Isis Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky
-- Vol. 2
Theosophical University Press Online Edition
[[Chapter 9, part 2]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 439 DAVID, THE ISRAELITISH KING ARTHUR.
descendants of Pali shepherds, or a mixture of all these. The
Bible names the Tyrians as a kindred people, and claims
dominion over them.*
There is more than one important character in the Bible, whose
biography proves him a mythical hero. Samuel is indicated as the
personage of the Hebrew Commonwealth. He is the doppel of
Samson, of the Book of Judges, as will be seen -- being
the son of Anna and EL-KAINA,
as Samson was of Manua or Manoah. Both were fictitious characters,
as now represented in the revealed book; one was the Hebrew Hercules,
and the other Ganesa. Samuel is credited with establishing the
republic, as putting down the Canaanite worship of Baal and Astarte,
or Adonis and Venus, and setting up that of Jehovah. Then the
people demanded a king, and he anointed Saul, and after him David
of Bethlehem.
David is the Israelitish King Arthur. He did great achievements
and established a government in all Syria and Idumea. His dominion
extended from Armenia and Assyria on the north and north-east,
the Syrian Desert and Persian Gulf on the East, Arabia on the
south, and Egypt and the Levant on the west. Only Phoenicia was
excepted.
His friendship with Hiram seems to indicate that he made his first
expedition from that country into Judea; and his long residence
at Hebron, the city of the Kabeiri (Arba or four), would
seem likewise to imply that he established a new religion in the
country.
After David came Solomon, powerful and luxurious, who sought to
consolidate the dominion which David had won. As David was a Jehovah-worshipper,
a temple of Jehovah (Tukt Suleima) was built in Jerusalem, while
shrines of Moloch-Hercules, Khemosh, and Astarte were erected
on Mount Olivet. These shrines remained till Josiah.
There were conspiracies formed. Revolts took place in Idumea and
Damascus; and Ahijah the prophet led the popular movement which
resulted in deposing the house of David and making Jeroboam king.
Ever after the prophets dominated in Israel, where the calf-worship
prevailed; the priests ruled over the weak dynasty of David, and
the lasci-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* They might have been also, as Pococke thinks, simply the tribes
of the "Oxus," a name derived from the "Ookshas,"
those people whose wealth lay in the "Ox," for he shows
Ookshan to be a crude form of Ooksha, an ox
(in Sanscrit ox is as in English). He believes that it
was they, "the lords of the Oxus," who gave their name
to the sea around which they ruled in many a country, the Euxine
or Ooksh-ine. Pali means a shepherd, and s'than
is a land. "The warlike tribes of the Oxus penetrated
into Egypt, then swept onward to Palestine (PALI-STAN),
the land of the Palis or shepherds, and there effected more permanent
settlements" ("India in Greece"). Yet, if even
so, it would only the more confirm our opinion that the Jews are
a hybrid race, for the "Bible" shows them freely intermarrying,
not alone with the Canaanites, but with every other nation or
race they come in contact with.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 440 ISIS UNVEILED.
vious local worship existed over the whole country. After the
destruction of the house of Ahab, and the failure of Jehu and
his descendants to unite the country under one head, the endeavor
was made in Judah. Isaiah had terminated the direct line in the
person of Ahaz (Isaiah vii. 9), and placed on
the throne a prince from Bethlehem (Micah v. 2,
5). This was Hezekiah. On ascending the throne, he invited the
chiefs of Israel to unite in alliance with him against Assyria
(2 Chronicles, xxx. 1, 21; xxxi. 1, 5; 2
Kings, xviii. 7). He seems to have established a sacred college
(Proverbs xxv. 1), and to have utterly changed
the worship. Aye, even unto breaking into pieces the brazen serpent
that Moses had made.
This makes the story of Samuel and David and Solomon mythical.
Most of the prophets who were literate seem to have begun about
this time to write.
The country was finally overthrown by the Assyrians, who found
the same people and institutions as in the Phoenician and other
countries.
Hezekiah was not the lineal, but the titular son of Ahaz. Isaiah,
the prophet, belonged to the royal family, and Hezekiah was reputed
his son-in-law. Ahaz refused to ally himself with the prophet
and his party, saying: "I will not tempt (depend
on) the Lord" (Isaiah vii. 12). The prophet
had declared: "If you will not believe, surely you shall
not be established" -- foreshadowing the deposition of his
direct language. "Ye weary my God," replied the prophet,
and predicted the birth of a child by an alma, or temple-woman,
and that before it should attain full age (Hebrews
v. 14; Isaiah vii. 16; viii. 4), the king of Assyria
should overcome Syria and Israel. This is the prophecy which Irenaeus
took such pains to connect with Mary and Jesus, and made the reason
why the mother of the Nazarene prophet is represented as belonging
to the temple, and consecrated to God from her infancy.
In a second song, Isaiah celebrated the new chief, to sit on the
throne of David (ix. 6, 7; xi. 1), who should restore to their
homes the Jews whom the confederacy had led captive (Isaiah
viii. 2-12; Joel iii. 1-7; Obadiah
7, 11, 14). Micah -- his contemporary -- also announced
the same event (iv. 7-13; v. 1-7). The Redeemer was to come out
of Bethlehem; in other words, was of the house of David; and was
to resist Assyria to whom Ahaz had sworn allegiance, and also
to reform religion (2 Kings, xviii. 4-8). This Hezekiah
did. He was grandson of Zechariah the seer (2 Chronicles,
xxix. 1; xxvi. 5), the counsellor of Uzziah; and
as soon as he ascended the throne he restored the religion of
David, and destroyed the last vestiges of that of Moses, i.e.,
the esoteric doctrine, declaring "our fathers have
trespassed" (2 Chron., xxix. 6-9). He next attempted
a reunion with the northern monarchy,
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 441 HEZEKIAH THE EXPECTED MESSIAH.
there being an interregnum in Israel (2 Chron., xxx.
1, 2, 6; xxxi. 1, 6, 7). It was successful, but resulted in an
invasion by the king of Assyria. But it was a new regime;
and all this shows the course of two parallel streams in
the religious worship of the Israelites; one belonging to the
state religion and adopted to fit political exigencies; the other
pure idolatry, resulting from ignorance of the true esoteric doctrine
preached by Moses. For the first time since Solomon built them
"the high places were taken away."
It was Hezekiah who was the expected Messiah of the exoteric state-religion.
He was the scion from the stem of Jesse, who should recall the
Jews from a deplorable captivity, about which the Hebrew historians
seem to be very silent, carefully avoiding all mention of this
particular fact, but which the irascible prophets imprudently
disclose. If Hezekiah crushed the exoteric Baal-worship, he also
tore violently away the people of Israel from the religion of
their fathers, and the secret rites instituted by Moses.
It was Darius Hystaspes who was the first to establish a Persian
colony in Judea, Zoro-Babel was perhaps the leader. "The
name Zoro-babel means 'the seed or son of Babylon' --
as Zoro-aster 
is the seed,
son, or prince of Ishtar."* The new colonists were doubtless
Judaei. This is a designation from the East. Even Siam
is called Judia, and there was an Ayodia in India. The temples
of Solom or Peace were numerous. Throughout Persia and
Afghanistan the names of Saul and David are very common. The "Law"
is ascribed in turn to Hezekiah, Ezra, Simon the Just, and the
Asmonean period. Nothing definite; everywhere contradictions.
When the Asmonean period began, the chief supporters of the Law
were called Asideans or Khasdim (Chaldeans), and afterward Pharisees
or Pharsi (Parsis). This indicates that Persian colonies were
established in Judea and ruled the country; while all the people
that are mentioned in the books of Genesis and Joshua
lived there as a commonalty (see Ezra ix.
1).
There is no real history in the Old Testament, and the
little historical information one can glean is only found in the
indiscreet revelations of the prophets. The book, as a whole,
must have been written at various times, or rather invented as
an authorization of some subsequent worship, the origin of which
may be very easily traced partially to the Orphic Mysteries, and
partially to the ancient Egyptian rites in familiarity with which
Moses was brought up from his infancy.
Since the last century the Church has been gradually forced into
concessions of usurped biblical territory to those to whom it
of right belonged.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Prof. A. Wilder: "Notes."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 442 ISIS UNVEILED.
Inch by inch has been yielded, and one personage after another
been proved mythical and Pagan. But now, after the recent discovery
of George Smith, the much-regretted Assyriologist, one of the
securest props of the Bible has been pulled down. Sargon
and his tablets are about demonstrated to be older than Moses.
Like the account of Exodus, the birth and story of the
lawgiver seem to have been "borrowed" from the Assyrians,
as the "jewels of gold and jewels of silver" were said
to be from the Egyptians.
On page 224 of Assyrian Discoveries, Mr. George Smith
says: "In the palace of Sennacherib at Kouyunjik, I found
another fragment of the curious history of Sargon, a translation
of which I published in the Transactions of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology, vol. i., part i., page 46. This text
relates that Sargon, an early Babylonian monarch, was born of
royal parents, but concealed by his mother, who placed him on
the Euphrates in an ark of rushes, coated with bitumen, like that
in which the mother of Moses hid her child (see Exodus ii.).
Sargon was discovered by a man named Akki, a water-carrier, who
adopted him as his son; and he afterward became King of Babylonia.
The capital of Sargon was the great city of Agadi -- called by
the Semites Akkad -- mentioned in Genesis as a capital
of Nimrod (Genesis x. l0), and here he reigned
for forty-five years.* Akkad lay near the city of Sippara,**
on the Euphrates and north of Babylon. "The
date of Sargon, who may be termed the Babylonian Moses, was in
the sixteenth century and perhaps earlier."
G. Smith adds in his Chaldean Account that Sargon I.
was a Babylonian monarch who reigned in the city of Akkad about
1600 B.C. The name of Sargon signifies the right, true, or legitimate
king. This curious story is found on fragments of tablets from
Kouyunjik, and reads as follows:
1. Sargona, the powerful king, the king of Akkad am I.
2. My mother was a princess, my father I did not know, a brother
of my father ruled over the country.
