Translator
Henry D. Fohr
Editor
Samuel D. Fohr
SOPHIA
PERENNIS
HILLSDALE NY
CONTENTS
Editorial Note xin
Foreword xvn
i Some Remarks on the Doctrine of
Cosmic Cycles 1 Reviews 8
part
i Atlantis and Hyperborea 15
2 The Place of the
Atlantean Tradition in the Manvantara 23
1
A Few Remarks on the Name Adam
29
2
Kabbalah 33
3
Kabbalah and
The Science of Numbers 38
4
Lu Kab We jut ve of Paul
Vulliaud 47
5
The Siphra di-Tzeniutha 64
Reviews 68
1
The Hermetic Tradition 73
2
Hermes 79
3
Hermes’ Tomb 86 Reviews 93
List of Original Sources 109
Index 111
ON THE
DOCTRINE
OF
COSMIC CYCLES
We
have often been asked, regarding allusions we have been led
to make here and there to the Hindu doctrine of cosmic cycles and its
equivalents in other traditions, whether we might give, if not a complete
explanation, at least an overview sufficient to reveal its broad outlines. In
truth, this seems an almost impossible task, not only because the question is
very complex in itself, but especially owing to the extreme difficulty of
expressing these things in a European language and in a way that is
intelligible to the present-day Western mentality, which has had no practice
whatsoever with this kind of thinking. All that is really possible, in our
opinion, is to try to clarify a few points with remarks such as those that
follow, which can only raise suggestions about the meaning of the doctrine in
question rather than to really explain it.
In the most general sense
of the term, a cycle must be considered as representing the process of
development of some state of manifestation, or, in the case of minor cycles,
of one of the more or less restricted and specialized modalities of that state.
Moreover, in virtue of the law of correspondence which links all things in
universal Existence, there is necessarily and always a certain analogy, either
among different cycles of the same order or among the principal cycles and
their secondary divisions. This is what allows us to use one and the same mode
of expression when speaking about them, although this must often be understood
only symbolically, for the very essence of all symbolism is precisely founded
on the analogies
and correspondences which
really exist in the nature of things. We allude here especially to the
'chronological' form under which the doctrine of cycles is presented: since a Kalpa
represents the total development of a world, that is to say of a state or
degree of universal Existence, it is obvious that one cannot speak literally
about its duration, computed according to some temporal measure, unless this
duration relates to a state of which time is one of the determining conditions,
as in our world. Everywhere else, this duration and the succession that it
implies can have only a purely symbolic value and must be transposed
analogically, for temporal succession is then only an image, both logical and
ontological, of an ‘extra-temporal’ series of causes and effects. On the other
hand, since human language cannot directly express any condition other than
those of our own state, such a symbolism is by that very fact sufficiently justified
and must be regarded as perfectly natural and normal.
We do not intend to deal
just now with the most extensive cycles, such as the Kalpas; we will
limit ourselves to those which develop within our Kalpa, that is, the Mamantaras
and their subdivisions. At this level, the cycles have a character that is at
once cosmic and historical, for they particularly concern terrestrial humanity,
while at the same time being closely linked to events occurring in our world
but outside of the history of humanity. There is nothing to surprise us here,
for the idea of seeing human history as somehow isolated from all the rest is
exclusively modern and sharply opposed to what is taught by all traditions,
which on the contrary unanimously affirm a necessary and constant correlation
between the cosmic and the human orders.
The Mamantaras, or
eras of successive Manus, are fourteen in number, forming two septenary
series of which the first includes both past ManvatUuras and our present
one, and the second future Manvantaras. These two series, of which one
relates to the past as well as to the present that is its immediate result, and
the other to the future, can be linked with those of the seven Svargas
and the seven Patalas, which, from the point of view of the hierarchy of
the degrees of existence or of universal manifestation, represent the states
respectively higher and lower than the human state, or anterior and posterior
with respect to that state if one places oneself at
the viewpoint of the
causal connection of the cycles symbolically described, as always, under the
analogy of a temporal succession. This last point of view is obviously the most
important here, for it enables us to see within our Kalpa a kind of
reduced image of the totality of the cycles of universal manifestation
according to the analogical relation we mentioned earlier; and in this sense
one could say that the succession of Manvantaras in a way marks a
reflection of other worlds in ours. To confirm this relationship, one could
also note that the words Manu and Loka are both used as symbolic
designations for the number 14; to say that this is simply a ‘coincidence’
would be to give proof of a complete ignorance of the profound reasons inherent
in all traditional symbolism.
Yet another correspondence
with the Manvantaras concerns the seven Dvlpas or ‘regions’ into
which our world is divided. Although according to the proper meaning of the
word that designates them these are represented as islands or continents
distributed in a certain way in space, one must be careful not to take this
literally and to regard them simply as different parts of present-day earth; in
fact, they ‘emerge’ in turns and not simultaneously, which is to say that only
one of them is manifested in the sensible domain over the course of a certain
period. If that period is a Manvantara, one will have to conclude that
each Dvlpa will have to appear twice in the Kalpa or once in each
of the just mentioned septenary series; and from the relationship of these two
series, which correspond to one another inversely as do all similar cases,
particularly the Svargas and the Pdtdlas, one can deduce that the
order of appearance for the Dvlpas will likewise have to be, in the
second series, the inverse of what it was in the first. In sum, this is a
matter of different ‘states’ of the terrestrial world rather than ‘regions’
properly speaking; the Jambu-Dvlpa really represents the entire earth in
its present state, and if it is said to extend to the south of Meru, the
‘axial’ mountain around which our world revolves, this is because Meru
is identified symbolically with the North Pole, so that the whole earth is
really situated to the south with respect to it. To explain this more completely
it would be necessary to develop the symbolism of the directions of space
according to which the Dvipas are distributed, as well as
correspondences existing between this spatial symbolism and the
temporal symbolism on
which the whole doctrine of cycles rests; but since we cannot here go into
these considerations, which alone would require a whole volume, we must be
content with these summary indications, which can he easily completed by all
who already have some knowledge of what is involved.
This way of envisaging the
Dvlpas is also confirmed by concordant data from other traditions which
also speak of ‘seven lands’, particularly Islamic esoterism and the Hebrew
Kabbalah. Thus in the latter, even while these ‘seven lands’ are outwardly
represented by as many divisions of the land of Canaan, they are related to the
reigns of the ‘seven kings of Edom’ which dearly correspond to the seven Manus
of the first series; and all are included in the ‘Land of the Living’ which
represents the complete development of our world considered as realized
permanently in its principial state. We can note here the coexistence of two
points of view, one of succession, which refers to manifestation in itself,
and the other of simultaneity, which refers to its principle or to what one
could call its ‘archetype’; and at root the correspondence between these two
points of view is in a certain way equivalent to that between temporal
symbolism and spatial symbolism, to which we just alluded in connection with
the Dvlpas of the Hindu tradition.
In Islamic esoterism, the
’seven lands’ appear, perhaps even more explicitly, as so many tabaqat
or ‘categories’ of terrestrial existence, which coexist and in a way
interpenetrate, but only one of which is presently accessible to the senses
while the others are in a latent state and can only be perceived exceptionally
and under certain special conditions; these too are manifested outwardly in
turn, during the different periods that succeed one another in the course of
the total duration of this world. On the other hand, each of the ‘seven lands’
is governed by a Quito or ‘Pole’, which thus corresponds very clearly to
the Manu of the period during which his land is manifested; and these
seven Aqtdb are subordinate to the supreme ‘Pole’ just as the different Manus
are subordinate to the Adi-Mami or primordial Maine, but because
these ‘seven lands’ coexist, they also in a certain respect exercise their
functions in a permanent and simultaneous way. It is hardly necessary to point
out that the designation of‘Pole’ is closely related to the ‘polar’ symbolism
of Meru which we just
mentioned, for Meru
itself has in any case its exact equivalent in the mountain of Qa/in Islamic
tradition. Let us also add that the seven terrestrial ‘Poles’ are considered to
be reflections of the seven celestial ‘Poles’ which preside respectively over
the seven planetary heavens; and this naturally evokes the correspondence with
the Svargas in Hindu doctrine, which shows in sum the perfect
concordance in this regard between the two traditions.
We shall now consider the
divisions of a Manvantara, that is to say the Yugas, which are
four in number. First of all, and without dwelling on it at length, let us
point out that this quaternary division of a cycle is susceptible of multiple
applications and that it is in fact found in many cycles of a more particular
order. One can cite as examples the four seasons of the year, the four weeks of
the lunar month, and the four ages of human life; here too there is correspondence
with a spatial symbolism, in this case principally related to the four cardinal
points. On the other hand, we have often called attention to the obvious
equivalence of the four Yugas with the four ages of gold, silver,
bronze, and iron as they were known to Greco- Latin antiquity, in both cases,
each period is marked by a degeneration in regard to the age that preceded it;
and this, which is directly opposed to the idea of 'progress’ as understood by
the modern world, is very simply explained by the fact that every cyclical
development, that is in sum every process of manifestation, quite truly
constitutes a ‘descent’ since it necessarily implies a gradual distancing from
the principle, and this is moreover the real meaning of the ‘fall’ in the
Judeo-Christian tradition.
From one Yuga to
the next the degeneration is accompanied by a decrease in duration, and this is
thought to influence the length of human life; and what is most important in
this respect are the ratios that exist between the respective durations of
these different periods. If the total duration of the Manvantara is
represented by 10, that of the Krita-Yuga or Satya-Yuga is 4,
that of the Treta-Yuga is 3, that of the Dvapara-Yuga is 2, and
that of the Kali-Yuga is 1. These numbers are also those belonging to
the feet of the symbolic bull of Dharma which are represented as resting
on the earth during the same periods. The division of the Manvantara is
therefore carried out according to the formula 10-4 + 3 + 2 + 1, which is, in
reverse,
that of the Pythagorean Tetraktys:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. This last formula corresponds to what the language of Western
Hermeticism calls the circling of the square’, and the other to the opposite
problem of the ‘squaring of the circle’, which expresses precisely the relation
of the end of a cycle to its beginning, that is, the integration of its total
development. Here there is an entire symbolism both arithmetic and geometric
which we can only indicate in passing so as not to digress too far from our
principal subject.
As for the numbers given
in different texts for the duration of the Manvantara and consequently
for that of the Yugas, it must be understood that they are not to be
regarded as a ‘chronology’ in the ordinary sense of the word, we mean as
expressing a literal number of years; and this is also why certain apparent
differences in these numbers do not really imply any contradiction. Generally
speaking, it is only the number 4,320 that is to be considered in these
figures, for a reason that we shall explain later, and not the many zeros that
follow it, which may well be meant to lead astray those who wish to devote
themselves to certain calculations. At first glance, such a precaution might
seem strange, and yet it is easily explained: if the real duration of the Manvantara
were known, and if in addition its starting-point were exactly determined,
anyone could without difficulty draw therefrom deductions allowing him to
foresee certain future events. But no orthodox tradition has ever encouraged
inquiries by means of which someone might see more or less into the future,
since in practice such a knowledge has more drawbacks than real advantages.
This is why the starting-point and the duration of the Manvantara have
always been more or less carefully concealed, either by adding or subtracting a
given number of years from the real dates, or by multiplying or dividing the
durations of the cyclical periods so as to conserve only their exact
proportions; and we will add that certain correspondences have also sometimes
been reversed for similar reasons.
If the duration of the Manvantara
is 4,320, those of the four Yugas will respectively be 1,728, 1,296,
864, and 432; but by what number must we multiply them to obtain an expression
of these durations in years? It is easy to see that all the cyclical numbers
are directly related to the geometric division of the circle; thus 4,320 = 360
x 12.
Besides, there is nothing
arbitrary or purely conventional in this division because, for reasons relating
to the correspondence between arithmetic and geometry, it is normal for it to
be carried out according to multiples of 3,9, and 12, whereas decimal division
is that best suited for the straight line. And yet this observation, although
truly fundamental, would not enable us to go very far in determining cyclical
periods if we did not also know that in the cosmic order their principal basis
is the astronomical period of the precession of the equinoxes, of which the
duration is 25,920 years, so that the displacement of the equinoctial points is
one degree in 72 years. This number 72 is precisely a sub-multiple of 4,320 =
72 x 60, and 4,320 is in turn a sub-multiple of 25,920 = 4,320 x 6. The fact
that we find in the precession of the equinoxes numbers linked to the division
of the circle is yet another proof of its truly natural character; but the
question that now arises is this: what multiple or sub-multiple of the
astronomical period in question really corresponds to the duration of the Manvantara?
The period that appears
most frequently in different traditions is in truth not so much the precession
of equinoxes as its half; actually, it is this that corresponds in particular
to the ‘great year’ of the Persians and the Greeks which is often expressed by
approximation as either 12,000 or 13,000 years, its exact duration being 12,960
years. Given the very particular importance which is thus attributed to that
period, it is to be presumed that the Manvantara will have to comprise a
whole number of these ‘great years’; but what will that number be? Here we
find, elsewhere than in Hindu tradition, at least a precise indication which
this time seems plausible enough to be accepted literally: among the Chaldeans,
the duration of the reign of Xisuthros, which is manifestly identical to
Vaivasvata, the Manu of the present era, is fixed at 64,800
years, or exactly five ‘great years’ Let us note incidentally that the number
5, being that of the bhutas or elements of the sensory world, must
necessarily have a special importance from the cosmological point of view,
something that tends to confirm the reality of such an evaluation; perhaps there
is reason to consider a correlation between the five bhutas and the
successive five ‘great years’ in question, all the more so in fact since in the
ancient traditions of Central America one encounters
an explicit association of
the elements with certain cyclical periods; but this question would require
closer examination. However that may be, if such is indeed the real duration of
the Manvantara, and if we continue to take as a base the number 4,320,
which is equal to the third part of the ‘great year’, it is then by 15 that
this number will have to be multiplied. On the other hand, the five ‘great
years’ will naturally be distributed unequally but according to simple relationships
among the four Yugas: the Krita-Yuga will contain 2 of them, the Trcta-Yuga
i'/z, the Dvapara-Yuga 1, and the Kali-Yuga Vz; these numbers are
of course half of those we previously used when representing the duration of
the Manvantara by 10. Expressed in ordinary years, these same durations
of the four Yugas will be respectively 25,920,19,440,12,960, and 6,480
years, forming the total of 64,800 years; and it will be recognized that these
numbers are at least within perfectly plausible limits and may very well
correspond to the true chronology of present terrestrial humanity.
We will end these
considerations here, for as concerns the starting-point of our Manvantara
and consequently the exact point in its course where we are presently situated,
we do not intend to risk an attempt to determine them. By all traditional data
we know that we have been in the Kali-Yuga for a long time already; and
we can say without fear of error that we are in an advanced phase, a phase
whose description in the Purauas corresponds in the most striking
fashion to the characteristics of our present epoch. But would it not be
imprudent to wish to be more exact, and would this not inevitably end in the
kinds of predictions to which traditional doctrine hasvnot without
good reasons, posed so many obstacles?
REVIEWS
Mircea
Eliade: Le Mythe de Peternel retour:
Archetypes et repetition (Paris: Gallimard, 1961)
|T/ie Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991)!- The title of this small volume, which does not exactly correspond to
its contents, does not appear to us to be a very happy one, for it inevitably
makes one think of the modern notions to which this term 'eternal return’ is
usually applied
and which, besides
confusing eternity with indefinite duration, imply the existence of a
repetition that is impossible and clearly contrary to the true traditional
notion of cycles, according to which there is only correspondence and not
identity. In the final analysis there is in the case of the macrocosmic order a
difference comparable to that which exists in the microcosmic order between the
idea of reincarnation and that of the passage of the being through the multiple
states of manifestation. But this is not in fact what Eliade’s book is about,
and what he means by‘repetition’ is nothing other than the reproduction or
rather the ritual imitation of'what was in the beginning’. In an integrally
traditional civilization, everything proceeds from ‘celestial archetypes’; thus
cities, temples, and dwellings are always erected according to a cosmic model;
another related question, one which at root differs much less from the former
than the author seems to think, is that of symbolic identification with the
‘Center’. These are things about which we ourselves have often spoken;[1]
Eliade has brought together numerous examples referring to the most diverse
traditions which show quite well the universality and, we could say, the
‘normality’ of these ideas. He then goes on to the examination of rites
properly so called, always from the same point of view; but there is one point
on which we must state a serious reservation: he speaks of ‘archetypes of
profane activities’, whereas precisely, as long as a civilization preserves an
integrally traditional character, there are no profane activities. It seems to
us that what he so designates is what has become profane as a result of a
degeneration, which is something quite different, for then, and by that very
fact, there can no longer be a question of‘archetypes’, for the profane is such
only because it is no longer linked to any transcendent principle. Besides,
there is certainly nothing profane in the examples he gives (ritual dances,
anointing of a king, traditional medicine). In what follows, the emphasis is
more particularly on the question of the annual cycle and the rites linked to it.
By virtue of the correspondence that exists between all cycles, the year itself
may naturally be taken as a reduced image of the great cycles of universal
manifestation, and this is what explains in particular that its beginning may
be considered to have a ‘cosmogonic’ character. The idea of a ‘regeneration of
time’, which the author interjects here, is not very clear, but it seems that
what must be understood by
this is the divine
conservation of the manifested world, with which the ritual action is a true
collaboration by virtue of the relations existing between the cosmic order and
the human order. What is regrettable is that despite all of this he thinks he
is obliged to speak of‘beliefs’, whereas what is involved is the application of
a very real knowledge and of traditional sciences which have a value altogether
different from that of the profane sciences. And why must he also, in another
concession to modern prejudices, excuse himself for having'avoided all
sociological or ethnographic interpretation’, whereas on the contrary we could
not praise the author too much for this abstention, especially when we recall
to what extent other studies have been spoiled by such interpretations?
The last chapters are less
interesting from our point of view, and they are in any case the most
questionable, for what they contain is no longer a description of traditional
ideas but rather Eliade’s own reflections, from which he tries to draw a sort
of‘philosophy of history’. Moreover, we do not see how cyclical conceptions
would be opposed in any way to history (he even uses the expression ‘refutation
of history’), and in truth history cannot really have meaning except insofar
as it expresses the unfolding of events within the course of the human cycle,
although profane historians are no doubt scarcely capable of conceiving this.
If the idea of‘misfortune’ can in one sense be attached to ‘historical
existence’, it is precisely because the course of the cycle is accomplished
according to a descending movement. One must add that the final remarks on the
‘terror of history’ seem to us rather too much inspired by‘current events’.
Gaston
Georgel: Les Rythmes dans I’Histoire
(Belfort: Gaston Georgel, 1937). This book constitutes an essay on the
application of cosmic cycles to the history of peoples and to the phases of
growth and decadence in civilizations. It is truly a pity that in undertaking
such a work the writer did not have at his disposal more complete traditional
data, and that he knew some only through rather doubtful intermediaries who
mingled with them their own imaginings. Nevertheless, he has seen that the
essential thing to consider is the period of the precession of the equinoxes
and its division, even though he adds some complications that seem of little
use; but the terminology he adopts to designate certain secondary periods
betrays a number of
misunderstandings and
confusions. Thus, the twelfth part of the precession certainly cannot be called
a ‘cosmic year’; that name would be much more fitting either for the entire
period, or even more to its half, which is precisely the ‘great year’ of the
ancients. On the other hand, the period of 25,765 years is probably borrowed
from some hypothetical calculation of modern astronomers, but the duration
traditionally indicated is 25,920 years. A singular consequence of this is that
the author is sometimes led to take the exact numbers for certain divisions,
for example 2,160 and 540, but then considers them as only ‘approximate’. Let
us add still one more observation on this subject: he thinks he has found a
confirmation of the cycle of 539 years in certain biblical texts which suggest
the number 77x7 = 539; but precisely here he should have taken 77 x 7
+1 = 540, even if only by analogy with the jubilee year, which was not the
49th but really the 50th, or 7 x 7 +1 = 50. As for applications, if there are
correspondences and relationships that are not only curious but really worthy
of note, we must say there are others which are much less striking or which
even seem somewhat forced, to the point of recalling unfortunately the
childishness of certain occultists. There would also be quite a few reservations
to be made on other points, for example the fanciful figures set forth for the
chronology of ancient civilizations. On the other hand, it would have been
interesting to see whether the writer could have continued to get results of
the same kind by expanding his field of inquiries, for there have been and
still are many other peoples than those he considers. In any case, we do not
think it possible to establish a general ‘synchronism’ because, for different
peoples, the starting- point must likewise be different; and moreover,
different civilizations do not simply succeed one another, they also coexist,
as one can still witness today. In conclusion, the author has thought it well
to indulge in several attempts at ‘foreseeing the future’, within rather
restricted limits; that is one of the dangers of this kind of research,
especially in our time, where so-called ‘prophecies’ are in such vogue.
Certainly, no tradition has ever encouraged such things and it is even in order
to obstruct them as much as possible rather than for any other reason that
certain aspects of the doctrine of cycles have always been shrouded in obscurity.
Gaston
Georgel: Les Rythmes dans I’Histoire.
(Besan^on: Editions ‘Servir’, 1947). We reviewed this book when the first
edition appeared (October 1937 issue); at the time, the author, as he indicates
in the foreword of this new edition, knew almost nothing of the traditional
data concerning cycles, to the point that it was only by good fortune that,
starting from a strictly empirical viewpoint, he happened to suspect the
importance of the precession of the equinoxes. The few remarks we made then had
the consequence of turning him toward more detailed studies, for which we can
certainly only congratulate ourselves, and we must express our thanks to him
for what he is willing to say on our behalf. He has therefore modified and
completed his work on many points, adding new chapters or paragraphs, one a history
of the question of cycles, correcting various inaccuracies, and suppressing the
doubtful considerations that he at first accepted on faith from occultist
writers because he was able to compare them with more authentic data. We regret
only that he forgot to replace the numbers 539 and 1,078 years with the correct
numbers 540 and 1,080, something which the foreword however seemed to announce,
all the more so because he did indeed rectify 2,156 years with 2,160, which
introduces a certain apparent disagreement between the chapters dealing with
these different cycles that are multiples of one another. It is also somewhat
unfortunate that he retained the expressions‘cosmic year’ and ‘cosmic season’
to designate periods much too short to really apply correctly (2,160 and of 540
years), which are rather, so to speak, only ‘months’ and ‘weeks’, all the more
so since the name ‘month’ fits rather well for the course of a zodiacal sign in
the precession of the equinoxes, and that, on the other hand, the number 540 =
77 x 7 t 1 has, like the number of the sevenfold ‘week of years’ of the jubilee
(50 - 7 x 7 + 1), of which it is so to speak an ‘extension’, a particular link
with the septenary. In any case, these are almost the only detailed criticisms
that we have to make this time, and the book as a whole is very worthy of
interest and favorably distinguished from certain other works on cyclical
theories which put forth far more ambitious and assuredly little justified
claims. Naturally, he restricts himself to what we can call the ‘minor
historical cycles’, and this only within the framework of the Western and
Mediterranean civilizations; but we know that Georgel is presently preparing,
in the same order of ideas, other works of a more general character, and we
hope that he may soon be able to bring these also to a successfill conclusion.
PART
II
AND
HYPERBOREA
In
Atlantis (June 1929), Paul Le Cour
comments on a footnote from our article of last May,[2]
in which we maintained the distinction between Hyperborea and Atlantis against
those who would conflate them and speak of an ‘Hyperborean Atlantis’. In truth,
although this expression seems to belong properly to Le Cour, our remarks were
not directed only at him, for he is not alone in confusing the two; the same
confusion can be found in Herman Wirth, author of an important work on the
origins of humanity (recently published in Germany as Der Aufgang der
Menschheit), who consistently uses the term ‘north-Atlantic’ to designate
the region from which the primordial tradition emerged. On the other hand, Le
Cour is, to our knowledge, the only one who claims that we affirm the existence
of an ‘Hyperborean Atlantis’. If we did not single him out for this, it is
because questions of persons are of little importance to us, our only concern
being to put our readers on guard against a false interpretation, whatever its
source may be. We wonder how Le Cour reads us; we wonder more than ever, for he
now has us saying that the North Pole was originally ‘not the one of today, but
the adjoining region, it seems, of Iceland and Greenland.’ Where could he have
found that? We are absolutely certain that we have never written a single word
on this matter and that we have never made the slightest allusion to the
question, which is in any case secondary from our point of view,
of a possible displacement
of the pole since the beginning of our Manvantara.[3]
With all the more reason we have never specified its original location, which
would be, in any event, on many grounds quite difficult to determine with
respect to present-day regions.
