Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry Part 71

All Categories whatever go forth from Hakemah; and in it are contained all things, unmanifested; and the aggregate of all things, or the Unity _in_ which the many _are_, and _out_ of which all flow, is the Sacred Name IHUH.

In the view of the Kabalists, all individuals are _contained_ in species, and all species in genera, and all particulars in a Universal, which is an idea, abstracted from all consideration of individuals; not an _aggregate_ of individuals; but, as it were, an _Ens_, Ent.i.ty or Being, ideal or intellectual, but none the less real; prior to _any_ individual, _containing_ them all, and out of which they are all in succession evolved.

If this discontents you, reflect that, supposing the theory correct, that _all_ was originally in the Deity, and that the Universe has proceeded forth from Him, and not been _created_ by Him out of nothing, the _idea_ of the Universe, existing in the Deity before its out-flow, must have been as real as the Deity Himself. The whole Human race, or Humanity, for example, then existed in the Deity, not distinguished into individuals, but as a Unit, out of which the Manifold was to flow.

Everything _actual_ must also first have been _possible_, before having actual existence; and this possibility or potentiality was to the Kabalists a real Ens. Before the evolvement of the Universe, it had to exist _potentially_, the whole of it, with all its individuals, included in a single Unity. This was the Idea or Plan of the Universe; and this had to be _formed_. It had to emanate from the Infinite Deity, and be _of_ Himself, though not His Very Self.

Geburah, Severity, the Sephirah opposite to and conjoined s.e.xually with Gedulah, to produce Tephareth, Harmony and Beauty, is also called in the Kabalah "_Judgment_," in which term are included the ideas of _limitation_ and _conditioning_, which often seems, indeed, to be its princ.i.p.al sense; while Benignity is as often styled _Infinite_. Thus it is obscurely taught that in everything that is, not only the _Finite_ but also the _Infinite_ is present; and that the rigor of the stern law of limitation, by which everything below or beside the Infinite Absolute is limited, bounded, and conditioned, is tempered and modified by the _grace_, which so relaxes it that the Infinite, Unlimited, Unconditioned, is also everywhere present; and that it is thus the Spiritual and Material Natures are _in equilibrio_, Good everywhere counterbalancing Evil, Light everywhere in equilibrium with Darkness: from which again results the Universal Harmony of things. In the vacant s.p.a.ce effected for creation, there at last remained a faint vestige or trace of Ainsophic Light, of the Light of the Substance of the Infinite.

Man is thus both human and divine: and the _apparent_ antagonisms in his Nature are a real equilibrium, _if he wills it shall be so_; from which results the Harmony, not only of Life and Action, but of Virtue and Perfection.

To understand the Kabalistic idea of the Sephiroth, it must be borne in mind that they were a.s.signed, not only to the world of Emanation, Aziluth, but also to each of the other worlds, Briah, Jezirah, and Asiah. They were not only attributes of the Unmanifested Deity, not only Himself in limitation, but His actual manifestations, or His qualities made apparent as modes; and they were also qualities of the Universal Nature--Spiritual, Mental, and Material, produced and made existent by the outflow of Himself.

In the view of the Kabalah, G.o.d and the Universe were One, and in the One General, as the type or source, were included and involved, and from it have been evolved and issued forth, the manifold and all particulars.

Where, indeed, does individuality begin? Is it the Hidden Source and Spring alone that is the individual, the Unit, or is it the flowing fountain that fills the ocean, or the ocean itself, or its waves, or the drops, or the vaporous particles, that are the individuals? The Sea and the River--these are each One; but the drops of each are many. The tree is one; but its leaves are a mult.i.tude: they drop with the frosts, and fall upon his roots; but the tree still continues to grow, and new leaves come again in the Spring. Is the Human Race not the Tree, and are not individual men the leaves? How else explain the force of will and sympathy, and the dependence of one man at every instant of his life on others, except by the oneness of the race? The links that bind all created things together are the links of a single Unity, and the whole Universe is One, developing itself into the manifold.

Obtuse commentators have said that the Kabalah a.s.signs s.e.xual characteristics to the very Deity. There is no warrant for such an a.s.sertion, anywhere in the Sohar or in any commentary upon it. On the contrary, the whole doctrine of the Kabalah is based on the fundamental proposition, that the Very Deity is Infinite, everywhere extended, without limitation or determination, and therefore without any conformation whatever. In order to commence the process of creation, it was necessary for Him, first of all, to effect a vacant s.p.a.ce within Himself. To this end the Deity, whose Nature is approximately expressed by describing Him as Light filling all s.p.a.ce, formless, limitless, contracts Himself on all sides from a point within Himself, and thus effects a quasi-vacant s.p.a.ce, in which only a vestige of His Light remains; and into this circular or spherical s.p.a.ce He immits His Emanations, portions of His Light or Nature; and to some of these, s.e.xual characteristics are symbolically a.s.signed.

