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446 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
their evil and cruel deeds.
daily to "our Father, in Heaven," and not to
"Lead us not into temptation" is addressed
the Devil, by millions of
Christian hearts. This they do, repeating the very words put into the
mouth of their Saviour, and yet do not give one thought to the fact
that their meaning is contradicted point blank by James, "the brother
of the Lord":
Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God : for God cannot be
tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.*
Why, then, say that it is the Devil who tempts us, when the Church
teaches us, 07i the aiitho7'ity of Christ, that it is God who does so Open
any pious volume in which the word "temptation" is defined in its
theological sense, and forthwith you find two definitions
(I) Those afflictions and troubles whereby God tries his people; (2) Those means
and enticements which the Devil makes use of to ensnare and allure mankind, t
Accepted literally, the teachings of Christ and James contradict each
other, and what dogma can reconcile the two if the Occult meaning is
rejected
Between the alternative allurements, wise will be that philosopher
who will be able to decide where God disappears to make room for the
Devil! Therefore, when we read that "the Devil is a liar and the
father of it," that is an incarnate lie, and are also told in the same
breath that Satan, the Devil, was a Son of God and the most beautiful
of his Archangels, rather than believe that Father and Son are a
gigantic, personified and eternal Lie, we prefer to turn to Pantheism
and to Pagan philosophy for information.
Once that the key to Genesis is in our hands, the scientific and symbolical
Kabalah unveils the secret. The Great Serpent of the Garden
of Eden and the "Lord God" are identical, and so are Jehovah and
Cain—that Cain who is referred to in Theology as the "murderer" and
the Liar to God! Jehovah tempts the King of Israel to number the
people, and Satan tempts him to do the same in another place. Jehovah
turns into the Fiery Serpents to bite those he is displeased with
and Jehovah informs the Brazen Serpent that heals them.
These short, and seemingly contradictory, statements in the Old
Testa^nent—contradictory because the two Powers are separated instead
of being regarded as the two faces of one and the same thing—are the
echoes, distorted out of recognition by exotericism and theology, of
the universal and philosophical dogmas in
Nature, so well understood
* James, i. 13. t James, i. 2, 12; Matth., vi. 13. See Cruden, sub voc.