Theos-Talk Archives (December 2009 Message tt00174)

Morten,
I could, perhaps, benefit by asking to what you are referring as Qabalistic phallicism. I might expect in response some vague, or partisan
quotes about some abstruse element of teaching, from one school or another, or ,more likely, an outright misinterpretation of
qabalistic symbolism or some quote, of someone saying it is so.

Being unfamiliar with the "western" tradition as you may be: it was taught by an ancient Sage that
" that which is above is as thatÂwhich is below, and that which is below, is as that which is above." The entirety of manifested existence is
the result of the interplay of, masculine and feminine, active and passive, positive and negative forces and activities. If these be considered
as corresponding to human sexuality, it is wrong-headed to see in it crude "phallicism". If the same seems repugnant, or frightening to someone,
they may simply be too immature to consider the esoteric mysteries.Also that even "phallic" symbolism contains nothing worthy of consideration,
knowing, full-well, they represent higher correspondences, is also a bit silly.

But, all that even , is granting you are accurately representing true qabalistic teachings. I supose you would respond , that you are not so representing,
being unfamiliar with the said teachings...O.K...but, that does not seem to keep you from throwing such nonsense out there, as if it were
true, without ever saying HOW such teachings are a degraded, phalicism. I recieve instruction from an esoteric, Qabalistic order, and am
perfectly able to see in it a degraded, phallic teaching, if it were there. But, my saying it is not, doesn't seem to quench your desire for
shallow partisanship. It comes down to the fact that you, as anyone else, are perfectly able, and responsible, to choose your own path.
I would applaude your so-doing , even should it differ from mine. That's like the Islamists, murdering, and Christians waging wars, over the
proper way to pronounce the name of God. Silliness.HPB used to emphasise open-mindedness, and hated dogmatism.Always warning
against it. I know that should not be a sort-of allowance for falsehoods to blind us but, PHALLICISM has no more to do with Qabalah,
than it does Hinduism, or any other science of Understanding. Your dislike of the FACTS of interplay between positive and negative
conditions in the universe, or even HPB's, doesn't change anything,sir.

Perhaps, instead of quoting someone saying-so, you might demonstrate what is actually degraded,or untrue, or even shallow and superficial
about the way the western interpretations of Qabalah, numerology, and Hermetic Alchemy are presented or recieved in the "west". Short
of that, I fail to see any validity in your position. Quoting HPB, God or anything else as having once said so, without demonstration, is
wholly without value. If the teachings are vile, show me HOW,and in what instance, they are so. 

brad




________________________________
From: Morten Nymann Olesen <global-theosophy@stofanet.dk>
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Fri, December 25, 2009 11:24:50 AM
Subject: Re: Theos-World Re:

 

Dear Brad

I choose to reply to this e-mail and not the earlier ones to me, with the hope that I will conver an answer adequately.

The views I present in our exchanges are merely my views. I might also be in error, since i claim no infallibility. So I am not in the least accusing anyone for being wrong, I am merely stating my views aiming to be of service to us all. I cannot know whether your system is phallic or not, because I have not yet seen it presented by you. But I find the Hebrew Kabala to contain such a teaching.

I will really like to know - the actual page - where you have found that Blavatsky says that the Chaldean Kabala is - identical - with the Hebrew Kabala? (Is it Secret Doctrine Vol. I, p.199?)

Because this it is as I see not true, at least not quite true. HPB also states this elsewhere. Because, they might be essentially the same when using the proper interpretations, yet they are not identical. I think we can agree so far. - The Hebrew words and letters certainly are not the most proper to use when compared with the Chaldean ones. Well unless one deliberately wants to distort the science of Gupta-Vidya and conseal it. And it is precisely (at least partly) becasue of the difference and misuse of interpretations of the Kabala, I find that H. P. Blavatsky wrote the Secret Doctrine by the help of her Masters and friends. - The Hebrew Kabala is essentially anthromorphically formulated (by some interpreted as such) and formulated by the use of phallic language and words, whereas the Easter Gupta Vidya- Kabala is a much more true Occult doctrine. Well that is my view and also that of others.

Though, One fault on my part in our exchanges so far, has been, that I used the term "Chaldean Kabala", where it aught to have been the "Eastern Gupta-Vidya" Kabala. I am sorry about that.

The below are just a few examples so to forward my views more clearly.