The Infinite first limits Himself by flowing forth in the shape of _Will_, of determination to act. This _Will_ of the Deity, or the Deity _as_ will, is _Kether_, or the _Crown_, the first Sephirah. In it are _included_ all other Emanations. This is a philosophical necessity. The Infinite does not _first_ will, and _then_, as a sequence to, or consequence of, that determination, _subsequently_ perform. To will and to act must be, with Him, not only simultaneous, but in reality _the same_ ... Nor does He, by His Omniscience, _learn_ that a particular action will be wise, and then, in consequence of being so convinced, first _determine_ to do the act, and _then_ do it. His Wisdom and His Will, also, act simultaneously; and, with Him, to decide that it was wise to create, _was_ to create. Thus His will contains in itself all the Sephiroth. This will, determining Him to the exercise of intellection, to thought, to frame the Idea of the Universe, caused the Power in Him to excite the intellectual Faculty to exercise, and _was_ that Power. Its SELF, which had flowed forth from Ainsoph as Will, now flows forth as the Generative Power to beget intellectual action in the Intellectual Faculty, or Intelligence, Binah. The _Act_ itself, the Thought, the Intellection, producing the Idea, is _Daath_; and as the text of the _Siphra de Zeniutha_ says, The Power and Faculty, the Generative and Productive, the Active and Pa.s.sive, the Will and Capacity, which unite to produce that Act of reflection or Thought or Intellection, are _always_ in conjunction. As is elsewhere said in the Kabalah, both of them are _contained_ and essentially _involved_ in the result. And the Will, _as_ Wisdom or Intellectual Power, and the Capacity or Faculty, are really the Father and Mother of all that is; for to the creation of _anything_, it was absolutely necessary that The Infinite should form for Himself and _in_ Himself, an idea of what HE willed to produce or create: and, as there is no Time with Him, to _will was_ to _create_, to _plan_ was to _will_ and to _create_; and in the Idea, the Universe in potence, the universal succession or things was included. Thenceforward all was merely evolution and development.

Netsach and Hod, the Seventh and Eighth Sephiroth, are usually called in the Kabalah, Victory and Glory. Netsach is the perfect _Success_, which, with the Deity, to Whom the Future is present, _attends_, and to His creatures is to _result_, from the plan of Equilibrium everywhere adopted by Him. It is the reconciliation of Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, Free-will and Necessity, G.o.d's omnipotence and Man's liberty; and the harmonious issue and result of all, without which the Universe would be a failure. It is the inherent Perfection of the Deity, manifested in His Idea of the Universe, and in all the departments or worlds, spiritual, mental, or material, of that Universe; but it is that Perfection regarded as the successful _result_, which it both causes or produces and _is_; the _perfection_ of the plan _being_ its _success_.

It is the prevailing of Wisdom over Accident; and it, in turn, both produces and _is_ the Glory and Laudation of the Great Infinite Contriver, whose plan is thus Successful and Victorious.

From these two, which are one,--from the excellence and perfection of the Divine Nature and Wisdom, considered as Success and Glory, as the opposites of Failure and Mortification, results what the Kabalah, styling it Yesod, Foundation or Basis, characterizes as the Generative member of the Symbolical human figure by which the ten Sephiroth are represented, and from this flows Malakoth, Empire, Dominion, or Rule.

Yesod is the Stability and Permanence, which would, in ordinary language, be said to _result_ from the perfection of the Idea or Intellectual Universal, out of which all particulars are evolved; from the _success_ of that scheme, and the consequent _Glory_ or Self-Satisfaction of the Deity; but which Stability and Permanence that Perfection, Success, and Glory really Is; since the Deity, infinitely Wise, and to Whom the Past, Present, and Future were and always will be one Now, and all s.p.a.ce one HERE, had not to await the operation and evolution of His plan, as men do the result of an experiment, in order to see if it would succeed, and so to determine whether it should stand, and be stable and permanent, or fall and be temporary. Its _Perfection_ was its _Success_; His _Glory_, its _permanence_ and _stability_: and the Attributes of Permanence and Stability belong, like the others, to the Universe, material, mental, spiritual, and real, _because_ and _as_ they belong to the Infinite Himself.

