Liber 777.pdf

LIBER

777

vel

P ROLEGOMENA

S YMBOLICA

AD S YSTEMAM

S CEPTICO -M YSTICÆ

V IÆ E XPLICANDÆ

F UNDAMENTUM

H IEROGLYPHICUM

S ANCTISSIMORUM

S CIENTÆ S UMMÆ

A\A\

publication in Class B

777

T HE FOLLOWING is an attempt to systematise alike the data of mysticism and the

results of comparative religion.

The sceptic will applaud our labours, for that the very catholicity of the symbols

denies them any objective validity, since, in so many contradictions, something must

be false; while the mystic will rejoice equally that the self-same catholicity all-

embracing proves that very validity, since after all something must be true.

Fortunately we have learnt to combine these ideas, not in the mutual toleration of sub-

contraries, but in the affirmation of contraries, that transcending of the laws of

intellect which is madness in the ordinary man, genius in the Overman who hath

arrived to strike off more fetters from our understanding. The savage who cannot

conceive of the number six, the orthodox mathematician who cannot conceive of the

fourth dimension, the philosopher who cannot conceive of the Absolute—all these are

one; all must be impregnated with the Divine Essence of the Phallic Yod of

Macroprosopus, and give birth to their idea. True (we may agree with Balzac), the

Absolute recedes; we never grasp it; but in the travelling there is joy. Am I no better

than a staphylococcus because my ideas still crowd in chains?

But we digress.

The last attempts to tabulate knowledge are the Kabbala Denudata of Knorr von

Rosenroth (a work incomplete and, in some of its parts, prostituted to the service of

dogmatic interpretation), the lost symbolism of the Vault in which Christian

Rosenkreutz is said to have been buried, some of the work of Dr. Dee and Sir Edward

Kelly, some very imperfect tables in Cornelius Agrippa, the “Art” of Raymond Lully,

some of the very artificial effusions of the esoteric Theosophists, and of late years the

knowledge of the Order Rosæ Rubeæ et Aureæ Crucis and the Hermetic Order of the

Golden Dawn. Unluckily, the leading spirit in these latter societies 1 found that his

prayer, “Give us this day our daily whisky, and just a wee drappie mair for luck!” was

sternly answered, “When you have given us this day our daily Knowledge-lecture.”

Under these circumstances Daath got mixed with Dewar, and Beelzebub with

Buchanan.

But even the best of these systems is excessively bulky; modern methods have enabled

us to concentrate the substance of twenty thousand pages in two score.

The best of the serious attempts to systematise the results of Comparative Religion is

that made by Blavatsky. But though she had an immense genius for acquiring facts,

she had none whatever for sorting and selecting the essentials.

Grant Allen made a very slipshod experiment in this line; so have some of the

polemical rationalists; but the only man worthy of our notice is Frazer of the Golden

Bough. Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm,

and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point.

This: That when a Japanese thinks of Hachiman, and a Boer of the Lord of Hosts, they

are not two thoughts, but one.

The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech;

and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy.

Every new sect aggravates the situation. Especially the Americans, grossly and

crapulously ignorant as they are of the rudiments of human language, seize like

mongrel curs upon the putrid bones of their decaying monkey-jabber, and gnaw and

tear them with fierce growls and howls.

The mental prostitute, Mrs. Eddy (for example), having invented the idea which

ordinary people call “God,” christened it “Mind,” and then by affirming a set of

propositions about “Mind,” which are only true of “God,” set all hysterical, dyspeptic,

crazy Amurrka by the ears. Personally, I don’t object to people discussing the

properties of four-sided triangles; but I draw the line when they use a well-known

word, such as pig, or mental healer, or dung-heap, to denote the object of their

paranoiac fetishism.

Even among serious philosophers the confusion is very great. Such terms as God, the

Absolute, Spirit, have dozens of connotations, according to the time and place of the

dispute and the beliefs of the disputants.

Time enough that these definitions and their inter-relation should be crystallised, even

at the expense of accepted philosophical accuracy.

2. The principal sources of our tables have been the philosophers and traditional

systems referred to above, as also, among many others, Pietri di Abano, 2 Lilly, Eliphaz

Levi, Sir R. Burton, Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu, Buddhist, and Chinese Classics,

the Qúran and its commentators, the Book of the Dead, and, in particular, original

research. The Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem and Egyptian systems have never

before been brought into line with the Qabalah; the Tarot has never been made public.

