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ОглавлениеBOOK III
DIVINE SYNTHESIS AND REALISATION OF MAGIA BY THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION
—GIMEL
CHAPTER I
CHRIST ACCUSED OF MAGIC BY THE JEWS
At the beginning of the Gospel according to St. John there is one sentence which is never uttered by the Catholic Church except in the bending of the knees; that sentence is: “The Word was made flesh.” The plenary revelation of Christianity is comprised therein. So also elsewhere the Evangelist furnishes the criterion of orthodoxy, which is the confession of Jesus Christ manifested in flesh—that is to say, in visible and human reality.
After emblazoning in his visions the pantacles and hieroglyphs of esoteric science; after exhibiting wheels revolving within wheels; after picturing living eyes turning to all the spheres; after deploying the beating wings of the four mysterious living creatures—Ezekiel, the most profound Kabalist of the ancient prophets, beholds nothing but a plain strewn with dry bones. At his word they are covered with flesh and so is form restored to them. A pitiful beauty invests these remnants of death, but that beauty is cold and lifeless. Of such were the doctrines and mythologies of the elder world, when a breath of love descended upon them from heaven. Then the dead shapes rose up; the wraiths of philosophy gave place to men of true wisdom; the Word was incarnate and alive; it was no longer the day of abstractions but one of reality. That faith which is proved by works replaced the hypotheses which ended in nothing but fables. Magic was transformed into sanctity, wonders became miracles, the common people—excluded by ancient initiation—were called to the royalty and priesthood of virtue. Realisation is thus of the essence of Christian religion, and its doctrine gives a body even to the most obvious allegories. The house of the young man who had great possessions is still shewn in Jerusalem, and it might be in no sense impossible for careful research to discover a lamp which, by a similar tradition, once belonged to one of the foolish virgins. Such ingenuous credulities are fundamentally not very dangerous; indeed they prove only the living and realising power of the Christian faith. The Jews accused that faith of having materialised belief and idealised earthly things. In our Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic we have recited the scandalous parable of the Sepher Toldos Jeshu which was invented to support the accusation. It is related in the Talmud that Jesus ben Sabta, or the son of the divorced woman, having studied profane mysteries in Egypt, set up a false stone in Israel and led the people into idolatry. It was acknowledged notwithstanding that the Jewish priesthood did wrong when it cursed him with both hands, and it is in this connection that we find in the Talmud one beautiful precept which is destined hereafter to unite Christendom and Israel: “Never curse with both hands, so that one of them may always be free to forgive and to bless.” As a fact, the priesthood was guilty of injustice towards that peace-bringing Master who counselled his disciples to obey the constituted hierarchy. “They are in the seat of Moses,” the Saviour said; “Do therefore that which they tell you but not as they do themselves.” On another occasion he commanded ten lepers to shew their persons to the priests, and they were cured on the road. What touching abnegation in the Divine Worker of miracles, Who thus ascribed to His most deadly enemies the very honour of His miracles I For the rest, were those who accused Christ of setting up a spurious corner-stone acquainted themselves with the true one? Had not the Jews in the days of the Pharisees lost the science of that which is at once the corner-stone, the cubic stone, the philosophical stone—in a word, the fundamental stone of the Kabalistic Temple, square at the base and triangular above like the pyramids? By impeaching Jesus as an innovator did they not proclaim that they had themselves forgotten antiquity? Was not that light which Abraham saw and rejoiced extinguished for the unfaithful children of Moses, and was it not recovered by Jesus, Who made it shine with a new splendour? To be quite certain on the subject, the Gospel and Apocalypse of St. John must be compared with the mysterious doctrines of the Sepher Yetzirah and Zohar. It will then be realised that Christianity, so far from being a heresy in Israel, was the true orthodox tradition of Jewry, while it was the Scribes and Pharisees who were sectarians. Furthermore, Christian orthodoxy is proved by the consent of the world at large and by the suspension of the sovereign priesthood, together with the perpetual sacrifice, in Israel—the two indisputable marks of a true religion. Judaism without a temple, without a High Priest and without a sacrifice survives only as a dissident persuasion; certain persons are still Jews, but the Temple and Altar are Christian.
There is a beautiful allegorical exposition in the apocryphal gospels of this criterion of certitude in respect of Christianity: its evidence is that of realisation. Some children were amusing themselves by fashioning birds of clay, and among them was the child Jesus. Each little artist praised his own work, and only Jesus said nothing; but when He had moulded His birds, He clapped His hands, telling them to fly, and they flew. So did Christian institutions shew their superiority over those of the ancient world; the latter are dead, but Christianity is alive. Considered as the fully realised and vital expression of the Kabalah—that is to say, of primitive tradition—Christianity is stiü unknown, and hence that Kabalistic and prophetic book called the Apocalypse yet remains to be explained, being incomprehensible without the Kabalistic Keys. The traditional interpretation was long preserved by the Johannites, or disciples of St. John; but the Gnostics intervened—to the total confusion and loss of everything, as will be made clear at a later stage.1
We read in the Acts of the Apostles that St. Paul at Ephesus collected all the books which treated of things curious and burnt them in public. The reference is no doubt to the old Göetic texts, or works of necromancy. The loss is regrettable assuredly, since even from the memorials of error there may shine some rays of truth, while information may consequently be derived which will prove precious to science.2 It is a matter of general knowledge that at the advent of Christ Jesus the oracles were silenced everywhere, and a voice went wailing over the sea, crying: “Great Pan is dead.” A pagan writer, who takes exception to the report, declares on his own part that the oracles did not cease, but in a little while no one was found to consult them. The rectification is valuable, for such an attempted justification is more conclusive than the pretended calumny. Much the same thing should be said concerning the works of wonder, which fell into contempt in the presence of real miracles. As a fact, if the higher laws of Nature are obedient to true moral superiority, miracles become supernatural like the virtues which produce them. This theory detracts nothing from the power of God, while the fact that the Astral Light is obedient to the superior Light of Grace signifies in reality for us that the old serpent of allegory places its vanquished head beneath the foot of the Queen of Heaven.
1 We shall meet with this sect accordingly, and it will be found that the present remark is either (a) not intended to justify the alleged traditional interpretation or (b) that the initial reference has to be qualified by its subsequent extension. Johannite Christianity has been the subject of much romancing among the exponents of HighGrade Masonry. Woodford's Cyclopcedia of Freemasonry identifies its followers with Nazarenes and Nasarites, and adds that they regarded St. John the Baptist as “the only true prophet”. One order of Templar Masonry, which is now extinct, seems to have claimed connection with the Johannite sect.
2 I have quoted elsewhere the previous remark of the author on the same subject as a curious example of how things are apt to strike a French exponent of occultism at different periods of time and in other states of emotion. “St. Paul burnt the books of Trismegistus”—not Göetic texts or works of necromancy; “Omar burned the disciples of Trismegistus (?) and St. Paul. O persecutors! O incendiaries I O coffers! When will you finish your work of darkness and destruction!” This is from the Rituel de la Haute Magic, p. 337.