3. In the city of Azupirana, which is by the side of the river
Euphrates,
4. My mother, the princess, conceived me; in difficulty she brought
me forth.
5. She placed me in an ark of rushes, with bitumen my exit she
sealed up.
6. She launched me in the river which did not drown me.
7. The river carried me to Akki, the water-carrier it brought
me.
8. Akki, the water-carrier, in tenderness of bowels, lifted me,
etc., etc.
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Moses reigned over the people of Israel in the wilderness for
over forty years.
** The name of the wife of Moses was Zipporah (Exodus ii.).
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 443 GEORGE SMITH'S VIEWS OF SARGON.
And now Exodus (ii.): "And when she (Moses' mother)
could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes,
and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein,
and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink."
The story, says Mr. G. Smith, "is supposed to have happened
about 1600 B.C., rather earlier than the supposed age of Moses*
as we know that the fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is quite
likely that this account had a connection with the event related
in Exodus ii., for every action, when once performed,
has a tendency to be repeated."
The "ages" of the Hindus differ but little from those
of the Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews. We include the Mosaic
computation advisedly, and with intent to prove our position.
The chronology which separates Moses from the creation of the
world by only four generations seems ridiculous, merely
because the Christian clergy would enforce it upon the world literally.**
The kabalists know that these generations stand for ages of the
world. The allegories which, in the Hindu calculations, embrace
the whole stupendous sweep of the four ages, are cunningly made
in the Mosaic books, through the obliging help of the Masorah,
to cram into the small period of two millenniums and a half
(2513)!
The exoteric plan of the Bible was made to answer also
to four ages. Thus, they reckon the Golden Age from Adam to Abraham;
the silver, from Abraham to David; copper, from David to the Captivity;
thenceforward, the iron. But the secret computation is quite different,
and does not vary at all from the zodiacal calculations of the
Brahmans. We are in the Iron Age, or Kali-Yug, but it began with
Noah, the mythical ancestor of our race.
Noah, or Nuah, like all the euhemerized manifestations of the
Unrevealed One -- Swayambhuva (or Swayambhu), was androgyne. Thus,
in
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* About 1040, the Jewish doctors removed their schools from Babylonia
to Spain, and of the four great rabbis that flourished during
the next four centuries, their works all show different readings,
and abound with mistakes in the manuscripts. The "Masorah"
made things still worse. Many things that then existed in the
manuscripts are there no longer, and their works teem with interpolations
as well as with lacunae. The oldest Hebrew manuscript
belongs to this period. Such is the divine revelation we are to
credit.
** No chronology was accepted by the rabbis as authoritative till
the twelfth century. The 40 and 1,000 are not exact numbers, but
have been crammed in to answer monotheism and the exigencies of
a religion calculated to appear different from that of the Pagans.
("Chron. Orth.," p. 238). One finds in the "Pentateuch"
only events occurring about two years before the fabled "Exodus"
and the last year. The rest of the chronology is nowhere, and
can be followed only through kabalistic computations, with a key
to them in the hand.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 444 ISIS UNVEILED.
some instances, he belonged to the purely feminine triad of the
Chaldeans, known as "Nuah, the universal Mother." We
have shown, in another chapter, that every male triad had its
feminine counterpart, one in three, like the former. It was the
passive complement of the active principle, its reflection.
In India, the male trimurty is reproduced in the Sakti-trimurti,
the feminine; and in Chaldea, Ana, Belita and Davkina answered
to Anu, Bel, Nuah. The former three resumed in one -- Belita,
were called:
"Sovereign goddess, lady of the nether abyss, mother of gods,
queen of the earth, queen of fecundity."
As the primordial humidity, whence proceeded all, Belita
is Tamti, or the sea, the mother of the city of Erech (the
great Chaldean necropolis), therefore, an infernal goddess. In
the world of stars and planets she is known as Istar or Astoreth.
Hence, she is identical with Venus, and every other queen of heaven,
to whom cakes and buns were offered in sacrifice,* and, as all
the archaeologists know, with Eve, the mother of all
that live, and with Mary.
The Ark, in which are preserved the germs of all living things
necessary to repeople the earth, represents the survival of life,
and the supremacy of spirit over matter, through the conflict
of the opposing powers of nature. In the Astro-Theosophic chart
of the Western Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is
placed at the sinister side, the side of the woman (the moon),
one of whose symbols is the left pillar of Solomon's temple --
Boaz. The umbilicus is connected with the receptacle in which
are fructified the germs of the race.** The Ark is the sacred
Argha of the Hindus, and thus, the relation in which
it stands to Noah's ark may be easily inferred, when we learn
that the Argha was an oblong vessel, used by the high priests
as a sacrificial chalice in the worship of Isis, Astarte, and
Venus-Aphrodite, all of whom were goddesses of the generative
powers of nature, or of matter -- hence, representing symbolically
the Ark containing the germs of all living things.
We admit that Pagans had and now have -- as in India -- strange
symbols, which, to the eyes of the hypocrite and Puritan, seem
scandalously
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Gnostics, called Collyridians, had transferred from Astoreth
their worship to Mary, also Queen of Heaven. They were persecuted
and put to death by the orthodox Christians as heretics. But if
these Gnostics had established her worship by offering her sacrifices
of cakes, cracknels, or fine wafers, it was because they imagined
her to have been born of an immaculate virgin, as Christ is alleged
to have been born of his mother. And now, the Pope's infallibility
having been recognized and accepted, its first practical
manifestation is the revival of the Collyridian belief as an article
of faith (See "Apocryphal New Testament"; Hone: "The
Gospel of Mary attributed to Matthew").
** Hargrave Jennings: "Rosicrucians."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 445 EVE-LILITH AND EVE.
immoral. But did not the ancient Jews copy most of these symbols?
We have described elsewhere the identity of the lingham with Jacob's
pillar, and we could give a number of instances from the present
Christian rites, bearing the same origin, did but space permit,
and were not all these noticed fully by Inman and others (See
Inman's Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names).
Describing the worship of the Egyptians, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child
says: "This reverence for the production of life, introduced
into the worship of Osiris, the sexual emblems so common in Hindustan.
A colossal image of this kind was presented to his temple in Alexandria,
by King Ptolemy Philadelphus. . . . Reverence for the mystery
of organized life led to the recognition of a masculine and feminine
principle in all things, spiritual or material. . . . The sexual
emblems, everywhere conspicuous in the sculptures of their temples,
would seem impure in description, but no clean and thoughtful
mind could so regard them while witnessing the obvious simplicity
and solemnity with which the subject is treated."*
Thus speaks this respected lady and admirable writer, and no truly
pure man or woman would ever think of blaming her for it. But
such a perversion of the ancient thought is but natural in an
age of cant and prudery like our own.
The water of the flood when standing in the allegory for the symbolic
"sea," Tamti, typifies the turbulent chaos, or matter,
called "the great dragon." According to the Gnostic
and Rosicrucian medaeival doctrine, the creation of woman was
not originally intended. She is the offspring of man's own impure
fancy, and, as the Hermetists say, "an obtrusion." Created
by an unclean thought she sprang into existence at the evil
"seventh hour," when the "supernatural" real
worlds had passed away and the "natural" or delusive
worlds began evolving along the "descending Microcosmos,"
or the arc of the great cycle, in plainer phraseology. First "Virgo,"
the Celestial Virgin of the Zodiac, she became "Virgo-Scorpio."
But in evolving his second companion, man had unwittingly endowed
her with his own share of Spirituality; and the new being whom
his "imagination" had called into life became his "Saviour"
from the snares of Eve-Lilith, the first Eve, who had a greater
share of matter in her composition than the primitive "spiritual"
man.**
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Progress of Religious Ideas."
** Lilith was Adam's first wife "before he married
Eve," of whom "he begat nothing but devils"; which
strikes us as a very novel, if pious, way of explaining a very
philosophical allegory.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 446 ISIS UNVEILED.
Thus woman stands in the cosmogony in relation to "matter"
or the great deep, as the "Virgin of the Sea,"
who crushes the "Dragon" under her foot. The "Flood"
is also very often shown, in symbolical phraseology, as the "great
Dragon." For one acquainted with these tenets it becomes
more than suggestive to learn that with the Catholics the Virgin
Mary is not only the accepted patroness of Christian sailors,
but also the "Virgin of the Sea." So was Dido the patroness
of the Phoenician mariners;* and together with Venus and other
lunar goddesses -- the moon having such a strong influence over
the tides -- was the "Virgin of the Sea." Mar, the
Sea, is the root of the name Mary. The blue color, which was with
the ancients symbolical of the "Great Deep" or the material
world, hence -- of evil, is made sacred to our "Blessed Lady."
It is the color of "Notre Dame de Paris." On account
of its relation to the symbolical serpent this color is held in
the deepest aversion by the ex-Nazarenes, disciples of John the
Baptist, now the Mendaeans of Basra.
Among the beautiful plates of Maurice, there is one representing
Christna crushing the head of the Serpent. A three-peaked mitre
is on his head (typifying the trinity), and the body and tail
of the conquered serpent encircles the figure of the Hindu god.
This plate shows whence proceeded the inspiration for the "make
up" of a later story extracted from an alleged prophecy.
"I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between
thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel."
The Egyptian Orante is also shown with his arms extended as on
a crucifix, and treading upon the "Serpent"; and Horus
(the Logos) is represented piercing the head of the dragon, Typhon
or Aphophis. All this gives us a clew to the biblical allegory
of Cain and Abel. Cain was held as the ancestor of the Hivites,
the Serpents, and the twins of Adam are an evident copy from the
fable of Osiris and Typhon. Apart from the external form of the
allegory, however, it embodied the philosophical conception of
the eternal struggle of good and evil.
