Chapter IX (1)

“All things are governed in the bosom of this triad.”--LYDUS:
_De Mensibus_, 20.

“Thrice let the heaven be turned on its perpetual axis.”--
OVID: _Fast_ iv.

“And Balaam said unto Balak, Build me here _seven_ altars,
and prepare me here _seven_ oxen and _seven_ rams.”--
_Numbers_ xxiii. 1, 2.

“In _seven_ days all creatures who have offended me shall
be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be secured in a
vessel miraculously formed; take, therefore ... and with
_seven_ holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of
all animals, enter the ark without fear; then shalt thou
know God face to face, and all thy questions shall be
answered.”--_Bagavedgitta._

“And the Lord said, I will destroy man ... from the face
of the earth.... But with thee will I establish my
covenant.... Come thou and all thy house into the ark....
For yet _seven_ days and I will cause it to rain upon the
earth.”--_Genesis_ vi., vii.

“The Tetraktys was not only principally honored because all
symphonies are found to exist within it, but also because
it appears to contain the nature of all things.”--THEOS. OF
SMYRNA: _Mathem._, p. 147.

Our task will have been ill-performed if the preceding chapters have not demonstrated that Judaism, earlier and later Gnosticism, Christianity, and even Christian Masonry, have all been erected upon identical cosmical myths, symbols, and allegories, whose full comprehension is possible only to those who have inherited the key from their inventors.

In the following pages we will endeavor to show how much these have been misinterpreted by the widely-different, yet intimately-related systems enumerated above, in fitting them to their individual needs. Thus not only will a benefit be conferred upon the student, but a long-deferred, and now much-needed act of justice will be done to those earlier generations whose genius has laid the whole human race under obligation. Let us begin by once more comparing the myths of the _Bible_ with those of the sacred books of other nations, to see which is the original, which copies.

There are but two methods which, correctly explained, can help us to this result. They are--the _Vedas_, Brahmanical literature and the Jewish _Kabala_. The former has, in a most philosophical spirit, conceived these grandiose myths; the latter borrowing them from the Chaldeans and Persians, shaped them into a history of the Jewish nation, in which their spirit of philosophy was buried beyond the recognition of all but the elect, and under a far more absurd form than the Aryan had given them. The _Bible_ of the Christian Church is the latest receptacle of this scheme of disfigured allegories which have been erected into an edifice of superstition, such as never entered into the conceptions of those from whom the Church obtained her knowledge. The abstract fictions of antiquity, which for ages had filled the popular fancy with but flickering shadows and uncertain images, have in Christianity assumed the shapes of real personages, and become accomplished facts. Allegory, metamorphosed, becomes sacred history, and Pagan myth is taught to the people as a revealed narrative of God’s intercourse with His chosen people.

“The myths,” says Horace in his _Ars Poetica_, “have been invented by wise men to strengthen the laws and teach moral truths.” While Horace endeavored to make clear the very spirit and essence of the ancient myths, Euhemerus pretended, on the contrary, that “myths were the legendary history of kings and heroes, transformed into gods by the admiration of the nations.” It is the latter method which was inferentially followed by Christians when they agreed upon the acceptation of euhemerized patriarchs, and mistook them for men who had really lived.

But, in opposition to this pernicious theory, which has brought forth such bitter fruit, we have a long series of the greatest philosophers the world has produced: Plato, Epicharmus, Socrates, Empedocles, Plotinus, and Porphyry, Proclus, Damascenus, Origen, and even Aristotle. The latter plainly stated this verity, by saying that a tradition of the highest antiquity, transmitted to posterity under the form of various myths, teaches us that the first principles of nature may be considered as “gods,” for the _divine_ permeates all nature. All the rest, details and personages, were added later for the clearer comprehension of the vulgar, and but too often with the object of supporting laws invented in the common interest.

Fairy tales do not exclusively belong to nurseries; all mankind--except those few who in all ages have comprehended their hidden meaning and tried to open the eyes of the superstitious--have listened to such tales in one shape or the other and, after transforming them into sacred symbols, called the product RELIGION!

We will try to systematize our subject as much as the ever-recurring necessity to draw parallels between the conflicting opinions that have been based on the same myths will permit. We will begin by the book of _Genesis_, and seek for its hidden meaning in the Brahmanical traditions and the Chaldeo-Judaïc _Kabala_.

The first Scripture lesson taught us in our infancy is that God created the world in six days, and rested on the _seventh_. Hence, a peculiar solenmity is supposed to attach to the seventh day, and the Christians, adopting the rigid observances of the Jewish sabbath, have enforced it upon us with the substitution of the first, instead of the seventh day of the week.

All systems of religious mysticism are based on numerals. With Pythagoras, the Monas or unity, emanating the duad, and thus forming the trinity, and the quaternary or Arba-il (the mystic _four_), compose the number seven. The sacredness of numbers begins with the great First--the ONE, and ends only with the nought or zero--symbol of the infinite and boundless circle which represents the universe. All the intervening figures, in whatever combination, or however multiplied, represent philosophical ideas, from vague outlines down to a definitely-established scientific axiom, relating either to a moral or a physical fact in nature. They are a key to the ancient views on cosmogony, in its broad sense, including man and beings, and the evolution of the human race, spiritually as well as physically.

The number _seven_ is the most sacred of all, and is, undoubtedly, of Hindu origin. Everything of importance was calculated by and fitted into this number by the Aryan philosophers--ideas as well as localities. Thus they have the

_Sapta-Rishi_, or seven sages, typifying the seven diluvian primitive races (post-diluvian as some say).