Eliphaz Levi knew the true attributions but was forbidden to use them. *

All this secrecy is very silly. An indicible Arcanum is an arcanum that cannot be

revealed. It is simply bad faith to swear a man to the most horrible penalties if he

betray . . ., etc., and then take him mysteriously apart and confide the Hebrew

Alphabet to his safe keeping. 3 This is perhaps only ridiculous; but it is a wicked

imposture to pretend to have received it from Rosicrucian manuscripts which are to be

found in the British Museum. To obtain money on these grounds, as has been done by

certain moderns, is clear (and, I trust, indictable) fraud.

The secrets of Adepts are not to be revealed to men. We only wish they were. When

a man comes to me and asks for the Truth, I go away and practice teaching the

Differential Calculus to a Bushman; and I answer the former only when I have

succeeded with the latter. But to withhold the Alphabet of Mysticism from the learner

is the device of a selfish charlatan. That which can be taught shall be taught, and that

which cannot be taught may at last be learnt.

* This is probably true, though in agreement with the statement of the traducer of Levi’s

doctrine and the vilifier of his noble personality.

3. As a weary but victorious warrior delights to recall his battles—Fortisan hæc olim

meminisse juvabit * —we would linger for a moment upon the difficulties of our task.

The question of sacred alphabets has been abandoned as hopeless. As one who should

probe the nature of woman, the deeper he goes the rottener it gets; so that at last it is

seen that there is no sound bottom. All is arbitrary; † withdrawing out caustics and

adopting a protective treatment, we point to the beautiful clean bandages and ask the

clinic to admire! To take one concrete example: the English T is clearly equivalent in

sound to the Hebrew t , the Greek t , the Arabic P and the Coptic t , but the numeration

is not the same. Again, we have a clear analogy in shape (perhaps a whole series of

analogies), which, on comparing the modern alphabets with primeval examples,

breaks up and is indecipherable.

The same difficulty in another form permeates the question of gods.

Priests, to propitiate their local fetish, would flatter him with the title of creator;

philosophers, with a wider outlook, would draw identities between many gods in order

to obtain a unity. Time and the gregarious nature of man have raised gods as ideas

grew more universal; sectarianism has drawn false distinctions between identical gods

for polemical purposes.

Thus, where shall we put Isis, favouring nymph of corn as she was? As the type of

motherhood? As the moon? As the great goddess Earth? As Nature? As the Cosmic

Egg from which all Nature sprang? For as time and place have changed, so she is all

of these!

What of Jehovah, that testy senior of Genesis, that lawgiver of Leviticus, that Phallus

of the depopulated slaves of the Egyptians, that jealous King-God of the times of the

Kings, that more spiritual conception of the Captivity, only invented when all

temporal hope was lost, that mediæval battleground of cross-chopped logic, that Being

stripped of all his attributes and assimilated to Parabrahman and the Absolute of the

Philosopher?

Satan, again, who in Job is merely Attorney-General and prosecutes for the Crown,

acquires in time all the obloquy attaching to that functionary in the eyes of the

criminal classes, and becomes a slanderer. Does any one really think that any angel is

such a fool as to try to gull the Omniscient God into injustice to his saints?

Then, on the other hand, what of Moloch, that form of Jehovah denounced by those

who did not draw huge profit from his rites? What of the savage and morose Jesus of

the Evangelicals, cut by their petty malice from the gentle Jesus of the Italian

children? How shall we identify the thaumaturgic Chauvinist of Matthew with the

metaphysical Logos of John? In short, while the human mind is mobile, so long will

the definitions of all our terms vary.

* [ Lat. approx. “perhaps it will be pleasant to remember these things one day.”]

† All symbolism is perhaps ultimately so; there is no necessary relation in thought between the

idea of a mother, the sound of the child’s cry “Ma,” and the combination of lines ma . This, too,

is the extreme case, since “ma” is the sound naturally just produced by opening the lips and

breathing. Hindus would make a great fuss over this true connection; but it is very nearly the

only one. All these beautiful schemes break down sooner or later, mostly sooner.

iii

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