| CHAPTER VI THE SOURCE OF MYSTIC POWER The Essence of the Qabalah |
| The Mysticism of Modern Science |
The science of today represents, in more than one way, what the scientist of fifty years ago would
have called chaos. The law of causation is to disappear, conservation of energy is to disappear,
uniformity is to disappear, determinism is to be replaced by probabilities, and Law by Chance. The
Law of the rationalists of the nineteenth century was at least something which the mind of man could
grip on to; it symbolized order, if not love: but Chance symbolizes neither. To the common mind
Chance is something blind, an eyeless force, a kind of omnipotent Cyclops aimlessly tumbling
through time and space, to whom the harmony of the spheres means nothing; a sightless gambler who
shuffles the lives of men and casts them upon the table of fate, not to play with, but merely to pick
them up again and reshuffle the pack.
Surely man himself is within himself superior to this, the latest symbolic emanation of truth. The
old struggle with the rationalist conception of the world was how to find a place for freedom in a
world where all things were determined by law. The new struggle with the mathematicians would
appear to be how to find a place for authority and order in a world of pure chance or pure accident -
that is of complete freedom. The one series of symbols led us to a mechanistic world conception - the
world as a vast machine; the other leads us to one which can best be compared to a dice-box -
accident, luck, odds on or against. In both, however, the Exalted Engineer and the Supreme Gambler
remain unexplained; hence there is hope that the present symbols are not final ones, but those only
which appeal to a small priesthood as exclusive as the priests of ancient Elusis.
Are these scientific speculations nothing more than symbols? Yes: as to this there can be no doubt.
They are not Truth, for at most they are but the reflections of Truth upon the mind of a mathematician
- just as the symbols of the first chapter of Genesis were the reflections of Truth upon the mind of
some early poet, living not in a mathematical civilization, but in a pastoral one. Sir James Jeans, who
has done so much to popularize the hidden meanings of present-day science, openly acknowledges
this. He tells us that, whilst formerly the scientist looked upon the world as a collection of “hard bits”,
today he looks upon it as a collection of “electrical waves.” These are, he says, of two kinds -
”bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation of light”.
These waves only exist in our minds, for they are nothing more than mental pictures of a Reality
which exists outside the mind - that is beyond the power of thought. Their existence is so completely
nebulous that, as Sir James Jeans says, “The making of models or pictures to explain mathematical
formulae and the phenomena they describe, is not a step towards, but a step away from, reality; it is
like making graven images of a spirit”. In fact they cannot be named as tangible things are named,
cat - ”cat”, table - ' 'table”, etc., etc., but merely numbered in a symbolical way as mathematical or - to
all intents and purposes - as metaphysical quantities.
In that fascinating book The Mysterious Universe, Professor Jeans writes
If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave energy, and setting
it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or
existent, so that the whole story of its creation can be told with perfect accuracy and completeness in the six
words “God said, Let there be light.”
Here, mysteriously, perhaps inevitably, the latest symbols of the creation of the universe in which
we live harmonize with those which flashed upon the mind of man thousands of years ago.
What has caused this extraordinary change between the scientific outlook of the present century
and that of the last? The answer is largely to be discovered in the Theory of Relativity, which is but
another name for the Three-fold Conception - the relationship between two facts as it appears in their
resultant. For instance, the resultant of pressure and resistance is the only means at our disposal of
understanding pressure and resistance: if there is no resultant, then pressure and resistance are nonexistent
to us.
Formerly this globe of ours was considered to be part of a three-dimensional universe, or space,
floating through time. Now time has been added to it as the fourth dimension, and the volume thus
conceived is described as a “continuum”. The relationship is therefore no longer that of ourselves and
space in time, but that of ourselves and the continuum in which time is an integral factor. Today man
is no longer faced as he was a couple of centuries ago by a universe of four elements, but instead by a
universe of four dimensions - ∞od, Heh, Vau, Heh, in a more all-embracing form - which with himself
complete the modern idea of the Microcosm.
To Sir James Jeans, in spite of the fact, as he says, that “We have no language at our command
except that derived from our terrestrial concepts and experiences”, scientific speculations lead to the
supposition that “the universe appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician” - a Qabalistic
assumption. And what does this mean?
It means that science, which during the last century broke away from the idealistic conceptions of
religion - the spiritual side of man - is today tending towards a return to these concepts; for, as this
scientist says:
We may think of the electrons as objects of thought, and time as the process of thinking . . . the universe can
be best pictured, though still very imperfectly and inadequately, as consisting of pure thought.
Here we return to an idealism which would have staggered the imagination of most of the
scientists of half a century ago; but which will be readily accepted by every Qabalist, and would have
been accepted by such as a supreme truth even two thousand years ago. And outside the Qabalah this
idealism logically brings us back to Bishop Berkeley, the greatest of the idealistic philosophers since
Plato. Over two hundred years ago he wrote:
All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of
the world, have not any substance without mind. . . . . . . So long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do
not exist in my mind, or in that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else
subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit [the Ayin].
Quoting these remarkable words of this most remarkable philosopher, Sir James says:
.Modern science seems to me to lead, by a very different road, to a not altogether dissimilar conclusion.
Because of our different line of approach we have reached the last of the above three alternatives first, and the
others appear unimportant in comparison. It does not matter whether objects “exist in my mind, or in that of any
other created spirit” or not; their objectivity arises from their subsisting “in the mind of some Eternal Spirit”.
This Eternal Spirit, being the “organ” of creative thought, must be something superior to, or
certainly other than, the continuum or four-dimensional universe in which we live; for this continuum
exists only in his thought, just as we are in ourselves Superior to our own thoughts, for we are the
creators of them and live in the shadow-world created by them. This Spirit must be something which
may be called Reality, or Truth (the Macrocosm or Macroprosopos) concerning which the human
reason can only form symbolical pictures, reflections in a mirror.
We will attempt to explain this in a simpler way: supposing we could not raise our heads and look
at the sun, we could nevertheless examine it indirectly by gazing into a looking-glass placed at our
feet. In it we should see a reflection of the sun, the only solar reality possible to us in the
circumstances; but it would not be the reality of the sun itself, any more than our image in a mirror is
ourself - in fact such an image is in a way upside down, as our right side becomes our left and vice
versa. As long as we kept our eyes fixed on the looking-glass, though we should know something
about the sun, we should in fact know very little. At times its image would appear and at times vanish,
according to the motion of the earth, the state of the atmosphere, or on account of an eclipse. So
erratically would its image come and go that we might well say that its movements were directed by
chance. Yet if we could only raise our eyes, we should soon discover the reasons why all this was so.
The fact is, as Sir James Jeans says:
Many would hold that, from the broad philosophical standpoint, the outstanding achievement of twentiethcentury
physics is not the theory of relativity with its welding together of space and time, or the theory of quanta
with its present apparent negation of the laws of causation, or the dissection of the atom with the resultant
discovery that things are not what they seem; it is the general recognition that we are not yet in contact with
ultimate reality. To speak in terms of Plato's well-known simile, we are still imprisoned in our cave with our
backs to the light, and can only watch the shadows on the wall. At present the only task immediately before
science is to study these shadows, to classify them and explain them in the simplest possible way.
Scientists are, therefore, concerned in explaining the shadows of Reality in terms of the rational
symbols of today, just as the Qabalists were concerned in explaining them in terms of the rational
(then theological and non-scientific) symbols of their day. Like the Qabalist the scientist can lead us
up to the threshold of the symbolic temple of God - this world and universe defined and explained by
science (knowledge) – but on account of the limitations of the instrument he uses, namely rational
thought, he cannot lead us into it. To enter it we need something, a faculty, which transcends the
reason. In the example we have above given of examining the sun by means of a looking-glass
because we are unable to raise our heads, this inability may be compared to rational thought, and the
raising of our heads to that higher faculty which will enable us to open, as it were, spiritual eyes, and
see not only the shadows of Reality but Reality itself.
Since the beginning of written history very little progress has been made in the intellectual
interpretation of the mysteries, which stood shrouded before the academies of Aristotle and Plato.
Many things have changed, innumerable experiments have been made, yet before the essential
mysteries we still stand as blindly as they did. All that has in reality happened is that we have changed
our forms of thought; then they were flatter, now they are rounder.