_Sapta-Loka_, the seven inferior and superior worlds, whence each of these Rishis proceeded, and whither he returned in glory before reaching the final bliss of Moksha.[810]

_Sapta-Kula_, or seven castes--the Brahmans assuming to represent the direct descendants of the highest of them.[811]

Then, again, the Sapta-Pura (seven holy cities); Sapta-Duipa (seven holy islands); Sapta-Samudra (the seven holy seas); Sapta-Parvata (the seven holy mountains); Sapta-Arania (the seven deserts); Sapta-Vruksha (the seven sacred trees); and so on.

In the Chaldeo-Babylonian incantation, this number reappears again as prominently as among the Hindus. The number is _dual_ in its attributes, _i.e._, holy in one of its aspects it becomes nefast under other conditions. Thus the following incantation we find traced on the Assyrian tablets, now so correctly interpreted.

“The evening of evil omen, the region of the sky, which produces misfortune....

“Message of pest.

“Deprecators of Nin-Ki-gal.

“The seven gods of the vast sky.

“The seven gods of the vast earth.

“The seven gods of blazing spheres.

“The seven gods of celestial legion.

“The seven gods maleficent.

“The seven phantoms--bad.

“The seven phantoms of maleficent flames....

“Bad demon, bad _alal_, bad _gigim_, bad _telal_ ... bad god, bad _maskim_.

“Spirit of seven heavens remember.... Spirit of seven earths remember ... etc.”

This number reappears likewise on almost every page of _Genesis_, and throughout the Mosaic books, and we find it conspicuous (see following chapter) in the _Book of Job_ and the Oriental _Kabala_. If the Hebrew Semitics adopted it so readily, we must infer that it was not blindly, but with a thorough knowledge of its secret meaning; hence, that they must have adopted the doctrines of their “heathen” neighbors as well. It is but natural, therefore, that we should seek in _heathen_ philosophy for the interpretation of this number, which again reappeared in Christianity with its _seven_ sacraments, _seven_ churches in Asia Minor, _seven_ capital sins, _seven_ virtues (four cardinal and three theological), etc.

Have the _seven_ prismatic colors of the rainbow seen by Noah no other meaning than that of a covenant between God and man to refresh the memory of the former? To the kabalist, at least, they have a significance inseparable from the seven labors of magic, the seven upper spheres, the seven notes of the musical scale, the seven numerals of Pythagoras, the seven wonders of the world, the seven ages, and even the seven steps of the Masons, which lead to the Holy of Holies, after passing the flights of _three_ and _five_.

Whence the identity then of these enigmatical, ever-recurring numerals that are found in every page of the Jewish Scriptures, as in every ola and sloka of Buddhistic and Brahmanical books? Whence these numerals that are the soul of the Pythagorean and Platonic thought, and that no unilluminated Orientalist nor biblical student has ever been able to fathom? And yet they have a key ready in their hand, did they but know how to use it. Nowhere is the mystical value of human language and its effects on human action so perfectly understood as in India, nor any better explained than by the authors of the oldest _Brahmanas_. Ancient as their epoch is now found to be, they only try to express, in a more concrete form, the abstract metaphysical speculations of their own ancestors.

Such is the respect of the Brahmans for the sacrificial mysteries, that they hold that the world itself sprang into creation as a consequence of a “sacrificial word” pronounced by the First Cause. This word is the “Ineffable name” of the kabalists, fully discussed in the last chapter.

The secret of the _Vedas_, “Sacred Knowledge” though they may be, is impenetrable without the help of the _Brahmanas_. Properly speaking, the _Vedas_ (which are written in verse and comprised in four books) constitute that portion called the _Mantra_, or magical prayer, and the _Brahmanas_ (which are in prose) contain their key. While the Mantra part is alone holy, the Brahmana portion contains all the theological exegesis, and the speculations and explanations of the sacerdotal. Our Orientalists, we repeat, will make no substantial progress toward a comprehension of Vedic literature until they place a proper valuation upon works now despised by them; as, for instance, the _Aitareya_ and _Kaushîtaki Brâhmanas_, which belong to the _Rig-Veda_.

Zoroaster was called a _Manthran_, or speaker of Mantras, and, according to Haug, one of the earliest names for the Sacred Scriptures of the Parsis was _Mânthra-speñta_. The power and significance of the Brahman who acts as the Hotri-priest at the Soma-Sacrifice, consists in his possession and full knowledge of the uses of the sacred word or speech--_Vâch_. The latter is personified in Sara-isvati, the wife of Brahma, who is the goddess of the sacred or “Secret Knowledge.” She is usually depicted as riding upon a peacock with its tail all spread. The eyes upon the feathers of the bird’s tail, symbolize the sleepless eyes that see all things. To one who has the ambition of becoming an adept of the “Secret doctrines,” they are a reminder that he must have the hundred eyes of Argus to see and comprehend all things.

And this is why we say that it is not possible to solve fully the deep problems underlying the Brahmanical and Buddhistic sacred books without having a perfect comprehension of the esoteric meaning of the Pythagorean numerals. The greatest power of this Vâch, or Sacred Speech, is developed according to the form which is given to the Mantra by the officiating Hotri, and this form consists wholly in the numbers and syllables of the sacred metre. If pronounced slowly and in a certain rhythm, one effect is produced; if quickly and with another rhythm, there is a different result. “Each metre,” says Haug, “is the invisible master of something visible in this world; it is, as it were, its exponent and ideal. This great significance of the metrical speech is derived from the number of syllables of which it consists, for each thing has (just as in the Pythagorean system) a certain numerical proportion. All these things, metres (chhandas), stomas, and prishthas, are liable to be as eternal and divine as the words themselves they contain. The earliest Hindu divines did not only believe in a primitive revelation of the words of the sacred texts, but even in that of the various forms. These forms, along with their contents, the everlasting _Veda_-words, are symbols expressive of things of the invisible world, and in several respects comparable to the Platonic ideas.”

