Chapter XXII (part 1)

CHAPTER XXII. CONCLUSION. HAVING reached the end of our journey we must cast one rapid glance over the road we have followed, in order to give some account of the scope of our work. Seeing that materialistic science was giving way, in spite of the desperate efforts of its partisans, under the irresistible pressure of the new era, the impotence of purely analytical methods forced itself upon us, and we were led to search for the possible basis of a synthesis which each day renders more indispensable. At this moment, the ancient wisdom revealed itself to our investigations, and we find that it contains this synthetic method as the immutable basis of all its scientific, religious, and social discoveries. The secret societies entrusted with the transmission of this sacred deposit have lost its key as well as its ritual; the nomad Gypsies and the Jews only have guarded their Bibles intact throughout the centuries: the latter had the Sepher of Moses, the former the Tarot attributed to Thoth Hermes Trismegistus, the triple hierarchic University of ancient Egypt. Tile Tarot appeared to us as the Egyptian translation of the book of initiation, starting as the now missing key to Freemasonry and the whole occult science. How could we decipher this series of hieroglyphics? How discover. the mysterious grouping of these plates, now become the accessory of gamblers? Wronski teaches us that the faculty to conceive implies the faculty to execute. Strong in this truth, we have questioned antiquity. Its Sphinxes, dumb to the profane, have spoken, its old temples have unveiled their mysteries, its Initiates have re-awakened in answer to our call: four mysterious letters have been revealed to us-- י ה ו ה Yod He Vau He [paragraph continues] The sacred word, which shines above every initiation, the object of the veneration and respect of all the sages. The study of the Tarot has shown us that it only expresses the combinations of IEVE. However, since we must in these questions guard ourselves above all things from leaving too much scope to the imagination, we have chosen as the starting-point for our studies a fixed principle, as basis to these immutable combinations, the sole guarantee against all possible error: the number . We then approached the symbol, and there we again encountered new difficulties. The history of the Tarot has shown us that its figures have often changed in passing through the hands of various peoples, and through different epochs, although its meaning has been preserved in all times and in all places. It was therefore necessary to find for the symbols a principle as fixed and immutable in its combinations as the number. The study of the origin of the letters used to inscribe human languages led us back to the determination of the sixteen primitive hieroglyphic signs, the source of the first alphabets. The 22 Hebrew letters immediately derived from these signs furnished us with this indispensable basis to all serious researches, as definitely fixed for the symbol , as the numbers were for the whole Tarot. We thus had a sure guide, which rendered error still more unlikely. Thanks to the application of these principles, exact, although very general, information was furnished to us upon Theogony , Androgony , and Cosmogony , and we could at last recapitulate the symbolism of the Tarot in a very interesting tableau. We then wished to show that the Tarot was really the general key which we had pronounced it to be. A few applications proved the fact. Astronomy is unquestionably the most important amongst them through its fixed principles. Therefore, when we wish to discover how an evolution can advance , and we wander in. the labyrinth of inexactitude, Astronomy shows us how the evolution of the sun progresses , and that knowledge gives us the key to every possible evolution.