"28th Degree - Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)


The Sages proudly wore the name of Kabalists. The Kabalah embodied a noble philosophy, pure, not mysterious, but symbolic. It taught the doctrine of the Unity of God, the art of knowing and explaining the essence and operations of the Supreme Being, of spiritual powers and natural forces, and of determining their action by symbolic figures; by the arrangement of the alphabet, the combinations of numbers, the inversion of letters in writing and the concealed meanings which they claimed to discover therein. The Kabalah is the key of the occult sciences; and the Gnostics were born of the Kabalists.

The science of numbers represented not only arithmetical qualities, but also all grandeur, all proportion. By it we necessarily arrive at the discovery of the Principle or First Cause of things, called at the present day THE ABSOLUTE.

Or UNITY, that loftiest term to which all philosophy directs itself; that imperious necessity of the human mind, that pivot round which it is compelled to group the aggregate of its ideas, Unity, this source, this centre of all systematic order, this principle of existence, this central point, unknown in its essence, but manifest in its effects; Unity, that sublime centre to which the chain of causes necessarily ascends, was the august Idea toward which all the ideas of Pythagoras converged. He refused the title of Sage, which means one who knows. He invented, and applied to himself that of Philosopher, signifying one who is fond of or studies things secret and occult. The astronomy which he mysteriously taught, was astrology: his science of numbers was based on Kabalistical principles.

The Ancients, and Pythagoras himself, whose real principles have not been always understood, never meant to ascribe to numbers, that is to say, to abstract signs, any special virtue. But the Sages of Antiquity concurred in recognizing a ONE FIRST CAUSE (material or spiritual) of the existence of the Universe. Thence, UNITY became the symbol of the Supreme Deity. It was made to express, to represent God; but without attributing to the mere number ONE any divine or supernatural virtue.

The Pythagorean ideas as to particular numbers are partially expressed in the following

LECTURE OF THE KABALISTS

Qu.'. Why did you seek to be received a Knight of the Kabalah?
Ans.. To know, by means of numbers, the admirable harmony which there is between
nature and religion.
Qu.'. How were you announced?
Ans.'. By twelve raps.
Qu.'. What do they signify?
Ans.'. The twelve bases of our temporal and spiritual happiness.
Qu.'. What is a Kabalist? Ans.'. A man who has learned, by tradition, the Sacerdotal Art and the Royal Art.
Qu.'. What means the device, Omnia in numeris sita sunt?
Ans.'. That everything lies veiled in numbers.
Qu.'. Explain me that.
Ans.'. I will do so, as far as the number 12. Your sagacity will discern the rest.
Qu.'. What signifies the unit in the number 10?
Ans.'. GOD, creating and animating matter, expressed by 0, which, alone, is of no value.
Qu.'. What does the unit mean?
Ans.'. In the moral order, a Word incarnate in the bosom of a virgin or religion. In the physical, a spirit embodied in the virgin earth or nature.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number two?
Ans.'. In the moral order, man and woman. In the phyiscal, the active and the passive.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 3?
Ans.'. In the moral order, the three theological virtues. In the physical, the three principles of bodies.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 4?
Ans.'. The four cardinal virtues. The four elementary qualities.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 5?
Ans.'. The quintessence of religion. The quintessence of matter.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the nwnber 6?
Ans.'. The theological cube. The physical cube.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 7?
Ans.'. The seven sacraments. The seven planets.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 8?
Ans.'. The small number of Elus. The small number of wise men.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 9?
Ans.'. The exaltation of religion. The exaltation of matter.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 10?
Ans.'. The ten commandments. The ten precepts of nature.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 11?
Ans.'. The multiplication of religion. The multiplication of nature.
Qu.'. What do you mean by the number 12?