_This testimony from an unwilling witness shows again the identity between the ancient religions as to their secret doctrine._ The Gâyatri metre, for example, consists of _thrice eight_ syllables, and is considered the most sacred of metres. It is the metre of Agni, the fire-god, and becomes at times the emblem of Brahma himself, the chief creator, and “fashioner of man” in his own image. Now Pythagoras says that “The number eight, or the Octad, is the first cube, that is to say, squared in all senses, as a die, proceeding from its base two, or even number; _so is man four-square or perfect_.” Of course few, except the Pythagoreans and kabalists, can fully comprehend this idea; but the illustration will assist in pointing out the close kinship of the numerals with the Vedic _Mantras_. The chief problems of every theology lie concealed beneath this imagery of fire and the varying rhythm of its flames. The burning bush of the _Bible_, the Zoroastrian and other sacred fires, Plato’s universal soul, and the Rosicrucian doctrines of both soul and body of man being evolved out of fire, the reasoning and immortal element which permeates all things, and which, according to Herakleitus, Hippocrates, and Parmenides, is God, have all the same meaning.

Each metre in the _Brahmanas_ corresponds to a number, and as shown by Haug, as it stands in the sacred volumes, is a prototype of some visible form on earth, and its effects are either good or evil. The “sacred speech” can save, but it can kill as well; its many meanings and faculties are well known but to the _Dikshita_ (the adept), who has been initiated into many mysteries, and whose “spiritual birth” is completely achieved; the Vâch of the _mantra_ is a spoken power, which awakes another corresponding and still more occult power, each allegorically personified by some god in the world of spirits, and, according as it is used, responded to either by the gods or the _Rakshasas_ (bad spirits). In the Brahmanical and Buddhist ideas, a curse, a blessing, a vow, a desire, an idle thought, can each assume a visible shape and so manifest itself _objectively_ to the eyes of its author, or to him that it concerns. Every sin becomes incarnated, so to say, and like an avenging fiend persecutes its perpetrator.

There are words which have a destructive quality in their very syllables, as though objective things; for every sound awakens a corresponding one in the invisible world of spirit, and the repercussion produces either a good or bad effect. Harmonious rhythm, a melody vibrating softly in the atmosphere, creates a beneficent and sweet influence around, and acts most powerfully on the psychological as well as physical natures of every living thing on earth; it reacts even on inanimate objects, for matter is still spirit in its essence, invisible as it may seem to our grosser senses.

So with the numerals. Turn wherever we will, from the Prophets to the Apocalypse, and we will see the biblical writers constantly using the numbers _three_, _four_, _seven_, and _twelve_.

And yet we have known some partisans of the _Bible_ who maintained that the _Vedas_ were copied from the Mosaic books![812] The _Vedas_, which are written in Sanscrit, a language whose grammatical rules and forms, as Max Müller and other scholars confess, were _completely established_ long before the days when the great wave of emigration bore it from Asia all over the Occident, are there to proclaim their parentage of every philosophy, and every religious institution developed later among Semitic peoples. And which of the numerals most frequently occur in the Sanscrit chants, those sublime hymns to creation, to the unity of God, and the countless manifestations of His power? ONE, THREE, and SEVEN. Read the hymn by Dirghatamas.

“TO HIM WHO REPRESENTS ALL THE GODS.”

“The _God_ here present, our blessed patron, our sacrificer, has a brother who spreads himself in mid-air. There exists a _third_ Brother whom we sprinkle with our libations.... It is he whom I have seen master of men and armed with _seven_ rays.”[813]

And again:

“_Seven_ Bridles aid in guiding a car which has but ONE wheel, and which is drawn by a single horse that shines with _seven_ rays. The wheel has _three_ limbs, an immortal wheel, never-wearying, whence hang all the worlds.”

“Sometimes _seven_ horses drag a car of _seven_ wheels, and _seven_ personages mount it, accompanied by _seven_ fecund nymphs of the water.”

And the following again, in honor of the fire-god--_Agni_, who is so clearly shown but a spirit subordinate to the ONE God.

“Ever ONE, although having _three_ forms of double nature (androgynous)--he rises! and the priests offer to _God_, in the act of sacrifice, their prayers which reach the heavens, borne aloft by Agni.”

Is this a coincidence, or, rather, as reason tells us, the result of the derivation of many national cults from one primitive, universal religion? A _mystery_ for the uninitiated, the _unveiling_ of the most sublime (because correct and true) psychological and physiological problems for the initiate. Revelations of the personal spirit of man which is divine because that spirit is not only the emanation of the ONE Supreme God, but is the only God man is able, in his weakness and helplessness, to comprehend--to feel _within_ himself. This truth the Vedic poet clearly confesses, when saying:

“The Lord, Master of the universe and full of wisdom, has entered with me (into me)--weak and ignorant--and has formed me of _himself_ in that place[814] where the spirits obtain, by the help of _Science_, the peaceful enjoyment of the _fruit_, as sweet as ambrosia.”

Whether we call this fruit “an apple” from the Tree of Knowledge, or the _pippala_ of the Hindu poet, it matters not. It is the fruit of esoteric wisdom. Our object is to show the existence of a religious system in India for many thousands of years before the exoteric fables of the Garden of Eden and the Deluge had been invented. Hence the identity of doctrines. Instructed in them, each of the initiates of other countries became, in his turn, the founder of some great school of philosophy in the West.

Who of our Sanscrit scholars has ever felt interested in discovering the real sense of the following hymns, palpable as it is: “_Pippala_, the sweet fruit of that tree upon which come _spirits_ who love the _science_ (?) and where _the gods produce all marvels_. This is a mystery for him _who knows not the Father_ of the world.”