Each new philosophy opens like a fairy-tale, for man is ever, and of necessity must be, a
wondering child. There is a man or a woman and a wishing-ring – an unannihilatable atom of magic.
The ring is turned and man sees something which does not exist, but which is so remarkable that he
persists that it does exist – he is for ever creating the hollow worlds of the Kings of Edom. Today we
laugh at Qabalistic learning – why? Because it is out of place and out of time. Tomorrow we shall
laugh at the scientific theories of today and for similar reasons. If the universe is really fourdimensional,
and certainly it appears to be so, then we are living not on a sphere but on the skin of a
hypersphere which we can only explain by means of mathematical symbols. What is a4? We cannot
even draw a picture of it!
Yet we are told, by those we cannot contradict, that “Einstein’s universe contains matter but no
motion and de Sitter’s contain motion but no matter” – on one side “motionless matter” and on the
other “matterless motion” – yet that Einstein’s universe will end in de Sitter’s and de Sitter’ in what
amounts to zero. Here surely, we are not very distant from the Qabalah, because “undifferentiated
sameness” and “nothingness” coincide.
Examine the following exposition:
To the pure geometer the radius of curvature [of spacetime] is an incidental characteristic – like the grin of
the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the
physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the
interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the “cat without a grin” and the “grin without a cat” are equally set
aside as purely mathematical phantasies.
In a spherical universe, if you gaze in any direction long enough – that is if you gaze for six
thousand million years – you will see the back of your head. But fortunately we are spared this
experiment because a ‘perfectly spherical world is a mathematical invention”. So also do we
conclude are all other worlds fashioned out of thought-forms, whether mathematical religious or
whatnot in shape. They are all shadows, all in “substance” illusionary.
Pope said in his Dunciad, See Mystery to Mathematics fly!” . . . Still the keystone is mystery. To
the Qabalist the number 137 is a number of awe, a complete book of mysteries (Qabalah hlbq = 5 +
30 + 2 +100 = 137). From the Ayin Soph to the three supernal Sephiroth and thence to the seven
inferior spheres it symbolizes the entire universe; but to the astronomer it is the value of “the finestructure
constant”. Something very different, nevertheless something equally mysterious. Yet to
scoff at science would be foolishness, just as it is foolishness to scoff at any honest idea. Science is a
means to an end - the knowledge of shadows. So also is the qabalah, though it looks at the mystery
from a different angle of thought. When the Qabalist says, “As above so beneath”, and when the
scientist says, “To measure the mass of an electron, a suitable procedure is to make astronomical
observations of the distances and velocities of spiral nebulae”, these angles all but coincide. And
when the Qabalist postulates No-Thingness as the beginning of Every-Thingness, and the scientist
says, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly
supernatural”, 16 coincidence is absolute; for in both Reality remains impenetrable, and like Bottom's
dream all that is derived from this Supreme Zero is without bottom - it is the pit of activities which the
Qabalists frequently call hell.
have called chaos. The law of causation is to disappear, conservation of energy is to disappear,
uniformity is to disappear, determinism is to be replaced by probabilities, and Law by Chance. The
Law of the rationalists of the nineteenth century was at least something which the mind of man could
grip on to; it symbolized order, if not love: but Chance symbolizes neither. To the common mind
Chance is something blind, an eyeless force, a kind of omnipotent Cyclops aimlessly tumbling
through time and space, to whom the harmony of the spheres means nothing; a sightless gambler who
shuffles the lives of men and casts them upon the table of fate, not to play with, but merely to pick
them up again and reshuffle the pack.
Surely man himself is within himself superior to this, the latest symbolic emanation of truth. The
old struggle with the rationalist conception of the world was how to find a place for freedom in a
world where all things were determined by law. The new struggle with the mathematicians would
appear to be how to find a place for authority and order in a world of pure chance or pure accident -
that is of complete freedom. The one series of symbols led us to a mechanistic world conception - the
world as a vast machine; the other leads us to one which can best be compared to a dice-box -
accident, luck, odds on or against. In both, however, the Exalted Engineer and the Supreme Gambler
remain unexplained; hence there is hope that the present symbols are not final ones, but those only
which appeal to a small priesthood as exclusive as the priests of ancient Elusis.
Are these scientific speculations nothing more than symbols? Yes: as to this there can be no doubt.
They are not Truth, for at most they are but the reflections of Truth upon the mind of a mathematician
- just as the symbols of the first chapter of Genesis were the reflections of Truth upon the mind of
some early poet, living not in a mathematical civilization, but in a pastoral one. Sir James Jeans, who
has done so much to popularize the hidden meanings of present-day science, openly acknowledges
this. He tells us that, whilst formerly the scientist looked upon the world as a collection of “hard bits”,
today he looks upon it as a collection of “electrical waves.” These are, he says, of two kinds -
”bottled-up waves, which we call matter, and unbottled waves, which we call radiation of light”.
These waves only exist in our minds, for they are nothing more than mental pictures of a Reality
which exists outside the mind - that is beyond the power of thought. Their existence is so completely
nebulous that, as Sir James Jeans says, “The making of models or pictures to explain mathematical
formulae and the phenomena they describe, is not a step towards, but a step away from, reality; it is
like making graven images of a spirit”. In fact they cannot be named as tangible things are named,
cat - ”cat”, table - ' 'table”, etc., etc., but merely numbered in a symbolical way as mathematical or - to
all intents and purposes - as metaphysical quantities.
In that fascinating book The Mysterious Universe, Professor Jeans writes
If annihilation of matter occurs, the process is merely that of unbottling imprisoned wave energy, and setting
it free to travel through space. These concepts reduce the whole universe to a world of light, potential or
existent, so that the whole story of its creation can be told with perfect accuracy and completeness in the six
words “God said, Let there be light.”
Here, mysteriously, perhaps inevitably, the latest symbols of the creation of the universe in which
we live harmonize with those which flashed upon the mind of man thousands of years ago.
What has caused this extraordinary change between the scientific outlook of the present century
and that of the last? The answer is largely to be discovered in the Theory of Relativity, which is but
another name for the Three-fold Conception - the relationship between two facts as it appears in their
resultant. For instance, the resultant of pressure and resistance is the only means at our disposal of
understanding pressure and resistance: if there is no resultant, then pressure and resistance are nonexistent
to us.
Formerly this globe of ours was considered to be part of a three-dimensional universe, or space,
floating through time. Now time has been added to it as the fourth dimension, and the volume thus
conceived is described as a “continuum”. The relationship is therefore no longer that of ourselves and
space in time, but that of ourselves and the continuum in which time is an integral factor. Today man
is no longer faced as he was a couple of centuries ago by a universe of four elements, but instead by a
universe of four dimensions - ∞od, Heh, Vau, Heh, in a more all-embracing form - which with himself
complete the modern idea of the Microcosm.
To Sir James Jeans, in spite of the fact, as he says, that “We have no language at our command
except that derived from our terrestrial concepts and experiences”, scientific speculations lead to the
supposition that “the universe appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician” - a Qabalistic
assumption. And what does this mean?
It means that science, which during the last century broke away from the idealistic conceptions of
religion - the spiritual side of man - is today tending towards a return to these concepts; for, as this
scientist says:
We may think of the electrons as objects of thought, and time as the process of thinking . . . the universe can
be best pictured, though still very imperfectly and inadequately, as consisting of pure thought.
Here we return to an idealism which would have staggered the imagination of most of the
scientists of half a century ago; but which will be readily accepted by every Qabalist, and would have
been accepted by such as a supreme truth even two thousand years ago. And outside the Qabalah this
idealism logically brings us back to Bishop Berkeley, the greatest of the idealistic philosophers since
Plato. Over two hundred years ago he wrote:
All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of
the world, have not any substance without mind. . . . . . . So long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do
not exist in my mind, or in that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else
subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit [the Ayin].
Quoting these remarkable words of this most remarkable philosopher, Sir James says:
.Modern science seems to me to lead, by a very different road, to a not altogether dissimilar conclusion.
Because of our different line of approach we have reached the last of the above three alternatives first, and the
others appear unimportant in comparison. It does not matter whether objects “exist in my mind, or in that of any
other created spirit” or not; their objectivity arises from their subsisting “in the mind of some Eternal Spirit”.
