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Fundamentals of Symbolism Part II

From the Renaissance to Modern Times by Hamilton Reed Armstrong

Unlike Gallileo some two hundred years later, the great Polish churchman and mathematician, Nicholas Copernicus, credited with the discovery of the helio-centric nature of the Cosmos relied more on Neo-Platonism and the Hermetica for his position than on scientific observation of the actual Solar System. In his De Rrevolutionibus Orbium Coelestum, written in 1453, he has the following to say, "In the middle of all sits the Sun enthroned. In this most beautiful temple, could we place this luminary in any better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? He is rightly called the Lamp, the Mind,, the Ruler of the Universe: Hermes Trismegistus names him the Visible God, Sophecles Electra calls him the All-Seeing. So the Sun sits upon a royal throne, ruling his children, the planets which circle around him."11 It must be remembered that for the Neo-Platonists, the planets and stars, as well as the sun were "divine living animals." (Ficino and his followers practiced sympathetic magic and chanted Orphic hymns to obtain the beneficial influences of these "star demons.") 12 Along with Hermeticism and Neoplatonism the third major influence on the times, cited by Pico, is the Jewish theosophical Kabbalah, or Cabala in its latinate form. Pico received his indoctrination from a Spanish Jew living in Italy named Flavius Mitraidedes (Raymond Moncada) in 1486. Other famous Renaissance adepts include Johanes Reuchlin, Cornelius Agrippa Von Neteshiem, and Giordano Bruno. 13 The Fundamental tenets of Kabbalah, according to the leading authority, Gershom Scholem, are as follows: "Over and above disagreements on specific details that tend to reflect different stages in the Kaballah's historical development, there exists a basic consensus among kaballists on man's essential nature...At opposite poles, both man and God encompass within their being the entire cosmos. However, whereas God contains all by virtue of being its Creator and Initiator in whom everything is rooted and all potency is hidden, man's role is to complete this process by being the agent through whom all the powers of creation are fully activated and made manifest. What exists seminally in God unfolds and develops in man Because he alone has been granted the gift of free will, it lies in his power to either advance or disrupt through his actions the unity of what takes place in the upper and lower worlds... his principal mission is to bring about tikkun or restoration of this world and to connect the lower with the upper." 14 The concept of tikkun, or restoration, involves the problem of evil, and again according to Scholem, "the root of evil resides within the Ein-Sof (hidden God) itself." Evil, therefore, for the kabbalist is simply the sitra ahra or "emation of the left" and at the end of time, through the process of man's work of tikkun even the devil, "Samael will become Sa'el, one of the 72 holy Names of God". ... "In Greek this is called apokatasis (sic)"..."To use the neoplatonic formula, the creation involves the departure of all from the one and its return to the one." 15 (See: Appendix 7, Kabbalah) Given the essentially monistic nature of Renaissance thought as seen above, it is symbolically represented as an Eastern "Mandala" rather than as a dyadic relationship between God and creation and/or Christ and His Church seen in the Byzantine and medieval iconography covered in the first part of this treatise. While the Church maintained her doctrine of Original sin and the necessity of Redemption, the humanists, in general, rejected it. Following Nicholas of Cusa's doctrine of Coincidentia oppositorum 16 and the kabbalist's tikkun to produce apokatastasis or resolution of al negations ultimately in the unity of God, the iconography changed, or reverted to, images of balance between the opposing cosmic forces.

Before examining the changes in symbolic expression evoked by Renaissance thought, some historical background is required. While the Catholic symbolism described at the close of the first part of this study remained largely intact within Western culture, the introduction of divergent cosmologies wrought some subtle and not so subtle changes. There is little consensus among historians as to when or how the so-called Renaissance came about, but most would agree that an affirmation of the dignity of man was the result. While the Church had always insisted that man was made "in the image and likeness of God" and therefore worthy of the highest respect, his status as a creature was strictly maintained. Man, to reach his proper end, the beatific vision, needed Sanctifying Grace supplied through the sacraments of the Church. Renaissance thought, at first subtly and then openly, challenged this view. Between 1437 and 1439 Nicholas of Cusa started the process when he wrote his De docta ignorantia based on a private illumination he received while crossing the sea between Greece and Italy. In this work he claimed, among other things, that just as Jesus Christ is the expression of all humanity, just as He signifies nothing but its simple idea and essence, so does man, too, viewed in his essence, include within himself all things. 1 This blurring of distinction between the Divine Logos and human nature was carried further by Pico della Mirandola in his famous Oratio de hominis dignitate published in 1469. Russel Kirk in his introduction to the translation of this work by Robert Caponigri, in fact posits that, "The Dignity of Man," delivered by Pico at Rome, was, " his glove dashed down before authority, and lives on as the most succinct expression of the mind of the Renaissance." "We have given you, Oh Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor any endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may with premeditation, select these same you may have and possess through your own judgment and decision...at the moment of his creation, God bestowed seeds pregnant with all possibilities ...Whichever of these a man shall cultivate, the same will mature and bear him fruit. If sensual, he will become brutish; if rational he will reveal himself a heavenly being; ...and if, dissatisfied with the lot of all creatures, he should recollect himself into the center of his own unity, he will there, become one spirit with God." Pico, with these words, openly defied the authority of the Roman Catholic Church with its hierarchical and sacramental theology. 2 Pico had no open desire to break with the Christian faith, but according to his concept of unlimited human potential, the advent of Christ, the Word Incarnate, did not inaugurate a new supernatural order embodied in the Church, but stimulated, a rebirth of natural man and human potential. In the words of Walter Ulmam, "Through [Baptism] there was a rebirth of natural man; through this restoration into his natural state, cosmological perspectives came to be opened up which were hitherto barely perceived ... Natural man was awakened from the slumber of the centuries: he was reactivated." 3 The Renaissance concept of the dignity of man did not draw on a new secularization of culture as is generally taught, but rather on a synthesis of ancient esoteric religious and philosophical ideas enumerated by Pico in his Oration. These ideas, mostly of oriental origin, had inundated Italy since the time of Marco Polo, but flowed in with greater impact after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Foremost among these were Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and the Orphic Mysteries combined with the NeoPlatonism of, Plotinus, Proclus and Iamblichus. Pico had studied many of these ideas at the Platonic Academy of Florence under the influence of the "Philosophus Platonicus, Theologus et Medicus," Marcilio Ficino. As protg of Cosimo de Medici, Marcilio Ficino (1433-1499), the founder of the Platonic Academy, was the pivotal figure of Renaissance thought. He was the first Western Christian thinker of the Renaissance to break the link of philosophy and faith achieved by Aquinas by returning to a Platonic understanding of the cosmos. Ficino affirmed, in chapter one of his Commentary on the Symposium, that God was not wholly other than the universe as understood by the Church magisterium, but was "the single center of everything since, "He is located, single simple and motionless within them all.""Thus Mind, Soul, Nature, and matter, proceeding from God, strive to return to Him". 4 This monistic (panentheist) view, is based more on the second and third century Neo-Platonists, especially Plotinus, than on Plato himself.

Erasmus, for example, denied St. Jerome's Latin translation of the Greek, (eph ho pantes hmarton) as "in quo omnes pecaverunt" (in whom all have sinned) in regard St. Paul's treatise on original sin (Romans: 5, 12 ). He preferred, "since him all have sinned." Promoting perfection rather than redemption, he eschewed the Crucifix as a symbol on the cover sheet of. his treatise on piety and used the ancient Caduceus, symbol of healing and wholeness, instead.

In light of the above observations as to Renaissance thought, it is interesting to look at some of the greatest art produced during this period for Humanist patrons. They will be studied not so much for their superb quality as works of genius, but to discern the iconography and symbolism to be found within them. According to oft quoted authority, Irwin Panofsky, in his Studies in Iconology, Humanist Themes in Art of the Renaissance, art works may be analyzed from three separate points of view. The first is the formalistic, that is, how the lines, shapes, and colors are arranged in an orderly and harmonies fashion to be enjoyed sensibly by the viewer. Second is the subject matter, that is whom or what does the picture represent, and third is the meaning, or "iconography in its deepest sense." Panofsky goes on to say that this "meaning" is apprehended by ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude of a nation, period class, a religious or philosophical persuasion unconsciously qualified by one personality and condensed into one work. Panofsky also points out that the artist himself most often does not fully comprehend the depth of his message. 17 Following are interpretations of three famous paintings that can be examined from all three perspectives, keeping in mind, however, the words of another Renaissance scholar, Edgar Wind, writing in his seminal book, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance. "They were designed for initiates; hence they require an initiation." 18

Key to the doctrine of Neo-Platonism, was Plotinus' idea that the universe was not created ex nihilo as the Church insisted, but that both the cosmos and man were emanations, or "overflowings" of the Divine substance. 5 Thus Ficino and his contemporaries conceptualized the entire universe or "Macrocosm" as a "Divine Animal" divinum animal, animated by a "Cosmic Mind" mens mundana connected to God, and a "Cosmic Soul" anima mundi, which though spiritual, is connected to matter. "An uninterrupted current of supernatural energy flows from above to below and reverts from below to above, thus forming a circuitus spiritualis." 6 Analogically, Man, the "Microcosm" has a "lower soul" anima secunda connected to the material world and a "higher soul" intellectus or mens that is connected to and even participates in the Divine Mind, intellectus divinus. 7 The illustration to the left depicts man the "microcosm" superimposed over the "macrocosm." In it we see both the cosmos and man as matter suffused with divinity centered on the generative principle. Man the "microcosm" is also the subject matter of the image to the right, "Vitruvian Man," drawn by Leonardo da Vinci c. 1510. In this image, man qua man rather than the unique person of Jesus Christ, true God - true man, is depicted as the embodiment of the perfect union of the spiritual heavens - the circle- and the material earth - the square-.

In 1492, at the death of Lorenzo de Medici, patron of both the arts and the Platonic Academy, an inventory was made of his belongings and among them was a circular painting, tondo, depicting the adoration of the Christ Child hanging in the main entrance hall of his palace. This painting begun in 1455 by the Dominican monk Giovanni da Fiesole (Fra Angelico), the year of his death, was finished by Carmelite brother, Filppo Lippi. The painting now hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. It is a curious fact of history that these two artists were of opposing temperaments and moral behavior. Fra Angelico was known in his own

The Renaissance "Humanists" (Those who believed in divine human potential) also, as enunciated by Pico, based much of their theology on the eclectic writings of a supposed pre-Mosaic Egyptian sage named Hermes Trismegistus translated into Latin by Ficino in 1463. His monistic definition of God and the cosmos as: "Deus est sphaera infinita cuijus centrum est ubique nusquam circumferentiae"(God is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere but whose circumference is nowhere) was fundamentally identical to that of the Neo-Platonists but he stressed man's innate divine nature even more. In the, Pimander, supposedly written by Trismegistus, it is stated, "He who knows himself goes toward himself...You are light and life, like God the Father of whom man is born." "If therefore you learn to know yourself as made of light and life... you will return to life." 8 As Elaine Pagels points out in her book The Gnostic Gospels, the doctrine of a secret knowledge of man's innate divinity is the central doctrine of the "Gnosticism" that began its battle against Christianity as far back as the second century AD. 9 Most people think of Gnosticism in terms of its Manechean, or dualist manifestation calling for the release of the soul trapped in matter, however, as A. J. Fustigiere, has explained, the Hermetic writings actually contained two distinct types of divine "gnosis," namely pessimist gnosis, and optimist gnosis. For the pessimist (or dualist) Gnostic, the material world, heavily impregnated with the fatal influence of the stars is in itself evil; it must be escaped from by an ascetic way of life which avoids as much as possible all contact with matter, until the lightened soul rises up through the spheres of the planets, casting off their evil influences as it ascends, to its true home in the immaterial divine world. For the optimist Gnostic, however, matter is impregnated with the divine life, the earth lives, moves, with divine life, the stars are living divine animals, the sun burns with divine power, there is no part of nature which is not good for all are parts of God. 10 ( see: Appendix_three Gnosis)

lifetime as a man of holy and devout life and was later raised to the altars of the Catholic Church as "Blessed" and proclaimed a patron of Catholic artists. Filippo Lippi, on the other hand, is recorded as having led a most dissolute life. According to the biographer Vassari, in his Lives of the Artists, Fra Filippo, "was so lustful that he would give anything to enjoy a woman he wanted"...and that "his amorous or rather animal desires drove him one night to escape through a window to pursue his own pleasures for days on end." 19 This contrast embodied in the two painters is actually reflected symbolically in the picture itself. As a Humanist icon, it is first of all presented in a circular or mandala format representative of the enclosed cosmos. Above, on the roof, a peacock, symbol of eternal life and the immortal soul since the time of the catacombs stands stage right. A pair of mating pheasants, creatures of the wild, are shown stage left. This follows the standard iconographical formula and represents the spiritual (m) and carnal (f) aspects of the cosmos as under stood in the Neo Platonic cosmology. Central to the theme of the picture is the seated Madonna and Christ Child, known to have been painted by Fra Angelico receiving the homage of virtually all mankind as well as the beasts. In the image, however, the Baby Jesus is not looking at the figure kneeling before him in adoration, but downward onto a small round object on his left thigh. This object, obviously painted in afterwards,

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either by Fra Filippo or some other hand, has an eye and menacing teeth. From an orthodox Catholic perspective it is symbolically out of place. Following the Neo-platonist theory explained above regarding the coincidentia oppositorum and the Kabbalistic notion that "God", the Ayn Sof, is the source of both good and evil, it makes perfect sense. It thus may be presumed that this little circular figure represents the incarnation of the sitra ahra or left hand "evil - restrictive" aspect of the divinity united in Christ, the archetype of all humanity. If this is, in fact, the case, a Humanist "initiate" would immediately recognize the message; both the macrocosm and the microcosm are ultimately formed by a harmonious fusion of all opposites.

fusion of opposites via the generative principle of the male and female within nature that creates harmony and wholeness in the monistic totality of the macrocosm. This painting by Giorgione may well be labeled a quintessential icon of Renaissance Humanist thought, in which there was no need for the Cross of Salvation. The Council of Trent (1545 - 1563), while generally remembered for its stance against the Protestant Reformation, officially renounced the Humanist ideology as well, and subsequently placed many of the writings of its proponents including Pico, Reuchlin and Erasmus on the Index of forbidden books. The writings of St. Thomas were established as the official philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church (During the sessions of the Council, the Summa Theologiae was placed on the altar of the Cathedral beside the Bible as a definitive text). Both the sacramental nature and hierarchical structure of the Church were reemphasized as well. The theology of the Council, in contrast to both the Reformers and the Humanists, reaffirmed the necessity of incorporation into Christ's Mystical Body, as summarized in the following passage from Saint and Doctor of the Church, John of Avila. "It is not enough to be born of blood if you wish to be children of God and go to heaven. He who is born of blood is flesh and blood, and he who is born of the will ordered by reason is a man; (he who lives according to the flesh does not deserve the name of man). [but] To possess heaven it is not enough to be merely a man. 'Quod enim natus est ex carne, caro est - Nemo ascendit in caelum, nisi qui descendit de caelo, filius hominis. To be a child of God you must abide in Christ so that you may ascend IN HIM. If you are nothing more than a man you will inherit from your father but not from God. Not thus are born those who go to heaven. - Ex Deo nati sunt - They must be born again of God. It has been announced. The true son of God is he who is born of water and the Holy Ghost. St. Paul says: He who has not the Spirit of God is not of God. He will not be saved. Hard words indeed!" 22 The Traditional Catholic ecclesiological structure was also reaffirmed and later summarized by another canonized Saint and Doctor of the Church, Robert Cardinal Bellarmine S.J.: " Our sentence is that there is only one true Church ... and that the only one true Church is the community of men united by the profession of the true Christian faith and the communion of the same sacraments, under the governance of the legitimate shepherds and above all, of the sole Vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman Pontiff...Indeed the Church, as visible and palpable community, is as real as the community of the Roman people, the Kingdom of France, or the Republic of Venice...". 23 The visual arts that proceeded from the Council of Trent are known to those art historians enamored of the Classical norm, as Baroque, a derogatory term derived from the Portuguese word for an imperfect pearl. However, following the Thomistic doctrine that nature is not destroyed, but transformed by grace, they evoke a hierarchical vision of engraced souls leading upward and opening into the transcendental realm of the Beatific Vision. The image at the left is of the Gesu Church in Rome, built shortly after the close of the Council that illustrates typical Tridentine iconology. This style of painting, along with the forms illustrated in the first part of this treatise, became the official orthodox manner of visually depicting the Truth of the Catholic Faith and was spread throughout Catholic Europe, Latin America, and the Asian lands proselytized by Catholic Missionaries.

