H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Volume 3

SECTION XXIII
What the Occultists and Kabalists Have to Say
(Page 211) THE Zohar, an unfathomable store of hidden wisdom and mystery, is very often appealed to by Roman Catholic writers. A very learned Rabbi, now the Chevalier Drach, having been converted to Roman Catholicism, and being a great Hebraist, thought fit to step into the shoes of Picus de Mirando and John Reuchlin, and to assure his new co-religionists that the Zohar contained in it pretty nearly all the dogmas of Catholicism. It is not our province to show here how far he has succeeded or failed; only to bring one instance of his explanations and preface it with the following.
The Zohar, is already shown, is not a genuine production of the Hebrew mind. It is the repository and compendium of the oldest doctrine of the East transmitted orally at first, and then written down in independent treatises during the Captivity at Babylon, and finally brought together by Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, toward the beginning of the Christian era. As Mosaic cosmogony was born under a new form in Mesopotamian countries, so the Zohar was a vehicle in which were focussed rays from the light of Universal Wisdom. Whatever likenesses are found between it and the Christian teachings, the compilers of the Zohar never had Christ in their minds. Were it otherwise there would not be one single Jew of the Mosaic law left in the world by this time. Again, if one is to accept literally what the Zohar says, then any religion under the sun may find corroboration in its symbols and allegorical sayings; and this, simply because this work is the echo of the primitive truths, and every creed is founded on some of these; the Zohar being but a veil of the Secret Doctrine. This is so evident that we have only to point to the said ex-Rabbi, the Chevalier Drach, to prove the fact.

 

(Page 212) In Part III, fol. 87 (col. 346^th) the Zohar treats of the Spirit guiding the Sun, its Rector, explaining that it is not the Sun itself that is meant thereby, but the Spirit “on, or under” the Sun. Drach is anxious to show that it was Christ who was meant by that “Sun,” or the Solar Spirit therein. In his comment upon that passage which refers to the Solar Spirit as “that stone which the builders rejected,” he asserts most positively that this

Sun-stone (pierre soleil) is identical with Christ, who was that stone,

and that therefore

The sun is undeniably (sans contredit) the second hypostasis of the Deity, [Harmonie entre l’Eglise et la Synagogue. t. 11., p.427 by the Chevalier Drach. See de Mirville.] or Christ.

 

If this be true, then the Vaidic or pre-Vaidic Aryans, Chaldaeans and Egyptians, like all Occultists past, present, and future, Jews included, have been Christians from all eternity. If this be not so, then modern Church Christianity is Paganism pure and simple exoterically, and transcendental and practical Magic or Occultism, Esoterically.

 

For this “stone” has a manifold significance, a dual existence, with gradations, a regular progression and retrogression. It is a “mystery” indeed.

 

The Occultists are quite ready to agree with St. Chrystostom, that the infidels - the profane, rather -

Being blinded by sun-light, thus lose sight of the true Sun in the contemplation of the false one.

But if that Saint, and along with him now the Hebraist Drach, chose to see in the Zohar and the Kabalistic Sun “ the second hypostasis,” this is no reason why all others should be blinded by them. The mystery of the Sun is the grandest perhaps, of all the innumerable mysteries of Occultism. A Gordian knot, truly, but one that cannot be severed with the double-edged sword of scholastic casuistry. It is a true deo dignus vindice nodus, and can be untied only by the Gods. The meaning of this is plain, and every Kabalist will understand it.

 

Contra solem ne loquaris was not said by Pythagoras with regard to the visible Sun. It was the “Sun of Initiation” that was meant, in its triple form - two of which are the “Day-Sun” and the “Night-Sun.”

 

If behind the physical luminary there were no mystery that people sensed instinctively, why should every nation, from the primitive peoples down to the Parsis of today, have turned towards the Sun during prayers?