This Eternal Spirit, being the “organ” of creative thought, must be something superior to, or
certainly other than, the continuum or four-dimensional universe in which we live; for this continuum
exists only in his thought, just as we are in ourselves Superior to our own thoughts, for we are the
creators of them and live in the shadow-world created by them. This Spirit must be something which
may be called Reality, or Truth (the Macrocosm or Macroprosopos) concerning which the human
reason can only form symbolical pictures, reflections in a mirror.
We will attempt to explain this in a simpler way: supposing we could not raise our heads and look
at the sun, we could nevertheless examine it indirectly by gazing into a looking-glass placed at our
feet. In it we should see a reflection of the sun, the only solar reality possible to us in the
circumstances; but it would not be the reality of the sun itself, any more than our image in a mirror is
ourself - in fact such an image is in a way upside down, as our right side becomes our left and vice
versa. As long as we kept our eyes fixed on the looking-glass, though we should know something
about the sun, we should in fact know very little. At times its image would appear and at times vanish,
according to the motion of the earth, the state of the atmosphere, or on account of an eclipse. So
erratically would its image come and go that we might well say that its movements were directed by
chance. Yet if we could only raise our eyes, we should soon discover the reasons why all this was so.
The fact is, as Sir James Jeans says:
Many would hold that, from the broad philosophical standpoint, the outstanding achievement of twentiethcentury
physics is not the theory of relativity with its welding together of space and time, or the theory of quanta
with its present apparent negation of the laws of causation, or the dissection of the atom with the resultant
discovery that things are not what they seem; it is the general recognition that we are not yet in contact with
ultimate reality. To speak in terms of Plato's well-known simile, we are still imprisoned in our cave with our
backs to the light, and can only watch the shadows on the wall. At present the only task immediately before
science is to study these shadows, to classify them and explain them in the simplest possible way.
Scientists are, therefore, concerned in explaining the shadows of Reality in terms of the rational
symbols of today, just as the Qabalists were concerned in explaining them in terms of the rational
(then theological and non-scientific) symbols of their day. Like the Qabalist the scientist can lead us
up to the threshold of the symbolic temple of God - this world and universe defined and explained by
science (knowledge) – but on account of the limitations of the instrument he uses, namely rational
thought, he cannot lead us into it. To enter it we need something, a faculty, which transcends the
reason. In the example we have above given of examining the sun by means of a looking-glass
because we are unable to raise our heads, this inability may be compared to rational thought, and the
raising of our heads to that higher faculty which will enable us to open, as it were, spiritual eyes, and
see not only the shadows of Reality but Reality itself.
Since the beginning of written history very little progress has been made in the intellectual
interpretation of the mysteries, which stood shrouded before the academies of Aristotle and Plato.
Many things have changed, innumerable experiments have been made, yet before the essential
mysteries we still stand as blindly as they did. All that has in reality happened is that we have changed
our forms of thought; then they were flatter, now they are rounder.
Each new philosophy opens like a fairy-tale, for man is ever, and of necessity must be, a
wondering child. There is a man or a woman and a wishing-ring – an unannihilatable atom of magic.
The ring is turned and man sees something which does not exist, but which is so remarkable that he
persists that it does exist – he is for ever creating the hollow worlds of the Kings of Edom. Today we
laugh at Qabalistic learning – why? Because it is out of place and out of time. Tomorrow we shall
laugh at the scientific theories of today and for similar reasons. If the universe is really fourdimensional,
and certainly it appears to be so, then we are living not on a sphere but on the skin of a
hypersphere which we can only explain by means of mathematical symbols. What is a4? We cannot
even draw a picture of it!
Yet we are told, by those we cannot contradict, that “Einstein’s universe contains matter but no
motion and de Sitter’s contain motion but no matter” – on one side “motionless matter” and on the
other “matterless motion” – yet that Einstein’s universe will end in de Sitter’s and de Sitter’ in what
amounts to zero. Here surely, we are not very distant from the Qabalah, because “undifferentiated
sameness” and “nothingness” coincide.
Examine the following exposition:
To the pure geometer the radius of curvature [of spacetime] is an incidental characteristic – like the grin of
the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the
physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the
interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the “cat without a grin” and the “grin without a cat” are equally set
aside as purely mathematical phantasies.
In a spherical universe, if you gaze in any direction long enough – that is if you gaze for six
thousand million years – you will see the back of your head. But fortunately we are spared this
experiment because a ‘perfectly spherical world is a mathematical invention”. So also do we
conclude are all other worlds fashioned out of thought-forms, whether mathematical religious or
whatnot in shape. They are all shadows, all in “substance” illusionary.
Pope said in his Dunciad, See Mystery to Mathematics fly!” . . . Still the keystone is mystery. To
the Qabalist the number 137 is a number of awe, a complete book of mysteries (Qabalah hlbq = 5 +
30 + 2 +100 = 137). From the Ayin Soph to the three supernal Sephiroth and thence to the seven
inferior spheres it symbolizes the entire universe; but to the astronomer it is the value of “the finestructure
constant”. Something very different, nevertheless something equally mysterious. Yet to
scoff at science would be foolishness, just as it is foolishness to scoff at any honest idea. Science is a
means to an end - the knowledge of shadows. So also is the qabalah, though it looks at the mystery
from a different angle of thought. When the Qabalist says, “As above so beneath”, and when the
scientist says, “To measure the mass of an electron, a suitable procedure is to make astronomical
observations of the distances and velocities of spiral nebulae”, these angles all but coincide. And
when the Qabalist postulates No-Thingness as the beginning of Every-Thingness, and the scientist
says, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly
supernatural”, 16 coincidence is absolute; for in both Reality remains impenetrable, and like Bottom's
dream all that is derived from this Supreme Zero is without bottom - it is the pit of activities which the
Qabalists frequently call hell.
| The Laboratory of Satan |
In the world we see a ceaseless struggle entailing change - birth, formation, growth, decay, and
death. A ceaseless evolution and dissolution surround us in which everything seems to be possessed
of a dual nature and to be urged onwards or backwards by a clash of dual powers. Thus far the duality
which lies at the foundation of Qabalistic philosophy appears rational enough. Yet reason cannot tell
us whether this duality is the ultimate end, or whether it emanates from unity or from nothingness.
Reason is a wonderful ladder which enables us to climb towards the ceiling of the intellectual world,
but it does not enable us to penetrate it and to see beyond. This ceiling and all which is contained
beneath it belong to the realm of science, which arranges and rearranges the furniture from time to
time. Beyond and above is another room - the super-scientific, the super-rational, perhaps a “space”
which is no conceivable room at all.
Man, however, has never been content with purely rational answers, for he is possessed by what
may be called a “spiritual discontent” which is unsatisfied with all scientific arguments, and which
has been both an assistant and resistant to scientific growth. The rationalist says that “the answer to a
+ b is x; the theologian says “no, it is y”; and between the beliefs and disbeliefs of both has the
intellectual world expanded from out of wonders to what we call facts. Yet, however firmly these
facts may be founded upon reason, there remains always a doubt. Within the circumference of this
doubt lie all religious systems, and its centre, where all doubt ends, is called God.
To a highly intellectual and speculative mind God is a mystery subject only to symbolic
explanation; but to the crude, sensuous masses of mankind He and His symbols are one. To the first
He is a metaphysical ideal; to the second - a physical fact. As from the Qabalistic mind is evolved an
androgenous being whose very existence depends upon the balance of passive and active forces,
similarly from the primitive mind of the masses is evolved an anthropomorphic deity who can
accomplish good and evil, and who consequently is to be loved and feared. As the mystical Adam
Qadmon is the measure of the one, so is the physical Adam, that is man himself, the measure of the
other. As the one is explained by symbols, the other is asserted in words. Between the mystical and
the superstitious there is consequently a close relationship; and as man, whether mystical or
superstitious, lives in one and the same world, both see God in Nature but from different intellectual
angles.