Another examples of Renaissance art wherein the meaning and symbolic structure may be of more interest than the splendid technique is the well known drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci titled The Virgin and Child with St. Ann. Executed in 1498-9 as a cartoon (preparatory sketch) for a larger commissioned work. It is one of the most enigmatic pictures in art history and has been the object of multitudinous critiques, commentaries and evaluations. In his 1939 biography of Leonardo, Kenneth Clark took the then prevailing formalist view, and described this picture as, "the contrast of interlocking rhythms enclosed within a single shape." While stating that the overall desired shape sought by Leonardo is the pyramid, Lord Clark wondered out loud why the two female heads at the top are in equilibrium rather than the aesthetically more correct ascending order. On the whole, however, Clark brushes off any inconsistencies within his own preconceived notion of what the picture is about and equates the picture to a masterpiece by Bach were one may always find: " ...new facilities of movement and harmony, growing more and more intricate, yet subordinate to the whole." 20 In the 1967 edition of this same book, Lord Clark modified his aesthetic critique of Leonardo's work by saying that he had tried too hard to separate Leonardo the artist from Leonardo the man, in regard to this picture. He then added what he called a profound and beautiful interpretation by Sigmund Freud. According to Freud, Leonardo spent the first years of his life with his natural mother, the peasant Caterina. Leonardo's father, Ser Piero, however, after his marriage a year later to another woman, which turned out to be fruitless, eventually brought his love child to be reared by his lawful wife. Thus, according to Freud, Leonardo had two mothers, both of whom he loved, and hence the equilibrium of the two female heads at the top of this composition. Leonardo has, again according to Freud, unconsciously produced two mysteriously smiling faces of approximately the same age emerging from what strangely appears to be one body. 21

Without questioning the integrity of Lord Clark or Sigmund Freud, for that matter, I invite the reader to carefully study this picture for its visual content and then consider once again its title. In this picture there are at the top the two smiling female heads as witnessed by Dr. Freud, and they do, in fact, appear to emerge from a single mass or body. There are also two semi naked children who not only appear to be of the same age, but who bear a striking resemblance to each other. They could almost be identical twins except that the one on the left has shorter hair, a broad forehead and a more intense expression. In contrast, the child fully to stage left with his massive curls, leaning languidly on his elbow, has a more passive sentimental posture and look. Between the two children, closer to the child at stage left, a hand with index finger extended points heavenward. This hand visually links the female head toward stage left (St. Anne?), to the child at stage left.(John the Baptist?) Now think of the title, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne. According to Christian tradition, St. Anne was historically the mother of the Virgin Mary and should therefore be rendered at least fifteen years her senior. One may, of course, accept Freud's theory but it does not explain the children. If Freud is right and there are unconscious sublimations contained in this picture, who does the child at stage left represent and why is he there? According to the title one assumes he is John the Baptist. Why, however, would the ascetic John the Baptist be represented, even as a child, as a baleful languid twin of the Christ Child? Leonardo was well acquainted with the biblical traditions and certainly had the technical ability to portray what so ever he wished to portray. If the pictorial content does not appear to coincide with the official title given the picture by the painter himself, what then is this picture all about? Regarding the two heads emerging from the one body, look again at these faces. The face on the left, (stage right) theoretically Mary, is all sweetness and light. The one, toward stage left, theoretically Mary's mother, not only appears the same age but, in fact, is physically a mirror image of Mary. She has, however, a dark and sinister mien. She smiles but it is not the gentle smile of motherly goodness; it is a quizzical, almost threatening smile. This single bodied but double natured woman, appears as both good and evil, the mother of life but also the destroyer, like the Hindu goddess Kali, who gives birth to all, but also drinks the blood of her victims from their own skulls. Does she not represent here Mother Nature, the macrocosm, in which all opposites exist? And the children? Instead of Jesus and John, could they not just as well be identified with Castor and Pollux, the twins born of Zeus and Leda the fruit of unnatural lust in the pagan myth (equally well known to Leonardo) or, perhaps, the Gemini, the twins of astrological lore who represent the fundamental duality of the cosmos? The one to stage right, with his composure and Apollonian reason appears to be blessing the unruly left hand, or Dionesiac twin side of his very own nature. As neither Leonardo nor his contemporaries have left us written explanations, the answer is, of course, a matter of speculation. However, given an understanding of Renaissance theology explained above, and the basic right-left, up-down form of symbolic expression we have previously examined, it would appear that the woman toward stage left with her "facia nigra" as representative of the dark "occult" forces, is pointing upward to tell the initiated viewer that both the light and dark, or good and evil forces of nature, the macrocosm, come from God and that through the coincidentia oppositorum or the resolution of opposites, man, the microcosm, will return thence - (apokatastasis)-.

The "Humanists," however, having lost official recognition by the Catholic authorities continued to flourish in Protestant lands as secret brotherhoods such as the Rosicrucians who first appeared to the public through such publications as the Fama and the Confessio in Germany in 1614-1615. 24 According to Frances Yates, in her authoritative book, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, at the root of the Rosicrucian movement was the Neo-Platonic idea that, while contemplating the "Book of Nature" we contemplate God Himself, as "The Spirit of God is at the center of Nature; it is the ground of nature and of the knowledge of all things" and that its purpose was to "Return [through the study of Nature's Book] to the Paradise that Adam had lost." 25 Again according to Frances Yates, the movement flourished in the Northern, Protestant countries as "The Hebraic, Old Testament piety of the Puritans and Calvanists was conducive to amalgamation with Cabala (sic. Latinized spelling) the Jewish form of Mysticism." i.e. along with its Neo-Platonic Roots, Rosicrucianism was strongly influenced by the Kabbalah. 26 Having been denounced by the Council of Trent, these Kabbalistic societies were not openly acceptable in Catholic realms and could be brought to trial before the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Symbolically, the Rosicrucian belief that, "The Spirit of God is at the center of Nature" is presented as a classic mandala wherein "God is placed at the center from which heaven and earth are emanations. (See the image above left from "The Secret Symbols of the Rosicrucians".) As these societies could not openly operate in Catholic realms, they kept secret their identity by including this symbol in their graphic arts which, though not understood by inquisitorial judges, would be instantly identifiable to adepts. The image to the right from "The Hermetic Museum" depicts this subterfuge. In the Protestant countries, the symbolism of the Rosicrucians was openly similar to that of the Humanist initiates of the Renaissance seen above as in the Tempesta of Giorgione; a fusion of the natural male (active) and female principles (passive) in polarity. In the anonymous German, Temple of Pansophia seen to the left, the male and female temple columns (J & B) as well as upper and lower realities ( Superior & Inferior) are shematically displayed. The Sun (masculine) rests on the top of Jachin and an upward pointing triangle on the base also suggests the male heavenly principle. The Moon (feminine) rests on top of Boaz and a downward pointing triangle suggests the female earthly principle. From both the Sun and Moon descend the words Pater and Mater to converge on a circle containing both an upward and downward pointing triangle to form the fusion of opposites, or coincidentia oppositorum. John Dee, necromancer, court astrologer and magician of Queen Elizabeth I of England, rendered the emblem seen to the left below as the Monas Hieroglyphica in 1564. According to Frances Yates, "It summed up a combination of cabalist, alchemical, and mathematical disciplines through which the adept believed that he could achieve both a profound insight into nature and a vision of a divine world beyond nature." 27 Symbolically, here again are seen the two columns associated with the (male) sun and (female) moon standing stage left and right respectively. Between the columns is what can only be described as the "Orphic" egg. According to the Orphic tradition (Rhapsodies), at the beginning of time the cosmic egg was formed in which Eros - Phanes, the god of love and light, mated with his daughter Nux, night - darkness, to bring forth Uranos the sky and Gaia the earth. This cosmogony is represented in Dee's egg via the conjunction of the conventional sun and moon symbols (upper center) over an equilateral cross to convey, once again, a harmonious fusion of opposites within an enclosed cosmos. The same egg shape is seen in Freemason and magician liphas Lvi's emblem from his 1861 Histoire de la Magie seen to the right. The egg is formed by the Ouroboros, or serpent eating its own tail. 28Within the enclosed cosmos is seen the coincidentia oppositorum of light and dark, male and female, good and evil, heaven and hell formed by the two interlacing triangles to form the Kabbalistic Magen David. It is, in fact, under the broad umbrella of Freemasonry where all of the above "Humanist" values can be found to this day. While the ostensible goals of Freemasonry are philanthropy and human development, the true goal is philosophic and ultimately religious. The index of any of the best known Masonic encyclopedias, i.e., Mackey, Pike, Waite, list the same spiritual influences (Neo-Platonism, Orphism, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, etc.) upon which the Craft is based, curiously similar to those pronounced by Pico della Mirandola in 1469. 29 See: Appendix 6 also www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/venzifr.html It is also within Freemasonry where the twin pillars are most widely exhibited and explained. Albert Pike, Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite, in his Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry, identifies them as follows: "You enter[ed] the Lodge between two columns... The pillar or column on the right, or in the south, was named, as the Hebrew word is rendered in our translation of the Bible, JACHIN: and that on the left BOAZ. Our translators say that the first word means, "He shall establish;" and the second, "In it is strength."...The former word also means he will establish, or plant in an erect position- from the (Hebrew) verb Kun, he stood erect. It probably meant active and vivifying Energy and Force; and Boaz, Stability, Permanence, in the passive sense." 30

Perhaps the most interesting symbolic portrayal of the Renaissance ideal of coincidentia oppositorum, is Giorgione's Tempesta or storm. Little is known of the provenance or early history of this picture other than that it was painted some time after 1504. First documented in 1530 as a landscape with a tempest, a gypsy and a soldier, it is probably the most discussed and analyzed paintings of the Renaissance. A nineteenth century inventory lists it as an allegory of Mercury (Hermes ) and Isis. This labeling may or may not come from an earlier tradition. As the original intention of the artist is unknown, many of the great art historians of our age have attempted to unravel what Kenneth Clark called, its "Magical" power. It is my belief that Italian Historian Lionello Venturi perhaps came the closest: "The subject is nature; man, woman and child are only elements - not the most important - of nature." From a simple iconographical point of view, this painting is truly archetypal and follows the standard: left-right; above-below analysis to perfection. The male with an enlarged codpiece and the staff (baton de commandemant) stands stage right surmounted by a stone edifice (man the builder). The female with her head covered by a veil (symbol of mystery) is seated stage left beneath the leafy trees (woman, nature, nurturer). It should be noted that the veil, or mystery, which covers the woman's head comes up from below. She and her power are of the earth. Above is the natural element of lightning associated with celestial power and therefore masculine. Below is the natural feminine principle of water. Central to the painting are two truncated columns. These columns or pillars, as we have seen since Solomon's Temple, have been used to represent the male (active) and the female (passive - receptive)) principles, both transcendental and immanent. In this case the forces are apparently immanent. Even though the larger or male principle is dominant, the two are fused together in concordia discors. Just as Christ Crucified, true God and true man was presented as the pontifex, or bridge builder between heaven and earth in the painting by Perrugino analyzed in the first section of this treatise, so these two pillars form the bridge which unites all the natural elements; right & left, as well as, above & below. The meaning of the painting is simple. It is the

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In explaining "The Royal Secret" of these pillars, Pike goes on to posit the inner duality or bi-sexuality of the Godhead itself. Man, according to Pike exists as both Male and Female as symbolic of the intrinsic divine duality: " [God]...the Ineffable Name, and dividing it, it becomes bi-sexual ...and discloses its meaning ...The highest of which the Columns Jachin and Boaz are the symbol. 'In the image of Deity,' we are told, 'God created the Man; Male and Female.'"31 Pike not only posits the existence of the dual existence of male and female within the Godhead, but the existence of good and evil as well: "The Evil is the shadow of the Good and inseparable from it. The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence of the Divine Will or Power, and the result is Beauty or Harmony. The arch rests not on a single column, but springs from one on either side." 32 This concept of harmony is at the core of the image shown to the left. Included in a variety of Masonic texts and periodicals, it is, in fact, an "icon" of the Masonic faith and represents, "The religions of the world." Among these religions one finds, for example, Mithraism in the lower left corner, Judaism at the center with the seven branched Menorah beneath a sacrificial lamb, a Muslim imam, Persian fire worshipers, and the Egyptian cult of Hathor, among others. (The Crucifix is conspicuous by its absence.). The most important element of all, however, is the object of worship of these devotees. Riding the clouds at the top are a woman (stage right) crowned with six stars and a tiny crescent moon on her head and a serpent at her feet. There is a young man to her left, blessing with his left hand. The Zodiac arches above them in an enclosing circle. (One might think that the woman is perhaps the Virgin Mary as she often appears crowned with twelve stars while treading the serpent in Catholic art. Catholics, however, do not worship Mary_as a divinity. This image simply represents the dual natured "Complete God" worshipped by Masons as described above by Albert Pike. [For the Freemason, the "Complete God," is comprised of both good and evil personified principles, however, the traditional roles are reversed. The "good" God is the natural (f) emancipator who offers freedom, and the "evil" one is the transcendental (m)God of restriction, as seen by the following quote by Pike. " The pavement, alternately black and white, symbolize the Good and Evil Principles of the Egyptian and Persian creed. It is the battle between the forces of light and shadow; Day and Night; Freedom and Despotism; Religious Liberty and the Arbitrary Dogmas of a Church that thinks for its votaries, and whose Pontiff claims to be in fallible, and the decretals of its Councils to constitute a gospel." 34 ("Lucifer Quote" ) ] Thus, the feminine figure seen above represents the Gnostic divinization of the feminine principle (Sofia), revived in the Renaissance and carried into our own times by Freemasonry. She is the Great_Goddess, ruler of "this world," the very incarnation of the serpent, not its conqueror. She is Venus, the personification of lust or voluptas Venus, however, was seen in the Renaissance as not only the manifestation of carnal desire, Venus Vulgare, but also that of divine beauty, Venus Celeste, the form divine. To the right is Boticellis Birth of Venus painted between 1480 1485, the first full size female nude goddess depicted anywhere in Europe since antiquity. This return to pagan eroticism, as we shall see, will lead to a different set of symbolic presentations of cosmic reality while maintaining the fundamental, above below, right left, polarities. For many of the Neoplatonists, the very vision of God was the contemplation of divine beauty in a state of erotic trance. This mystical vision was complete when, although still in this life, one received the Kabbalistic "mors osculi" or "kiss of death" from the Venus Celeste source of all beauty and wisdom 35 Whereas the Venus Celeste or Celestial Venus and the Venus Vulgare or Earthly Venus were theoretically distinct in the writings of Marcilio Ficino, for Bocaccio in his Questo Amoroso Fuoco the two are clearly linked. Union with the Celestial Venus or Beauty itself must be achieved through "Eros" and participation in the divine creative act by simulacrum ie., via sexual magic in the act of copulation. 36 Pico Della Mirandola, while admitting that all Eros or lust is not noble, held that even carnal knowledge, if carried out in the right frame of mind serves to achieve ecstatic union with the Venus Celeste. 37 Perhaps the greatest exposition of this line of thought, however, emerged in the writings of Giordano Bruno who was condemned and burnt for heresy in 1600. Antedating Freud by some 300 years, Bruno set forth the doctrine in his De Vinculis in Genere that, " [erotic] love rules the world, the strongest chain is that of Venus. Eros is lord of the world: he pushes directs and appeases every one. All other bonds are reduced to that one, as we see in the animal kingdom where no female and no male tolerate rivals, even forgetting to eat and drink, even at the risk of life itself." 35 He maintained, however, that this drive could and ought to be contained and willfully directed. For Bruno the Eroici Furori, the Heroic Fury of the poets and artists was the distillation of erotic furor and an assault on heaven. Through Eros man could, indeed, become god. 38 The watershed work embodying the Erotic nature of the Neoplatonic, Hermetic, Kabbalistic Renaissance thinkers was Sandro Botticellis Primavera or Springtime painted in 1477. Not only does the painting portray a bucolic scene from the pagan past with nostalgia, it contains within its very core an imaginative portrayal of the erotic nature of Renaissance thought. "Primavera" was most probably painted for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, a Neoplatonic enthusiast and cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent. There is little doubt that it reflects an allegorical expression as well as artistic achievement. According to Renaissance scholar, Edgar Wind, the key to this painting lies in the words of Pico della Mirandola, that "the unity of Venus unfolds in the trinity of the graces" and that this simile pervades the totality of universal pagan myth. 37 In Primavera, following Plotinus and Pico, there are nine figures which form an Ennead, that is to say an emanation in multiples of three. Central to the painting, although somewhat to our right, is the goddess [Venus, Isis] herself. On our right hand (stage left), [female or nature side] is the triad of Zephyr or West wind, Chloris the innocent earth nymph, and Flora, the resplendent herald of Spring. On our left hand (stage right) [male or God side] is, from the center outward, the group depicting the three graces Pulchritude or beauty, Castitas Chastity and Voluptas pleasure, and to the farthest left and separate from them, Mercury the divine mystagogue 39 with his caduceus (entwined serpent staff) dispelling the clouds from the upper left hand corner. At the top center is blind Cupid or Eros firing his love dart at the figure of Chastity.