Le Cour goes on to say
that ‘in spite of his [Guenon’s] Hinduism, he admits that the origin of the
traditions is Western.’ We do not admit this at all, quite the contrary, for we
say that it is polar, and as far as we know the pole is no more Western than it
is Eastern; and we persist in maintaining, as we did in the note just referred
to, that North and West are two different cardinal points. It is only in a
later epoch that the seat of the primordial tradition, transferred to other
regions, was able to become either Western or Eastern—Western for certain
periods and Eastern for other; and in any case, the last transferal was surely
to the East and already completed long before the beginning of the times called
‘historic’ (the only times accessible to the investigations of ‘profane’
history). We should note, moreover, that it is not at all ‘in spite of his
Hinduism’ (in using this word Le Cour probably spoke more correctly than he
knew), but on the contrary because of it that we consider the origin of the
traditions to be Nordic, and even more exactly to be polar, since this is
expressly affirmed in the Veda as well as in other sacred books.1
The land where the sun ‘circled the horizon without setting’ must have in fact
been located very near the pole if not at the pole itself; it is also said that
at a later date the representatives of the tradition were transported to a region
where the longest day was twice as long as the shortest, but this already
involves a subsequent phase which, geographically, clearly has nothing to do
with Hyperborea.
Le Cour may be right in
distinguishing between a southern Atlantis and a northern Atlantis, although
they must not have been
separate originally; but
it is no less true that even the northern Atlantis had nothing hyperborean
about it. As we freely acknowledge, what greatly complicates the issue is that
over time the same designations have been applied to very different regions,
and not only to successive locations of the traditional primordial center, but
even to the secondary centers that proceeded more or less directly from it. We
pointed out this difficulty in our study The King of the World, where,
on the very page to which Le Cour refers, we wrote:
But it is also necessary
to distinguish the Atlantean Tula [the original place of the Toltecs,
which was probably situated in Northern Atlantis] from the Hyperborean Tula,
the latter then truly representing the original and supreme center for the
totality of the present Manvantara-, it was this that was the‘sacred
isle’ par excellence, having originally been situated quite literally at the
pole.... All the other sacred isles, which everywhere bear names of identical
meaning, were only its images; and this applies even to the spiritual center of
the Atlantean tradition, which only presided over a secondary historical cycle
subordinate to the Manvantara.
To which we added this
note:
A major difficulty in
determining precisely the meeting-point of the Atlantean and the Hyperborean
traditions results from various name substitutions that have given rise to
many confusions; but in spite of everything the question is perhaps not entirely
insoluble.[4]
In speaking of this
meeting-point, we were thinking chiefly of Dru- idism; and now, precisely on
this subject, we find in Atlantis (July- August, 1929) another note that
proves how difficult it sometimes is to make oneself understood. On the subject
of our June article on the ‘triple enclosure’,[5]
Le Cour writes: ‘It limits the scope of this emblem to make it only a Druidic
symbol; it is likely to be earlier and to radiate beyond the Druidic world.'
Now we are so far from making it only a Druidic symbol that in our article,
after having noted the examples I.e Cour himself gathered from Italy and
Greece, we said:
The fact that this same
figure is found elsewhere than among the Celts would indicate that there were,
in other traditional forms, hierarchies constituted on this same model [of the
Druidic hierarchy], which is perfectly normal.
As for the question of
anteriority, it would be necessary first of all to know what precise epoch
Druidism dates to, and it probably dates back earlier than is ordinarily
supposed, all the more in that the Druids possessed a tradition of which a
significant part was indisputably of hyperborean provenance.
We will take this occasion
to make a further remark which has its own importance. We say ‘hyperborean’ to
conform with the usage that has prevailed since the Greeks; but the use of this
word shows that they, at least in the ‘classical’ epoch, had already lost the
sense of the primitive designation. It would, in fact, suffice to say ‘Boreas’,
a word strictly equivalent to the Sanskrit Varaha, or rather, when it
involves an area of land, to its feminine form Varahr, it is the'land of
the wild boar', which also became the ‘land of the bear’ at a certain epoch
during the period of ascendancy of the Kshatriyas, to which Parashurama('
put an end.
To finish this
clarification, it remains for us to say a few words on three or four questions
that Le Cour raises incidentally in his two notes. The first is a reference to
the swastika, which he says we ‘make the sign of the pole.’ Without the
slightest animosity, we will here ask Le Cour not to liken our case to his, for
it is necessary to tell things as they are: we consider him a ‘seeker’ (and
this is not in any way to lessen his merit) who offers explanations according to
his personal views, which are somewhat adventurous at times; and that is
altogether his right since he is not attached to any living tradition and is
not in possession of any facts received by direct transmission. We could say,
in other words, that he is doing archeology, whereas we are doing initiatic
science, two points of view which, even when they touch upon the same subjects,
cannot in any way coincide. We do not ‘make’ of the swastika the sign of
the pole; we say that it is and has always been this, and that this is its true
traditional meaning, which is an entirely different thing, for this is a fact
that neither Le Cour nor we ourselves can change. Le Cour, who evidently can
provide only more or less hypothetical interpretations, claims that the swastika
is ‘only a symbol related to an ideal lacking loftiness’;7 that is
his way of seeing things, but it is nothing more than that, and so we are all
the more reluctant to discuss it in that it represents only a sentimental
opinion; ‘lofty* or not, an ‘ideal’ is to us something rather empty, and in
reality it is a question of things that are much more ‘positive’, as we would
readily say if this word were not so abused.
Le Cour, on the other
hand, does not appear satisfied with the note we devoted to an article by one
of his collaborators who wished to see at all costs an opposition between East
and West, and who
viewed these questions a
little more clearly in the West if Fabre d’Olivet and those who followed him
had not hopelessly entangled the story of Parashurama with that of Ramachandra,
that is, the sixth and the seventh avatdras, who however are quite
distinct in every respect.
7.
We would suppose that in
writing these words Le Cour had in mind modern and not traditional
interpretations of the swastika, like those conceived by the German
‘racists’, for example, who in effect claimed to take possession of this
emblem, dressing it up, moreover, with the baroque and trivial appellation of hakenkreuz,
or ‘hooked cross’.
showed, with regard to the
East, an altogether deplorable exclusivism.[6]
He writes some astonishing things concerning this:
Ren^ Guenon, who is a pure
logician, can only investigate the purely intellectual side of things,
concerning the East as well as the West, as is proven by his writings; he
demonstrates this again in declaring that Agni is sufficient unto itself
(see Regnabit, April 1926), and in ignoring the duality Aar-Agni,
to which we will often return, for this duality is the cornerstone of the
edifice of the manifested world.
Although we are ordinarily
indifferent to what is written about us, we cannot let it pass that we are a
‘pure logician’ when on the contrary we consider logic and dialectic to be
simple expository instruments, as such useful at times, but of an entirely
external character and without any interest in themselves. To repeat, we adhere
only to the initiatic point of view, and the rest, that is to say all that is
only ‘profane’ knowledge, is entirely without value in our eyes. Although we
often do speak of ‘pure intellectuality’, it is only because this expression
has a completely different meaning for us than it does for Le Cour, who seems
to confuse ‘intelligence’ with ‘reason’ and who even envisages an ‘esthetic
intuition’, whereas there is no genuine intuition other than 'intellectual
intuition’, which is of a supra- rational order. There is here, moreover,
something formidable in quite another way than can be conceived by one who
clearly has not the least suspicion of what ‘metaphysical realization’ might
be, and who probably imagines that we are only a kind of theoretician, which
proves once more that he has scarcely understood our writings, which, strange
to say, nonetheless appear to preoccupy him.
As for the fable of Aar-Agni,
of which we are not in the least ‘ignorant’, it would be good once and for all
to make an end of these reveries, for which Le Cour is moreover not
responsible: if 'Agni is sufficient unto itself,’ it is for the good
reason that in Sanskrit this
term designates fire in
all its aspects, and those who claim the contrary demonstrate their total
ignorance of Hindu tradition. We did not say anything other than this in the
note in our Regnabit article, which we believe it necessary to reproduce
here:
Knowing that among the
readers of Regnabit there are some who are acquainted with the theories
of a school whose works, though very interesting and quite admirable in many
respects, nonetheless invite certain reservations, we must say here that we
cannot accept the use of the terms Aor and Agni to designate the
two complementary aspects of fire (light and heat). The first of these two
words is in fact Hebrew, while the second is Sanskrit, and one cannot associate
in this way terms borrowed from different traditions, whatever may be, among
such traditions, the real concordances and even the fundamental identity hidden
under their diversity of forms; we must not confuse ‘syncretism’ with true
synthesis. Moreover, if Aor is exclusively light, Agni is the
igneous principle envisaged integrally (the Latin ignis being exactly
the same word), and therefore light and heat together; the restriction of this
term to the second aspect is entirely arbitrary and unjustified.
We need hardly add that in
writing this note we in no way had Le Cour in mind; we were thinking solely of
Hi^ron de Paray-le- Monial, to whom the invention of this bizarre verbal
association properly belongs. We see no reason to give any attention to a
fantasy issuing from Sarachaga’s too fertile imagination, entirely lacking in
authority and without the slightest value from the traditional point of view,
to which we strictly confine ourselves.[7]
Finally, Le Cour takes
advantage of these circumstances to affirm once again the anti-metaphysical and
anti-initiatic theory of Western ‘individualism’, which is after all his own
concern and involves only himself; and he adds, with a note of pride indicating
quite well that he is hardly free from individual contingencies: ‘We maintain
our point of view because
we are ancestors in the domain of knowledge.’ This claim is truly a little
extraordinary—does Le Cour then believe himself to be so ancient? Not only are
modern Westerners not the ancestors of anyone, they are not even legitimate
descendants, for they have lost the key to their own tradition; it is not ‘in
the East that there has been deviation,’ whatever might be said by those who
are ignorant of everything pertaining to the Eastern doctrines. The
'ancestors’, to take up Le Cour’s word, are the effective holders of the primordial
tradition; there could not be any others, and, in the present age, these will
certainly not be found in the West.
ATLANTEAN
TRADITION
IN THE MANVANTARA
In
the preceding chapter we pointed out the all too common
confusion between the primordial tradition, which was originally ‘polar’ in the
literal sense of the word and whose starting-point is the very same as the
present Manvantara, and the derivative and secondary Atlantean
tradition, which relates to a much more restricted period. We said then, as we
have said before,[8]
that this confusion could be explained in some measure by the fact that the
subordinate spiritual centers were constituted in the image of the supreme
center, and that the same appellations had been applied to them. Thus it is
that the Atlantean Tula, a name preserved in Central America where it
was brought by the Toltecs, must have been the seat of a spiritual power that
was as it were an emanation from that of the Hyperborean Tula-, and
since the name Tula designates Libra [the Scales), its double
application is closely related to the transfer of that same designation from
the polar constellation of the Great Bear to the zodiacal sign which even today
bears the name of the Scales. It is also to the Atlantean tradition that one
should relate the transfer of the sapta-riksha (the symbolic dwelling
place of the seven Rishis) at a certain epoch from the same Great Bear
to the Pleiades, a constellation also formed of seven stars but in a zodiacal
position; what leaves no doubt in this respect is that the Pleiades were said
to be daughters of Atlas and, as such, also called Atlantides.
All this is in accord with
the geographical locations of the traditional centers, themselves linked to
their own characteristics as well as to their respective places in the cyclical
period, for everything here holds together more closely than could be supposed
by those ignorant of the laws of certain correspondences. Hyperborea obviously
corresponds to the North, and Atlantis to the West; and it is remarkable that
although the very designations of these two regions are clearly distinct, they
may also give rise to confusion since names of the same root were applied to
both. In fact, one finds this root under diverse forms such as hiber, iber,
or cber, and also ereb by transposition of letters, designating
both the region of winter, that is, the North, and the region of evening or the
setting sun, that is, the West, and the peoples who inhabit both; this fact is
manifestly of the same order as those we just mentioned.
The very position of the
Atlantean center on the East-West axis indicates its subordination with respect
to the Hyperborean center, located at the North-South polar axis. Indeed,
although in the complete system of the six directions of space the conjunction
of these two axes forms what one can call a horizontal cross, the North- South
axis must nonetheless be regarded as relatively vertical with respect to the
East-West axis, as we have explained elsewhere.[9]
In conformity with the symbolism of the annual cycle, one can still call the
first of these two axes the solstitial axis and the second the equinoctial
axis; and this helps us understand that the starting-point given to the year
may not be the same in all the traditional forms. The starting-point that one
can call normal, as being in direct conformity with primordial tradition, is
the winter solstice; the fact of starting the year at one of the equinoxes
indicates the attachment to a secondary tradition, such as the Atlantean
tradition.
Since this last, on the
other hand, is located in a region that corresponds to evening in the diurnal
cycle, it must be regarded as belonging to one of the last divisions of the
cycle of present terrestrial humanity and therefore as relatively recent; and
in fact, without seeking to give precise details which would be difficult to
justify, one can say that it certainly belongs to the second half of the
present
Manvantara?
Besides, just as the autumn of the year corresponds to evening in the day, one
can see a direct allusion to the Atlantean world in the fact that the Hebraic
tradition (whose name moreover betrays its Western origin) indicates that the
world was created at the autumn equinox (the first day of the month of Thishri
according to a certain transposition of the word Bereshith)-, and
perhaps that is also the most immediate reason (there are others of a more profound
order) for the enunciation of ‘evening’ (ereb) before ‘morning’ (baker)
in the recital of the ‘days’ of Genesis.[10]
This is confirmed by the fact that the literal meaning of the name Adam is
‘red’, for the Atlantean tradition was precisely that of the red race; and it
seems also that the biblical deluge corresponds directly to the cataclysm in
which Atlantis disappeared and that, consequently, it must not be identified
with the deluge of Satyavrata which, according to Hindu tradition,
having issued directly from the primordial tradition, immediately preceded the
beginning of our Manvantara.[11]
Of course, this meaning, which one can call historical, does not in any way
exclude the other meanings; besides, one must never lose sight of the fact
that, according to the analogy that exists between a principal cycle and the
secondary cycles into which it is subdivided, all considerations of this order
are always susceptible of applications at different degrees; but what we wish
to say is that, although the Atlantean cycle was taken as a foundation in the
Hebrew tradition, it seems that the transmission was made either by the mediation
of the Egyptians—which at least has nothing improbable about it—or by
altogether different means.
[f we make this last
reservation, it is because it seems particularly difficult to determine how,
after the disappearance of Atlantis, the current coming from the West was
joined with another current descending from the North and proceeding directly
from the primordial tradition, a junction from which was to result the
constitution of the different traditional forms proper to the last part of the
Manvantara. This is in any case not a matter of a reabsorption pure and
simple in the primordial tradition of what went forth from it at an earlier
epoch; it is a matter of a sort of fusion of forms previously differentiated to
give birth to other forms adapted to new circumstances of time and place; and
the fact that the two currents then appear in a way to be autonomous can
further support the illusion of the independence of the Atlantean tradition. If
one wished to research the conditions under which that fusion took place, it
would doubtless be necessary to give particular importance to the Celts and the
Chaldeans, whose name, which is the same, designated in reality not a
particular people, but rather a sacerdotal caste; but who knows today what the
Celtic and Chaldean traditions were, or even that of the ancient Egyptians? One
cannot be overprudent when it comes to civilizations that have entirely
disappeared, and it is certainly not the attempts at reconstitution to which
profane archeologists devote themselves that are likely to shed light on the
question; but it is nonetheless true that many vestiges of a forgotten past are
coming out of the earth in our age, and perhaps not without reason. Without
risking the slightest prediction on what can result from these discoveries, the
possible importance of which those who make themare generally incapable of
suspecting, we must certainly see in this a ‘sign of the times’. Must not
everything be found again at the end of the Manvantara, to serve as a
starting-point for the elaboration of the future cycle?
PART
III
ON THE
NAME ADAM
In
the last chapter we said that the literal meaning of
the name Adam is ‘red’, and that one can see in it one indication of the
link of the Hebraic tradition to the Atlantean tradition, which was that of the
red race. On the other hand, in his interesting article on ‘blood and some of
its mysteries’, our colleague Argos envisages for this same name Adam a
derivation that may seem different. After recalling the usual interpretation
that it means ‘drawn from the earth’ (adamah), he asks whether it could
not rather come from the word dam, ‘blood’; but the difference is only apparent,
since all these words really have one and the same root.
It is worth remarking
first of all that from the linguistic point of view the usual etymology, which
derives Adam from adamah, translated as ‘earth’, is impossible;
the inverse derivation would be more plausible, but in fact the two
substantives both come from the same verbal root adam, which means ‘to
be red’. Adamah is not, originally at least, the earth in general (eretz)
or the element earth (yabashah, a word whose original meaning indicates
‘dryness’ as a quality characteristic of this element). It is properly red
clay, which by its plastic properties is particularly apt to represent a
certain potentiality, a capacity to receive forms; and the work of the potter
has often been taken as a symbol of the production of manifested beings from
the undifferentiated primordial substance. It is for the same reason that ‘red
earth’ seems to have special importance in Hermetic symbolism, where it can be
taken for one of the symbols of‘prime matter’, although when understood in its
literal sense it can only play that role in a very relative way since it is
already endowed with definite
qualities. Let us add that
the relationship between a designation of the earth and the name of Adam,
taken as a type of humanity, is found in another form in Latin, where the word hitnuts,
'earth', is also singularly close to homo and humamts. On the
other hand, if we relate this same name Adam more particularly to the
tradition of the red race, the latter corresponds, among the elements, to
earth, as it does to the West among the cardinal points, and this last concordance
further justifies what we said previously.
As for the word dam,
‘blood’ (which is common to Hebrew and Arabic), it is also derived from the
same root adam:' blood is properly the red fluid, which is in fact its
most immediately apparent characteristic. The kinship between this designation
of blood and the name of Adam is therefore incontestable and is
self-evident through derivation from a common root; but this derivation appears
to be direct for both, and it is not possible, starting from the verbal root adam,
to pass by way of the intermediary of dam to the name of Adam.
One could, it is true, envisage things in another way, less strictly
linguistic, and say that it is because of his blood that man is called ‘red’.
Such an explanation is not very satisfying because the fact of having blood is
not confined to man but is common with the animal species, so that it cannot
really serve to characterize him. In fact in Hermetic symbolism the color red
is that of the animal kingdom, as the color green is that of the vegetable kingdom
and the color white that of the mineral kingdom;[12]
and this, as regards the color red, can be related precisely to blood
considered as the seat, or rather the support, of animal vitality properly
speaking. From another point of view, if one comes back to the more specific
relation of the name of Adam with the red race, the latter does not seem
| in spite of its color) susceptible of being related to a predominance of
blood in its organic constitution, for the sanguine temperament corresponds to
fire among the elements, and not to earth;
and it is the black race
which corresponds to the element of fire, as it does to the South
among the cardinal points.
Let us further point out
that among the derivatives of the root Adam is the word edom,
which means‘reddish-brown’ and which in any case differs from the name of Adam
only by vowel points. In the Bible, Edom is a surname of Esau, whence
the name ‘Edomites’ given to his descendants, and that of Idumaea to the
country they inhabited (and which in Hebrew is also Edom, but in the
feminine). This recalls the ‘seven kings of Edom’ mentioned in the Zohar,
and the close resemblance of Edom to Adam may be one of the
reasons why this name is taken here to designate the vanished peoples, that is,
those of the previous Manvantaras.[13]
We also see the relationship that this last point presents with the question of
what has been called the ‘pre-adamites’: if one takes Adam as being the
origin of the red race and of its particular tradition, it can simply be a
matter of the other races that have preceded the former in the course of the
present human cycle. If we take it in a more extended sense as the prototype
for the whole of present humanity, it will be a case of these earlier
humanities to which precisely the ‘seven kings of Edom’ refers. In all cases,
the discussions to which this question has given rise appear to be quite vain,
for there should not be any difficulty about it, and in fact there is none, at
least for the Islamic tradition, in which there exists an hadith
(saying of the Prophet) that ‘before the Adam whom we know, God created a
hundred thousand Adams’ (that is, an undetermined number), which is as clear an
affirmation as can be of the multiplicity of the cyclical periods and of the
corresponding humanities.
Since we alluded to blood
as the support of vitality, we will recall that, as we have already had
occasion to explain in one of our works,[14]
the blood effectively constitutes one of the links of the corporeal organism
with the subtle state of the living being, which is properly the ‘soul’ (the nephesh
chayah [‘living soul’l of Genesis), that is, in the etymological sense (anima),
the principal animator or
vivifying force of the
being. The subtle state is called Taijasa in the Hindu tradition, by
analogy with tejas or the igneous element; and as fire is qualitatively
polarized into light and heat, the subtle state is linked to the corporeal
state in two different and complementary ways: through the blood as to the
caloric quality and through the nervous system as to the luminous quality. In
fact, even simply from the physiological point of view, blood is the vehicle of
animating heat; and this explains the correspondence we indicated above of the
sanguine temperament with the element fire. On the other hand, one can say
that, in fire, light represents the superior aspect and heat the inferior
aspect: Islamic tradition teaches that angels were created from the ‘divine
fire’ (or from the ‘divine light’), and that those who rebelled as followers of
Iblis lost their natural luminosity, retaining only a lowly heat.[15]
Consequently, one can say that the blood is directly related to the inferior
aspect of the subtle state; and from this comes the interdiction of blood as
nourishment, since its absorption conveys that which is grossest in animal
vitality, and which, being assimilated and mingling intimately with the psychic
elements of man, can actually have very serious consequences. From this also
derives the frequent use of blood in the practices of magic and even of sorcery
(as attracting the‘infernal’ entities by similarity of nature). But on the
other hand, this is also susceptible under certain conditions of a
transposition to a superior order, whence derive rites, either religious or
even initiatic (like the Mithraic ‘taurobokis’ [bull sacrifice]), involving animal
sacrifices; and since in this respect it is said that the sacrifice of Abel is
opposed to the unbloody sacrifice of Cain, we will perhaps return to this
point on some future occasion.
KABBALAH
The
term Kabbalah[16] in
Hebrew means nothing else than ‘tradition’ in the most general sense, and
although it generally designates the esoteric or initiatic tradition when used
with no further precision, it also sometimes happens that it may be applied to
the exoteric tradition itself? This term can therefore designate any
tradition; but since it belongs to the Hebraic language, it is normal to
reserve it to the Hebrew tradition alone, as we have noted on other occasions,
or, if one prefers perhaps a more exact way of speaking, to the specifically
Hebrew form of the tradition. If we insist on this point, it is because we have
noted that some people have a tendency to attach another meaning to this word,
to make it the name of a special type of traditional knowledge, wherever this
may be found, and this because they believe they have discovered in the word
all sorts of more or less extraordinary things that really are not there at
all. We do not intend to waste our time bringing up all these fanciful
interpretations; it is more useful to clarify the original meaning of the word,
which will suffice to reduce them to nothing, and this is all we propose to do
here.
The root QBL in Hebrew and
Arabic[17]
signifies essentially the relationship of two things placed face to face with
one another, and
from this come all the varied
meanings of the words derived from it, as for example those of encounter and
even opposition. From this relationship also comes the idea of a passage from
the one to the other of the two terms, whence ideas like those of receiving,
welcoming, and accepting expressed in the two languages through the verb qabal;
and Kabbalah derives directly from this, that is to say ‘that which is
received’or transmitted (in Latin traditum) from one to the other. Here
there appears, along with the idea of transmission, that of a succession; but
it must be noted that the primary meaning of the root indicates a relationship
that can be simultaneous as well as successive, spatial as well as temporal.