 

The Mystery of the Sun- (Page 213) The Solar Trinity is not Mazdean, but is universal, and is as old as man . All the temples in Antiquity were invariably made to face the Sun, their portals to open to the East. See the old temples of Memphis and Baalbec, the Pyramids of the Old and of the New (?) Worlds, the Round Towers of Ireland, and the Serapeum of Egypt. The Initiates alone could give a philosophical explanation of this, and a reason for it - its mysticism notwithstanding - were only the world ready to receive it, which, alas! it is not. The last of the Solar Priests in Europe was the Imperial Initiate, Julian, now called the Apostate. [ Julian died for the same crime as Socrates. Both divulged a portion of the solar mystery, the heliocentric system being only a part of what was given during Initiation - one consciously, the other unconsciously, the Greek Sage never having been initiated. It was not the real solar system that was preserved in such secrecy, but the mysteries connected with the Sun’s constitution. Socrates was sentenced to death by earthly and worldly judges: Julian died a violent death because the hitherto protecting hand was withdrawn from him, and, no longer shielded by it, he was simply left to his destiny or Karma. For the student of Occultism there is a suggestive difference between the two kinds of death. Another memorable instance of the unconscious divulging of secrets pertain to mysteries is that of the poet, P. Ovidius Naso, who, like Socrates, had not been initiated. In his case, the Emperor Augustus, who was an Initiate, mercifully changed the penalty of death into banishment to Tomos on the Euxine. This sudden change from unbounded royal favour to banishment has been a fruitful scheme of speculation to classical scholars not initiated into the Mysteries. They have quoted Ovid’s own lines to show that it was some great and heinous immorality of the Emperor of which Ovid had become unwillingly cognizant. The inexorable law of the death penalty always following upon the revelation of any portion of the Mysteries to the profane, was unknown to them. Instead of seeing the amiable and merciful act of the Emperor in its true light, they have made it an occasion for traducing his moral character. The poet’s own words can be no evidence, because as he was not an Initiate, it could not be explained to him in what his offence consisted. There have been comparatively modern instances of poets unconsciously revealing in their verses so much of the hidden knowledge as to make even Initiates suppose them to be fellow-Initiates, and come to talk to them on the subject. This only shows that the sensitive poetic temperament is sometimes so far transported beyond the bounds of ordinary sense as to get glimpses into what has been impressed on the Astral Light. In the Light of Asia there are two passages that might make an Initiate of the first degree think that Mr. Edwin Arnold had been initiated himself in the Himalyan ashrams, but this is not so.] He tried to benefit the world by revealing at least a portion of the great mystery of the τρεπλασος and - he died. “There are three in one,” he said of the Sun - the central Sun [ A proof that Julian was acquainted with the heliocentric system.] being a precaution of Nature: the first is the universal cause of all, Sovereign Good and perfection; the Second Power is paramount Intelligence, having dominion over all reasonable beings, νοεροις;the third is the visible Sun. The pure energy of solar intelligence proceeds from the luminous seat occupied by our Sun in the centre of heaven, that pure energy being the Logos of our system; the “Mysterious Word Spirit produces all through the Sun, and never operates through any other medium,” says Hermes Trismegistus. For it is in the Sun, more than in any other heavenly body that the [unknown] Power placed the (Page 214) seat of its habitation. Only neither Hermes Trismegistus nor Julian an initiated Occultist, nor any other, meant by this Unknown Cause Jehovah, or Jupiter. They referred to the cause that produced all the manifested “great Gods” or Demiurgi (the Hebrew God included) of our system. Nor was our visible, material Sun meant, for the latter was only the manifested symbol. Philolaus the Pythagorean, explains and completes Trismegistus by saying:

The Sun is a mirror of fire, the splendour of whose flames by their reflection in that mirror [the Sun] is poured upon us, and that splendour we call image.

 It is evident that Philolaus referred to the central spiritual Sun, whose beams and effulgence are only mirrored by our central Star, the Sun. This is as clear to the Occultists as it was to the Pythagoreans. As for the profane of pagan antiquity, it was, of course, the physical Sun that was the “highest God” for them, as it seems - if Chevalier Drach’s view be accepted - to have now virtually become for the modern Roman Catholics. If words mean anything, the statements made by the Chevalier Drach that “this sun is, undeniably, the second hypostasis of the Deity,” imply what we say; as “this Sun” refers to the Kabalistic Sun, and “hypostasis” means substance or subsistence of the Godhead or Trinity - distinctly personal. As the author, being an ex-Rabbi, thoroughly versed in Hebrew, and in the mysteries of the Zohar, ought to know the value of words; and as, moreover, in writing this, he was bent upon reconciling “the seeming contradictions,” as he puts it, between Judaism and Christianity - the fact becomes quite evident.

