Masks of the Illuminati (9 page)

The effect was the same as the deliberate mystification with the Golden Dawn about who was or wasn’t a member. Looking for the Buddha in everyone, like looking for more members of the Order, caused Sir John to pay a great deal closer attention to people than he ever had before, and to see more of their mysterious and adamantine individuality, rather than classifying them into categories of age, sex, race, caste or other superficialities. He now saw all people as mysterious, incredible beings; and he understood, suddenly, a most annoying paradox of Goethe, who had said, “What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes.”

And he understood, too, Saint Paul’s insistence that “we are all members of the Body of Christ.” Every man and woman was a single facet of the diamond-mirror, made in the image of God, which was humanity. Buddhism, as Jones had promised him, had not weakened his Christianity but had illuminated it further.

Sir John thought this was marvelous and poured it out in manic excitement at his next meeting with Jones.

“Very good,” Jones said condescendingly. “You have awakened, a little, from one of the dreams that keep the sleepwalkers on the street from
seeing
one another. This is a beginning, but only a beginning. Don’t be too impressed with your progress, for God’s sake, or you’ll never move another inch. Try seeing the divine Light in every beautiful object that comes your way—deep scarlet rubies, or tiger-lilies in a field, or the red markings on a crab’s back. Then ask yourself where consciousness and divinity are
not.”

And with that crushing and yet encouraging speech, delivered with a trace of leonine fire, mild Mr. Jones seemed to Sir John definitely beyond all doubt the genuine article: a true Adept. Then, without mercy, Jones dumped ten books on Cabala upon Sir John, told him to master them thoroughly—and nearly torpedoed and sank him forever.

Babcock, previously, had studied Cabala only as a historian, learning enough of its terminology and theories to trace its influence from the early Hermeticists like Pico della Mirándola and Giordano Bruno through Dr. Dee and Sir Francis Bacon, onward to Freemasonry and Illuminism. Now he found himself confronted with the necessity of mastering the entire Cabalistic theory of the universe, which was about a thousand times more complicated than the periodic table of chemical elements Uncle Bentley kept in his study.

According to Cabala, the cosmos is governed by symbolic
correspondences between many planes of being, visible and invisible. That
seemed
simple enough; but the correspondences themselves had no logical connections at all—“Cabala
transcends
logic,” Jones reminded Sir John. The correspondences could only be learned by brute force and rote repetition until they finally embedded themselves in the memory. Even after being memorized, the correspondences would not be
understood
by the student, Jones cheerfully remarked; true understanding, he said, could come only through intuition or through direct experience of the invisible planes, by techniques to be taught when Sir John graduated from Probationer to Neophyte.

Q: Give three concise examples of Cabalistic logic.

A: [1] All Hebrew words having the same numerical value must have equivalent meanings; therefore, ACh D (unity) which equals A(l) + Ch(8) + D(4) or 13, is the same as AHBH (love) because A(l) + H(5) + B(2) + H(5) also equals 13;
ergo
, unity
is
love and love
is
unity. [2] Since the Holy Unspeakable Name of God (YHVH) = Y(10) + H(5) + V(6) + H(5) = 26, which is 2 × 13, God
is
love + unity. [3] Since 7 of the 22 Hebrew letters also correspond to planets, the proportion 22/7 is very important; and, indeed, 22/7 = 3.1415 … etc., the value of TT, or the ratio of the radius of a circle to its circumference.

Q: Give an example of Cabalistic logic running into trouble.

A: Since God is unity, and the first Hebrew letter A (Aleph) = 1, A symbolizes God. But A (Aleph) written in full Hebrew is ALP which = 111, showing that God is a triple unity; well and good for Christian Cabalists, although annoying to Jewish and Moslem Cabalists. But 111 also = APL, Darkness, and ASN, Sudden Death. Is God therefore, equivalent to Darkness and Sudden Death?

    Sir John spent days, weeks, then months rote-reciting over and over, peering into the books again each time
memory slipped:
“Aleph
is the first Hebrew letter and means ‘ox.’ The principle correspondences are the Fool card in the Tarot, the color yellow, the element air, the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, the Breath of God—what’s that?—
Ruach Elohim
, the Breath of God, in the Old Testament, the path from Kether to Chockmah on the Tree of Life and, uh, oh, God, uh …” Back to the books.

“Beth
is the second Hebrew letter and means ‘house.’ The Juggler in the Tarot, the color scarlet, the planet Mercury, Thoth in Egyptian, Hermes in Greek, Odin in Norse, the path from Kether to Binah, the monkey-god in Hindu … Oh, Christ, what’s the name of the monkey-god …?” Back, again, to the books.

Jones would travel to Babcock Manor and test Sir John occasionally.

“Nun,”
he would say, “what Tarot card is that?”

“Death.”

“The Hebrew meaning?”

“A fish.”

“Very good. The medieval equivalent of the Chariot card in the Tarot?”

“The Holy Grail.”

“Excellent. The Hebrew letter for the same?”

“Uh, uh,
daleth
…”

“Wrong. Won’t do at all, my boy. No carelessness allowed. Memorize,
memorize
, memorize!”

Sir John memorized.

“Work on the first two words of the Bible,” Jones suggested then; and Sir John found himself seeking the hidden meanings in BRAShITH ALHIM. “In the beginning, the Gods.”

Of course, he knew from Pico della Mirándola that BRAShITH [“In the beginning …”] has the numerical value of 3910, the number of years according to occult tradition from the “Fall” of humanity (due to the unfortunate trauma of the first contact with Higher Intelligence,
coded into the serpent myth of Genesis) to the birth of Jesus. He discovered for himself that ALHIM (the gods: God-in-the-singular as YHVH or Jehovah not appearing until the second chapter) contains, by the permutations of ternura, 3.1415, or pi accurate to four places. Then he noted that BRA, the first three letters, form by notarikon the initials of
Ben
, the Son;
Ruach
, the Holy Spirit; and
Abba
, the Father.

