEAVEN.
from his towering person streams an effulgence of Light -- the
Shekinah. As a poetic conception, the composition does honor to
the artist, but does it honor God? Better, the chaos behind Him,
than the figure itself; for there, at least, we have a solemn
mystery. For our part, we prefer the silence of the ancient heathens.
With such a gross, anthropomorphic, and, as we conceive, blasphemous
representation of the First Cause, who can feel surprised at any
iconographic extravagance in the representation of the Christian
Christ, the apostles, and the putative Saints? With the Catholics
St. Peter becomes quite naturally the janitor of Heaven, and sits
at the door of the celestial kingdom -- a ticket-taker to the
Trinity!
In a religious disturbance which recently occurred in one of the
Spanish-American provinces, there were found upon the bodies of
some of the killed, passports signed by the Bishop of the Diocese
and addressed to St. Peter; bidding him "admit the bearer
as a true son of the Church." It was subsequently
ascertained that these unique documents were issued by the Catholic
prelate just before his deluded parishioners went into the fight
at the instigation of their priests.
In their immoderate desire to find evidence for the authenticity
of the New Testament, the best men, the most erudite
scholars even among Protestant divines, but too often fall into
deplorable traps. We cannot believe that such a learned commentator
as Canon Westcott could have left himself in ignorance as to Talmudistic
and purely kabalistic writings. How then is it that we find him
quoting, with such serene assurance as presenting "striking
analogies to the Gospel of St. John," passages
from the work of The Pastor of Hermas, which are complete
sentences from the kabalistic literature? "The view which
Hermas gives of Christ's nature and work is no less harmonious
with apostolic doctrine, and it offers striking analogies to the
Gospel of St. John. . . . He (Jesus) is a rock higher
than the mountains, able to hold the whole world, ancient, and
yet having a new gate! . . . He is older than creation, so that
he took counsel with the Father about the creation which he made.
. . . No one shall enter in unto him otherwise than by his Son."*
Now while -- as the author of Supernatural Religion well
proves --
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* This work, "The Pastor of Hermas," is no longer extant,
but appears only in the "Stichometry" of Nicephorus;
it is now considered an apocrypha. But, in the days of Irenaeus,
it was quoted as Holy Scripture (see "Sup. Religion,"
vol. i., p. 257) by the Fathers, held to be divinely inspired,
and publicly read in the churches (Iraenus: "Adv. Haer.,"
iv., 20). When Tertullian became a Montanist he rejected
it, after having asserted its divinity (Tertullian: "De
Orat.," p. 12).
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 244 ISIS UNVEILED.
there is nothing in this which looks like a corroboration of the
doctrine taught in the fourth gospel, he omits to state that nearly
everything expressed by the pseudo-Hermas in relation to his parabolic
conversation with the "Lord" is a plain quotation, with
repeated variations, from the Sohar and other kabalistic
books. We may as well compare, so as to leave the reader in no
difficulty to judge for himself.
"God," says Hermas, "planted the vineyard, that
is, He created the people and gave them to His Son; and the Son
. . . himself cleansed their sins, etc."; i.e.,
the Son washed them in his blood, in commemoration of which Christians
drink wine at the communion. In the Kabala it is shown
that the Aged of the Aged, or "Long-Face,"
plants a vineyard, the latter typifying mankind; and a vine,
meaning Life. The Spirit of "King Messiah"
is, therefore, shown as washing his garments in the wine from
above, from the creation of the world.* Adam, or A-Dam is "blood."
The life of the flesh is in the blood (nephesh -- soul), Leviticus
xvii. And Adam-Kadmon is the Only-Begotten. Noah also plants
a vineyard -- the allegorical hot-bed of future humanity. As a
consequence of the adoption of the same allegory, we find it reproduced
in the Nazarene Codex. Seven vines are procreated, which
spring from Iukabar Ziva, and Ferho (or Parcha) Raba waters them.**
When the blessed will ascend among the creatures of Light, they
shall see Iavar-Zivo, Lord of LIFE,
and the First VINE!*** These kabalistic metaphors
are thus naturally repeated in the Gospel according to John
(xv. 1): "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman."
In Genesis (xlix.), the dying Jacob is made to say, "The
sceptre shall not depart from Judah (the lion's whelp), nor a
lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh (Siloh) comes. .
. . Binding his colt unto the vine, and his ass's colt
unto the choice vine, he washed his garments in wine, and
his clothes in the blood of grapes."
