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374 '^H® sscREiT doctrine;.
Abrasax, by whom was created Mind [Mahat, in Sanskrit; Nous, in
Greek]. From Mind proceeded the Word, lyOgos; from the Word,
Providence [Divine lyight, rather];
then from it Virtue and Wisdom in
Principalities, Powers, Angels, etc." By these Angels the 365 ^ons
were created. "Amongst the lowest, indeed, and those who made this
world, he [Basilides] sets last of all the God of the Jews, whom he
denies to be God [and very rightly], affirming he is one of the Angels."
Here, then, we find the same system as in the Purdnas, wherein the
Incomprehensible drops a Seed, which becomes the Golden ^"g^, from
which Brahma is produced. Brahma produces Mahat, etc. True
Esoteric Philosophy, however, speaks neither of "creation," nor of
"evolution," in the sense in which the exoteric religions do. All these
personified Powers are not evolutions from one another, but so many
aspects of the one and sole manifestation of the Absolute All.
The same system as that of the Gnostic Emanations prevails in the
Sephirothic aspects of Ain Suph, and, as these aspects are in Space and
Time, a certain order is maintained in their successive appearances.
Therefore, it becomes impossible not to take notice of the great changes
that the Zohar has undergone under the handling of generations of
Christian Mystics. For, even in the metaphysics of the Talmud, the
Lower Face or Lesser Countenance, or Microprosopus, could never be
placed on the same plane of abstract ideals as the Higher, or Greater
Countenance, Macroprosopus. The latter is, in the Chaldean Kabalah, a
pure abstraction, the Word or Logos, or Dabar in Hebrew; which Word,
though it becomes in fact a plural number, or Words, D(a)B(a)R(i)M,
when it reflects itself, or falls into the aspect of a Host of Angels, or
Sephiroth—the "Number"—is still collectively One, and on the ideal
plane a nought, O. "Nothing." // 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," when he speaks of
"the Second God, who is his [the Highest God's] Wisdom."! Deity is
not God. It is No-thing, and Darkness. It is nameless, and therefore
called Ain Suph, the word " Ayin meaning nothing." J The "Highest
God," the Unmanifested Logos, is Its Son.
Nor are most of the Gnostic systems which have come down to us,
mutilated as they are by the Church Fathers, anything better than the
distorted shells of the original speculations. Nor were they, moreover,
ever open to the public or general reader; for had their hidden meaning
* Franck, Die Kabbala, 126. t Philo, Qucest. et Solut. % Franck, Op. cil., 153.