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THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
binations. Each element has its own letters and peculiar character, and pronunciation,
and groupings and similitudes; but none of them perceives the form of
that of which it is the element, nor understands the utterance of its neighbour,
but, what each sounds forth itself, as sounding forth all [it can], that it thinks good
to call the whole And these sounds are they which manifest in form
the Beingless and Ingenerable ^on, and these are the forms which are called
Angels, perpetually beholding the Face of the Father,* [the Logos, the "Second
God," who stands next God the "Inconceivable," according to PhiloJ.f
This is as plain as ancient esoteric secres)^ could make it. It is as
Kabalistic though less veiled than the Zohai% in which the mystic
names, or attributes, are also four syllabled, twelve, forty-two, and
even seventy-two syllabled words ! The Tetrad shows to Marcus the
Truth in the shape of a naked woman, and letters every limb of that
figure, calling her head A fl, her neck B >!', shoulders and hands V X,
etc. In this, Sephira is easily recognized ; the head, or Crown, Kether,
being numbered i; the brain, or Chokmah, 2; the Heart, or Intelligence,
Binah, 3; and the other seven Sephiroth representing the
limbs of the body. The Sephirothic Tree is the Universe, and Adam
Kadmon personifies it in the West, as Brahma represents it in India.
Throughout, the Ten Sephiroth are represented as divided into the
Three higher, or the spiritual Triad, and the lower Septenary. The
true esoteric meaning of the sacred number Seven though cleverly
veiled, in the Zohar, is betrayed by the double way of writing the
term, "in the Beginning," or Be-rasheeth, and Be-raishath, the latter
the "Higher, or Upper Wisdom." As shown by S. ly. MacGregor
Mathers! and Isaac Myer,§ both of these Kabalists being supported by
the best ancient authorities, these words have a dual and secret meaning.
Braisheeth barah Elohim means, that the six, over which stands the
seventh Sephira, belong to the lower material class, or, as the author
says: "Seven .... are applied to the Lower Creation, and Three to
the Spiritual Man, the Heavenly Prototypic or First Adam."
When the Theosophists and Occultists say that God is no Being, for
It is Nothing, No-Thing, they are more reverential and religiously
respectful to the Deity than those who call God He, and thus make of
Him a gigantic Male.
He who studies the Kabalah will soon find the same idea in the
ultimate thought of its
authors, the earlier and great Hebrew Initiates,
* The "Seven Angels of the Face," with the Christians.
+ Philosophunie7ia , vi. 42.
% The Kabbalah Unveiled, 47.
\ Qabbalah, 233.