Stage right (God or Spirit side) to the great goddess are her emanations, the three Graces, who dance in a spiritual sublimation of erotic desire. In the center of these is Castitas or Chastity, neatly coifed shy and melancholy. To her left is the sensuous Voluptas or pleasure. To her right is the decorous figure of haughty Pulchretudo or Beauty. They, in fact, form a trinity of purpose. All three have their hands tightly united above and below in what Horace called the "segnesque nodum solvere Gratiae" or knot of the Graces. 40 The final and most important triad in this Ennead, however, is made up of the prime movers of the whole scene Eros (male) above, Venus (the eternal feminine) below, and Mecurius (the divine fusion of opposites) reaching upward at stage right. Once human passion has been awakened as depicted in the scene of Zephyr, Chloris and Flora the stage is set for the erotic fulfillment of man through the desire embodied in Pulchretudo, Castitas and Voluptas. From his position above, blind (desire devoid of rational judgement) Eros fires his dart at Castitas. Castitas diaphanous garment falls from her left shoulder as desire enters her heart. She looks longingly at Mercurius while Voluptas looks knowingly at her. The spark of divine rapture, of ecstasy, has been enkindled. The "heroic Fury" of the poet to convert desire to fruition is achieved by Mercurius. It is he, who with his Caduceus (entwined male and female serpents) reaches beyond the golden apples of earthly desire. It is he, Mercurius Duplex, the concordia discors or fusion of opposites [spirit and matter] who draws back the clouds of mystery (upper corner, stage right) to reveal the divine form. It is the Mors Osculi or Kiss of death that awaits.

Following are two paintings, Giovanni Bellinis Feast of the Gods painted in 1514, and Nicholas Pousins Kingdom of Flora painted in 1631. While painted a hundred years apart and depicting different pagan myths share a consistent iconography. Ostensibly Bellinis painting simply shows a bucolic scene in which gods and goddesses as well as nymphs and satyrs indulge themselves without inhibition. Iconographically, however, the picture is laid out in the universal right (m) left (f), above below presentation and contains what Panofsky called meaning, or "iconography in its deepest sense." It should be remembered that this concept of "meaning" as used by Panofsky, as explained above, refers to a distilled presentation of cultural, religious, or philosophical values that define a an age yet may not be fully understood, if at all, by the artist. The scene is a shaded earthly glade while in the background (perhaps painted by Titian), Mount Parnassus ascends to the heavens. Stage right, Mars the quintessential violent male god of war, surrounded by a debauched male entourage looks longingly at a bare-breasted Venus with her female attendants who is being awakened by a male rustic. Between the two celestial figures, sits a rustic or peasant couple with the mans hand groping the womans crotch. This painting is not meant to be pornographic, but esoteric. It follows the Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistus, "The below is as the above, and the above is as below." The awakening of lust below awakens desire between the gods above and vice-versa. The Venus Vulgare and the Venus Celeste are one and the same and, as in Boticellis Primavera, the beatific vision is but rarefied lust.

. Pousins Kingdom of Flora, again, has the same classic right left, above below layout. Ostensibly the theme is taken from a tale in Ovids Metamorphosis that recounts how various heroes and demigods were turned to flowers at their death. Once again, stage right is the figure of a male Herm, or erect column statue of Priapus, god of male fertility. Beneath him is Ajax, who falls on his own sword after being denied the armor of Achilles. Hyacinths were said to have grown from his blood that spilled on the ground. Stage left, the lovers Krokos and Smilax erotically recline. According to Ovid, they were accordingly turned into saffron. All the male figures at stage left are curiously androgynous. In the center, above is Apollo, the sun god and below is Flora dispensing her magic upon Narcissus and Echo, who skrie the future from the waters of the urn. Iconographically, again in its deepest unconscious sense, this painting speaks of the death of the male principle, (Patriarchal authority) here seen as Ajax, (stage right) and the triumph of the feminine or earthly principle of erotic fulfillment symbolized by Flora and the androgynous group (stage left). These are the first stirrings of the "Romantic" full divinization of "The Eternal Feminine" which will be found especially in the writings of Wolgang Frederich Von Goethe. In his 1782 treatise Die Natur, Goethe wrote "Nature! We are surrounded and enveloped by her unable to step outside her, unable to get into her more deeply. Un-asked and unwarned, she takes us up into the circle of her dance and carries us along till we are wearied and fall from her armsMen are all in her and she in allEven the most unnatural is Nature , even the crudest pedantry still has at touch of her geniusLife is her fairest invention, death but her artifice whereby to have much life All is there in her always. She knows not

The first triad, then is that of Zephyr, Chloris, and Flora, pictured here on the right. In this scene, which follows the Fasti of Ovid, Zephyr the soft breeze of spring [incipient erotic desire] caresses the fleeing innocent nymph Chloris who, spewing flowers on her breath, is thus turned through a metamorphoses into Flora. Flora as harbinger of spring is the culmination of natural beauty and is depicted as fully formed erotic woman. As such she is the source and also the fruition of earthly desire, Venus Vulgare. Flora stands self consciously erect in the knowledge that she is the highest manifestation of nature. She occupies the dominant position stage left to the eternal feminine manifestation Venus Celeste, Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, the great goddess, at the center.

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past nor future. Present is her eternity. And she is good and I praise her in all her works." 41 This theme of " Divine Nature" caught on among the intelligentsia and was picked up in the early nineteenth century by such artists as William Blake, David Friederich, and Philip Otto Runge, among others. Rung expressed his experience of the immanent divinity of Nature as "the feeling of the whole universe with us; this united chord which in its vibration touches every string of our heart;here is the highest that we divine- God"42 To the right of the page is Runges 1809 painting titled: "The Times of Day, Morning" designed as a sacred picture for a chapel dedicated to the new religion of nature. At the center of the painting is the figure of Nature herself in the guise of Aurora, the emerging dawn. She is surrounded by adoring cherubs, flowers, and other natural elements and below her is, not the Christ Child, but the new emancipated child of Nature. This painting is diametrically opposed to the Byzantine Anastais icon reviewed at the end of part one. In that painting, representing the end of time, the Glorified Christ stood between the two rock escarpments converging over Him as he raised the just and cast bound Satan into Hell. In direct contrast, Runges painting depicts Aurora rising up, between the twin rocks folding back, as harbinger of the Novus Ordo Saeclorum, or "New Age."

The great Romantic Sculptor, Antonio Canova, carved the Three Graces as a feminine Trinity of lesbian erotica in 1815

The image of God as eternal Transcendental Father has all but disappeared from modern iconology and has been replaced by the Eternal Feminine of immanent earthly spirituality.

At the present time, in fact, New Age icons abound. Many are represented as classic oriental Mandalas. The1991 painting at the left by Bev Doolittle was offered in the Smithsonian Magazine as the "Spirit of the Earth" and places the Bindu, or point of contact with the divine, on the Native American rider at the center. The picture at the right is taken from a 1993 advertisement in the Washington Times. It was a call for essays regarding the subject of democracy, a noble topic, which is unfortunately represented, however, as a classic oriental Tai-Chi image of equal black and white yin-yang hemispheres representing the antinomian fusion of opposites in an impersonal cosmic order.

Diego Riveras 1928 mural., to the left, La Tierra Liberada, El Paraiso Reconquistado, in Chapingo, Mexico, is a further example of a "Revolutionary Icon" dedicated to Nature as Great Goddess. Her naked figure fills the heavens as recipient of the "spirit." Just beneath her is a "Mandala" symbol with its "bindu" at the center (as formed by a windmill) connecting the earthly and heavenly realms. With her right hand she offers a life form to the woman below to stage right, while Promethius, stage left, offers the stolen fire to the man. The "divine child," of the new emancipated humanity, touches wires together setting off sparks that will set progress in motion. Once again, this is the complete antithesis of the Anastasis , the Pantocrator, or any other Christian icon. The mural to the right by Jose Orozco, Omnesciencia painted at the same period is another example of the deposition and replacement of Christ with the "Feminine Principle" at the heart of Mexican Revolutionary art.

Regretfully mandala imagery has crept into the iconography of the Roman Catholic Church. The image at the left is the logo of the Jubilee Year in Rome marking 2000 years of Christianity. At the center of the mandala is the "divine" bindu a nebulous light surrounded by five (Kabalistic number for man) doves representing the diverse spiritualities of man? They are joined together by what Carl Jung referred to as a "solar" "cross of equilibrium."43 The words within the circle say Christus, Heri, Hodie, Semper (Christ, yesterday, today, always). But, what Christ? Which Christianity? By the time of the Second Vatican Council, two divergent ideologies regarding the "image of God" in man came into conflict. They have yet to be resolved. The first ideology is the traditional view as put forward in the Creeds (Christ is the unique Son of God) and reaffirmed at the Council of Trent. It is most simply explained by St. Thomas Aquinas. "The image of a thing may be found in something in two ways. In one way, it is found in something of the same specific nature; as the image of the king is found in his son. In another way, it is found in something of a different nature, as the kings image on a coin. In the first sense the Son is Image of the Father; in the second sense, man is called the image of God." ST, 1, 35, R3. The true "image of God" in man is achieved only by Baptism into Christs Mystical Body, the Church, whereby we become sons "by adoption."

The second ideology is the modernist view that "God is immanent in man and the cosmos." This erroneous view was denounced by St. Pius X in his encyclical letter Pascendi dominici gregis,: esp. The Modernist as Theologian #19. It is based on the Neo-Platonic, Kabalistic, Hermetic, Renaissance theology as well as the19th century, especially French, Masonic occultism described above, (as enunciated in the afterward by Hans Urs Von Balthasar to the anonymous Meditations on the Tarot, 44) as well as by the German Romanticism described above which culminates in the writings of Friedrich Schleiermacher: "The essential difference between the Redeemer and the redeemed consists in the prototypal dominance of the God-consciousness in the Redeemer, into whose fellowship the believer may be admitted by a process substantially analogous to the formation of a human society around a charismatic leader, who unites them by his vision of their future state." 45 (emphasis added)

The paradigm shift from the Judeo-Christian acknowledgment and worship of the transcendent patriarchal God to the immanent goddess, mother Nature, is reflected as well in the two following "icons." To the left of the page is "The High Priestess" from A.E. Waites 1910 The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, and to the right , Christy Swids Belthane, from the1986 cover of Pathways a "New Age" health journal. They are two versions of the same theme, the emergent power of the "feminine principle." In Waites Tarot card, the traditional columns, Jachin and Boaz have been reversed, and in Swids rendition they have not only been reversed but changed into trees to emphasize the polarity within nature itself. An interesting variant is seen in Vincent Desiderios 2002 triptych titled "Pantocrator" from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art collection. The naked woman in the shower represents the feminine principle as dominant at stage right and the Florentine Baptistry where Brunelleschi is said to have discovered analytic "perspective" is placed as the passive male principle at stage left. At the center of this obvious reversal of the traditional order is the "Panocrator" (Lord of all) the Byzantine title for Christ, save in this case it is a "flying saucer" presumably filled with "alien" masters. This painting represents a mystery of faith where all takes place within an enclosed deified cosmos heedless of the Transcendent Creator and His Divine Son, Jesus Christ, unique mediator between Heaven and earth.

See: Modernists Much, if not most, of the late twentieth century iconography is based on the latter. The picture to the left is the cover piece of the Fall 2003 publication of the CMMB (Catholic Medical Missions board). This particular issue dedicated to the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. In and of itself, it is tender rendering of an African mother and child with two doves looking on. Two barely visible transparent arms come down from the doves (spirits) and gently embrace the mother. The child holds an eight-petaled sunflower on which he fixes his gaze. At the center of the flower, (enlarged image to the right) however there is a classic Hindu eight-spoked wheel of life mandala, complete with bindu point, thus rendering the painting a religious icon of the monistic (God is nature nature is God) one world religion variety.

While the icon cited above is displayed on an unofficial Catholic publication the image here shown to the left is taken from a 1992 publication of The Secretariat for Latin America of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. It shows a man singing to the sun and a woman enthralled by a budding flower. There is a male worker, stage right, and a mother with child, stage left. Instead of the two usual columns, there are two rivers (with fish) presumably in reference to equal male and female living waters. The top and bottom of the image are clearly defined by thick stripes suggesting an enclosed reality dominated by the sun (father sky) and fertility (mother earth). The symbolic message would seem to be that the Christian vision for the perfection of humanity lies in a harmonious balance between all elements within the cosmic order. The only recognizable Catholic image relating to the transcendent order is a small cross atop a tiny church at the upper left corner. The title of the pamphlet to which this picture relates is, Faith Alive In The Americas La Fe Vive En Las

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Americas." To what faith do these phrases refer? Do they refer to such traditional Christian topics as sacraments, sin, redemption, sanctifying grace and eternal life, or do they refer to divine immanence in nature and the resolution of opposites?

whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere." Although there are variations on the theme, religions that espouse this view generally hold that all, both what are considered "good" or "evil," comes out from the "One" by emanation and will eventually return to the "One." This system is symbolically represented by the circular mandala with a bindu point at the center and is comprised of such groups as Brahmanism and Hinduism in the East, and the various neo-platonic, gnostic , kabbalistic, and "new age" sects in the West. The focus of these religions is, most basically, to affirm and develop ones own "divine" potential as well as harmonize the divine imbalance of the cosmos.

The visual message of this American Catholic pamphlet is, in fact, not dissimilar from the image shown to the right painted by Dan Lomahaftewa titled Rainbow Myth. It was featured on the Spring 1998 cover of Teaching Tolerance, a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center. This painting, based on the ancient petroglyphs of the Hopi tribes of New Mexico, depicts the perennial quest for the fusion of opposites described throughout this essay. The artist has portrayed a classic pre-post Christian cosmos, between the celestial rainbow above and the infernal dragon below (emerging from the flames). Within this enclosed environment one sees a horned male (stage right) and a feather decked female (stage left). The male figure carries a shield with the male sun symbol and is flanked by spermatoid serpents. The female caries the feminine spiral symbol and is flanked by the same symbol of involution. The allusion is to an all sacred generative principle. Between the two, above, is the circular cosmic mandala, and below, their offspring, a harmonious union of man and beast. While harmony with nature and the environment is a noble endeavor within the natural order, is this the Gospel of Salvation preached by Jesus Christ and fomented by the Holy Catholic Church for two thousand years?

