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({{hpbcollect}}, Vol.IV, p.421 <ref>("Footnotes to "Zoroaster and his Religion", in ''The Theosophist'', Vol. IV, No. 8, May, 1883, p. 191)</ref>) | ({{hpbcollect}}, Vol.IV, p.421 <ref>("Footnotes to "Zoroaster and his Religion", in ''The Theosophist'', Vol. IV, No. 8, May, 1883, p. 191)</ref>) | ||
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As is constantly shown in the Zohar, the Infinite Unity, or Ain-Soph, is ever placed outside human thought and appreciation; and in Sepher Yetzirâh we see the Spirit of God—the Logos, not the Deity itself—called One. | |||
One is the Spirit of the living God, . . . who liveth forever. Voice, Spirit, [of the Spirit], and Word: this is the Holy Spirit, <ref>Spher Yetzirah, I, §9.</ref>, and the Quaternary. From this Cube emanates the whole Kosmos. | |||
Says the Secret Doctrine : | |||
<blockquote>It is called to life. The mystic Cube in which rests the Creative Idea, the manifesting Mantra [or articulate speech— Vach] and the holy Purusha [both radiations of prima materia] exist in the Eternity in the Divine Substance in their latent state</blockquote> | |||
— during Pralaya. | |||
And in the Sepher Yetzirah, when the Three-in-One are to be called into being—by the manifestation of Shekhinah, the first effulgency or radiation in the manifesting Kosmos—the “Spirit of God,” or Number One,<ref>In its manifested state it becomes Ten, the Universe. In the Chaldaean Kabalah it is sexless. In the Jewish, Shekhinah is female, and the early Christians and Gnostics regarded the Holy Ghost as a female potency. In the Book of Numbers “Shekhina” is made to drop the final “h” that makes it a feminine name. Narayana, the Mover on the Waters, is also sexless; but it is our firm belief that Shekhînah and Daiviprakiti, the “Light of the Logos,” are one and the same thing philosophically.</ref> fructifies and awakens the dual Potency, Number Two, Air, and Number Three, Water; in these “are darkness and emptiness, slime and dung”—which is Chaos, the Tohu-Vah-Bohu. The Air and Water emanate Number Four, Ether or Fire, the Son. This is the Kabalistic Quaternary. This Fourth Number, which in the manifested Kosmos is the One, or the Creative God, is with the Hindus the “Ancient,” Sanat, the Prajâpati of the Vedas and the Brahmâ of the Brâhmans—the heavenly Androgyne, as he becomes the male only after separating himself into two bodies, Vâch and Virâj. With the Kabalists, he is at first the Yôd-Havâh, only later becoming Jehovah, like Virâj, his prototype, after separating himself as Adam-Kadmon into Adam and Eve in the formless, and into Cain-Abel in the semiobjective world, he became finally the Yôd-Havâh, or man and woman, in Enoch, the son of Seth. | |||
For, the true meaning of the compound name of Jehovah—of which, unvoweled, you can make almost anything—is: men and women, or humanity composed of its two sexes. From the first chapter to the end of the fourth chapter of Genesis every name is a permutation of another name, and every personage is at the same time somebody else. A Kabalist traces Jehovah from the Adam of earth to Seth, the third son—or rather race—of Adam.<ref>The Elohim create the Adam of dust, and in him Jehovah-Binah separates himself into Eve, after which the male portion of God becomes the Serpent, tempts himself in Eve, then creates himself in her as Cain, passes into Seth, and scatters from Enoch, the Son of Man, or Humanity, as Yod-Havah.</ref> Thus Seth is Jehovah male; and Enos, being a permutation of Cain and Abel, is Jehovah male and female, or our mankind. The Hindu Brahmâ-Virâj, Virâj-Manu, and Manu-Vaivasvata, with his daughter and wife, Vâch, present the greatest analogy with these personages—for anyone who will take the trouble of studying the subject in both the Bible and the Puranas. It is said of Brahmâ that he created himself as Manu, and that he was born of, and was identical with, his original self, while he constituted the female portion “Śata-rupa” (hundred-formed). In this Hindu Eve, “the mother of all living beings,” Brahma created Viraj, who is himself, but on a lower scale, as Cain is Jehovah on an inferior scale: both are the first males of the Third Race. The same idea is illustrated in the Hebrew name of God יהוה. Read from right to left “Yôd” י is the father. “He” ה the mother, “Vau” ו the son, and “He” ה , repeated at the end of the word, is generation, the act of birth, materiality. This is surely a sufficient reason why the God of the Jews and Christians should be personal, as much as the male Brahmâ, Vishnu, or Śiva of the orthodox, exoteric Hindu. | |||
Thus the term of Yhvh alone—now accepted as the name of “One living [male] God”—will yield, if seriously studied, not only the whole mystery of Being (in the Biblical sense), but also that of the Occult Theogony, from the highest divine Being, the third in order, down to man. As shown by the best Hebraists: | |||
היה or Hayah, or E-y-e, means to be, to exist, while היה or Hayah, or E-y-e, means to live, as motion of existence. <ref>The Source of Measures, p. 8.</ref> | |||
