2. The Pillars Of The Templed

“By the fear of the unknown must the crowd be restrained,” he observes in another place; and Christ also said: “Cast not your pearls before swine, lest, trampling them under their feet, they turn and rend you.” The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, of which the fruits are death, is the type of this hieratic secret of the duad, which would be only misconstrued if divulged, and would lead commonly to the unholy denial of free will, though it is the principle of moral life. It is hence in the essence of things that the revelation of this secret means death, and it is not at the same time the Great Secret of Magic; but the arcanum of the duad leads up to that of the tetrad, or more correctly proceeds therefrom, and is resolved by the triad, which contains the word of that enigma propounded by the sphinx, the finding of which would have saved the life, atoned for the unconscious crime and established the kingdom of Oedipus. In the hieroglyphic work of Hermes, being the Tarot or Book of Thoth, the duad is represented either by the horns of Isis, who has her head veiled and an open book concealed partially under her mantle, or otherwise by a sovereign lady, Juno, the Greek goddess, with one hand uplifted towards heaven and the other pointed to earth, as if formulating by this gesture the one and twofold dogma which is the foundation of Magic and begins the marvellous symbols of the “Emerald Table” of Hermes. In the Apocalypse of St. John there is reference to two witnesses or martyrs on whom prophetic tradition confers the names of Elias and Enoch-Elias, man of faith, enthusiasm, miracle; Enoch, one with him who is called Hermes by the Egyptians, honoured by the Phoenicians as Cadmus, author of the sacred alphabet and the universal key to the initiations of the Logos, father of the Kabalah, he who, according to sacred allegories, did not die like other men, but was translated to heaven, and will return at the end of time. Much the same parable is told of St. John himself, who recovered and explained in his Apocalypse the symbolism of the word of Enoch. This resurrection of St. John and Enoch, expected at the close of the ages of ignorance, will be the renovation of their doctrine by the comprehension of the kabalistic keys which unlock the temple of unity and of universal philosophy, too long occult and reserved solely for the elect, who perish at the hands of the world. But we have said that the reproduction of the monad by the duad leads of necessity to the conception and dogma of the triad, so we come now to this great number, which is the fullness and perfect word of unity.