Shiloh is "King Messiah," as well as the Shiloh
in Ephraim, which was to be made the capital and the place of
the sanctuary. In The Targum of Onkelos, the Babylonian,
the words of Jacob read: "Until the King Messiah shall
come." The prophecy has failed in the Christian as well as
in the kabalistico-Jewish sense. The sceptre has departed from
Judah, whether the Messiah has already or will come, unless we
believe, with the kabalists, that Moses was the first Messiah,
who transferred his soul to Joshua -- Jesus.****
Says Hermas: "And, in the middle of the plain, he showed
me a great white rock, which had risen out of the plain,
and the rock was
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Sohar," xl., p. 10.
** "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. iii., pp. 60, 61.
*** Ibid., vol. ii., p. 281; vol. iii., p. 59.
**** We must remind the reader, in this connection, that Joshua
and Jesus are one and the same name. In the Slavonian Bibles Joshua
reads -- Iessus (or Jesus), Navin.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 245 THE COMING OF KING MESSIAH.
higher than the mountains, rectangular, so as to be able to hold
the whole world; but that rock was old, having a gate hewn out
of it, and the hewing out of the gate seemed to me to be recent."
In the Sohar, we find: "To 40,000 superior
worlds the white of the skull of His Head (of the most
Sacred Ancient in absconditus) is extended.*
. . . When Seir (the first reflection and image of his
Father, the Ancient of the Ancient) will, through the mystery
of the seventy names of Metatron, descend into Iezirah (the third
world), he will open a new gate. . . . The Spiritus Decisorius
will cut and divide the garment (Shekinah) into two parts.** .
. . At the coming of King Messiah, from the sacred cubical stone
of the Temple a white light will be arising during forty
days. This will expand, until it encloses the whole world.
. . . At that time King Messiah will allow himself to be revealed,
and will be seen coming out of the gate of the garden of Odan
(Eden). 'He will be revealed in the land Galil.'*** . . . When
'he has made satisfaction for the sins of Israel, he will lead
them on through a new gate to the seat of judgment.'****
At the Gate of the House of Life, the throne is prepared
for the Lord of Splendor."*****
Further on, the commentator introduces the following quotation:
"This rock and this gate are the Son of
God. 'How, Lord,' I said, 'is the rock old and the gate new?'
'Listen,' He said, 'and understand, thou ignorant man. The Son
of God is older than all of his creation, so that
he was a Councillor with the Father in His works of creation;
and for this is he old.' "******
Now, these two assertions are not only purely kabalistic, without
even so much as a change of expression, but Brahmanical and Pagan
likewise. "Vidi virum excellentem coeli terraeque conditore
natu majorem. . . . I have seen the most excellent (superior)
MAN, who is older by birth than the maker of heaven and earth,"
says the kabalistic Codex.******* The Eleusinian
Dionysus, whose particular name was Iacchos (Iaccho,
Iahoh)******** -- the God from whom the liberation of souls was
expected -- was considered older than the Demiurge. At the mysteries
of the Anthesteria at the lakes (the Limnae), after the usual
baptism by purification of water, the Mystae were made
to pass through to another door (gate), and one
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Idra Rabba," vol. iii., § 41; the "Sohar."
** "Kabbala Denudata," vol. ii., p. 230; the "Book
of the Babylonian Companions," p. 35.
*** "Sohar Ex.," p. 11.
**** "Midrash Hashirim"; "Rabbi Akaba"; "Midrash
Koheleth," vol. ii., p. 45.
***** "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. iii., p. 60.
****** "On the Canon," p. 178 ff.
******* Vol. ii., p. 57; Norberg's "Onomasticon"; "Sod,
the Son of the Man," p. 103.
******** "Preller," vol. i., p. 484; K. O. Muller: "History
of Greek Literature," p. 238; "Movers," p. 553.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 246 ISIS UNVEILED.
particularly for that purpose, which was called "the gate
of Dionysus," and that of "the purified."
In the Sohar, the kabalists are told that the work-master,
the Demiurge, said to the Lord: "Let us make man after our
image."* In the original texts of the first chapter of Genesis,
it stands: "And the Elohim (translated as the
Supreme God), who are the highest gods or powers, said: Let us
make man in our (?) image, after our
likeness." In the Vedas, Brahma holds counsel with
Parabrahma, as to the best mode to proceed to create the world.