The religion of the masses has never changed in essence; for it has always been Nature-worship in
one form or another. Life eternal is but a prolongation of life terrestrial; the soul, of the personality; heaven
is but a super-happy home and hell but an infra-abominable gaol. Everywhere and in every land we
find the same ideas dressed in different garments the same gods and goddesses of chaos and order, of
love and death, of hatred and life, of fertility, of dawn, of night, etc., etc. From such is built up the
normal religious mood of the masses; nevertheless there is yet another mood, for from time to time in
the world's history something happens: a man appears, be he prince or pauper, who throws the masses
into such a state of religious fervour that all reason and with it all doubt is obliterated and a spiritual
condition is produced which closely resembles physical drunkenness. Such men were Orpheus,
Oedipus, Osiris, Zoroaster, Krishna, Odin, Buddha, Christ, Mahomet, and a host of lesser names,
mythological and historical, many of which have passed into oblivion. For a time these men have
lifted the multitudes out of Nature, endowing them with a spiritual instinct, a Ketheric Nephesh, more
powerful than all their natural instincts combined. Self-preservation, self-sacrifice, self-assertion,
pugnacity, love, hate, fear, greed, and all the other instincts in man in an instant become slaves to this
tyrant. The people are in fact filled with a god, for what the Master says is the voice of the Deity. Yet
his words cannot explain his illuminating vision; for all they can do is to translate the super-rational
into the rational, that is to render comprehensible the incomprehensible form which he himself can
grasp only symbolically. These words are drawn from his sentiments (Nephesh) and his intellect
(Rua'h) and not from his spirit (Neshamah); and should his sentiments be gross and his intellect crude,
then will his symbols be gross and crude and so will be the words whereby he attempts to explain
them.
This brings us back to the opening words of this chapter: it does not matter what an intellectual
man or woman may think of the wisdom of the Qabalah; he or she may say, “Well, if these people
like to symbolize God as a Satanic force, let them; it is their business and not mine.” This is tolerant
enough, but it avoids the danger without removing it; which is that should a Qabalist attain to so
potent a vision that he can detonate the spiritual instinct of the masses, will he not, because of his
education, make use of a Satanic symbology which, literally accepted by his intoxicated followers,
will spiritually turn them upside down and impel them towards the most diabolical acts of anarchy
and outrage?
The likelihood of this is common knowledge, for the power of the demagogue is well known, and
the most dangerous of demagogues is he who is fervently narrow in his opinions or faith, that is
single-minded. How much more, then, is he who believes that his voice is God's voice, the veritable
Logos, God being symbolized to him according to what his sentiments, intellect, and education make
him, and God to his listeners being fashioned according to their level of intelligence! If the symbols
are accepted as realities by his followers, and if his darkness, lit by his spiritual frenzy, finds a
sympathetic and passive partner in their ignorance and animality (the chaos of his would-be cosmos),
then the child of this union will not be Lucifer, the intellectual Satan, but Belial, his sensuous or
Qliphothic counterpart. Then will the surroundings of his followers be turned into a physical hell.
It was for this reason that the Qabalists locked away their secrets from the uninitiated, and that
every other truly religious cult has done the same; for the Spirit of God cannot be reflected upon
chaos except as a broken, jagged, and turbulent star of light which maddens its watchers in place of
illumining them.
This, we are of opinion, will be accepted by most thinkers, though many will refuse to differentiate
between the demagogue and the religious master, because the power of both these soul-troublers
varies in degree. This is so, yet this variance opens up an important problem: namely, why does it
vary? We know that in the material world conviction depends on one or more of the three spheres of
power - the physical, sensuous, and the intellectual - and that this mastership stands beyond good and
evil because it is a power for good and evil. A skilled craftsman may use his energy and talents for the
benefit or detriment of mankind, and so also a skilled demagogue or a skilled philosopher. Is not a
similar process also applicable to the spiritual sphere, granted that there is such a sphere? And if this
be not granted, then some abnormal intellectual or sensuous sphere must be assumed. To us the threefold
order is not alone patent to the Qabalah, but is an obvious rational conception. We know that we
are composed of matter, but matter plus something we call our ego. We know that we are living
matter, and that the earth we come from is not living matter in the sense that we are. We infer,
therefore, that as the earth is one thing and as we are partly earth and partly something else, this
something else is another thing, and further still that in all probability we are a link between these two
things which can only consciously manifest in ourselves, but which evertheless may exist apart from
us as a material and a spiritual world or, when united in perfect equilibrium, form God.
Accepting these possibilities, which are not far removed from the doctrines of the Qabalah, then if
any one of us could by some process or another know as much about the spiritual world and its
possible spheres of power as we know about the material world, surely such a spiritualized person
would possess a stupendous power over his less enlightened fellow men, always granted that there is
something spiritual within them. It is the source of this spiritual or magnetic force which we will now
enquire into.
death. A ceaseless evolution and dissolution surround us in which everything seems to be possessed
of a dual nature and to be urged onwards or backwards by a clash of dual powers. Thus far the duality
which lies at the foundation of Qabalistic philosophy appears rational enough. Yet reason cannot tell
us whether this duality is the ultimate end, or whether it emanates from unity or from nothingness.
Reason is a wonderful ladder which enables us to climb towards the ceiling of the intellectual world,
but it does not enable us to penetrate it and to see beyond. This ceiling and all which is contained
beneath it belong to the realm of science, which arranges and rearranges the furniture from time to
time. Beyond and above is another room - the super-scientific, the super-rational, perhaps a “space”
which is no conceivable room at all.
Man, however, has never been content with purely rational answers, for he is possessed by what
may be called a “spiritual discontent” which is unsatisfied with all scientific arguments, and which
has been both an assistant and resistant to scientific growth. The rationalist says that “the answer to a
+ b is x; the theologian says “no, it is y”; and between the beliefs and disbeliefs of both has the
intellectual world expanded from out of wonders to what we call facts. Yet, however firmly these
facts may be founded upon reason, there remains always a doubt. Within the circumference of this
doubt lie all religious systems, and its centre, where all doubt ends, is called God.
To a highly intellectual and speculative mind God is a mystery subject only to symbolic
explanation; but to the crude, sensuous masses of mankind He and His symbols are one. To the first
He is a metaphysical ideal; to the second - a physical fact. As from the Qabalistic mind is evolved an
androgenous being whose very existence depends upon the balance of passive and active forces,
similarly from the primitive mind of the masses is evolved an anthropomorphic deity who can
accomplish good and evil, and who consequently is to be loved and feared. As the mystical Adam
Qadmon is the measure of the one, so is the physical Adam, that is man himself, the measure of the
other. As the one is explained by symbols, the other is asserted in words. Between the mystical and
the superstitious there is consequently a close relationship; and as man, whether mystical or
superstitious, lives in one and the same world, both see God in Nature but from different intellectual
angles.
The religion of the masses has never changed in essence; for it has always been Nature-worship in
one form or another. Life eternal is but a prolongation of life terrestrial; the soul, of the personality; heaven
is but a super-happy home and hell but an infra-abominable gaol. Everywhere and in every land we
find the same ideas dressed in different garments the same gods and goddesses of chaos and order, of
love and death, of hatred and life, of fertility, of dawn, of night, etc., etc. From such is built up the
normal religious mood of the masses; nevertheless there is yet another mood, for from time to time in
the world's history something happens: a man appears, be he prince or pauper, who throws the masses
into such a state of religious fervour that all reason and with it all doubt is obliterated and a spiritual
condition is produced which closely resembles physical drunkenness. Such men were Orpheus,
Oedipus, Osiris, Zoroaster, Krishna, Odin, Buddha, Christ, Mahomet, and a host of lesser names,
mythological and historical, many of which have passed into oblivion. For a time these men have
lifted the multitudes out of Nature, endowing them with a spiritual instinct, a Ketheric Nephesh, more
powerful than all their natural instincts combined. Self-preservation, self-sacrifice, self-assertion,
pugnacity, love, hate, fear, greed, and all the other instincts in man in an instant become slaves to this
tyrant. The people are in fact filled with a god, for what the Master says is the voice of the Deity. Yet
his words cannot explain his illuminating vision; for all they can do is to translate the super-rational
into the rational, that is to render comprehensible the incomprehensible form which he himself can
grasp only symbolically. These words are drawn from his sentiments (Nephesh) and his intellect
(Rua'h) and not from his spirit (Neshamah); and should his sentiments be gross and his intellect crude,
then will his symbols be gross and crude and so will be the words whereby he attempts to explain
them.
