mon. The Alexandrine mystics identified that biblical figure of speech with the Sophia, Logos, Verb and divine Word or Wisdom. The Judean Essenes and the Christian Gnostics identified it with the Messiah and "Son of God." Many names designate in the Bible the Deity. They are God's attributes; they are identical with the Sephiroth. But in the Qabbala these divine attributes are abstracted and personified as independent entities. They are assumed to be subordinated deities, each with a particular sphere of activity, just as were the Persian Ameshas Spentas. No wonder that in some popular quarters a body, too, was attributed to them. In such a manner came out polytheism, idolatry, anthropomorphism, man-gods and anthropopathism-God with human passions. John's doctrine about Jesus as the Verb, or Logos, had a kindred evolution of thought; and the Qabbala with its Ten Sephiroth and the heading Adam Qadmon had the same origin; all hailing from the Upanishads, Vedanta and Avesta. Hindu-Zoroastrian conceptions came to the Qabbalists by the way of Alexandrine NeoPlatonism, as we shall show further on.

AIN-SOPH. TEN SEPHIROTH. THEIR ORIGIN.

In the preceding pages we have seen the Qabbala teaching that the Supreme One is the Ain-Soph, the All, the Infinite in space and time, unknowable and hence non-existent, Aïn, to human intelligence; that He first brought forth the celestial man, with the Ten Sephiroth or divine emanations, intermediate between the Supreme Essence and this world of matter. Let us now look closer to the Sephiroth, their analogies and derivations; these are ten in number, viz: "Crown, Wisdom, Intelligence, Majesty, Grace, Justice, Foundation, Firmness, Splendour, Dominion." Let me premise here that these ten Qabbalistic Sephiroth may well turn out to be identical with the ten fiats of Gen. i. with the ten "sayings" л of Mishna Abboth and Talmud Hagigah, etc., spoken of in these pages; with the Ameshas Spentas, etc., the divine companions and assistants of Parsee mythology. These latter were shaped after the pattern of the chief grandees of the Persian kings, the Achæmenida.

The Ameshas Spentas were the genii and patrons, but really personified abstractions of the different parts of the universe and Ahura's divine attributes. We shall later on find more analogies with the Ten Sephiroth.

The following will show the striking kinship of these ideas. We read in Babli Berachoth 16 b: "R. Saphra used to conclude his prayers with these words:1 "May it please Thee, O Lord, that Thou makest peace in Thy heavenly Council and in the earthly Council." The commentator, Rashi, correctly explains "this to refer to the Divan, or Senate, of the heavenly genii, the patrons of the respective nations on earth; when these genii are at war, their clients below are so, too." This is a Zoroastrian view, accepted by the Babylonian Talmud and R. Solomon Izhaki. The same permeates later philosophers and mystics down to our present time.

Such are the Ten Sephiroth of the Qabbala. Indeed, each of these sets of divine beings reflects the many sides and features of the Infinite. They are His forces and His attributes. Looking closer to the names and doctrines of the Zohar, we shall find them not original. We shall see, as mentioned, that the Qabbalists took their cue, consciously or not, from earlier thinkers, the Talmud and Jewish mystics, and these in their turn derived their wisdom from more ancient sources, as far back as Brahmanism and Parseeism. Philo and the Alexandrine Platonists teach that God, the Unknowable, first created the Logos, Sophia, the only begotten Wisdom, which brought about the world. Aristobul, an earlier Jewish thinker of Alexandria, preceded him in that train of thought: God is the Infinite embracing the unbounded space and time; matter is uncreated; and the Intellectus Activus, Logos, shaped the universe. Plato's system is not far off, either; he had taught: God is the highest Idea, and His emanations are spiritual prototypes of all material, existing beings; these types he called Ideas. There is an infinite scale and gradation of such Ideas; all are contained in, and emanations from, the highest God-Idea. Brahmanism

נייר שתשים שלום בפמליא של מעלה ושל מטה.

teaches: The Infinite, or All-God, as unfolding in Brahma, Wishnu, Shiwan and their myriads, the creative, conservative and destructive forces of nature. Parseeism teaches: ZrvanaAkarana, Infinite space and Eternity of time, produced Ahura Mazda and Angro-Mainyu, each emanating his court of grandees and his own world. Modern materialism thinks God, the Unknowable, is unfolding in matter and force, and both are eternal. Greek Polytheism taught: Fatum and chaos, differentiating into Ouranos, Chronos and Zeus; Zeus is the brother of Posseidon and Hades; the earth belongs to all, heaven is the empire of Zeus; the sea and the nether-world belong to his brothers. That means, in plain words: boundless space is Ouranos; infinite time, Chronos; and Zeus as the living existence. He, Zeus, gives birth to Athene, wisdom and force, Logos. All the gods are the genii of the material universe and Zeus is the father of gods and of man, the ruler of all. We shall later enlarge upon this topic. Each of these systems had an infinity of inferior powers, deities, agents. We read in Talmud Bably, Hagiga, 12 a: R Zutra, son Toby, in the name of Rab, said: "With ten words was the world created: Wisdom, intelligence, knowledge, force, terror, power, justice, judgment, grace and sympathy.'

