"17th Degree - Knight of the East & West" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)

The writings of the Essenes were full of mysticism, parables, enigmas, and allegories. They believed in the esoteric and exoteric meanings of the Scriptures; and, as we have already said, they had a warrant for that in the Scriptures themselves. They found it in the Old Testament, as the Gnostics found it in the New. The Christian writers, and even Christ himself, recognized it as a truth, that all Scripture had an inner and an outer meaning. Thus we find it said as follows, in one of the Gospels:

"Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God; but unto men that are without, all these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand. And the disciples came and said unto him, 'Why speakest Thou the truth in parables?' He answered and said unto them, 'Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given.'"

Paul, in the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, speaking of the simplest facts of the Old Testament, asserts that they are an allegory. In the 3d chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians, he declares himself a minister of the New Testament, appointed by God; "Not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth." Origen and St. Gregory held that the Gospels were not to be taken in their literal sense; and Athanasius admonishes us that "Should we understand sacred writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous
blasphemies."

Eusebius said, "Those who preside over the Holy Scriptures, philosophize over them, and expound their literal sense by allegory."

The sources of our knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines, are the books of Jezirah and Sohar, the former drawn up in the second century, and the latter a little later; but containing materials much older than themselves. In their most characteristic elements, they go back to the time of the exile. In them, as in the teachings of Zoroaster, everything that exists emanated from a source of infinite LiGHT. Before everything, existed THE AN- CIENT OF DAYS, the KING OF LIGHT; a title often given to the Creator in the Zend-Avesta and the code of the Sabaeans. With the idea so expressed is connected the pantheism of India. KING OF LIGHT, THE ANCIENT, is ALL THAT IS. He is not only the real cause of all Existences; he is Infinite (AINSOPH). He is HIMSELF: there is nothing in Him that We can call Thou.

In the Indian doctrine, not only is the Supreme Being the real cause of all, but he is the only real Existence: all the rest is illusion. In the Kabalah, as in the Persian and Gnostic doctrines, He is the Supreme Being unknown to all, the "Unknown Father." The world is his revelation, and subsists only in Him. His attri- butes are reproduced there, with different modifications, and in different degrees, so that the Universe is His Holy Splendor:it is but His Mantle; but it must be
revered in silence. All beings have emanated from the Supreme Being: The nearer a being is to Him, the more perfect it is; the more remote in the scale, the less its purity.

A ray of Light, shot from the Deity, is the cause and principle of all that exists. It is at once Father and Mother of All, in the sublimest sense. It penetrates everything; and without it nothing can exist an instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the two parts of the word I.∙. H.∙. U.∙. H.∙. emanated the FIRST-BORN of God, the Universal Form, in which are contained all beings; the Persian and Platonic Archetype of things, united with the Infinite by the primitive ray of Light.

This First-Born is the Creative Agent, Conservator, and animating Principle of the Universe. It is THE LIGHT OF LIGHT. It possesses the three Primitive Forces of the Divinity, LIGHT, SPIRIT and LIFE. As it has received what it gives, Light and Life, it is equally considered as the generative and conceptive Principle, the Primitive Man, ADAM KADMON. As such, it has revealed itself in ten emanations or Sephiroth, which are not ten different beings, nor even beings at all; but sources
of life, vessels of Omnipotence, and types of Creation. They are Sovereignty or Will, Wisdom, Intelligence, Benignity, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Permanency, and Empire. These are attributes of God; and this idea, that God re- veals Himself by His attributes, and that the human mind cannot perceive or discern God Himself, in his works, but only his mode of manifesting Himself, is a profound Truth. We know of the Invisible only what the Visible reveals.

Wisdom was called NOUS and LOGOS, lNTELLECT or the WORD. Intelligence, source of the oil of anointing, responds to the Holy Ghost of the Christian Faith.

Beauty is represented by green and yellow. Victory is YA-HOVAH-TSABAOTH, the column on the right hand, the column Jachin: Glory is the column Boaz, on the left hand. And thus our symbols appear again in the Kabalah. And again the LIGHT, the object of our labors, appears as the creative power of Deity. The circle, also, was the special symbol of the first Sephirah, Kether, or the Crown.

We do not further follow the Kabalah in its four Worlds of Spirits, Aziluth, Briah, Yezirah, and Asiah, or of emanation, creation, formation, and fabrication, one inferior to and one emerging from the other, the superior always enveloping the inferior; its doctrine that, in all that exists, there is nothing purely material; that all comes from God, and in all He proceeds by irradiation; that everything subsists by the Divine ray that penetrates creation; and all is united by the Spirit of God, which is the life of life; so that all is God; the Existences that inhabit the four worlds, inferior to each other in proportion to their distance from the Great King of Light: the contest
between the good and evil Angels and Principles, to endure until the Eternal Himself comes to end it and re-establish the primitive harmony; the four distinct parts of the Soul of Man; and the migrations of impure souls, until they are sufficiently purified to share with the Spirits of Light the contemplation of the Supreme Being whose Splendor fills the Universe.

