If the Virgin Mary has her nuns, who are consecrated to her and bound to live in chastity, so had Isis her nuns in Egypt, as Vesta had hers at Rome, and the Hindu Nari, "mother of the world hers." The virgins consecrated to her cultus-the Devadasi of the temples, who were the nuns of the days of old-lived in great chastity, and were objects of the most extraordinary veneration, as the holy women of the goddess. Would the missionaries and some travellers reproachfully point to the modern Devadasis, or Nautch-girls? For all response, we would beg them to consult the official reports of the last quarter century, cited in chapter II., as to certain discoveries made at the razing of convents, in Austria and Italy. Thousands of infants' skulls were exhumed from ponds, subterranean vaults, and gardens of convents. Nothing to match this was ever found in heathen lands.

Christian theology, getting the doctrine of the archangels and angels directly from the Oriental Kabala, of which the Mosaic Bible is but an allegorical screen, ought at least to remember the hierarchy invented by the former for these personified emanations. The hosts of the Cherubim and Seraphim, with which we generally see the Catholic Madonnas surrounded in their pictures, belong, together with the Elohim and Beni Elohim of the Hebrews, to the third kabalistic world, Jezirah. This world is but one remove higher than Asiah, the fourth and lowest world, in which dwell the grossest and most material beings-the klippoth, who delight in evil and mischief, and whose chief is Belial!

Explaining, in his way, of course, the various "heresies" of the first two centuries, Irenæus says: "Our Hæretics hold . . . that PROPATOR is known but to the only-begotten son, that is to the mind" (the nous). It was the Valentinians, the followers of the "profoundest doctor of the Gnosis," Valentinus, who held that "there was a perfect AION, who existed before Bythos, or Buthon (the Depth), called Propator. This is again kabalistic, for in the Sohar of Simon Ben Iochaï, we read the following: "Senior occultatus est et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus" (Rosenroth: The Sohar Liber Mysteries, iv., 1). In the religious metaphysics of the Hebrews, the Highest One is an abstraction; he is "without form or being," "with no likeness with anything else." And even Philo calls the Creator, the Logos who stands next God, "the SECOND God." "The second God who is his WISDOM." God is NOTHING, he is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Soph-the word Ain meaning nothing. But if, according to the older Jews, Jehovah is the God, and He manifested Himself several times to Moses and the

*Franck: "Die Kabbala," p. 126.

+ See Franck : “Die Kabbala,” p. 153 ff.

+ Philo : "Quæst. et Solut."

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THE FOURTH GOSPEL NOT WRITTEN BY JOHN. prophets, and the Christian Church anathematized the Gnostics who denied the fact-how comes it, then, that we read in the fourth gospel that "No man hath seen God AT ANY TIME, but the only-begotten Son . . . he hath declared him?” The very words of the Gnostics, in spirit and substance. This sentence of St. John-or rather whoever wrote the gospel now bearing his name-floors all the Petrine arguments against Simon Magus, without appeal. The words are repeated and emphasized in chapter vi.: "Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he (Jesus) hath seen the Father" (46)—the very objection brought forward by Simon in the Homilies. These words prove that either the author of the fourth evangel had no idea of the existence of the Homilies, or that he was not John, the friend and companion of Peter, whom he contradicts point-blank with this emphatic assertion. Be it as it may, this sentence, like many more that might be profitably cited, blends Christianity completely with the Oriental Gnosis, and hence with the KABALA.

While the doctrines, ethical code, and observances of the Christian religion were all appropriated from Brahmanism and Buddhism, its ceremonials, vestments, and pageantry were taken bodily from Lamaism. The Romish monastery and nunnery are almost servile copies of similar religious houses in Thibet and Mongolia, and interested explorers of Buddhist lands, when obliged to mention the unwelcome fact, have had no other alternative left them but, with an anachronism unsurpassed in recklessness, to charge the offense of plagiarism upon the religious system their own mother Church had despoiled. This makeshift has served its purpose and had its day. The time has at last come when this page of history must be written.

CHAPTER V.

"Learn to know all, but keep thyself unknown."-Gnostic Maxim.
"There is one God supreme over all gods, diviner than mortals,
Whose form is not like unto man's, and as unlike his nature;
But vain mortals imagine that gods like themselves are begotten
With human sensations, and voice, and corporeal members."

-XENOPHANES : Clem. Al. Strom., v. 14, § 110.

"TYCHIADES.-Can you tell me the reason, Philocles, why most men desire to lye, and delight not only to speak fictions themselves, but give busie attention to others who do?

"PHILOCLES.-There be many reasons, Tychiades, which compell some to speak lyes, because they sce 'tis profitable.”—A Dialogue of Lucian.

"SPARTAN.--Is it to thee, or to God, that I must confess? "PRIEST.-To God.

"SPARTAN.-Then, MAN, stand back !"-PLUTARCH: Remarkable Lacedemonian Sayings.

WE

E will now give attention to some of the most important Mysteries of the Kabala, and trace their relations to the philosophical myths of various nations.

In the oldest Oriental Kabala, the Deity is represented as three circles in one, shrouded in a certain smoke or chaotic exhalation. In the preface to the Sohar, which transforms the three primordial circles into THREE HEADS, Over these is described an exhalation or smoke, neither black nor white, but colorless, and circumscribed within a circle. This is the unknown Essence.* The origin of the Jewish image may, perhaps, be traced to Hermes' Pimander, the Egyptian Logos, who appears within a cloud of a humid nature, with a smoke escaping from it. † In the Sohar the highest God is, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, and as in the case of the Hindu and Buddhist philosophies, a pure abstraction, whose objective existence is denied by the latter. It is Hakama, the "SUPREME WISDOM, that cannot be understood by reflection," and that lies within and without the CRANIUM of LONG FACE (Sephira), the uppermost of the three "Heads." It is the "boundless and the infinite En-Soph," the No-Thing.

