The phrase, then, is incorrectly translated in the _Bible_. It is not “in the beginning,” for it should be at the stage of the _generating force_,(424) which would thus exclude every idea of the _ex‐nihilo_ ... as _nothing_ cannot produce something. The word “Eloim” or “Elohim” signifies the generating Powers, and such is the Occult sense of the first verse.... “Bereschith” (“nature” or “genesis”), “Bara” (“created”) “Eloim” (“the forces”) “Athat‐ ashamaim” (“heavens”) “ouath” and “oaris” (“the earth”); that is to say, “The generative potencies created indefinitely (eternally(425)) those forces that are the equilibrated opposites that we call heaven and earth, meaning the space and the bodies, the volatile and the fixed, the movement and the weight.” Now this, if it be correct, is too vague to be understood by any one ignorant of the Kabalistic teaching. Not only are his explanations unsatisfactory and misleading—in his published works they are still worse—but his Hebrew transliteration is entirely wrong: it precludes the student, who would compare it for himself with the equivalent symbols and numerals of the words and letters of the Hebrew alphabet, from finding anything of that he might have found were the words correctly spelt in the French transliteration. Compared even with exoteric Hindu Cosmogony, the philosophy which Éliphas Lévi gives out as Kabalistic is simply mystical Roman Catholicism adapted to the Christian _Kabalah_. His _Histoire de la Magie_ shows it plainly, and reveals also his object, which he does not even care to conceal. For, while stating with his Church, that The Christian religion has imposed silence on the lying oracles of the Gentiles and put an end to the prestige of the false gods,(426) he promises to prove in his work that the real Sanctum Regnum, the great Magic Art, is in that Star of Bethlehem which led the three Magi to adore the Saviour of the World. He says: We will prove that the study of the sacred Pentagram had to lead all the Magi to know the new name which should be raised above all names, and before which every being capable of worship has to bend his knee.(427)