1.
Yet we still have the following from H. P. Blavatsky:

"But here again they will hardly be successful if they share the belief that the Jewish Kabalistic system contains the key to the whole mystery: for, it does not. Nor does any other Scripture at present possess it in its entirety, for even the Vedas are not complete. Every old religion is but a chapter or two of the entire volume of archaic primeval mysteries â Eastern Occultism alone being able to boast that it is in possession of the full secret, with its seven keys."
(The Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 318)
http://www.phx- ult-lodge. org/SDVolume_ I.htm

- - -
2.
And In the below we find that the upper triad has been degraded into something Microcosmic on the terrestial plane by various of the later Kabalaists and Christian mystics. That was perhaps why they in another system used only 8 sefiroth or 7,8,9 depending on the system used - instead of 10. The use of 7 sefiroth might be with Ain Soph Aur and Malkuth excluded. It might have been 8 with either Malkuth or Ain Soph Aur included; and 9 with both of them included. The Kabala with the number ten is in fact 11 with Ain Soph Aur included. Yet, the number 7 is an esoteric number, and the number 10 is a exoterical number. - So the Kabala of the 8 serves the purposes of viewing the upper three as ONE, which also is an important occult teaching. And it also serves the purpose of not confusing the upper three Sefiroth's with the lower 7 as beloning to the human plane of ordinary existence.

It is by the use of the system of 8 sefiroth, that one in the Arab Chaldean Kabala will find a more true system of magic than the one given in the anhropomorphic and phallic version used by some Jews, some so-called Rosicrucians and Masons even until today. The other systems can of course be used so far they are able to reveal the easoterical doctrines - removed of their anhropomorphic and phallic contents.

H. P. Blavatsky said:
"The latter is the symbol, in almost every religion, of the Logos as the first emanation. It is that of Vishnu in India (the Chakra, or wheel), and the glyph of the Tetragrammaton, the "He of the four letters" orâmetaphoricallyâ"the limbs of Microprosopos" in the Kabala, which are ten and six respectively. The later Kabalists however, especially the Christian mystics, have played sad havoc with this magnificent symbol.* For the "ten limbs" of the Heavenly Man are the ten Sephiroth; but the first Heavenly Man is the unmanifested Spirit of the Universe, and ought never to be degraded into Microprosopusâthe lesser Face or Countenance, the prototype of man on the terrestrial plane."
.......
"* Indeed, the Microprosopusâwho is, philosophically speaking, quite distinct from the unmanifested eternal Logos "one with the Father,"âhas been finally brought, by centuries of incessant efforts, of sophistry and paradoxes, to be considered as one with Jehovah, or the ONE living God (!), whereas Jehovah is no better than Binah, a female Sephiroth. This fact cannot be too frequently impressed upon the reader."
(The Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 215)
http://www.phx- ult-lodge. org/SDVolume_ I.htm

- - -
3.
The following from H. P. Blavatsky might reveal to some readers that H. P. Blavatsky did not put high value on Knorr von Rosenroth's Kabala and the present day Zohar.

H. P. Blavatsky said:
" In the Zoharâwhich, as now arranged and re-edited by Moses de Leon, with the help of Syrian and Chaldean Christian Gnostics in the XIIth century, and corrected and revised still later by many Christian hands, is only a little less exoteric than the Bible itselfâthis divine "Vehicle" no longer appears as it does in the "Chaldean Book of Numbers." True enough, Ain-Soph, the ABSOLUTE ENDLESS NO-THING, uses also the form of the ONE, the manifested "Heavenly man" (the FIRST CAUSE) as its chariot (Mercabah, in Hebrew; Vahan, in Sanskrit) or vehicle to descend into, and manifest through, in the phenomenal world. But the Kabalists neither make it plain how the ABSOLUTE can use anything, or exercise any attribute whatever, since, as the Absolute, it is devoid of attributes; nor do they explain that in reality it is the First Cause (Plato's Logos) the original and eternal IDEA, that manifests through Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos, so to speak. In the "Book
 of Numbers" it is explained that EN (or Ain, Aior) is the only self-existent, whereas its "Depth" (Bythos or Buthon of the Gnostics, called Propator) is only periodical. The latter is Brahmà as differentiated from Brahma or Parabrahm. It is the Depth, the Source of Light, or Propator, which is the unmanifested Logos or the abstract Idea, and not Ain-Soph, whose ray uses Adam-Kadmon or the manifested Logos (the objective Universe) "male and female"âas a chariot through which to manifest. But in the Zohar we read the following incongruity: "Senior occultatus est et absconditus; Microprosopus manifestus est, et non manifestus." (Rosenroth; Liber Mysterii, IV., 1.) This is a fallacy, since Microprosopus or the microcosm, can only exist during its manifestations, and is destroyed during the Maha-Pralayas. Rosenroth's Kabala is no guide, but very often a puzzle."
(The Secret Doctrine, vol. I, p. 214-215)
http://www.phx- ult-lodge. org/SDVolume_ I.htm