The second view is that the one transcendent God created the cosmos from nothing, ex nihilo, and that God and the creation are separate realities. This view is summed up in the Catholic definition from Vatican I, that, "God is other than the world in being and essence, and above all else, that could possibly be considered to be, ineffably superior." This group is comprised of all orthodox Jews, Moslems and Christians. It finds its fulfillment in the Christian doctrine of the "Incarnation" wherein man is invited to live by faith and sacrament in Christ the unique mediator between the two realities. The focus of this religious view is to, love, honor, and serve God in general, (Jews, Muslims, and all Christians) and to be sacramentally incorporated into His mystical body in particular ( esp. Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity.) The symbolic representation of this incorporation may be represented as the letters, IHS with the cross of Christ at the center. This symbol, in fact, incorporates the "wholeness" desired by all humanity in that it represents the coming together of heaven and earth in the person of Jesus Christ..

In closing, I should like to present two archetypal icons that represent the two fundamental religious alternatives discussed in this treatise. The first icon is a traditional Catholic vision of nature elevated by grace portrayed in a 15th century Byzantine icon from the Peremyshl Museum in Ukraine. This symbolic picture conforms to the first part of this study. The second icon is a modern Kabalistic vision ( see the Hebrew letters in the four quadrants) presented at the Chicago International Art Exposition in 1989 which relates to the second. Both follow precisely the right-left, above below dialectic proposed at the beginning and developed throughout this study.

Now, as ever, we must pray earnestly that the bishops united to the Holy Father be reminded that they "have a battle to fight over the faith that was handed down, once and for all, to the saints (St. Jude 1:3 Once again, as in the dream of St. John Bosco, the perennial Catholic dyadic symbolism of grace and nature shows the way. In his well known dream, the saint saw two pillars standing in the sea while the Bark of Peter was tossed violently in the troubled waters. The larger pillar was surmounted by the Holy Eucharist; Gods pouring out of Himself for our sanctification and salvation. The second smaller pillar held the Blessed Virgin Mary, the archetype of redeemed humanity, (the Church) and our loving mother raised up to meet Him. After terrifying battles and storms, the ship carrying the Roman Pontiff, along with other smaller ships representing other Christian churches and communities, moored at these pillars. A period of peace was then accorded the world. May I humbly suggest that, as the present Holy Father has reminded us, these two great Christian realities, the Eucharist and devotion to Mary, are the key to the future, both here and in the world to come.

ABOVE
Heaven (male) Sky Stage Right ...........................................Stage Left (male) .......................................................(female)

ABOVE Heaven (Male) Sky Stage Right .............................................Stage Left (male).......................................................... (female)

Another cause, dear to His Holiness, John Paul II, is the reunification of Eastern and Western Churches; "the two lungs" of the one Universal Church. In this regard, the following modern "icon" commemorating the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius now celebrated on February 14 (Valentines Day) visually represents the reunion of two Churches. It is of symbolic interest. These two brothers are credited with the conversion of the southern Slavs, c. 863, to Byzantine Christianity and are recognized by the Roman Church as the patron saints of Christian unity as they had formal authorization for their missionary work from both the Roman Pontiff and the Patriarch of Constantinople. In the icon St. Cryil stands at stage right and is dressed in classic Western monastic garb. He has a white cross on his head and a blue cross at the bottom of his scapular covering his body. At the center of his scapular is the Patriarchal cross a Latin cross with a horizontal bar above (head reason) and diagonal bar forming an X (body emotion and intuition) below. He holds another official "Patriarchal" cross, symbolic of heavenly and earthly authority. With his right hand he offers the Eastern blessing with his fingers arranged to form the Greek name of the Redeemer, (Christos). St. Methodius, an ordained Byzantine priest and later Roman bishop, stands at stage left. He is dressed in the traditional robes of the Orthodox priesthood with multiple crosses. In his right hand is seen the chalice of salvation and his left hand is hidden to reflect the sense of mystery at the core of Eastern theology. By following the universal "right left" symbolism discussed above, one may assume that Cryil represents the (m.) authority figure embodied in the Apostolic See of Rome and Methodius the receptive (f.) mystical element of Christianity. Wholeness in Christ contains both. The reunion of the Churches, Rome with its law and philosophy, and Byzantium with its mystic contemplation and liturgy could be based on this mutual recognition in sacramental submission to Christ. At the Second Council of Nicea in 787, the last council recognized by both Churches, the book containing the Gospel was enthroned and all decrees were proclaimed in both Latin and Greek. Could not the two come together once again, as in a nuptial, to share in the Body and Blood of the Savior and swear fidelity to each other in Him?

(active)................................................... (passive)
Earth (female) Hell BELOW

(active)..................................................... (passive)
Earth(female) Hell BELOW

In the orthodox Ukrainian icon, (seen above to the left) the hand of the transcendent male God reaches into the created order from the upper stage right corner to impart the necessary grace upon St. George for him to overcome the dragon-serpent of sin. The dragon itself emanates from a dark mandala form at the bottom inside corner of the picture. It is not a transcendental but chthonic creature and therefore depicted as feminine. By overcoming the beast by natural virtue and the indispensable help of Gods grace, the fetter that ties the earthly woman to the dragon is broken and both man and woman are raised up and exalted in the tower directly across from Gods intervening hand. The symbolism is virtually the same as in St. John Boscos dream where Christ pours Himself out in the Eucharist from upper stage right, and Mary Church is raised up and exalted at upper stage left by Gods grace. The Kabbalist icon (seen above to the right) may be read in exactly the same way. From upper stage right within the picture, a red angel falls downward into the cosmos. According to esoteric legend, it was one or more of these angels that imparted the secret knowledge (Kabbalah) to man. Below the angel is shown a man with three triangles superimposed over him. These represent the three configurations or triads that form the sefirot or vessels of the tree of life. Each sefira, according to the Kabbalah, is a level of attainment in knowledge or balance between the pillars of mercy (stage right) and the pillar of severity (stage left) that will lead to his self-deification. Across at lower stage left, rather than the woman set free of sin by virtue and grace, we see a terrified man possessed by the demon (central third eye and reptilian tail). At upper stage left, instead of the exaltation of man and woman as seen in the icon of St. George, a black hand covers over and annihilates man. The message of the two icons represents the two alternatives offered to man by God. "Consider that I have set before you this day life and good, and on the other hand death and evil. I call heaven and earth to witness this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Choose therefore life (eternal)." Deuteronomy XXX : 15,19

Lest anyone dismiss the above as idyll speculation, ponder the words of the eminent French art historian Ren Hughy: By way of final recapitulation, I should like to restate the basic premise of this essay dedicated to the understanding of universal symbols. Leaving aside the simple atheists who deny the existence of anything but matter, there are two fundamental belief systems adhered to by humanity. The first view is that there is but one unified cosmos comprising all spirit and matter. This view is summed up in the Neo-Platonic, Hermetic definition. "God is an infinite circle "Many think of art as a mere diversion, a thing that is marginal to the real business of life, they do not see that it [visual art] looks into lifes very heart and lays bare its unconscious secrets, that it contains the most honest confessions, confessions that have within them the least element of calculation and must therefore be accounted especially sincere. The soul of the individual- and of an age no longer wears a mask, it seeks and discloses itself with the prophetic knowledge that is to be found both with

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the highly sensitive and the possessed." Or again, the words of Marshal McLuhan , quoting Father White who wrote concerning "Jung and the Supernatural" (Commonweal, March 14, 1952, p. 561): " A living symbol does something to us; it moves us, shifts our center of awareness, changes our values. Whether it is just looked at, or heard, acted out, painted out, written out, or danced out, it arouses not only thought, but delight, fear, awe, horror, perhaps a deeper insight." In other words, the symbols of our environment, commercial and artistic, are not just signs whose reference has to be understood for them to be efficacious. That is Cartesian and Lockean theory of communication which never fitted the facts. But Catholics today still hold to that theory of communication, and it hands them over bound and helpless to the consciously manipulated pagan rituals of art, literature and commerce."

celebrate the intelligible gods, and above them all, the great king of intelligible beings, whose greatness is manifested even by the plurality of the gods. As the Divinity is not restricted to one only being, but is shown to be as multiple as God effectively manifests to us." Cit. Lebreton & Zeiler, The History of the Primitive Church (New York: Mcmillan, 1947) p.884 The above stated position was condemned at the Synod of Constantinople in 543 under the jurisdiction of Pope Virgil and the Emperor Justinian as follows: Article 6 "If anyone states or believes that the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the watersabove the sky are virtues endowed with souls and endowed with reason, anathema sit." 13) Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. (London: Ark Paperback, 1983) 14) Gershom Scholem, Kaballah (New York: Dorset Press:1974) p.226,227 15) Ibid., 126-128, 227 16) Cusanus concept of coincidentia oppositorum that all opposites are reconciled in God who is the essence of the world was developed in his treatise De docta ignorantia 1, 5 2, 4. Cit. Fredrick Copleston, S.J. A History of Philosophy, Vol. III (New York: Doubleday, Image, 1993) p.231 247. [ This would appear to be in direct opposition to St. Thomas (ST, 1,3,8) ] As Fr. Copleston points out, the Teologus Germanicus, Cusanus, had an enormous influence on later German idealist philosophers such as Schelling and Hegel, and thereby- much post Vatican II theology 17) ibid. Panofsky, p. 3-8 Introduction 18) Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1968) p.15 19) Giorgio Vassari, Lives of the Artists (London: The Folio Society, 1995) p.235

The author standing before the Cathedral of Trent in 2002

20) 5. Kenneth Clark, Leonardo Da Vinci (New York: Penguin, 1967) p.136 21) ibid. 137 22) Blessed John of Avila, Cit. The Holy Ghost (Dublin: Scepter Books, 1959) p 38-39 23) St. Robert Bellarmine, Disputaciones de Controversiis christianae Fidei adversus huius temporis haereticus (1586-1593), (Venice, 1721) 53.

The ideas presented in this essay are the fruit of the research and personal insights of this author and do not reflect the opinion of any group, order, or society of the Roman Catholic Church. They are, however, dedicated to the memory of Fr. John Hardon, SJ, under whose direct order of obedience they were written. The visual material herein presented is for critical and educational evaluation only and should not be reproduced for any personally advantageous or commercial purpose.

24) Frances A. Yates The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Boulder, CO, Shambhala, 1978) p. 30 25) ibid. p.97 26) ibid. p. 227

End Notes 1. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, iii, 3, De visione Dei, xx: "Video in te Jesu filiationem divinam, qua est veritas omnis filiationis, et pariter altissimam humanam filiationem, qua est propinquissima imago absolutae filiationis Omnia igitur in natura humana tua video, qua et video in divina, sed humaniter illa esse ideo in natura humana qua sunt ipsa divina, qua sunt ipsa divina veritas in natura divina." "Quia mens est quoddam divinum semen sua vi comlicans omnium rerum exemplaria notionaliter"Nicholas of Cusa, Idiota iii. 5. Fol. 154 cit. Ernst Casirrer, , The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (New York: Dover, 1963) p. 40, 45

27) ibid/ p. 39 28) According to Cirlot, the Ouroborus appears principlally among the Gnostics as a dragon or serpent biting its own tail. In its broadest sense it is symbolic of time and of the continuity of life. It sometimes bears the caption Hen to pan _ "the One, the all." It is symbolic of self fecundation, or the primitive idea of self sufficient Nature, which continually returns within a cyclic pattern to its own beginning. Cirlot, A Dictionary of symbols, (New York: Philosophical Library, 1971) p.247 29) See: Albert Mackey, Lexicon of Freemasonry,( ); Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of Free Masonry (Charleston: A\ M\ 5680), Arthur, Edward Waite, A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (New York: Random House Wings Books, 1996) 30) Abert Pike in his Morals and Dogma of Free Masonry (Charleston: A\ M\ 5680) p. 8

2) Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man Trans. Roberto Caponigri, (Chicago: Gateway Edition, Henry Regnary Co., 1956) pp. 7-9 3)Walter Ulman, Medieval Foundations of Renaissance Humanism (Cornel University Press, 1977) p. 18 4) Marcilio Ficino, Commentary on Platos Symposium (De Amore) Chapter III, cit. Hofstader&Kuhns, Philosophies of Art and Beauty (Chigago: University of Chigago Press, 1964) p.210,11. See also: Irwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (New York: Harper & Row, 1962) p.132 5) Plotinus, Enneads 5.2.1 "The absolute remains as the super-finite, the super-one, and super-being, pure in itself. Nevertheless, because of the super-abundance in it, the absolute overflows, and from this super-abundance it produces the multiformity of the universe, down to formless matter as the extreme limit of non-being." According to E. Cassirer, Plotinus came to "the bastard concept of emanation " in an attempt to bridge the gap between Platos total separation between the world of ideas and the visible world, and Aristotles philosophy of development. Ernst Cassier, The Individual and the Cosmos p. 18 As to the Orphic roots of Plotinus thought, see, Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Rnaissance (New York, Barnes and Noble. 1968) Introduction: The Language of Mysteries 6) M. Ficino, Thelologia. Platonica , X,7, Bibl.90, p.234: divinus influxus, ex Deo manans, per coelos penetrans, descendans per elementa, in inferiorem materiam desinens" cit. Panofsky p.132 7) Ficino, Tholog. Platon., VII, 16, Bibl.90 p. 200, quoted by E, Cassirer, Bibl. 59., p 74 -. Ibid., The Individual and the Cosmos p.28 8) Frances A. Yates, Giordamno Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964) p.25. The writings of Hermes Trismegistus were shown to be of late Hellenistic origin rather than ancient Egyptian by Isaac Casaubon in the 16th century (Yates p.400) and the monistic formula itself, found in the Liber xxiv philosophorum was written around 1200 AD 9)Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vantage, 1979) chapter six, Gnosis: Self-Knowledge as Knowledge of God 10) A.-J Festugire, La Rvlacion dHerms Trismgiste,, Paris, 1950-4, cit. Ibid., Frances A.Yates, p.22 11) Ibid., Yates p. 154. See also, J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man (Boston: Little Brown, 1973) p.196,7 12) Marcillio Ficino, Opera Omnia p 1747 cit. D. P. Walker, Spiritual & Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000) p. 22,23 " Our Spirit is consonant with the heavenly rays which, occult or manifest, penetrate everything. We can make it still more consonant, if we vehemently direct our affections towards the star from which we wish to receive a certain benefitabove all if we apply the song and light suitable to the astral deity and also the odour, as in the hymns of Orpheus addressed to cosmic deities." The source of this doctrine is Hellenistic. Plotinus had stipulated in his Enneads that, "After the happy soul, we must

31) ibid. Morals and Dogma, p.849 32) ibid. 846 33) Arthur Edward Waite, A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry.(New York: Wings Books, 1996) p.ix 34) ibid. Morals and Dogma 14. Pike is yet more specific as to the representation of "good" and "evil" in his "Lucifer Quote" of 1889. It may be found in the Library of the Scottish Rite Southern Jurisdiction, 1773 16th St. NW Washington, DC. "That which we must say to the crowd is, we worship a God, but it is the God one worships without superstition The Masonic religion should be, by all of us initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the Luciferian Doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay (the God of the Christians), whose deeds prove his cruelty, perfidy and hatred of man, barbarism and repulsion to science, would Adonay and his priests calumniate him? "Yes Lucifer is God, and unfortunately Adonay is also God. For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the absolute can; and the true only exist as two gods Thus the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and true and pure philosophic religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is struggling for humanity against Adonay, God of Darkness and Evil."