The WORD was also found in the Phoenician Creed. As in all those of Asia, a WORD of God, written in starry characters, by the planetary Divinities, and communicated by the Demi-Gods, as a profound mystery, to the higher classes of the human race, to be communicated by them to mankind, created the world. The faith of the Phoenicians was an emanation from that ancient worship of the Stars, which in the creed of Zoroaster alone, is connected with a faith in one God. Light and Fire are the most important agents in the Phoenician faith. There is a race of children of the Light. They adored the Heaven with its Lights, deeming it the
Supreme God.

Everything emanates from a Single Principle, and a Primitive Love, which is the Moving Power of All and governs all. Light, by its union with Spirit, whereof it is but the vehicle or symbol, is the Life of everything, and penetrates everything. It should therefore be respected and honored everywhere; for everywhere it governs and controls.

The Chaldaic and Jerusalem Paraphrasts endeavored to render the phrase, DEBAR-YAHOVAH, the Word of God, a personalty, wherever they met with it. The phrase, "And God created man," is, in the Jerusalem Targum, "And the Word of IHUH created man."

So, in xxviii. Gen. 20,21, where Jacob says: "If God (IHIH ALHIM) will be with me...then shall IHUH be my ALHIM; UHIH IHUH LI LALHIM; and this stone shall be God's House (IHIH BITH ALHIM): Onkelos paraphrases it, "If the word of IHUH will be my help. . . . then the word of IHUH shall be my God."

So, in iii. Gen. 8, for "The Voice of the Lord God" (IHUH ALHIM), we have, "The Voice of the Word of IHUH." In ix. Wisdom, 1, "O God of my Fathers and Lord of Mercy! who has made all things with thy word." And in xviii. Wisdom, 15, "Thine Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven."

Philo speaks of the Word as being the same with God. So in several places he calls it the Second Divinity; the Image of God: the Divine Word that made all things: substitute, of God; and the like.

Thus when John commenced to preach, had been for ages agitated, by the Priests and Philosophers of the East and West, the great questions concerning the eternity or creation of matter: immediate or intermediate creation of the Universe by the Supreme God; the origin, object, and final extinction of evil; the relations between the intellectual and material worlds, and between God and man; and the creation, fall, redemption, and restoration to his first estate, of man.

The Jewish doctrine, differing in this from all the other Oriental creeds, and even from the Alohayistic legend with which the book of Genesis commences, attributed the creation to the immediate action of the Supreme Being. The Theosophists of the other Eastern Peoples interposed more than one intermediary between God and the world. To place between them
but a single Being, to suppose for the production of the world but a single intermediary, was, in their eyes, to lower the Supreme Majesty. The interval between God, who is perfect Purity, and matter, which is base and foul, was too great for them to clear it at a single step. Even in the Occident, neither Plato nor Philo could thus impoverish the Intellectual World.

Thus, Cerinthus of Ephesus, with most of the Gnostics, Philo, the Kabalah, the Zend-Avesta, the Puranas, and all the Orient, deemed the distance and antipathy between the Supreme Being and the material world too great, to attribute to the former the creation of the latter. Below,
and emanating from, or created by, the Ancient of Days, the Central Light, the Beginning, or First Principle, one, two, or more Principles, Existences, or Intellectual Beings were imagined, to some one or more of whom (without any immediate creative act on the part of the Great
Immovable, Silent Deity), the immediate creation of the material and mental universe was due.

We have already spoken of many of the speculations on this point. To some, the world was created by the LOGOS or WORD, first manifestation of, or emanation from, the Deity. To others, the beginning of creation was by the emanation of a ray of Light, creating the principle of Light and Life. The Primitive THOUGHT, creating the inferior Deities, a succession of INTELLGENCES, the Iynges of Zoroaster, his Amshaspands, Izeds, and Ferouers, the Ideas of Plato, the Aions of the Gnostics, the Angels of the Jews, the Nous, the Demiourgos, the DIVINE REASON, the Powers or Forces of Philo, and the Alohayim, Forces or Superior Gods of the ancient legend with which Genesis begins, to these and other intermediaries the creation was owing. No restraints were laid on the Fancy and the Imagination. The veriest Abstractions became Existences and Realities. The attributes of God, personified, became Powers, Spirits,