THE KABALISTIC FOUR ADAMS

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silence and secrecy upon the true meaning of Mosaic sayings, and thus came to grief. The Doctrines of Qû-tâmy, the Chaldaean, are, in short, the allegorical rendering of the religion of the earliest nations. of the Fifth Race.

Why then should M. Renan treat the name Adam-Adami" with such academical contempt? The author of the Origins of Christianity evidently knows nothing of the "origins of pagan symbolism or of Esotericism either, otherwise he would have known that the name was a form of universal symbol, referring, even with the Jews, not to one man, but to four distinct humanities or mankinds. This is very easily proven.

The Kabalists teach the existence of four distinct Adams, or the transformation of four consecutive Adams, the emanations from the Dyooknah (divine phantom) of the Heavenly Man, an ethereal combination of Neshamah, the highest Soul or Spirit: this Adam having, of course, neither a gross human body, nor a body of desire. This "Adam" is the prototype (tzure) of the second Adam. That they represent our Five Races is certain, as everyone can see by their description in the Kabala: the first being the "perfect, Holy Adam”; ... “a shadow that disappeared" (the Kings of Edom) produced from the divine Tzelem (Image); the second is called the protoplastic androgyne Adam of the future terrestrial and separated Adam; the third Adam is the man made of "dust" (the first, innocent Adam); and the fourth, is the supposed forefather of our own race the Fallen Adam. See, however, the admirably clear description of these in Mr. Isaac Myer's Qabbalah.958 He gives only four Adams, because of the Kings of Edom, no doubt. "The fourth Adam," he writes, ". . . was clothed with skin, flesh, nerves, etc. This answers to the lower Nephesh and Guff, i.e., body, united. He has the animal power of reproduction and continuance of species," and this is the human Root-Race. It is just at this point that the modern Kabalists - led into error by the long generations of Christian mystics who have tampered with the Kabalistic records wherever they could diverge from the Occultists. in their interpretations, and take the later thought for the earlier idea. The original Kabala was entirely metaphysical, and had no concern. with animal, or terrestrial sexes; the later Kabala has suffocated the divine ideal under the heavy phallic element. The Kabalists say:"God made man male and female." "Among the Qabbalists, the necessity to continued creation and existence is called the Balance," says the author of Qabbalah;958 and being without this "Balance," connected with Ma-qom (mysterious place),959 even the First Race is

959. Simply, the womb, the "Holy of Holies" with the Semites.

not, as we have seen, recognized by the Sons of the Fifth Adam. From the highest Heavenly Man, the upper Adam who is “male female" or Androgyne, down to the Adam of dust, these personified symbols are all connected with sex and procreation. With the Eastern Occultists it is entirely the reverse. The sexual relation they consider as a "Karma" pertaining only to the mundane relation of man, who is dominated by Illusion, a thing to be put aside, the moment that the person becomes "wise." They consider it a most fortunate circumstance if the Guru (teacher) found in his pupil an aptitude for the pure life of Brahmacharya. Their dual symbols were to them but the poetical imagery of the sublime correlation of creative Cosmic forces. And this ideal conception is found beaming like a golden ray upon each idol, however coarse and grotesque, in the crowded galleries of the somber fanes of India and other Mother lands of cults.

This will be demonstrated in the following Section.

Meanwhile, it may be added that, with the Gnostics, the second Adam also emanates from the Primeval Man, the Ophite Adamas, in "whose image he is made"; the third, from this second- an Androgyne. The latter is symbolized in the 6th and 7th pairs of the male-female Aeons, Amphain-Essumene, and Vananin-Lamer (Father and Mother; vide Valentinian Table, in Epiphanius) —while the fourth Adam, or Race, is represented by a Priapean monster. The latter a post-Christian fancy is the degraded copy of the anteChristian Gnostic symbol of the "Good One," or "He, who created before anything existed," the Celestial Priapus-truly born from Venus and Bacchus when that God returned from his expedition into India, for Venus and Bacchus are the post-types of Aditi and the Spirit. The later Priapus, one, however, with Agathodaimon, the Gnostic Savior, and even with Abraxas, is no longer the glyph for abstract creative Power, but symbolizes the four Adams, or Races, the fifth being represented by the five branches cut off from the Tree of Life on which the old man stands in the Gnostic gems. The number of the Root-Races was recorded in the ancient Greek temples by the seven vowels, of which five were framed in a panel in the Initiation halls of the Adyta. The Egyptian glyph for it was a hand with five fingers spread, the fifth or little finger being only halfgrown, and also five "N's"-hieroglyphs standing for that letter, The Romans used the five vowels A EIO V in their fanes; and this archaic symbol was adopted during the middle ages as a motto by the House of the Hapsburgs. Sic transit gloria!