But how strangely elastic, how adaptable to any and every thing
this mystical philosophy proved after the Christian era! When
were ever facts, irrefutable, irrefragable, and beyond denial,
less potential for the reestablishment of truth than in our century
of casuistry and Christian cunning? Is Christna proved to have
been known as the "Good Shep-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* It is in commemoration of the Ark of the Deluge that the Phoenicians,
those bold explorers of the "deep," carried, fixed on
the prow of their ships, the image of the goddess Astarte, who
is Elissa, Venus Erycina of Sicily, and Dido, whose name is the
feminine of David.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 447 THE EGYPTIAN ORANTE.
herd" ages before the year A.D. 1, to have crushed the Serpent
Kalinaga, and to have been crucified -- all this was but a prophetic
foreshadowing of the future! Are the Scandinavian Thor, who bruised
the head of the Serpent with his cruciform mace, and Apollo, who
killed Python, likewise shown to present the most striking similarities
with the heroes of the Christian fables; they become but original
conceptions of "heathen" minds, "working upon the
old Patriarchal prophecies respecting the Christ, as they were
contained in the one universal and primeval Revelation"!*
The flood, then, is the "Old Serpent" or the great deep
of matter, Isaiah's "dragon in the sea" (xxvii. 1),
over which the ark safely crosses on its way to the mount of Salvation.
But, if we have heard of the ark and Noah, and the Bible at
all, it is because the mythology of the Egyptians was ready at
hand for Moses (if Moses ever wrote any of the Bible),
and that he was acquainted with the story of Horus, standing
on his boat of a serpentine form, and killing the Serpent with
his spear; and with the hidden meaning of these fables, and their
real origin. This is also why we find in Leviticus, and
other parts of his books, whole pages of laws identical with those
of Manu.
The animals shut up in the ark are the human passions. They typify
certain ordeals of initiation, and the mysteries which were instituted
among many nations in commemoration of this allegory. Noah's ark
rested on the seventeenth of the seventh month. Here
we have again the number; as also in the "clean beasts"
that he took by sevens into the ark. Speaking of the
water-mysteries of Byblos, Lucian says: "On the top of one
of the two pillars which Bacchus set up, a man remains seven
days."** He supposes this was done to honor Deukalion. Elijah,
when praying on the top of Mount Carmel, sends his servant to
look for a cloud toward the sea, and repeats, "go again seven
times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, behold
there arose a little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand."***
"Noah is a revolutio of Adam, as Moses
is a revolutio of Abel and Seth," says the Kabala; that
is to say, a repetition or another version of the same story.
The greatest proof of it is the distribution of the characters
in the Bible. For instance, beginning with Cain, the
first murderer, every fifth man in his line of descent
is a murderer. Thus there come Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methuselah,
and the fifth is Lamech, the second
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Dr. Lundy: "Monumental Christianity."
** Lucian, iv. 276.
*** 1 Kings xviii. All this is allegorical, and, what is more,
purely magical. For Elijah is bent upon an incantation.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 448 ISIS UNVEILED.
murderer, and he is Noah's father. By drawing the five-pointed
star of Lucifer (which has its crown-point downward) and writing
the name of Cain beneath the lowest point, and those of his descendants
successively at each of the other points, it will be found that
each fifth name -- which would be written beneath that of Cain
-- is that of a murderer. In the Talmud this genealogy
is given complete, and thirteen murderers range themselves in
line below the name of Cain. This is no coincidence.
Siva is the Destroyer, but he is also the Regenerator. Cain
is a murderer, but he is also the creator of nations, and an inventor.
This star of Lucifer is the same one that John sees falling down
to earth in his Apocalypse.
In Thebes, or Theba, which means ark -- TH-ABA
being synonymous with Kartha or Tyre, Astu or Athens and Urbs
or Rome, and meaning also the city -- are found the same foliations
as described on the pillars of the temple of Solomon. The bicolored
leaf of the olive, the three-lobed figleaf, and the lanceolate-shaped
laurel-leaf, had all esoteric as well as popular or vulgar meanings
with the ancients.
The researches of Egyptologists present another corroboration
of the identity of the Bible-allegories with those of
the lands of the Pharaohs and Chaldeans. The dynastic chronology
of the Egyptians, recorded by Herodotus, Manetho, Eratosthenes,
Diodorus Siculus, and accepted by our antiquarians, divided the
period of Egyptian history under four general heads: the dominion
of gods, demi-gods, heroes, and mortal men. By combining the demi-gods
and heroes into one class, Bunsen reduces the periods to three:
the ruling gods, the demi-gods or heroes -- sons of gods, but
born of mortal mothers -- and the Manes, who were the ancestors
of individual tribes. These subdivisions, as any one may perceive,
correspond perfectly with the biblical Elohim, sons of God, giants,
and mortal Noachian men.
Diodorus of Sicily and Berosus give us the names of the twelve
great gods who presided over the twelve months of the year and
the twelve signs of the zodiac. These names, which include Nuah,*
are too well known to require repetition. The double-faced Janus
was also at the head of twelve gods, and in his representations
of him he is made to hold the keys to the celestial domains. All
these having served as models for the biblical patriarchs, have
done still further service -- especially Janus -- by furnishing
copy to St. Peter and his twelve apostles, the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Talmud books say that Noah was himself the dove (spirit),
thus identifying him still more with the Chaldean Nouah. Baal
is represented with the wings of a dove, and the Samaritans worshipped
on Mount Gerizim the image of a dove. "Talmud, Tract. Chalin.,"
fol. 6, col. 1.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 449 ADAM THE PROTOTYPE OF NOAH.
former also double-faced in his denial, and also represented as
holding the keys of Paradise.
This statement that the story of Noah is but another version in
its hidden meaning of the story of Adam and his three sons, gathers
proof on every page of the book of Genesis. Adam is the
prototype of Noah. Adam falls because he eats of the
forbidden fruit of celestial knowledge; Noah, because
he tastes of the terrestrial fruit: the juice of the
grape representing the abuse of knowledge in an unbalanced mind.
Adam gets stripped of his spiritual envelope; Noah of his terrestrial
clothing; and the nakedness of both makes them feel ashamed.
The wickedness of Cain is repeated in Ham. But the descendants
of both are shown as the wisest of races on earth; and they are
called on this account "snakes," and the "sons
of snakes," meaning the sons of wisdom, and not
of Satan, as some divines would be pleased to have the world understand
the term. Enmity has been placed between the "snake"
and the "woman" only in this mortal phenomenal "world
of man" as "born of woman." Before the carnal fall,
the "snake" was Ophis, the divine wisdom, which
needed no matter to procreate men, humanity being utterly spiritual.
Hence the war between the snake and the woman, or between spirit
and matter. If, in its material aspect, the "old serpent"
is matter, and represents Ophiomorphos, in its spiritual meaning
it becomes Ophis-Christos. In the magic of the old Syro-Chaldeans
both are conjoint in the zodiacal sign of the androgyne of Virgo-Scorpio,
and may be divided or separated whenever needed. Thus
as the origin of "good and evil," the meaning of the
S.S. and Z.Z. has always been interchangeable; and if upon some
occasions the S.S. on sigils and talismans are suggestive of serpentine
evil influence and denote a design of black magic upon
others, the double S.S. are found on the sacramental cups of the
Church and mean the presence of the Holy Ghost, or pure wisdom.
The Midianites were known as the wise men, or sons of
snakes, as well as Canaanites and Hamites; and such was the renown
of the Midianites, that we find Moses, the prophet, led on,
and inspired by "the Lord," humbling
himself before Hobab, the son of Raguel, the Midianite, and
beseeching him to remain with the people of Israel: "Leave
us not, I pray thee; forasmuch as thou knowest how we are
to encamp IN THE WILDERNESS, thou mayest be
to us instead of eyes."* Further, when Moses
sends spies to search out the land of Canaan, they bring as a
proof of the wisdom (kabalistically speaking) and goodness of
the land, a branch with one cluster of grapes, which
they are compelled to bear between two men on a staff. Moreover,
they add: "we saw the children of ANAK there."
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Numbers x. 29, 31.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 450 ISIS UNVEILED.
They are the giants, the sons of Anak, "which
come of the giants,* and we were in our own sight
as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight."**
Anak is Enoch, the patriarch, who dies not, and who is
the first possessor of the "mirific name," according
to the Kabala, and the ritual of Freemasonry.
Comparing the biblical patriarchs with the descendants of Vaiswasvata,
the Hindu Noah, and the old Sanscrit traditions about the deluge
in the Brahmanical Mahabharata, we find them mirrored
in the Vaidic patriarchs who are the primitive types upon which
all the others were modelled. But before comparison is possible,
the Hindu myths must be comprehended in their true significance.
Each of these mythical personages bears, besides an astronomical
significance, a spiritual or moral, and an anthropological or
physical meaning. The patriarchs are not only euhemerized gods
-- the prediluvian answering to the twelve great gods
of Berosus, and to the ten Pradjapati, and the postdiluvian
to the seven gods of the famous tablet in the Ninevean Library,
but they stand also as the symbols of the Greek AEons, the kabalistic
Sephiroth, and the zodiacal signs, as types of a series of human
races.*** This variation from ten to twelve will
be accounted for presently, and proved on the very authority
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The Bible contradicts itself as well as the Chaldean account,
for in chapter vii. of Genesis it shows "every one of them"
perishing in the deluge.