 

But all this pertains to questions and problems which will be solved naturally and in the course of the development of the doctrine. The Roman Catholic Church stands accused, not of worshipping under other names the Divine Beings worshipped by all nations in Antiquity, but of declaring idolatrous, not only the Pagans ancient and modern, but every Christian nation that has freed itself from the Roman yoke. The accusation brought against herself by more than one man of Science, of worshipping the stars like true Sabaeans of old, stands to this day uncontradicted, yet no star-worshipper has ever addressed his adoration to the material stars and planets, as will be shown before the last page of this work is written; none the less it is true that those Philosophers alone who studied Astrology and Magic knew that the last word of those sciences was to be sought in, and expected from, the Occult forces emanating from those constellations.

 

SECTION XXIV

 

Modern Kabalists in Science and Occult Astronomy

 

(Page 215) THERE is a physical, an astral, and a super-astral Universe in the three chief divisions of the Kabalah; as there are terrestrial, super-terrestrial, and spiritual Beings. The “Seven Planetary Spirits” may be ridiculed by Scientists to their hearts’ content, yet the need of intelligent ruling and guiding Forces in so much felt to this day that scientific men and specialists, who will not hear of Occultism or of ancient systems, find themselves obliged to generate in their inner consciousness some kind of semi-mystical system. Metcalf’s “sun-force” theory, and that of Zaliwsky, a learned Pole, which made Electricity the Universal Force and placed its storehouse in the Sun, [ La Gravitation par l’Electricité, p.7. quoted by De Mirville, iv. 156 ] were revivals of the Kabalistic teachings. Zaliwsky tried to prove that Electricity, producing “the most powerful, attractive, calorific, and luminous effects,” was present in the physical constitution of the Sun and explained its peculiarities. This is very near the Occult teaching. It is only by admitting the gaseous nature of the Sun-reflector, and the powerful Magnetism and Electricity of the solar attraction and repulsion, that one can explain (a) the evident absence of any waste of power and luminosity in the Sun - inexplicable by the ordinary laws of combustion; and (b) the behaviour of the planets, so often contradicting every accepted rule of weight and gravity. And Zaliwsky makes this “solar electricity” “differ from anything known on earth.”

 

Father Secchi may be suspected of having sought to introduce

Forces of quite a new order and quite foreign to gravitation, which he had discovered in Space. [ De Mirville. iv.157.] (Page 216)

in order to reconcile Astronomy with theological Astronomy. But Nagy, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was no clerical, and yet he develops a theory on the necessity of intelligent Forces whose complacency “would lent itself to all the whims of the comets.” He suspects that:

 

Notwithstanding all the actual researches on the rapidity of light - that dazzling product of an unknown force . . . . which we see too frequently to understand – that light is motionless in reality.

 

[ C. E. Love, the well-known railway builder and engineer in France, tired of blind forces, made all the (then) “imponderable agents” - now called “forces” - subordinates of Electricity, and declares the latter to be

an Intelligence - albeit molecular in nature and material. [ Essai sur l'Identité des Agents Producteurs du Son, de la Lumiere, etc., p.15, ibid .]

 In the author’s opinion these Forces are atomistic agents, endowed with intelligence, spontaneous will, and motion, [ Ibid.,p.218.] and he thus, like the Kabalists, makes the cousal Forces substantial, while the Forces that act on this plane are only the effects of the former, as with him matter is eternal, and the Gods also; [ Summarised from Ibid., p.213. De Mirville, iv.158.] so is the Soul likewise, though it has inherent in itself a still higher Soul [Spirit], preëxistent, endowed with memory, and superior to Electric Force; the latter is subservient to the higher Souls, those superior Souls forcing it to act according to the eternal laws. The concept is rather hazy, but is evidently on the Occult lines. Moreover, the system proposed is entirely pantheistic, and is worked out in a purely scientific volume. Monotheists and Roman Catholics fall foul of it, of course; but one who believes in the Planetary Spirits and who endows Nature with living Intelligences, must always expect this.

 

In this connection, however, it is curious that after the moderns have so laughed at the ignorance of the ancients,

Who, knowing only of seven planets [yet having an ogdoad which did not include the earth!], invented therefore seven Spirits to fit in with the number,

 Babinet should have vindicated the “superstition” unconsciously to himself. In the Revue des Deux Mondes this eminent French Astronomer writes:

 

The Place of Neptune -

(Page 217) The ogdoad of the Ancients included the earth [which is an error] i.e., eight or seven according to whether or not the earth was comprised in the number. [ May. 1855. Ibid., p.139.]