35) Pico Della Mirandola Commento 111, viii (ed.Garin IV, iv pp. 557) "Through the first death, which is only a detachment of the soul from the body,the lover may see the beloved celestial Venusand by reflecting on her divine image, nourish his purified eyes with joy; but if he would posses her more closely, he must die the second death by which he is completely severed from the body And observe that the most perfect and intimate union the lover can have with the celestial beloved is called the union of kiss ( "morte de bacio" or "mors osculi") .. and because the learned Cabbalists declare that many of the ancient fathers died in such spiritual rapture,.." cf. Edgar Wind Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New York:Barnes & Noble Inc., 1968) fn. P.155 36). Ibid. p. 84 37). Ibid. pp. 138, 155 38) Ioan Coulianos Eros and Magic in the Renaissance p. 58 21. Ibid. p. 97 Further, according to a citation of D. P. Walker, Bruno taught that "Transitive magic purports to direct the emotions of other people by altering their imagination in a specific and permanent way. Techniques are founded on sexual drives because they are so linked to the imagination. Walker continues that, "Bruno made a remarkable attempt to evolve a technique explicitly based on sexual attraction for Global Emotional Control.

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39) ibid p. 58 40) ibid. p. 89 41) Wolgang Frederich Von Goethe, in Rudolf Steiners Naturwissenshaftliche Schriften (Vol. 34, p. 1) (Verlag, Dornach,[Switzerlad] 1972). Quoted in Readings in Goethian Science, Ed. Herbert Koepf & Linda Jolly (Wyoming, Rhode Island, 1978) p. 12-13 42) R.M. Bizanz, German Romanticism and Philip Otto Runge (Dekalb: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 1970) pp.48-51 43) Carl Jung, Man and his symbols( London: Aldous Books, 1964) pp. 243-245 44) Anonymous, Meditations on the Tarot - A Journey into Christian Mysticism (Jeremy P. Thatcher/Putnam Inc., NY, 2002) Hans Urs Von Balthesar (Afterward), "Above all during the Renaissance, the best minds were occupied with accommodating the Jewish magical mystical Cabala into the Christian faith. As has now been observed, many of the Church Fathers had already attributed a place of honor among the heathen prophets and wisemen to the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus. Hermetic books had already circulated in the early and high Middle Ages, Later, during the Renaissance, Hermes Trismegistus was celebrated as the great contemporary of Moses, and as the father of wisdom of the Greeks. Poets, painters and theologians drew enthusiastically and reverently from the teachings of Hermes, and from the other sources of pagan wisdom, the scattered rays of divine illumination, bringing it to a focus in the Christian faith. Yet the other sources from which enlightenment was gathered, the Cabbala, was if anything, still more important (the secret, oral tradition of the Cabbala is likewise dated back to the time of Moses.)" As to esoteric French Masonic influence on Modernist thought , especially through the Jesuit Frs. Riquet, Gruber and Berteloot in the first half of the 20th century, see: Mistre DIniquit by Pierre Virion, available in Spanish translation as La Masoneria Dentro de la Iglesia (Buenos Aires: Cruz y Fierro, 1968)

British author, Aldeous Huxley, in his 1945 classic, The Perennial Philosophy argued that the universal metaphysic is that which recognizes " a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places mans end in the knowledge of the imminent and transcendent Ground of all being." The Italian Humanist, Bennedetto Croce, wrote in his 1942 essay Why we cannot call ourselves Christians, "Christianity was humanitys greatest revolution. The reason for this is that the Christian revolution worked on the core of the soul on moral conscienceAnd the Christian God is still ours and our refined philosophers call him the spirit which takes over, but which is always us, ourselves." German psychoanalyst, Eric Fromms 1976, stated in To have or to be, "Faith isan intimate orientation, an attitude. It would be better to say that a person is in faith rather than had faith This faith in God is guaranteed by the experience of the divine quality or ego; it is a process of continual self-creation which is active, of the eternal birth of Christ within us."

Or again, American politician, Al Gore mused in his Earth in Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit "By gathering in the minds eye all of creation, one can perceive the image of the creator vividlyNature in its fullest is God." "The fate of mankind depends on a new faith in the future. Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to resanctify the earth."

The Deification of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Deification_of Mary From time to time, contrary to Catholic Dogma, individuals or groups have attempted to impute a divine status to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The most egregious of these was the Swiss Psychologist, Carl Jung, who in his book A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity, suggested that "Mary" be added to the traditional "Trinity" of divine persons to be proclaimed the "fourth person" of a more psychologically acceptable"Quaternity."1 Dr. Jungs motives for this suggestion were not grounded on any real devotion to the Blessed Mother, but on his desire to impute "wholeness" to the divinity by incorporating a fourth but evil (material f.) "hypostasis" into the God-head. This inclusion of matter as "evil" would abet the reconciliation of the polarized opposites of good and evil, as set forth in the classic Manichean dualist tradition. For Jung, divinizing the material mother of God (Theotokos) seemed the most appropriate course of action as Catholics already defined dogmatically both her "Immaculate Conception" (1854) and bodily "Assumption" to heaven,(1950) but his real aim was to equate Mary with Lucifer as the "shadow side" of God. 2 Regarding the supposed improvement to be achieved by the new "quaternity" brought about by including "Lucifer Mary," Jung has this to say: "In our diagram, Christ and the devil appear as equal and opposite, thus conforming to the idea of the adversary. This opposition means conflict to the last; and it is the task of humanity to endure this conflict until the time or turning-point is reached where good and evil begin to relativise themselves, to doubt themselves, and the cry is roused for a morality beyond good and evil." "In the Age of Christianity and in the domain of trinitarian thinking such an idea is simply out of the question, because the conflict is too violent for evil to be assigned any other logical relation to the Trinity than that of an absolute opposite." 3 While this attempt at equating Mary with Lucifer is bizarre but understandable in a man such as Carl Jung who avowedly perceived God as both good and evil since childhood, 4 this anomaly has even affected elements of ostensibly orthodox believers within the Church. Such is the case, for example, attributed by Canadian author, R. Barbeau, to the renowned "Catholic" author, Leon Bloy 5 According to Barbeau, Bloy received his spiritual illumination, not from the Catholic Church so much as from a poor woman, a prostitute by the name of Anne-Marie Roul, the Veronica of his novel Le Dsespr. Presumably, based on his encounter with Mme. Roul, Bloy developed an antagonistic relationship with God and wrote in his autobiography, "All that I can find in myself is a bitter, savage resentment against a God who has shown himself to be so cold and ungrateful I should be ashamed to treat the mangiest of curs in the way God treats me." 6 Following, after a fashion, the theories of Jochim de Fiore (circa 1145-1202), he believed, in fact, that God the Father was an imperious and pitiless master, that God the Son could do no more than make good the work in which the Father had so lamentably failed, and that the Holy Spirit alone would inaugurate the reign of universal love. Regarding the Holy Spirit, however, Bloy wrote to his fiance, the daughter of the Danish writer Molbech, on Deceber 2, 1889, " the Serpent, the dark image of the Holy Spirit, deceives the woman who is the light imagehas passed into the woman, has become one with her: light and shadow have melted one into the other for all time." "The woman, image of the Holy Spirit, represents all that is fallen and will fall.""If we understand this ambiguous and pretentious language aright, the Serpent, that is to Say Satan, the shadow side of the Paraclete, deceives the woman, and not only Eve but the Woman who is to become the Virgin Mary, the radiant side of the same Paraclete. The Serpent has become one with her which means that Satan and the Light and Woman are melted into each other for all time. The Serpent and the Woman now form a single being, who is the Paraclete. But after the Fall, the rehabilitation. Love, in one ineffable, incomprehensible movement, falls to earth: the Word, from which it is inseparable, falls after it, and the Father lifts them up, one through the other. The Paraclete is synonymous with Lucifer. His most striking image is that of the Prodigal Son. The Father anxiously awaits his return. Lucifer will return. He will be received with joy by the Father. His older brother will be dissatisfied, This means that the Church will persecute the Paracete-Liberator, who is to bring Christ down from the Cross at the end of time. This will be the inconceivable Second Coming, the triumph of the Synagogue and of Satan." 7 It is uncertain whether Leon Bloy had access to the works another "convert" from Judaism to Catholicism in the 18th century, Jacob Frank. Frank first claimed himself to be the Messaiah in Poland in 1756 as part of a Kabbalistic Trinity made up of Attika Kadisha (The Holy Ancient One), Melika Kadisha ( The Holy King Messiah), and the Shekhinah ( feminine earthly half of the divinity). As he was persecuted by the Orthodox Jewish community for his bizarre faith and orgiastic initiations, he and many of his followers came into the Catholic Church precisely to introduce a feminine element, the Shekhinah, into the Christian Trinity under the guise of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (secretly present in his own daughter Eva) According to Gershom Scholem, recognized authority on Jewish mysticism, the true reason for Franks supposed conversion was to subvert the Church from within. He quotes Frank as saying: "Under the burden of silence the true believer, who has God in his secret heart, should go through all the religions, rites and established orders without accepting any and indeed annihilating all from within and thereby establishing true freedom. Organized religion is only a cloak to be put on and be thrown away on the way to the "sacred knowledge."the gnosis of the place where all traditional values are destroyed in the stream of "life." 8 Whereas, Jung added a new "Hypostasis" to the Trinity to accommodate evil into the God-head, Bloy simply merged Lucifer and the Holy Spirit, and Frank introduced the Kabbalistic Shekhinaha to achieve the same end. All three felt obliged to erroneously deify The Blessed Virgin to accomplish their goal.

45) A.E. Mc Grath, The Making of Modern German Christology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986) p. 23 Appendix_5

Modernists: Following is a brief synthesis of "Modernist" belief as condemened in the Encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis of St. Pius X
"Religion, whether natural or supernatural, must like, every other fact, admit of some explanation. But when natural theology has been destroyed, and the road to revelation closed by the rejection of the arguments of credibility, and all external revelation absolutely denied, it is clear that this explanation will be sought in vain outside man himself. It must, therefore, be looked for in man; and since religion is a form of life, the explanation must certainly be found in the life of man. It is thus that the religious sense, which through the agency of vital immanence emerges from the lurking places of the subconsciousness, is the germ of all religion, and the explanation of everything that has been or ever will be in any religion. #7 "If you ask the modernist believer on what his belief rests, he answers: In the personal experience of the individualIn the religious sense one must recognize an intuition of the heart which puts man in immediate contact with the reality of God They assert, therefore, the existence of a real experience, and one of a kind that surpasses all rational experienceOn what ground can Modernists deny the truth of an experience affirmed by a follower of Islam? Indeed, Modernists do not deny, but actually maintain, some confusedly, others frankly, that all religions are true # 14 "God is immanent in man #19, "Modernism is the synthesis of all heresies" # 39 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Neo-Modernism or "Nouvelle Theologie" returned in the 1930s with anonymous typewritten papers that circulated among the Catholic intellectuals of that era. The following anonymous article titled "How I believe" is taken from, La Nouvelle Theologie ou va-t-elle? Published in 1946 by Pere Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. It is indicative of Modernist thought. "If we wish, we other Christians, to conserve to Christ the qualities which are the basis of His power and our adoration, we can do nothingbetter or even nothing more than accept completely the most modern ideas of Evolution. Under pressure, the Union of Science and philosophy occurs, and the World more and more imposes itself on our experience and our thought as a system linked by activities gradually lifting us toward liberty of conscience. The only satisfying interpretation of this process is that of regarding it as irreversible and convergent. Thus before we arrived, there was a universal cosmic Center, (emphasis in the original) where all leads, where All is felt or all merge into each other. "In the first place, Catholicism deceived me with its narrow definitions of the World, and by its failure to understand the role of Matter. Now I recognize that by that by the Incarnation of God, it was revealed to me that I am only able to be saved by uniting myself to the universe. And most profound pantheistic hopes are guided, reassured and fulfilled by this same thrust (into the Universe). The World around me, becomes divine (emphasis in original)"A General convergence of religions toward a Christ-universal, who fundamentally, fufills everyone: This appears to me to be the only conversion possible to the world, and the only form imaginable for the Religion of the future." It has been suspected that this anonymous paper was, in fact, written by Pere Tielhard de Chardin, whose thinking certainly follows these lines of thought. "No Spirit (not even God within the limits of our experience) exists, nor could structurally exist without an associated multiple, any more than a center without a circle or circumference. In a concrete sense there is not matter and spirit. All that exists is matter becoming spirit." Teilhard de Chardin SJ, Human Energy (Harcourt Brace, NY, 1969) p. 162 "God and the grace of Christ are in all things, as the secret essence of each reality He who accepts his own existence, and thereby his humanity, even though he doesnt know it, says yes to Christ. K. Rahner SJ..( Roma: Paoline II, 1967) p. 129 The theology of both Teilhard de Chardin and Karl Rahner would appear to be part of the trend by which some in the Church sought to bring Catholic thinking into line with modern thought in general, and in regard to the theory of divine immanence. See for example the following recognized secular authors:

End Notes 1. Carl Gustav Jung, Zur Psychologie der Trinitatslehre, translated in Vol. 11, 2nd ed. Of his Complete Works (Princeton University Press, 1969 ) pp. 170 ff. 2) ibid., pp. 398-399 3)ibid., p. 174 4) See Chapter 1, " First Years" of Jungs autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, where he recounts his first experience of the underground "Phalic God" as the dark

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side of the divinity, at 4-6 years of age (New York: Vintage Books, 1965) 5) R. Barbeau Leon Bloy: a prophet of Lucifer (Paris, Editions Montaigne, Aubier, 1957) cit., Lon Christiani, Evidence for Satan in the Modern World ( :Tan Books, 1977) p.190 6) Leon Bloy, Biography (Paris: Albin-Michel, 1947) I. 428-429 7) ibid., Christiani, pp. 192, 193 8) Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah New York: Dorset Press, 1974) p.284 Appendix_3

the all. " "I am androgenous. [I am both Mother and] Father, since [I copulate with myself]and with those who love me I am the Womb [that gives shape] to the AllI am Me[iroth]ea, the glory of the Mother." 8

A third variant, again from a Nag Hammadi text, the Apocalypse of Adam speaks of the same basic theme: "..from the nine Muses, one (Sophia) separated away. She came to a high mountain and spent time seated there, so that she desired herself alone in order to become androgynous. She fulfilled her desire, and became pregnant from her desire." 9

Gnosis
A brief introduction to its History and Meaning
Harvard professor Harold Bloom, in his 1992 book The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post Christian Nation proclaimed that the "self-concealed core of American Religion is "Orphic, Gnostic, Millenarian." In a more recent work (1996), Omens of Millennium, he quotes Adeous Huxley as defining Gnosis as the "perennial philosophy that is concerned with the one, divine Reality substantial to the manifold world of things and lives and minds." He then goes on to assert that at the core of Gnosticism is the belief in a radically transcendent God who is not the Creator. "The world we live in imprisons both the transcendent God and the divine spark in human beings. The goal of life is to escape the created order through the knowledge (Greek gnosis) of the deepest self revealed by an alien messenger." (Emphasis added) 1 Gnosis, or knowledge, as understood in Gnostic religious systems, thus does not refer to rational understanding of natural or supernatural reality, but involves an awareness through illumination, intuition, initiation or induced trance that the human spirit is consubstantial with the divine ground of being. One can find examples of this train of thought in the West as far back as 2nd Century AD denounced in the writings of such orthodox Catholic writers as Justin Martyr, Tertulian, Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus of Rome, who until recently, were the primary sources of our knowledge regarding Gnostic beliefs. The following quote regarding their teachings is taken from Hippolytus: "Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own way and says, `My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body. Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love hateIf you carefully investigate these matters you will find him [god] in yourself," 2