** Numbers xiii.
*** We do not see why the clergy -- especially the Catholic --
should object to our statement that the patriarchs are all signs
of the zodiac, and the old gods of the "heathen" as
well. There was a time, and that less than two centuries ago,
when they themselves exhibited the most fervent desire to relapse
into sun and star worship. This pious and curious attempt was
denounced but a few months since by Camille Flammarion, the French
astronomer. He shows two Augsburgian Jesuits, Schiller and Bayer,
who felt quite anxious to change the names of the whole Sabean
host of the starry heaven, and worship them again under Christian
names! Having anathematized the idolatrous sun-worshippers for
over fifteen centuries, the Church now seriously proposed to continue
heliolatry -- to the letter this time -- as their idea
was to substitute for Pagan myths biblical and (in their ideas)
real personages. They would have called the sun, Christ; the moon,
Virgin Mary; Saturn, Adam; Jupiter, Moses (!); Mars, Joshua; Venus,
John the Baptist; and Mercury, Elias. And very proper substitutes
too, showing the great familiarity of the Catholic Church with
ancient Pagan and kabalistic learning, and its readiness, perhaps,
to at last confess the source whence came their own myths. For
is not king Messiah the sun, the Demiurge of the heliolaters,
under various names? Is he not the Egyptian Osiris and the Grecian
Apollo? And what more appropriate name than Virgin Mary for the
Pagan Diana-Astarte, "the Queen of Heaven," against
which Jeremiah exhausted a whole vocabulary of imprecations? Such
an adoption would have been historically as well as religiously
correct. Two large plates were prepared, says Flammarion, in a
recent number of "La Nature," [[Footnotes contined on
next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 451 THE JEWISH ADONAI AND HINDU ADANARI.
of the Bible. Only, they are not the first gods described
by Cicero,* which belong to a hierarchy of higher powers, the
Elohim -- but appertain rather to the second class of the "twelve
gods," the Dii minores, and who are the terrestrial
reflections of the first, among whom Herodotus places Hercules.**
Alone, out of the group of twelve, Noah, by reason of his position
at the transitional point, belongs to the highest Babylonian triad,
Noah, the spirit of the waters. The rest are identical with the
inferior gods of Assyria and Babylonia, who represented the lower
order of emanations, introduced around Bel, the Demiurge, and
help him in his work, as the patriarchs are shown to assist Jehovah
-- the "Lord God."
Besides these, many of which were local gods, the protecting
deities of rivers and cities, there were the four classes of genius,
we see Ezekiel making them support the throne of Jehovah in his
vision. A fact which, if it identifies the Jewish "Lord God"
with one of the Babylonian trinity, connects, at the same time,
the present Christian God with the same triad, inasmuch as it
is these four cherubs, if the reader will remember, on which Irenaeus
makes Jesus ride, and which are shown as the companions of the
evangelists.
The Hindu kabalistic derivation of the books of Ezekiel and
Revelation are shown in nothing more plainly than in this
description of the four beasts, which typify the four elementary
kingdoms -- earth, air, fire, and water. As is well known, they
are the Assyrian sphinxes, but these figures are also carved on
the walls of nearly every Hindu pagoda.
The author of the Revelation copies faithfully in his
text (see chap. iv., verse 7) the Pythagorean pentacle, of which
Levi's admirable sketch is reproduced on page 452.
The Hindu goddess Adanari (or as it might be more properly written,
Adonari, since the second a is pronounced almost like the English
o) is represented as surrounded by the same figures. It fits exactly
Ezekiel's "wheel of the Adonai," known as "the
Cherub of Jeheskiel," and indicates, beyond question, the
source from which the Hebrew seer drew his allegories. For convenience
of comparison we have placed the figure in the pentacle. (See
page 453.)
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnotes continued from previous page]] and represented the
heavens with Christian constellations instead of Pagan. Apostles,
popes, saints, martyrs, and personages of the Old and New Testament
completed this Christian Sabeanism. "The disciples of Loyola
used every exertion to make this plan succeed." It is curious
to find in India among the Mussulmans the name of Terah, Abraham's
father, Azar or Azarh, and Azur, which also means fire, and is,
at the same time, the name of the Hindu third solar month (from
June to July), during which the sun is in Gemini, and
the full moon near Sagittarius.
* Cicero: "De Nat. Deo," i., 13.
** "Herodotus," ii., 145.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 452 ISIS UNVEILED.
Above these beasts were the angels or spirits, divided in two
groups: the Igili, or celestial beings, and the Am-anaki, or terrestrial
spirits, the giants, children of Anak, of whom the spies complained
to Moses.
The Kabbala Denudata gives to the kabalists a very clear,
to the profane a very muddled account of permutations or substitutions
of one person for another. So, for instance, it says, that "the
scintilla" (spiritual spark or soul) of Abraham was taken
from Michael, the chief
of the AEons, and highest emanation of the Deity; so high indeed
that in the eyes of the Gnostics, Michael was identical with Christ.
And yet Michael and Enoch are one and the same person. Both occupy
the junction-point of the cross of the Zodiac as "man."
The scintilla of Isaac was that of Gabriel, the chief of the angelic
host, and the scintilla of Jacob was taken from Uriel, named "the
fire of God"; the sharpest sighted spirit in all Heaven.
Adam is not the Kadmon but Adam Primus, the Microprosopus.
In one of his aspects the latter is Enoch,
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 453 ENOCH THE TYPE OF DUAL MAN.
the terrestrial patriarch and father of Methuselah. He that "walked
with God" and "did not die" is the spiritual Enoch,
who typified humanity, eternal in spirit and as eternal in flesh,
though the latter does die. Death is but a new birth,
and spirit is immortal; thus humanity can never die, for the Destroyer
has become the Creator, Enoch is the type of the
dual man, spiritual and terrestrial. Hence his place in the centre
of the astronomical cross.
But was this idea original with the Hebrews? We think not. Every
nation which had an astronomical system, and especially India,
held the cross in the highest reverence, for it was the geometrical
basis of the religious symbolism of their avatars; the
manifestation of the Deity, or of the Creator in his creature
MAN; of God in humanity and humanity in God, as spirits. The oldest
monuments of Chaldea, Persia, and India disclose the double or
eight-pointed cross. This symbol, which very naturally is found,
like every other geometrical figure in nature, in plants as well
as in the snowflakes, has led Dr. Lundy, in his super-Christian
mysticism, to
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 454 ISIS UNVEILED.
name such cruciform flowers as form an eight-pointed star by the
junction of the two crosses -- "the Prophetic Star of
the Incarnation, which joined heaven and earth, God and man
together."* The latter sentence is perfectly expressed; only,
the old kabalist axiom, "as above, so below," answers
still better, as it discloses to us the same God for all humanity,
not alone for the handful of Christians. It is the Mundane
cross of Heaven repeated on earth by plants and dual man:
the physical man superseding the "spiritual," at the
junction-point of which stands the mythical Libra-Hermes-Enoch.
The gesture of one hand pointing to Heaven, is balanced by the
other pointing down to the earth; boundless generations below,
boundless regenerations above; the visible but the manifestation
of the invisible; the man of dust abandoned to dust, the man of
spirit reborn in spirit; thus it is finite humanity which is the
Son of the Infinite God. Abba -- the Father; Amoria -- the Mother;
the Son, the Universe. This primitive triad is repeated in all
the tbeogonies. Adam Kadmon, Hermes, Enoch, Osiris, Christna,
Ormazd, or Christos are all one. They stand as Metatrons between
body and soul -- eternal spirits which redeem flesh by the regeneration
of flesh below, and soul by the regeneration above,
where humanity walks once more with God.
We have shown elsewhere that the symbol of the cross or Egyptian
Tau, 
, was by many ages
earlier than the period assigned to Abraham, the alleled forefather
of the Israelites, for otherwise Moses could not have learned
it of the priests. And that the Tau was held as sacred by the
Jews as by other "Pagan" nations is proved by a fact
admitted now by Christian divines as well as by infidel archeologists.
Moses, in Exodus xii. 22, orders his people to mark their
door-posts and lintels with blood, lest the "Lord
God" should make a mistake and smite some of his chosen people,
instead of the doomed Egyptians.** And this mark is a tau! The
identical Egyptian handled cross, with the half of which
talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin
at Philae.*** How gratuitous is the idea that all such crosses
and symbols were so many unconscious prophecies of Christ, is
fully exemplified in the case of the Jews upon whose accusation
Jesus was put to death. For instance, the same learned author
remarks in Monumental Christianity that "the Jews
themselves acknowledged this sign of salvation until they rejected
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Monumental Christianity," p. 3.
** Who but the authors of the "Pentateuch" could have
invented a Supreme God or his angel so thoroughly human as to
require a smear of blood upon the door-post to prevent his killing
one person for another! For gross materialism this exceeds any
theistical conception that we have noticed in Pagan literature.
*** Denon: "Egypt," ii., pl. 40, No. 8, p. 54.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 455 A DISCUSSION OF THE ZODIAC.
Christ"; and in another place he asserts that the rod of
Moses, used in his miracles before Pharaoh, "was, no doubt,
this crux ansata, or something like it, also used
by the Egyptian priests."* Thus the logical
inference would be, that 1, if the Jews worshipped the same symbols
as the Pagans, then they were no better than they; and 2, if,
being so well versed as they were in the hidden symbolism of the
cross, in the face of their having waited for centuries for the
Messiah, they yet rejected both the Christian Messiah and Christian
Cross, then there must have been something wrong about both.
Those who "rejected" Jesus as the "Son of God,"
were neither the people ignorant of religious symbols, nor the
handful of atheistical Sadducees who put him to death; but the
very men who were instructed in the secret wisdom, who knew the
origin as well as the meaning of the cruciform symbol, and who
put aside both the Christian emblem and the Saviour suspended
from it, because they could not be parties to such a blasphemous
imposition upon the common people.
Nearly all the prophecies about Christ are credited to the patriarchs
and prophets. If a few of the latter may have existed as real
personages, every one of the former is a myth. We will endeavor
to prove it by the hidden interpretation of the Zodiac, and the
relations of its signs to these antediluvian men.
If the reader will keep in mind the Hindu ideas of cosmogony,
as given in chapter vi., he will better understand the relation
between the biblical antediluvian patriarchs, and that puzzle
of commentators -- "Ezekiel's wheel." Thus, be it remembered
1, that the universe is not a spontaneous creation, but an evolution
from pre-existent matter; 2, that it is only one of an endless
series of universes; 3, that eternity is pointed off into grand
cycles, in each of which twelve transformations of our world occur,
following its partial destruction by fire and water, alternately.