THE Sanctum Sanctorum of the Ancients, i. e., that recess on the Western side of the Temple which was enclosed on three sides by blank walls and had its only aperture or door hung over with a curtain - also called the Adytum — was common to all ancient nations.

Nevertheless, a great difference is found between the secret meanings of this symbolical place, in the esotericism of the Pagans and that of later Jews; though the symbology of it was originally identical throughout the ancient Races and Nations. The Gentiles, by placing in the Adytum a sarcophagus, or a tomb (taphos), and the solar-god to whom the temple was consecrated, held it, as Pantheists, in the greatest veneration. They regarded it in its esoteric meaning- as the symbol of resurrection, cosmic, solar (or diurnal), and human. It embraced the wide range of periodical and (in time) punctual, Manvantaras, or the re-awakenings of Kosmos, Earth, and Man to new existences; the sun being the most poetical and also the most grandiose symbol of the same in heaven, and man-in his re-incarnations on Earth. The Jews whose realism, if judged by the dead-letter, was as practical and gross in the days of Moses as it is now - in the course of their estrangement from the gods of their pagan neighbors, consummated a national and levitical polity, by the device of setting forth their Holy of Holies as the most solemn sign of their Monotheism - exoterically; while seeing in it but a universal phallic symbol — esoterically. While the Kabalists knew but Ain-Soph and the "gods" of the Mysteries, the Levites had no tomb, no god in their adytum but the "Sacred" Ark of the Covenant- their "Holy of Holies."

960

When the esoteric meaning of this recess is made clear, however, the profane will be better able to understand why David danced "uncovered" before the ark of the Covenant, and was so anxious to appear vile for the sake of his "Lord," and base in his own sight.961

The ark is the navi-form Argha of the Mysteries. Parkhurst, who

960. But it was not so, in reality, witness their prophets. It is the later Rabbis and the Talmudic scheme that killed out all

spirituality from the body of their symbols; leaving only their Scriptures a dead shell, from which the Soul has departed.

961. See II Samuel, vi. 16-22.

has a long dissertation upon it in his Greek dictionary, and who never breathes a word about it in the Hebrew lexicon, explains it thus:

'Apx in this application answers to the Hebrew rasit or wisdom . . . a word which had the meaning of the emblem of the female generative power, the Arg or Arca, in which the germ of all nature was supposed to float or brood on the great abyss during the interval which took place after every mundane cycle.

Quite so; and the Jewish ark of the Covenant had precisely the same significance; with the supplementary addition that, instead of a beautiful and chaste sarcophagus (the symbol of the matrix of Nature and resurrection) as in the Sanctum sanctorum of the pagans, they had the ark made still more realistic in its construction by the two cherubs set up on the coffer or ark of the covenant, facing each other, with their wings spread in such a manner as to form a perfect yoni (as now seen in India). Besides which, this generative symbol had its significance enforced by the four mystic letters of Jehovah's name, namely, ; or meaning Jod (membrum virile, see Kabala); (Hé, the womb); (Vau, a crook or a hook, a nail), and again, meaning also an opening"); the whole forming the perfect bisexual emblem or symbol or Y (e) H (0) V (a) H, the male and female symbol. Perhaps, also, when people realize the true meaning of the office and title of the Kadesh Kadeshim, "the holy ones," or "the consecrated to the temple of the Lord," the "Holy of Holies" of the latter may assume an aspect far from edifying.