This Stability and Permanence causes continuance and generates succession. It _is_ Perpetuity, and continuity without solution; and by this continuous succession, whereby out of Death comes new Life, out of dissolution and resolution comes reconstruction, Necessity and Fatality result as a consequence: that is to say, the absolute control and dominion (Malakoth) of The Infinite Deity over all that He produces, and over chance and accident; and the absolute non-existence in the Universe, in Time and in s.p.a.ce, of any other powers or influences than those which, proceeding from Him, are and cannot _not_ be perfectly submissive to His will. This _results_, humanly speaking; but in reality, the Perfection of the plan, which is its _success_, His _glory_, and its _stability_, IS also His Absolute Autocracy, and the utter absence of Chance, Accident, or Antagonism. And, as the Infinite Wisdom or Absolute Reason rules in the Divine Nature itself, so also it does in its Emanations, and in the worlds or systems of Spirit, Soul, and Matter; in each of which there is as little Chance or Accident or Unreasoning Fate, as in the Divine Nature unmanifested.

This is the Kabalistic theory as to each of the four worlds;--1st, of the Divine Nature, or Divinity itself, quant.i.tatively limited and determined, but not manifested into Ent.i.ties, which is the world of _Emanation_; 2d, of the first Ent.i.ties, that is, of Spirits and Angels, which is the world of _Creation_; 3d, of the first _forms_; souls, or psychical natures, which is the world of _Formation_ or _Fashioning_; and, 4th, of Matter and Bodies, which is the world of _Fabrication_, or, as it were, of manufacture. In each of these the Deity is _present, as, in_, and _through_ the Ten Sephiroth. First of these, in each, is Kether, the Crown, ring, or circlet, the HEAD. Next, _in_ that Head, as the two Hemispheres of the Brain, are Hakemah and Binah, and their result and progeny, Daath. These three are found also in the Spiritual world, and are universals in the psychical and material world, producing the lower Sephiroth. Then follow, in perfect Equilibrium, Law and Equity, Justice and Mercy, the Divine Infinite Nature and the Human Finite Nature, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Benignity and Severity, the Male and the Female again, as Hakerrah and Binah are, mutually tempering each other, and by their intimate union producing the other Sephiroth.

The whole Universe, and all the succession of ent.i.ties and events were present to The Infinite, before any act of creation; and His Benignity and Leniency, tempering and qualifying the law of rigorous Justice and inflexible Retribution, enabled Him to create: because, but for it, and if He could not but have administered the strict and stern law of justice, that would have compelled Him to destroy, immediately after its inception, the Universe He purposed to create, and so would have _prevented_ its creation. This Leniency, therefore, was, as it were, the very essence and quintessence of the Permanence and Stability of the plan of Creation, and part of the Very Nature of the Deity. The Kabalah, therefore, designates it as _Light_ and _Whiteness_, by which the Very Substance of Deity is symbolized. With this agree Paul's ideas as to Law and Grace; for Paul had studied the Kabalah at the feet of Gamaliel the Rabbi.

With this Benignity, the Autocracy of the dominion and control of the Deity is imbued and interpenetrated. The former, _poured_, as it were, into the latter, is an integral and essential _part_ of it, and causes it to give birth to the succession and continuance of the Universe. For Malakoth, in the Kabalah, is _female_, and the matrix or womb out of which all creation is born.

_The Sephiroth may be arranged as on page 770._

The Kabalah is the primitive tradition, and its entirety rests on the single dogma of Magism, "the visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible." The Ancients, observing that equilibrium is in physics the universal law, and that it results from the apparent opposition of two forces, concluded from the physical to the metaphysical equilibrium, and thought that in G.o.d, that is to say, in the first living and active cause, two properties necessary to each other, should be recognized; stability and movement, necessity and liberty, order dictated by reason and the self-rule of Supreme Will, Justice, and Love, and consequently Severity and Grace, Mercy or Benignity.

The idea of equilibrium among all the impersonations; of the male on one side, and the female on the other, with the Supreme Will, which _is_ also the Absolute Reason, above each two, holding the balance, is, according to the Kabalah, the foundation of all religions and all sciences, the primary and immutable idea of things. The Sephiroth are a triple triangle and a circle, the idea of the Ternary explained by the balance and multiplied by itself in the

???: Kether: Crown Will.

/ / / / Binah: ???? / ????: Hakemah: Pa.s.sive capacity <----------> Active Potency of being impregnated / of begetting intellection and producing / intellection. / / / ???: Daath: Intellection.

/ / / / / ????? Gedulah: Benignity Geburah: ????? <----------> or or or Severity or rigid / ??? Khased: Mercy.

Justice / / / / ?????: Tephareth: Beauty: / the Universal Harmony.

/ / / <--------> Hod: ??? / ???: Netsach: Victory Glory / or Success.