- - -
4.
In the below we will find that the Hebrew Kabala with its many distortions and anthropomorphizings of the upper triade and its use of phallic terms for each sefiroth, particularly the 

Given as written by H. P. Blavatsky, 1883:
"More even than the Brahmans, are the Parsees heirs to Chaldean wisdom, since they are the direct, though the latest, offshoots of Aryan Magianism. The Occultists are very little concerned with the apparent difficulty that the Magian âChaldeesâ with all their priests and initiates, whether of the Medes, the Scythians, or the Babylonians are regarded by the Orientalists as of Semitic origin, while the ancient Iranians are Aryans. The classification of those nations into Turanians, Akkadians, Semites and what not, is at best arbitrary. The word âChaldeanâ does not refer merely to a native or an inhabitant of Chaldea, but to âChaldeism,â the oldest science of astrology and occultism. And in that sense the Zoroastrians are the true heirs to Chaldean wisdom, the light which shineth in darkness,â though (modern) âdarkness comprehended it not,â and the Parsees themselves know nothing of it now. The Hebrew Kabala is but the loud echo of the
 Chaldean; an echo which passing through the corridors of Time picked up in its transit all kinds of alien sounds that got mixed up with the original keynotes struck beyond the epochs known to the present profane generations; and thus it reached the later student of Hebrew lore as a confused and somewhat distorted voice. Yet, there is much to learn in it, for him who has the patience and the perseverance required, since first of all he would have to learn the Gematria, Notaricon, and Themura.* When speaking of the Kabala, the Lecturer meant by it, the universal, not any special, esoteric system, already adapted to a later exoteric creed as is at present the Jewish secret science. The word âKabalaâ is derived from a Hebrew root meaning reception of knowledge; and practically speaking it refers to all the old systems handed down by oral transmission, and is very nearly allied to the Sanskrit âSmritiâ and âSruti,â and the Chaldaic âZend.ââ"

"â Of course, as found out by the Orientalists, the word âZendâ does not apply to any language, whether dead or living, and never belonged to any of the languages or dialects of ancient Persia (See Farhang-i-Jahà ngÃrà the Persian dictionary.) It means, as in one sense correctly stated, âa commentary or explanation,â but it also means that which the Orientalists do not seem to have any idea about, viz., the ârendering of the esoteric into exoteric sentences,â the veil used to conceal the correct meaning of the Zen-(d)-zar texts, the sacerdotal language in use among the initiates of archiac India. Found now in several undecipherable inscriptions, it is still used and studied unto this day in the secret communities of the Eastern adepts, and called by themâaccording to the localityâZend-zar and Brahma or Dew-Bhashya. "
http://www.katinkah esselink. net/blavatsky/ articles/ v4/y1883_ 075.htm

And that Brahma or Dew-Bhashya is as far as I know an early version of the Sanskrit Devanagari, the Language of the Gods.

- - -

5.
Blavatsky said:
" Ask the hundreds of honourable English men and women who have been members of the Theosophical Society for years whether an immoral precept or a pernicious doctrine was ever taught to them. Open the Secret Doctrine, and you will find page after page denouncing the Jews and other nations precisely on account of this devotion to Phallic rites, due to the dead letter interpretation of nature symbolism, and the grossly materialistic conceptions of her dualism in all the exoteric creeds. Such ceaseless and malicious misrepresentation of our teachings and beliefs is really disgraceful. "
.......
"Ain-Soph (Heb.) The "Boundless" or "Limitless" Deity emanating and extending. Ain-Soph is also written En-Soph and Ain-Suph, for no one, not even the Rabbis, are quite sure of their vowels. In the religious metaphysics of the old Hebrew philosophers, the ONE Principle was an abstraction like Parabrahm, though modern Kabalists have succeeded by mere dint of sophistry and paradoxes in making a "Supreme God" of it, and nothing higher. But with the early Chaldean Kabalists Ain-Soph was "without form or being" with "no likeness with anything else." (Franck's Die Kabbala, p. 126.) That Ain-Soph has never been considered as the "Creator" is proved conclusively by the fact that such an orthodox Jew as Philo calls "creator" the Logos, who stands next the "Limitless One," and is "the SECOND God." "The Second God is in its (Ain-Soph's) wisdom," says Philo in Quaest et Solut. Deity is NO-THING; it is nameless, and therefore called Ain-Sophâthe word Ain meaning
 nothing. (See also Franck's Kabbala, p. 153.)"
.......
"For it is only owing to deliberate mistranslation that the Hebrew word asdt was translated "angels" from the Septuagint, while it means Emanations, AEons, just as with the Gnostics. "
(The key to Theosophy by Blavatsky, p. 278 + wordbook)
http://www.phx- ult-lodge. org/aKEY. htm

So although a number of Seekers prefers the Hebrew Kabala as their main teaching, they aught at least to be aware of the difference the content of it has with the Chaldean Kabala and the Eastern Gupta Vidya doctrines; the latter being without phallic terms and words, and without an anthropomorphic system of teaching.