Or this one again:

“These stanzas bear at their head a title which announces that they are consecrated to the _Viswadévas_ (that is to say, to all the gods). He who knows not the Being whom I sing _in all his manifestations_, will comprehend nothing of my verses; those who do know HIM are not strangers to this reünion.”

This refers to the reünion and parting of the immortal and mortal parts of man. “The immortal Being,” says the preceding stanza, “is in the cradle of the mortal Being. The two eternal spirits go and come everywhere; only some men know the one without knowing the other” (_Dirghatamas_).

Who can give a correct idea of Him of whom the _Rig-Veda_ says: “That which is One the wise call it in divers manners.” That One is sung by the Vedic poets in all its manifestations in nature; and the books considered “childish and foolish” teach how at will to call the beings of wisdom for our instruction. They teach, as Porphyry says: “a liberation from all terrene concerns ... a flight of the _alone_ to the ALONE.”

Professor Max Müller, whose every word is accepted by his school as philological gospel, is undoubtedly right in one sense when in determining the nature of the Hindu gods, he calls them “masks without an actor ... names without being, not beings without names.”[815] For he but proves thereby the monotheism of the ancient Vedic religion. But it seems to us more than dubious whether he or any scientist of his school needed hope to fathom the old Aryan[816] thought, without an accurate study of those very “masks.” To the materialist, as to the scientist, who for various reasons endeavors to work out the difficult problem of compelling facts to agree with either their own hobbies or those of the _Bible_, they may seem but the empty shells of phantoms. Yet such authorities will ever be, as in the past, the unsafest of guides, except in matters of exact science. The _Bible_ patriarchs are as much “masks without actors,” as the pragâpatis, and yet, if the living personage behind these masks is but an abstract shadow there is an idea embodied in every one of them which belongs to the philosophical and scientific theories of ancient wisdom.[817] And who can render better service in this work than the native Brahmans themselves, or the kabalists?

To deny, point-blank, any sound philosophy in the later Brahmanical speculations upon the _Rig-Veda_, is equivalent to refusing to ever correctly understand the mother-religion itself, which gave rise to them, and which is the expression of the inner thought of the direct ancestors of these later authors of the _Brahmanas_. If learned Europeans can so readily show that all the Vedic gods are but empty masks, they must also be ready to demonstrate that the Brahmanical authors were as incapable as themselves to discover these “actors” anywhere. This done, not only the three other sacred books which Max Müller says “do not deserve the name of _Vedas_,” but the _Rig-Veda_ itself becomes a meaningless jumble of words; for what the world-renowned and subtile intellect of the ancient Hindu sages failed to understand, no modern scientist, however learned, can hope to fathom. Poor Thomas Taylor was right in saying that “philology is not philosophy.”

It is, to say the least, illogical to admit that there is a hidden thought in the literary work of a race perhaps ethnologically different from our own; and then, because it is utterly unintelligible to us whose spiritual development during the several thousand intervening years has bifurcated into quite a contrary direction--deny that it has any sense in it at all. But this is precisely what, with all due respect for erudition, Professor Max Müller and his school do in this instance, at least. First of all, we are told that, albeit cautiously and with some effort, yet we may still walk in the footsteps of these authors of the _Vedas_. “We shall feel that we are brought face to face and mind to mind with men yet intelligible to us _after we have freed ourselves from our modern conceits_. We shall not succeed always; words, verses, nay whole hymns in the _Rig-Veda_, will and must remain to us a dead letter.... For, with a few exceptions ... the whole world of the Vedic ideas is so entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon, that instead of translating, we can as yet only guess and combine.”[818]

And yet, to leave us in no possible doubt as to the true value of his words, the learned scholar, in another passage, expresses his opinion on these same Vedas (with one exception) thus: “The only important, the only real Veda, is the _Rig-Veda_--the other so-called _Vedas_ deserve the name of _Veda_ no more than the _Talmud_ deserves the name of _Bible_. Professor Müller rejects them as unworthy of the attention of any one, and, as we understand it, on the ground that they contain chiefly “sacrificial formulas, charms, and incantations.”[819]

And now, a very natural question: Are any of our scholars prepared to demonstrate that, so far, they are intimately acquainted with the hidden sense of these perfectly absurd “sacrificial formulas, charms, and incantations” and magic nonsense of _Atharva-Veda_? We believe not, and our doubt is based on the confession of Professor Müller himself, just quoted. If “the whole world of the Vedic ideas [the _Rig-Veda_ cannot be included alone in this _world_, we suppose] is so entirely beyond our own [the scientists’] intellectual horizon that, instead of translating, we can as yet only guess and combine;” and the _Yagur-Veda_, _Sama-Veda_, and _Atharva-Veda_ are “childish and foolish;”[820] and the _Brahmanas_, the _Sûtras Yâska_, and _Sâyana_, “though _nearest in time_ to the hymns of the _Rig-Veda_, indulge in the most frivolous and ill-judged interpretations,” how can either himself or any other scholar form any adequate opinion of either of them? If, again, the authors of the _Brahmanas_, the nearest in time to the Vedic hymns, were already incompetent to offer anything better than “ill-judged interpretations,” then at what period of history, where, and by whom, were written these grandiose poems, whose mystical sense has died with their generations? Are we, then, so wrong in affirming that if sacred texts are found in Egypt to have become--even to the priestly scribes of 4,000 years ago--wholly unintelligible,[821] and the _Brahmanas_ offer but “childish and foolish” interpretations of the _Rig-Veda_, at least as far back as that, then, 1st, both the Egyptian and Hindu religious philosophies are of an untold antiquity, far antedating ages cautiously assigned them by our students of comparative mythology; and, 2d, the claims of ancient priests of Egypt and modern Brahmans, as to their age, are, after all, correct.

We can never admit that the three other _Vedas_ are less worthy of their name than the Rig-hymns, or that the _Talmud_ and the _Kabala_ are so inferior to the _Bible_. The very name of the _Vedas_ (the literal meaning of which is _knowledge_ or _wisdom_) shows them to belong to the literature of those men who, in every country, language, and age, have been spoken of as “those who know.” In Sanscrit the third person singular is _véda_ (he knows), and the plural is _vidá_ (they know). This word is synonymous with the Greek θεοσέβεια which Plato uses when speaking of the _wise_--the magicians; and with the Hebrew Hakamin, חכמים (wise men). Reject the _Talmud_ and its old predecessor the _Kabala_, and it will be simply impossible ever to render correctly one word of that _Bible_ so much extolled at their expense. But then it is, perhaps, just what its partisans are working for. To banish the _Brahmanas_ is to fling away the key that unlocks the door of the _Rig-Veda_. The _literal_ interpretation of the _Bible_ has already borne its fruits; with the _Vedas_ and the Sanscrit sacred books in general it will be just the same, with this difference, that the absurd interpretation of the _Bible_ has received a time-honored right of eminent domain in the department of the ridiculous; and will find its supporters, against light and against proof. As to the “heathen” literature, after a few more years of unsuccessful attempts at interpretation, its religious meaning will be relegated to the limbo of exploded superstitions, and people will hear no more of it.

We beg to be clearly understood before we are blamed and criticised for the above remarks. The vast learning of the celebrated Oxford professor can hardly be questioned by his very enemies, yet we have a right to regret his precipitancy to condemn that which he himself confesses “entirely beyond our own intellectual horizon.” Even in what he considers a ridiculous blunder on the part of the author of the _Brahmanas_, other more spiritually-disposed persons may see quite the reverse. “_Who_ is the greatest of the gods? Who shall first be praised by our songs?” says an ancient Rishi of the _Rig-Veda_; mistaking (as Prof. M. imagines) the interrogative pronoun “Who” for some divine name. Says the Professor: “A place is allotted in the sacrificial invocations to a god ‘Who,’ and hymns addressed to him are called ‘Whoish hymns.’” And is a god “Who” less natural as a term than a god “I am?” or “Whoish” hymns less reverential than “I-amish” psalms? And who can prove that this is really a blunder, and not a premeditated expression? Is it so impossible to believe that the strange term was precisely due to a reverential awe which made the poet hesitate before giving a name, as form to that which is justly considered as the highest abstraction of metaphysical ideals--God? Or that the same feeling made the commentator who came after him to pause and so leave the work of anthropomorphizing the “Unknown,” the “WHO,” to future human conception? “These early poets thought more for themselves--than for others,” remarks Max Müller himself. “They sought rather, in their language, to be true to their own thought than to please the imagination of their hearers.”[822] Unfortunately it is this very thought which awakes no responsive echo in the minds of our philologists.

Farther, we read the sound advice to students of the _Rig-Veda_ hymns, to collect, collate, sift, and reject. “Let him study the commentaries, the _Sûtras_, the _Brahmanas_, and even later works, in order to exhaust all the sources from which information can be derived. He [the scholar] _must not despise the traditions of the Brahmans_, even where their misconceptions ... are palpable.... Not a corner in the _Brahmanas_, the _Sûtras_, _Yâska_, and _Sâyana_, should be left unexplored _before we propose a rendering of our own_.... When the scholar has done his work, the poet and philosopher must take it up and finish it.”[823]

Poor chance for a “philosopher” to step into the shoes of a learned philologist and presume to correct _his_ errors! We would like to see what sort of a reception the most learned Hindu scholar in India would have from the educated public of Europe and America, if he should undertake to correct a savant, after he had sifted, accepted, rejected, explained, and declared what was good, and what “absurd and childish” in the sacred books of his forefathers. That which would finally be declared “Brahmanic misconceptions,” by the conclave of European and especially German savants, would be as little likely to be reconsidered at the appeal of the most erudite pundit of Benares or Ceylon, as the interpretation of Jewish Scripture by Maimonides and Philo-Judæus, by Christians after the Councils of the Church had accepted the mistranslations and explanations of Irenæus and Eusebius. What pundit, or native philosopher of India should know his ancestral language, religion, or philosophy as well as an Englishman or a German? Or why should a Hindu be more suffered to expound Brahmanism, than a Rabbinical scholar to interpret Judaism or the Isaïan prophecies? Safer, and far more trustworthy translators can be had nearer home. Nevertheless, let us still hope that we may find at last, even though it be in the dim future, a European philosopher to sift the sacred books of the wisdom-religion, and not be contradicted by every other of his class.

Meanwhile, unmindful of any alleged authorities, let us try to sift for ourselves a few of these myths of old. We will search for an explanation within the popular interpretation, and feel our way with the help of the magic lamp of Trismegistus--the mysterious number _seven_. There must have been some reason why this figure was universally accepted as a mystic calculation. With every ancient people, the Creator, or Demiurge, was placed over the seventh heaven. “And were I to touch upon the initiation into our sacred Mysteries,” says Emperor Julian, the kabalist, “which the Chaldean bacchised respecting the _seven-rayed God, lifting up the souls through Him_, I should say things unknown, and _very unknown to the rabble_, but well known to the _blessed Theurgists_.”[824] In _Lydus_ it is said that “The Chaldeans call the God IAO, and SABAOTH he is often called, _as He_ who is over the seven orbits (heavens, or spheres), that is the Demiurge.”[825]

One must consult the Pythagoreans and Kabalists to learn the potentiality of this number. Exoterically the seven rays of the solar spectrum are represented concretely in the seven-rayed god Heptaktis. These seven rays epitomized into THREE primary rays, namely, the red, blue, and yellow, form the solar trinity, and typify respectively spirit-matter and spirit-essence. Science has also reduced of late the seven rays to three primary ones, thus corroborating the scientific conception of the ancients of at least one of the visible manifestations of the invisible deity, and the seven divided into a quaternary and a trinity.

The Pythagoreans called the number seven the vehicle of life, as it contained body and soul. They explained it by saying, that the human body consisted of four principal elements, and that the soul is triple, comprising reason, passion, and desire. The ineffable WORD was considered the _Seventh_ and highest of all, for there are six minor substitutes, each belonging to a degree of initiation. The Jews borrowed their Sabbath from the ancients, who called it _Saturn’s_ day and deemed it unlucky, and not the latter from the Israelites when Christianized. The people of India, Arabia, Syria, and Egypt observed weeks of seven days; and the Romans learned the hebdomadal method from these foreign countries when they became subject to the Empire. Still it was not until the fourth century that the Roman kalends, nones, and ides were abandoned, and weeks substituted in their place; and the astronomical names of the days, such as _dies Solis_ (day of the Sun), _dies Lunæ_ (day of the Moon), _dies Martis_ (day of Mars); _dies Mercurii_ (day of Mercury), _dies Jovis_ (day of Jupiter), _dies Veneris_ (day of Venus), and _dies Saturni_ (day of Saturn), prove that it was not from the Jews that the week of seven days was adopted. Before we examine this number kabalistically, we propose to analyse it from the standpoint of the Judaico-Christian Sabbath.

When Moses instituted the _yom shaba_, or _Shebang_ (Shabbath), the allegory of the Lord God resting from his work of creation on the seventh day was but a _cloak_, or, as the _Sohar_ expresses it, a screen, to hide the true meaning.

The Jews reckoned then, as they do now, their days by number, as, day the _first_; day the second; and so on; _yom ahad_; _yom sheni_; _yom shelisho_; _yom rebis_; _yom shamishi_; _yom shishehi_; yom SHABA.

“The Hebrew _seven_ שבע, consisting of three letters, S. B. O., has more than one meaning. First of all, it means _age_ or cycle, Shab-ang; Sabbath שבע can be translated _old age_, as well as _rest_, and in the old Coptic, _Sabe_ means _wisdom_, learning. Modern archæologists have found that as in Hebrew _Sab_ שב also means _gray-headed_, and that therefore the _Saba_-day was the day on which the “gray-headed men, or ‘aged fathers’ of a tribe, were in the habit of assembling for councils or sacrifices.”[826]

“Thus, the week of six days and the seventh, the _Saba_ or _Sapta_-day period, is of the highest antiquity. The observance of the lunar festivals in India, shows that that nation held hebdomadal meetings as well. With every new quarter the moon brings changes in the atmosphere, hence certain changes are also produced throughout the whole of our universe, of which the meteorological ones are the most insignificant. On this day of the _seventh_ and most powerful of the prismatic days, the adepts of the “Secret Science” meet as they met thousands of years ago, to become the agents of the occult powers of nature (emanations of the working God), and commune with the invisible worlds. It is in this observance of the seventh day by the old sages--not as the resting day of the Deity, but because they had penetrated into its occult power, that lies the profound veneration of all the heathen philosophers for the number _seven_ which they term the “venerable,” the sacred number. The Pythagorean _Tetraktis_, revered by the Platonists, was the _square_ placed below the _triangle_; the latter, or the Trinity embodying the invisible _Monad_--the unity, and deemed too sacred to be pronounced except within the walls of a Sanctuary.

The ascetic observance of the Christian Sabbath by Protestants is pure religious tyranny, and does more harm, we fear, than good. It really dates only from the enactment (in 1678) of the 29th of Charles II., which prohibited any “tradesman, artificer, workman, laborer, or other person,” to “do or exercise any worldly labor, etc., etc., upon the Lord’s day.” The Puritans carried this thing to extremes, apparently to mark their hatred of Catholicism, both Roman and Episcopal. That it was no part of the plan of Jesus that such a day should be set apart, is evident not only from his words but acts. It was not observed by the early Christians.

When Trypho, _the Jew_, reproached the Christians _for not having a Sabbath_, what does the martyr answer him? “The new law will have you keep a perpetual Sabbath. You, when _you have passed a day in idleness, think you are religious_. The Lord is not pleased with such things as these. If any be guilty of _perjury or fraud_, let him reform; _if he be an adulterer_, let him repent; and _he will then have kept the kind of Sabbath truly pleasing to God_.... The elements are never idle, and keep no Sabbath. There was no need of the observance of Sabbaths before Moses, neither now is there any need of them after Jesus Christ.”

The _Heptaktis_ is not the Supreme Cause, but simply an emanation from _Him_--the first visible manifestation of the Unrevealed Power. “His Divine _Breath_, which, violently breaking forth, condensed itself, shining with radiance until it evolved into Light, and so became cognizant to external sense,” says John Reuchlin.[827] This is the emanation of the Highest, the Demiurge, a multiplicity in a _unity_, the _Elohim_, whom we see _creating_ our world, or rather fashioning it, in six days, and resting on the _seventh_. And who are these _Elohim_ but the euhemerized powers of nature, the faithful manifested servants, the laws of Him who is immutable law and harmony Himself?