So that when a new minor period sets in, the earth is so changed,
even geologically, as to be practically a new world; 4, that of
these twelve transformations, the earth after each of the first
six is grosser, and everything on it -- man included -- more material,
than after the preceding one: while after each of the remaining
six the contrary is true, both earth and man growing more and
more refined and spiritual with each terrestrial change; 5, that
when the apex of the cycle is reached, a gradual dissolution takes
place, and every living and objective form is destroyed. But when
that point is reached, humanity has become fitted to live subjectively
as well as objectively. And not humanity alone, but also ani-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Pages 13 and 402.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 456 ISIS UNVEILED.
mals, plants, and every atom. After a time of rest, say the Buddhists,
when a new world becomes self-formed, the astral souls of animals,
and of all beings, except such as have reached the highest Nirvana;
will return on earth again to end their cycles of transformations,
and become men in their turn.
This stupendous conception, the ancients synthesized for the instruction
of the common people, into a single pictorial design -- the Zodiac,
or celestial belt. Instead of the twelve signs now used, there
were originally but ten known to the general public, viz.: Aries,
Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo-Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus,
Aquarius, and Pisces.* These were exoteric. But in addition there
were two mystical signs inserted, which none but initiates comprehended,
viz.: at the middle or junction-point where now stands Libra,
and at the sign now called Scorpio, which follows Virgo.
When it was found necessary to make them exoteric, these two secret
signs were added under their present appellations as blinds to
conceal the true names which gave the key to the whole secret
of creation, and divulged the origin of "good and evil."
The true Sabean astrological doctrine secretly taught that within
this double sign was hidden the explanation of the gradual transformation
of the world, from its spiritual and subjective, into the "two-sexed"
sublunary state. The twelve signs were therefore divided into
two groups. The first six were called the ascending, or the line
of Macrocosm (the great spiritual world); the last six, the descending
line, or the Microcosm (the little secondary world) -- the mere
reflection of the former, so to say. This division was called
Ezekiel's wheel, and was completed in the following way: First
came the ascending five signs (euphemerized into patriarchs),
Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and the group concluded with
Virgo-Scorpio. Then came the turning-point, Libra. After
which, the first half of the sign Virgo-Scorpio, was duplicated
and transferred to lead the lower, or descending group of Microcosm
which ran down to Pisces, or Noah (deluge). To make it
clearer, the sign Virgo-Scorpio, which appeared originally thus
, became simply Virgo,
and the duplication, 
,
or Scorpio, was placed between Libra, the seventh sign
(which is Enoch, or the angel Metatron, or Mediator between
spirit and matter, or God and man). It now became Scorpio (or
Cain), which sign or patriarch led mankind to destruction,
according
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* In Volney's "Ruins of Empires" p. 360, it is remarked
that as Aries was in its fifteenth degree 1447 B. C.,
it follows that the first degree of "Libra" could not
have coincided with the Vernal equinox more lately than 15,194
years B. C., to which, if you add 1790 years since Christ, it
appears that 16,984 years have elapsed since the origin of the
Zodiac.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 457 THE SIGN LIBRA INVENTED BY THE
GREEKS.
to exoteric theology; but, according to the true doctrine of the
wisdom-religion, it indicated the degradation of the whole
universe in its course of evolution downward from the subjective
to the objective.
The sign of Libra is credited as a later invention by
the Greeks, but it is not generally stated that those among them
who were initiated had only made a change of names conveying the
same idea as the secret name to those "who knew," leaving
the masses as unwise as ever. Yet it was a beautiful idea of theirs,
this Libra, or the balance, expressing as much as could possibly
be done without unveiling the whole and ultimate truth. They intended
it to imply that when the course of evolution had taken the worlds
to the lowest point of grossness, where the earths and their products
were coarsest, and their inhabitants most brutish, the turning-point
had been reached -- the forces were at an even balance. At the
lowest point, the still lingering divine spark of spirit within
began to convey the upward impulse. The scales typified that eternal
equilibrium which is the necessity of a universe of harmony, of
exact justice, of the balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces,
darkness and light, spirit and matter.
These additional signs of the Zodiac warrant us in saying
that the Book of Genesis as we now find it, must be of later date
than the invention of Libra by the Greeks; for we find the
chapters of the genealogies remodelled to fit the new Zodiac,
instead of the latter being made to correspond with the list of
patriarchs. And it is this addition and the necessity of concealing
the true key, that led the Rabbinical compilers to repeat the
names of Enoch and Lamech twice, as we see them now in the Kenite
table. Alone, among all the books of the Bible, Genesis belongs
to an immense antiquity. The others are all later additions, the
earliest of which appeared with Hilkiah, who evidently concocted
it with the help of Huldah, the prophetess.
As there is more than one meaning attached to the stories of the
creation and deluge, we say, therefore, that the biblical account
cannot be comprehended apart from the Babylonian story of the
same; while neither will be thoroughly clear without the Brahmanical
esoteric interpretation of the deluge, as found in the Mahabharata
and the Satapatha-Brahmana. It is the Babylonians
who were taught the "mysteries," the sacerdotal language,
and their religion by the problematical Akkadians who -- according
to Rawlinson came from Armenia -- not the former who emigrated
to India. Here the evidence becomes clear. The Babylonian Xisuthrus
is shown by Movers to have represented the "sun" in
the Zodiac, in the sign of Aquarius, and Oannes, the
man-fish, the semi-demon, is Vishnu in his first avatar; thus
giving the key to the double source of the biblical revelation.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 458 ISIS UNVEILED.
Oannes is the emblem of priestly, esoteric wisdom; he comes out
from the sea, because the "great deep," the water, typifies,
as we have shown, the secret doctrine. For this same reason Egyptians
deified the Nile, apart from its being regarded, in consequence
of its periodical overflows, as the "Saviour" of the
country. They even held the crocodiles as sacred, from having
their abode in the "deep." The "Hamites,"
so called, have always preferred to settle near rivers and oceans.
Water was the first-created element, according to some old cosmogonies.
This name of Oannes is held in the greatest reverence, in the
Chaldean records. The Chaldean priests wore a head-gear like a
fish's head, and a shadbelly coat, representing the body of a
fish.*
"Thales," says Cicero, "assures that water
is the principle of all things; and that God is that Mind which
shaped and created all things from water."**
"In the Beginning, SPIRIT within strengthens
Heaven and Earth,
The watery fields, and the lucid globe of Luna, and then --
Titan stars; and mind infused through the limbs
Agitates the whole mass, and mixes itself with GREAT MATTER."***
Thus water represents the duality of both the Macrocosmos and
the Microcosmos, in conjunction with the vivifying SPIRIT, and
the evolution of the little world from the universal cosmos. The
deluge then, in this sense, points to that final struggle between
the conflicting elements, which brought the first great cycle
of our planet to a close. These periods gradually merged into
each other, order being brought out of chaos, or disorder, and
the successive types of organism being evolved only as the physical
conditions of nature were prepared for their appearance; for our
present race could not have breathed on earth, during that intermediate
period, not having as yet the allegorical coats of skin.****
In chapters iv. and v. of Genesis, we find the so-called
generations of Cain and Seth. Let us glance at them in the order
in which they stand:
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See cuts in Inman's "Ancient Faiths."
** Cicero: "De Nat. Deorum," i., 10.
*** Virgil: "AEneid," vi., 724 ff.
**** The term "coats of skin," is the more suggestive
when we learn that the Hebrew word "skin" used in the
original text, means human skin. The text says: "And
Java Aleim made for Adam and his wife 
CHITONUTT OUR. The first Hebrew word is the same as the Greek
[[chiton]] -- chiton -- coat. Parkhurst defines it as
the skin of men or animals 
,
and 
, OUR, OR, or ORA.
The same word is used at Exodus xxxiv. 30, 35, when the skin
of Moses "shone" (A. Wilder).
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 459 THE BIBLE PATRIARCHS ONLY ZODIACAL
SIGNS.
LINES of GENERATIONS.
Sethite.
(Good Principle)
1. Adam.
2. Seth.
3. Enos.
4. Cainan.
5. Mahalaleel.
6. Jared.
7. Enoch.
8. Methuselah.
9 . Lamech.
10. Noah.
Kenite.
(Evil Principle)
1. Adam.
2. Cain.
3. Enoch.
4. Irad.
5. Mehujael.
6. Methusael.
7. Lamech.
8. Jubal.
9. Jabal.
10. Tubal Cain.
The above are the ten biblical patriarchs, identical with Hindu
Pragapatis (Pradjapatis), and the Sephiroth of the Kabala.
We say ten patriarchs, not twenty, for
the Kenite line was devised for no other purpose than, 1, to carry
out the idea of dualism, on which is founded the philosophy of
every religion; for these two genealogical tables represent simply
the opposing powers or principles of good and evil; and 2, as
a blind for the uninitiated masses. Suppose we restore them to
their primitive form, by erasing these premeditated blinds. These
are so transparent as to require but a small amount of perspicacity
to select, even though one should use only his unaided judgment,
and were not, as we are, enabled to apply the test of the secret
doctrine.
By ridding ourselves, therefore, of the Kenite names that are
mere duplications of the Sethite, or of each other, we get rid
of Adam; of Enoch -- who, in one genealogy, is shown the father
of Irad, and in the other, the son of Jared; of Lamech, son of
Methusael, whereas he, Lamech, is son of Methuselah in the Sethite
line; of Irad (Jared),* Jubal and Jabal, who, with Tubal-Cain,
form a trinity in one, and that one the double of Cain; of Mehujael
(who is but Mahalaleel differently spelled), and Methusael (Methuselah).
This leaves us in the Kenite genealogy of chapter iv., one only,
Cain, who -- the first murderer and fra-
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Here, again, the "Masorah," by converting one name
into another, has helped to falsify the little that was left original
in the primitive Scriptures.