This brings us back to the opening words of this chapter: it does not matter what an intellectual
man or woman may think of the wisdom of the Qabalah; he or she may say, “Well, if these people
like to symbolize God as a Satanic force, let them; it is their business and not mine.” This is tolerant
enough, but it avoids the danger without removing it; which is that should a Qabalist attain to so
potent a vision that he can detonate the spiritual instinct of the masses, will he not, because of his
education, make use of a Satanic symbology which, literally accepted by his intoxicated followers,
will spiritually turn them upside down and impel them towards the most diabolical acts of anarchy
and outrage?
The likelihood of this is common knowledge, for the power of the demagogue is well known, and
the most dangerous of demagogues is he who is fervently narrow in his opinions or faith, that is
single-minded. How much more, then, is he who believes that his voice is God's voice, the veritable
Logos, God being symbolized to him according to what his sentiments, intellect, and education make
him, and God to his listeners being fashioned according to their level of intelligence! If the symbols
are accepted as realities by his followers, and if his darkness, lit by his spiritual frenzy, finds a
sympathetic and passive partner in their ignorance and animality (the chaos of his would-be cosmos),
then the child of this union will not be Lucifer, the intellectual Satan, but Belial, his sensuous or
Qliphothic counterpart. Then will the surroundings of his followers be turned into a physical hell.
It was for this reason that the Qabalists locked away their secrets from the uninitiated, and that
every other truly religious cult has done the same; for the Spirit of God cannot be reflected upon
chaos except as a broken, jagged, and turbulent star of light which maddens its watchers in place of
illumining them.
This, we are of opinion, will be accepted by most thinkers, though many will refuse to differentiate
between the demagogue and the religious master, because the power of both these soul-troublers
varies in degree. This is so, yet this variance opens up an important problem: namely, why does it
vary? We know that in the material world conviction depends on one or more of the three spheres of
power - the physical, sensuous, and the intellectual - and that this mastership stands beyond good and
evil because it is a power for good and evil. A skilled craftsman may use his energy and talents for the
benefit or detriment of mankind, and so also a skilled demagogue or a skilled philosopher. Is not a
similar process also applicable to the spiritual sphere, granted that there is such a sphere? And if this
be not granted, then some abnormal intellectual or sensuous sphere must be assumed. To us the threefold
order is not alone patent to the Qabalah, but is an obvious rational conception. We know that we
are composed of matter, but matter plus something we call our ego. We know that we are living
matter, and that the earth we come from is not living matter in the sense that we are. We infer,
therefore, that as the earth is one thing and as we are partly earth and partly something else, this
something else is another thing, and further still that in all probability we are a link between these two
things which can only consciously manifest in ourselves, but which evertheless may exist apart from
us as a material and a spiritual world or, when united in perfect equilibrium, form God.
Accepting these possibilities, which are not far removed from the doctrines of the Qabalah, then if
any one of us could by some process or another know as much about the spiritual world and its
possible spheres of power as we know about the material world, surely such a spiritualized person
would possess a stupendous power over his less enlightened fellow men, always granted that there is
something spiritual within them. It is the source of this spiritual or magnetic force which we will now
enquire into.
| The Mystical Ordeal |
There is a spiritual or mystical ordeal, not necessarily order, which all great religious Masters have
passed through, and Qabalistically it is fully described in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis. In it
we read
And Jacob [the Vau] rose up that night, and took his two wives [the two Hehs, also the pillars of the Temple
- Yakhin and Boaz] and his eleven sons [the conjunction of the five and six pointed stars, the Microcosm and
Macrocosm; also the Van and Heh final, which symbolize purification through the balancing of opposites] and
passed over the ford Jabbok [the Veil of the Abyss which separates the seven lower Sephiroth from the three
Supernal ones]. . . . And Jacob was left alone [in meditation, being cut off from the lower emanations] and there
wrestled a man [the ∞od] with him until the breaking of the day [the Vision of the Shin]. And he [the man -
∞od] said, Let me go, for the day breaketh [the ∞od fearing that if the sun rose, namely the Shin, his identity as
the potential Tetragrammaton would be lost in the emanation of YHShVH, and his dominion would thus come
to an end]. And he [Jacob] said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me [unite with me, which he can only do
through the two wives-the ∞od Heh in the seven lower Sephiroth]. And he said unto him, What is thy name?
And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince has thou
power with God and with men [as above so beneath] and hast prevailed [attained to the spiritual vision].
Jacob then asks of him his name, but the wrestler is silent because his name cannot be pronounced.
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face and my life
[reason] is preserved.
This ordeal, it will be seen, is of a three-fold nature. First, the aspirant must equilibrate all the
opposite forces within him, and not merely those he considers vicious. Secondly, he must cut himself
away from all outward things and influences and meditate on the Spirit he desires to unite with.
Thirdly, he must persevere, that is wrestle with this Spirit. These three acts will lead him to the vision
of God, the World Soul, a spark of which burns within him and differentiates him from and also
unites him to all things which surround him.
Whilst this vision lasts he is the Messiah, but once it has faded away he is again man, yet charged
with a terrific power which according to his will is a power for good or for evil.
The existence and possible employment of this force constitute the great secret of Practical Magic; it is the
wand of Thaumaturgy and the Key of black magic. It is the Edenic Serpent who transmitted to Eve the
seductions of a fallen angel. The Astral Light warms, illuminates, magnetizes, attracts, repels, vivifies, destroys,
coagulates, separates, breaks and conjoins everything under the impetus of powerful wills. God created it on the
first day, when He said: “Let there be light.” This force of itself is blind but is directed by Egregores,
that is, by chiefs of souls, or, in other words, by energetic and active spirits.
So writes Éliphas Lévi. These Egregores are those who tower above the flock, who are so
excellent and distinguished that their wisdom frequently appears to be folly to mankind or else is
accepted blindly. The World Fools, or World Sages, attain to something which is extraordinary in its
nature and which, when they attempt to reveal it to those unworthy to receive it, renders them
magicians, their actions being tinged not only by their mental, moral, and physical characteristics, but
also by those of their recipents. Thus we obtain two classes of mysteries or of magic, the white and
the black.
passed through, and Qabalistically it is fully described in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis. In it
we read
And Jacob [the Vau] rose up that night, and took his two wives [the two Hehs, also the pillars of the Temple
- Yakhin and Boaz] and his eleven sons [the conjunction of the five and six pointed stars, the Microcosm and
Macrocosm; also the Van and Heh final, which symbolize purification through the balancing of opposites] and
passed over the ford Jabbok [the Veil of the Abyss which separates the seven lower Sephiroth from the three
Supernal ones]. . . . And Jacob was left alone [in meditation, being cut off from the lower emanations] and there
wrestled a man [the ∞od] with him until the breaking of the day [the Vision of the Shin]. And he [the man -
∞od] said, Let me go, for the day breaketh [the ∞od fearing that if the sun rose, namely the Shin, his identity as
the potential Tetragrammaton would be lost in the emanation of YHShVH, and his dominion would thus come
to an end]. And he [Jacob] said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me [unite with me, which he can only do
through the two wives-the ∞od Heh in the seven lower Sephiroth]. And he said unto him, What is thy name?
And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince has thou
power with God and with men [as above so beneath] and hast prevailed [attained to the spiritual vision].
Jacob then asks of him his name, but the wrestler is silent because his name cannot be pronounced.
And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, for I have seen God face to face and my life
[reason] is preserved.
This ordeal, it will be seen, is of a three-fold nature. First, the aspirant must equilibrate all the
opposite forces within him, and not merely those he considers vicious. Secondly, he must cut himself
away from all outward things and influences and meditate on the Spirit he desires to unite with.
Thirdly, he must persevere, that is wrestle with this Spirit. These three acts will lead him to the vision
of God, the World Soul, a spark of which burns within him and differentiates him from and also
unites him to all things which surround him.
Whilst this vision lasts he is the Messiah, but once it has faded away he is again man, yet charged
with a terrific power which according to his will is a power for good or for evil.