Canon Westcott, quoting Hermas, shows him asking: "And why
is the gate new, Lord? I said. 'Because,' he replied,
'he was manifested at the last of the days of the dispensation;
for this cause the gate was made new, in order that they who shall
be saved might enter by it into the Kingdom of God.' "**
There are two peculiarities worthy of note in this passage. To
begin with, it attributes to "the Lord" a false statement
of the same character as that so emphasized by the Apostle John,
and which brought, at a later period, the whole of the orthodox
Christians, who accepted the apostolic allegories as literal,
to such inconvenient straits. Jesus, as Messiah, was not
manifested at the last of the days; for the latter are yet to
come, notwithstanding a number of divinely-inspired prophecies,
followed by disappointed hopes, as a result, to testify to his
immediate coming. The belief that the "last times" had
come, was natural, when once the coming of King Messiah had been
acknowledged. The second peculiarity is found in the fact that
the prophecy could have been accepted at all, when even
its approximate determination is a direct contradiction of Mark,
who makes Jesus distinctly state that neither the angels, nor
the Son himself, know of that day or that hour.*** We might add
that, as the belief undeniably originated with the Apocalypse,
it ought to be a self-evident proof that it belonged to the
calculations peculiar to the kabalists and the Pagan sanctuaries.
It was the secret computation of a cycle, which, according to
their reckoning, was ending toward the latter part of the first
century. It may also be held as a corroborative proof, that the
Gospel according to Mark, as well as that ascribed to
John, and the Apocalypse, were written by men,
of whom neither was sufficiently acquainted with the other. The
Logos was first definitely called petra (rock) by Philo;
the word, moreover, as we have shown elsewhere, means, in Chaldaic
and Phoenician, "interpreter." Justin Martyr calls him,
throughout his works, "angel," and makes a clear distinction
between the Logos and God the Creator.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Sohar," vol. i., fol. 25.
** "Simil.," vol. ix., p. 12; "Supernatural Religion,"
vol. i., p. 257.
*** Mark xiii. 32.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 247 WHO WAS GABRIEL LEGATUS.
"The Word of God is His Son . . . and he is also called Angel
and Apostle, for he declares whatever we ought to know (interprets),
and is sent to declare whatever is disclosed."*
"Adan Inferior is distributed into its own paths, into thirty-two
sides of paths, yet it is not known to any one but Seir. But
no one knows the SUPERIOR ADAN
nor His paths, except that Long Face" -- the Supreme God.**
Seir is the Nazarene "genius," who is called AEbel Zivo;
and Gabriel Legatus -- also "Apostle Gabriel."*** The
Nazarenes held with the kabalists that even the Messiah who was
to come did not know the "Superior Adan," the
concealed Deity; no one except the Supreme God; thus
showing that above the Supreme Intelligible Deity, there is one
still more secret and unrevealed. Seir-Anpin is the third God,
while "Logos," according to Philo Judaeus, is the second
one.**** This is distinctly shown in the Codex. "The
false Messiah shall say: "I am Deus, son of Deus; my Father
sent me here. . . . I am the first Legate, I am AEbel
Zivo, I am come from on high! But distrust him; for he will not
be AEbel Zivo. AEbel Zivo will not permit himself to be seen in
this age."***** Hence the belief of some Gnostics that it
was not AEbel Zivo (Archangel Gabriel) who "overshadowed"
Mary, but Ilda-Baoth, who formed the material body of
Jesus; Christos uniting himself with him only at the
moment of baptism in the Jordan.
Can we doubt Nork's assertion that "the Bereshith Rabba,
the oldest part of the Midrash Rabboth, was known to the Church
Fathers in a Greek translation"?******
But if, on the one hand, they were sufficiently acquainted with
the different religious systems of their neighbors to have enabled
them to build a new religion alleged to be distinct from all others,
their ignorance of the Old Testament itself, let alone
the more complicated questions of Grecian metaphysics, is now
found to have been deplorable. "So, for instance, in Matthew
xxvii. 9 f., the passage from Zechariah xi. 12,
13, is attributed to Jeremiah," says the author of Supernatural
Religion. "In Mark i. 2, a quotation
from Malachi iii. 1, is as-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Apolog.," vol. i., p. 63.
** "Idra Rabba," x., p. 177.
*** "Codex Nazaraeus," vol. i., p. 23.
**** Philo says that the Logos is the interpreter
of the highest God, and argues, "that he must be the
God of us imperfect beings" ("Leg. Alleg.," iii.,
§ 73). According to his opinion man was not made in the likeness
of the most High God, the Father of all, but in that
of the second God who is his word -- Logos" (Philo:
"Fragments," 1; ex. Euseb. "Praepar. Evang.,"
vii., 13).