De Rossi, of Parma, says of the Massoretes, in his "Compendis,"
vol. iv., p. 7: "It is known with what carefulness Esdras,
the most excellent critic they have had, had reformed [the
text] and corrected it, and restored it to its primary
splendor. Of the many revisions undertaken after him, none are
more celebrated than that of the Massoretes, who came after the
sixth century . . . and all the most zealous adorers and defenders
of the "Masorah," Christians and Jews . . . ingenuously
accord and confess that it, such as it exists, is deficient,
imperfect, interpolated, full of errors, and a most
unsafe guide." The square letter was not invented
till after the third century.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 460 ISIS UNVEILED.
tricide -- is made to stand in his line as father of Enoch, the
most virtuous of men, who does not die, but is translated alive.
Turn we now to the Sethite table, and we find that Enos, or Enoch,
comes second from Adam, and is father to Cain (an). This
is no accident. There was an evident reason for this inversion
of paternity; a palpable design -- that of creating confusion
and baffling inquiry.
We say, then, that the patriarchs are simply the signs of the
Zodiac, emblems, in their manifold aspects, of the spiritual and
physical evolution of human races, of ages, and of divisions of
time. In astrology, the first four of the "Houses,"
in the diagrams of the "Twelve Houses of Heaven" --
namely, the first, tenth, seventh, and fourth, or the second inner
square placed with its angles upward and downward, are termed
angles, as being of the greatest strength and power.
They answer to Adam, Noah, Cain-an, and Enoch, Alpha, Omega, evil
and good, leading the whole. Furthermore, when divided (including
the two secret names) into four trigons or triads, viz.:
fiery, airy, earthy, and watery, we find the latter corresponding
to Noah.
Enoch and Lamech were doubled in the table of Cain, to fill out
the required number ten in both "generations" in the
Bible, instead of employing the "Secret Name";
and, in order that the patriarchs should correspond with the ten
kabalistic Sephiroth, and fit at the same time the ten, and, subsequently,
twelve signs of the Zodiac, in a manner comprehensible
only to the kabalists.
And now, Abel having disappeared out of that line of descent,
he is replaced by Seth, who was clearly an afterthought suggested
by the necessity of not having the human race descend entirely
from a murderer. This dilemma being apparently first noticed when
the Kenite table had been completed, Adam is made (after all the
generations had appeared) to beget this son, Seth. It is a suggestive
fact that, whereas the double-sexed Adam of chapter v. is made
in the likeness of the Elohim (see Genesis chapter i.
27 and v. 1 of the same), Seth (v. 3) is begotten in Adam's "own
likeness," thus signifying that there were men of different
races. Also, it is most noticeable that neither the age nor a
single other particular respecting the patriarchs in the Kenite
table is given, whereas the reverse is the case with those in
the Sethite line.
Most assuredly, no one could expect to find, in a work open to
the public, the final mysteries of that which was preserved for
countless ages as the grandest secret of the sanctuary. But, without
divulging the key to the profane, or being taxed with undue indiscretion,
we may be allowed to lift a corner of the veil which shrouds the
majestic doctrines of old. Let us then write down the patriarchs
as they ought to stand in their relation to the Zodiac, and see
how they correspond with the signs.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 461 EZEKIEL'S WHEEL FULLY EXPLAINED.
The following diagram represents Ezekiel's Wheel, as given in
many works, among others, in Hargrave Jennings' Rosicrucians:
EZEKIEL'S WHEEL (exoteric).
These signs are (follow numbers):
1, Aries; 2, Taurus; 3, Gemini; 4, Cancer; 5, Leo; 6, Virgo, or
the ascending line of the grand cycle of creation. After
this comes 7, Libra -- "man," which, though
it is found right in the middle, or the intersection point, leads
down the numbers:
8, Scorpio; 9, Sagittarius; 10, Capricornus; 11, Aquarius; and
12, Pisces.
While discussing the double sign of Virgo-Scorpio and Libra, Hargrave
Jennings observes (p. 65):
"All this is incomprehensible, except in the strange mysticism
of the Gnostics and the kabalists; and the whole theory requires
a key of explanation to render it intelligible; which key is only
darkly referred to as possible, but refused absolutely, by these
extraordinary men, as not permissible to be disclosed."
The said key must be turned seven times before the whole
system is divulged. We will give it but one turn, and
thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy
he, who understands the whole!
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 462 ISIS UNVEILED.
EZEKIEL'S WHEEL (esoteric).
To explain the presence of Jodheva (or Yodheva), or what is generally
termed the tetragram 
,
and of Adam and Eve, it will suffice to remind the reader of the
following verses in Genesis, with their right meaning
inserted in brackets.
1. "And God [Elohim] created man in his [their] own image
. . . male and female created he them [him]" -- (ch. 1. 27).
2. "Male and female created he them [him] . . . and called
their [his] name ADAM" -- (v. 2).
When the ternary is taken in the beginning of the tetragram, it
expresses the divine creation spiritually, i.e., without
any carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter;
it is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters,
that of the primitive or heavenly
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 463 LIBRA IDENTICAL WITH ENOCH AND
HERMES.
Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or Yodh; therefore it must
not be read Jehova but Ieva, or Eve. The Adam of the
first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure androgyne, Adam
Kadmon. When woman issues from the left rib of the second Adam
(of dust), the pure Virgo is separated, and falling "into
generation," or the downward cycle, becomes Scorpio,*
emblem of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points
at the purely spiritual races, or the ten prediluvian patriarchs
(the Pradjapatis, and Sephiroth)** are led on by the creative
Deity itself, who is Adam Kadmon or Yodcheva, the lower one is
that of the terrestrial races, led on by Enoch or Libra, the
seventh; who, because he is half-divine, half-terrestrial,
is said to have been taken by God alive. Enoch, or Hermes, or
Libra are one. All are the scales of universal harmony; justice
and equilibrium are placed at the central point of the Zodiac.
The grand circle of the heavens, so well discoursed upon by Plato,
in his Timaeus, symbolizes the unknown as a unity; and
the smaller circles which form the cross, by their division on
the plane of the Zodiacal ring -- typify, at the point of their
intersection, life. The centripetal and centrifugal forces, as
symbols of Good and Evil, Spirit and Matter, Life and Death, are
also those of the Creator and the Destroyer, -- Adam and Eve,
or God and the Devil, as they say in common parlance. In the subjective,
as well as in the objective worlds, they are the two powers, which
through their eternal conflict keep the universe of spirit and
matter in harmony. They force the planets to pursue their paths,
and keep them in their elliptical orbits, thus tracing the astronomical
cross in their revolution through the Zodiac. In their conflict
the centripetal force, were it to prevail, would drive the planets
and living souls into the sun, type of the invisible Spiritual
Sun, the Paraatma or great universal Soul, their parent; while
the centrifugal force would chase both planets and souls into
the dreary space, far from the luminary of the objective universe,
away from the spiritual realm of salvation and eternal life, and
into the chaos of final cosmic destruction, and individual annihilation.
But the balance is there, ever sensitive at the intersection
point. It regulates the action of the two combatants, and the
combined effort of both, causes planets and "living souls"
to pursue a double diagonal line in their revolution through Zodiac
and Life; and thus preserving strict harmony, in visible and invisible
heaven and earth, the forced unity of the two reconciles spirit
and matter, and Enoch is
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Scorpio is the astrological sign of the organs of reproduction.
** The patriarchs are all convertible in their numbers as well
as interchangeable. According to what they relate, they become
ten, five, seven, twelve, and even fourteen. The whole system
is so complicated that it is an utter impossibility in a work
like this to do more than hint at certain matters.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 464 ISIS UNVEILED.
said to stand a "Metatron" before God. Reckoning from
him down to Noah and his three sons, each of these represent a
new "world," i.e., our earth, which is the
seventh* after every period of geological transformation, gives
birth to another and distinct race of men and beings.
Cain leads the ascending line, or Macrocosm, for he is the Son
of the "Lord," not of Adam (Genesis iv.
1). The "Lord" is Adam Kadmon, Cain, the Son of
sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood, Seth on the
other hand is the leader of the races of earth, for he is the
Son of Adam, and begotten "in his own likeness, after his
image" (Genesis v. 3). Cain is Kenu, Assyrian,
and means eldest, while the Hebrew word 
means a Smith, an artificer.
Our science shows that the globe has passed through five distinct
geological phases, each characterized by a different stratum,
and these are in reverse order, beginning with the last: 1. The
Quaternary period, in which man appears as a certainty; 2. The
Tertiary period, in which he may have appeared; 3. Secondary
period, that of gigantic saurians, the megalosaurus, icthyosaurus,
and plesiosaurus -- no vestige of man; 4. The
Palaeozoic period, that of gigantic crustacea; 5 (or first). The
Azoic period, during which science asserts organic life had not
yet appeared.
And is there no possibility that there was a period, and several
periods, when man existed, and yet was not an organic
being -- therefore could not have left any vestige of himself
for exact science? Spirit leaves no skeletons or fossils
behind, and yet few are the men on earth who doubt that man can
live both objectively and subjectively. At all events, the theology
of the Brahmans, hoary with antiquity, and which divides the formative
periods of the earth into four ages, and places between each of
these a lapse of 1,728,000 years, far more agrees with official
science and modern discovery than the absurd chronological notions
promulgated by the Councils of Nice and Trent.
The names of the patriarchs were not Hebrew, though they may
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See vol. I. of the present work, p. 32. Alone, the Hindu calculation
by the Zodiac, can give a key to the Hebrew chronologies and the
ages of the patriarchs. If we bear in mind that, according to
the former astronomical and chronological calculations, out of
the fourteen manwantara (or divine ages), each of which composed
of twelve thousand years of the devas, multiplied by
seventy-one, forms one period of creation --
not quite seven are yet passed, the Hebrew calculation
will become more clear. To help, as much as possible, those who
will be sure to get a good deal bewildered in this calculation,
we will remind the reader that the Zodiac is divided into 360
degrees, and every sign into thirty degrees; that in the Samaritan
Bible the age of Enoch is fixed at 360 years; that in
"Manu," the divisions of time are given thus: "The
day and the night are composed of thirty Mouhourta. A
mouhourta contains thirty kalas. A month of the mortals
is of thirty days, but it is but one day of the pitris.