“Very good,” Jones said when this was reported. “There is much, much more there. For instance,
Agape
, the word for ‘Love’ in the New Testament, has the Cabalistic value of 93. Add that to the 3.1415 of ALHIM and you get 3.141593, pi accurate to six places. Keep working on it until you find the Golden Proportions of the Masonic lodge in it.”

Once, Sir John had the temerity to ask Jones about the Mysterious Holy Guardian Angel which the Golden Dawn training was intended to evoke.

“Usually,” Jones said, “that is explained three different ways—for Probationers, Neophytes, and those of higher rank who have yet not attained it. In your case, considering the mixture of scholarship and romanticism I detect in your temperament, I will give you all three explanations simultaneously. One: it is a metaphor that signifies, roughly, learning to receive communications from your own unconscious mind without the usual distortions. Two: it is not that simple at all; the Holy Guardian Angel speaks to you
through
your unconscious, but is literally a separate being of evolutionary status as far beyond us as we are beyond the first invertebrates. Three: yes, it is a metaphor, after all, but for something so far outside our ordinary consciousness that it doesn’t matter a rap whether you think of it in the scientific terms of my first answer or in the mystical terms of my second answer; it transcends both. When you have the experience, you will find your own metaphor for it, which may result in a scientific
theory never known to the world before, in a work of art, or just in a change in your life toward sanctity or compassion or something more traditionally ‘religious.’ Do more of the work and ask fewer questions, if you want to advance faster.”

Eventually, nine months after Sir John’s initiation, he had completed his reading course in world mysticism and was able to pass all of Jones’ Cabalistic quizzes easily. By now, he was also totally confused and was beginning to wonder if he or Jones or both of them might not be a bit mad. After all, what did an ox have to do with a man in Fool’s garb, or either of them with the color yellow or the Holy Spirit? If Thoth and Hermes were the same god under two names, well and good; that made sense historically. But why were they in correspondence with the Hebrew word for “house”? Or what the hell did the planet Venus have to do with the letter
daleth
and the goddess Demeter? Was Cabala all a complicated Jewish joke at the expense of those who tried to comprehend the suprarational by rational means?

It was when Sir John had begun to seriously consider this last thought that quiet, fatherly Mr. Jones gave him his first real test, right between the eyes.

“You are familiar,” he said, “with the letters that appear atop every Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Crucifix, I.N.R.I.”

“Yod
Nun Resh Yod,”
Sir John replied at once, giving the Hebrew equivalents.

[“
I nearly reached India.”]

“Very good. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches, of course, explain this in childish terms, for the simple minds of the masses. Are you, perhaps, familiar with that explanation?”

“It’s supposed to be Latin,” Sir John said happily; this was easy. “Iesus Nazarinus Rex Iudorem—‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.’”

“Excellent,” Jones said. “Now I must inform you that there was an esoteric Gnostic meaning in those initials long before the creation of the exoteric one you have just supplied. It requires Cabalistic knowledge and the true faculty of intuition to decode it. That will be your assignment to complete before we promote you to Neophyte. Call me whenever you think you have the answer.”

Sir John spent a week nearly going mad over this conundrum. On the seventh day he made up a table in which he deliberately listed only the most nonsensical and illogical correspondences, to force himself to think in the meta-logical manner of the true Cabalists. The table looked like this:

He tried letting his mind drift through the images, avoiding words and associations: hand, fish, head, hand; hand, fish, head, hand; hand, fish, head, hand … Dozens of ideas came to him that were original and dazzling (he once began to see evolution as a pre-written scenario …), but nothing came up that didn’t seem like empty and windy nonsense when he re-thought it later.

He tried the astrological correspondences: Virgo, Scorpio,
the Sun, Virgo. A virgin, an insect, the Sun, and the virgin again. That was even less helpful than hand-fish-head-hand. He tried Virgin-hand, insect-Death, head-Sun, Virgin-hand. This gave rise to a line of thought which made him quite embarrassed and caused him to doubt again if he had the purity of heart to pass through Chapel Perilous successfully.

The Greek correspondences were resonant with eerie imagery. Chronos, god of Time, could be visualized gruesomely by recalling Goya’s terrifying painting,
Chronos Devouring His Children
. Hades and the world of the dead were easy to invoke by remembering the descent of Odysseus to the underworld. Apollo reminded Sir John of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas and was harder to deal with. But what was the meaning of the sequence itself: Chronos, Hades, Apollo, Chronos?

Sir John tried contemplating the images on the Tarot cards:

The Hermit: an old man carrying a lantern in the dark. But what did that have to do with
yod
, the hand, except that you need a hand to carry a lantern? And why the correspondence with scorpions and virginity?

Death: a skeleton on a great white horse, mowing down King, Bishop, Mother and Child in his path. But what did that have to do with
nun
, a fish? Although it fit Hades, God of the dead, of course.

The Sun: a naked child on the same great white horse with the sun rising in the background. And what did that have to do with
resh
, the head? Although it fit the astrological correspondence for once.

And the old Hermit carrying his lantern again …

Was it a psychological parable about the path of initiation itself? The student’s mind begins as an
old man
(social tradition), wandering in the
darkness
of ignorance, guided only by the
lantern of intuition;
becomes transformed through the
death
of its conditioned aspects—the links
with
King
(the State), Bishop (the Church),
Mother and Child
(family); is reborn as the
sun-child
(“Unless ye become as a little child ye shall in no wise enter the Kingdom”); and then—and then—why the return to the old man wandering in the dark? It was just more nonsense, when he thought he was on the right track at last.