Secret societies and subversive movementsWebster, Nesta Helen
History
Secret societies and subversive movements
Webster, Nesta Helen
Secret societies
According to this theory, which we find again propounded by the American
Freemason, Dr. Mackey,[39] there was, besides the divine Cabala of the
children of Seth, the magical Cabala of the children of Cain, which
descended to the Sabeists, or star-worshippers, of Chaldea, adepts in
astrology and necromancy. Sorcery, as we know, had been practised by the
Canaanites before the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites; Egypt
India, and Greece also had their soothsayers and diviners. In spite of
the imprecations against sorcery contained in the law of Moses, the
Jews, disregarding these warnings, caught the contagion and mingled the
sacred tradition they had inherited with magical ideas partly borrowed
from other races and partly of their own devising. At the same time the
speculative side of the Jewish Cabala borrowed from the philosophy of
the Persian Magi, of the Neo-Platonists,[40] and of the
Neo-Pythagoreans. There is, then, some justification for the
anti-Cabalists' contention that what we know to-day as the Cabala is not
of purely Jewish origin.
Gougenot des Mousseaux, who had made a profound study of occultism,
asserts that there were therefore two Cabalas: the ancient sacred
tradition handed down from the first patriarchs of the human race; and
the evil Cabala, wherein this sacred tradition was mingled by the Rabbis
with barbaric superstitions, combined with their own imaginings and
henceforth marked with their seal.[41] This view also finds expression
in the remarkable work of the converted Jew Drach, who refers to--
The ancient and true Cabala, which ... we distinguish from the
modern Cabala, false, condemnable, and condemned by the Holy See,
the work of the Rabbis, who have also falsified and perverted the
Talmudic tradition. The doctors of the Synagogue trace it back to
Moses, whilst at the same time admitting that the principal truths
it contains were those known by revelation to the first patriarchs
of the world.[42]
Further on Drach quotes the statement of Sixtus of Sienna, another
converted Jew and a Dominican, protected by Pius V:
Since by the decree of the Holy Roman Inquisition all books
appertaining to the Cabala have lately been condemned, one must
know that the Cabala is double; that one is true, the other false.
The true and pious one is that which ... elucidates the secret
mysteries of the holy law according to the principle of anagogy
(i.e. figurative interpretation). This Cabala therefore the Church
has never condemned. The false and impious Cabala is a certain
mendacious kind of Jewish tradition, full of innumerable vanities
and falsehoods, differing but little from necromancy. This kind of
superstition, therefore, improperly called Cabala, the Church
within the last few years has deservedly condemned.[43]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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