These are simply attributes of the Deity. The Zohar assumed them as semi-independent, divine beings, under the pompous name of Sephiroth, retained some of these and took some other epithets, so as to hide his dependence upon this and other Talmudical and foreign sources. That these Sephiroth and Words are essentially identical with the Persian Ameshas Spentas and the other genii, we have shown in our treatise on Parseeism.

In the same Talmudical context are marvelous things told of Adam, the first man: "He first occupied the space between earth and heaven, and after he had transgressed, God placed His hands upon him and made him small." Another teacher there repeats: "He was occupying the space from end to end of the universe, and after he had sinned he was reduced to small pro

1

בעשרה דברים נברא העולם. בחכמה ובתבונה בדעת ובבוח בגערה ובגברה בצדק

וסמשפט בחסד וברחמים.

portions." In Midrash Bereshith Rabba 8 we read alike: "When God created the first man, his body measured from end to end of the world." In the same Midrash and in the same place, we read in reference to Gen. i.: 2: "And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." "That was the spirit of the King Messiah.” 1 Here we have the origin of the Qabbalistic Sephiroth and Adam Qadmon. Even the expression and term "Sephiroth" is not original with the Qabbalists. "Sephiroth" has several meanings. It signifies numbers, of Hebraic origin, D; next a sphere, globe, realm, of Greek origin, papa; it means irradiation, emanation, beaming forth of light, from the Latin sapphirus, σapeigoσ, in Greek, DD in Hebrew; sapphire, etc. Now, in this threefold meaning the term, Sephira, was known long before the Qabbala, as now before us. Pythagoras (540 B. C.) taught that, the principles underlying the universe are not bodies or elements, as assumed by the Ionic naturalistic philosophers, but numbers, ten numbers, are the archtypes of all existence, the proportions, combinations and symbols of the sensual bodies. Here are the Ten Sephiroth, as meaning numbers. As to Sephira denoting a sphere, globe, the word recurs most often among the Greek thinkers after Pythagoras, for it is well known that the Pythagorian school taught the earth to be a globe revolving around its own axis and around the sun. They preceded Copernicus and assumed the planets as spheres. Finally, Sephira, as lightirradiation, or emanation from the essence of the Deity, that idea pervades all the Platonic, Neo-Platonic and Philonic philosophical systems. It is their very backbone, and from them it came to the Qabbalists.

Here are some further rabbinical analogies: We have seen Adam Qadmon, the first Sephira, is called, as such, Kether, Crown. He is presumed to be the divine Viceroy, God-manifested, in contradistinction to God-Unknowable, Ain Soph. Now, we find in the following passage the origin of that name and conception. Evidently that goes to prove that the mystics did not draw upon their own imagination, but had Talmudical and Aggadic authorities behind them, and that there may well

1 ורוח אלהים מרחפת", זו מלך המשיח.

have existed a Qabbala, a secret philosophy handed down by tradition. In Berachoth 7 a, R. Johanan says: "How do we know that God prays? For we read (Is. lvi.), I shall bring them to My holy mount and delight them in My house of prayer." What does God pray? Rab said: "May I be pleased to conquer My own anger and treat My children rather with My attribute of mercy than with that of justice." Here we have Akathriel as the second God, who is expressly surnamed Iah, Ihvh, Zebaoth. Next, we have two further powers, mercy and justice, which later developed into semi-independent divine beings. According to Talmudical mystics, God has mercy and justice as His two leading attributes in the world's dominion. He wears philacteries with proper inscriptions. Such attributes condensed into the Sephiroth, in Qabbala and into Ameshas Spentas in Parseeism, its analogy. The passage continues: "So have we learned, R. Ishmael, son Elisha, said, 'Once upon a time I entered the Holy of Holies to offer incense, and I saw Akathriel Iah, Ihvh, Zebaoth1 sitting upon a high and sublime throne. . . . He said to me: "Ishmael, my son, bless Me," and I said: "Mayest thou be pleased to conquer Thy anger, display Thy mercy and treat Thy children with Thy attribute of love rather than with that of justice." And he nodded with his head. . . . That means to say: "Let not the blessing of a common man be light in thine eyes," modestly closes the Aggada. Now, Akathriel, etc., means Kether-El, the divine Crown, Ihvh, Lord of Hosts, viz: of the universe of the Sephiroth. That is the Adam Qadmon, the first Sephira of the Qabbalists. These justly thought that R. Ishmael could not have seen the Unknowable God whom "no living man can see." He saw His Alter-Ego, the first Sephira. Interesting, too, is: "He nodded with His head." So in Homer, Zeus nods assent. Thus the name and conception of that Sephira is rabbinic. Indeed, it is hardly conceivable that the Talmudists imagined God as praying, with philacteries on, asking for man's blessing and nodding assent to a mortal. But some of them have entertained, as Philo, etc., the idea of emanation, of a divine AlterEgo, a Logos-Metatron. These passages may apply to such,

1 וראיתי אכתריאל יה יהוה צבאות ונעני לי בראשו.