. . . A year of the mortals is one day of the Devas."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 465 ARIES THE ADAM OF DUST.
have been Hebraized later; they are evidently of Assyrian or Aryan
origin.
Thus Adam, for instance, stands in the explained Kabala
as a convertible term, and applies nearly to every other
patriarch, as every Sephiroth to each Sephira, and vice versa.
Adam, Cain, and Abel form the first triad of the
twelve. They correspond in the Sephiral tree to the Crown, Wisdom,
and Intelligence; and in astrology to the three trigons -- the
fiery, the earthy, and the airy; which fact, were we allowed to
devote more space than we have to its elucidation, would perhaps
show that astrology deserves the name of science as well as any
other. Adam (Kadmon) or Aries (ram) is identical with the Egyptian
ram-headed god Amun, fabricating man on the potter's wheel. His
duplication, therefore -- or the Adam of dust -- is also Aries,
Amon, when standing at the head of his generations, for he fabricates
mortals also in "his own likeness." In astrology the
planet Jupiter is connected with the "first house" (Aries).
The color of Jupiter, as seen in the "stages of the seven
spheres," on the tower of Borsippa, or Birs Nimrud, was red;*
and in Hebrew Adam means 
"red" as well as "man." The Hindu god Agni,
who presides at the sign of Pisces, next to that of Aries in their
relation to the twelve months (February and March),** is painted
of a deep red color, with two faces (male and female),
three legs, and seven arms; the whole forming
the number twelve. So, also, Noah (Pisces), who appears in the
generations as the twelfth patriarch, counting Cain and Abel,
is Adam again under another name, for he is the forefather of
a new race of mankind; and with his "three sons," one
bad, one good, and one partaking of both qualities, is the terrestrial
reflection of the super-terrestrial Adam and his three sons. Agni
is represented mounted on a ram, with a tiara surmounted by a
cross.***
Kain, presiding over the Taurus (Bull) of the Zodiac, is also
very suggestive. Taurus belongs to the earthy trigon, and in connection
with this sign it will not be amiss to remind the student of an
allegory from the Persian Avesta. The story goes that
Ormazd produced a being -- source and type of all the universal
beings -- called LIFE, or Bull in the Zend.
Ahriman (Cain) kills this being (Abel), from the seed of which
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Rawlinson's "Diagrams."
** In the Brahmanical Zodiac the signs are all presided over by
and dedicated to one of the twelve great gods. So, 1. Mecha (Aries)
is dedicated to Varuna; 2. Vricha (Taurus), to Yama; 3. Mithuna
(Gemini), to Pavana; 4. Karcataca (Cancer), to Surya; 5. Sinha
(Leo), to Soma; 6. Kanya (Virgo), to Kartikeia; 7. Toulha (Libra),
to Kouvera; 8. Vristchica (Scorpio), to Kama; 9. Dhanous (Sagittarius),
to Ganesa; 10. Makara (Capricornus), to Poulhar; 11. Kumbha (Aquarius),
to Indra; and, 12. Minas (Pisces), to Agni.
*** Moor's "Hindu Pantheon," pp. 295-302.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 466 ISIS UNVEILED.
(Seth) new beings are produced. Abel, in Assyrian, means son,
but in Hebrew 
it
means something ephemeral, not long-lived, valueless, and
also a "Pagan idol,"* as Kain means a Hermaic
statue (a pillar, the symbol of generation). Likewise, Abel
is the female counterpart of Cain (male), for they are twins and
probably androgynous; the latter answering to Wisdom, the former
to Intelligence.
So with all other patriarchs. Enos, 
,
is Homo again -- a man, or the same Adam, and Enoch in
the bargain; and Kain-an
is identical with Cain. Seth, 
,
is Teth, or Thoth, or Hermes; and this is the reason, no
doubt, why Josephus, in his first book (ch. 3) shows Seth so proficient
in astrology, geometry, and other occult sciences. Foreseeing
the flood, he says, he engraved the fundamental principles of
his art on two pillars of brick and stone, the latter of which
"he saw himself [Josephus] to remain in Syria in his
own time." Thus is it that Seth is identified
also with Enoch, to whom kabalists and Masons attribute the same
feat; and, at the same time, with Hermes, or Kadmus again, for
Enoch is identical with the former; 
He-NOCH means a teacher, an initiator, or an initiate; in Grecian
mythology, Inachus. We have seen the part he is made to play in
the Zodiac.
Mahalaleel, if we divide the word and write 
,
ma-ha-la, means tender, merciful; and
therefore is he made to correspond with the fourth Sephira, Love
or Mercy, emanated from the first triad.** Irad,
, or Iared,
is (minus the vowels) precisely the same. If from the verb 
,
it means descent; if from 
,
arad, it means offspring, and thus corresponds
perfectly with the kabalistic emanations.
Lamech, 
,
is not Hebrew, but Greek. Lam-ach means Lam -- the father, and
Ou-Lom-Ach is the father of the age; or the father of him (Noah)
who inaugurates a new era or period of creation after the pralaya
of the deluge; Noah being the symbol of a new world, the
Kingdom (Malchuth) of the Sephiroth; hence his father, corresponding
to the ninth Sephiroth, is the Foundation.*** Furthermore, both
father and son answer to Aquarius and Pisces in the Zodiac; and
thus the former belonging to the airy and the latter to the watery
trigons, they close the list of the biblical myths.
But if, as we see, every patriarch represents, in one sense, like
each of the Pradjapatis, a new race of antediluvian human beings;
and if, as it may as easily be proved, they are the copies of
the Babylonian Saros,
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Apollo was also Abelius, or Bel.
** Halal is a name of Apollo. The name of Mahalal-Eliel
would then be the autumnal sun, of July, and this patriarch presides
over Leo (July) the zodiacal sign.
*** See description of the Sephiroth, in chapter iv.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 467 THE DYNASTIES OF THE PRADJAPATIS.
or ages, the latter themselves copies of the Hindu ten dynasties
of the "Lords of beings,"* yet, however we may regard
them, they are among the profoundest allegories ever conceived
by philosophical minds.
In the Nuctemeron,** the evolution of the universe
and its successive periods of formation, together with the gradual
development of the human races, are illustrated as fully as possible
in the twelve "hours" into which the allegory is divided.
Each "hour" typifies the evolution of a new man, and
in its turn is divided into four quarters or ages. This work shows
how thoroughly was the ancient philosophy imbued with the doctrines
of the early Aryans, who were the first to divide the life on
our planet into four ages. If one would trace this doctrine from
its source in the night of the traditional period down to the
Seer of Patmos, he need not go astray among the religious systems
of all nations. The Babylonians he would find teaching that in
four different periods four Oannes (or suns) appeared; the Hindus
asserting their four Yuga; the Greeks, Romans, and others firmly
believing in the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages, each of
the epochs being heralded by the appearance of a saviour. The
four Buddhas of the Hindus and the three prophets of the Zoroastrians
-- Oshedar-Cami, Oshedar-mah, and Sosiosh -- preceded by Zarotushtra,
are the types of these ages.
In the Bible, the very opening tells us that before
the sons of God saw the daughters of men, the latter lived
from 365 to 969 years. But when the "Lord God" saw the
iniquities of mankind, He concluded to allow them at most 120
years of life (Genesis vi. 3). To account for
such a violent oscillation in the human mortality-table is only
possible by tracing this decision of the "Lord God"
to its origin. Such incongruities as we meet at every step in
the Bible can be only attributed to the facts that the
book of Genesis and the other books of Moses were
tampered with and remodelled by more than one author; and, that
in their original state they were, with the exception of the external
form of the allegories, faithful copies from the Hindu sacred
books. In Manu, book i., we find the following:
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* How servile was this Chaldean copy may be seen in comparing
the Hindu chronology with that of the Babylonians. According to
Manu, the antediluvian dynasties of the Pradjapatis reigned 4,320,000
human years, a whole divine age of the devas in short, or that
length of time which invariably occurs between life on earth and
the dissolution of that life, or pralaya. The Chaldeans, in their
turn, give precisely the same figures, minus one cipher,
to wit: they make their 120 saros yield a total of 432,000 years.
** Eliphas Levi gives it both in the Greek and Hebrew versions,
but so condensed and arbitrarily that it is impossible for one
who knows less than himself to understand him.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 468 ISIS UNVEILED.
"In the first age, neither sickness nor suffering were known.
Men lived four centuries."
This was in the Krita or Satya yug.
"The Krita-yug is the type of justice. The bull
which stands firm on its four legs is its image; man adheres to
truth, and evil does not as yet direct his actions."* But
in each of the following ages primitive human life loses one-fourth
of its duration, that is to say, in Treta-yug man lives 300, in
Dwapara-yug 200, and in Kali-yug, or our own age, but 100 years
generally, at the most. Noah, son of Lamech -- Oulom-Ach,
or father of the age -- is the distorted copy of Manu, son of
Swayambhu, and the six Manus or Rishis issued from the Hindu "first
man" are the originals of Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph,
and Moses, the Hebrew sages, who beginning with Terah were all
alleged to have been astrologers, alchemists, inspired prophets,
and soothsayers; or in a more profane but plainer language --
magicians.
If we consult the Talmudistic Mishna we find therein
the first emanated divine couple, the androgyne Demiurge Chochmah
(or Hachma Achamoth) and Binah building themselves a house with
seven pillars. They are the architects of God -- Wisdom
and Intelligence -- and His "compass and square." The
seven columns are the future seven worlds, or the typical
seven primordial "days" of creation.