De Mirville assures his readers that: 

M. Babinet was telling me but a few days ago that we had in reality only eight big planets, including the earth, and so many small ones between Mars and Jupiter . . . .Herschell offering to call all those beyond the seven primary planets asteroids! [ La Terre et notre Systieme solaire. De Mirville, iv. 139.]

 There is a problem to be solved in this connection. How do Astronomers know that Neptune is a planet, or even that it is a body belonging to our system? Being found on the very confines of our Planetary World, so called, the latter was arbitrarily expanded to receive it; but what really mathematical and infallible proof have Astronomers that it is (a) a planet, and (b) one of our planets? None at all! It is as such an immeasurable distance from us,

the apparent diameter of the sun being to Neptune but one-fortieth of the sun’s apparent diameter to us,

 and it is so dim and hazy when seen through the best telescope that it looks like an astronomical romance to call it one of our planets. Neptune’s heat and light are reduced to 1/900th part of the heat and light received by the earth. His motion and that of his satellites have always looked suspicious. They do not agree - in appearance at least - with those of the other planets. His system is retrograde, etc. But even the latter abnormal fact resulted only in the creation of new hypotheses by our Astronomers, who forthwith suggested a probable overturn of Neptune, his collision with another body, etc. Was Adams’ and Leverrier’s discovery so welcomed because Neptune was as necessary as was Ether to throw a new glory upon astronomical prevision, upon the certitude of modern scientific data and principally upon the power of mathematical analysis? It would so appear. A new planet that widens our planetary domain by more than four hundred million leagues is worthy of annexation. Yet, as in the case of terrestrial annexation, scientific authority may be proved “right” only because it has “might.” Neptune’s motion happens to be dimly perceived: Eureka! it is a planet! A mere motion, however, proves very little. It is now an ascertained fact in Astronomy that there are no absolutely fixed stars in Nature, [ If, as Sir W. Herschel thought, the so-called fixed stars have resulted from, and owe their origin to nebular combustion, they cannot be fixed any more than is our sun, which was believed to be motionless and is now found to rotate around its axis every twenty-five days. As the fixed star nearest to the sun, however, is eight-thousand times farther away from him than is Neptune the illusions furnished by the telescopes must be also eight-thousand times as great. We will therefore leave the question at rest, repeating only what A. Maury said in his work (La Terre et l’Homme, published in 1858): “It is utterly impossible, so far, to decide anything concerning Neptune’s constitution, analogy alone authorising us to ascribe to him a rotary motion like that of other planets.” (De Mirville, iv.140).] even though such stars should (Page 218) continue to exist in astronomical parlance, while they have passed from the scientific imagination. Occultism, however, has a strange theory of its own with regard to Neptune.

 

Occultism says that if several hypotheses resting on mere assumption - which have been accepted only because they have been taught by eminent men of learning - are taken away from the Science of Modern Astronomy, to which they serve as props, then even the presumably universal law of gravitation will be found to be contrary to the most ordinary truths of mechanics. And really one can hardly blame Christians - foremost of all the Roman Catholics - however scientific some of these may themselves be, for refusing to quarrel with their Church for the sake of scientific beliefs. Nor can we even blame them for accepting in the secresy of their hearts - as some of them do - the theological “Virtues” and “Archons” of Darkness, instead of all the blind forces offered them by Science. 

Never can there be intervention of any sort in the marshalling and the regular precession of the celestial bodies! The law of gravitation is the law of laws; who ever witnessed a stone rising in the air against gravitation? The permanence of the universal law is shown in the behaviour of the sidereal worlds and globes eternally faithful to their primitive orbits; never wandering beyond their respective paths. Nor is there any intervention needed, as it could only be disastrous. Whether the first sidereal incipient rotation took place owing to an intercosmic chance, or to the spontaneous development of latent primordial forces; or again, whether that impulse was given once for all by God or Gods - it does not make the slightest difference. At this stage of cosmic evolution no intervention, superior or inferior, is admissible. Were any to take place, the universal clock-work would stop, and Kosmos would fall into pieces.