- - -
6.
Brad wrote:
"Frankly, I have no idea how she comes to such an absurd conclusion.This is the alphabet the Hebrews took with them out of Babylon.
Thir original alphabet was a cuniform script. The,now, Hebrew IS Chaldean.The Chaldeans droped it when they adopted the Arabic
script.It is termed the FIRE-alphabet, letters of flame, not phallus-letters. "

M.. Sufilight asks:
I would really be interested if you would be able to show me whether the above views of yours are true.
Will you by documentation seek to do this, I will I have to rely on your statement alone?

Peace.

M. Sufilight

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Brad Crawford 
To: theos-talk@yahoogro ups.com 
Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2009 9:29 PM
Subject: Re: Theos-World Re:

morten,
Notice at the phx-ult-site on Kabalah, they, to say therein that the Hebrew Qabalah is IDENTICLE, with the Chaldean qabalah.
Just a side-note. I'll let it go now. I don't know if this thread is facilitating any good now. I was referring to one of the sites you
posted in the above comment.

____________ _________ _________ __
From: Morten Nymann Olesen <global-theosophy@ stofanet. dk>
To: theos-talk@yahoogro ups.com
Sent: Wed, December 23, 2009 6:55:03 PM
Subject: Re: Theos-World Re:

Dear Brad

My views are:

Known Adepts or initiates are sometimes later found out to be less Adept and less Initiated.

I do respect the Kabala and everything on this globe. But I do find the teachings of the present day Hebrew Kabala and the present day Rosicrucians to be distorted, and H. P. Blavatsky said the same and proved it in her Secret Doctrine vol.. I - and - to a certain extend in other writings of hers.

My affiliations with Islam are assumed by you. I am just as much a Muslim as I am a Heathen or a Christian. But I prefer the core of the esoteric Buddhistic and Adwaita ethics, if you would like to know. And I do this because these teachings systems are much more capeable of revealing the truth to the Seekers on this globe in our time. - How ever I do also like esoteric Sufism and non-fanatical views.

1.
In the beelow you will find that The Jewish Encyclopaedia supports the view, that there originally were eight Sefiroth.

>>> THE KABALA or CABALA <<<
Influence of Greco-Arabic Philosophy.

"The "Faithful Brothers of Basra," as well as the Neoplatonic Aristotelians of the ninth century, have left their marks on the Cabala. The brotherhood taught, similarly to early Gnosticism, that God, the highest Being, exalted above all differences and contrasts, also surpassed everything corporeal and spiritual; hence, the world could only be explained by means of emanations. The graduated scale of emanations was as follows: (1) the creating spirit (ÎÎáÏ); (2) the directing spirit, or the world-soul; (3) primal matter; (4) active nature, a power proceeding from the world-soul; (5) the abstract body, also called secondary matter; (6) the world of the spheres; (7) the elements of the sublunary world; and (8) the world of minerals, plants, and animals composed of these elements. These eight form, together with God, the absolute One, who is in and with everything, the scale of the nine primal substances, corresponding to the nine primary numbers and
the nine spheres. These nine numbers of the "Faithful Brothers" (compare De Boer, "Gesch. der Philosophie im Islam," p. 84; Dieterici, "Die Sogenannte Theologie des Aristoteles, " p. 38; idem, "Weltseele," p. 15) have been changed by a Jewish philosopher of the middle of the eleventh century into ten, by counting the four elements not as a unit, but as two ("Torat ha-Nefesh," ed. Isaac BroydÃ, pp. 70, 75; compare, also, Guttmann, in "Monatsschrift, " xlii. 450)."
http://www.jewishen cyclopedia. com/view. jsp?artid= 1&letter= C#66