"Chochmah immolates her victims." These victims are
the numberless forces of nature which must "die" (expend
themselves) in order that they should live; when one
force dies out, it is but to give birth to another force, its
progeny. It dies but lives in its children, and resuscitates at
every seventh generation. The servants of Chochmah, or
wisdom, are the souls of H-Adam, for in him are all the souls
of Israel.
There are twelve hours in the day, says the Mishna,
and it is during these hours that is accomplished the creation
of man. Would this be comprehensible, unless we had Manu to teach
us that this "day" embraces the four ages of the world
and has a duration of twelve thousand divine years of
the Devas?
"The Creators (Elohim) outline in the second" hour "the
shape of a more corporeal form of man. They separate it into two
and prepare the sexes to become distinct from each other. Such
is the way the Elohim proceeded in reference to every created
thing."** "Every fish, fowl, plant, beast and man was
androgyne at the first hour."
Says the commentator, the great Rabbi Simeon:
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* See Rabbi Simeon's dissertation on the primitive Man-Bull and
the horns. "Sohar."
** "The Nuctameron of the Hebrews"; see Eliphas Levi,
vol. ii.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 469 ARCHETYPAL MAN A SPHEROID.
"O, companions, companions, man as emanation was both man
and woman; as well on the side of the FATHER
as on the side of the MOTHER. And this is the
sense of the words, and Elohim spoke, Let there be Light and it
was Light! . . . And this is the 'two-fold man'!"*
A spiritual woman was necessary as a contrast for the spiritual
man. Harmony is the universal law. In Taylor's translation, Plato's
discourse upon creation is rendered so as to make him say of this
universe that "He caused it to move with circular motion.
. . . When, therefore, that God who is a perpetually reasoning
Divinity, cogitated about that God (man) who was destined
to subsist at some certain period of time, He produced
his body smooth and even, and every way even and whole from the
centre, and made it perfect. This perfect circle of the created
God, He decussated in the form of the letter X."
The italics of both these sentences from Timaeus belong
to Dr. Lundy, the author of that remarkable work mentioned once
before, Monumental Christianity; and attention is drawn
to the words of the Greek philosopher, with the evident purpose
of giving them the prophetic character which Justin Martyr applied
to the same, when accusing Plato of having borrowed his "physiological
discussion in the Timaeus . . . concerning the Son of
God placed crosswise in the universe," from Moses and his
serpent of brass. The learned author seems to fully accord an
unpremeditated prophecy to these words; although he does not tell
us whether he believes that like Plato's created god, Jesus was
originally a sphere "smooth and even, and every way even
and whole from the centre." Even if Justin Martyr were excusable
for his perversion of Plato, Dr. Lundy ought to know that the
day for that sort of casuistry is long gone by. What the philosopher
meant was man, who before being encased in matter had
no use for limbs, but was a pure spiritual entity. Hence if the
Deity, and his universe, and the stellar bodies are to be conceived
as spheroidal, this shape would be archetypal man's. As his enveloping
shell grew heavier, there came the necessity for limbs, and the
limbs sprouted. If we fancy a man with arms and legs naturally
extended at the same angle, by backing him against the circle
that symbolizes his prior shape as a spirit, we would have the
very figure described by Plato -- the X cross within the circle.
All the legends of the creation, the fall of man, and the resultant
deluge, belong to universal history, and are no more the property
of the Israelites than that of any other nation. What specially
belongs to them (kabalists excepted) are the disfigured details
of every tradition. The Genesis of Enoch is by far anterior
to the books of Moses,** and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* "Auszuge aus dem Sohar," p. 13, 15.
** Such is the opinion of the erudite Dr. Jost and Donaldson.
"The Old Testa- [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 470 ISIS UNVEILED.
Guillaume Postel has presented it to the world, explaining the
allegories as far as he dared; but the ground-work is still unexposed.
For the Jews, the Book of Enoch is as canonical as the
Mosaic books; and if the Christians accepted the latter as an
authority, we do not see why they should reject the former as
an apocrypha. No more can the age of one than that of the other
be determined with anything like certainty. At the time of the
separation, the Samaritans recognized only the books of Moses
and that of Joshua, says Dr. Jost.* In 168 B.C., Jerusalem had
its temple plundered, and all the sacred books were destroyed;**
therefore, the few MSS. that remained were to
be found only among the "teachers of tradition." The
kabalistic Tanaim, and their initiates and prophets had always
practised its teachings in common with the Canaanites, the Hamites,
Midianites, Chaldeans, and all other nations. The story of Daniel
is a proof of it.
There was a sort of Brotherhood, or Freemasonry among the kabalists
scattered all over the world, since the memory of man; and, like
some societies of the mediaeval Masonry of Europe, they called
themselves Companions*** and Innocents.****
It is a belief (founded on knowledge) among the kabalists,
that no more than the Hermetic rolls are the genuine sacred books
of the seventy-two elders -- books which contained the "Ancient
Word" -- lost, but that they have all been
preserved from the remotest times among secret communities. Emanuel
Swedenborg says as much, and his words are based, he says, on
the information he had from certain spirits, who assured
him that "they performed their worship according to this
Ancient Word." "Seek for it in China," adds the
great seer, "peradventure you may find it in Great Tartary!"
Other students of occult sciences have had more than the word
of "certain spirits" to rely upon in this special case
-- they have seen the books.
We must choose therefore perforce between two methods -- either
to accept the Bible exoterically or esoterically. Against
the former we have the following facts: That, after the first
copy of the Book of God has been edited and launched
on the world by Hilkiah, this copy disappears, and Ezra has to
make a new Bible, which Judas Maccabeus finishes; that
when it was copied from the horned letters into square letters,
it was corrupted beyond recognition; that the Masorah completed
the work of destruction; that, finally, we have a text, not 900
years old, abounding
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
[[Footnote continued from previous page]] ment. Books, as we now
find them, seem to have been concluded about 150 years B.C. .
. . The Jews now sought the other books, which had been dispersed
during the wars, and brought them into one collection" (Ghillany:
"Menschenopfer der Hebraer," p. 1). "Sod, the Son
of the Man." Appendix.
* "Jost," vol. i., p. 51.
** Burder's "Josephus," vol. ii., pp. 331-335.
*** "Die Kabbala," p. 95.
**** Gaffarel: Introduction to "Book of Enoch."
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 471 THE REAL HEBREW BIBLE A SECRET
VOLUME.
with omissions, interpolations, and premeditated perversions;
and that, consequently, as this Masoretic Hebrew text has fossilized
its mistakes, and the key to the "Word of God" is lost,
no one has a right to enforce upon so-called "Christians"
the divagations of a series of hallucinated and, perhaps, spurious
prophets, under the unwarranted and untenable assumption that
the author of it was the "Holy Ghost" in propria
personae.
Hence, we reject this pretended monotheistic Scripture, made up
just when the priests of Jerusalem found their political profit
in violently breaking off all connection with the Gentiles. It
is at this moment only that we find them persecuting kabalists,
and banning the "old wisdom" of both Pagans and Jews.
The real Hebrew Bible was a secret volume, unknown to the
masses, and even the Samaritan Pentateuch is far
more ancient than the Septuagint. As for the former,
the Fathers of the Church never even heard of it. We prefer decidedly
to take the word of Swedenborg that the "Ancient Word"
is somewhere in China or the Great Tartary. The more
so, as the Swedish seer is declared, at least by one clergyman,
namely, the Reverend Dr. R. L. Tafel, of London, to have been
in a state of "inspiration from God," while writing
his theological works. He is given even the superiority over the
penmen of the Bible, for, while the latter had the words
spoken to them in their ears, Swedenborg was made to understand
them rationally and was, therefore, internally and not
externally illuminated. "When," says the reverend author,
"a conscientious member of the New Church hears any charges
made against the divinity and the infallibility of either the
soul or the body of the doctrines of the New Jerusalem, he must
at once place himself on the unequivocal declaration made in those
doctrines, that the Lord has effected His second coming in and
by means of those writings which were published by Emanuel Swedenborg,
as His servant, and that, therefore, those charges are not and
cannot be true." And if it is "the Lord" that spoke
through Swedenborg, then there is a hope for us that at least
one divine will corroborate our assertions, that the ancient "word
of God" is nowhere but in the heathen countries, especially
Buddhistic Tartary, Thibet, and China!
"The primitive history of Greece is the primitive history
of India," exclaims Pococke in his India in Greece. In
view of subsequent fruits of critical research, we may paraphrase
the sentence and say: "The primitive history of Judea is
a distortion of Indian fable engrafted on that of Egypt."
Many scientists, encountering stubborn facts, and being reluctant
to contrast the narratives of the "divine" revelation
with those of the Brahmanical books, merely present them to the
reading public. Meanwhile they limit their conclusions to criticisms
and contradictions
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 472 ISIS UNVEILED.
of each other. So Max Muller opposes the theories of Spiegel,
and some one else; and Professor Whitney those of the Oxford Orientalist;
and Dr. Haug made onslaughts on Spiegel, while Dr. Spiegel chose
some other victim; and now even the time-honored Akkadians and
Turanians have had their day of glory. The Proto-Kasdeans,
Kasdeo-Scyths, Sumirians, and what not, have to make room
for some other fictions. Alas! for the Akkads, Halevy, the Assyriologist
attacks the Akkado-Sumirian language of old Babylon, and Chabas,
the Egyptologist, not content with dethroning the Turanian speech,
which has rendered such eminent services to Orientalists when
perplexed, calls the venerable parent of the Akkadians -- Francois
Lenormant -- himself, a charlatan. Profiting by the learned turmoil,
the Christian clergy take heart for their fantastic theology on
the ground that when the jury disagree there is a gain of time
at least for the indicted party. And thus is overlooked the vital
question whether Christendom would not be the better for adopting
Christism in place of Christianity, with its Bible, its
vicarious atonement and its Devil. But to so important a personage
as the latter, we could not do less than devote a special chapter.
Chapter 10
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