Part 56 (2/2)

Though originally more moral and political than religious, they soon became the heritage, as it were, of the priests, and essentially religious, though in reality limiting the sacerdotal power, by teaching the intelligent laity the folly and absurdity of the creeds of the populace. They were therefore necessarily changed by the religious systems of the countries into which they were transplanted. In Greece, they were the Mysteries of Ceres; in Rome, of _Bona Dea_, the Good G.o.ddess; in Gaul, the School of Mars; in Sicily, the Academy of the Sciences; among the Hebrews, they partook of the rites and ceremonies of a religion which placed all the powers of government, and all the knowledge, in the hands of the Priests and Levites. The paG.o.das of India, the retreats of the Magi of Persia and Chaldea, and the pyramids of Egypt, were no longer the sources at which men drank in knowledge.

Each people, at all informed, had its Mysteries. After a time the Temples of Greece and the School of Pythagoras lost their reputation, and Freemasonry took their place.

Masonry, when properly expounded, is at once the interpretation of the great book of nature, the recital of physical and astronomical phenomena, the purest philosophy, and the place of deposit, where, as in a Treasury, are kept in safety all the great truths of the primitive revelation, that form the basis of all religions. In the modern Degrees three things are to be recognized: The image of primeval times, the tableau of the efficient causes of the Universe, and the book in which are written the morality of all peoples, and the code by which they must govern themselves if they would be prosperous.

The Kabalistic doctrine was long the religion of the Sage and the Savant; because, like Freemasonry, it incessantly tends toward spiritual perfection, and the fusion of the creeds and Nationalities of Mankind.

In the eyes of the Kabalist, all men are his brothers; and their relative ignorance is, to him, but a reason for instructing them. There were ill.u.s.trious Kabalists among the Egyptians and Greeks, whose doctrines the Orthodox Church has accepted; and among the Arabs were many, whose wisdom was not slighted by the Mediaeval Church.

The Sages proudly wore the name of Kabalists. The Kabalah embodied a n.o.ble philosophy, pure, not mysterious, but symbolic. It taught the doctrine of the Unity of G.o.d, the art of knowing and explaining the essence and operations of the Supreme Being, of spiritual powers and natural forces, and of determining their action by symbolic figures; by the arrangement of the alphabet, the combinations of numbers, the inversion of letters in writing and the concealed meanings which they claimed to discover therein. The Kabalah is the key of the occult sciences; and the Gnostics, were born of the Kabalists.

The science of numbers represented not only arithmetical qualities, but also all grandeur, all proportion. By it we necessarily arrive at the discovery of the Principle or First Cause of things, called at the present day THE ABSOLUTE.

Or UNITY,--that loftiest term to which all philosophy directs itself; that imperious necessity of the human mind, that pivot round which it is compelled to group the aggregate of its ideas: Unity, this source, this centre of all systematic order, this principle of existence, this central point, unknown in its essence, but manifest in its effects; Unity, that sublime centre to which the chain of causes necessarily ascends, was the august Idea toward which all the ideas of Pythagoras converged. He refused the t.i.tle of _Sage_, which means _one who knows_.

He invented, and applied to himself that of _Philosopher_, signifying one who _is fond of_ or _studies things secret and occult_. The astronomy which he mysteriously taught, was _astrology_: his science of numbers was based on Kabalistical principles.

The Ancients, and Pythagoras himself, whose real principles have not been always understood, never meant to ascribe to numbers, that is to say, to abstract signs, any special virtue. But the Sages of Antiquity concurred in recognizing a ONE FIRST CAUSE (material or spiritual) of the existence of the Universe. Thence UNITY became the symbol of the Supreme Deity. It was made to express, to represent G.o.d; but without attributing to _the mere number_ ONE any divine or supernatural virtue.

The Pythagorean ideas as to particular numbers are partially expressed in the following:

LECTURE OF THE KABALISTS.

_Qu_ Why did you seek to be received a Knight of the Kabalah?

_Ans_ To know, by means of numbers, the admirable harmony which there is between nature and religion.

_Qu_ How were you announced?

_Ans_ By twelve raps.

_Qu_ What do they signify?

_Ans_ The twelve bases of our temporal and spiritual happiness.

_Qu_ What is a Kabalist?

_Ans_ A man who has learned, by tradition, the Sacerdotal Art and the Royal Art.

_Qu_ What means the device, _Omnia in numeris sita sunt_?

_Ans_ That everything lies veiled in numbers.

_Qu_ Explain me that.

_Ans_ I will do so, as far as the number 12. Your sagacity will discern the rest.

_Qu_ What signifies the _unit_ in the number 10?

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