/ / ???? Yesud: Foundation: _i.e._, Stability and Permanency of things.

?????: Malakoth: Dominion: Supremacy and absolute control of the Divine Will in all things, domain of the Ideal; then the realization of this Idea in forms.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

The human unity is made complete by the right and left. The primitive man was of both s.e.xes.

The Divinity, one in its essence, has two essential conditions as fundamental bases of its existence--Necessity and Liberty.

The laws of the Supreme Reason necessitate and regulate liberty in G.o.d, Who is necessarily reasonable and wise.

Knowledge supposes the binary. An object known is indispensable to the being that knows.

The binary is the generator of Society and the law. It is also the number of the _gnosis_, a word adopted in lieu of _Science_, and expressing only the idea of cognizance by intuition. It is Unity, multiplying itself by itself to create; and therefore it is that the Sacred Symbols make Eve issue from the very chest of Adam.

Adam is the human Tetragram, which is summed up in the mysterious Yod of the Kabalah, image of the Kabalistic Phallus. Add to this Yod [?], the ternary name of Eve, and you form the name of Jehova, the _Divine_ Tetragram, the transcendent Kabalistic and magical word:

Thus it is that Unity, complete in the fecundity of the Ternary, forms, with it, the Quaternary, which is the key of all numbers, movements, and forms.

The Square, turning upon itself, produces the circle equal to itself, and the circular movement of four equal angles turning around one point, is the quadrature of the circle.

The Binary serves as a measure for Unity; and the relation of equality between the Above and the Below, forms with them the Ternary.

To us, Creation is Mechanism: to the Ancients it was Generation. The world-producing egg figures in all cosmogonies; and modern science has discovered that all animal production is oviparous. From this idea of generation came the reverence everywhere paid the image of generative power, which formed the Stauros of the Gnostics, and the philosophical Cross of the Masons.

_Aleph_ is the man; _Beth_ is the woman. _One_ is the Principle; _two_ is the Word. A. is the Active; B. is the Pa.s.sive. Unity is Boaz, and the Binary is Jachin.

The two columns, Boaz and Jachin, explain in the Kabalah all the mysteries of natural, political, and religious antagonism.

Woman is man's creation; and universal creation is the female of the First Principle. When the Principle of Existence made Himself Creator, He produced by emanation an ideal Yod; and to make room for it in the plenitude of the uncreated Light, He had to hollow out a pit of shadow, equal to the dimension determined by His creative desire; and attributed by Him to the ideal Yod of radiating Light.

The nature of the Active Principle is to diffuse: of the Pa.s.sive Principle, to collect and make fruitful.

Creation is the habitation of the Creator-Word. To create, the Generative Power and Productive Capacity must unite, the Binary become Unity again by the conjunction. The WORD is the First-BEGOTTEN, not the first _created_ Son of G.o.d.

SANCTA SANCTIS, we repeat again; the Holy things to the Holy, and to him who is so, the mysteries of the Kabalah will be holy. Seek and ye shall find, say the Scriptures: knock and it shall be opened unto you. If you desire to find and to gain admission to the Sanctuary, we have said enough to show you the way. If you do not, it is useless for us to say more, as it has been useless to say so much.

The Hermetic philosophers also drew their doctrines from the Kabalah; and more particularly from the Treatise _Beth Alohim_ or _Domus Dei_, known as the _Pneumatica Kabalistica_, of Rabbi Abraham Cohen Irira, and the Treatise _De Revolutionibus Animarum_ of Rabbi Jitz-chak Lorja.

This philosophy was concealed by the Alchemists under their Symbols, and in the jargon of a rude Chemistry,--a jargon incomprehensible and absurd except to the Initiates; but the key to which is within your reach; and the philosophy, it may be, worth studying. The labors of the human intellect are always interesting and instructive.

To be always rich, always young, and never to die: such has been in all times the dream of the Alchemists.

To change into gold, lead, mercury, and all the other metals; to possess the universal medicine and elixir of life; such is the problem to be resolved, in order to accomplish this desire and realize this dream.

Like all the Mysteries of Magism, the Secrets of "the Great Work" have a threefold signification; they are religious, philosophical, and natural.

The philosophal gold, in religion, is the Absolute and Supreme Reason: in philosophy, it is the Truth; in visible nature, the Sun; in the subterranean and mineral world, the most perfect and pure gold.

It is for this that the pursuit of the Great Work is called the Search for the Absolute; and the work itself, the work of the Sun.

All the masters of the Science admit that it is impossible to attain the material results, unless there are found in the two higher Degrees all the a.n.a.logies of the universal medicine and of the philosophal stone.