Theosophist Henry T. Patterson wrote the following interesting remarks about Occult knowledge and Kabbalah:
Everywhere in nature there is
interior and exterior; in material forms, and immaterial conceptions; in
physics and metaphysics; in arts, sciences and religions. It is not necessary
to demonstrate this; the fact is so apparent. That which is interior is so from
its essential nature. In the fruit the pulp is interior to the rind or skin,
the seed to the pulp. The exterior protects. The interior is that seat which
contains the valuable, vital and living part. The seed or the interior can only
be reached through the protective exterior.
The transmission of esoteric knowledge
In knowledge, crude opinions
surround and preserve hidden truths. Those truths are stored up in the treasure
houses of wisdom. Their custodians are those whose worthiness has been proven.
Only those who have broken through the barriers, scaled the parapets and
overcome the warders can be trusted as defenders. At different times, and in
different places, from the treasure house, have been given to the people by
those whom the Pharaohs have placed in charge, the necessary grain for food and
seed.
The seed thus given has been
implanted in the minds of the people, and from it has grown the crop, according
to the nature of the soil and seed; the teachings, though never the same in
form, are always the same in essence, and are always imparted by similar
methods. The lowest form of dissemination is by means of words carrying associations
of ideas. Back of this form, is the cipher contained in the words, which as
combinations of letters are complex symbols; back of the symbol is the sound per
se, apart from its association of ideas; back of the sound is the color
which sound always produces by correlation; back of the color is the numerical
valuation; back of the numerical valuation the related state of consciousness.
Before written teachings came oral
teachings; before oral, other forms. The Gnostics say that the superior
creatures impart of their efflux to the inferior creatures when they — the
inferior — adore. If we look upon adoration in its aspect of aspiration, and
upon aspiration as associated with inspiration, we get a clue to the meaning of
this statement. When we —the inferior creatures— aspire, then the superior
creatures can impart to us of their efflux and we inspire from the higher
planes. The creatures of these higher planes are the devas.
In all the great religions the
anagram was one of the most prevalent ciphers. Transposing the letters of the
word devas we have the word vedas that highest form of instruction in which the
higher imparts to the lower of its efflux. In the course of time, however, as
by emanation the instruction took lower and lower forms the impartation of
knowledge by efflux became the impartation by sound, the impartation by sound
became the impartation by the written word, and so the devas became the vedas.
This is why the vedas are spoken of as the leaves of the universal tree. They
are such in their original devic form. The Upanishads are the keys to the
vedas.
The Kabbalah
Looking for the interior knowledge
of the Hebrews we find it not in the old testament, which is quite external in
its nature, but in the Kabbalah, the key to the old testament.
The story of the creation, of Adam
and Eve, of Noah, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his twelve sons came from the
East to the Jews through the Babylonian civilization. Adam us the ad-om,
the first, ad, and the logos, om. Adam was thus the first logos, Adam Kadmon,
the Adam of Adams, the logos of logoi. Abram is taken from the Sanscrit Brahm,
and the wife of Abram was Sara (Saros?), as Sarasvati was the wife of Brahm.
The twelve sons of Jacob are but euhemerizations of the twelve signs of the
Zodiac, the macrocosm from which we, the people of Israel, as part of the
microcosm must have descended.
These are, however, merely surface
revelations. There are far deeper ones some of which can never be found in the
Kabbalah itself, excepting with extraneous suggestion. Every letter in the
Hebrew language is both a form, a symbol, and a number. Thus Aleph is the horns
of a bull; Beth a House, Gimel a serpent, and so on. Also each letter has a
number corresponding to it. The use of these corresponding numbers gives
mathematical formulas. These are expounded in the Sepher Jezirah. Sepher is the
same as our word cipher, the s-ph-ra tallying with our c-ph-r.
In this system of numbers the naught
precedes the enumeration. It is Ainsoph, the limitless, the boundless light,
the infinite. It is in no sense creative, the true Kabbalistic teachings not
admitting of creation in the sense of production of something from nothing. It
is, however, that from which emanation takes place.
(Cid's observation: here Mr. Patterson confounds Parabrahma, which is the
Absolute, Ainsoph in the Kabbalah; with Brahma, which is the limitless,
the boundless light, the infinite, the logos of logoi.)
It is from it that the Sephiroth
emanate. These are grouped in triads, the upper sephirothal triad being in the
Archetypal World. In the sephiroth we have the ten points of the Pythagorean
triangle, the ten Prajapati of the Hindus. Only by understanding the different
systems can we comprehend any one by itself; and yet the terms of one system
are not translatable literally from one to the other. It is like the
translation of ideas from language to language. To make a good translation more
than the dictionary values of the words must be understood, and much freedom
must be used.
In some of the names of the creative
entities there are proofs of the profundity of the learning of the old
Kabbalists. The numerical equivalent of Alhim or Elohim, who created man in
their image, is 13514. Considering these numbers anagramatically, as the letters
in the words devas and vedas have already been considered, we have the
relationship of diameter to circumference 3.1415. This exactly expresses one of
the aspects of the Elohim. It is through them that the finite is related to the
infinite, the diameter to the circumference, the 1 to the 3.1415.
This also is true of man made in
their image. Equally interesting is one of the Kabbalistic names of God — God as
revealed to Moses. Its numerical equivalent is 543.
5, 4, 3 are the basic numbers of
manifestation. In plane geometry they are the pentagon, the square and the
triangle. On these forms are built up the fundamental figures of solid
geometry. 5, 4, 3, also gives the multiple and separate parts of 4,320,000, the
maha-yuga; of 360, the number of degrees in a circle; of 86,400, the number of
seconds in a day, of the 24, 27, 30, 32, 36, 40 and 45 vibrations of the
musical scale, of the 12 signs of the Zodiac, of the 12 inches in a foot, of
the number of degrees in the tetrahedron, the cube and the dodecahedron, of the
number of degrees in the triangle, the square, the pentagon and the hexagon,
and the relationship of the simplest right angle triangle which gives the most
complexity in whole numbers, the one whose hypothenuse is five and two sides
four and three respectively.
But Moses saw God backward, or from
behind, that is the 5 preceding the 4 and the 3 following. This is precisely
what does happen when man seeks to know the divine or fundamental. First he
perceives through his five senses the exterior manifestations, later he rises
until he unites himself with the trinity, the three in one, and so cognizes the
interior manifestations. Moses, himself, in numerical equivalents was 345. That
is from the trinity emanated by degrees that which became the pentagon or
five-fold, five-sensed man.
_ _ _
Thus all through these old, old
teachings runs the marvelous story of creation by emanation, of transmutations,
of successive objectivizations. The grand cycles are changing once again, and
man begins to look back to the source from whence he came. From the five,
through the four, the three, the two (the pairs of opposites) he is reaching
towards the one ray, and through it towards the luminous ocean which is neither
one nor many, but the shoreless ocean of infinite being from which all came and
to which all must return.
The subject could be continued
indefinitely. Suffice it, however, that there is in these old books, the
Kabbalah, the Upanishads, the Vedas, and the rest, many a key which will unlock
storehouses of knowledge which cannot be entered otherwise excepting by long,
weary years of hard unremitting labor and study.
(Universal
Brotherhood, October 1898, p.369-371)
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