***** "Codex Nazaraeus," p. 57; "Sod, the Son of
the Man," p. 59.
****** "Hundert und ein Frage," p. xvii.; Dunlap: "Sod,
the Son of the Man," p. 87; the author, who quotes Nork,
says that parts of the "Midrashim" and the "Targum"
of Onkelos, antedate the "New Testament."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 248 ISIS UNVEILED.
cribed to Isaiah. In 1 Corinthians, ii. 9, a passage
is quoted as Holy Scripture, which is not found in the
Old Testament at all, but which is taken, as Origen and
Jerome state, from an apocryphal work, The Revelation of Elias
(Origen: Tract. xxxv.), and the passage is similarly
quoted by the so-called Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians
(xxxiv.). How reliable are the pious Fathers in their explanations
of divers heresies may be illustrated in the case of Epiphanius,
who mistook the Pythagorean sacred Tetrad, called in the Valentinian
Gnosis, Kol-Arbas, for a heretic leader.* What
with the involuntary blunders, and deliberate falsifications of
the teachings of those who differed in views with them; the canonization
of the mythological Aura Placida (gentle breeze), into a pair
of Christian martyrs -- St. Aura and St. Placida;** the deification
of a spear and a cloak, under the names of SS.
Longimus and Amphibolus;*** and the Patristic quotations from
prophets, of what was never in those prophets at all; one may
well ask in blank amazement whether the so-called religion of
Christ has ever been other than an incoherent dream, since the
death of the Great Master.
So malicious do we find the holy Fathers in their unrelenting
persecution of pretended "haeresies,"****
that we see them telling, without hesitation the most preposterous
untruths, and inventing entire narratives, the better to impress
their own otherwise unsupported arguments upon ignorance. If the
mistake in relation to the tetrad had at first originated as a
simple consequence of an unpremeditated blunder of Hippolytus,
the explanations of Epiphanius and others who fell into the same
absurd error***** have a less innocent look. When Hippolytus gravely
denounces the great heresy of the Tetrad, Kol-Arbas, and states
that the imaginary Gnostic leader is, "Kolarbasus, who endeavors
to explain
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Writing upon Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, the author of "Supernatural
Religion" (vol. ii., p. 217) says that "the inaccuracy
of the Fathers keeps pace with their want of critical judgment,"
and then proceeds to illustrate this particularly ridiculous blunder
committed by Epiphanius, in common with Hippolytus, Tertullian,
and Philostrius. "Mistaking a passage of Irenaeus, 'Adv.
Haer.,' i., p. 14, regarding the Sacred Tetrad (Kol-Arbas), Hippolytus
supposes Irenaeus to refer to another heretic leader." He
at once treats the Tetrad as such a leader named "Colarbasus,"
and after dealing (vi., 4) with the doctrines of Secundus, and
Ptolemaeus, and Heracleon, he proposes, §5, to show, "what
are the opinions held by Marcus and Colarbasus,"
these two being, according to him, the successors
of the school of Valentinus (cf. Bunsen: "Hippolytus, U.
S. Zeit.," p. 54 f.; "Ref. Omn. Haer.," iv., §
13).
** See Godf. Higgins: "Anacalypsis."
*** Inman: "Ancient Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism,"
p. 84.
**** Meaning -- holding up of different views.
***** "This absurd mistake," remarks the author of "Supernatural
Religion," vol. ii., p. 218, "shows how little these
writers knew of the Gnostics of whom they wrote, and how the one
ignorantly follows the other."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 249 SELF-CONFESSED INFAMY OF EPIPHANIUS.
religion by measures and numbers,"* we may simply smile.
But when Epiphanius, with abundant indignation, elaborates upon
the theme, "which is Heresy XV.," and pretending
to be thoroughly acquainted with the subject, adds: "A certain
Heracleon follows after Colarbasus, which is Heresy XVI.,"**
then he lays himself open to the charge of deliberate falsification.