The existence and possible employment of this force constitute the great secret of Practical Magic; it is the
wand of Thaumaturgy and the Key of black magic. It is the Edenic Serpent who transmitted to Eve the
seductions of a fallen angel. The Astral Light warms, illuminates, magnetizes, attracts, repels, vivifies, destroys,
coagulates, separates, breaks and conjoins everything under the impetus of powerful wills. God created it on the
first day, when He said: “Let there be light.” This force of itself is blind but is directed by Egregores,
that is, by chiefs of souls, or, in other words, by energetic and active spirits.
So writes Éliphas Lévi. These Egregores are those who tower above the flock, who are so
excellent and distinguished that their wisdom frequently appears to be folly to mankind or else is
accepted blindly. The World Fools, or World Sages, attain to something which is extraordinary in its
nature and which, when they attempt to reveal it to those unworthy to receive it, renders them
magicians, their actions being tinged not only by their mental, moral, and physical characteristics, but
also by those of their recipents. Thus we obtain two classes of mysteries or of magic, the white and
the black.
| The Fourth Dimension |
To the source of mystic power we will now give another name in order to bring it more closely
into touch with the ideology of today. We will call it the fourth dimension. Here we have no “up” or
“down” in the common meaning of these words; for “up” and “down” are attributes of the threedimensional
space in which we consciously live, and to four dimensional consciousness this space and
all it contains is nothing more than a mathematical abstraction - a mere notion of the mind.
In spite of the immateriality of the three-dimensional world when viewed from a four-dimensional
position, it is possible, as we shall show later on, for a three-dimensional being to establish contact
with this source of mystic power, that is to tap it; but once it is tapped it is only possible for the
recipient to make use of this power in accordance with his three-dimensional nature. Consequently
many of the great religious teachers have insisted on the absolute necessity of their disciples'
“purifying” themselves, so that when they attain to the mystic power it may find an equilibrated
habitation. For instance, morality, though a gate to the spiritual life, is in no sense its sanctuary; for it
is but one of the three great gates - equilibrium of body, heart, and mind. The reason why such
innumerable disputes and persecutions have arisen out of the teachings of so many of the Masters is
that they have considered morality, and frequently sexual morality, as the only gate and the only end.
Misunderstanding the meaning of moral equilibrium, which demands a balancing of all the moral and
so-called immoral forces, and not a suppression of any one category of them, they have so completely
contorted the three-dimensional medium that when it receives the mystic power a diabolical state is
created. Some have gone so far as to command their followers to neglect and macerate their bodies,
and others have asserted that the intellect must be annihilated in order to create a vacuum for the
onrush of the spirit. The dreadful consequent is that these errors do not prevent attainment; in fact, in
many cases they hasten it by cutting down resistance. But what kind of attainment do they lead to?
The vision of X, the Unknown God, on entering a balanced medium or body, becomes the Logos; but
when it enters an unbalanced body it becomes the Anti-Logos. True, in both cases the fire brought
down from heaven is identically the same fire, but according to the medium it inhabits it illumines or
blinds.
Those attracted towards this four-dimensional state are such as Éliphas Lévi calls “the energetic
and active spirits”, that is individuals possessing strong three-dimensional powers - a deep insight into
good and evil, the positive and negative currents of life. As beneath, so above; it consequently follows
that mundane force is attracted by spiritual force, that the stronger the currents of life the more they
are drawn towards the currents of That which created life. And as the mundane force cannot exist
without evil, any more than an electrical current can exist without negative electricity, the terrible
danger is that spiritual power, like dynamite, can either blast the rock from which the Temple is to be
built or blast the Temple which is already built and into which this highest of explosives is off-loaded.
Mystic Power is diabolical as well as divine - according to circumstances.
The object of attainment is greater knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of the reality of
existence - the Who behind the These. This wisdom in itself cannot assist mankind, though it may
utterly change the life of the recipient. It is not the spirituality of the recipient which will tell him how
to utilize the power he is charged with, but his intellect h is knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of
mankind - that is the mundane shadows of the supernal realities. A physician who discovers some
powerful drug would rightly be considered mad were he to administer it to his patients irrespective of
their ailments. So also is an adept mad (possessed by Satan) if he attempts to do likewise with his
spiritual drug. Worse still, he turns his patients mad and the world becomes a raving hell.
This higher wisdom is a forward impulse of the three-dimensional wisdom, which is a compound
of good and evil - the opposite or complementary forces. It is a forward impulse of the will, but with
this difference: that whilst in the three-dimensional world a man normally makes use of virtue to
enhance virtue and of vice to enhance vice - that is things built upwards - an individual who has
experienced the four-dimensional vision, on his re-entering three-dimensional consciousness, sees
things upside down. Consequently it happens that, unless his intellect has, as in a telescope, been
provided with a lens which will reverse the object, he will affirm with all the frenzy of religious faith
that the world is standing upon its head. As he knows (three-dimensionally) that the world should
stand on its feet, and as he believes (four-dimensionally) that this reversion is necessary to salvation,
he will in actual fact turn the world upside down in order to attain his end. To him in his higher
wisdom virtue and vice are equivalents, for both are illusions when compared to reality; therefore,
according to his nature, he desires to establish reality in the three-dimensional world, and if by nature
he is vicious he will attempt to transmute good into evil, and, if virtuous, evil into good. In both cases
he will be attempting the impossible. Should he, however, have equilibrated the good and evil
qualities of his three-dimensional nature before attaining to the vision of the fourth, knowing that all
conscious conceptions are illusionary, after attainment he will remain silent and radiate forth
spirituality in place of making graven images of its source.
To will, to dare, to know, and to remain silent are the four supreme powers of the Magus, and the
fourth is the divine synthesis of the preceding three. Those who attain to the fourth (the final letter of
the divine name) are the leaders of light - the man Jacob who wrestled with Tetragrammaton at the
ford of Jabbok and who did not attempt to pronounce his name. Those who attain to the first three
only are like Jason, who cast the cubic Stone of the Wise into the midst of the host of warriors
(unbalanced forces), who at once turned upon one another in anarchy.
Not one of the great historical religious Masters was a true Messiah; because no man, however
sublime may be his nature, can redeem mankind. There is no short cut to heaven, for mankind will
find deliverance only when it creates the power which can deliver it; and when it does so, then
spontaneously will the Messianic Age be born. Of all these Masters, probably the sublimest was
Gotama Buddha, because he refused to discuss the soul, the nature of God, and the joys of heaven. He
said: Think rightly, act rightly, live rightly, and deliverance will be revealed to you. He did not say:
Accept my thoughts, my words, my life, and salvation is yours. He spoke in parables and locked up
the mysteries in his heart; for he understood the sublimity of the true Logos-the Unspoken Word.
into touch with the ideology of today. We will call it the fourth dimension. Here we have no “up” or
“down” in the common meaning of these words; for “up” and “down” are attributes of the threedimensional
space in which we consciously live, and to four dimensional consciousness this space and
all it contains is nothing more than a mathematical abstraction - a mere notion of the mind.
In spite of the immateriality of the three-dimensional world when viewed from a four-dimensional
position, it is possible, as we shall show later on, for a three-dimensional being to establish contact
with this source of mystic power, that is to tap it; but once it is tapped it is only possible for the
recipient to make use of this power in accordance with his three-dimensional nature. Consequently
many of the great religious teachers have insisted on the absolute necessity of their disciples'
“purifying” themselves, so that when they attain to the mystic power it may find an equilibrated
habitation. For instance, morality, though a gate to the spiritual life, is in no sense its sanctuary; for it
is but one of the three great gates - equilibrium of body, heart, and mind. The reason why such
innumerable disputes and persecutions have arisen out of the teachings of so many of the Masters is
that they have considered morality, and frequently sexual morality, as the only gate and the only end.
Misunderstanding the meaning of moral equilibrium, which demands a balancing of all the moral and
so-called immoral forces, and not a suppression of any one category of them, they have so completely
contorted the three-dimensional medium that when it receives the mystic power a diabolical state is
created. Some have gone so far as to command their followers to neglect and macerate their bodies,
and others have asserted that the intellect must be annihilated in order to create a vacuum for the
onrush of the spirit. The dreadful consequent is that these errors do not prevent attainment; in fact, in
many cases they hasten it by cutting down resistance. But what kind of attainment do they lead to?