Such are stray sentences, pearls of wisdom, fallen from time to time from scientific lips, and now chosen at random to illustrate a query. We lift our diminished heads and look heavenward. Such seems to be the fact: worlds, suns, and stars, the shining myriads of the heavenly hosts, remind the Poet of an infinite, shoreless ocean, whereon move swiftly numberless squadrons of ships, millions upon millions of cruisers, large and small, crossing each other, whirling and gyrating in every direction; and Science teaches us, that though they be without rudder or compass or any beacon to guide them, they are nevertheless secure from collision - almost secure, at any rate, save in chance accidents - as the whole celestial machine is built upon and guided by an immutable, albeit blind, law, and by constant and accelerating force or forces.

 

Self-Generation Ex-Niholo?- (Page 219) “Built upon” by whom? “By self-evolution,” is the answer. Moreover, as dynamics teach that 

A body in motion tends to continue in the same state of relative rest or motion unless acted upon by some external force,

this force has to be regarded as self-generated - even if not eternal, since this would amount to the recognition of perpetual motion - and so well self-calculated and self-adjusted as to last from the beginning to the end of Kosmos. But “self-generation” has still to generate from something, generation ex-nihilo being as contrary to reason as it is to Science. Thus we are placed once more between the horns of a dilemma: are we to believe in perpetual motion or in self-generation ex-nihilo? And if in neither, who or what is that something, which first produced that force or those forces?

 

There are such things in mechanics as superior levers, which give the impulse and act upon secondary or inferior levers. The former, however, need an impulse and occasional renovation, otherwise they would themselves very soon stop and fall back into their original status. What is the external force which puts and retains them in motion? Another dilemma!

 

As to the law of cosmical non-intervention, it could be justified only in one case, namely, if the celestial mechanism were perfect; but it is not. The so-called unalterable motions of celestial bodies alter and change incessantly; they are very often disturbed, and the wheels of even the sidereal locomotive itself occasionally jump off their invisible rails, as may be easily proved. Otherwise why should Laplace speak of the probable occurrence at some future time of an out-and-out reform in the arrangements of the planets; [ Exposition du vrai System du Monde. p. 282.] or Lagrange maintain the gradual narrowing of the orbits; or our modern Astronomers, again, declare that the fuel in the sun is slowly disappearing? If the laws and forces which govern the behaviour of the celestial bodies are immutable, such modifications and wearing-out of substance or fuel, of force and fluids, would be impossible; yet they are not denied. Therefore (Page 220) one has to suppose that such modifications will have to rely upon the laws of forces, which will have to self-regenerate themselves once more on such occasions, thus producing an astral antinomy, and a kind of physical palinomy, since, as Laplace says, one would then see fluids disobeying themselves and reacting in a way contrary to all their attributes and properties.

 

Newton felt very uncomfortable about the moon. Her behaviour in progressively narrowing the circumference of her orbit around the earth made him nervous, lest it should end one day in our satellite falling upon the earth. The world, he confessed, needed repairing, and that very often. [ See the passage quoted by Herschel in Natural Philosophy, p. 165. De Mirville. iv.165.] In this he was corroborated by Herschel. [ l,oc. cit.] He speaks of real and quite considerable deviations, besides those which are only apparent, but gets some consolation from his conviction that somebody or something will probably see to things.

 

We may be answered that the personal beliefs of some pious Astronomers, however great they may be as scientific characters, are no proofs of the actual existence and presence in space of intelligent supramundane Beings, of either Gods or Angels. It is the behaviour of the stars and planets themselves that has to be analysed and inferences must be drawn therefrom. Renan asserts that nothing that we know of the sidereal bodies warrants the idea of the presence of any Intelligence, whether internal or external to them.

 

Let us see, says Reynaud, if this is a fact, or only one more empty scientific assumption. 

The orbits traversed by the planets are far from being immutable. They are, on the contrary, subject to perpetual mutation in position, as in form. Elongations, contractions, and orbital widenings, oscillations from right to left, slackening and quickening of speed . . .. And all this on a plane which seems to vacillate. [ Terre et Ciel. p.28. Ibid. ] 

As is very pertinently observed by des Mousseux: 

Here is a path having little of the mathematical and mechanical precision claimed for it; for we know of no clock which, having gone slow for several minutes should catch up the right time of itself and without the turn of a key. 

So much for blind law and force. As for the physical impossibility - a miracle indeed in the sight of Science - of a stone raised in the air against the law of gravitation, this is what Babinet - the deadliest enemy and opponent of the phenomena of levitation - (cited by Arago) says: