Part 9 (2/2)
Injustice is the essence of Falsehood; and every false word is an injustice.
Injustice is the death of the Moral Being, as Falsehood is the poison of the Intelligence.
The perception of the Light is the dawn of the Eternal Life, in Being.
The Word of G.o.d, which creates the Light, seems to be uttered by every Intelligence that can take cognizance of Forms and will look. ”Let the Light BE! The Light”, in fact, exists, in its condition of splendor, for those eyes alone that gaze at it; and the Soul, amorous of the spectacle of the beauties of the Universe, and applying its attention to that luminous writing of the Infinite Book which is called ”The Visible,”
seems to utter, as G.o.d did on the dawn of the first day, that sublime and creative word, ”BE! LIGHT!”
It is not beyond the tomb, but in life itself, that we are to seek for the mysteries of death. Salvation or reprobation begins here below and the terrestrial world too has its Heaven and its h.e.l.l. Always, even here below, virtue is rewarded; always, even here below vice is punished; and that which makes us sometimes believe in the impunity of evil-doers is that riches, those instruments of good and of evil, seem sometimes to be given them at hazard. But woe to unjust men, when they possess the key of gold! It opens, for _them_, only the gate of the tomb and of h.e.l.l.
All the true Initiates have recognized the usefulness of toil and sorrow. ”Sorrow,” says a German poet, ”is the dog of that unknown shepherd who guides the flock of men.” To learn to suffer, to learn to die, is the discipline of Eternity, the immortal Novitiate.
The allegorical picture of Cebes, in which the Divine Comedy of Dante was sketched in Plato's time, the description whereof has been preserved for us, and which many painters of the middle age have reproduced by this description, is a monument at once philosophical and magical. It is a most complete moral synthesis, and at the same time the most audacious demonstration ever given of the Grand Arcanum, of that secret whose revelation would overturn Earth and Heaven. Let no one expect us to give them its explanation! He who pa.s.ses behind the veil that hides this mystery, understands that it is in its very nature inexplicable, and that it is death to those who win it by surprise, as well as to him who reveals it.
This secret is the Royalty of the Sages, the Crown of the Initiate whom we see redescend victorious from the summit of Trials, in the fine allegory of Cebes. The Grand Arcanum makes him master of gold and the light, which are at bottom the same thing, he has solved the problem of the quadrature of the circle, he directs the perpetual movement, and he possesses the philosophical stone. Here the Adepts will understand us.
There is neither interruption in the toil of nature, nor gap in her work. The Harmonies of Heaven correspond to those of Earth, and the Eternal Life accomplishes its evolutions in accordance with the same laws as the life of a dog. ”G.o.d has arranged all things by weight, number, and measure,” says the Bible; and this luminous doctrine was also that of Plato.
Humanity has never really had but one religion and one wors.h.i.+p. This universal light has had its uncertain mirages, its deceitful reflections, and its shadows; but always, after the nights of Error, we see it reappear, one and pure like the Sun.
The magnificences of wors.h.i.+p are the life of religion, and if Christ wishes poor ministers, His Sovereign Divinity does not wish paltry altars. Some Protestants have not comprehended that wors.h.i.+p is a teaching, and that we must not create in the imagination of the mult.i.tude a mean or miserable G.o.d. Those oratories that resemble poorly-furnished offices or inns, and those worthy ministers clad like notaries or lawyer's clerks, do they not necessarily cause religion to be regarded as a mere puritanic formality, and G.o.d as a Justice of the Peace?
We scoff at the Augurs. It is so easy to scoff, and so difficult well to comprehend. Did the Deity leave the whole world without Light for two score centuries, to illuminate only a little corner of Palestine and a brutal, ignorant, and ungrateful people? Why always calumniate G.o.d and the Sanctuary? Were there never any others than rogues among the priests? Could no honest and sincere men be found among the Hierophants of Ceres or Diana, of Dionusos or Apollo, of Hermes or Mithras? Were these, then, all deceived, like the rest? Who, then, constantly deceived them, without betraying themselves, during a series of centuries?--for the cheats are not immortal! Arago said, that outside of the pure mathematics, he who utters the word ”impossible,” is wanting in prudence and good sense.
The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh reversed; for Satan is not a black G.o.d, but the negation of G.o.d. The Devil is the personification of Atheism or Idolatry.
For the Initiates, this is not a _Person_, but a _Force_, created for good, but which _may_ serve for evil. _It is the instrument of Liberty or Free Will_. They represent this Force, which presides over the physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the G.o.d PAN; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient Serpent, and the Light-bearer or _Phosphor_, of which the poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend.
Gold, to the eyes of the Initiates, is Light condensed. They style the sacred numbers of the Kabalah ”golden numbers,” and the moral teachings of Pythagoras his ”golden verses.” For the same reason, a mysterious book of Apuleius, in which an a.s.s figures largely, was called ”The Golden a.s.s.”