And this explains the double meaning of the preposition qabal in Hebrew
and qabl in Arabic, which signify both ‘in front of’ (that is, ‘facing’
in space) and ‘before’ (in time); and the close relationship of these two
words, ‘in front of’ and ‘before’, even in French,[18]
clearly shows that there is always a certain analogy between these two
different modalities, one in simultaneity and the other in succession. This
also allows the resolution of an apparent contradiction: although the usual
idea when it comes to a temporal relationship is that of anteriority, which
relates therefore to the past, it also happens that derivatives from the same
root designate the future (in Arabic miis- taqbal, that is to say
literally that toward which one goes, from istaqbal, ‘to go toward’).
But do we not also say in French that the past is‘before’ [rnwit] us, and the
future is‘in front of’ [devmit| us, which is quite comparable? In sum, it
suffices in every case that one of the two terms considered be ‘in front of’ or
‘before’ the other, whether it be a question of a spatial relationship or a
temporal one.
All these remarks can be
further confirmed by the examination of another root, equally common to Hebrew
and Arabic, and which has meanings very close to these, one could even say
identical in great part, for even though their starting-point is clearly
different the derived meanings converge. This is the root QDM, which in the
first place expresses the idea of‘to precede’ (qadam), whence all that
refers not only to a temporal anteriority but to a priority of any order. Thus
for words derived from this root one finds, besides the
original and ancient
meanings (qedem in Hebrew, qidm or qidam in Arabic) that
of primacy or precedence and even that of walking, advancing, or progression
(in Arabic taqaddum);[19]
and here again, the preposition qadam in Hebrew and quddam in
Arabic has the double meaning of ‘in front of’ and ‘before’. But the principal
meaning designates what is first, whether hierarchically or chronologically;
thus the idea most frequently expressed is that of origin or primordiality, and
by extension, that of antiquity when the temporal order is involved. Thus, qadmon
in Hebrew and qadim in Arabic signify ‘ancient’ in current usage, but
when they are related to the domain of principles, they must be translated by
‘primordial’.[20]
Concerning these same
words, there are other reasons that are not without interest. In Hebrew,
derivatives of the root QDM also serve to designate the East,[21]
that is, the direction of the ‘origin’ in the sense that it is there that the
rising sun appears (oriens, from oriri, from which comes also origo
in Latin), the starting-point of the diurnal course of the sun; and at the same
time it is also the point used when ‘orienting’ oneself by turning toward the
rising sun.[22]
Thus qedem also means ‘East’, and qadmon ‘eastern’; but one
should not see in these designations the affirmation of a primordiality of the
East from the point of view of the history of terrestrial humanity, since, as
we have often said, the original tradition is Nordic, ‘polar’ even, and
neither Eastern nor Western; moreover, the
explanation we just
indicated seems to us fully sufficient. We will add in this connection that
these questions of‘orientation’ are generally quite important in traditional
symbolism and in rites based on that symbolism; they are, besides, more complex
than one might think and can give rise to certain errors, for in the different
traditional forms there are many different modes of orientation. When one
turns toward the rising sun, as we have just said, the South is designated as
the 'right side’ (yamin or yaman; cf. the Sanskrit dak- shina,
which has the same meaning) and the North as the ‘left side’ (shemol in
Hebrew, shimal in Arabic); but it also happens that orientation is
established by turning toward the sun at the meridian, and the point before one
is then no longer the East but the South. Thus in Arabic the South has among
other names that of qiblah, and the adjective qibli means
‘southern’ [ineridioiial]. These last terms bring us to the root QBL;
the same word qiblah is also known in Islam to designate the ritual
orientation; in all cases it is the direction one has in front of one; and what
is also rather curious is that the spelling of the word qiblah is
exactly identical to that of the Hebrew qabbalah.
Now, one can ask why it is
that in Hebrew‘tradition’ is designated by a word coming from the root QBL, and
not from the root QDM. It is tempting to answer that since the Hebrew tradition
constitutes only a secondary and derived form, a name evoking the idea of origin
or primordiality would not be fitting; but this argument does not seem to us to
be essential, for directly or not, every tradition is linked to its origins and
proceeds from the primordial tradition, and we have even seen elsewhere that
every sacred language, including Hebrew itself and Arabic, is thought to
represent the primordial language in some way. The real reason, it seems, is
that the idea that must especially be highlighted here is that of a regular and
uninterrupted transmission, which is therefore properly expressed by the word
‘tradition’, as we noted at the beginning. This transmission constitutes the
‘chain’ (shelsheleth in Hebrew, silsilah in Arabic) that unites
the present to the past and that must continue from the present into the
future; it is the ‘chain of tradition’ (shelsheleth ha- qabbalah) or the
‘initiatic chain’ which we recently had occasion to speak of; and it is also the
determination of a ‘direction’ (we find
here the meaning of the
Arabic qiblah) which, through the course of time, orients the cycle
toward its end and joins it again with its origin, and which, extending even
beyond these two extreme points by the fact that its principial source is
timeless and ‘non-human’, links it harmoniously to the other cycles, forming
with these a greater ‘chain’, that which certain Eastern traditions call the
‘chain of worlds’ into which by degrees is integrated the entire order of universal
manifestation.
KABBALAH AND
We
have often stressed the fact that the ‘sacred sciences’
belonging to a given traditional form are really an integral part of it, at
least as secondary and subordinate elements, and are far from representing
merely a kind of adventitious addition linked to it more or less artificially.
It is indispensable to understand this point well and never to lose sight of it
if we wish to penetrate, however little, into the true spirit of a tradition;
and it is all the more necessary to call attention to this, as in our day one
rather frequently notes among those who claim to study traditional doctrines a
tendency not to take these sciences into account, either because of the special
difficulties presented by their assimilation, or because, in addition to the
impossibility of fitting them into the framework of modern classifications,
their presence is particularly annoying for anyone who strives to reduce
everything to exoteric points of view and interprets doctrines in terms
of‘philosophy’ or‘mysticism’. Without wishing to elaborate yet again on the
futility of such studies undertaken ‘from the outside’ and with wholly profane
intentions, we will nevertheless repeat, because we see daily the opportunity,
that the distorted ideas to which they inevitably lead are certainly worse than
pure and simple ignorance.
It sometimes even happens
that certain traditional sciences play a more important role than that we have
just indicated, and that apart from the proper value they possess in themselves
in their contingent order, they are taken as symbolic means of expression for
the higher and essential part of the doctrine, to the extent that this becomes
entirely unintelligible if we try to separate it from them. This is what
happens in particular with the Hebrew Kabbalah for the ‘science of
numbers’, which moreover
is largely identical to the ‘science of letters’, just as it is in Islamic
esoterism, and this in virtue of the very constitution of the Hebrew and Arabic
languages, which as we have just said are so close to one another in all
respects.[23]
The preponderant role of
the science of numbers in the Kabbalah is a fact so evident that it cannot
escape even the most superficial observer, and it is hardly possible even for
‘critics’ who are most full of prejudice or bias, to deny or to conceal it. Nevertheless,
they are not remiss in giving erroneous interpretations of this fact in order
to somehow make it fit into the framework of their preconceived ideas; we
propose here especially to dissipate these more or less deliberate confusions,
due in good part to abuse of the too famous 'historical method’, which in spite
of everything wants to see ‘borrowings’ anywhere it sees similarities.
We know that it is
fashionable in university circles to claim that the Kabbalah is linked to
Neoplatonism, so as to diminish both its antiquity and its scope; is it not
considered to be an unquestionable principle that everything must come from the
Greeks? It is unfortunately forgotten that Neoplatonism itself contains many
elements that are not specifically Greek, and that in the Alexandrian period
Judaism in particular had a far from negligible importance, so that if there
really were borrowings, they could have occurred in a direction opposite to
that claimed. This hypothesis is even more likely, first because the adoption
of a foreign doctrine is hardly reconcilable with the ‘particularism’ that was
always one of the dominant traits of the Judaic spirit, and then because,
whatever one may think in other respects of Neoplatonism, it represents only a
relatively exoteric doctrine (even if it is based on esoteric ideas, it is only
an ‘exteriorization’ of them), which as such has not been able to exercise a
real influence on an essentially initiatic and even very‘closed’ tradition such
as Kabbalah is and always has been.[24]
Besides, we do
not see that there is any
particularly striking resemblance between this and Neoplatonism, nor do we see
in the form in which Neoplatonism is expressed that numbers play the same role
that is so characteristic of the Kabbalah. The Greek language would hardly
have allowed it, while it is, we repeat, something inherent to the Hebrew
language itself, and must consequently have been linked from the beginning to
the traditional form that expresses itself by it.
There is of course no
reason to dispute that a traditional science of numbers may have existed among
the Greeks, for it was as we know the basis of Pythagorism, which was not only
a philosophy but also had a properly initiatic character; and it is from this
that Plato drew not only the entire cosmological part of his doctrine such as
expounded particularly in the Timaeus, but even his 'theory of ideas’,
which is really only a transposition in different terminology of the
Pythagorean ideas about numbers considered as the principles of things. If we
really want to find among the Greeks a term of comparison with (he Kabbalah we
must turn to Pythagor- ism; but it is precisely here that the inanity of the
thesis of'borrowings’ becomes most clearly apparent. We are indeed in the
presence of two initiatic doctrines, both of which give primary importance to
the science of numbers, but that science is presented by each under radically
different forms.
Here, some considerations
of a more general order will be worthwhile. It is perfectly normal that the
same science should be found in different traditions, for truth in any domain
could not be the monopoly of one traditional form to the exclusion of others.
This fact cannot then be a cause for astonishment except no doubt for
the'critics’, who do not believe in the truth; and indeed it is the contrary
that would be, not only surprising, but even scarcely conceivable. There is
nothing here that implies a more or less direct communication between two
different traditions, even in the case where one is incontestably more ancient
than the other; can a certain truth not be seen and expressed independently of
those who have already expressed it before, and, given that independence, is it
not all the more probable that this same truth will in fact be expressed
differently? It must however be clearly understood that this is in no way
contrary to the common origin of all traditions;
but the transmission of
principles from this common origin does not necessarily imply the explicit
transmission of all the developments that are implicit in it and all the
applications which they can produce. All that is a matter of ‘adaptation’, in a
word, can be considered to belong properly to this or that particular
traditional form, and, if one finds the equivalent elsewhere, that is because
from the same principles one would naturally draw the same conclusions,
whatever be the special way in which they will have been expressed here or
there (with the reservation of course that certain symbolic modes of
expression, being everywhere the same, must be regarded as going back to the
primordial tradition). Moreover, the differences of form will generally be
greater as one moves further away from principles to descend to more contingent
orders; and this is one of the main difficulties in understanding certain traditional
sciences.
It is easy to understand
that these considerations remove almost all interest regarding the origin of
the traditions or the provenance of the elements which they contain according
to the ‘historical’ point of view as understood in the profane world, since
they render perfectly useless the supposition of any direct filiation; and even
where one notes a much closer similarity between two traditional forms, that
similarity is explained far less by ‘borrowings’, which are often quite
unlikely, than by ‘affinities’ due to a certain ensemble of common or similar
conditions (race, type of language, way of life, etc.) among the peoples to
whom these forms respectively apply.[25]
As
for cases of real
filiation, this is not to say that they must be entirely excluded, for it is
evident that all traditional forms do not proceed directly from the primordial
tradition and that other forms must have sometimes played the role of
intermediaries; but the latter are most often traditions that have entirely
disappeared, and those transmissions in general go back to epochs far too
distant for ordinary history—whose field of investigation is really very
limited—to be capable of the slightest knowledge of them, not counting the fact
that the means by which they were effected are not among those accessible to
its methods of research.
All of this only seems to
take us away from our subject, and so returning now to the relationships
between the Kabbalah and Pythagorism, we can now ask ourselves this question:
if the former cannot be derived directly from the latter (even supposing that
it is not anterior to it), and even if this is only because of too great a difference
in form, something to which we will return presently in a more precise fashion,
can one not at least envisage a common origin for both, which according to
some would be the tradition of the ancient Egyptians (this of course would take
us back well before the Alexandrian period)? Let us say right away that this is
a theory that has been much abused; and as concerns Judaism, we are unable in
spite of certain more or less fanciful assertions to discover the slightest
connection with what is known of the Egyptian tradition (we are speaking here
of the form, the only thing to be considered, since the substance is
necessarily identical in all traditions); doubtless it would have links that
are more real with the Chaldean tradition, ^whether by derivation or by simple
affinity, as far as it is possible to really grasp something of these
traditions that have been extinct for so many centuries.
As for Pythagorism, the
question is perhaps more complex. The journeys of Pythagoras, whether they are
to be taken literally or symbolically, do not necessarily imply borrowings from
doctrines of this or that people (at least as to the essentials, whatever may
be the case for certain points of detail), but rather the establishment or
strengthening of certain links with more or less equivalent initiations. It
seems that Pythagorism in fact was above all the continuation of something
that existed earlier in Greece itself, and that there
is no reason to look
elsewhere for its principal source; we have in mind the Mysteries, and more
particularly Orphism, of which it was perhaps only a ‘readaptation’ in this
epoch of the sixth century before the Christian era, which by a strange
synchronism saw changes of form take place at once among almost all peoples. It
is often said that the Greek Mysteries were themselves of Egyptian origin, but
such a general assertion is much too ‘simplistic’, and although this may be
true in certain cases such as the Mysteries of Eleusis (which particularly come
to mind in the circumstances), there are others where this is not tenable at
all.[26]
Whether it be a question of Pythagorism itself or the earlier Orphism, it is
not at Eleusis that we must look for the ‘connecting point’, but at Delphi; and
the Delphic Apollo is not at all Egyptian but Hyperborean, an origin which is
in any case impossible to envisage for the Hebrew tradition.[27]
And this leads us directly to the most important point as regards the science
of numbers and the different forms it has assumed.
This science of numbers in
Pythagorism appears closely linked to that of geometric forms; and it is the
same in Plato, who in this respect is purely Pythagorean. One could see here
the expression of a characteristic trait of the Hellenistic mentality, which is
especially tied to visual forms; and we know that among the mathematical sciences
it is in fact geometry that the Greeks especially developed.[28]
However, there is something else involved here, at least as regards
‘sacred geometry’; the ‘geometer’ God of Pythagoras and Plato, understood in
its most precise and, we could say, technical meaning,
is none other than Apollo.
We cannot undertake an elaboration of this subject, which would lead us too far
afield, and we may perhaps come back to this question on another occasion. It
is enough at present to point out that this fact is sharply opposed to the
hypothesis of a common origin for both Pytbagorism and the Kabbalah, even on
the very point where a special effort has been made to link them, and which is
really the only point which could have raised the idea of such a connection,
that is, the apparent similarity between the two doctrines with regard to the
role the science of numbers plays in them.
In the Kabbalah this same
science of numbers is in not at all connected to geometric symbolism in the
same way, and it is easy to see that this should be so, for this symbolism
could not be suitable for nomadic peoples such as the Hebrews and the Arabs
originally were.[29] On
the other hand, we find something there which does not have its equivalent
among the Greeks: the close union, one could even say the identity in many
respects, of the science of numbers with that of letters by reason of the
latter’s numerical correspondences. This is what is eminently characteristic
of the Kabbalah[30]
and is found nowhere else, at least under this aspect and with this
development, unless, as we have already said, it be in Islamic esoter- ism,
that is to say in the Arabic tradition.
It might seem surprising
at first sight that considerations of this kind should have remained foreign to
the Greeks,[31]
since their letters
too have a numeric value
(which is moreover the same as their equivalents in the Hebrew and Arabic
alphabets), and since indeed they never had any other numerical signs. The
explanation of this fact is nonetheless quite simple. Greek writing is really
only a foreign import (whether ‘Phoenician’, as is usually said, or in any
case ‘Cadmean’, that is to say ‘Eastern’ without any more precise specification,
the very names of the letters bearing witness to this), and never as it were
became truly one in its symbolism, numerical or otherwise, with the language
itself.[32] On
the contrary, in languages such as Hebrew and Arabic, the meaning of the words
is inseparable from the symbolism of the letters, and it would be impossible to
give a complete interpretation as to the deepest meaning of words, that which
really matters from the traditional and initiatic point of view (for we must
not forget that these are essentially ‘sacred languages’), without taking into
account the numerical value of the letters composing them; the relations existing
between numerically equivalent words and the substitutions to which they
sometimes lend themselves are in this respect a particularly clear example.[33]
There is thus something here which, as we said at the outset, relates
essentially to the very constitution of these languages, something that belongs
to them in a truly ‘organic’ way and is very far from attaching to it from the
outside and after the fact, as in the case of the Greek language; and since
this element is found both in Hebrew and Arabic, one can legitimately regard it
as proceeding from the
common source of these two
languages and of the two traditions they express, that is, what can be called
the ‘Abrahamic’ tradition.
From the above
considerations we can draw the necessary conclusion, namely that if we look at
the science of numbers among the Greeks and among the Hebrews, we see it
clothed in two very different forms and based in one case on a geometric
symbolism, and in the other on the symbolism of letters.[34]
Consequently there can be no question of ‘borrowings’ on one side any more than
on the other, but only of equivalences such as are necessarily to be found
among all traditional forms. We leave aside entirely any question of
‘priority’, which is of no real interest under these conditions, and is perhaps
insoluble, for the real starting-point is perhaps very much earlier than the
epochs for which it is possible to establish an even slightly rigorous
chronology. Moreover, the very hypothesis of a direct common origin must also
be ruled out, for the tradition of which this science is an integral part can
be seen to date back on the one hand to an ‘Apollonian’ source, that is to say
one that is directly Hyperborean, and on the other to an ‘Abrahamic’ source,
which seems itself to be linked especially (as the very names of the Hebrews
and Arabs suggest) to the traditional current that came from the ‘lost island
of the West’.[35]
LA KABBALE JUIVE
Up
to now there has existed no serious body of work for the
study of the Kabbalah; indeed, the book by Adolphe Frank, despite his
reputation, showed how its author, imbued as he is with university prejudices
and completely ignorant of Hebrew, was incapable of understanding the subject
he undertook to treat. As for certain compilations that are as indigestible as
they are fanciful, like that of Papus, better not to speak of them at all. Thus
there was a regrettable gap to fill, and it seemed to us that the important
work of Paul Vulliaud[36]
was destined precisely for that purpose. However, although this work has been
done very conscientiously and contains many interesting things, we must confess
that on reading it we have felt a certain disappointment.
This work, which we would
have been happy to recommend unreservedly, does not give what its very general
title seems to promise, and the contents of the book are far from being without
defect. Indeed, the subtitle ‘Critical Essay’ should have put us on guard as to
the spirit in which this book was conceived, for we know only too well what the
word ‘critical’ means when used by ‘official’ scholars', but since Vulliaud
does not belong to this category we were at first merely surprised that he had
used an expression susceptible to such an unfortunate interpretation. Later we
began to understand the purpose which the author wished to hint at in this way;
we found it expressed very clearly in a note where he declares
that he had assigned
himself a ‘double goal’: ‘To treat of the Kabbalah and its history, then at
the same time to explicate the scientific method by which well-respected
authors work.’ (vol. 2, p2o6.)
Thus it was not a case of
following the authors in question or of adopting their prejudices, but on the
contrary of combatting them, for which we can only congratulate him. But he wished
to oppose them on their own ground and as it were with their own weapons, and
it is for this reason that he became, so to speak, the critic of the critics
themselves. Indeed, he too places himself at the point of view of pure and
simple erudition; but although he did this voluntarily, one might ask to what
extent this attitude has been truly useful and beneficial. Vulliaud denies that
he is a Kabbalist; and he does so with an insistence that surprises us and that
we find hard to understand. Could he be one of those who glory in being
‘profane’ and who, up till now, we had for the most part only met in ‘official’
circles, those toward which he has himself given proof of a just severity? He
even goes so far as to qualify himself as a ‘simple amateur’, but in this we
believe he maligns himself. Is he not depriving himself of a good part of the
authority he would need when addressing those authors whose assertions he
questions? In addition, this bias of looking at a doctrine from the ‘profane’
point of view, that is, 'from the outside’, seems to us to exclude all
possibility of a profound comprehension. And furthermore, even if this
attitude is only affected, it is no less regrettable since, although he has
attained the aforesaid comprehension on his own account, he thus obliges
himself to show nothing of it and so the interest of the doctrinal part will be
greatly diminished. As for the critical part, the author will look more like a
polemicist than a qualified judge, which for him is a manifest inferiority.
Besides, two goals for one single work is probably one too many, and in
Vulliaud’s case it is very regrettable that, as noted above, the second of
these goals too often causes him to forget the first, which is however by far
the more important. Indeed, discussions and criticisms follow one another right
through his book, even in chapters whose titles seem rather to point to a
subject of a purely doctrinal order; one comes away with a certain impression
of disorder and confusion. On the other hand, if among Vulliaud’s criticisms
there are some that are perfectly justified, for
example those concerning
Renan and Frank and also certain occultists, the latter being the most
numerous, there are others that are more debatable, in particular those
concerning Fabre d’Olivet, toward whom the author seems to direct an echo of
certain rabbinical hatreds (unless he inherited the hatred of Napoleon himself
for the author of Hermeneutic Interpretation of the Origin of the Social
State of Man and of the Destiny of the Adamic Race, but this second
hypothesis is much less likely).[37] In
any case, even for the most legitimate criticisms, those that can be held to
destroy usurped reputations, would it not have been possible to say the same
things more briefly, and especially more seriously and in a less aggressive
tone? The work would certainly have gained by it, first because it would not
have given the appearance of a polemical work, an aspect which he too often
presents and which ill-intentioned people could easily use against him, and
more seriously, the essential would have been sacrificed less to considerations
that are really only secondary and of rather minor interest. There are still
other regrettable faults: the imperfections of form are sometimes embarrassing;
we do not mean only printing errors, which are quite numerous and of which the
errata only rectify a very small part, but too frequent inaccuracies that are
difficult, even with the best of goodwill, to impute to the typography. Thus,
there are various 'slips’ which are truly inopportune. We have noted a certain
number, and, curiously enough, these are found especially in the second volume,
as if it had been written more hastily. For example, Frank was not a ‘professor
of philosophy at Stanislas College’ (p24i), but at the College de France, which
is something quite different. Also, Vulliaud writes ‘Cappelle’, and sometimes
also ‘Capele’ for the Hebraist Louis Cap- pel, whose exact name we can
establish with all the more certainty since, while writing this article, we
have his own signature before us. Would Vulliaud have seen this name only in a
latinized form? All this is nothing much, but, on the other hand, on page 26,
it is a question of a divine name of 26 letters, and we find later that it has
42. This passage is truly incomprehensible and we wonder whether
there has not been some
omission here. We will point out yet another piece of negligence of the same
order, but one all the more serious in that it leads to a real injustice:
criticizing an editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vulliaud ends
with this sentence:
One could not expect sound
logic from an author who in the same article maintains that people have
underestimated the Kabbalistic doctrines (absurdly overestimated) and at
the same time that the Zohar is a farrago of absurdity (vol. 2, p4i8).
The English words were
cited by Vulliaud himself; now, overestimated does not mean
‘sous-estim^’ (which would be underestimated), but on the contrary
‘surestime’, which is precisely the opposite, and thus, whatever may be the
errors contained in that author’s article, the contradictions for which he is
reproached are in no way found in it. Assuredly, these things are only details,
but when one is so severe with others and is ever ready to catch them out,
should one not try to be above reproach oneself? In the transcription of
Hebrew words there is a lack of uniformity that is truly annoying; we know very
well that no transcription can be perfectly exact, but when one has adopted
one, whatever it may be, it would be preferable to at least hold to it
consistently. Moreover, there are some terms which seem to have been translated
much too hastily and for which it would not have been difficult to find a more
satisfactory interpretation. For example, on page 49 of volume two, there is
an image of teraphim on which is inscribed, among others, the word luz.
The author has reproduced the different meanings of the verb luz given
by Buxtorf, following each of them with a question mark because it seemed to
him to be inappropriate, but he did not think that there might also exist a
noun luz, which ordinarily means ‘almond’ or ‘kernel’ (and also ‘almond
tree’, because it designates the tree and its fruit at the same lime). Now, in
rabbinic language this same noun is the name of a small indestructible bodily
part to which the soul remains bound after death (it is curious to note that
this Hebrew tradition probably inspired certain theories of Leibnitz); this
last meaning is certainly the most plausible and this is moreover confirmed for
us by the very place which the word luz occupies in the figure given.