They remain over the seventh heaven (or spiritual world), for it is they who, according to the kabalists, formed in succession the six material worlds, or rather, attempts at worlds, that preceded our own, which, they say, is the _seventh_. If, in laying aside the metaphysico-spiritual conception, we give our attention but to the religio-scientific problem of creation in “six days,” over which our best biblical scholars have vainly pondered so long, we might, perchance, be on the way to the true idea underlying the allegory. The ancients were philosophers, consistent in all things. Hence, they taught that each of these departed worlds, having performed its physical evolution, and reached--through birth, growth, maturity, old age, and death--the end of its cycle, had returned to its primitive subjective form of a _spiritual_ earth. Thereafter it had to serve through all eternity as the dwelling of those who had lived on it as men, and even animals, but were now spirits. This idea, were it even as incapable of exact demonstration as that of our theologians relating to Paradise, is, at least, a trifle more philosophical.

As well as man, and every other living thing upon it, our planet has had its spiritual and physical evolution. From an impalpable ideal _thought_ under the creative Will of Him of whom we know nothing, and but dimly conceive in imagination, this globe became fluidic and _semi_-spiritual, then condensed itself more and more, until its physical development--matter, the tempting demon--compelled it to try its own creative faculty. _Matter_ defied SPIRIT, and the earth, too, had its “Fall.” The allegorical curse under which it labors, is that it only _procreates_, it does not _create_. Our physical planet is but the handmaiden, or rather the maid-of-all-work, of the spirit, its master. “Cursed be the ground ... thorns and thistles shall it bring,” the Elohim are made to say. “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” The Elohim say this both to the ground and the woman. And this curse will last until the minutest particle of matter on earth shall have outlived its days, until every grain of dust has, by gradual transformation through evolution, become a constituent part of a “living soul,” and, until the latter shall reascend the cyclic arc, and finally stand--its own _Metatron_, or Redeeming Spirit--at the foot of the upper step of the spiritual worlds, as at the first hour of its emanation. Beyond that lies the great “Deep”--A MYSTERY!

It must be remembered that every cosmogony has a _trinity_ of workers at its head--Father, spirit; Mother, nature, or matter; and the manifested universe, the Son or result of the two. The universe, also, as well as each planet which it comprehends, passes through _four_ ages, like man himself. All have their infancy, youth, maturity, and old age, and these four added to the other three make the sacred seven again.

The introductory chapters of _Genesis_ were never meant to present even a remote allegory of the creation of _our_ earth. They embrace (chapter i.) a metaphysical conception of some indefinite period in the eternity, when successive attempts were being made by the law of evolution at the formation of universes. This idea is plainly stated in the _Sohar_: “There were old worlds, which perished as soon as they came into existence, were formless, and were called _sparks_. Thus, the smith, when hammering the iron, lets the sparks fly in all directions. The sparks are the primordial worlds which could not continue, because the _Sacred Aged_ (Sephira) had not as yet assumed its form (of androgyne or opposite sexes) of king and queen (Sephira and Kadmon) and the Master was not yet at his work.”[828]

The six periods or “days” of _Genesis_ refer to the same metaphysical belief. Five such ineffectual attempts were made by the _Elohim_, but the sixth resulted in worlds like our own (_i.e._, all the planets and most of the stars are worlds, and inhabited, though not like our earth). Having formed this world at last in the sixth period, the Elohim rested in the _seventh_. Thus the “Holy One,” when he created the present world, said: “This pleases me; the previous ones did not please me.”[829] And the Elohim “saw everything that he had made, and behold _it was_ very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth _day_.”--_Genesis_ i.

The reader will remember that in Chapter IV. an explanation was given of the “day” and “night” of Brahma. The former represents a certain period of cosmical activity, the latter an equal one of cosmical repose. In the one, worlds are being evolved, and passing through their allotted four ages of existence; in the latter the “inbreathing” of Brahma reverses the tendency of the natural forces; everything visible becomes gradually dispersed; chaos comes; and a long night of repose reinvigorates the cosmos for its next term of evolution. In the morning of one of these “days” the formative processes are gradually reaching their climax of activity; in the evening imperceptibly diminishing the same until the _pralaya_ arrives, and with it “_night_.” One such morning and evening do, in fact, constitute a cosmic day; and it was a “day of Brahma” that the kabalistic author of _Genesis_ had in mind each time when he said: “And the evening and the morning were the first (or fifth or sixth, or any other) _day_.” Six days of gradual evolution, one of repose, and then--evening! Since the first appearance of man on _our_ earth there has been an eternal Sabbath or rest for the Demiurge.

The cosmogonical speculations of the first six chapters of _Genesis_ are shown in the races of “sons of God,” “giants,” etc., of chapter vi. Properly speaking, the story of the formation of our earth, or “creation,” as it is very improperly called, begins with the rescue of Noah from the deluge. The Chaldeo-Babylonian tablets recently translated by George Smith leave no doubt of that in the minds of those who read the inscriptions esoterically. Ishtar, the great goddess, speaks in column iii. of the destruction of the _sixth_ world and the appearance of the seventh, thus:

“SIX _days_ and _nights_ the wind, deluge, and storm overwhelmed.

“On the _seventh_ day, in its course was calmed the storm, and all the deluge,

“which had destroyed like an earthquake,[830]

“quieted. The sea he caused to dry, and the wind and deluge ended....

“I perceived the shore at the boundary of the sea....

“to the country of Nizir went the ship (argha, or the moon).

“the mountain of Nizir stopped the ship....

“the _first_ day, and the _second_ day, the mountain of Nizir the same.

“the _fifth_ and the _sixth_, the mountain of Nizir the same.

“on the _seventh_ day, in the course of it

“I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and turned, and ... the raven went ... and did not return.

“I built an altar on the peak of the mountain.

“by _seven_ herbs I cut, at the bottom of them I placed reeds, pines, and simgar....

“the gods like flies over the sacrifice gathered.

“from of old _also the great God_ in his course.

“the great brightness (the sun) of Anu had created.[831] When the glory of those gods the charm round my neck would not repel,” etc.