The result of Sophias frustrated desire or self infatuation, no matter which text one follows, is a male abortive creature, Proarchon (First Ruler) or Demiurge. The Demiurge, unaware of his divine provenance, believes himself to be alone and brings forth from himself emmanations which are Archons (Rulers) like himself, to whom he boasts "I am God and no one exists beside me!" At this point, according to both Irenaeus and The Nag Hammadi Apocryphon of John, Sophia calls out from above and says, "You are wrong, Samael! (God of the blind) and to prove it, stretched forth her finger and introduced light into matter." 10 "It was because he was foolish and ignorant of his mother that he said I am God; there is none beside me." 11 It is obvious from the above, that with all its complicated theogony, the root purpose of all Gnostic argumentation was to establish a maternal source prior to the male Creator God of the Old Testament. In fact, virtually all the Gnostic sects identify the Demiurge with the Hebrew YAHWEH 12 whom some called Ialdabaoth, most likely a corruption of the Aramaic yalda beht "Son of Shame. 13 For the Gnostic, then, the Hebrew God YAHWEH is the miscreant son of the "whore and holy one" Sophia and the personification of Evil, and matter is considered to be the coagulation of the primal anguish, fright, pain and ignorance experienced by Sophia in giving him birth. 14 There are many and varied Gnostic myths regarding the creation of man, however, there is an overall similarity in their presentation. For instance the Nag Hammadi text, On the Origin of the World states: After the day of rest, Sophia [literally, " wisdom"] sent Zoe [literally, "life"], her daughter, who is called Eve, as an instructor to raise up AdamWhen Eve saw Adam cast down, she pitied him and she said "Adam live! Rise up upon the earth!" When he saw her he said, " you will be called mother of the living, because you are the one who gave me life." 15

Historically the foundations of Gnosticism are clouded in mystery. Ion Couliano, in his The Tree of Gnosis makes the case that Western Gnosticism finds its roots in Orphism. He states that, according to the Orphics who flourished in Greece during, if not prior to, the fourth century BC, there was a time before history when the preternatural giants or Titans rebelled against the gods and murdered and devoured one of them, Dionesius. In revenge of this deicide, Zeus destroyed the rebellious Titans with a thunderbolt and Humankind was born from their ashes. We humans, therefore, have a divine seed within us as we contain the fragments of the (divine) Dionesius swallowed by the Titans that was residual in their ashes. 3 In order to re-establish union with the divine source, Orphic ideology and practice entailed world rejection and devaluation of the body, reincarnation and vegetarianism. There is little doubt that the Orphic mysteries had a strong influence on Plato and later Neoplatonism with its doctrine of metemsomatosis or entrapment of spirit in matter. 4 The Gnostic heresy denounced by the Church Fathers; Ireneus, Justin Martyr and Hippolytus et al, would appear to be, in fact, a curios mix of Jewish scriptures, Talmudic lore, the Christian apostolic tradition, and the Orphic Neoplatonism described above. It has also been suggested that Gnostic religion draws on the Greek concept of hypostatization (personification)of concepts or abstract generative entities which function as archai, or governors of our cosmos. Together these hypostases (personifications) make up the Pleroma or fullness of being as opposed to the Kenoma or void. 5 These speculations have been corroborated by the discovery in 1945 of a series of papyrus texts that had belonged to a flourishing Egyptian Gnostic community dating from the first century AD. The documents, written in Coptic, have since been fully documented and translated into modern languages under the auspices of UNESCO and the Carl Jung Foundation of Zurich. 6 From this original source material it is possible to confirm the fundamental tenets of their beliefs. Although there are many variants, the fundamental gnostic mythos, as denounced by the Church Fathers and confirmed by Nag Hammadi texts, is as follows: The Pleroma is divided into 30 Aeons (personified forces) which live in syzygy or paired opposites making up the Ogadoad (eight), the Decad (ten) and Duodecad (twelve) uncreated forces of the cosmos which one may call divine. The last Aeon of the Dodecad is Sophia (Wisdom) through whom the created order comes into existence. The Nag Hammadi text; Thunder, Perfect Mind, offers an extraordinary poem spoken in the voice of Sophia as the feminine divine power: I am the first and the last I am the honored one and the scorned one I am the whore and the holy one I am the wife and the virgin I am the barren one, and many are her sons I am the silence and the incomprehensible I am the utterance of my own name 7

Another text unearthed at Nag Hamadi, The Hypostasis of the Archons gives a similar account: "And the spirit endowed Woman came to [Adam] and spoke with him saying, "Arise, Adam." And when he saw her, he said, "It is you who have given me life; you shall be called "Mother of the living" Then the Female Spiritual principle came in the snake, the Instructor, and taught them, saying, "you shall not die; for it was out of jealousy that he said this to you. Rather your eyes shall be open, and you shall become like gods, recognizing evil and good.". And the arrogant ruler cursed the Woman[and] the snake." 16

Thus, as there is no "Fall from grace" or "Original Sin" for the Gnostic, Jesus is not a redeemer (totally unnecessary) but a spiritual Aeon sent by Sophia to instruct men as to their divine nature. 17 Whereas virtually all the Gnostic traditions accepted the crucifixion event as a historic fact, they deny that the Aeon Jesus suffered death. Some claimed that it was Simon of Cyrene who died on the cross, as in the Second treatise of the Great Seth, 18 while others claimed that Jesus only appeared to die and that those present who were illuminated with the "spiritual eye" saw the real numinous Jesus next to the cross either smiling or laughing. The latter view is related in the Nag Hammadi Apocalypse of Peter: "Who is this one above the cross who is glad and laughing? He whom you saw glad and laughing above the cross is the Living Jesus. But he into whose hands and feet they are driving nails is his fleshly part, which is the substitute." 19

Another text , Trimorphic Protenoia (Tripple-formed primal thought) puts these words in the mouth of Sophia: "[I] am [Protonoia the] Thought that [dwells] in [the Light] [She who exists] before the All I move in every creature I am the invisible one within

As the real "spiritual" Jesus did not die, belief in the physical resurrection is, for the Gnostic, the "faith of fools." 20 The resurrection, they insisted, was not a unique event in the past, instead it symbolized how Christs liberating presence could be experienced spiritually in the present. For example, the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter recounts how he did not actually see but perceived a vision of the Risen Lord who Proclaimed, "I am the intellectual spirit, filled with radiant light." 21 Following the theorizing of the distinct Gnostic apologists as laid out above, Ioan Coulianos, in his The Tree of Gnosis cited above, drew the conclusion that the whole hermeneutic of Gnosis is an "Inverse exegesis" of the Bible starting from Genesis. All started in the Garden where the Serpent and Cain, true representatives of the Pleroma, planted the seed of "revolution" into a world dominated by the laws of the evil Demiurge. Some moving forward to the New Testament name Judas as, "The only one among the apostles to know the truth and fulfill the mystery of treason." 22

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Fundamentally, then, Gnosticism is a religious movement that eschews Divine law as presented in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Aristotelian natural law, and hierarchical power structures and authority in general. In its most elemental aspect, Gnosticism replaces the Male assertive intellectual authoritative conscious- Word (Logos) with a Female rebellious intuitive passionate unconscious image (Sophia). The Gnostic adept, therefore, while rejecting outside authority, relies on direct intuitive contact with a supposed immanent androgynous ground of being, via mystical experience and/or, Professor Bloom suggests, revelations by "an alien messenger" who speaks from within. "The vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my visions deepest enemy Thine is the friend of all mankind, Mine speaks in parables to the blind: Thine loves the same world that my mine hates, Thy heavens doors are my Hell gates Both read the Bible day and night, But thou readst black where I read white Seeing this False Christ , in fury and in passion I made my voice heard all over the Nation.
William Blake, William Blake, Woman of the Apocalypse In this painting the "woman" dressed in a red heart (not the sun) welcomes the great dragon (serpent) rather than flee from him.

20) Origen, Commentarium in I Corinthins, in Journal of Theological Studies 10 (1909) 46-47, ibid., cit. Pagels 21) Apocalypse of Peter 83.8-10, in NHL 344, ibid., cit. Pagels 22) Couliano, p. 121

Appendix_4

The Great Goddess

The following passage is taken from The Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius, a second century Neo-Platonist and magician. Although his works were vigorously denounced by St. Augustin in The City of God, (See Book IX, chapter one) this work was a best seller in Renaissance Italy. 1 Even after it was put on the Roman index and many copies burnt as matter prejudicial to salvation, printed copies of the 1469 vulgar edition continued to circulate. "Not long after I awoke in sudden terror. A dazzling full moon was rising from the sea. It is at this secret hour that the Moon-goddess, sole sovereign of mankind, is possessed of her greatest power and majesty. She is the shining deity by whose divine influence not only all beasts, wild and tame, but all inanimate things as well, are invigorated; whose ebbs and flows control the rhythm of all bodies whatever, whether in the air, on earth or below the sea " "Blessed Queen of Heaven whether you are pleased to be known as Ceres, the original harvest mother who in the joy of finding herb daughter Prsoserpine abolished the rude acorn diet of our forefathers and gave them bread raised from the fertile soil of Eleusis; or whether as celestial Venus, now adored at sea-girt Paphos, who at the time of the first Creation coupled the sexes in mutual love and so contrived that men should propagate; or whether as Artemis, physician sister to Phoebus Apollo. I beseech you by whatever name..restore my shattered fortunes, grant me repose, end my miseries . ."

The Everlasting Gospel "When I had finished my prayer .. I had scarcely closed my eyes before the apparition of a woman began to rise from the middle of the sea with so lovely a face that the gods themselves would have fallen down in adoration of it. First the head, the whole shining body gradually emerged and stood before me on the surface of the waves Her long thick hair fell in tapering ringlets on her lovely neck, and was crowned with an intricate chaplet in which was woven every kind of flower. Just above her brow shone a round disc, like a mirror, or like the bright face of the moon, which told me who she was. Vipers rising from the left hand and right hand partings of her hair supported this disc, with ears of corn bristling beside them. Her many colored robe was of finest linen; part was glistening white, part crocus yellow, part glowing red and along the entire hem a woven bordure of flowers and fruit clung swaying in the breeze. But what caught and held my eye more than anything else was the deep black lustre of her mantle. She wore it slung across her body from her right hip to the left shoulder where it was caught in a knot resembling the boss of a shield; but part of it hung in innumerable folds, the tasselled fringe quivering. It was embroidered with glittering stars on the hem and every where else, and in the middle beamed a full and fiery moon. In her right hand she held a bronze rattle, of the sort used to frighten away the God of the Sirocco; its narrow rim was curved like a sword-belt and three little rods which sang shrilly when she shook the handle, passed through it. A boat shaped gold dish hung from her left hand and along the upper surface of the handle writhed an asp with puffed throat and head raised ready to strike. On her feet she wore palm leaves, the emblem of victory." " `I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. ` Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names, and propitiated with all manner of rites, yet the whole round earth venerates me. `.. Some know me as Juno, some as Bellona of the Battles; others as Hecate.. and the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning worship me with ceremonies proper to my godhead, call me by my true name, Queen Isis. "

H.R.A. 2003

End Notes

1. Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post Christian Nation,(New York: Simonand Shuster, 1992). Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams and Resurrection. (New York: Putnam Pub. Group, 1996) Quotes furnished in The New York Times Book Review by Mark C. Taylor. Sunday, Sep. 8, 1996 2) Hipolytus, REF 8.15.1-2. Refutationis Omnium Haeresium cit. Elaine Pagels The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Vintage Books, 1989) intro. XIX 3) Ion Couliano The Tree of Gnosis (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992) p. 57 4) ibid., p. 108 See also, source references, Plato,Republic VII.514a; Timaeus 30b; 41a-e; 42a; Phaedrus 249e; Plotinus Enneads IV.8.2; V.II etc.) 5) H. S. Wiesner cit. Couliano p. 70

NOTES 6)J.M. Robinson, "The Jung Codex: The Rise and Fall of a Monopoly, in Religious Studies Review" 3.1 (January 1997)17-30 1. Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass translation by Robert Graves (New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1951)pp. 261-5 7) Thunder Perfect Mind 13.16-16.25, in NHL 271 274 cit. Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels p.55 8)Trimorpfic Protenoia 35.1-24 in NHL 461-462 ibid cit. Pagels 9) Apocalypse of Adam 81:2-9 ibid. cit 54 10) Hypostasis of the Archons 94.21 95.7 in NHL 158, ibid. cit 58 11) As quoted By Ireneaus in Adversus Haeresis, I.5.4 , REF 6.33 ibid cit. 57 12) Carpocrates: Iren. I.25.4 = Hipp.VI32.4; Ophites: Iren. I.30; Valentians: Hipp. VI.33; Theodotus:Clem. Exc.. 49.1; Archeontes: Epiph. 40.5.1; Docetists: Hipp. IX.6. etc. cit. Couliano p. 95 13) Mathew Black, An Aramaic Etymology of Ialdaboth?, cit. Couliano p. 96 14) Irenaeus, I.54 ibid., Couliano p. 77 15) On the Origen of the World 115.31 116.8 in NHL 172, cit. Pagels p.30 16) Hypostasis of the Archons , 89.11-91.1 in NHL 154-155, ibid., Pagels p.31 17) Acts of John 89 in NT Apocrypha II, 225 ibid., Pagels p. 73 18) Second treatise of the Great Seth 56.6-19 in NHL 332, ibid., p. 73 19) Apocalypse of Peter 81.4-24 in NHL 344, ibid., 72 Appendix Six

Freemasonry, a brief summary

Freemasonry, A.K.A."the Brotherhood," or "the Craft," is a curious mixture of the medieval stone masons guild and various underground speculative currents of esoteric and occult thought that blossomed throughout Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The origins of Freemasonry are clouded by the vast number of legends put forward by the adherents of the various lodges. As historical fact, however, modern Freemasonry is generally acknowledged to have begun in 1717. At that time various sectarian groups came together to found the Grand Lodge in London as the seat of "speculative," rather than "operative" Freemasons, dedicated to the building of freely perfected men rather than stone cathedrals. The roots of so called "speculative" masonry, as suggested above, are to be found in the secretive movements that had existed for centuries in Europe as parallel and adversarial to the established order of Christendom. As the power of the Catholic Church weakened under the attacks of both Protestantism and Renaissance humanism, such latent esoteric movements as Catharism (Manechean dualism) in France, Jewish theosophy -Kabbalah- in Spain, and Alchemy throughout Europe gained respectability. This trend was aggravated by the arrival of Egyptian Hermetecism- a Gnostic philosophy that openly preached the divinity of man- which entered Italy after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. These movements coalesced in to such "secret brotherhoods" as Rosicrucians in England as well as Germany and Shabbateans in Eastern Europe in the 17th century. These in turn in the 18th and 19th centuries influenced the Bavarian Illuminati, Italian Carbonari and Polish Frankists whose adepts openly asserted their influence on the political affairs of their day, especially in the "Young Europe" political parties. Although these societies and movements had distinct structures and rituals, all shared a single common denominator, the belief in the perfectibility of man and society through political action without need of the Church with her dogmas, discipline and

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sacraments. Rather than confront the Church head on, these groups, under the umbrella of the Masonic brotherhood, generally attempted to subvert rather than destroy the religious faith of the unwary. In contrast to the English Grand Lodge Masonry with its "religious" overtones, as described above, there also exists a distinct, but linked, European Grand Orient Masonry based on the "Deist" or even, since the declarations of 1777, openly atheist philosophy of the French Enlightenment. Virtually all the precursors of the French Revolution, Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, and Robespierre were Grand Orient Masons. Until recently, the goal of the Grand Orient Lodges has been to openly confront the Roman Catholic Church with its hierarchical structure of government topped by the Pope in Rome by espousing revolution and radical democracy. The Church, from the beginning, has fought back against Freemasonry with all of its strength. There have been dozens of warnings and encyclical letters issued by the Holy See regarding the dangers of Masonry. The foremost of these is that of Pope Leo the XIII titled Humanum Genis, published in 1884. In this document the Pope clearly states that the conspiratorial society of Freemasons shelters "the partisans of evil" and is, at its root, "Satanic" in nature. * According to the 1917 Code of Cannon Law, article #2335, to belong to a Freemasonic Lodge was grounds for automatic excommunication Latae Sententiae. (the act itself bringing the penalty without formal accusation.) Although no longer grounds for ipso facto excommunication, Cardinal Ratzinger reiterated the incompatibility of Masonry and Catholicism in 1985. While the ostensible goals of Freemasonry are philanthropy and human development, the true goal is philosophic and ultimately religious. Masonic author, Albert Pike (Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, 1859 -1891) sets the record straight in his authoritative Morals and Dogma of Freemasonry. According to Pike, following the system of the medieval Jewish Kabbalah (oral tradition), Freemasons are bound to no one particular religion, but worship the "Complete God." This "God," Pike points out, again according to the Kabbalah, is comprised of both good (expansive) and evil (restrictive) principles, personified by, God and the devil. It should be noted, however, that in Albert Pike's twisted mind, as put forth in his July 4, 1889 letter to the Masonic supreme councils, Lucifer is the expansive, pleasure loving "good" god, and Adonai (the Judeo-Christian God) is the restrictive, judgmental mean spirited deity. The "secret" then for the individual Freemason, following the Serpent's lie that, "Ye shall be as gods," is to work out for himself the balance or harmony of good and evil in his own life to achieve his own divine perfection. "Man is a God in the Making", Manly P.Hall, 33 The Lost Keys of Free Masonry Collectively the external goal of Masonry is for an emancipated mankind to rebuild "Eden" without heed to the restrictive demands of the Creator and His established Church. The esoteric goal is to incorporate Lucifer into definition of the "Complete God" that includes both good and evil, or the fusion of opposites, coincidentia opositorum. "In one instance we have the interlaced triangles, one black, the other white, the white triangle has its point up; the black triangle points down... The interlaced black and white triangles represent the forces of darkness and light, error and truth, ignorance and wisdom and good and evil; when properly placed they represent balance and harmony." Wes Cook 32 Vigniettes in Masonry from the Royal Arch Masonry Magazine

the upper and lower worlds... his principal mission is to bring about Tikkun Olam or restoration of this world and to connect the lower with the upper." 1. The concept of tikkun, or restoration, involves the problem of evil, and again according to Scholem, "the root of evil resides within the Ein-Sof (hidden God) itself." Evil, therefore, for the kabbalist is simply the sitra ahra or "emation of the left" and at the end of time, through the process of man's work of tikkun even the devil, "Samael will become Sa'el, one of the 72 holy Names of God". ... "In Greek this is called apokatasis (sic)"..."To use the neoplatonic (Plotinus) formula, the creation involves the departure of all from the one and its return to the one." 2.