The "three Heads," superposed above each other, are evidently taken from the three mystic triangles of the Hindus, which also superpose each other. The highest "head" contains the Trinity in Chaos, out of which springs the manifested trinity. En-Soph, the unrevealed forever, who is

*Kabbala Denudata;" preface to the "Sohar," ii., p. 242. See Champollion's "Egypte."

"Idra Rabba," vi., p. 58.

THE SUPREME ESSENCE NOT THE CREATOR.

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boundless and unconditioned, cannot create, and therefore it seems to us a great error to attribute to him a "creative thought," as is commonly done by the interpreters. In every cosmogony this supreme Essence is passive; if boundless, infinite, and unconditioned, it can have no thought nor idea. It acts not as the result of volition, but in obedience to its own nature, and according to the fatality of the law of which it is itself the embodiment. Thus, with the Hebrew kabalists, En-Soph is non-existent

, for it is incomprehensible to our finite intellects, and therefore cannot exist to our minds. Its first emanation was Sephira, the crown na. When the time for an active period had come, then was produced a natural expansion of this Divine essence from within outwardly, obedient to eternal and immutable law; and from this eternal and infinite light (which to us is darkness) was emitted a spiritual substance.* This was the First Sephiroth, containing in herself the other nine a Sephiroth, or intelligences. In their totality and unity they represent the archetypal man, Adam Kadmon, the #pwróуovos, who in his individuality or unity is yet dual, or bisexual, the Greek Didumos, for he is the prototype of all humanity. Thus we obtain three trinities, each contained in a “head." In the first head, or face (the three-faced Hindu Trimurti), we find Sephira, the first androgyne, at the apex of the upper triangle, emitting Hackama, or Wisdom, a masculine and active potency-also called Jah, and Binah, m, or Intelligence, a female and passive potency, also represented by the name Jehovah ni. These three form the first trinity or "face" of the Sephiroth. This triad emanated Hesed, on, or Mercy, a masculine active potency, also called El, from which emanated Geburah, or Justice, also called Eloha, a feminine passive potency; from the union of these two was produced Tiphereth n-on, Beauty, Clemency, the Spiritual Sun, known by the divine name Elohim; and the second triad, "face," or "head," was formed. These emanating, in their turn, the masculine potency Netzah, n, Firmness, or Jehovah Sabaoth, who issued the feminine passive potency Hod, n, Splendor, or Elohim Sabaoth; the two produced Jesod, 10", Foundation, who is the mighty living one El-Chai, thus yielding the third trinity or "head." The tenth Sephiroth is rather a duad, and is represented on the diagrams as the lowest circle. It is Malchuth or Kingdom, n, and Shekinah, also called Adonai, and Cherubim among the angelic hosts. The first "Head" is called the Intellectual world; the second "Head" is the Sensnous, or the world of Perception, and the third is the Material or Physical world.

"Before he gave any shape to the universe," says the Kabala, "before

* Idra Suta: "Sohar," ii.

he produced any form, he was alone without any form and resemblance to anything else. Who, then, can comprehend him, how he was before the creation, since he was formless? Hence, it is forbidden to represent him by any form, similitude, or even by his sacred name, by a single letter, or a single point. . . . The Aged of the Aged, the Unknown of the Unknown, has a form, and yet no form. He has a form whereby the universe is preserved, and yet has no form, because he cannot be comprehended. When he first assumed a form (in Sephira, his first emanation), he caused nine splendid lights to emanate from it." *

And now we will turn to the Hindu esoteric Cosmogony and definition of "Him who is, and yet is not."

"From him who is, † from this immortal Principle which exists in our minds but cannot be perceived by the senses, is born Purusha, the Divine male and female, who became Narayana, or the Divine Spirit moving on the water."

Swayambhuva, the unknown essence of the Brahmans, is identical with En-Soph, the unknown essence of the kabalists. As with the latter, the ineffable name could not be pronounced by the Hindus, under the penalty of death. In the ancient primitive trinity of India, that which may be certainly considered as pre-Vedic, the germ which fecundates the mother-principle, the mundane egg, or the universal womb, is called Nara, the Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, which emanates from the primordial essence. It is like Sephira, the oldest emanation, called the primordial point, and the White Head, for it is the point of divine light appearing from within the fathomless and boundless darkness. In Manu it is "NARA, or the Spirit of God, which moves on Ayana (Chaos, or place of motion), and is called NARAYANA, or moving on the waters." In Hermes, the Egyptian, we read: "In the beginning of the time there was naught in the chaos.” But when the "verbum," issuing from the void like a "colorless smoke," makes its appearance, then "this verbum moved on the humid principle." And in Genesis we find: "And darkness was upon the face of the deep (chaos). And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." In the Kabala, the emanation of the primordial passive principle (Sephira), by dividing itself into two parts, active and passive, emits Chochma-Wisdom and Binah-Jehovah, and in conjunction with these two acolytes, which complete the trinity, becomes the Creator of the abstract Universe; the physical world being the production of later and still more material powers. In the Hindu Cosmogony, Swayambhuva emits

* Idra Suta: "Sohar," iii., p. 288 a. Ego sum qui sum (see “Bible"). See "Institutes of Manu," translated by Sir William Jones. § Champollion. We are fully aware that some Christian kabalists term En-Soph the "Crown,"