Art Magic

The writers of the Jewish Cabbala evidently labored, and with remarkable success, too, to conceal the true meaning of what they wrote.

Thus some letters are so shortened as to leave the word intact, but the meaning masked; others are lengthened, crooked, or interpolated with seemingly unmeaning points, all with the same design; for example, in the sentence, Abraham came to week for Sara, the letter Caph is smaller than the others, by which Cabbalistic readers understand that as Sara was old, her spouse only wept for her a little.

In a certain passage the syllables Isch, signifying a man, and Escha, a woman, will be found with a point against the word man, absent in writing the word woman; next there occurs a point in the word woman, lacking in writing the word man; when the two points are combined in the same sentence, they signify God; when one alone is there, the word fire is implied. Without the pointing the idea conveyed is, man and woman do agree well together. With the interception of the subtle points in the peculiar mode of Cabbalistic writings, the sentence would read, When man and woman agree together, God is with them; when they disagree, fire is between them.

The study of a lifetime would fail to master all the subtleties with which these writings abound, and the determination which the authors of the Jewish Cabbala manifest to veil the meaning of their sentences under the mask of cypher; and hence it is doubtful how much the popular translations of this celebrated collection can be relied on, especially when they are given to the world by Mystics, as much interested in reserving Cabbalistic ideas, as their original authors.

The Talmud very probably contains a fair digest of the Cabbala, although the latter is richer in occult lore. From a comparison of the two we may glean the following summary of ancient Jewish opinions, concerning the Divine order of cosmogony.

"God is a Trinity," to-wit; Light, Spirit and Life. His first emanations are also triune, namely: En Soph, the masculine of Infinity; Sophia, the feminine of Wisdom and the Word, the divine Activity proceeding from the union of the two. A third triad of principles is indicated, namely: Matter, the formative mould; Life, the active principle of formation; and Soul, the eternal and infinite form of Spirit. Much stress is laid on the ineffable mystery of Triune being - that is, "Three in one, and one in three;" also on the science of numerals, the exact principle of mathematics, and the immutable order by which creation is designed, on geometrical proportions. Mathematics and geometry are as inextricably interwoven with Cabbalistic ideas as Spirit and matter.

The first man - Adam Kadman - is mysteriously mixed up with the Jewish Christ - the Adam of the fall; King David, and the original "only begotten Son of God." It would take all the craft of the unscrupulous Eusebius to disentangle the exact relations of Adam Kadman with his subsequent appearances on earth, and all the faith of the most unquestioning of Christian believers to swallow the Cabbalistic methods of interpreting the scheme of unaccountable perdition, and unaccountable salvation for man. There is some probability that the wild and unsustained theories of modern reincarnationists borrow their fantasies from these Cabbalistic ramblings; still there is much of beauty, much, too, of scientific value, in the suggestions thrown out concerning the just proportions of the universe, and the profound mathematical bases on which the structure of creation rests. To a great extent the scheme of descending emanations in creations, and ascending spheres providing for the progress of fallen spirits and elementary existences, agrees with the views of other ancient Theologians, whose opinions we have cited. Cabbalistic writers are very diffuse in their descriptions of different orders of "Resplendent Angels," Tutelary Spirits, Guardian Angels of every grade and function, Souls of men, Spirits, and legions of Elementaries, filling all space, crowding all elements, and peopling the universe with realms of Spiritual existence corresponding to the Archetypes, Spiritual principles and ultimates of form.

We shall have occasion to draw from the Cabbala again in our sections on Magic; meantime we close this brief notice by affirming that the very best and most reliable digests of Cabbalistic wisdom are to be found in the songs of Orpheus, the philosophy of Plato, the doctrines of Pythagoras, Appolonius of Tyana, and the modern mystics, Van Helmont and Behmen. Many others have borrowed fragments from this collection of writings, and though we are unprepared to assert that the celebrated Greek sages named above derived their ideas from the Cabbala, we are satisfied that they all and each drew from the same source, and that the fountains of wisdom that supplied them, poured forth their treasures from the grand old ranges of the mighty Himalayas, and trembled in the dewy chalices of the white lotuses that fringed the shores of the sacred Nile.

The more we pursue the wisdom of the ancients, through all their ramifications of varied speech, allegorical forms, and the symbolic representation, the more surely we shall come to the conclusion that they are all tributary streams from one central source; that this source was the Book of Nature, written over with flowers and bloom on the fair green earth, with suns and stars in the spangled vault of Heaven - that the great Schoolmaster, who first instructed men and angels in the letters of this divine alphabet was God, the Father of Spirits; that the means of teaching were intuition, inspiration, and direct communion with Angels, the messengers of God; - magic, as the artificer of a new form of communion, when the child-like early man lost the power of intuition, and broke the links of direct communication, by the corruptions of a materialistic civilization, and all means combined, when the pure heart and the clear brain can elevate the soul to its native heavens, and learn to master the occult forces of nature by science. Perhaps we may never return to the simple and child-like attitude which the early men of the earth sustained towards their God.

They conversed with their tutelary spirits as a man speaks with his friend. They looked, and saw that God was. They listened and God's Angels spoke to them in voices as clear as the sighing of the breeze or the murmuring of the brook. They reflected and their past spiritual origin and present destiny cast their images on the mirror of their minds as truthfully as the limpid waters of the lake reflects the lustre of the stars.

Had you asked the intuitional man of old, how he knew these things, he would have gazed upon you with astonishment, and questioned back, "How is it possible that you should fail to know them?" Socrates said, "I respect my own soul, though I cannot see it."

The men of our purely materialistic and external age doubt the existence of their own souls because they cannot see them.

How, then, can they expect to see spirits, hear their voices, or apprehend the nature of that God "who is a Spirit?"