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Iacchus again is Iao or Jehovah; and Baal or Adon, like Bacchus, was a phallic god. "Who shall ascend into the hill (the high place) of the Lord?" asks the holy king David, "who shall stand in the place of his Kadushu TP ? " 962 Kadesh may mean in one sense to devote, hallow, sanctify, and even to initiate or set apart; but it also means the ministry of lascivious rites (the Venus-worship) and the true interpretation of the word Kadesh is bluntly rendered in Deuteronomy xxiii, 17; Hosea iv. 14; and Genesis xxxviii, from verses 15 to 22. The "holy" Kadeshuth of the Bible were identical, as to the duties of their office, with the Nautch-girls of the later Hindû pagodas. The Hebrew Kadeshim, or galli, lived "by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove," or the bust of Venus-Astarte, says verse the seventh in the twenty-third chapter of II Kings.

The dance performed by David round the ark was the "circle-dance," said to have been prescribed by the Amazons for the Mysteries. Such was the dance of the daughters of Shiloh, and the leaping of the prophets of Baal. It was simply a characteristic of the Sabaean

963

962. Psalms xxiv. 3.

963. Judges xxi. 21, 23, et passim.

964.

I Kings xviii. 26.

WHAT WAS THE CIRCLE-DANCE?

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worship, for it denoted the motion of the planets round the sun. That the dance was a Bacchic frenzy is apparent. Sistra were used on the occasion, and the taunt of Michal and the King's reply are very expressive.965

"The Ark, in which are preserved the germs of all living things necessary to repeople the earth, represents the survival of life, and the supremacy of spirit over matter, through the conflict of the opposing powers of nature. In the Astro-Theosophic chart of the Western Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is placed at the sinister side, the side of the woman (the moon), one of whose symbols is the left pillar of Solomon's temple - Boaz. The umbilicus is connected through the placenta with the receptacle in which are fructified the embryos of the race. . . . The Ark is the sacred Argha of the Hindûs, and thus the relation in which it stands to Noah's ark may be easily inferred when we learn that the Argha was an oblong vessel, used by the high priests as a sacrificial chalice in the worship of Isis, Astarte, and Venus-Aphrodite, all of whom were goddesses of the generative powers of nature, or of matter- hence representing symbolically the Ark containing the germs of all living things.'

...

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Mistaken is he who accepts the Kabalistic works of today, and the interpretations of the Zohar by the Rabbis, for the genuine Kabalistic lore of old! 967 For no more today than in the day of Friedrich von Schelling does the Kabala accessible to Europe and America, contain much more than "ruins and fragments, much distorted remnants still of that primitive system which is the key to all religious systems." 968

965. Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 45.

"

966. Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 444. 967. The author of the Qabbalah' makes several attempts to prove conclusively the antiquity of the Zohar. Thus he shows that Moses de Leon could not be the author or the forger of the Zoharic works in the XIIIth century, as he is accused of being, since Ibn Gebirol gave out the same philosophical teaching 225 years before the day of Moses de Leon. No true Kabalist or scholar will ever deny the fact. It is certain that Ibn Gebirol based his doctrines upon the oldest Kabalistic sources, namely, the 'Chaldacan Book of Numbers," as well as some no longer extant Midrashim, the same, no doubt, as those used by Moses de Leon. But it is just the difference between the two ways of treating the same esoteric subjects, which, while proving the enormous antiquity of the esoteric system, points to a decided ring of Talmudistic and even Christian sectarianism in the compilation and glossaries

"

...

a

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of the Zoharic system by Rabbi Moses. Ibn Gebirol never quoted from the Scriptures to enforce the teachings (Vide I. Myer's Qabbalah, p. 7). Moses de Leon has made of the Zohar that which it has remained to this day, a running commentary on the Books of the Pentateuch" (ibid.), with few later additions made by Christian hands. One follows the archaic esoteric philosophy; the other, only that portion which was adapted to the lost Books of Moses restored by Ezra. Thus, while the system, or the trunk on which the primitive original Zohar was engrafted, is of an immense antiquity, many of the (later) Zoharic offshoots are strongly colored by the peculiar views held by Christian Gnostics (Syrian and Chaldaean), the friends and co-workers of Moses de Leon who, as shown by Munk, accepted their interpretations.

968. See Kabbala, by Professor Franck, Preface.