The author sometimes makes
the mistake of taking up in passing subjects about which he is obviously much
less informed than he is on the Kabbalah, and which he could well have
refrained from speaking about, and this would have avoided certain errors
which, however excusable they may be (given that it is hardly possible to have
the same competence in all fields), can only be prejudicial to a serious work.
Thus we found (vol. 2, P377) a passage involving a would-be ‘Chinese theosophy’
in which we had some trouble recognizing Taoism, which is not ‘theosophy’ in
any sense of the word, the proffered summary of which, made on the basis of we
know not what source (no reference being given), is eminently fanciful. For
example ‘active nature’, T’ien = heaven, is put in opposition to ‘passive
nature’, Kou^n = earth; now Kouin has never meant ‘earth’, and
the expressions ‘active nature’ and ‘passive nature’ make us think much less of
conceptions from the Far East than of Spinoza’s ‘nature naturante’ and natura
naturata. Two different dualities are here confused with the greatest
naivete, that of‘active perfection’, Khien, and ‘passive perfection’, Kou^n
(we say ‘perfection’ and not ‘nature’), and that of‘heaven’, ti^n and
‘earth’, ti.
Since we have come to
speak of Eastern doctrines, we will make another observation on this subject:
after noting quite rightly the disagreement that prevails among Egyptologists
and among other such ‘specialists’, and which makes it impossible to trust
their opinions, the author points out that the same thing holds true of Indologists
(vol. 2, P363), which is correct; but how does he not see that this last case
is in no way comparable to the others? Indeed, we obviously have no direct
means of verification regarding peoples like the ancient Egyptians and
Assyrians, who disappeared without leaving any legitimate successors, and we
are certainly right in entertaining some skepticism as to the value of fragmentary
and hypothetical reconstitutions. On the contrary, for India and China, whose
civilizations have continued down to our own time and are still living, it is
quite possible to know what to believe; what matters is not so much what
Indologists say but what Hindus themselves think. Vulliaud, who is careful to
refer only to Hebrew sources in trying to understand the Kabbalah, is
absolutely correct on this point, since the Kabbalah is Hebrew tradition
itself, but could he
not admit that one should
not act otherwise when studying other traditions?
There are other things
that Vulliaud does not know much better than he does the doctrines of the Far
East, but which ought to have been more accessible to him, if only because of
the fact that they are Western. Thus, for example, Rosicrucianism, about which
he scarcely seems to know more than the ‘profane’ and ‘official’ historians,
and whose essentially Hermetic character seems to have escaped him; he only
knows that it is something altogether different from the Kabbalah (the
occultist and modern idea of a ‘Kabbalistic Rosicrucianism’ is indeed a pure
fantasy), but to support this assertion and not rely on mere negation it would
still be necessary to prove precisely that Kabbalah and Hermeticism are two
entirely different traditional forms. Still in regard to Rosicrucianism, we do
not believe it possible to 'generate a little sympathy for the dignitaries of
classical science’ by recalling that Descartes tried to contact the
Rosicrucians during his stay in Germany (vol. 2, P235), for this fact is quite
well known. But what is certain is that he was unsuccessful in his attempt,
and that the very spirit of his works, which are as contrary as can be to all
esoterism, is both the proof and explanation of this failure. It is surprising
to see quoted, as a sign of Descartes’ possible affiliation with the
Brotherhood of the Rose- Cross, a dedication (that of the Thesaurus
mathematicus) which is obviously ironic and in which one senses on the
contrary all the resentment of a man who was unable to attain the affiliation
he sought. Stranger still are Vulliaud’s errors concerning Freemasonry.
Immediately after making fun of Eliphas Levi, who did indeed stack confusion
upon confusion when he tried to speak of the Kabbalah, Vulliaud also says many
no less amusing things when speaking of Freemasonry. We cite the following
passage which was meant to establish that there is no link between the Kabbalah
and Masonry:
On the limiting of Masonry
to the European frontiers it can be observed that Masonry is universal,
worldwide. Is it likewise kabbalistic among the Chinese and the Blacks? (vol.
2, P319).
Certainly the Chinese and
African secret societies (of the latter particularly those of the Congo) had
no connection with the Kabbalah,
but they had no more of a
link with Masonry; and if this is not‘limited to the European frontiers’ it is
only because Europeans have introduced it to other parts of the world. And here
is a statement no less curious: ‘How does one explain such an anomaly [if it is
admitted that Masonry is of Kabbalistic inspiration] as the Freemason
Voltaire, who had nothing but scorn for the Jewish race?’ Vulliaud seems
unaware that Voltaire was received into the lodge ‘The Nine Sisters’ as a
purely honorific gesture, and only six months before his death. On the other
hand, even had he chosen a better example, this still would not have proven
anything, for there are many Masons, we would even say the greatest number, and
even those in the highest grades, to whom all real knowledge of Masonry is
completely foreign (and we can include among them certain dignitaries of the Grand-Orient
de France whom Vulliaud, doubtless letting himself be impressed by their
titles, wrongly cites as authorities). Our author would have been better
advised to invoke in support of his thesis the fact that in Germany and in
Sweden there exist Masonic organizations from which Jews are strictly excluded;
we believe that he knew nothing of this for he makes not the slightest allusion
to it. It is interesting to extract from the note which ends the same chapter
(P328) the following lines:
Various persons may
reproach us for having argued as if there were only one single form of Masonry.
We are not unaware of the anathemas of spiritualist Masonry against the Grand-Orient
de France but when all is duly considered, we feel that the conflict
between the two Masonic schools is only a family quarrel.
We will observe that there
are not just ‘two Masonic schools’ but a very great number of them, and that the
Grand-Orient de France, like that in Italy, is not recognized by the
other organizations because it rejects certain landmarks or fundamental
principles of Masonry, which constitutes, after all, a fairly serious ‘quarrel’
(whereas among the other ‘schools’ the divergences are far from being so
great). As for the expression ‘spiritualist Masonry’, it corresponds to
absolutely nothing, seeing that it is only an invention of certain occultists
whose suggestions he is generally less eager to accept. A little further on he
quotes as examples of ‘spiritualist
Masonry’ the Ku-Klux-Klan
and the Orangists (we suppose that this means the Royal Order of Orange), that
is, two purely Protestant organizations, which no doubt can count some Masons
among their members but which have no more connection with Masonry than the
secret societies of the Congo mentioned previously. Assuredly, Vulliaud has
every right to be unaware of all these things and many others besides, and we
do not think we should reproach him for that; but again, who obliged him to
speak of them, given that these questions lie outside his subject and that he
could not claim to know absolutely everything about this subject? In any case,
if he had stuck to it, he would have had much less trouble gathering, al least
on certain of those points, fairly exact information, rather than looking up a
number of rare and unknown books that he takes pleasure in quoting with some
ostentation.
Of course, all these
reservations do not prevent us from recognizing the real merits of the work or
from rendering homage to the considerable effort to which it bears witness;
quite the contrary, if we have dwelt on his errors so much it is because we
think we are rendering a service to an author in criticizing him on very precise
points. Now we must say that Vulliaud, in contrast to modern authors who
question it (and among them, strange to say, there are many lews), has done a
good job in establishing the antiquity of the Kabbalah as well as its
specifically Jewish and strictly orthodox character. Indeed, it is the fashion
among ‘rationalist’ critics to set the esoteric tradition against rabbinic
exoterism, as if they were not two complementary aspects of one and the same
doctrine. At the same time, he has exploded a certain number of myths that have
been broadcast too widely (by those same'rationalists’) and that lack any
basis, such as that which tries to link the Kabbalah to Neoplatonic doctrines,
that which attributes the Zohar to Moses de Leon (thus making it a work dating
only from the thirteenth century), that which claims Spinoza was a Kabbalist,
and others of greater or lesser importance. Moreover, he has thoroughly
established that the Kabbalah is not at all ‘pantheistic’ as some have claimed
(doubtless because they think it can be linked to the theories of Spinoza which
are truly ‘pantheistic’); and he very rightly observes that ‘this term has been
strangely abused’ and that it has been used without rhyme
or reason for the most
varied ideas with the sole intention of‘seeking to frighten’ (vol. i, P429),
and also, we might add, because one thus thinks oneself freed from any further
discussion. This absurd accusation is gratuitously and very frequently raised
against all Eastern doctrines; but it always produces its desired effect on
certain timid minds, although by being used abusively the word ‘pantheism’ ends
by no longer meaning anything. When will it be understood that names invented
by systems of modern philosophy are applicable to them alone? Vulliaud further
shows that a so-called ‘mystical philosophy’ of the Jews, different from the
Kabbalah, is something that has never existed in reality, but on the contrary
he is wrong to use the word ‘mysticism’ to qualify the said Kabbalah. Doubtless
that depends on the meaning one gives to this word, and the one he indicates
(which would make it almost a synonym of‘Gnosticism’ or transcendent knowledge)
would be tenable if one did not have to worry about etymology, for it is
precisely true that ‘mysticism’ and ‘mystery’ have one and the same root (vol.
i, ppi24 and 131-132); but in the end it is necessary to take into account the
established usage, which has modified and considerably restricted its meaning,
On the other hand, it is not possible for us to accept in either one of these
two cases the affirmation that ‘mysticism is a philosophical system’ (pi26);
and if the Kabbalah too often takes a ‘philosophical’ appearance in Vulliaud’s
work, this is a result of the ‘outside’ point of view he wishes to maintain.
For us, the Kabbalah is far more metaphysical than philosophical and more
initiatic than mystical; one day we shall have a chance to expound the
essential differences that exist between the way of initiates and that of
mystics (which, let us note in passing, correspond respectively to the ‘dry
way’ and the ‘humid way’ of the alchemists).[38]
However that may be, the varied results we have noted could henceforth be
considered as definitely established if the incomprehension of some so-called
scholars did not always come along to put everything in doubt again by going
back to a historical point of view to which Vulliaud has accorded (we are
tempted to say‘unfortunately’, without however failing to recognize its
relative importance) too great an importance compared with the
properly doctrinal point
of view. With regard to the latter, we will note as particularly interesting
the chapters in the first volume concerning En-Soph and the Sephiroth
(chap. 60), the Shekinah and Mctatron (chap. 13), although it
would have been desirable to find more elaborations and precision there, as
well as in the chapter where the Kabbalistic methods are explained (chap. 5).
Indeed, we wonder whether those who have no previous knowledge of the Kabbalah
would be sufficiently enlightened by reading them.
With regard to what could
be called the applications of the Kabbalah, which although secondary with
respect to the pure doctrine are certainly not to be neglected, we will mention
in the second volume the chapter devoted to ritual (chap. 14) and those
devoted to amulets (chap. 15) and to Messianic ideas (chap. 16); these contain
things that are really new or at least fairly little known; in particular, one
finds in chapter sixteen numerous items of information on the social and
political side which contribute in great part to give to the Kabbalistic
tradition its clearly and properly Jewish character. Taken as a whole,
Vulliaud’s work seems to us particularly capable of rectifying a large number
of false ideas, which is certainly something, and even a great deal, but
perhaps not enough for such an important work and one which wishes to be more
than a mere introduction. If the author one day brings out a new edition, it
is to be hoped that he will separate the doctrinal part as completely as possible,
appreciably curtail the first part, and expand the second, even if in doing so
he runs the risk of no longer passing as the 'mere amateur’, to which role he
has been too keen to confine himself.
To .end this discussion of
Vulliaud’s book we offer a few more observations on a question that
particularly merits attention and that has a certain connection with what we
have already explained more especially in our study The King of the World;
we mean that concerning the Shekinah and Metatron. In its most
general sense, the Shekinah is the ‘real presence’ of the Divinity; the
first thing we must point out is that the passages of scripture which
particularly mention it are especially (hose concerning the establishment of a
spiritual center: the construction of the Tabernacle and the erection of the
Temples of Solomon and Zorobabel. Such a center, established in regularly
defined conditions, must be the place of divine
manifestation, always
represented as a ‘Light’; and although Vulliaud denies any connection between
the Kabbalah and Masonry (even though he recognizes that the symbol of the
‘Great Architect’ is a metaphor customary among rabbis), the expression ‘a
regular and well-illuminated place’ which Masonry has preserved really seems to
be a memory of the ancient sacerdotal science that presided over the
construction of the temples and that moreover is not peculiar to Jews. It is
useless for us to tackle here the theory of‘spiritual influences’ (we prefer this
expression to ‘benedictions' to translate the Hebrew berakoth, all the
more because that is the meaning very clearly preserved in the Arabic word barakah);
but even considering things from this point of view alone it would be possible
to explain the statement of Elias Levita which Vulliaud reports: ‘The Masters
of the Kabbalah have great secrets on this subject.’ Now the question is all
the more complex because the Shekinah presents itself under multiple
aspects. It has two principal aspects, one interior and the other exterior
(vol. 1, p495). but here Vulliaud could have explained himself a little more
clearly than he did, all the more so because, in spite of his intention to
treat only the ‘Jewish Kabbalah’, he has pointed out precisely ‘the connections
between the Jewish and Christian theologies with respect to the Shekinah’
(p493)- Now in the Christian tradition there is a phrase that very clearly
describes the two aspects of which he speaks: Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in
terra Pax hominibus bonae Voluntatis. The words Gloria and Pax
refer respectively to the inner aspect, with respect to the Principle, and to
the outer aspect, with respect to the manifested world; and if one considers
these two words in this way one immediately understands why they are pronounced
by the Angels (Malakim) to announce the birth of‘God with us’ or ‘in us’
(Emmanuel). For the first aspect, it would also be possible to recall
the theory of the theologians on the ‘Light of Glory’ in which and by which is
accomplished the beatific vision (in excelsis). For the second aspect,
we will say further that ‘Peace’ in its esoteric sense is everywhere mentioned
as the spiritual attribute of the spiritual centers established in this world (terra).
On the other hand, the Arabic word Sakinah, which is obviously identical
with the Hebrew word, is translated by ‘Great Peace’, the exact equivalent of
the Pax Profunda of the Rosicrucians; and in this way
it would doubtless be
possible to explain what they meant by the ‘Temple of the Holy Spirit'. One
could likewise precisely interpret a certain number of Gospel texts, all the
more so as 'the secret tradition concerning the Shekinah would have
some connection with the light of the Messiah’ (P503). Is it thus without
meaning it that, in making this last remark, Vulliaud says that it is a
question of the tradition ‘reserved to those who follow the way which leads to
Parties; that is, as we have explained elsewhere, to the supreme
spiritual center? This leads us to observe that when, a little further on, it
is a question of a ‘mystery relating to the Jubilee’ (p506), which is related
in a certain sense to the idea of‘Peace’, he cites the following text from the Zohar
(III, p586):
The river which flows out
of Eden bears the name of Jobel, like that of Jeremiah (17:8): ‘It will
extend its roots by the river,’ from which it follows that the central idea of
the Jubilee is the return of all things to their primitive state.
It is clear that this
involves the return to the‘primordial state’ envisaged by all traditions and
which we dealt with in our study TheEso- terism of Dante; and when we
add from Vulliaud that ‘the return of all things to their first state will
announce the Messianic era’ (P507), those who have read that essay will recall
what we said there about the links between the‘Terrestrial Paradise’ and
the‘Heavenly Jerusalem’.[39] On
the other hand, what is involved here, everywhere and always, in the different
phases of cyclic manifestation's the Parties, the center of this world,
which the traditional symbolism of all peoples compares to the heart, center
of the being and ‘divine residence’ (Brahma-para in Hindu doctrine),
like the tabernacle which is its image and which, for that reason, is called in
Hebrew mishkan or ‘abode of God’ (P493)> a word with the same root as
the word Shekinah. From another point of view, the Shekinah is
the synthesis of the Scphiroth; now in the sephirotic tree, the
‘right-hand column’ is the side of Mercy and the ‘left-hand column’ is the side
of Rigor; we must therefore find these two aspects in the Shekinah also.
Indeed ‘if man sins and withdraws from the Shekinah, he falls under
the influence of the
powers (Sarim) subject to Rigor’ (P507) and then the Shekinah is
called the ‘hand of rigor’, which immediately recalls the well-known symbol of
the ‘hand of justice’. But if on the contrary man draws near to the Shekinah,
he is freed, and the Shekinah is the ‘right hand’ of God, that is to
say that the ‘hand of justice’ then becomes the ‘hand that blesses’. These are
the mysteries of the ‘House of Justice’ (Beith-Din), which is yet
another name of the supreme spiritual center; and we hardly need point out that
the two sides we have considered are those into which the elect and the damned
are divided in the Christian representations of the ‘Last Judgment’. One could
likewise establish a parallel between the two ways which the Pythagoreans
represented by the letter ‘Y’ and which were symbolized exoterically by the
myth of Hercules between Virtue and Vice; by the two doors, celestial and
infernal, which among the Latins were associated with the symbolism of Janus;
and by the two cyclical phases, ascending and descending which among the Hindus
were likewise associated with the symbolism of Ganesha. Finally, it is easy
to understand what is truly meant here when we consider such expressions as
‘right intention’ and ‘goodwill’ (Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis, and
those familiar with the numerous symbols to which we have alluded will see that
it is not without reason that Christmas coincides with the winter solstice),
when one is careful to leave aside all the outward, philosophical and moral
interpretations that have been given them from the Stoics to Kant.
‘The Kabbalah gives to the
Shekinah a ‘twin’ [par^dre], which bears names identical to its
own, and which accordingly possesses the same characteristics’ (pp496—498) and
which naturally has as many different aspects as the Shekinah; its name
is Metatron, and this name is numerically equal to that of Shadda'i,
the ‘All Powerful (which is said to be the name of the God of Abraham). The
etymology of the word Metatron is very uncertain, and Vulliaud reports
several hypotheses, one of which derives it from the Chaldean Mitra which
means ‘rain’, and which through its root also has a certain connection with
‘light’. Even if this is so, the resemblance with the Hindu and Zoroastrian Mitra
does not constitute a sufficient reason to admit a borrowing by Judaism from
foreign doctrines, any more
than the role attributed
to rain in different Eastern traditions constitutes a borrowing; and on this
subject we will point out that Jewish tradition speaks of a ‘dew of light’
emanating from the ‘Tree of Life’, by means of which the resurrection of the
dead will be accomplished (p99), and also of an ‘effusion of dew’ which
represents the celestial influence spread to all worlds (P465), and which
curiously recalls the symbolism of the alchemists and Rosicrucians.
‘The term Metatroii
includes all such meanings as guardian, Lord, envoy, mediator’ (p499); he is
the ‘Angel of the Face’ and also ‘Prince of the World’ (Sar Ita-d/am);
he is the ‘author of theophanies, of divine manifestations in the sensible
world’ (P492). We will readily admit that he is the ‘Celestial Pole’; and since
this has its reflection in the ‘Terrestrial Pole’ with which it is directly
related along the ‘World Axis’, is this not the reason why it is said that Meta-
tron himself was Moses’ teacher? Let us further cite these lines:
His name is Mikael,
the ‘High Priest’ who is holocaust and oblation before God. And all that the
Israelites do on earth is accomplished in conformity with what happens in the
celestial world. The Great Pontiff here below symbolizes Mikael, prince
of Clemency.... In all the passages where Scripture speaks of the appearance of
Mikaiil, the glory of the Shekiiiah is involved.’ (pp 500-501.)
What is said here of the
Israelites can be said of all peoples who possess a truly orthodox tradition;
all the more must it be said of the representatives of the primordial
tradition, from which all the others derive and to which they are all
subordinate. On the other hand, Mctatron not only has the aspect of
Clemency but also that of Justice; in the celestial world he is not only
the‘High Priest’ {Koheii ha- gadol) but also the ‘High Prince’ {Stir
ha-gadol), which amounts to saying that in him is found the principle of
royal power as well as that of the sacerdotal or pontifical power to which the
function of ‘mediator’ properly corresponds. It should also be noted that Melck,
‘king’, and Maleak, ‘angel’ or ‘messenger’, are really two forms of
the same word; moreover, Malaki, 'my messenger' (that is to say, the
messenger of God, or‘the angel in which is God', maleak ha-Elohim) is
the anagram of Mikael. It is fitting to add that although as we have
seen Mikael is
identified with Metatron, he represents only one aspect of him; besides
the luminous face there is also a dark face, and we touch here upon other
mysteries. Indeed, it may seem strange that Samael is also named Sar
ha-dlam, and we are a little surprised that Vulliaud was content to
register this fact without the least comment (pju). It is this last aspect, and
this one only, that is in an inferior sense ‘the guardian spirit of this
world’, the Princeps huius mundi mentioned in the Gospel; and this
relationship with Metatron, of which he is like the shadow, justifies
the use of the same name in a double meaning, and leads one to understand at
the same time why the apocalyptic number 666 is also a solar number (it is
formed in particular from the name Sorath, demon of the Sun, and opposed
as such to the angel Mikael), Moreover, Vulliaud remarks that according
to Saint Hippolyte, ‘the Messiah and the Antichrist both have for an emblem the
lion’ (vol. 2, p373)> which is also a solar symbol; and the same observation
could be made for the serpent and for many other symbols. From the Kabbalistic
point of view it is again a question of the two opposite faces of Metatron',
in a more general way one could develop on the basis of this question of
the double meaning of symbols an entire theory that does not yet seem to have
been clearly expounded. We will not dwell further, at least for the moment, on
this side of the question, which is perhaps one of those where one encounters,
in trying to explain it, the greatest difficulties.
But let us return to the Shekinah:
this is represented in the lower world by the last of the ten Sephiroth,
which is called Malkuth, that is to say the 'Kingdom', a designation
quite worthy of comment from our point of view (as much as is Tsedek,
‘the Just’, which is sometimes a synonym of it); and Malkuth is the
‘reservoir into which flow the waters which come from the river on high, that
is, all the emanations (graces or spiritual influences) which it pours out in
abundance’ (vol. i, p509). This ‘river from on high’ and the waters that come
from it strangely recall the role attributed to the celestial river Ganga
in the Hindu tradition, and one could also point out that the Shakti, of
which the Ganga is one aspect, does not lack a certain analogy with the Shekinah,
were it only by reason of the ‘providential’ function common to them both. We
know well that
the habitual exclusivism
of Judaic ideas is not at ease with such comparisons, but they are none the
less real, and for us who are not in the habit of allowing ourselves to be
influenced by certain prejudices, they present a very great interest because
they are a confirmation of the essential doctrinal unity hidden under the
apparent diversity of outward forms.
The reservoir of the
celestial waters is naturally identical with the spiritual center of our world,
from which well up the four rivers of Parties, making their way to the
four cardinal points. For the Hebrews, this spiritual center is the holy Mt
Zion, to which they give the name ‘heart of the world’, and which thus becomes
for them the equivalent of the Mcru of the Hindus or the Alborj
of the Persians. 'The Tabernacle of the Holiness of Jehovah, the residence of
the Shekinah, is the Holy of Holies which is the heart of the Temple
that is itself the center of Zion (Jerusalem), as Holy Zion is the center of
the Land of Israel, and as the land of Israel is the center of the world’
(P509).
It is also in this way
that Dante presents Jerusalem as the‘spiritual pole’, as we have explained
elsewhere;[40]
but when one departs from the properly Judaic point of view', this
representation becomes above all symbolic and no longer constitutes a
localization in the strict sense of the word. All secondary spiritual centers,
established in view of different adaptations of the primordial tradition to
given conditions, are images of the supreme center. Zion may really be only one
of the secondary centers, but despite this it can be identified symbolically
with the supreme center by virtue of this analogy; and what we have already
said regarding the ‘Holy Land’, which is not only the Land of Israel, will
enable us to understand this more easily. Another very remarkable expression,
as a synonym of‘Holy Land’, is ‘Land of the Living’; it is said that ‘the Land
of the Living comprises seven lands’, and Vulliaud remarks in this connection
that ‘this land is Canaan, in which there were seven peoples’ (vol. 2. pn6).
Doubtless this is correct
in the literal sense; but would not these seven lands correspond symbolically
to the seven Dvtpas which,
according to the Hindu
tradition, have Meru as their common center? And if this is so, when
the ancient worlds or the creations anterior to ours are represented by the
'seven kings of Edom’ (the number is related to the seven 'days’ of Genesis),
is there not a resemblance, too strongly emphasized to be accidental, to the
ages of the seven Manus that have elapsed from the beginning of the Kalpa
up to the present time? We present these few thoughts only as an example of
conclusions it is possible to draw from the information contained in
Vulliaud’s work; unfortunately, it is much to be feared that most readers may
not be able to perceive this and draw conclusions from it on their own. But by
following up our critique with more doctrinal considerations, we have done a
little, within the limits we necessarily had to set ourselves, of what we would
have hoped to find in Vulliaud himself.
THE SIPHRA
DI-TZENIUTHA
As the first of a series of'fundamental texts of the Kabbalah’,
Paul Vulliaud has just published a translation of the Siphra di-Tzc- niutha,[41]
preceded by a long introduction, much longer than the translation itself, or
rather the two translations, for there are two successive versions of the text
in this volume, one literal and the other paraphrased. This introduction seems
intended especially to demonstrate that such a work is far from being useless,
even after the Zohar of Jean de Pauly; thus, the greater part of it is
devoted to a detailed account of the said French translation, an account
containing, it seems, almost everything it is possible to know about the
translator himself, a truly enigmatic personage whose origins are not yet fully
clarified. This whole story is very curious, and it is not beside the point, in
order to explain the gaps and the imperfections of this work, to know under
what conditions it was realized and what strange difficulties the editor had
with the unfortunate Jean de Pauly, who was afflicted by a persecution mania.
Nevertheless, we feel that such details have been given too great a place; on
reading them, one begins to regret that Vulliaud did not devote himself
entirely to what can be called the lesser details of the story, for lie surely
would have brought to them an unusual zest; but the Kabbal- istic studies would
have lost a great deal had he done so.
Concerning the present
state of these studies, this same introduction contains general considerations
in the course of which Vulliaud attacks, as only he knows how, the ‘Doctors’,
that is, the ‘officials’
about whom he had already
spoken some harsh truths in his Kab- bale juive, and then a Jesuit
priest, Fr. Bonsirven, whom some it seems are now trying to present as an
incomparable authority on the subject of Judaism. This discussion is the
occasion for some very interesting remarks, especially on the methods of the
Kabbalists and on the manner—adjudged ‘astounding’ by the critics—in which they
cite scriptural texts; in this connection Vulliaud adds:
Contemporary exegesis has
shown itself particularly incapable of adequately analyzing Gospel ‘quotations’
because it is determined to ignore the procedures of Jewish hermeneutics; one
must take oneself to Palestine, since the evangelical works were elaborated in
this region.
This seems to accord, at
least in tendency, with the works of another Jesuit Father, Marcel Jousse, and
it is a pity that he is not mentioned, for it would have been interesting to
have him thus confront his colleague... On the other hand, Vulliaud very
properly points out that Catholics who scoff at the magic formulas, or what are
called such, contained in Kabbalistic works, and who hasten to label them as
superstitious, ought really to notice that their own rituals are filled with
things of the same kind. Likewise for the accusation of ‘eroticism’ and
‘obscenity’ brought against a certain type of symbolism:
Catholic critics might
reflect, before adding their voices to those of rationalist Jews and
Protestants, that Catholic theology is susceptible, like the Kabbalah, of
easily becoming an object of derision regarding what occupies us at present.
It is good that these
things are said by a writer who himself professes Catholicism, and certain
fanatical anti-Semites and antiMasons ought to take profit from this excellent
lesson.
There are also many other
things to point out in the introduction, notably regarding the Christian
interpretation of the Zohar. Vulliaud makes some apt qualifications
regarding certain rather forced comparisons made by Drach and accepted by Jean
de Pauly. He also returns to the question of the antiquity of the Zohar,
which the adversaries of the Kabbalah are bent on challenging for very poor
reasons. But there is something else that is a pleasure to point
out: Vulliaud states that
‘to properly translate certain essential passages, it is necessary to be
initiated into the mysteries of Jewish eso- terisin,’ and that “de Pauly
undertook the translation of the Zohar without having this initiation';
further on he notes that the Gospel of St John, as well as the Apocalypse, was
‘addressed to initiates,’ and we could find still other similar statements.
There is thus a certain change of attitude with Vulliaud for which we can only
congratulate him, for until now he seemed to have a strange reluctance to utter
the word ‘initiation’, or at least if he did, it was really only to mock certain
‘initiates’ whom he ought rather, to avoid all regrettable confusion, to have
qualified as pseudo-initiates. What he writes now is the exact truth; it is
indeed ‘initiation’ in the proper sense of the word that is in question, both
in the Kabbalah and in every other esoterism worthy of the name; and we must
add that this goes much further than the deciphering of a sort of cryptography,
which is what Vulliaud seems to have especially in mind when he speaks as we
have just seen. Doubtless this too exists; but this is still only a question of
outward form, though the outward form is far from being negligible since one
must pass through it to arrive at an understanding of the doctrine. But one
must not confuse the means with an end nor place them on the same plane.
However that may be, it is
quite certain that most often the Kab- balists may really be speaking of
something very different from what they appear to be speaking of, and this is
not peculiar to them, far from it, for one finds it also in the Western Middle
Ages. We had occasion to examine this subject in connection with Dante and the
‘Fedeli d’Amore’ and we noted then the principal reasons for it, which do not
all reduce to mere prudence as the ‘profane’ may be tempted to suppose.[42]
The same thing also exists in Islamic esoter- isni, developed to a point that
no one, we believe, could suspect in the Western world; moreover, the Arabic
language as well as the Hebrew language lends itself to this admirably. Here we
find not only the usual symbolism, which Luigi Valli has shown in the work we
spoke of to be common to both Sufis and the ‘Fedeli d'Amore’, but much that is
better still. Is it conceivable to Western minds that
a mere treatise on grammar
or geography, or even on commerce, should at the same time possess another
meaning that makes it an initiatic work of great importance? So it is
nonetheless, and these are not chance examples; these three cases are from
books that very really exist and that we actually have in our hands.
This leads us to express a
slight criticism concerning Vulliaud’s translation of the title Siphra
di-Tzeniutha. He writes ‘Secret Book’, and not ‘Book of the Secret’, and
the reasons he gives seem rather inconclusive. It is indeed puerile to imagine,
as some have done, that ‘this title recalls the flight of Simeon ben Yohai',
during which time that rabbi is said to have composed this opuscule in secret’;
but this is hardly what is meant by ‘Book of the Secret’, which really has a
much higher and deeper meaning than that of‘Secret Book’. Here we allude to the
important role played in certain initiatic traditions, precisely those which
interest us now, by the idea of a ‘secret’ (in Hebrew sod, in Arabic sirr),
which has nothing to do with discretion or dissimulation but is thus by the
very nature of things;[43]
must we recall in this connection that the Christian Church itself in its first
days had a ‘discipline of the secret’, and that the word ‘mystery’ in its
original sense properly designates the inexpressible?
As for the translation
itself, we said there were two versions, and they are not redundant, for the
literal version, useful as it may be for those who wish to go back to the text
and follow it closely, is often unintelligible. It is always like this, as we
have said many times, in the case of sacred books or other traditional
writings, and if a translation had to be ‘word for word’ in the scholarly and
academic fashion, one would have to declare them really untranslatable. In
reality, for us who place ourselves at a completely different point of view
from that of the linguists, it is in truth the paraphrased and annotated
version that constitutes the meaning of the text and allows it to be
understood, while the literal version sometimes has the effect of a sort of
‘word-puzzle’, as Vulliaud says, or an incoherent rambling. We only regret that
the commentary is not more extensive and explicit; the notes, although numerous
and very interesting, are not always sufficiently ‘illuminating’, so to speak,
and it is to be feared
that they may not be
understood by those who do not already have a more than elementary knowledge of
the Kabbalah; but doubtless we must await the sequel of these'fundamental
texts’ which, it is to be hoped, will felicitously complete this first volume. Vulliaud
owes it both to us and himself to provide a similar work on the Iddra Robin and
Iddra Zula which, with the Siphra di-Tzeniutha, are as he says
far from being simply annexes or appendices of the Zohar, but 'are on
the contrary its central parts,’ those which contain as it were in the most
concentrated form all the essential part of the doctrine.
REVIEWS
Le Scorpion, symbols dn
people ]mf dans l'art religieux des XIVe. A’V-,
XVIe slides, by Marcel
Bulard (Paris: Editions de Boccard, 1935). Starting with an examination
of paintings in the Chapel of St Sebastian de Lans-le-Villard in Savoy, the
author has collected all the relevant documents he was able to discover and
has made a very detailed study of them, accompanied by many reproductions.
Under discussion are representations of the scorpion, either on the standard
carried by the personified Synagogue, or more frequently in the
representations of certain scenes of the Passion. In this last case, the
scorpionic standard is generally associated with standards bearing other
emblems, and especially the letters S P Q R, obviously to indicate the
participation of both the Jews and the Romans. A rather curious thing that
seems to have escaped the author’s attention is that these same letters,
arranged in another order (S Q R P), evoke pho- netically the very name of the
scorpion. As for the interpretation of this symbol, the author, basing himself
on the ‘Bestiaries’ as well as on the dramatic poetry of the end of the Middle
Ages, shows that it especially signifies falsity and perfidy; he quite rightly
remarks, moreover, that during the period in question symbolism, tar from
being‘dogmatic’ as it was previously, became principally‘moral’, which amounts
to saying that it was on the verge of degenerating into mere ‘allegory’, a
direct consequence of the weakening of the traditional spirit. Be that as it
may, we think that, originally at least, there must have been something more,
perhaps an allusion to the zodiacal sign of Scorpio, to which the idea of death
is attached; besides, we may note in this regard that without such an allusion
the very passage of the Gospel
where the scorpion is
opposed to the egg (Luke 11:11-12) remains perfectly incomprehensible. Another
interesting and enigmatic point is the attribution of the same symbols, in
particular the scorpion and the basilisk, to the Synagogue and to Dialectic.
Here the explanations considered, such as the reputation for dialectical skill
that the Jews had, seem to us truly insufficient to explain such an
association; and we cannot help but recall a tradition according to which the
works of Aristotle, who was considered the master of Dialectic, must have contained
a hidden meaning that cannot be penetrated and applied except by the
Antichrist, who on the other hand, it is said, must be of Jewish descent. Is
there not something to look for in this direction?
Sir
Charles Marston, La Bible a dit vrai, tr.
Luce Clarence (Paris: Librairie Pion, 1935) [orig. English, The Bible is
True: the Lessons of the 1925-1934 Excavation in Bible Lands Summarized and
Explained (London: The Religious Book Club, 1934)1- First and foremost this
book contains, if one may put it so, an excellent criticism of biblical
‘criticism’, bringing out perfectly all that is partial in its methods and
mistaken in its conclusions. Moreover, it seems that the position of this
‘criticism’, formerly so self-assured, is today seriously compromised in the
eyes of many, for all the recent archeological discoveries only bring more
refutations. Perhaps this is the first time that such discoveries serve for
something that goes beyond mere erudition... It goes without saying moreover
that those who truly know what tradition is have never had any need for this
kind of proof; but it must be recognized that, being based on facts that are as
it were ‘material’ and tangible, they are especially fitted to appeal to the
modern spirit, which is sensitive only to things of this order. We will note in
particular that the results obtained go directly against all the
‘evolutionist’ theories, and that they show‘monotheism’ at the very origins and
not as the final outcome of a long development starting from a so-called
primitive ‘animism’. Another interesting point is the proof of the existence of
alphabetic writing at the time of Moses, and even earlier; and texts almost
contemporaneous with him describe rites similar to those of the Pentateuch,
which the ‘critics’ claimed to be of late institution. Finally, numerous
historical facts reported in the Bible, the authenticity of which was
challenged, are now found to be entirely confirmed. Of course, there still
remain besides this many more or less doubtful points; and what we must be wary
of is not to go too far
in the direction of a
narrow and exclusive ‘literalism’, which, whatever one might say, has
absolutely nothing traditional about it in the true sense of the word. It is
questionable whether one may speak of a ‘biblical chronology’ when one goes
back beyond Moses. The epoch of Abraham might well be more remote than is
supposed. And as for the Deluge, the date that some assign to it would oblige
us to reduce its importance to that of a local and very secondary catastrophe,
comparable to the Hoods of Deucalion and Ogyges. As to the origins of
humanity, it is necessary to be wary of the obsession with the Caucasus and
Mesopotamia, which also has nothing traditional about it and arose solely from
interpretations formulated when certain things were no longer understood in
their true sense. We can hardly dwell here on certain more particular points,
but let us nonetheless note this: how, while recognizing that ‘Melchizedek was
regarded as a very mysterious personage’ in every tradition, can one bring
oneself to make him merely the king of some small city, which moreover was not
called Salem, but Jebus? And furthermore, if one wishes to place the country of
Midian beyond the Gulf of Akaba, what does one do with the tradition that the
location of the Burning Bush is to be found in the crypt of the monastery of
Saint Catherine, at the very foot of Sinai? But of course, all this in no way
diminishes the value of the really important discoveries, which will doubtless
continue to multiply, all the more, since, after all, their first appearance
goes back only some ten years; and we can only recommend the reading of this
clear and conscientious account to all who wish to find arguments against this
destructive and anti-traditional‘criticism’. But we are obliged to end with a
‘warning’ against another point of view: the author seems to rely on modern
‘metapsychics’ to explain miracles or at least to have them accepted, along
with the gift of prophecy and in general links with what he rather
unfortunately calls the‘Invisible’ (a word which occultists of every category
have used and abused all too much); moreover, he is not alone in this, and we
have become aware recently of other examples of a similar tendency. This is a
regrettable illusion, and there is even, from this perspective, a danger that
is all the greater as one is less aware of it. It must not be forgotten that
‘diabolical ruses’ take all forms, according to circumstances, and attest to
almost inexhaustible resources!
PART IV
Under
the title La Tradizione Erntetica nei suoi
Simboli, nella sua Dottrina e nella sua ‘Ars Regia',[44]
Julius Evola has recently published a work that is interesting in many
respects, but which just once more illustrates, as if this were needed, the
timeliness of what we wrote recently on the relationships between priestly
initiation and royal initiation.[45] We
find affirmed here the independence of the second, to which the author wishes
precisely to link Hermeticism, and the idea of two distinct and even
irreducible traditional types, one contemplative and the other active, which
generally characterize of the East and the West respectively. Thus we make
certain reservations about the interpretation given of Hermetic symbolism, in
the measure that it is influenced by such a conception, although elsewhere it
clearly shows that true alchemy is of the spiritual and not the material order,
which is the exact truth, a truth too often misunderstood or ignored by modern
writers who claim to deal with these questions.
We will take advantage of
this occasion to further clarify some important ideas, first of all the meaning
which should be attributed to the word ‘Hermeticism’ itself, which some of our
contemporaries
seem to use without rhyme
or reason. This word indicates that we are dealing essentially with a tradition
of Egyptian origin, later cloaked in a Hellenized form, doubtless in the
Alexandrian epoch, and transmitted in this form during the Middle Ages to both
the Islamic and the Christian worlds, and, let us add, to the second largely by
the intermediary of the first, as is proven by the numerous Arabic or
arabicized terms adopted by the European Hermeticists, beginning with the word
‘alchemy’ (al-Kimia) itself.-' It would therefore be quite illegitimate
to extend this designation to other traditional forms, just as it would be, for
example, to call ‘Kabbalah’ anything other than Hebrew esoterism; not, of
course, that there exist no equivalents elsewhere, for these exist to the point
that this traditional science of alchemy has its exact correspondence in doctrines
such as those of India, Tibet, and China, although with modes of expression and
methods of realization that are naturally quite different. But as soon as one
says ‘Hermeticism’, one specifies a clearly determined form, whose provenance
can only be Greco- Egyptian. Indeed, the doctrine thus designated is by this
very fact related to Hermes insofar as he was considered by the Greeks
to be identical with the Egyptian Thoth; and we will note immediately
that this goes against Evola’s thesis by presenting this doctrine as derived
essentially from a sacerdotal teaching, for Thoth, in his role as
preserver and transmitter of tradition, is nothing other than the very
representation of the ancient Egyptian priesthood, or rather, to speak more
exactly, of the principle of inspiration from which it held its authority and
in whose name it formulated and communi- cated initiatic knowledge.
Now a question must be
asked: does what has been preserved under the name of‘Hermeticism’ constitute a
complete traditional doctrine? The answer can only be negative, for strictly
speaking the knowledge it represents is not metaphysical but only cosmological
(understanding this in its double application, ‘macrocosmic’ and
‘microcosmic’). It is therefore not admissible that Hermeticism, in the sense
that this word has acquired since the Alexandrian period
3.
This word is Arabic in its
form but not in its root. It probably derives from the name Kemi
or'Black Earth’given to ancient Egypt.
and held constantly since
then, represents the whole of the Egyptian tradition. Although the cosmological
point of view seems to have been particularly developed here, and is in any
case what is most apparent in all the vestiges that remain, whether it be texts
or monuments, it must not be forgotten that it can never be anything but a
secondary and contingent point of view, an application of the doctrine to the
knowledge of what we can call the ‘intermediary world’. It would be
interesting, though no doubt rather difficult, to examine how this part of the
Egyptian tradition could have found itself as it were isolated and yet remain
apparently independent, and then be incorporated into the Islamic and Christian
esoterisms of the Middle Ages (which a complete doctrine could not have
achieved), to the point of truly becoming an integral part of both and furnishing
them with an entire symbolism which, through a suitable transposition, could
even serve on occasion as a vehicle for truths of a higher order. This is not
the place to enter into these very complex historical considerations, but
however that may be, we must say that, even if the specifically cosmological
character of Hermeticism does not justify Evola’s conception, it at least
explains it in a certain measure, for sciences of this order are those which,
in all traditional civilizations, have been pre-eminently the appanage of the
Kshatriyas or their equivalents, whereas pure metaphysics was that of the
Brahmins. This is why one sometimes witnesses as an effect of the revolt of the
Kshatriyas against the spiritual authority of the Brahmins the formation of
incomplete traditional currents, reduced to these single sciences separated
from their principle, and even deviated in a ‘naturalist’ direction by a
negation of metaphysics and the misunderstanding of the subordinate character
of‘physical’ science and (the two things being closely connected) the
sacerdotal origin of all initiatic teaching, even that more particularly
intended for the use of the Kshatriyas, as we have explained on other
occasions.[46]
This is certainly not to say that Hermeticism in itself constitutes such
a deviation or that it essentially implies something illegitimate (which would
have made its incorporation into traditional orthodox forms impossible); but
it is quite necessary to recognize that it
can easily lend itself to
this by its very nature, and this more generally is the danger of ail
traditional sciences when they are cultivated for themselves alone, something
that exposes them to the danger of losing sight of their attachment to the
principial order. Alchemy, which could be defined as the ‘technique’ of
Hermeticism, is truly a 'royal art’, if this is understood to be a mode of
initiation particularly appropriate to the nature of Kshatriyas; but this
itself marks its exact place in the ensemble of a regularly constituted
tradition, and one must furthermore not confuse the means to initiatic
realization with its final goal, which is always pure knowledge.
Another point in Evola’s
thesis that seems questionable is the assimilation he almost always makes
between Hermeticism and magic, It is true that he seems to take ‘magic’ in a
rather different sense from what is ordinarily understood, but we greatly fear
that even this cannot but occasion some rather unfortunate confusions.
Inevitably, when one thinks of‘magic’, one thinks of a science meant to produce
more or less extraordinary phenomena, notably (but not exclusively) in the
sensible order. Whatever the origin of the word may have been, this meaning has
become so thoroughly inherent in it that it ought to be left as it is. Thus it
is nothing but the most inferior of the applications of traditional knowledge,
we could even say the most despised, whose practice is left to those whose
individual limitations make them incapable of developing other possibilities;
we see no benefit to evoking the idea when it is really a question of things
that, even though contingent, are nonetheless notably higher, and even if this
is only a question of terminology it must be agreed that it still has its
importance. Besides, something more may be involved here; this word
‘magic’exercises a strange fascination on some people in our time, and as we
have already noted in the preceding article to which we alluded in the
beginning, the preponderance accorded to such a point of view, be this only in
intention, is still linked to the alteration of traditional sciences separated
from their metaphysical principle; and this is doubtless the rock which every
attempt at reconstituting such sciences strikes against, if one does not begin
from what is truly the beginning in all respects, that is to say with the
principle itself, which is also the end in view of which all the rest must
normally be ordered.
On the other hand, where
we are entirely in agreement with Evola, and where we see the greatest merit of
his book, is when he insists on the purely spiritual and ‘interior’ nature of
true alchemy, which has absolutely nothing to do with the material operations
of any ‘chemistry’ in the natural meaning of this word. Nearly all the moderns
are strangely mistaken about this, both those who would make themselves
defenders of alchemy as well as those who have made themselves its detractors.
It is nevertheless easy to see in what terms the ancient Hermeticists speak of
the ‘puffers’ and ‘charcoal burners’, in whom must be recognized the true
precursors of present-day chemists, unflattering as this may be for them; even
as late as the eighteenth century an alchemist like Pern^ty does not fail to
stress the difference between ‘Hermetic philosophy’ and ‘common chemistry’.
Thus, what gave birth to modern chemistry is not alchemy, with which it has in
the final analysis no relationship (any more than does the ‘hyperchemistry’
dreamed up by some contemporary occultists); it is only a deformation or
deviation resulting from the incomprehension of those who, incapable of
penetrating the true meaning of the symbols, took everything literally and,
believing that only material operations were involved, embarked on a program of
more or less disordered experimentation. In the Arab world too, material
alchemy has always been held of little worth, sometimes even likened to a kind
of sorcery, whereas spiritual alchemy, the only true alchemy, was held in high
honor, being often designated by the name Kimia-es-saadah or ‘alchemy of
felicity’.[47]
This is not to say,
however, that one must deny for this reason the possibility of the metallic
transmutations that represent alchemy in the eyes of the common man; but we
must not confuse things of wholly different orders, and we do not even see a
priori why such transmutations could not be achieved through procedures
belonging merely to profane chemistry (the ‘hyperchemistry’ to which we
alluded earlier really amounts to no more than this). There is, however,
another aspect to the question which Evola very correctly points out. Anyone
who has realized certain inner states can, by virtue of the analogical
relationship between the ‘microcosm’ and the
‘macrocosm’, produce
outwardly corresponding effects. It is therefore admissible that the one who
has reached a certain degree in the practice of spiritual alchemy may be
thereby capable of accomplishing metallic transmutations, but this only as a
wholly accidental consequence and without recourse to any of the procedures of
material pseudo-alchemy, solely by a kind of outward projection of the energies
he carries within himself. There is a difference here comparable to that
separating ‘theurgy’, or the action of ‘spiritual influences’, from magic and
even sorcery; if the apparent effects are sometimes the same in both cases, the
causes which bring them about are totally different. We will add moreover that
those who really possess such powers generally make no use of them, at least
outside of very particular circumstances where their exercise is made lawful by
other considerations. Be that as it may, what must never be lost sight of, and
what lies at the very foundation of all truly traditional teaching, is that every
realization worthy of the name is of an essentially inward order, even if it is
susceptible of outward repercussions. Man can find its principles and means
only within himself, and he can do so because he carries within himself a
correspondence with all that exists. Al-insanu ramzul-wujudfmm is a
symbol of universal Existence’; and if he succeeds in penetrating to the center
of his own being, he thereby attains total knowledge with all that it implies
in addition. Man yaraf nafsahu yarafRabbahu,'he. who knows his self
knows his Lord’; and he then knows all things within the supreme unity of the
Principle itself, outside of which there is nothing that can have the slightest
degree of reality.
When
speaking earlier about the Hermetic tradition we said
that this properly refers to a knowledge that is not metaphysical but only
cosmological, understanding this last in both its ‘macrocosmic’ and
‘microcosmic’ senses. Although this was only the expression of the strict
truth, it was unfortunately enough to displease some who, viewing Hermeticism
through their own fantasies, would like it to contain any and everything, it is
true that such people hardly know what pure metaphysics is. However this may
be, it must be understood that by saying that we in no way wished to
depreciate the traditional sciences that belong to Hermeticism nor those that
correspond to them in the other doctrinal forms of the East or West; but one
has to know how to put each thing in its place, and these sciences, like any
specialized knowledge, remain secondary and derivative with respect to
principles, of which they are only the application to a lower level of reality.
Only those who would give the ‘Royal Art’ preeminence over the 'Sacerdotal Art’
can claim the contrary;[48]
and perhaps this is at root the more or less conscious reason for the
protestations just alluded to.
Without otherwise
concerning ourselves with what anyone else may think or say, for we are not
accustomed to taking into account such individual opinions which, for tradition,
do not exist, it seems
that it might not be
useless to add some new details confirming what we have already said, by
focusing more particularly on Hermes, for at least no one contests that it is
from Hermes that Hcrmet- icism takes its name.[49]
The Greek Hermes has in fact characteristics that correspond exactly to the
sciences in question and that are especially expressed by his chief emblem, the
caduceus, the symbolism of which we will no doubt find some other occasion to
examine more fully. Suffice it to say for the moment that this symbolism
relates essentially and directly' to what might be called ‘human alchemy’[50]
that concerns possibilities of the subtle state, even if these are taken merely
as the preparatory means to a higher realization, as the equivalent Hatha-Yogn
practices are in the Hindu tradition. This can, moreover, be transferred to the
cosmic order, since everything in man has its correspondence in the world, and
inversely,[51]
here again, and by reason of this very correspondence, the domain in
question is the ‘intermediary world’, where forces are brought into play whose
dual nature is very clearly figured by the two serpents of the caduceus. We
will also recall in this connection that Hermes is represented as the messenger
of the gods and as their
interpreter (hermeneutes),
that is, precisely, as an intermediary between the celestial and terrestrial
worlds, and that he has in addition the function of a ‘psychopomp’ [guide of
the souls of the dead] which, in a lower order, is clearly related to the
domain of subtle possibilities.[52]
It might be objected that
in Hermeticism, Hermes takes the place of the Egyptian Thoth, with whom he was
identified, and that Thoth properly represents Wisdom, which relates to the
priesthood as the guardian and transmitter of the tradition. That is true
enough, but since this assimilation cannot have been made without some reason,
it must be admitted that it is more particularly a certain aspect of Thoth
that is considered here, one corresponding to a certain part of the tradition
that includes the branches of knowledge relating to the intermediary world;
and in fact, all that can be known of the ancient Egyptian civilization from
its vestiges shows precisely that this kind of knowledge was much more developed
there and had acquired more importance there than anywhere else. There is
besides another comparison, we might even say another equivalence, which shows
clearly that this objection has no real significance: in India, the planet
Mercury (or Hermes) is called Budha, a name whose root means Wisdom;
here again, it is enough to determine the order where this Wisdom, which in its
essence is the inspiring principle of all knowledge, is to find its more
particular application when it is related to this specialized function.[53]
As concerns the name Budha,
it is curious to note that it is in fact identical to the Scandinavian Odin,
Woden, or Wotan;[54]
it is thus not
at all arbitrary that the
Romans assimilated Odin to Mercury, and in some Germanic languages the day of
Mercury (in French mer- credi) is still called the day of Odin.[55]
What is perhaps even more remarkable is that this same name is found in the Votan
of the ancient traditions of Central America, who moreover has the attributes
of Hermes, for he is Quetzalcoatl, the ‘bird-serpent’, and the union of
these two symbolic animals (corresponding respectively to air and fire) is
also figured by the wings and the serpents of the caduceus.[56]
One must indeed be blind not to see in such facts a sign of the fundamental
unity of all traditional doctrines; unfortunately, such blindness is only too
common in our time, where those who truly know how to read symbols are now a
tiny minority, and where we find on Ihe contrary all too many ‘profane ones’
who think themselves qualified to interpret ‘sacred science’, which they fit to
the measure of their own more or less confused imagination.
Another no less
interesting point is that in the Islamic tradition the prophet Idris is
identified both with Hermes and with Enoch; this double assimilation seems to
indicate a continuity of tradition going back before the Egyptian priesthood,
for this latter merely inherited what Enoch represented, and he manifestly
relates to an earlier period.[57] At
the same time, the sciences attributed to Idris
and placed under his
special influence are not the purely spiritual sciences, which are attributed
to the prophet Aissa, that is, to Christ, but the sciences that can be
qualified as ‘intermediary’, among which alchemy and astrology belong in the first
rank; these are indeed the sciences that can properly be called Hermetic. But
this brings us to another consideration, which, at least at first glance, might
seem to indicate a rather strange reversal of the usual correspondences. Among
the principal prophets, a particular one, as we shall see in a future study,
presides over each of the planetary heavens and is its ‘Pole’ (al-Qutb).
Now, it is not Idris who presides over the heaven of Mercury, but Aissa
[Jesus], whereas Idris presides over the heaven of the sun; and this naturally
involves the same transposition in the astrological correspondences of the
sciences that are respectively attributed to them. This raises a very complex
question which we could not hope to treat fully here; perhaps we shall have
occasion to come back to it, but for the moment we will confine ourselves to a
few remarks which will perhaps enable us to glimpse the solution, and will in
any case at least show that there is something altogether different here from
a simple confusion, and which what might pass for such in the eyes of a
superficial and ‘outward’ observer is in reality based on very profound
notions.
First, this is not an
isolated case among all the traditional doctrines, for one can find something
similar in Hebrew angelology. Generally, Mikael is the angel of the sun,
and Raphael is the angel of Mercury, but it sometimes happens that these roles
are reversed. On the other hand, if Mikael, insofar as he represents the
solar Meta- tron, is esoterically assimilated to Christ,11
Raphael, according to the meaning of his name, is the ‘divine healer’, while
Christ also appears as ‘spiritual healer’ and as ‘restorer’; one could find
also other connections between Christ and the principle represented by Mercury
the whole corpus of
‘Hermetic books’? On the other hand, some also say that the prophet Idris is
the same as the Buddha. What has already been said shows well enough how we are
to understand this assertion, which really refers to Budha, the Hindu
equivalent of Hermes. It could not refer to the historic Buddha, whose death is
a known feet, whereas Idris is expressly said to have been transported alive to
heaven, which corresponds precisely to the biblical Enoch.
11.
See The King of the
World, chap. 3.
among the planetary
spheres.12 It is true that for the Greeks medicine was attributed
to Apollo, that is, to the solar principle, and to his son Asclepius (in Latin,
Aesculapius)-, but in the ‘Hermetic books’Asclepius becomes the son of
Hermes, and we should also note that the staff that is his emblem has close
symbolic connections to the caduceus.” This example from medicine moreover
allows us to understand how one and the same science can have aspects related
to different orders, thus with equally different correspondences, even if the
outward effects obtained are apparently similar, for there is a purely
spiritual or ‘theurgic’ medicine, and there is also
12.
Perhaps it is here that
one must see the origin of the error committed by those who consider the Buddha
to he the ninth avatara of Vishnu; in reality this is a manifestation
related to the principle designated as the planetary Budha. In this case
the Solar Christ would properly be Glorious Christ, that is, the tenth avatara,
who is to come at the end of the cycle. We will recall as a curiosity that the
month of May takes its name from Main. Mercury’s mother (who is said to
be one of the Pleiades) to whom that month was formerly consecrated in ancient
times; now in Christianity it has become the‘month of Mary’by an assimilation,
doubtless not merely phonetic, between Maria and Maia.
[In his translation of the
present chapter inchided in The Sword of Gnosis (Boston: Arkana, 1986),
Martin Lings provides the following expanded version of the above note, adding
that 'it has been somewhat modified by the translator in the light of
conversation that he had with the author many years after the article had been
written’:
If Hindu doctrine
considers the Buddha as being the ninth avatara of Vishnu, that is the Mleccha
(foreign) avattlra, this does not necessarily exclude other divine
interventions that have taken place on behalf of‘foreign’ (non-Hindu) peoples
during the same period. In particular, Christ might be said to share with the
Buddha the ninth avataric function, since his first coming was, for the West,
what the advent of the Buddha was for the Far East (and what the Koranic
‘descent’ was for the ‘middle’ region). Now, as we have seen in connection with
the Buddha, the ninth avatara is a ‘Mercurial’ manifestation. It would
seem that the two comings of Christ may be related to his ‘Mercurial’ and
‘Solar’ aspects, the Solar Christ being Christ Glorious, that is, the tenth or Kalki
avatara, who is to come at the end of the cycle, the‘white horse’of this
final descent being a solar symbol par excellence... .|
13.
Around the staff of
Asclepius is coiled a single serpent which represents the benefic force, for
the malefic force must disappear by the very fact that it is a question of the
genius of medicine. Let us note too the connection of this same staff of
Asclepius, as an emblem of healing, with the biblical symbol of the ‘brazen
serpent’ (see on this symbolism our study ‘Seth’, chap. 22 of Symbols of
Sacred Science).
Hermetic or ‘spagyric’
medicine; this is directly related to the question we are presently
considering; and perhaps we will explain some day why from the traditional
point of view medicine was considered as essentially a sacerdotal science.
On the other hand, there
is nearly always a close connection made between Enoch (Idris) and Elijah
(Dhul-Kifl), both of whom were taken up to heaven without passing through
corporeal death,[58]
and Islamic tradition places both in the solar sphere. Similarly,
according to the Rosicrucian tradition, Elias Artista, who presides over
the Hermetic ‘Great Work’,[59]
resides in the ‘Solar Citadel’, which is the abode of the ‘Immortals’ (in the
sense of the ChirajMs of Hinduism, that is, beings ‘endowed with
longevity’, whose life lasts throughout the whole cycle),[60]
and which represents one of the aspects of the ‘Center of the World’. All of
this is certainly worthy of reflection, and if one also adds the traditions,
which nearly everywhere liken the sun itself symbolically to the fruit of ‘the
Tree of Life’,[61]
one will perhaps understand the special relationship which the solar influence
has with Hermeticism, insofar as this, like the ‘lesser mysteries’ of
antiquity, has as its essential aim the restoration of the human ‘primordial
state’. Is this not the ‘Solar Citadel’ of the Rosicrucians, which is to
‘descend from Heaven to earth’ at the end of the cycle in the form of the
‘Heavenly Jerusalem’, realizing the ‘squaring of the circle’ according to the
perfect measure of the ‘golden reed’?
What
we have said about certain ‘pseudo-initiatic’
enterprises makes it easy to understand the reasons why we are very little
inclined to address questions more or less directly touching upon the ancient
Egyptian tradition. On this subject we can even add that the very fact that
present-day Egyptians do not in any way preoccupy themselves with research
concerning this vanished civilization should suffice to show that from the
point of view that interests us there is no effective benefit in doing so. If
it were otherwise, it is quite obvious that they would not have allowed it to
be as it were abandoned to the monopoly of foreigners, who in any case have
never made it anything more than a matter of erudition. The truth is that
between ancient Egypt and present-day Egypt there is no more than a
geographical coincidence without the slightest historical continuity; thus the
tradition in question is even more completely foreign in the country where it
formerly existed than is Druidism for the peoples now inhabiting the ancient
Celtic countries; ..and the fact that many more of its monuments still stand
changes nothing in this respect. We insist on clarifying this point once and
for all in order to cut short all the illusions entertained only too easily on
this subject by those who have never had occasion to examine things more
closely; and at the same time, this statement will destroy yet more completely
the claims of ‘pseudo-initiates’ who, while relying on the evidence of ancient
Egypt, would like to give us to understand that they are connected with something
that still subsists in Egypt itself. Moreover, we know that this is not a
purely imaginary supposition, and that some, counting on general ignorance, in
which, unfortunately, they are not altogether wrong, push their claims to this
point.
However, in spite of all
this, it so happens that we find ourselves almost obliged to give, insofar as
it is possible, some explanations that have lately been asked of us from
different quarters as a result of the unbelievable multiplication of certain
fantastic stories to which we have been obliged to refer while reviewing the
books to which we were alluding just now. Moreover, it must be said that these
explanations will not really relate to the Egyptian tradition itself but only to
what relates to it in the Arabic tradition. There are at least some rather
curious indications that can perhaps contribute in spite of everything to
clarifying certain obscure points, although we do not at all intend to
exaggerate the importance of the conclusions it is possible to draw from them.
We have pointed out
previously that no one really knows what purpose the Great Pyramid served, and
we could say the same thing of the pyramids in general. It is true that the
most common and widespread opinion is that they were tombs; and doubtless there
is nothing impossible in this hypothesis itself. But we also know that because
of certain preconceived ideas modern archeologists are resolved to discover
tombs everywhere, even where there has never been the slightest trace of them,
and this is not without arousing in us some suspicion. In any case, they have
yet to find a tomb in the Great Pyramid; but even if one were discovered, the
enigma would still not be entirely resolved, for this would obviously not exclude
its having other uses at the same time, perhaps even more important ones, just
as could other Pyramids that have in fact served as tombs; and it is further
possible that, as some have thought, the funerary use of these monuments was a
more or less late development, and that this was not their original purpose at
the time of their construction. If, however, one objects to this that certain
ancient information of a more or less traditional character would seem to
confirm that they were really tombs, we will say something which may seem
strange at first glance but which is precisely what the considerations to
follow will tend to make one admit: are not the tombs in question to be
understood in a purely symbolic sense?
Indeed, some say that the
Great Pyramid might be the tomb of IdrTs, that is, of the prophet Enoch, while
the second Pyramid would be that of another personage who would have been his
Master, and of whom we will speak again; but, presented in this way and taken
in
a literal sense, the thing
is manifestly absurd since Enoch did not die but was taken up living to Heaven;
how then could he have a tomb? One should not, however, be too hasty to speak
here in the Western manner of baseless ‘legends’, for here is the explanation
given: it is not Idris’ body which was buried in the Pyramid, but his science;
by this some understand his books, but what likelihood is there that the books
were purely and simply buried, and what interest could this have presented from
any point of view?[62] It
would assuredly be much more plausible that the contents of these books should
have been carved in hieroglyphics on the inside of the monument; but
unfortunately for such a supposition there are in fact neither inscriptions nor
symbolic figurations of any kind to be found in the Great Pyramid.[63]
Therefore there remains only one acceptable hypothesis, which is that Idris’
science is indeed hidden in the Pyramid, but that it is embedded in its very
structure, in its outer and inner arrangement and in its proportions; and everything
that may be valid in the ‘discoveries’ that moderns have made or think they
have made on this subject represent in the final analysis only a few minute
fragments of this ancient traditional science.
This interpretation agrees
quite well moreover with another Arab version of the Pyramids’ origin, which
attributes their construction to the antediluvian king Surid, who having been
warned in a dream of the imminence of the Deluge had the Pyramids built
according to the plan of the sages, and ordered the priests to place in them
the secrets of their sciences and the precepts of their wisdom. Now we know
that Enoch or Idris, also antediluvian, is identified with Hermes or Thoth,
who represents the source from which the Egyptian priesthood held its knowledge,
and so by extension this priesthood
itself as the continuator
of the same function of traditional teaching. It is thus always the same
sacred science which in this way too would have been placed in the Pyramids.[64]
On the other hand, this
monument destined to assure the preservation of traditional knowledge in
anticipation of the cataclysm, recalls yet another well-known story, that of
the two columns raised, according to some, precisely by Enoch, and according to
others by Seth, on which the essentials of all the sciences was inscribed; and
the mention made here of Seth leads us back to the personage for whom the
second Pyramid is reputed to have been the tomb. Indeed, if this was the Master
of Idris, he could not have been any other than Shith, that is, Seth, son of
Adam. It is true that some ancient Arab authors call him by the apparently
strange names of Aghatimun and Adhirnun, but these are visibly
only deformations of the Greek Agathodaemon, which, relating back to
the symbolism of the serpent envisaged under its benefic aspect, applies
perfectly to Seth, as we have explained elsewhere.[65]
The particular connection thus established between Seth and Enoch is all the
more remarkable in that both are also connected with certain traditions
concerning a return to the Terrestrial Paradise, that is, to the ‘primordial
state’, and consequently with a ‘polar’ symbolism that is not unconnected with
the orientation of the Pyramids. But this is another question, and we will only
note in passing that this fact, which implies clearly enough a reference to
‘spiritual centers’, would tend to confirm the hypothesis that makes of the
Pyramids a place of initiation, which, moreover, would have been the normal way
to keep ‘alive’ the knowledge enclosed in it, at least as long as this initiation
subsisted.
Let us add that it is said
that Idris or Enoch wrote many inspired books after Adam himself and Seth had
already written others;5 these books were the prototypes of the
sacred books of the Egyptians, and the more recent Hermetic Books
represent only as it were a ‘readaptation’ of them, as is also the case with
the various Books of Enoch that have come down to us under this name. On
the other hand, the books of Adam, Seth, and Enoch naturally have expressed
different aspects of traditional knowledge, each implying a particular
relationship with one or another of the sacred sciences, as is always the case
for the teaching transmitted by the different Prophets. It might be
interesting in these conditions to ask with regard to Enoch and Seth whether
there ought not to be something corresponding to these differences in the
structure of the two Pyramids we spoke of, and whether perhaps the third
Pyramid would not likewise have some connection with Adam, for although we have
not found any explicit allusion to this anywhere, it would after all be quite
logical to suppose that it ought to complete the ternary of the great
antediluvian Prophets.6 Of course, we do not at all think that these
questions are resolvable at present; besides, al) modern ‘seekers’ have, so to
speak, been ‘hypnotized’ almost exclusively by the Great Pyramid, although it
is really not so much larger than the other two that the difference is
striking. And when, in order to justify the exceptional importance they
attribute to it, they maintain that it is the only one which was oriented
exactly, perhaps they are making the error of not considering that certain
variations in orientation might well be due not simply to some negligence on
the part of the builders, but reflect precisely something connected to different
traditional ‘epochs'. But how could one expect modern Westerners to be guided
in their researches by even the least accurate and appropriate ideas on things
of this sort?7
5.
The numbers of' these
books varies and in many cases may be only symbolic, but this point has only a
rather secondary importance.
6.
It goes without saying
that this does not mean that the construction of the Pyramids must be literally
attributed to them, but only that it may have constituted a ‘fixation’ of the
traditional sciences respectively linked to them.
7.
The idea that the Great
Pyramid differs essentially from the other two seems very recent. It is said
that the Caliph AI-Mamun, wishing to ascertain what the Pyramids contained,
decided to have one opened; this happened to be the Great Pyramid, but he does
not seem to have thought it was at all special in character.
Another observation which
also has its importance is that the very name Hermes is far from being unknown
to the Arab tradition;[66]
should we see only a 'coincidence’ in the similarity that it presents with the
word Haram (Ahram in the plural), an Arab designation for the Pyramid,
from which it differs only by the addition of a final letter that is not a
part of its root? Hermes is called Al- muthalleh bil-hikam, literally
'triple by wisdom’,[67]
which is equivalent to the Greek epithet Trismegistus, although it is
more explicit, for the ‘greatness’ which this last expresses is at root really
only the result of the wisdom that is the proper attribute of Hermes.[68]
Moreover, this ‘triplicity’ has still another meaning, for it is sometimes
found elaborated in the form of three distinct Hermes: the first, called
‘Hermes of Hermes’ (Hermes Al-Haramesah) and considered antediluvian, is
properly identified with Idris; the two others, who would be postdiluvian, are
the ‘Babylonian Hermes’ (Al-Babeh) and the ‘Egyptian Hermes’ (Al-Misri).
This seems to indicate quite clearly that the Chaldean and Egyptian traditions
were derived directly from one and the same principal source, which, given its
acknowledged antediluvian character, can hardly have been other than the
Atlantean tradition.[69]
Whatever one may think of
all these considerations, which are certainly as far from the views of
Egyptologists as they are from
those of the modern
investigators of the ‘secret of the Pyramid’, it is permissible to say that
this truly represents ‘Hermes’ tomb’, for the mysteries of his wisdom and his
science have been concealed in it in such a way that it is certainly very
difficult to find them.[70]
REVIEWS
Enel:
Les Origines de la Genese et Tenseignement des Temples de
Tanci- enne Egypte. vol. 1, ireet 2e
parties. (Cairo: Institut ffan^ais d’Arch^ol- ogie orientate, 1935). It is
assuredly very difficult, and perhaps even wholly impossible today, to know
what the ancient Egyptian tradition, extinct for so many centuries, really
was. Thus, the various interpretations and reconstructions attempted by
Egyptologists are largely hypothetical and, moreover, often contradict each
other. The present work is distinguished from the usual Egyptological works by
a laudable concern for doctrinal comprehension which is generally absent from
them, and also by the great importance it rightly gives to symbolism, which
the ‘official’ scholars for their part tend to deny or to ignore purely and
simply: but is this to say that the views expressed here are less hypothetical
than the others? We rather doubt this, especially seeing that they are inspired
by a sort of prejudice toward finding a constant parallelism between the
Egyptian and Hebraic traditions, for although the basis is essentially the
same everywhere, nothing proves that the two forms in question have truly been
so close to one another, and the direct filiation which the author seems to
imagine between them and which the title itself probably means to suggest, is
more than contestable. From this result more or less forced assimilations; it
must be asked, for example, whether it is really certain that the Egyptian
doctrine considered universal manifestation under the aspect of‘creation’,
which seems so peculiar to the Hebraic tradition and to those that are linked
to it. The testimony of the ancients, who ought to have known better than we
what they believed, does not support it in any way; and on this point our suspicion
increases further when we note that the same principle is sometimes called
‘Creator’ and sometimes simply ‘Demiurge’; one must at least choose between
these two obviously incompatible roles... On the other hand, the linguistic
considerations put forward doubtless call for many reservations as well, for
the language in which the Egyptian tradition expresses itself is no better
known than is that tradition itself; and we should add that some
interpretations are clearly too much influenced by occultist ideas. But despite
everything, this is not to say that there is not in this volume, whose first
part is devoted to the Universe and the second to Man, a fairly great number of
remarks
worthy of interest, of
which some could even be confirmed by comparison with the Eastern traditions,
which unfortunately the author seems to ignore almost completely, much better
than by biblical references. Naturally, we cannot enter into details here; to
give one example, we will only point out, in this order of ideas, what is said
concerning the constellation of the Thigh, a designation of the 'Great Bear’,
and the expression ‘Master of the Thigh’, which applies to the Pole. There
would be some curious connections to point out here. Finally, let us note the
opinion of the author on the Great Pyramid, which he sees as both a ‘Solar
Temple’ and a monument to ‘immortalize the knowledge of the laws of the
Universe.’ This supposition is at least as plausible as many others that have
been put forward on the subject; but as for saying that 'the hidden symbolism
of the Hebrew and Chrislian Scriptures relates directly to facts which took
place during the construction of the Great Pyramid,’ this is an assertion
which seems to us to lack plausibility in every respect!
Enel:
A Message from the Sphinx
(London: Rider & Co., 1936). The reservations we expressed last year in
connection with another work of the same author as to the purely hypothetical
character of all attempts at the reconstitution and interpretation of the
ancient Egyptian tradition apply equally to this one, where we find once again
in the first part, treated more briefly, some of the same ideas. The book opens
with a study of hieroglyphic writing based on perfectly sound principles, which
are moreover quite generally known, concerning the plurality of meanings of
this writing. But when these are to be applied in detail, how can we really be
certain not to mix in a greater or lesser measure of fantasy? Let us also note
that the term ‘ideographic’ does not apply, as is claimed, to the simple
representation of sensible objects, and that when it is a question of writing
it is in short synonymous with ‘symbolic’; and there are many other
improprieties of language which are no less regrettable. For example, it is
quite certain that the Egyptian doctrine must have been at root
‘monotheistic’, for all traditional doctrines without exception are so in the
sense that they cannot but affirm principial unity. But if the word
‘monotheism’ thus has an acceptable meaning, even outside of specifically religious
forms, has one the right to call ‘pantheism’ what everyone else is accustomed
to call ‘polytheism’? Another more serious error concerns
magic, which the author
clearly confuses in many cases with theurgy (a confusion which amounts in the
final analysis to that between the psychic and the spiritual), for he sees it
wherever the ‘power of the word’ is involved, which leads him to believe that
it must have had a major role at the very beginning, whereas on the contrary
its predominance, as we have often explained, could only have been in Egypt,
as elsewhere, a more or less late degeneration also. Let us note before going
further a rather unfortunate concession made to modern ‘evolutionist’
theories: if the men of those ancient times possessed the crude or rudimentary
mentality ascribed to them, where could they ever have recruited those
‘initiates’ in whom, at the same time, one observes precisely the opposite? One
must necessarily choose between anti-traditional ‘evolutionism’ and the
acceptance of traditional facts, and any compromise can only lead to insoluble
contradictions.
The second part of the
book is devoted to the Hebrew Kabbalah, which might be surprising if we were
not already familiar with the ideas of the author on this subject. For him the
Hebrew tradition is directly descended from the Egyptian tradition; they are
like ‘two consecutive links of the same chain.’ We have already said what we
think about this, but we will clarify the point further: the author is
certainly right when he says that the Egyptian tradition was derived from
Atlantis (which, we can say more clearly than he does, was not therefore
itself the seat of the primordial tradition), but it was not the only one. And
the same thing seems true particularly of the Chaldean tradition; the Arab
teaching on the ‘three Hermes’, of which we spoke elsewhere, shows this descent
quite clearly. But, if the principal source is thus the same, the difference of
these forms was probably determined by the meeting with other currents, one
coming from the South in the case of Egypt, and the other from the North in
that of Chaldea. Now the Hebrew tradition is essentially‘Abrahamic’, hence of
Chaldean origin; the ‘readaptation’ effected by Moses was no doubt able,
because of circumstances of place, to make accessory use of Egyptian elements,
especially as regards certain more or less secondary traditional sciences; but
it could never have had the effect of causing this tradition to depart from
its own lineage so as to transfer it into another lineage foreign to the people
for whom it was expressly destined and in whose language it had to be
formulated. Besides, as soon as one recognizes the common origin and foundation
of all traditional doctrines, the observation of certain similarities does not
in any way
imply a direct filiation;
this is the case for example with links like those the author wishes to
establish between the Sephiroth and the Egyptian ‘Ennead’. assuming that
they are justified; and strictly speaking, even if the resemblances seem to be
based on points too particular to go back as far as the primordial tradition,
the kinship of the Egyptian and Chaldean traditions would in any case amply
suffice to explain it. As for claiming that primitive Hebraic writing was
derived from hieroglyphs, this is an entirely gratuitous hypothesis, since no
one in fact knows exactly what this writing was; all the indications that one
can find concerning them tend rather to make one think the contrary; moreover,
it is not at all clear how the association of numbers with letters, which is
essential for Hebrew, could really have been borrowed from the hieroglyphic
system. What is more, the close similarities between Hebrew and Arabic, to
which not the least allusion is made here, clearly runs counter to this
hypothesis, for it would be very difficult to seriously maintain that the Arab
tradition also had to come from Egypt!
We will pass rapidly over
the third part, where we first find views on art which, if they do in spite of
everything contain some truth, nonetheless still start from an affirmation that
is questionable at the very least; it is not possible to say, at least without
more clarification, that ‘there is only one art’, for it is obvious that the
underlying unity namely ideas expressed symbolically, in no way excludes the
multiplicity of forms. In the chapters that follow the author gives a survey,
not of authentic traditional sciences as one might wish, but of more or less
distorted fragments that have survived until our time, especially under the
‘divinatory’ aspect; the influence of‘occultist’conceptions appear here in a
particularly regrettable way. Let us state once again tha't it is wholly
inaccurate to say that certain sciences taught in the temples of antiquity were
purely and simply equivalent to modern ‘academic’ sciences; in reality, even
where there is an apparent similarity of object, the point of view was still
totally different, and there is always a veritable abyss between the
traditional sciences and the profane sciences. Finally, we cannot refrain from
pointing out some errors of detail that are truly astonishing; thus the well
known image of the ‘churning of the sea’ is said to be that of a ‘god, Samudra
Mutu’ [src|! But this is perhaps still more excusable than the errors about
things which should be more familiar to the author than the Hindu tradition,
particularly the Hebrew language. We will not speak of
mere errors of
transcription, although this is terribly careless; but how can one continually
call Ain Bekar that which is really Aiq Bekar (a cryptographic
system that is as well-known in Arabic as in Hebrew, where one can find the
prototype of the Masonic alphabets), confuse the final form of kaph with
that of nun with regard to their numerical value, and even mention a
'final samek', which has never existed and which is nothing but a mem*.
How can one insist that the translators of Genesis have rendered tehbm
by 'waters’, in a place where the word in the Hebrew text is maim and
not thehom, or that Ain Soph literally means the ‘Ancient of
Years' when the strictly literal translation of this name is 'without limit’? Yetsirah
is ‘Formation’ and not ‘Creation’ (which is Beriah); Zohar does not mean
'celestial Chariot’ (an obvious confusion with the Merkabah) but 'Splendor’;
and the author seems to be wholly ignorant of what the Talmud is, since
he thinks it is formed from the Notarikon, the Temourah, and the Gematria,
which however are not ‘books’, as he says, but kabbalistic methods of
interpretation! We shall stop here, but it will be agreed that such errors
hardly encourage one to blindly accept the author’s assertions on less easily
verifiable points and to grant an unreserved confidence to his Egyptological
theories...
Xavier
Guichard: Eleusis Alesia: EnquSte sw les
origenes de la civilisation europiene (Abbeville: E Paillart,
1936). Whatever one may think of the views expressed in this work, it is
nonetheless fitting to pay tribute to the work it represents, and to the
patience and perseverance shown by the author, who for more than twenty years
dedicated to this research all the spare time left him by his professional
duties. He has studied all the places, not only in France but in all of Europe,
with a name that seems to be derived, sometimes under rather altered forms,
from Alesia. He has found a considerable number of these, and has
noticed that all share certain common topographical particularities: they
‘occupy sites surrounded by more or less important water courses which isolate
them almost into islands,’ and‘all possess a mineral spring.’ From a
‘prehistoric’ or at the very least ‘proto-historic’ epoch, these ‘alesian
sites’ were chosen, because of their privileged locations, as ‘meeting-places’
(this is the original meaning of their name) and soon became centers of
habitation, which would seem to be confirmed by the numerous traces generally
found there. In short.
all of this is perfectly
plausible, and only shows that in those regions what is called ‘civilization'
goes back very much further than is ordinarily supposed, and that since that
time there has not been any real interruption. But we do have reservations
about the assimilation of certain names; even that of Alesia with Eleusis
is not as obvious as the author seems to believe, and in general it is
regrettable that certain of his speculations bear witness to insufficient or
unsure linguistic knowledge on many points; but even leaving the more doubtful
cases aside, there still remain enough, especially in Western Europe, to justify
what we have just said. Moreover, it goes without saying that the existence of
this ancient ‘civilization’ does not in any way surprise us, whatever its
origin and characteristics may have been—questions to which we shall return
later.
But there is still
something else which seems even more extraordinary: the author has noted that
the‘alesian sites’ were regularly laid out according to lines radiating from a
center and running from one end of Europe to the other; he has found twenty
four such lines, which he calls ‘alesian itineraries’, and which all converge
on Mount Poupet near Alaise, at the Doubs.[71]
Besides this system of geodesic lines there is even a second system formed by a
‘meridian’, an ‘equinoctial’, and two ‘solstitials’, whose center is in
another point of the same‘alesia’, marked by a place with the name of Myon. And
there is even a series of‘alesian sites’ (some of which coincide with the
preceding ones) marking out lines that correspond exactly to the different
degrees of longitude and latitude. All this forms a rather complex ensemble,
and unfortunately it cannot be said that everything seems to be absolutely
rigorous. Thus the twenty-four lines of the first system do not all form equal
angles; moreover, one needs only a very slight error of direction in the
starting-point in order to have a considerable deviation at a certain
distance, something that leaves a rather larger degree of‘approximation’; there
are also isolated ‘alesian sites’ outside of these lines, hence exceptions or
anomalies... On the other hand, it is hard to see what the special importance
of the central ‘alesia’ can have been; it is possible that it really did have
one at some distant period, but it is rather astonishing that no trace of it
has survived apart from a few ‘legends’ which are in no way exceptional, and
which are also associated with many other places. In any case, this is
an unresolved question
that in the present state of things is perhaps even insoluble. Be that as it
may, there is another more serious objection which the author has not
considered and which is as follows: on the one hand, as we saw earlier,
the'alesian sites’ are defined by certain conditions that relate to the natural
configuration of the terrain; on the other hand, they are situated on lines
which were traced artificially by the men of a certain age: how can these two
things of a wholly different order be reconciled? The 'alesian sites' thus
have as it were two distinct definitions, and it is hard to see how they can be
reconciled; at the very least this calls for an explanation, and as long as one
is looking it must be recognized that all of this has a certain air of improbability.
It would be different if one were to say that most of the places showing
‘alesian’ characteristics were naturally distributed according to certain
determinate patterns; this might be strange, but not impossible, for it is
possible that the world is really much more ‘geometric’ than is thought; and in
this case, people would only have had to recognize the existence of these
lines and to transform them into roads linking their different‘alesian’
establishments; if the lines in question are not a simple ‘cartographic’
illusion, we hardly see how they can be accounted for otherwise.
We have just spoken of
roads, and it is really this which implies the existence on the ‘alesian
itineraries’ of certain ‘distance markers’ consisting of places most of which
bear names like Calais, Versailles, Myon, and Millid res. The distances of
these places from the center are exact multiples of a unit of measure to which
the author gives the conventional name ‘alesian stadium’; and what is
particularly remarkable is that this unit, which would have been the prototype
of the Greek stadium, the Roman mile, and the Gallic league, is equal to the
sixth part of a degree, which implies that the men who determined its length
knew with precision the true dimensions of the terrestrial sphere. On this
subject, the author points to facts indicating that the knowledge possessed by
the geographers of‘classical’ antiquity such as Strabo and Ptolemy, far from
being the result of their own discoveries, represented the remnants of a much
more ancient or even ‘prehistoric’ science, of which the greater part had by
then been lost. What is astonishing is that in spite of such acknowledgments,
he accepts the ‘evolutionist’ theories on which ‘prehistory’ such as is taught
‘officially’ is built. Whether he truly accepts them or simply does not dare
risk contradicting them, there is something in his attitude which is
not entirely logical and
which greatly weakens his thesis. In fact, this aspect of the question can only
be clarified by the idea of traditional sciences, and this appears nowhere in
this study; there is not the least suspicion that there even existed a science
whose origin was other than ‘empirical’ and which was not formed 'progressively
by a long series of observations by means of which man is supposed to have
emerged little by little from a so-called 'primitive' ignorance, which is here
simply carried back a little further into the past than is common.
Of course the same lack of
any traditional information also affects the way the origin of the ‘alesian
civilization’ is envisaged; the truth is that at the beginning, and even much
later, all things had a ritual and ‘sacred’ character; thus there is no need to
ask whether ‘religious’ influences (an inappropriate word in any case) affected
this or that particular point, a question which conies from an all too modern
point of view and sometimes even has the effect of completely reversing
certain relationships. Thus, even if it is conceded that the designation
‘Champs-Elysees’ is related to the ‘alesian’ names (which seems rather
hypothetical), one cannot conclude that the abode of the dead was conceived after
the model of the inhabited areas near which the bodies were buried, but on the
contrary, that these places themselves were chosen or arranged in conformity
with the ritual exigencies governed by that idea, which at that time certainly
counted for much more than simple ‘utilitarian’ preoccupations, even if these
latter really existed as such at a time when human life was entirely regulated
by traditional knowledge. On the other hand, it is possible that the ‘elysian
myths’ were connected with ‘chthonian’ cults (and what vve have explained about
the symbolism of the cave would even explain in certain cases their
relationship with the initiatic‘mysteries’), but again it would have been
appropriate to explain more fully the meaning attributed to this assertion. In
any case, the ‘Mother-Goddess’ was undoubtedly something quite different than
‘Nature’, unless by this are understood Natura naturtms, which is no
longer a ‘naturalist’conception at all. We must add that a predominance given
to the‘Mother- Goddess’ does not seem to go back beyond the beginning of the Kali-
Ytiga, of which it is quite a clear characteristic; and this perhaps allows
one to ‘date’ the ‘alesian civilization’ more exactly, that is, to determine
the cyclic period to which it must be connected. Here there is assuredly
something earlier than ‘history’ in the ordinary sense of the word, but
nonetheless already very far removed from the true origins.
Finally, the author seems
bent on establishing that ‘European civilization’ had its origin in Europe
itself, apart from any foreign influences, especially Eastern ones; but this
is not really how the question should be put. We know that the primordial
origin of tradition, and accordingly of all ‘civilization’, was in fact
hyperborean, and neither Eastern nor Western; but at the age in question, it is
evident that one can envisage a secondary current that more directly gave birth
to this ‘alesian civilization’, and in fact various indications make us think
especially here of the Atlantean current during the period when it was
spreading from West to East after the disappearance of Atlantis itself. Of
course this is only a suggestion, but it is one that at least is able to
include in the framework of traditional data all that can justifiably be based
on the results of those investigations. In any case, there is no doubt that a
question such as that of the ‘alesian sites’ can only be treated completely and
accurately from the point of view of‘sacred geography’; but it must be said
that among the ancient traditional sciences, the reconstruction of this
science would today raise altogether insurmountable difficulties; and in the
presence of certain enigmas encountered in this domain, one may wonder whether,
even during periods where no notable cataclysm occurred, the ‘countenance’ of
the terrestrial world has not sometimes changed in a very strange way.
NOel
de la Houssaye: Les Bronzes italiotes archaiques et
leur sym- bolique. (Paris: Editions du Trident, 1938).
This study begins with a consideration of the origins of coinage in the
Mediterranean basin, a rather obscure subject for which, as for so many other
things, it does not seem possible to go back beyond the sixth century bc. In any case, the author understands
well enough that‘for the ancients coinage was a sacred thing’, contrary to the
wholly profane conception that the moderns have of it—and that this explains
the character of the symbols which it bore; one could go even further, we
think, and see these symbols as the mark of control exercised by a spiritual
authority. What follows more particularly concerns Rome and Italy, and is much
more hypothetical: relating the name of Aeneas to the Latin name for bronze [aenetis],
that even if not impossible, seems rather questionable; and it is perhaps a
rather restricted interpretation of the legend of Aeneas to see in the
different stages of his journeys nothing more than the spread of bronze
coinage. Whatever importance this may
have had, however, it can
only be a secondary fact, doubtless linked to an entire tradition. Be that as
it may, what seems to us most improbable is the idea that the Aeneas legend
can have any connection with Atlantis. To begin with, Aeneas’s journeys from
Asia Minor to Italy obviously do not have their starting-point in the West;
next, they refer to a time which, even if it cannot be precisely determined, is
in any event several thousand years after the disappearance of Atlantis. But
this over-imaginative theory, as well as some linguistic fantasies on which we
shall not dwell, must probably be attributed to the fact that the study in
question first appeared in part in the journal Atlantis...
The enumeration of the
symbols figuring on the coins seems to be as complete as possible, and synoptic
tables have been added at the end of the work that allow one to see their
distribution on the circumference of the Mediterranean basin; but there could
have been much more to say on the meaning of these symbols, and in this respect
there are indeed some quite astonishing gaps. Thus, we do not understand how
one can say that the prow of a ship associated with the figure of (anus on the
Roman «s,H 'concerns Saturn, and him alone,’ when it is quite well
known that the ship or the barque was one of the attributes of [anus himself;
and it is curious too that with regard to Saturn, what is called the 'pastoral
era’ is really the 'agricultural era', that is to say exactly the opposite,
since the shepherds are essentially nomadic peoples while the farmers are
sedentary. How then could the'pastoral era’ really coincide with the ‘formation
of towns’? What is said of the Dioscuri’5 scarcely clarifies the
meaning, and the same goes for the Kabiri.[72]
But above all, how is it that the author docs not seem to have observed that
the symbolism of the latter is closely related to metallurgy, and even more
particularly to copper, something which would have had a direct bearing on his
subject?
Noei.
de la Houssaye: Le Phoenix, po^me symbolique.
(Paris: Editions du Trident, n.d.). We are not qualified to appraise a poem as
such, but, from the symbolic point of view this poem seems to us less
clear than might be hoped,
and even the essentially ‘cyclic* and 'solar* character of the myth of the
phoenix does not emerge very clearly; as for the symbol of the egg, we confess
that we have not managed to grasp how it is envisaged here. In spite of its
title, the inspiration of the whole gives the impression of being more
‘philosophical’ than symbolic; on the other hand, the author appears to
seriously believe in the existence of an organization called the ‘Brothers of
Heliopolis’ and in its links with an Egyptian tradition. Europeans do have
rather curious ideas about Egypt... Moreover, is he quite sure that it is the
Heliopolis in Egypt with which the phoenix was originally associated? There was
also a Heliopolis in Syria, and if one recalls that the region of Syria did not
always coincide exactly with the country that bears this name today, this can
bring us nearer to its origins. The truth, in fact, is that these various
relatively recent ‘Cities of the Sun’ were only secondary images of the
hyperborean ‘solar earth’, and thus, beyond all the derivative forms that are
‘historically’ known, the symbolism of the phoenix is directly linked to the
primordial tradition itself.
Lettres d’Humaniti
(Paris: Society d’Mitions ‘Le Belles Lettres’, ser. 1942-45). Lettres
d’Humaniti, a publication of L’Association Guillaume Bud^, contains in its
third volume (1944) a curious essay by Paul Maury entitled Le Secret de
Virgile et I’architecture des Bucoliques. The author in fact has discovered
there a veritable ‘architecture’, almost as astonishing as that of the Divine
Comedy. It would be difficult to summarize all this, but we shall try to
point out at least its principal features. Firstly he has noticed a symmetry
between eclogues I and ix (the ordeals of the Earth), It and vin (the ordeals
of Love), nt and vti (the liberating Music), and iv and vi (the supernatural
Revelations); these eight eclogues form a double progression, ascending for the
first four and descending for the last four, that is to say a sort of double
ladder whose summit is occupied by eclogue v (Daphnis), which he calls‘the
Bucolic major’. There remains eclogue x (Gallus), which is opposed to eclogue v
‘as profane love is opposed to sacred love, as is the imperfectly initiated man
of flesh to the ideal of man reformed’; these are ‘the two limits between which
the souls circulate, between the terraqueous globe and Olympus.’ The whole thus
forms the plan of a kind of ‘chapel’, or rather of a ‘Pythagorean basilica* of
which eclogue v constitutes the apse while eclogue x is at
the opposite extremity;
between the two the other eclogues are ranged laterally on one side and the
other, those which are in symmetry naturally facing each other. But this is
not all, and the remarks which follow are even more extraordinary. These refer
to the number of the verses of the different eclogues, in which are found other
multiple symmetries which certainly can only be intentional. At first glance,
it is true, a few of these numerical symmetries appear to be only approximate;
but the slight differences thus noted have led the author to work out and
‘localize’ certain alterations of the text (verses omitted or added), but
these are very few in any event and coincide precisely with those which had
already been suspected for purely philological reasons. That done, the
symmetries all become exact; unfortunately, it is not possible for us to
reproduce here the various tables in which these symmetries are presented and
without which they can hardly be comprehensible. We will only say, therefore,
that the principal numbers evident here and which are repeated with an emphasis
that is significant, are 183 (a number by which, according to a passage from
Plutarch, ‘the Pythagoreans represented the harmony of the great Cosmos
itself’), 333, and 666; the last is also ‘a Pythagorean number, a triangular
number of 36, itself a triangle of 8, the double Ogdoad of the Tetrad’; we
shall add that this is essentially a ‘solar’ number, and point out that the
meaning attributed to it in the Apocalypse does not constitute a ‘reversal of
values’ as the author says, but really represents an application of the
opposite aspect of that number, which possesses itself, as do so many other
symbols, both a ‘benefic’ and a ‘malefic’ meaning. It was obviously the first
of these two meanings that Virgil had in view; now is it correct to say that he
wished particularly to make the number 666 ‘the cipher of Caesar’, which would
appear to be confirmed by the fact that, according to the commentator Servius,
the Daphnis of the central eclogue v would be none other than Caesar himself?
There is certainly nothing implausible in this, and other rather remarkable
parallels are invoked in support of this interpretation. Let us add that this
cannot be seen as a mere ‘political’ application in the ordinary sense of the
word, if one thinks of the not even exclusively‘religious’ side of Caesar
(which the author recognizes) but of his truly‘esoteric’ role. We cannot pursue
this question any further, but we think we have said enough to show the value
of this work, and we particularly recommend it to those interested in the
symbolism of numbers.
In the same publication,
other articles devoted to Hippocrates call for a few remarks. Much is presently
being said in medical circles of a ‘return to Hippocrates’, but strangely
enough this seems to be viewed in two different and even contrary ways, for
while some understand it, and rightly so, in the sense of a restoration of
traditional ideas, others, as is the case here, would like to turn it
altogether into its opposite. The latter would attribute to Hippocratic
medicine a ‘philosophical’ character, that is, according to the meaning they
give to the word ‘rationalist’, even a ‘secular’ character (do they forget then
that Hippocrates himself came from a priestly family, failing which he could
not have been a physician?), and with this as justification oppose it to the
ancient sacerdotal medicine, in which they naturally see, in conformity with
the customary modern prejudice, only‘empiricism’ and ‘superstition’! We do not
believe it pointless to draw this to the attention of the partisans of
traditional Hippocratism and to urge them, when the occasion arises, to set
things right and to react against this unfortunate interpretation. It would be
truly regrettable to allow a movement which, even if as yet it indicates no
more than a tendency, is certainly not lacking in interest from more than one
point of view, to be diverted from its normal and legitimate aim.
Lettres d’Humanite,
volume four (1945) contains a long study of Pierre Grimal’s Le Dieu Janus et
les origines de Rome, where there are found many interesting and little
known historical facts, although unfortunately no really important conclusions
can be drawn from them. The author is certainly right in criticizing the
‘historians of religions’ who wish to reduce everything to ‘ideas’ as ‘simple
and crude’ as those of ‘forces of nature’ or ‘social functions’; but are his
own explanations, even if more subtle, really any more satisfactory? Whatever
one might think of the more or less hypothetical existence of an ancient word ianus,
meaning the ‘action of going’ and consequently having the meaning of‘passage’,
we do not see how this allows one to maintain that there was originally no
relationship between this word and the name of the god Janus, for a simple
difference of declension most certainly does not prevent their sharing a
common root; in truth, these are nothing but philological subtleties with no
serious import. Even if one admits that the name of Janus was initially not
Latin (because, for Grimal, Janus would have been first and foremost a ‘foreign
god’).
why would the root i,‘to
go’, which is common to Latin and Sanskrit, not be found in other languages?
Another rather plausible hypothesis could still be put forward: why could not
the Romans, when they adopted this god, have translated his name, whatever it
may have been, by an equivalent in their own language, just as they later
changed the names of the Greek gods in order to assimilate them to their own?
In sum, Grimal’s thesis is that the ancient Janus could never have been a ‘door
god’, and that this attribute would have been attached to him only‘belatedly’,
as a result of a confusion between two words which were quite different
although quite similar in form. But all this does not seem at all convincing to
us, for the assumption of a so-called ‘fortuitous’ coincidence never explains
anything. Moreover, it is obvious that the deeper significance of the symbolism
of the ‘door god’ escapes him; has he even noticed its close connection with
the role of Janus in the annual cycle, which nevertheless brings him back quite
directly to the fact that this same Janus was, as he says, a ‘god of Heaven’ as
well as a god of initiation? This last point, moreover, is passed over entirely
in silence; it is well said, however, that ‘Janus was an initiator, the very
god of initiators,’ but this term is taken there only in an indirect and wholly
profane sense which in reality has absolutely nothing to do with initiation...
Some rather curious remarks are made on a god Bifrons existing elsewhere
than in Rome, especially in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean, but it is
very much out of proportion to wish to conclude from this that ‘in Rome Janus
is only the incarnation of a Syrian Uranus,’ since, as we have often said,
similarities between different traditions are very far from necessarily
implying‘borrowings’ from the one to the other. But can one ever make this
understood to those who believe that the ‘historical method’ is applicable to
everything?
In the same volume there
is an article entitled ‘Beatrice dans la vie et I’oeuvre de Dante’ which does
not present any interest from our point of view, but which does call fora
remark: how is it possible, after the appearance of so many works on the Fedeli
d’Amore written by Luigi Valli and many others, that one can be ignorant
when dealing with Dante (or at least affect such ignorance) of the existence of
an esoteric and initiatic significance? The only allusion here is to the
theological interpretation by R. P. Mandonnet, which is certainly quite
insufficient but which, although wholly exoteric, at least acknowledges a
meaning higher than the crude ‘literalism’ which only sees in
Beatrice ‘a woman of flesh
and blood’. Nevertheless, this ‘literalism’ is still upheld as lending itself
to ‘a more psychological and more human explanation,’ that is to say, in short,
one more to the taste of the moderns and more in conformity with ‘esthetic’ and
‘literary’ prejudices which were quite foreign to Dante and his
contemporaries!
Georges
Dum^zil: L’HMtage indo-europ^en d Rome
(Paris: Galli- mard, 1949). Dumezil set out from an altogether secular point of
view, but in the course of his researches he came across certain traditional
data from which he drew conclusions which are not without interest but which
are not always entirely justified and should not be accepted without
reservations, all the more so as he almost always tries to support them with
linguistic considerations of which the least that can be said is that they are
very hypothetical. Furthermore, as the data is necessarily very fragmentary,
he has ‘fastened’ exclusively and as it were systematically on certain things
such as the ‘tripartite’ division, which he insists on finding everywhere, and
which in fact does exist in many cases, but which is not the only one to be
taken into account here, even if we confine ourselves to his specialized
domain. In this volume he has undertaken to sum up the present state of his
labors, for it must be recognized that he at least does not claim to have
succeeded in reaching any final results, and moreover his continuing
discoveries have already led him to modify his conclusions on several
occasions. What is essentially involved here is the sifting out of those
elements in the Roman tradition which appear to go back directly to the epoch
when the peoples called by common consent‘Indo-European’ had not yet split into
distinct branches which thereafter existed independently of the others. The
basis of his theory is the ternary of divinities consisting of Jupiter, Mars,
and Quirinus,[73] which
he regards as corresponding to three social functions; moreover, he seems to
try rather too hard to reduce everything to the social point of view, which
easily risks leading to a reversal of the real relationships between principles
and their applications. With him there is even a certain rather ‘juridical’
turn of mind which obviously limits his horizon; we do not know whether he
acquired this because he devoted himself primarily to the
study of the Roman
civilization, or on the contrary because, already having this tendency, Roman
civilization particularly attracted him, but in any case the two do not seem
entirely unconnected. We cannot enter here into the details of the questions
treated in this book, but we must at the very least point out a truly curious
remark, all the more so because upon it a great part of these considerations
rest. This is that many accounts of events presented elsewhere as 'myths’ are
found again, with all their principal features, in what ts given as the history
of the first days of Rome, whence it should be concluded that the Romans
transformed into 'ancient history’ what was really originally their
'mythology’. To judge from the examples Dumlzil gives it does appear that there
is some truth in this, although one should perhaps not misuse this
interpretation by generalizing it beyond measure. It is true that one could
also ask whether history, especially'sacred history’, may not in certain cases
indeed reproduce the myth and offer a ‘humanized’ image of it; but it goes
without saying that such a question, which in short is none other than that of
the symbolic value of historical facts, cannot even occur to the modernist
spirit.
V.I. = Le Voile d'Isis,
E.T. = Etudes Traditionnelles
|
PT. I, 1. REVIEWS |
E. T.
Oct. 1938 PT.IV, 1. v.l. April 1931 M.
Eliade, E. T. Dec. 1949 pt. iv, 2. V. I. April 1932 G.
Georgel I, E.T. Oct. 1949 pt. 1 v, 3. E. T. Dec. 1936 G. Georgel II, E. T. Jan.
1949 reviews Enel 1, E. T.
Nov. 1936 Enel II, E. T. Nov. 1937 |
|
PT. II, 1. PT. II, 2. |
V. I. Oct.
1929 X.
Guicbard, E. E June 1938 V.i.
Aug.-Sept. 1931 N.
Houssaye I, E. T. Jan. 1945 N, Houssaye II, E. T.
Jan. 1935 |
|
PT.111,1. PT. Ill, 2. PT. in, 3. PT. in, 4. PT.in, 5. REVIEWS |
V.I. Dec.
1931 Lettres
d’ Humanity,1 and 11: V.I. May
1933 E.
T. Jan.-Feb. 1948, Jan. 1945 V. I.
Aug.-Sept. 1933 G.
Dum^zil, E. T. Dec. 1949 ignis 1925 V.I. Dec.
1930 M. Bulard, E. T. July 1936 C. Marston, E. T. Dec. 1936 |
3. Those who want precise
references here can find them in the remarkable work of B.G. Tilak, The
Arctic Home in the Veda, which seems unfortunately to have remained
completely unknown in Europe, no doubt because its author was a non-
Westernized Hindu.
6. This name Varnhl
is applied to the 'sacred land’ and symbolically likened to a certain aspect of
the Shakti of Vishnu, the latter then being envisaged especially
in his third avatara. There would be much to say on this subject, and
perhaps we will someday return to it. This same name has never been used to
designate Europe, as Saint Yves d'Alveydre seems to have believed; on the other
hand, one might have
3. We think that the
duration of the Atlantean civilization must have been equal to a ‘great year’
understood in the sense of the half-period of the precession of the equinoxes;
as to the cataclysm that put an end to it, certain concordant data seem to
indicate that it took place 7,200 years before the year 720 of the Kali-Yuga,
a year which is itself the starting-point of a known era, but of which those
who still use it today no longer seem to know the origin or the significance.
1. The initial aleph,
which exists in the root, disappears in the derived word, which is not an
exceptional fact. This aleph does not in any way constitute a prefix
having an independent meaning, as is thought by Latouche, whose linguistic conceptions
are too often fanciful.
2. This has not failed to
cause certain errors: thus, we have seen some claim to link the Talmud
to the ‘Kabbalah’, understood in the esoteric sense; indeed, the Talmud
is certainly from the 'tradition’, but is purely exoteric, religious, and
legal.
14. A unit of money. Et>.
15. The twins Castor and
Pollux. En.
[1] See especially The King of the World. Ed.
[2] This article, entitled ‘Thunderbolts’, appeared
in the May 1929 issue of Le Voile d’Isis, and forms chap. 27 of Symbols
of Sacred Science,
[3] This question seems to be linked to that of the
inclination of the terrestrial axis, which, according to certain traditional
ideas, would not have existed from the beginning, but was a consequence of what
in Western language is called the 'Fall of Man’.
[4] [The King of the World, chap, io, and
note 2.] In regard to the Atlantean Tula, we think it worth reproducing
here a piece of information that we gathered from a geography column in the Journal
des Debats (January 22,1929), entitled ‘Les Indiens de I’isthme de Panama’,
whose importance certainly escaped even the author himself: ‘In 1925, a great
party of the Cuna Indians rose up, killed the Panamanian police that lived in
their territory, and founded the Independent Republic of Tdi, whose flag
was a swastika on an orange background with a red border. This republic
still exists at the present time? This seems to indicate that, in regard to the
traditions of ancient America, much more still exists than one might be
tempted to believe.
[5] The article, entitled ‘The Triple Enclosure of
the Druids’, appeared in Le Voile tllsis in 1929. and forms chap. \z
of Symbols of Sacreil Science.
[6] Le Cour reproaches ns for having said that his
collaborator ‘certainly does not have the gift of languages,’ which he finds ‘an
unfortunate statement’; alas, he quite simply confuses the ‘gift of languages’
with linguistic knowledge, whereas what is involved has absolutely nothing to
do with erudition.
[7] This is the same Sarachaga who wrote zwadisca
for swastika; one of his disciples, to whom we once made this
observation, assured us that he must have had a reason for writing it thus—a
justification we find a little too facile!
[8] See particularly The King of the World.
[9] See our study The Symbolism of the Cross.
[10] Among the Arabs, too, the custom is to count the
hours of the day beginning with the maghreb, that is, the setting of the
sun.
[11] On the other hand, the deluges of Deucalion
and Ogyges among the Greeks, seem to relate to periods even more limited
and to partial cataclysms later than that of Atlantis.
[12] On the symbolism of thrse three colors, see our
study The lisotcrism of Dilute.
[13] See The King of the World, end of chap.
6.
[14] Man and His Becoming according to the
Vedanta, chap. 14. Cf. also The Spiritist Fallacy, ppiK-ns
[15] This is indicated in the relationship which
exists in Arabic between the words niir.'light'and nHr/fire’ (in the sense of
heat).
[16] Although the initial ‘K’ has been retained in
spelling Kabbalah, since this represents current practice, when other
terms and roots are introduced, the letter 'Q' has been used, as in the
original French and in common philological practice. Ed.
[17] We cal) attention to the fact, which perhaps is
not sufficiently noticed, that these two languages, which share most of their
roots, can very often shed light on one another.
[18] In French, ilevant and avaitt.
Ei>.
[19] From which comes the word qadam, meaning
‘foot’, that is, what serves for walking.
[20] Al-iitsan at-qadim, that is, 'primordial
Man’ is, in Arabic, one of the designations of‘Universal Man’ (synonym of Al-insUn
al-kHmil, which is literally 'perfect or complete Man’); it is precisely
the Hebraic Adam Qadmon.
[21] In French, Orient, whence orientul,
‘eastern’. As pointed out below, the Latin oriri means ‘to rise’. En.
[22] It is curious to note that Christ is sometimes
called Oriens, a designation that can doubtless be related to the
symbolism of the rising sun; but by reason of the double meaning we are
indicating here it is possible that we should also, and even above all, relate
it to the Hebrew Elohi Qedem or the expression designating the Word as
the 'Ancient of Days’, that is, He who is before the days, or the Principle of
the cycles of manifestation represented symbolically as ‘days’ by various
traditions (the 'days of BrahmS’ in the Hindu tradition, the ‘days of the
creation’ in the Hebrew Genesis).
[23] See the chapter ‘Kabbalah’ above; we ask our
readers to refer also to the study ‘The Science of Letters’, which forms
chapter 8 of Symbols of Snored Science.
[24] This last argument is equally valid against the
claim of linking Islamic esoterism to the same Neoplatonism. Among the Arabs,
only philosophy is of Greek origin, as is the case wherever we meet it with
everything to which the name of philosophy (in Arabic, falsafah) can
properly be applied, this name being as it were a mark of this origin; but here
philosophy is no longer involved at all.
[25] This can be applied particularly to the
similarity of expression we have already pointed out between the Kabbalah
and Islamic esoterism. Regarding this last point there is a rather curious
remark to make: its ‘exoterist’ adversaries, in Islam itself, have often tried
to deprecate it by attributing to it a foreign origin; and under the pretext
that many of the best-known Sufis were Persian, they claim to see in it
borrowings from Mazdaism, even extending this gratuitous affirmation to the
'science of letters'. Now, there is no trace of anything at all like this
among the ancient Persians, whereas this science exists on the contrary in a
very similar form in Judaism, something that is explained very simply by the
‘affinities’ to which we alluded, not to mention the more remote community of
origin to which we will have to return. But even though this fact is perhaps
the only one that could give some appearance of likelihood to the idea of a
borrowing from a pre-lslamic and nonArabic doctrine, it seems to have totally
escaped them!
[26] (t is hardly necessary to say that certain
stories in which Moses and Orpheus both receive initiation at the same time in
the temples of Egypt are only fantasies with no serious basis; and what has not
been said on Egyptian initiation since AbM Terrasson’s Sithost
[27] We are speaking here of direct derivation. Even
if the primordial tradition is Hyperborean, and if consequently all traditional
forms without exception are in the end linked to that origin, there are cases
like that of the Hebrew tradition where this could only be very indirectly and
through a long series of intermediaries, which would moreover be very difficult
to reconstruct exactly.
[28] Algebra, on the other hand, is of Indian origin,
and was only introduced into the West much later by the Arabs, who gave to it
the name it has retained (al-jabr).
[29] On this point, see chapter 21 of The Reign of
Quantity anil The Signs of the Times, entitled ‘Cain and Abel-.
We must not forget, as we indicated at the time, that in constructing the
Temple, Solomon had recourse to foreign workers, a particularly significant
fact because of the intimate relation which exists between geometry and
architecture.
[30] Let us recall that the word genmtria
(which, being of Greek origin, must, like a certain number of other terms of
the same provenance, have been introduced at a relatively recent period,
something that does not mean that what it designates may not have existed
earlier), is not derived fromgftuwtrw.as is often claimed, but from grammateia,
so that once more it is the science of letters that is involved.
[31] It is only with Christianity that one can find
something like this in Greek, and then it is manifestly a question of a
transposition of a symbolism whose origin is Hebraic. In this regard we are
alluding principally to the Apocalypse; we could probably also find things of
the same order in what remains of Gnostic writings.
[32] Even in the symbolic interpretation of the words
(for example in Plato’s Cratylus), a consideration of the letters of
which they are composed does not intervene; it is the same, moreover, for nirukM
in the Sanskrit language, and if in certain aspects of the Hindu tradition
there nonetheless exists a symbolism of letters, even one that is well
developed, it is based on principles entirely different from those in question
here.
[33] This is one of the reasons why the idea, which
some extol under the pretext of‘convenience’, of writing Arabic with Latin
characters is altogether unacceptable, and even absurd (this without prejudice
to other more contingent considerations, like the impossibility of establishing
a truly exact transcription because of the very feet that all the Arabic
letters do not have their equivalent in the Latin alphabet). The real reasons
why certain orientalists propagate this idea are moreover quite different from
those they profess and must be sought in their ‘anti-traditional’ designs and
in preoccupations of a political order; but that is another story...
[34] We say ‘based on' because in both cases these
symbolisms effectively constitute the sensible ‘support’ and as it were the
‘body’ of the science of numbers.
[35] We have used the expression ’science of numbers’
to avoid any confusion with profane arithmetic, though we could perhaps adopt a
term such as ‘arithmol- ogy’; but because of the ‘barbarism’ of its hybrid
composition we must reject the recently coined term ‘numerology’, by which some
seem to want to designate a sort of‘divinatory art’ that has almost no
connection with the true traditional science of numbers.
[36] Ui Kabbalejuive: histoire et doctrine, 2
vols., in octavo, of 520 and 460 pages (E. Nourry: Paris, 1923).
[37] For more on Fabre d’Olivet and his works, see The
Great Triad, chaps. 21 and 22. Ed.
[38] See Perspectives on Initiation,
especially chap 1. Ed.
[39] See The Esoterism of Dante, chap 8.
Ei>.
[40] See The Esoterisin of Dante, chap 8. Eo.
[41] See The King of the World, chap. 10,04. Ed.
[42] See Insights into Christian Esoterism,
chaps. 4 and 5. El>.
[43] See Perspectives on Initiation, chap. 13.
Ed.
[44] G. Laterza: Bari, 1931. This work has since
appeared in a French translation. [See the recent English translation, The
Hermetic Tradition: Symbols & Teachings of the Royal Art (Inner
Traditions International: Rochester, VT, 1995). Ed.]
[45] Cf. Perspectives on Initiation, chap. 40.
[Cf. also Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power. Ed.]
[46] See in particular Spiritual Authority and
Temporal Power.
[47] There exists a treatise of Al-Ghazzali bearing
this title.
[48] We have considered this question in Spiritual
Authority and Temporal Power. With regard to the expression ‘Royal Art’,
which Freemasonry still uses, we may note here the curious resemblance between
the names Hermes and Hiram; needless to say, this does not mean
that these two names share a common linguistic origin, but their composition is
nonetheless identical, and the combination HRM, from which both are essentially
formed, also suggests other comparisons.
[49] We must emphasize that Hermeticism is really of
Hellene-Egyptian provenance, anil that one cannot without abuse extend this
term to what under diverse forms corresponds to it in other traditions, any
more than one can, for example, call ‘Kabbalah’ a doctrine that is not
specifically Hebraic. No doubt, if we were writing in Hebrew, we would use ijiibMah
to designate the tradition in general, just as, writing in Arabic, we would
call initiation under any form hifwwttfi but transposed into another
language the words in Hebrew, Arabic, etc., must be reserved for the
traditional forms of which their languages of origin are the respective
expression, whatever may otherwise he the comparisons or even the assimilations
to which they may legitimately give rise; anil one must not in any case confuse
a certain order of knowledge, envisaged in itself, with -some special form it
may have taken on in particular historical circumstances.
[50] See Man and Hit Recoining according to the
Vedanta, chap. 21.
[51] As is said in the Rasd'U Ikhm'in asSafa,
‘The world is a great man and man is a little world’ (al-idam insitn kubir
widl-inslitt (dam teghir). It is moreover by virtue of this correspondence
that a certain realization in the ‘microcosmic’ order can bring about, as an
accidental consequence for the being that has achieved it, an outward
realization relating to the ‘macrocosmic’ order without it having been
especially sought for itself, as we remarked in certain cases of metallic
transmutation in the preceding chapter,‘The Hermetic Tradition’.
[52] Astrologically, the two functions of messenger
of the gods and psychopomp can be respectively related to a diurnal and
nocturnal aspect; on the other hand, the same correspondence can be found in
them as between the ascending and descending currents symbolized by the two
serpents of the caduceus.
[53] The name Budha must not be confused with Buddha,
the name of Shakyamuni, although both obviously have the same root meaning;
moreover, certain aspects of the planetary Budha were later transferred
to the historical Buddha, who is represented as having been
'illuminated’ by the irradiation of this star, whose essence he is said to have
absorbed. Let us note here that the mother of the Buddha is called Mayil-Devi
and that, for the Greeks and Romans, Maia was also the mother of Hermes
or Mercury.
[54] The change of b to v or w
is a very common linguistic phenomenon.
[55] 'Wednesday'has exactly the same connotation in
English. E».
[56] On this subject see 'The Language of the Bir ds'
(Symbols of Sacred Science, chap. 7), where we pointed out that the
serpent is opposed or associated with the bird accor ding to whether it is
envisaged in its malefic or benefit aspect. We will add that a figure like that
of an eagle holding a serpent in its talons (which is to be found precisely in
Mexico) does not evoke exclusively the idea of tire antagonism represented in
the Hindu tradition by the combat of (lunula against the Naga. On
occasion, especially in heraldic symbolism, rhe serpent is replaced by a sword
(a substitution that is all the more striking when the weapon in question has
the form of a (laming sword, which can be linked io the lightning in the clutch
of Jupiter's eagle), and the sword, in its highest signification, represents
Wisdom and the power of the Word (sec, for example, Rev. 1:16). — It may be
noted that one of the chief symbols of the Egyptian Thoth was the ibis,
destroyer of reptiles, which on this basis became a symbol of Christ: but in
the caduceus of Hermes we have the serpent in its two contrary aspects, as in
the figure of the medieval 'amphisbaena' (see The King of the World,
chap. 3, n 20).
)(). Should it not be concluded from this
assimilation that the Book ifFjtoch, or at any rate what is known by
this name, must be considered to be an integral part of
[58] It is said that they are to appear on earth
again at the end of the cycle; they are the two'witnesses’ mentioned in Rev.
11.
[59] He incarnates as it were the nature of the
‘philosophic fire’, and one knows that, according to the Bible narrative, the
Prophet Elijah was taken up to heaven on a ‘chariot of fire’; this is related
to the ‘fiery vehicle’ (taijasa in the Hindu doctrine) which, in the
human being, corresponds to the subtle state (see Man and His Becoming
according to the VediMa, chap. 14).
[60] See Man and His Becoming according to the
Veddnta, chap. 1. Let us also recall, from the alchemical point of view,
the correspondence between the sun and gold, which the Hindu tradition
designates as ‘mineral light’; the aurum potabile of the Hermeticists is
moreover the same as the ‘draught of immortality’, which is also called ‘liquor
of gold’ in Taoism.
[61] See The Symbolism of the Cross, chap. 9.
[62] We hardly need remark that the case of books
ritually placed in a true tomb is completely different.
[63] On this question we sometimes come across
strange and more or less completely fanciful assertions; thus in the Occult
Magazine, organ of the HBofL, we found an allusion to the ‘seventy-eight
leaves of the book of Hermes, which lies buried in one of the Pyramids’ (Dec.
1885, p8"). This is obviously a reference to the Tarot, but this has never
been represented as a Book of Hermes, of Thoth, or of Enoch, except in certain
very recent conceptions, and it is only as‘Egyptian’ as are the Bohemians, to
whom this name has also been given. On the ‘HBofL’, see our book Theosophy:
History of a Pseudo-Religion. [See also The Spiritist Fallacy. Eo.|
[64] Still another version, no longer Arab but
Coptic, attributes the origin of the Pyramids to Shedid and Sheddad, the sons
of Ad. We really do not know what conclusions could be drawn from this, and it
does not seem that there is reason to attach any great importance to it, for
besides the fact that it is a question of‘giants’ here, we do not see what
symbolic intention it could conceal.
[65] See our study ‘Seth’, chap. 22 of Symbols of
Sacred Science. The Agathodaemon of the Greeks is often identified
with Kneph, also represented by the serpent in connection with the ‘World
Egg’, which always refers to the same symbolism. As for the Kakodaemon,
the malefic aspect of the serpent, it is evidently identical to the Set- Typhon
of the Egyptians.
[66] In addition to the correct form Hermes,
we also find in certain authors the form Armis, which is obviously a
distortion of it.
[67] Hikam is the plural of hikmah, but
both the singular and the plural forms are used in the sense of'wisdom’.
[68] It is curious to note that the word muthalleth
also designates the triangle, for one could, without forcing things too much,
find in it a link with the triangular form of the Pyramid's faces, which must
also have been determined ‘by the wisdom’ of those who designed them, and this
without taking into account that the triangle is also linked to the symbolism
of the 'Pole'; and from this last point of view it is quite evident that the
Pyramid itself is in fact only one image of the ‘sacred Mountain’.
[69] It is easy to understand that all this is
already rather remote from the primordial tradition, and there would in any
case be very little point in specially designating the latter as the common
source of two particular traditions, since it is necessarily the source of all
traditional forms without exception. One could however conclude from the order
of enumeration of the three Hermes that, insofar as it seems to have some
chronological significance, the Chaldean tradition had a certain anteriority
with respect to the Egyptian tradition.
[70] While on this subject, we will point out yet
another modern fantasy. We have noted that some attribute a considerable
importance to the fact that the Great Pyramid was never finished; indeed the
top is missing, but all we can say for certain here is that the most ancient
authors whose testimony we have, and who are still relatively recent, always
saw it truncated as it is today. To claim from this that the missing summit
corresponds to the ‘corner stone’ spoken of in the Bible and in the Gospel is
really going too far, all the more because according to much more authentically
traditional information, the stone in question would not be a 'pyramidion’ but
rather a ’keystone’, and if it was ‘rejected by the builders’, it is because
these, being initiated only into Square Masonry, were ignorant of the
secrets of Arch Masonry. Another curious thing is that the seal of the
United States portrays a truncated pyramid above which is a radiating triangle
which, while being separate and even isolated by the circle of clouds
surrounding it, seems to replace the summit; but there are also in this seal,
which certain ‘pseudo-initiatic’ organizations seek to profit from, other
details that are, to say the least, bizarre. Thus, the thirteen courses of the
pyramid are said to correspond to the thirteen tribes of Israel (counting the
two half-tribes of the sons of Joseph separately), and this is perhaps not
altogether unrelated to the real origins of certain contemporary ramblings
about the Great Pyramid, which tend Io make of it, for rather obscure reasons,
a sort of Judeo- Christian monument.
[71] A river in eastern France. Eo.
[72] A group of deities whose primary worship was in
Samothrace, associated especially with Hephaestus as being master metal
workers. En.
[73] A Roman god of war similar to Mars, but later
identified with the deified Romulus. Ed.