2. The Pillars Of The Templeb

Such is the mysterious language of the Kabalists in the Talmud, and on account of vulgar ignorance and malignity, it is impossible for us to explain or simplify it further. What then is creation? It is the house of the creative Word. What is the cteis? It is the house of the phallus. What is the nature of the active principle? To diffuse. What is that of the passive? To gather in and to fructify. What is man? He who initiates, who toils, who furrows, who sows. What is woman? She who forms, unites, irrigates and harvests. Man wages war, woman brings peace about; man destroys to create, woman builds up to preserve; man is revolution, woman is conciliation; man is the father of Cain, woman the mother of Abel. What also is wisdom? It is the agreement and union of two principles, the mildness of Abel directing the activity of Cain, man guided by the sweet inspirations of woman, debauchery conquered by lawful marriage, revolutionary energy softened and subdued by the gentleness of order and peace, pride subjugated by love, science acknowledging the inspirations of faith. It is then that science becomes wise and submits to the infallibility of universal reason, instructed by love or universal charity. Then it can assume the name of GNOSIS, because it knows at least that as yet it cannot boast of knowing perfectly. The monad can manifest only by the duad; unity itself and the notion of unity at once constitute two. The unity of the Macrocosm reveals itself by the two opposite points of two triangles. Human unity fulfils itself to right and left. Primitive man is androgynous. All organs of the human body are disposed in pairs, excepting the nose, the tongue, the umbilicus and the kabalistic JOD. Divinity, one in its essence, has two essential conditions as the fundamental grounds of its being -necessity and liberty. The laws of supreme reason necessitate and rule liberty in God, Who is of necessity wise and reasonable. To make light visible God had only to postulate shadow. To manifest the truth He permitted the possibility of doubt. The shadow bodies forth the light, and the possibility of error is essential for the temporal manifestation of truth. If the buckler of Satan did not intercept the spear of Michael, the might of the angel would be lost in the void or manifested by infinite destruction launched below from above. Did not the heel of Michael restrain Satan in his ascent, Satan would dethrone God, or rather he would lose himself in the abysses of the altitude. Hence Satan is needful to Michael as the pedestal to the statue, and Michael is necessary to Satan as the brake to the locomotive. In analogical and universal dynamics one leans only on that which resists. Furthermore, the universe is balanced by two forces which maintain it in equilibrium, being the force which attracts and that which repels. They exist alike in physics, in philosophy and in religion; in physics they produce equilibrium, in philosophy criticism, in religion progressive revelation. The ancients represented this mystery by the conflict between Eros and Anteros, the struggle between Jacob and the angel, and by the equilibrium of the golden mountain, which gods on the one side and demons on the other encircle with the symbolic serpent of India. It is typified also by the caduceus of Hermanubis, by the two cherubim of the ark, by the twofold sphinx of the chariot of Osiris and by the two seraphim - respectively black and white. Its scientific reality is demonstrated by the phenomena of polarity, as also by the universal law of sympathies and antipathies.