The Pagans accused the Christians of wors.h.i.+pping an a.s.s, and they did not invent this reproach, but it came from the Samaritan Jews, who, figuring the data of the Kabalah in regard to the Divinity by Egyptian symbols, also represented the Intelligence by the figure of the Magical Star adored under the name of _Remphan_, Science under the emblem of Anubis, whose name they changed to _Nibbas_, and the vulgar faith or credulity under the figure of _Thartac_, a G.o.d represented with a book, a cloak, and the head of an a.s.s. According to the Samaritan Doctors, Christianity was the reign of _Thartac_, blind Faith and vulgar credulity erected into a universal oracle, and preferred to Intelligence and Science.
Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemas, a great Kabalist, but of doubtful orthodoxy, wrote:
”The people will always mock at things easy to be misunderstood; it must needs have impostures.”
”A Spirit,” he said, ”that loves wisdom and contemplates the Truth close at hand, is forced to disguise it, to induce the mult.i.tudes to accept it.... Fictions are necessary to the people, and the Truth becomes deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its brilliance. If the sacerdotal laws allowed the reservation of judgments and the allegory of words, I would accept the proposed dignity on condition that I might be a philosopher at home, and abroad a narrator of apologues and parables.... In fact, what can there be in common between the vile mult.i.tude and sublime wisdom? The truth must be kept secret, and the ma.s.ses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect reason.”
Moral disorders produce physical ugliness, and in some sort realize those frightful faces which tradition a.s.signs to the demons.
The first Druids were the true children of the Magi, and their initiation came from Egypt and Chaldaea, that is to say, from the pure sources of the primitive Kabalah. They adored the Trinity under the names of _Isis_ or _Hesus_, the Supreme Harmony; of _Belen_ or _Bel_ which in a.s.syrian means Lord, a name corresponding to that of ADONA; and of _Camul_ or _Camael_, a name that in the Kabalah personifies the Divine Justice. Below this triangle of Light they supposed a divine reflection, also composed of three personified rays: first, _Teutates_ or _Teuth_, the same as the _Thoth_ of the Egyptians, the Word, or the Intelligence formulated; then Force and Beauty, whose names varied like their emblems. Finally, they completed the sacred Septenary by a mysterious image that represented the progress of the dogma and its future realizations. This was a young girl veiled, holding a child in her arms; and they dedicated this image to ”The Virgin who will become a mother;--_Virgini paritur_.”
Hertha or Wertha, the young Isis of Gaul, Queen of Heaven, the Virgin who was to bear a child, held the spindle of the Fates, filled with wool half white and half black; because she presides over all forms and all symbols, and weaves the garment of the Ideas.
One of the most mysterious pantacles of the Kabalah, contained in the Enchiridion of Leo III., represents an equilateral triangle reversed, inscribed in a double circle. On the triangle are written, in such manner as to form the prophetic Tau, the two Hebrew words so often found appended to the Ineffable Name, [Hebrew: ????] and [Hebrew: ?????], ALOHAYIM, or the Powers, and TSABAOTH, or the starry Armies and their guiding spirits; words also which symbolize the Equilibrium of the Forces of Nature and the Harmony of Numbers. To the three sides of the triangle belong the three great Names [Hebrew: ????,????], and [Hebrew: ????], IAHAVEH, ADONA, and AGLA. Above the first is written in Latin, _Formatio_, above, the second _Reformatio_, and above the third, _Transformatio_. So Creation is ascribed to the FATHER, Redemption or Reformation to the SON, and Sanctification or Transformation to the HOLY SPIRIT, answering unto the mathematical laws of Action, Reaction, and Equilibrium. IAHAVEH is also, in effect, the Genesis or Formation of dogma, by the elementary signification of the four letters of the Sacred Tetragram; ADONA is the realization of this dogma in the Human Form, in the Visible LORD, who is the Son of G.o.d or the perfect Man; and AGLA (formed of the initials of the four words _Ath Gebur Laulam Adona_) expresses the synthesis of the whole dogma and the totality of the Kabalistic science, clearly indicating by the hieroglyphics of which this admirable name is formed the Triple Secret of the Great Work.
Masonry, like all the Religions, all the Mysteries, Hermeticism and Alchemy, _conceals_ its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, or the Elect, and uses false explanations and misinterpretations of its symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be misled; to conceal the Truth, which it calls Light, from them, and to draw them away from it.
Truth is not for those who are unworthy or unable to receive it, or would pervert it. So G.o.d Himself incapacitates many men, by color-blindness, to distinguish colors, and leads the ma.s.ses away from the highest Truth, giving them the power to attain only so much of it as it is profitable to them to know. Every age has had a religion suited to its capacity.
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