All this has a purely astronomical, magical, and esoteric relation. One who reads these tablets will recognize at a glance the biblical account; and judge, at the same time, how disfigured is the great Babylonian poem by euhemeric personages--degraded from their exalted positions of gods into simple patriarchs. Space prevents our entering fully into this biblical travesty of the Chaldean allegories. We shall therefore but remind the reader that by the confession of the most unwilling witnesses--such as Lenormant, first the inventor and then champion of the Akkadians--the Chaldeo-Babylonian triad placed under Ilon, the _unrevealed_ deity, is composed of Anu, Nuah, and Bel. Anu is the primordial chaos, the god time and world at once, χρόνος and κόσμος, the uncreated matter issued from the one and fundamental principle of all things. As to _Nuah_, he is, according to the same Orientalist:

“... the intelligence, we will willingly say the _verbum_, which animates and fecundates matter, which penetrates the universe, directs and makes it live; and at the same time Nuah is the king of the _humid principle; the Spirit moving on the waters_.”

Is not this evident? Nuah is Noah, _floating on the waters_, in his ark; the latter being the emblem of the argha, or moon, the feminine principle; Noah is the “spirit” falling into matter. We find him as soon as he descends upon the earth, planting a vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk on it; _i.e._, the pure spirit becoming intoxicated as soon as it is finally imprisoned in matter. The seventh chapter of _Genesis_ is but another version of the first. Thus, while the latter reads: “... and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit (of God) moved upon the face of the waters,” in chapter seventh, it is said: “... and the waters prevailed ... and the ark went (with Noah--the spirit) upon the face of the waters.” Thus Noah, if the Chaldean Nuah, is the spirit vivifying _matter_, chaos represented by the deep or waters of the flood. In the Babylonian legend it is Istar (Astoreth, the moon) which is shut up in the ark, and sends out a dove (emblem of Venus and other lunar goddesses) in search of dry land. And whereas in the Semitic tablets it is Xisuthrus or Hasisadra who is “translated to the company of the gods for his piety,” in the _Bible_ it is Enoch who walks with, and being taken up by God, “was no more.”

The successive existence of an incalculable number of worlds before the subsequent evolution of our own, was believed and taught by all the ancient peoples. The punishment of the Christians for despoiling the Jews of their records and refusing the true key to them began from the earliest centuries. And thus is it that we find the holy Fathers of the Church laboring through an impossible chronology and the absurdities of literal interpretation, while the learned rabbis were perfectly aware of the real significance of their allegories. So not only in the _Sohar_, but also in other kabalistic works accepted by Talmudists, such as _Midrash Berasheth_, or the universal _Genesis_, which, with the _Merkaba_ (the chariot of Ezekiel), composes the _Kabala_, may be found the doctrine of a whole series of worlds evolving out of the chaos, and being destroyed in succession.

The Hindu doctrines teach of two _Pralayas_ or dissolutions; one universal, the Maha-Pralaya, the other partial, or the minor Pralaya. This does not relate to the universal dissolution which occurs at the end of every “Day of Brahma,” but to the geological cataclysms at the end of every minor cycle of our globe. This historical and purely local deluge of Central Asia, the traditions of which can be traced in every country, and which, according to Bunsen, happened about the year 10,000 B.C., had naught to do with the mythical Noah, or Nuah. A partial cataclysm occurs at the close of every “age” of the world, they say, which does not destroy the latter, but only changes its general appearance. New races of men and animals and a new flora evolve from the dissolution of the precedent ones.

The allegories of the “fall of man” and the “deluge,” are the two most important features of the _Pentateuch_. They are, so to say, the Alpha and Omega, the highest and the lowest keys of the scale of harmony on which resounds the majestic hymns of the creation of mankind; for they discover to him who questions the _Zura_ (figurative _Gemantria_), the process of man’s evolution from the highest spiritual entity unto the lowest physical--the post-diluvian man, as in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, every sign of the picture writing which cannot be made to fit within a certain circumscribed geometrical figure may be rejected as only intended by the sacred hierogrammatist for a premeditated blind--so many of the details in the _Bible_ must be treated on the same principle, that portion only being accepted which answers to the numerical methods taught in the _Kabala_.

The deluge appears in the Hindu books only as a tradition. It claims no sacred character, and we find it but in the _Mahâbhârata_, the _Puranas_, and still earlier in the _Satapatha_, one of the latest _Brahmanas_. It is more than probable that Moses, or whoever wrote for him, used these accounts as the basis of his own purposely disfigured allegory, adding to it moreover the Chaldean Berosian narrative. In _Mahâbhârata_, we recognize Nimrod under the name of _King Daytha_. The origin of the Grecian fable of the Titans scaling Olympus, and the other of the builders of the Tower of Babel who seek to reach heaven, is shown in the impious _Daytha_, who sends imprecations against heaven’s thunder, and threatens to conquer heaven itself with his mighty warriors, thereby bringing upon humanity the wrath of Brahma. “The Lord then resolved,” says the text, “to chastise his creatures with a terrible punishment which should serve as a warning to survivors, and to their descendants.”

_Vaivasvata_ (who in the _Bible_ becomes Noah) saves a little fish, which turns out to be an _avatar_ of Vishnu. The fish warns that just man that the globe is about to be submerged, that all that inhabit it must perish, and orders him to construct a vessel in which he shall embark, with all his family. When the ship is ready, and _Vaivasvata_ has shut up in it with his family _the seeds of plants and pairs of all animals_, and the rain begins to fall, a gigantic fish, armed with a horn, places itself at the head of the ark. The holy man, following its orders, attaches a cable to this horn, and the fish guides the ship safely through the raging elements. In the Hindu tradition the number of days during which the deluge lasted _agrees exactly with that of the Mosaic account_. When the elements were calmed, the fish landed the ark on the summit of the Himalayas.