The vision of X, the Unknown God, on entering a balanced medium or body, becomes the Logos; but
when it enters an unbalanced body it becomes the Anti-Logos. True, in both cases the fire brought
down from heaven is identically the same fire, but according to the medium it inhabits it illumines or
blinds.
Those attracted towards this four-dimensional state are such as Éliphas Lévi calls “the energetic
and active spirits”, that is individuals possessing strong three-dimensional powers - a deep insight into
good and evil, the positive and negative currents of life. As beneath, so above; it consequently follows
that mundane force is attracted by spiritual force, that the stronger the currents of life the more they
are drawn towards the currents of That which created life. And as the mundane force cannot exist
without evil, any more than an electrical current can exist without negative electricity, the terrible
danger is that spiritual power, like dynamite, can either blast the rock from which the Temple is to be
built or blast the Temple which is already built and into which this highest of explosives is off-loaded.
Mystic Power is diabolical as well as divine - according to circumstances.
The object of attainment is greater knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of the reality of
existence - the Who behind the These. This wisdom in itself cannot assist mankind, though it may
utterly change the life of the recipient. It is not the spirituality of the recipient which will tell him how
to utilize the power he is charged with, but his intellect h is knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of
mankind - that is the mundane shadows of the supernal realities. A physician who discovers some
powerful drug would rightly be considered mad were he to administer it to his patients irrespective of
their ailments. So also is an adept mad (possessed by Satan) if he attempts to do likewise with his
spiritual drug. Worse still, he turns his patients mad and the world becomes a raving hell.
This higher wisdom is a forward impulse of the three-dimensional wisdom, which is a compound
of good and evil - the opposite or complementary forces. It is a forward impulse of the will, but with
this difference: that whilst in the three-dimensional world a man normally makes use of virtue to
enhance virtue and of vice to enhance vice - that is things built upwards - an individual who has
experienced the four-dimensional vision, on his re-entering three-dimensional consciousness, sees
things upside down. Consequently it happens that, unless his intellect has, as in a telescope, been
provided with a lens which will reverse the object, he will affirm with all the frenzy of religious faith
that the world is standing upon its head. As he knows (three-dimensionally) that the world should
stand on its feet, and as he believes (four-dimensionally) that this reversion is necessary to salvation,
he will in actual fact turn the world upside down in order to attain his end. To him in his higher
wisdom virtue and vice are equivalents, for both are illusions when compared to reality; therefore,
according to his nature, he desires to establish reality in the three-dimensional world, and if by nature
he is vicious he will attempt to transmute good into evil, and, if virtuous, evil into good. In both cases
he will be attempting the impossible. Should he, however, have equilibrated the good and evil
qualities of his three-dimensional nature before attaining to the vision of the fourth, knowing that all
conscious conceptions are illusionary, after attainment he will remain silent and radiate forth
spirituality in place of making graven images of its source.
To will, to dare, to know, and to remain silent are the four supreme powers of the Magus, and the
fourth is the divine synthesis of the preceding three. Those who attain to the fourth (the final letter of
the divine name) are the leaders of light - the man Jacob who wrestled with Tetragrammaton at the
ford of Jabbok and who did not attempt to pronounce his name. Those who attain to the first three
only are like Jason, who cast the cubic Stone of the Wise into the midst of the host of warriors
(unbalanced forces), who at once turned upon one another in anarchy.
Not one of the great historical religious Masters was a true Messiah; because no man, however
sublime may be his nature, can redeem mankind. There is no short cut to heaven, for mankind will
find deliverance only when it creates the power which can deliver it; and when it does so, then
spontaneously will the Messianic Age be born. Of all these Masters, probably the sublimest was
Gotama Buddha, because he refused to discuss the soul, the nature of God, and the joys of heaven. He
said: Think rightly, act rightly, live rightly, and deliverance will be revealed to you. He did not say:
Accept my thoughts, my words, my life, and salvation is yours. He spoke in parables and locked up
the mysteries in his heart; for he understood the sublimity of the true Logos-the Unspoken Word.
THE Wisdom of the Qabalah may be sublime or it may be diabolical; but whatever its values are,
one thing is certain: they are utterly confused. The Zohar, our main source of Qabalistic knowledge, is
like an untidy pawn-shop - a jumble of trash and articles of value. Here are crowded together and
stacked up the cast-off intellectual clothing of many minds, cheap jewellery, base metals thinly plated,
gold, silver, copper, and brass. Yet if we delve deep enough among the rubbish which encumbers its
shelves, we shall, as we have shown we can, now and again find a pearl of great price.
The supernal diadem is there, but it has been broken up, the urge of secrecy having dismembered it
and hidden its priceless fragments away in the most unlikely and inacessible corners. This secrecy has
all but defeated its own end by so obscuring truth that in many cases it is no longer discoverable. And
when by much searching and labour we do find some precious stone, symbolism has cut it into so
many facets that it is all but impossible to judge of its true shape. We look at it from one side and see
one thing, then from another and see another, the very brilliance of the symbols confusing us.
In Chapters I to V we have attempted - and acknowledgedly with but limited success - to project a
beam of light into the chaotic lumberrooms of Zoharic learning and illumine what therein lies stored.
Nevertheless, we believe that the little we have discovered is of priceless value, because also do we
believe much of it to be universally true, offering to the tumultuous years in which we live a key to
the door which at present bars us from a completer understanding.
Today we wait on the threshold of this door, fearfully gazing out upon a world monstrous and twoheaded.
Darkness has taken upon itself a political form which has bereft the nations of their sight; has
shrouded their minds and blotted out their wisdom; has sown among them the dragon's teeth of war.
We stand today at the foot of the Tower of Babel - the tower of class strife and international conflict.
Meanwhile light has scintillated forth in science, the boundless Shekinah of this present age. It is
girt by no frontier and circumscribed by no class. It shines forth over the north and the south, over the
east and the west. Into the heights and into the depths it glows, and yet for the perfection of its
creative force it demands that upon its ever-expanding effulgence be cast the shadow of a new human
form: the shadow of a humanity in which the physical, the moral, and the intellectual are balanced
between the material and the spiritual. What the world demands is a new Microcosmic Idea, a new
five-fold Messianic Force, a new Dispensation of Balance which will establish within it a new
equilibrium.
As science is a universal understanding of things, and as the Qabalah purports to be the key to
universal wisdom, then, if this wisdom fits this understanding, will this key unlock the door before
which we blindly stand. What then is there common between science and the Qabalah? Before
answering this question we will attempt to reduce much of what we have as yet tried to explain to its
simplest form.
(1) Man is a mystery shrouded in a mystery which we call the universe; and this mystery leads us to a yet
deeper mystery which we call God or the Unknowable. All is a three-fold wonder, a relationship
between God, man, and the universe.
(2) This universe comes from some unknown source and wends its way towards some unknown end. As
it comes from -?, appears to be proceeding towards -?, and is in itself -?, its nature, form, and
powers can only be described by means of symbols; that is in pictures which in themselves are no
more real than a photograph is real when compared to the thing it represents.
(3) As symbols are but thoughts set forth in pictorial form which possess no activity, we conclude that
the world in which we live, and which in fact is shadowed forth by our thoughts, is no more than
one infinite thoughtform, a form which exists (how is beyond our understanding) in God, or the
Unknowable, and which finds its activity in our thoughts by being fragmented by our finite minds.
(4) To us our thought would be impossible without light, and light would be incomprehensible without
darkness, just as heat is incomprehensible without cold. To us, in its ultimate form, the universe is
light; it is that which opens the mind of the thinker, which, however, cannot comprehend the
existence of light without lack of light.
(5) This light reveals to us a universe of four dimensions, of four worlds in one manifestation, of space
and of time the former being built up of three directions, length, breadth, and thickness. The one
encloses or includes the other, and what is beyond this four-dimensional universe is unknown, if not
unknowable.
6) In its turn darkness reveals to us the limitations of human knowledge. Our minds may be compared to
fire-flies flitting about in the cavern of night. The minute glow which they emit and cast on the void
not only shows us how vast is our ignorance, but that all our knowledge can be no more than
relatively true, for the mind is finite and the cavern apparently infinite.
(7) As all knowledge can be no more than relatively true - that is never free from ignorance - wisdom
consists in recognizing this fact and of utilizing knowledge in accordance with circumstances.