2.
>>> THE CHALDEAN-ORIENTAL KABALA or CABALA <<<

Shrivatsa - The Endless Knot - Flow of Time
It can look somewhat like a fleur-de-lis, an endless knot, a flower or diamond shaped symbol.
The endless knot has been described as "an ancient symbol representing the interweaving of the Spiritual path, the flowing of Time and Movement within That Which is Eternal. All existence, it says, is bound by time and change, yet ultimately rests serenely within the Divine and the Eternal."
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Shrivatsa
Shrivatsa (photo)
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ File:EndlessKnot 03d.png
Shigatse - Tashilhunpo Monastery - Shrivatsa - Endless Knot (big photo) 
http://www.pbase. com/robburvill/ image/30526901

3. A few more words by Blavatsky.

Kabalist.
"No two of them, however, agreed upon the origin of the Kabala, the Zohar, Sepher Yetzirah, etc. Some show it as coming from the Biblical Patriarchs, Abraham, and even Seth; others from Egypt, others again from Chaldea. The system is certainly very old; but like all the rest of systems, whether religious or philosophical, the Kabala is derived directly from the primeval Secret Doctrine of the East; through the Vedas, the Upanishads, Orpheus and Thales, Pythagoras and the Egyptians."
(TS Glossary - HPB)
http://www.phx- ult-lodge. org/aijk. htm#k

H. P. Blavatsky said:
"Zend-Avesta (Pahl.). The general name for the sacred books of the Parsis, fire or sun worshippers, as they are ignorantly called." . . . . . . . "Zend means âa commentary or explanationâ, and Avesta (from the old Persian ÃbashtÃ, âthe lawâ. (See Darmsteter.) As the translator of the VendÃdÃd remarks in a foot note (see int. xxx.): âwhat it is customary to call âthe Zend languageâ, ought to be named âthe Avesta languageâ, the Zend being no language at all and if the word be used as the designation of one, it can be rightly applied only to the Pahlaviâ. But then, the Pahlavi itself is only the language into which certain original portions of the Avesta are translated. What name should be given to the old Avesta language, and particularly to the âspecial dialect, older than the general language of the Avestaâ (Darmst.), in which the five Ghthas in the Yasna are written? To this day the Orientalists are mute upon the subject. Why
should not the Zend be of the same family, if not identical with the Zen-sar, meaning also the speech explaining the abstract symbol, or the âmystery language,â used by Initiates?"
http://www.phx- ult-lodge. org/ATUVWXYZ. htm#z
http://www.archive. org/stream/ theosophicalglo0 0meadgoog# page/n396/ mode/1up/ search/Zend

M. Sufilight

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Brad Crawford 
To: theos-talk@yahoogro ups.com 
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:12 PM
Subject: Theos-World Re:

Morten,
"Who is in possesion of ...knowledge? " I would not take this transaction to indicate ONLY those of the "snowy range". The Divine Wisdom has existed before there 
was such a range.There have been many possessed of the sacred Wisdom, who have not been there. But, I certainly would not be one to belittle the spiritual work
that has come forth from the Himalayas.
"Then,from eternity,with Ten SayingsYou gouged
With Scribe,script, and scroll-Ten,
You finished them in six directions,
Ten words."
Rabbi Elazer Kalir
Ten,not nine..Ten, not eleven are the Holy Sephiroth.. But, of course I could quote volumes from sacred Hebrew sources, and if you are of the opinion that
these sources are illigitimate, as they are not secret Chaldean works, there is little point.

I am not sure how,philosophically . the ogdoad is a better representative, symbolically than the decad. I have not yet looked into the sites you posted , but I will.
I have some works from various Ogdoadic traditions.
I am unfamiliar with a system based on eight Sephiroth. In my mind I can see how there may be something to it. I was thinking of the ancient symbol of the
eight-spoked wheel, but I understand that to be a symbol of Akasha, more or less. The Pythagoreans, Neo-Platonists, Qaballists, have used a ten-fold 
division of Being, as it is mathematically sound philosophy. I wish I could consult Theon of Smyrna, but I was unable to purchase a copy of his book:
Mathmatics Useful for Understanding Plato. Very expensive.

You have given me much to think about. but...

Of what value is this super-esoteric Chaldean system, if virtually no one has ever heard of it. I have not been introduced to this system, through the esoteric
instructions of my school but, I am truly not a high-Initiate, so...I don't know. I do know the one who founded our order was a genuine Initiate or Adept
whos teachings I trust.But I am excited to look into your comments..

May I be so bold as to ask if you do not respect the Qabalah of the Rosicrucians or Hebrew Initiates, because of your affiliations or sympathy with Islamic
traditions? I hope that is not out of line but, also if there may not be something to it? Just curious.

in L.V.X.
brad

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