A Brief History
Although many adepts claim that the Kabbalah, or secret oral tradition, goes back to Moses or even Adam, Scholem places its practical beginnings in the Second Temple period, posterior to the Babylonian exile. 3. (The words Cabala, Kabbalah, Qabalah etc. are virtually interchangeable. Kabbalah is used here as in Scholem's works.) Once again, according to Scholem, the development of Kabbalah was coeval with Hellenistic syncretic religion and Gnosticism. Both Hellenistic Gnosis and Rabbinical Gnosis were based on the theory that there are spiritual emanations of God (Aeons and Archons for the Greek, Sephirot for the Hebrew) which fill the primordial cosmos. These, if properly understood and harnessed lead back to the deity. Historically, the esoteric teachings contained in the Kabbalah passed from such groups as the Essenes, or Qumran apocalyptics, through the Diaspora to the Medieval Provenal and Spanish thinkers who produced the Sepher Yezira (Book of Creation) and Zohar (Book of Splendor). These speculations were further developed in the sixteenth century by Jacob Cordovero and Isaac Luria whose writings led to the Messianic hopes placed in Shabbetai Zevi in 1666. Since that time, in Jewish circles, the Kabbalah lay in fermentation among the Hasidim (Pious ones) of Eastern Europe and the Doenmeh, a strange group of followers of the failed Messiah, Shabbetai Zevi, who became false converts to other religions in order to seek redemption through apostasy and sin. 6 The Rabbis of normative Judaism with its emphasis on Halakah, "the Law," have traditionally viewed the Kabbalah with suspicion Some recent movements, especially those coming out of Eastern Europe, such as the Chabad Lubavicher movement of the Late Rabbi Schneerson have tried to combine traditional Halachic teachings with elements of Kaballah. preaching the esoteric doctrine of Hochmah (Wisdom), Binah (Intelligence), and Daath (Harmony, Balance, "Cha ba d" ), described below. The influence of the Kabbalah on segments of Christian thinking has flourished since the Renaissance. It was openly quoted in the works of such influential thinkers as Pico della Mirandola, Johannes Reuchlin, Agrippa of Nettesheim, Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, the Franciscan Friar, Francesco Giorgio of Venice, as well as the apostate Dominican, Giordano Bruno. The tradition carried through into the 17th century in the writings of Jacob Boehme and culminated in the eighteenth century within the esoteric writings of such figures as Martines de Pasqually and Louis Claude de Saint Martin. 7. In modern times it may be found as the core doctrine of occult, theosophical Freemasonry. 8. (See: Kabbalah and Freemasonry below)

The Doctrine Dialectical Monism

In a much simplified exposition of the basic Kabalistic doctrine, all begins with Ein-Soph ( alt. Ayn- Soph, En-Soph) the infinite, or literally without measure. Like the Gnostic "God beyond god" or Pleroma, it contains within its essence both the active and passive ( male and female, good and evil) principles in their full potential. In the beginning, before there was anything, the eternal source, Ein-Soph contracted itself within and then filled the subsequent void with emanations of its own essence. This contraction and expansion is called the Zimzum. (See: Fig. 1,(Left) Illustrations - following the text) According to the Zohar (Book of Splendor), what was engraved first on the void were the words: "Let there be light." in the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Subsequently, El Gadol (Great God) emerged from the primal ether on the right as the masculine principle and Elohim (Darkness) emerged on the left as the feminine principle. Then appeared the actual "Light" signifying "that the Left was included in the Right and the Right in the Left." 9. From the initial point of light streamed forth, in concentric circles, ten mystical numbers or paths known as Sephiroth. The names of these Sephiroth are as follows: Keter (Crown); Binah (Intelligence); Hokmah (Wisdom) Gevurah (Justice); Gedullah (Greatness); Tiferet (Beauty); Hod (Honor); Nezah (Victory); Yesod (Foundation); and Malkhut (Kingdom). These Sephiroth would come to form Adam Kadmon the celestial archetypal man.

The Masonic "Complete" God by Elephias Levi 33

* Pope Leo XIII: "The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and giver of heavenly gifts, "through the envy of the devil," separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for things which are contrary to virtue and truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God...At this period, the partisans of evil seem to be combining together, and to be struggling with united vehemence, led on or assisted by that strongly organized and widespread association called Freemasons." Humanum Genus: 1884 H.R.A.

Appendix#7

KABBALAH
Adam Kadmon

This was not the Adam of the Bible but a cosmic prototype for all of reality akin to the Neo-Platonic Demiurge. The Sephiroth may also be displayed as the descending Azilut "emanations" - which form the "Tree of Life." (Fig. 2 6, Illustrations)

Introduction
Kabbalah, simply stated, according to Gershom Scholem, the worlds greatest authority on the subject, is a form of Gnosis that underlies certain "Jewish mystical theology." The Fundamental tenets of Kabbalah, according to Scholem, are as follows: "Over and above disagreements on specific details that tend to reflect different stages in the Kaballah's historical development, there exists a basic consensus among kaballists on man's essential nature...At opposite poles, both man and God encompass within their being the entire cosmos. However, whereas God contains all by virtue of being its Creator and Initiator in whom everything is rooted and all potency is hidden, man's role is to complete this process by being the agent through whom all the powers of creation are fully activated and made manifest. What exists seminally in God unfolds and develops in man Because he alone has been granted the gift of free will, it lies in his power to either advance or disrupt through his actions the unity of what takes place in

The first three Sephiroth: Keter (Crown); Binah (Intelligence); and Hokhma (Wisdom) received the "Light" and contained it. (See the three faces in the diagram above) Thus the divine essence is preserved in a tripartite interrelationship, or immanent "Trinity" within the mind of Adam Kadmon, the macrocosm and within the mind of individual man, the microcosm. The following seven Sephiroth could not contain the light and shattered, forming shards of coagulated energy (matter) called Kelippot. Again, following the Neo-platonic or Gnostic doctrine, the farther the Sephirah lies from the center, the denser the matter. Malkhuth, therefore, as farthest away from the center, forms the earthly kingdom or the feet of Adam Kadmon. (See again: Fig.1, ) Through the break up of the Sephiroth, the equilibrium and unity of God has been destroyed. The "light" and the "dark" of the primal Light have been separated and it is the obligation of man to re-establish both his own inner unity or wholeness and the wholeness of God. To accomplish this project called Tikkun, The Jewish people as Knesset Israel have the predominant role. According to the Kabbalah, from the earliest Spanish manuscripts onward, the Jewish race has seen itself as the representative of the Shekhinah, ** (see below) the feminine principle split off from God, reminiscent of the Gnostic Sophia. 10. According to kabalistic (Hasidic) Tradition it is said: "Just because of this split, God needs man, whose task it is to reunite the riven opposites within the divine personality itself. From this point of view the exile of the Jewish people receives

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deep and special meaning. For this exile of the people corresponds in the `upper world, so to speak, to an exile of the Shekinah (supposed feminine half of God) who went into exile with them. The return of the Jewish people from exile therefore means, in Jewish mysticism, the redemption of the Jewish people; it is above all an earthly image, and likeness of an inner-divine drama of redemption, of the homecoming of the Shekhina to God... So while man needing redemption strives to restore the disturbed world order, he is at the same time working toward the redemption of God and his union with the Shekhinah and thus toward the restoration and realization of the wholeness of God." 11. A tradition also holds that the final Masiach, messiah, who will achieve Tikkun Olam, concordia discors or "world harmony," will be a manifestation of the Shekinah, i.e., female. Within the overall historical perspective and purpose of the Kabbala i.e. the ultimate complete unity of God and creation, there are two fundamental problems to be resolved. First is the relationship of the individual human being to God and second the problem of evil. For the Kabalistic initiate, while awaiting the final restoration of history, there are various techniques available for personal spiritual development. One is meditation on the mysteries of the Sephiroth called Kavvanah and another involving numerology is called Gematria. The technique of Kavvanah involves mental concentration on the combinations of the sacred names which pave the way for ecstatic union with the divine source, Metatron, (alternately known as the prince of God's countenance, Prince of this world, Angel of light, or ones own true self). 12. This union is mystically known as Zivvug ha-Kadosh, or coupling face to face, which is said to produce an internal harmony of the restrictive (passive) powers of Din and the out flowing (active) powers of Rahanim. Once again one finds Concordia Discors, or Coincidentia Oppositorum, the fusion of opposites as object of the endeavor. 13. Seen in this light, the parallel between Kabbalah and the Eastern Religions is quite obvious. It is, of course, the resolution in harmony of the passive Yin and the active Yang according to the Tao which produces the "enlightened" state where "all duality merges into oneness, a noble path that leads to contentment and peace." 14. In reality, according to Gershom Scholem, "the Techniques of `prophetic Kabbalah' that were used to aid the ascent of the soul, such as breathing exercises, the repetition of the Divine Names, and meditation on colors, bear a marked resemblance to those of both Indian Yoga and Muslim Sufism." 15. Gematria on the other hand, involves the belief that the Hebrew alphabet is the first emanation of Ayn-Sof and that the arrangement of these 22 letters, according to their numerical value, make up the seventy-two sacred names of the All Holy as well as the cosmos. Gematria can be used for the concordance of Biblical texts and messianic prophecy as well as in calling up spirits. 16. This latter property may be employed, at least in theory, both for good and for evil. The manipulator of spirits, (good or evil) is called a Baal Shem or master of the divine names. 17. According to legend, in the 16th century, Rabbi Loewe used Gematria to create a fearsome creature called the Golem to protect the Prague Ghetto. The problem of evil for the Kabalistic is complex, as, if all comes from and is contained in the Ayn Sof what man calls evil must be intrinsic to the divine nature. What is it, then, in the divine nature that may be called "evil"? Once again, according to Scholem: "The determining factor is the estrangement of created things from their source of emanation, a separation which leads to manifestations of what appears to us to be the power of evil. But the other [evil] has no metaphysical reality ... outside the structure of the Sephiroth ... the Sepher Gevurah as `the left hand of the Holy One blessed be He,' and as `a quality whose name is evil' has many offshoots in the forces of judgement, the constricting and limiting powers of the universe" Cutting through the flowery rhetoric, it would appear that Evil, for the Kabalist, is any force that restricts or limits (divine) human freedom and creativity. It [evil] reverts to that part of God which is designated, " Pure judgement, untempered by any mitigating admixture, [which has] produced from within itself the sitra ahra (the other side) The `emanation of the left.' " 18. According to Nathan of Gaza, the grand apologist of 17th century Shabbetean Kabbalah The first light was entirely active [creative] and the second light entirely passive [restrictive] immersed in the depths of itself. "The root of evil is a principle within the Ayn-Soph itself which holds itself aloof from creation and seeks to prevent the forms of light which contain thought from being actualized, not because it is evil by nature but only because its whole desire is that nothing should exist apart from Ayn-Soph." For the Kabalistic, of whatever school, neither good nor evil, exist as such. Whatever meaning there is to existence involves Tikkun or the restoration of harmony and balance between the forces of expansive light and restrictive darkness until all is once again absorbed in the Ayn-Soph. These speculations, it seems, are the inevitable result of dialectic opposition in a monistic system. The argument is as follows: If the universe is an overflowing or projection of God, (See Plotinus Ennead 5) and the universe contains what man calls "evil," then "evil" is contained in the nature of God. If, however, God is all good, then evil is not evil, it is but the dark side or foil of good. There is, in fact, no other possible logical solution to the problem of evil in a universe produced by emanation rather than creation from nothing. As man develops his own inner divine potential (individually and collectively) as an emanation of God there must be a balance of the progressive and the restrictive within the person and society to attain the ideal. This was, of course, the "enlightenment" proposed by Leibnitz in his Thodice. 19. This form of thinking has impacted Western thought from the 16th century to the present. In terms of eschatology, the imanentist theology of the Kabbalah must inevitably lead to the doctrine of Apokatastasis the reintegration of all spiritual emanations, active and passive, "good" and "evil," into the divinity at the end of time. If God is all, then God can not leave part of himself out side of himself forever. This is precisely what the Kabbalah predicts with its doctrine of Tikkun Olam. After myriad reincarnations, the souls of all men, * as well as of angels and demons, will form once again the unity of God. As the forces of creative light expand in man and dark judgement is absorbed, so also shall it be with God. It is even said that the Arch Devil Samael will be transformed at time's end to Sael one of the 72 holy Names of God.20
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Gnosticism and Kabbalah in the Modern World