Understand the circumstances and through knowledge extract light (higher Knowledge) from them -
this is wisdom; but to use knowledge in order to extract power (the clash between light and
darkness) - this is magic.
(8) Wherever we turn we come up against a three-fold order: within man in the form of the physical,
moral, and intellectual spheres of his activities between men in that of justice, culture, and work:
between man and the universe and between man and God - between everything. Nothing in this
world is single; not even a thought is single. All things and all thoughts are relative; that is, they are
the offspring of a relationship, of an above and of a below.
(9) Relativity is, consequently, the secret of deliverance from darkness; therefore it is the road towards
the expansion of light. And as light grows, so does thought grow. Consequently, when light has
reached its utmost limits, thought will do likewise, and the one Thought-Form will be re-created.
This we feel is the ultimate end of the human will - the myriads of fragments of thought reestablished
in the Primal Idea.
(10) Finally, this transfiguration can only be accomplished through action, that is through will to think or
to stop thinking. The world we live in is a world of activity, a conflict between light and darkness,
knowledge and ignorance, good and evil. It is a whirling energy - nebular force, stellar force,
planetary force, human force. It is a world of perpetual revolutions - a cosmos, a chaos, a void, the
spark of a new thought; and then once again a cosmos, a chaos, and a void, the shadow of a dead
thought. Nature abhors a vacuum; hence life is the plenitude which fills it, a plenitude which of
necessity can never stand still. Each true thought; a thought full of light, which flashes on the
darkness which surrounds it, is a Christ unto this world. When three such thoughts, one in the
physical realm, one in the moral, and one in the intellectual, simultaneously flash forth, then is a
Messianic Age begotten. It is this three-fold deliverance which the world awaits - a deliverance and
transfiguration which can only come from within.
Such in brief are some of the main doctrines of the Qabalah reduced to their simplest terms and
translated into easily understandable language. From them we will turn to the scientific conceptions of
today and will show that between these two systems of thought there are certain similarities.
one thing is certain: they are utterly confused. The Zohar, our main source of Qabalistic knowledge, is
like an untidy pawn-shop - a jumble of trash and articles of value. Here are crowded together and
stacked up the cast-off intellectual clothing of many minds, cheap jewellery, base metals thinly plated,
gold, silver, copper, and brass. Yet if we delve deep enough among the rubbish which encumbers its
shelves, we shall, as we have shown we can, now and again find a pearl of great price.
The supernal diadem is there, but it has been broken up, the urge of secrecy having dismembered it
and hidden its priceless fragments away in the most unlikely and inacessible corners. This secrecy has
all but defeated its own end by so obscuring truth that in many cases it is no longer discoverable. And
when by much searching and labour we do find some precious stone, symbolism has cut it into so
many facets that it is all but impossible to judge of its true shape. We look at it from one side and see
one thing, then from another and see another, the very brilliance of the symbols confusing us.
In Chapters I to V we have attempted - and acknowledgedly with but limited success - to project a
beam of light into the chaotic lumberrooms of Zoharic learning and illumine what therein lies stored.
Nevertheless, we believe that the little we have discovered is of priceless value, because also do we
believe much of it to be universally true, offering to the tumultuous years in which we live a key to
the door which at present bars us from a completer understanding.
Today we wait on the threshold of this door, fearfully gazing out upon a world monstrous and twoheaded.
Darkness has taken upon itself a political form which has bereft the nations of their sight; has
shrouded their minds and blotted out their wisdom; has sown among them the dragon's teeth of war.
We stand today at the foot of the Tower of Babel - the tower of class strife and international conflict.
Meanwhile light has scintillated forth in science, the boundless Shekinah of this present age. It is
girt by no frontier and circumscribed by no class. It shines forth over the north and the south, over the
east and the west. Into the heights and into the depths it glows, and yet for the perfection of its
creative force it demands that upon its ever-expanding effulgence be cast the shadow of a new human
form: the shadow of a humanity in which the physical, the moral, and the intellectual are balanced
between the material and the spiritual. What the world demands is a new Microcosmic Idea, a new
five-fold Messianic Force, a new Dispensation of Balance which will establish within it a new
equilibrium.
As science is a universal understanding of things, and as the Qabalah purports to be the key to
universal wisdom, then, if this wisdom fits this understanding, will this key unlock the door before
which we blindly stand. What then is there common between science and the Qabalah? Before
answering this question we will attempt to reduce much of what we have as yet tried to explain to its
simplest form.
(1) Man is a mystery shrouded in a mystery which we call the universe; and this mystery leads us to a yet
deeper mystery which we call God or the Unknowable. All is a three-fold wonder, a relationship
between God, man, and the universe.
(2) This universe comes from some unknown source and wends its way towards some unknown end. As
it comes from -?, appears to be proceeding towards -?, and is in itself -?, its nature, form, and
powers can only be described by means of symbols; that is in pictures which in themselves are no
more real than a photograph is real when compared to the thing it represents.
(3) As symbols are but thoughts set forth in pictorial form which possess no activity, we conclude that
the world in which we live, and which in fact is shadowed forth by our thoughts, is no more than
one infinite thoughtform, a form which exists (how is beyond our understanding) in God, or the
Unknowable, and which finds its activity in our thoughts by being fragmented by our finite minds.
(4) To us our thought would be impossible without light, and light would be incomprehensible without
darkness, just as heat is incomprehensible without cold. To us, in its ultimate form, the universe is
light; it is that which opens the mind of the thinker, which, however, cannot comprehend the
existence of light without lack of light.
(5) This light reveals to us a universe of four dimensions, of four worlds in one manifestation, of space
and of time the former being built up of three directions, length, breadth, and thickness. The one
encloses or includes the other, and what is beyond this four-dimensional universe is unknown, if not
unknowable.
6) In its turn darkness reveals to us the limitations of human knowledge. Our minds may be compared to
fire-flies flitting about in the cavern of night. The minute glow which they emit and cast on the void
not only shows us how vast is our ignorance, but that all our knowledge can be no more than
relatively true, for the mind is finite and the cavern apparently infinite.
(7) As all knowledge can be no more than relatively true - that is never free from ignorance - wisdom
consists in recognizing this fact and of utilizing knowledge in accordance with circumstances.
Understand the circumstances and through knowledge extract light (higher Knowledge) from them -
this is wisdom; but to use knowledge in order to extract power (the clash between light and
darkness) - this is magic.
(8) Wherever we turn we come up against a three-fold order: within man in the form of the physical,
moral, and intellectual spheres of his activities between men in that of justice, culture, and work:
between man and the universe and between man and God - between everything. Nothing in this
world is single; not even a thought is single. All things and all thoughts are relative; that is, they are
the offspring of a relationship, of an above and of a below.
(9) Relativity is, consequently, the secret of deliverance from darkness; therefore it is the road towards
the expansion of light. And as light grows, so does thought grow. Consequently, when light has
reached its utmost limits, thought will do likewise, and the one Thought-Form will be re-created.
This we feel is the ultimate end of the human will - the myriads of fragments of thought reestablished
in the Primal Idea.
(10) Finally, this transfiguration can only be accomplished through action, that is through will to think or
to stop thinking. The world we live in is a world of activity, a conflict between light and darkness,
knowledge and ignorance, good and evil. It is a whirling energy - nebular force, stellar force,
planetary force, human force. It is a world of perpetual revolutions - a cosmos, a chaos, a void, the
spark of a new thought; and then once again a cosmos, a chaos, and a void, the shadow of a dead
thought. Nature abhors a vacuum; hence life is the plenitude which fills it, a plenitude which of
necessity can never stand still. Each true thought; a thought full of light, which flashes on the
darkness which surrounds it, is a Christ unto this world. When three such thoughts, one in the
physical realm, one in the moral, and one in the intellectual, simultaneously flash forth, then is a
Messianic Age begotten. It is this three-fold deliverance which the world awaits - a deliverance and
transfiguration which can only come from within.
Such in brief are some of the main doctrines of the Qabalah reduced to their simplest terms and
translated into easily understandable language. From them we will turn to the scientific conceptions of
today and will show that between these two systems of thought there are certain similarities.
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The Secret Wisdom Of The Qabalah: Chapter 6