Hence Eve stands as the evolution and the never-ceasing “becoming” of Nature. Now if we take the almost untranslatable Sanskrit word Sat, which means the quintessence of absolute immutable Being, or Be-ness—as it has been rendered by an able Hindu Occultist—we shall find no equivalent for it in any language; but it may be regarded as most closely resembling “Ain,” or “Ain-Soph,” Boundless Being. Then the term Hâyâh, “to be,” as passive, changeless, yet manifested existence may perhaps be rendered by the Sanskrit Jîvâtman, universal life or soul, in its secondary or cosmic meaning; while “Hâyâh,” “to live,” as “motion of existence,” is simply Prana, the ever-changing life in its objective sense. It is at the head of this third category that the Occultist finds Jehovah—the Mother, Binah, and the Father, Arelim. This is made plain in the Zohar, when the emanation and evolution of the Sephirôth are explained: First, Ain-Soph, then Shekhinah, the Garment or Veil of Infinite Light, then Sephîrah or the Kadmon, and, thus making the fourth, the spiritual Substance sent forth from the Infinite Light. This Sephîrah is called the Crown, Kether, and has besides, six other names—in all seven. These names are: 1. Kether; 2. the Aged; 3. the Primordial Point; 4. the White Head; 5. the Long Face; 6. the Inscrutable Height; and 7. Eheyeh (“I am”).<ref>This identifies Sephirah, the third potency, with Jehovah the Lord, who says to Moses out of the burning bush: “(Here) I am” (Exodus iii, 4). At this time the “Lord” had not yet become Jehovah. It was not the one male God who spoke, but the Elohim manifested, or the Sephiroth in their manifested collectivity of seven, contained in the triple Sephirah.</ref> This Septenary Sephîrah is said to contain in itself the nine Sephirôth. But before showing how she brought them forth, let us read an explanation about the Sephirth in the Talmud, which gives it as an archaic tradition, or Kabalah. | |||
There are three groups (or orders) of Sephîrôth: 1. The Sephrth called “divine attributes” (the Triad in the Holy Quaternary); 2. the sidereal (personal) Sephîrôth; 3. the metaphysical Sephîrôth, or a periphrasis of Jehovah, who are the first three Sephirôth (Kether, Hokmah and Bînâh), the rest of the seven being the personal “Seven Spirits of the Presence” (also of the planets, therefore). Speaking of these, the angels are meant, though not because they are seven, but because they represent the seven Sephirôth which contain in them the universality of the Angels. | |||
This shows (a) that, when the first four Sephîrôth are separated, as a Triad-Quaternary—Sephîrah being its synthesis—there remain only seven Sephiroth, as there are seven Rishis; these become ten when the Quaternary, or the first divine Cube, is scattered into units; and (b) that while Jehovah might have been viewed as the Deity, if he be included in the three divine groups or orders of the Sephiroth, the collective Elohim, or the quaternary indivisible Kether, once that he becomes a male God, he is no more than one of the Builders of the lower group—a Jewish Brahma. <ref>The Brahmans were wise in their generation when they gradually, for no other reason than this, abandoned Brahma, and paid less attention to him individually than to any other deity. As an abstract synthesis they worshipped him collectively and in every God, each of which represents him. As Brahmâ, the male, he is far lower than Śiva, the Linga, who personates universal generation, or Vishnu, the preserver—both Śiva and Vishnu being the regenerators of life after destruction. The Christians might do worse than follow their example, and worship God in Spirit, and not in the male Creator.</ref> A demonstration is now attempted. | |||
The first Sephirah, containing the other nine, brought them forth in this order: (2) Hokmah (or Wisdom), a masculine active potency represented among the divine names as Yah; and, as a permutation or an evolution into lower forms in this instance—becoming the ophanim (or the Wheels—cosmic rotation of matter) among the army, or the angelic hosts. From this Hokmah emanated a feminine passive potency called (3) Intelligence, Binah, whose divine name is Jehovah, and whose angelic name, among the Builders and Hosts, is Arelim.<ref>A plural word, signifying a collective host generically; literally, the “strong lion.”</<ref> It is from the union of these two potencies, male and female (or Hokmah and Binah) that emanated all the other Sephiroth, the seven orders of the Builders. Now if we call Jehovah by his divine name, then he becomes at best and forthwith “a female passive” potency in Chaos. And if we view him as a male God, he is no more than one of many, an Angel, Arelim. But straining the analysis to its highest point, and if his male name Yah, that of Wisdom, be allowed to him, still he is not the “Highest and the one Living God”; for he is contained with many others within Sephirah, and Sephirah herself is a third Potency in Occultism, though regarded as the first in the exoteric Kabalah—and is one, moreover, of lesser importance than the Vaidic Aditi, or the Primordial Water of Space, which becomes after many a permutation the Astral Light of the Kabalist. | |||
({{hpbcollect}}, Vol.XIV, pp.186-191 <ref>("The eastern Gupta-Vidyâ and the Kabalah")</ref>) | |||
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