If this zealous Christian can boast so unblushingly of
having caused "by his information seventy women,
even of rank, to be sent into exile, through the seductions
of some in whose number he had himself been drawn into joining
their sect," he has left us a fair standard by which to judge
him. C. W. King remarks, very aptly, on this point, that "it
may reasonably be suspected that this worthy renegade had in this
case saved himself from the fate of his fellow-religionists by
turning evidence against them, on the opening of the persecution."***
And thus, one by one, perished the Gnostics, the only heirs to
whose share had fallen a few stray crumbs of the unadulterated
truth of primitive Christianity. All was confusion and turmoil
during these first centuries, till the moment when all these contradictory
dogmas were finally forced upon the Christian world, and examination
was forbidden. For long ages it was made a sacrilege, punishable
with severe penalties, often death, to seek to comprehend that
which the Church had so conveniently elevated to the rank of divine
mystery. But since biblical critics have taken upon themselves
to "set the house in order," the cases have become reversed.
Pagan creditors now come from every part of the globe to claim
their own, and Christian theology begins to be suspected of complete
bankruptcy. Such is the sad result of the fanaticism of the "orthodox"
sects, who, to borrow an expression of the author of "The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," never were, like the
Gnostics, "the most polite, the most learned, and most wealthy
of the Christian name." And, if not all of them "smelt
garlic," as Renan will have it, on the other hand, none of
these Christian saints have ever shrunk from spilling their neighbor's
blood, if the views of the latter did not agree with their own.
And so all our philosophers were swept away by the ignorant and
superstitious masses. The Philaletheians, the lovers of truth,
and their eclectic school, perished; and there, where the young
Hypatia had taught the highest philosophical doctrines; and where
Ammonius Saccas had explained that "the whole which Christ
had in view was to reinstate and restore to its primitive
integrity the wisdom of the ancients -- to reduce
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Ref. Omn. Haer.," iv., §13.
** Epiph.: "Haer.," xxxvi., § 1, p. 262 (quoted
in "Supernatural Religion"). See Volkmar's "Die
Colarbasus-gnosis" in Niedner's "Zeitschr. Hist. Theol."
*** "Gnostics and their Remains," p. 182 f., note 3.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 250 ISIS UNVEILED.
within bounds the universally prevailing dominion of superstition
. . . and to exterminate the various errors that had found their
way into the different popular religions"* -- there, we say,
freely raved the [[hoipolloi]] of Christianity. No more
precepts from the mouth of the "God-taught philosopher,"
but others expounded by the incarnation of a most cruel, fiendish
superstition.
"If thy father," wrote St. Jerome, "lies down across
thy threshold, if thy mother uncovers to thine eyes the bosom
which suckled thee, trample on thy father's lifeless body, trample
on thy mother's bosom, and, with eyes unmoistened and dry, fly
to the Lord who calleth thee"! !
This sentence is equalled, if not outrivalled, by this other,
pronounced in a like spirit. It emanates from another father of
the early Church, the eloquent Tertullian, who hopes to see all
the "philosophers" in the gehenna fire of Hell. "What
shall be the magnitude of that scene! . . . How shall I laugh!
How shall I rejoice! How shall I triumph when I see so many illustrious
kings who were said to have mounted into heaven, groaning with
Jupiter, their god, in the lowest darkness of hell! Then shall
the soldiers who have persecuted the name of Christ burn in more
cruel fire than any they had kindled for the saints!"**
These murderous expressions illustrate the spirit of Christianity
till this day. But do they illustrate the teachings of Christ?
By no means. As Eliphas Levi says, "The God in the name of
whom we would trample on our mother's bosom we must see in the
hereafter, a hell gaping widely at his feet, and an exterminating
sword in his hand. . . . Moloch burned children but a few seconds;
it was reserved to the disciples of a god who is alleged to have
died to redeem humanity on the cross, to create a new Moloch whose
burning stake is eternal!"***
That this spirit of true Christian love has safely crossed nineteen
centuries and rages now in America, is fully instanced in the
case of the rabid Moody, the revivalist, who exclaims: "I
have a son, and no one but God knows how I love him; but I would
see those beautiful eyes dug out of his head to-night, rather
than see him grow up to manhood and go down to the grave without
Christ and without hope!!"
To this an American paper, of Chicago, very justly responds: "This
is the spirit of the inquisition, which we are told is dead. If
Moody in his zeal would 'dig out' the eyes of his darling son,
to what lengths may he not go with the sons of others, whom he
may love less? It is the spirit of Loyola, gibbering in the nineteenth
century, and prevented from lighting the fagot flame and heating
red-hot the instruments of torture only by the arm of law."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Mosheim.
** Tertullian: "Despectae," ch. xxx.
*** Mosheim: "Eccles. Hist.," c. v., § 5.
Chapter 6
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