In the No. 2 - 2003 issue of 30 Days magazine there is an article by Italian theologian, Massimo Borghesi, which, while singling out Kabalist Shabetai Zevi at the beginning, had the following to say regarding Gnostic dualism in general that is significant to this study: " The Serpent, the tempter, appears in the guise of the liberator, the one who raises man beyond good and evil, beyond the God of old, foe of freedom. The last two hundred years have rediscovered the the liberator principle of the world [affirmed] by the Ophite sect, a principle foreshadowed in the notions of Shabbatai Zevi with his Messiah consigned to the serpents" "Hegel, with his dialectic of the negative, was to give rich theoretical guise to this idea. Man must sin, must come out of natural innocence to Become God. He must realize the promise of the serpent: must know like God, good and evil. This knowledge is the origin of sickness, but also the fountainhead of health, it is the poisoned chalice from which man drinks death and putrefaction, and at the same time the wellspring of reconciliation, since to posit oneself as wicked is in itself the overcoming of evil." [Jakob] Bhme, according to Hegel, struggled to understand in God and from God the negative, evil, the Devil . God is the unity of contraries, of anger and love, of evil and good, of the Devil and his contrary, the Son. On this view Christ and Satan become in some way brothers, sons of the one Father, parts of him, moments in his polar nature." This is an idea set down by Carl Gustav Jung in his esoteric Septem Sermones ad Mortuos written in 1916, circulated as a monograph among his friends and never published. The text, which borrows conceptually from the Gnostic Basilides, affirms the pleroma nature of God, composed from pairs of opposites of which, God and devil are the prime manifestations." "Everywhere at work Romano Gurdini wrote in 1964 there is the fundamental Gnostic idea that contraries are polarities: Goethe, Gide, and C.G. Jung, Th [omas]. Mann, H[erman] Hesse All see evil, the negative [] as dialectical elements in the totality of life, of nature. This attitude for Guardini, manifest itself already in everything that is called Gnosticism, in alchemy, in theosophy. It presents itself in programmatic form in Goethe, for whom the satanic enters even into God; evil is the original power of the universe necessary as good, death only another element in that everything, the pole opposite which is which is called life. This opinion has been proclaimed in all forms and made concrete in the field of therapy by C.G Jung." That Kabalistic thought continues alive and flourishing in the modern world, one may add the favorable words of Jorge Luis Borges regarding "The Kabbalah" presented in his 1984 (English translation) Seven Nights: "Borges takes us on an intellectual stroll through "The Kabbbalah." In it he considers the necessity of evil, and its justification, theodicy. He cites the Two Libraries of Leibnitz: one containing 1,000 copies of only the one perfect book, the Aeneid; the other boasting only one copy of this perfect book. The999 imperfect books of the second make it superior. Evil is in the variety, but variety is necessary for the world." (Emphasis added) "The lesson of the Kabbalah, Borges tells us in his succinct if disparate, essay, is in the doctrine the Greeks called apokatastaisis: that all creatures, including Cain and the Devil, will return, at the end of great transmigrations, to be mingled again with the Divinity from which they once emerged." 24

Marashal McLuhen, in a review of a book, Melvilles Quarrel with God, by Lawrence Thompson, (Princeton University Press, 1952) , offers the following thoughts. "The theme of this book is briefly stated (p. 332) by the author: My suggestion is that Billy Budd should be viewed as Melville's most subtle triumph in triple-talk; that it was designed to conceal and reveal much the same notions as are expressed years earlier in Moby Dick and Pierre and The onfidence-Man: that Melville came to the end of his life still harping on the notion that the world was put together wrong and that God was to blame and that only the self- profiting authoritarians pretend otherwise, in order to victimize the stupid . . . . his chronic anti- Christian pessimism did not abate during the forty- five years which elapsed between Confidence-Man and Billy Budd. Phrased that way, Melville's case sounds typical enough. Spelt out by Professor Thompson, however, this very typical attitude of our time is shown to have profound historic dimensions. Melville's diabolism, like that of Byron, Blake, Milton, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, was directly linked to the old gnostic tradition of the Ophites and Parsees. God and the devil are one. But only the enlightened, the illuminate, know this. For the populace another version of the facts is expedient. Writing in Blackfriars of Karl Marx (July-August, 1952) Father Victor White provides a handy description of the myths of Marxist religion and counter-religion which corresponds exactly with the politics of the Marquis de Sade and with the views of Herman Melville -- namely that conventional religion and secular humanism are a swindle to put a benign countenance on the devil-god of reality. Through revolution and tribulation men can perhaps mend the hideous defects of the dualistic divine being. Mankind can be the saviour of a helplessly malignant deity. From this point of view, the greater the criminal, the greater his efficacy as saviour. The error of our age has been to regard its diabolical figures and politics as the fruit of impersonal causes and to disregard the historic continuity of devil-worship, with its perennial appeal to the ambitious intellects of every age. Our situation enters its present phase with the eighteenth century 'attack' on belief in the personality of the devil. As Father White points out, Marxism does not repudiate religion, but channels it against Christianity: Marxism, in short, only denies God in the sense of setting on record that He is, in our society, in practice denied and ineffectual, and in the sense of echoing the Satanic assurance, 'You shall be as God'. Its power against contemporary Christianity lies in the fact that it has stolen Christ's thunder . . . . But just because it is the ape of God and His Christ, the Christian must see in Marxism a supreme embodiment of the Antichrist . . . "

*It should be noted that there is some dispute among Kabalistic as to whether all sons of Adam or only Jews have within them the "divine spark" or Neshama which would allow re-incorporation to the Ein-Sof. According to the Zohar, only Jewish people come from the "holy side" or sitra di-kedusha from which the divine spark proceeds. Non Jewish people are products of the "other side" or sitra ahra and do not have the "divine" neshama but only the animal soul called nefesh and a spirit of cognitive ability called the ruah. 21.
_ ** The word Shekinah, simply said, does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. The term MiShKaN, from which the word Shekinah is derived, refers to the Sanctuary in the wilderness not the being who dwells therein. As Feminist Hebrew scholar/Rabbi, Lynn Gottlieb in her book, She Who Dwells Within, points out, "The word Shekinah first appears in the Mishna and Talmud (ca 200 CE), where it is used interchangeably with WHVH and Elohim as names of God. By 1000 CE, the very mythologies so suppressed in the Bible erupted in the heart of Jewish mysticism, known as the Kabul, and Shekinah became YHVH wife, lover and daughter." This word only entered into common usage among Jewish thinkers in Medieval Spain where "Kabalistic" (Gnostic) mysticism took root from the writings of Moses de Leon in the Sefer ha-Zohar or Book of Splendor (c. 1280 AD).

NOTES 1. Gershom Scholem, Kaballah (New York: Dorset Press:1974) p.226,227 2. Ibid., 126-128, 227 3.Gershom Scholem Kabbalah (New York, Dorset Press, 1987) p. 3 - 5. The Second Temple period dates from the return of the Jewish people from the Babylonian exile in 538 BC until the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. The influence of Sumerian and/or Persian religion on the exiled Jewish community has been suggested as a possible source of the Kabbalah 3. Ibid. pp. 5-12 4. Ibid. Pp. 8-22 The book of Genesis, for example, is treated as an esoteric explanation of the entrapment of the soul in matter in its descent from the world of Azilut into the world of creation Beriah and the book of Exodus, by contrast, begins the work of liberation and re-ascent of the soul to the spiritual order.

As explained by Daniel Matt in his Essential Kabbalah, "In Kabbalah, Shekhinah becomes full-fledged She: the feminine half of God." This doctrine spread through Southern Europe to Palestine and Turkey and then upward to Poland and Russia after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. More recently, Joseph Dan of the University of Jerusalem in an interview with Jewish Book News (May 9th 1996 issue) states, "The Kaballah insists that there is a feminine aspect within the divinity itself, the Shekhinah, and therefore sexual life is applicable to the divine world."
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An interesting addendum is that of Polish "convert" from Judaism to Catholicism, Jacob Frank. Frank first claimed himself to be the Messiah in Poland in 1756 as part of a Kabalistic Trinity made up of Attika Kadisha (The Holy Ancient One), Melika Kadisha ( The Holy King Messiah), and the Shekhinah (feminine earthly half of the divinity). As he was persecuted by the Orthodox Jewish community for his bizarre faith and orgiastic initiations, he and many of his followers came into the Catholic Church precisely to introduce a feminine, or earthly, element, the Shekhinah, into the Christian Trinity under the guise of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Secretly present in his own daughter Eva, but to be made manifest in the last days as a ultimate feminine Messiah) 22

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5. N.B. ibid. 284, 327 - 332 According to Scholem, after the false Messiah, Shabbetai Zevi converted to Islam in 1666 many of his followers (known as Doenmeh apostates) did so as well. According to the 18th C. Polish Shabbatean, Jacob Frank, the raison dtre of these conversions would appear to be as follows: "under the `burden of silence' the true believer, who has God in his secret heart, should go through all religions, all rites, and established orders without accepting any and indeed annihilating all from within and thereby establishing true freedom. Organized religion is only a cloak to be put on and thrown away on the way to the `sacred knowledge,' the gnosis of the place where all traditional values are destroyed in the stream of `life'." In this regard it should be noted that the Doenmeh

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indulged in orgiastic sexual activity especially during the spring festival Hag ha-Keves. Scholem also acknowledges that this movement influenced the universal upheavals of the eighteenth century as for-runner of the Enlightenment, Jacobinism and Freemasonry. He cites as some of the acknowledged Doenmeh of history: the majority of Kemal Ataturk's `Young Turk' movement and the founder of Polish Messianism, the poet Adam Mickiewicz.

Carl Gustav Jung, Opera Omnia esp. A Psychological Treatise on the Doctrine of the Trinity (Princeton, NJ: Bolingen, Princeton University Press)

6. Ibid. pp. 197 201 7. Albert Pike .Morals and Dogma of Free Masonry (Charleston, Southern Jurisdiction Publication, 1871) pp.581-800 8. The Zohar I Sperling and Simon, trans. p. 70, cit. June Singer Androgyny Toward a New Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor, 1977) p. 153 N.B. This concept is fundamental to understanding of the Kabbalah as thus can be seen the initial mixing of light and darkness, male and female, good and evil as the initial act of the "One God," and the Kabalist can pronounce with impunity the traditional Jewish Shema "Shema Ysrael Adonai Elehenu, Adonai Ehad" "The Lord is God, The Lord is One." 9. Scholem pp. 88 168 10. Siegmund Hurwitz Psychological Aspects of Early Hasidic Literature Timeless Documents of Soul (Evanston, IL: North Western University Press, 1968) pp. 202 - 203 cit. Singer, p. 160 11. Scholem p. 180 12. Ibid. pp. 141, 143, 161, 162,, 167, 194 13. Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai The Teaching of Buddha (Tokyo, Japan,1970 ) p. 62 14. Ibid. p. 125, See also Malcolm Godwin Angels, An Endangered Species (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990) entry for Metatron pp. 59 61 15. Scholem p. 180 16. Ibid. pp. 337 343 17. Ibid. p. 310 18. Ibid. p. 127 19. Ibid. p. 128 20. Bid. Pp. 156 157

Illustrations

21. Genesis 1:1-2 "Berishit Barra Elohim" "In the beginning God created the heavens and earth" The verb barra in Hebrew means to create from nothing. It is only used for the divine act at the beginning of time. From this Biblical account comes the traditional orthodox Jewish version of creation called Torah di Beriah as opposed to the Kabalistic Torah de Azilut or world of emanations. In both traditional Jewish and Christian theology, God is worshipped as a personal, omnipotent, omniscient, creator who is other than his creation. For the Roman Catholic, the formula may be stated as follows: "(Deus) est re et essentia a mundo distinctus, et super omnia praeter ipsum sunt aut concippi posunt ineffabiliter excelsus."Vatican I caps. I, ca 1-4) "(He is really and essentially distinct from the world...and ineffably raised above all things which are outside of Himself or which can be conceived as being so." 22. Scholem, p. 302 23. Anthony Kerrigan, Review of Seven Nights, Jorge Luis Borges (New Directions: NY, 1984) in Winter 1987- The University Bookman, Ed. Russell Kirk

Bibliography
(Some, by and large, easily available books consulted for this essay and of use to serious students of the subject) Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah (New York: Dorset Press, 1987) Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1995) Zohar (New York: Schocken Books, 1995) Leonard R. Glotzer, The Fundamentals of Jewish Mysticism The Book of Creation and its Commentaries (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1992) Daniel C. Matt, The Essential Kabbalah The Heart of Jewish Mysticism (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1994 Adin Steinsaltz, The Thirteen Petalled Rose A Discourse on the Essence of Jewish Existence and Belief (New York: Basic Books, 1980) The Essential Talmud ( Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1992) Rachel Elior, The Pardoxical Ascent to God The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasdism (Albany, NY: State of New York University Press, 1993) Edward Hoffman, The Way of Splendor Jewish Mysticism and Modern Psychology (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc., 1992) Mordachai Rotenberg, Dialog with Deviance The Hasidic Ethic and Theory of Social Contraction (New York: University Press of America, 1993) Pinchas Giller, The Enlightened Will Shine Symbolization and Theurgy in the Later Strata of the Zohar (Albany, NY: The State University of New York,1993) Lyn Gottlieb, She Who Dwells Within A Feminist Vision of a Renewed Judaism (San Francisco, CA: Harpers San Francisco, 1995) Matityahu Glazerson, Building Blocks of the Soul Studies on the Letters and Words of the Hebrew Language (Nortrhvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc. 1997) Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Charles Scribner, 1958) Francis A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, `1984) The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1983) The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Boulder, CO: Shambala, 1978) Karen Silvia De Len-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996) Kathleen Raine, Yeats The Tarot and the Golden Dawn (Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1976) June Singer, Androgyny Toward a new Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor Press, 1976) Fig.2- Descent of the "Divine Fire" down through the "Tree of Life" to reach and divinize Malkuth - the Earth Fig.1 (left)
Adam Kadmon depicted as Cosmic Christ on the schematic Tree of Life. The Kabalistic Trinity Atika Kadisha (Holy One of Old), Meleka Kadisha (Holy King), and the Shekhinah (Feminine presence of God) are above Christs head empowering him to bring the divine down to Earth, Malkuth (Right) The Ayn Soph contracts and the expands to fill the void with the divine presence, Zim Zum. The further out from the center, abode of the binary god, Ayn Soph, the denser the material shards, Kelipoth until one reaches the firmament, Malkuth at the outer circle.

Fig. 3 - 13th Century Jewish depiction of the "Tree of Life"

Fig.4- "Tree of Life" from the 12th C. Liber Figurarum of "Catholic mystic, Joachim da Fiore

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Fig. 8 - Ultimately the Essential Symbol of the Kabalistic Tikkun Olam is the occult (not Biblical) "Seal of Solomon" representing the Coincidentia Opositorum (Fusion) of Good and Evil to form the "Complete God"
by lephias Lvi, 33 Histoire de la Magie 1861

Fig. 5 - 16th C. Masonic "Johanite"- engraving of Christ as Adam Kadmon "Cosmic Christ" corresponding to the Sephirotic "Tree of Life." Note the split black and white (good & evil) "Ayn Soph" at the top and the seven branched Menorah dominating the lower world of Malkuth.

Fig. 6 - Drawing from the notebook of Rosicrucian, George Pollexon, c.1894 showing the Kabalistic "Tree of Life." Note the androgynous ( beard & breasts) Adam Kadmon (Christ Figure) on the Cross-, drawing from both pillars Jachin & Boaz representing the male and female forces of both God, AynSoph and the Cosmos. The "God of Light" above and the "Dragon" Satan below are united on earth Malkuth represented as the naked woman with flowers springing up around her. Pollexon was a member of the "Kabalistic Order of the Golden Dawn" along with poet W.B. Yeates who signed and was known among his colleagues in the society as "Dedi" or "Demon est Deus Inversus"

Fig. 8 The great lie and true Luciferian nature of

Kabbalah is shown in the "icon" above. From the upper right hand corner, a red angel falls, ejected from heaven, downward into the cosmos. According to esoteric legend, it was one or more of these angels that imparted the secret knowledge (Kabbalah) to man. Below the angel is shown a man with three triangles superimposed over him. These represent the three configurations or triads that form the sefirot or vessels of the tree of life. Each sefira, according to the Kabbalah, is a level of attainment in knowledge or balance between the pillar of judgment Din and the pillar of

Fig. 7 In the political realm, the working out of Tikkun Olam is the "Dialectic." Both Hegel and Marx were
influenced by Kabalistic and the concepts of "Thesis" "Antithesis"-"Synthesis" closely follows the "Tree of Life" in binary confrontation of the forces of Din (authoritarian judgmental oppression) vs. Hessed or Rahanim (merciful progressive liberation) working toward synthesis and perfection of the Earthly Kingdom, Malkuth through. The resolution of opposites

mercy Hessed ( See: Fig. 7 at left) that will lead to enlightenment and harmony. Across at lower right, however, we see a terrified man possessed by the demon (central third eye and reptilian tail). At upper right, heavenly judgment, corner, a black hand covers over and annihilates man.

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