Editor’s Note: This text forms the second subsection of Section V of the surviving “Würzburg Manuscript,” occupying pp. 159–169 of the original manuscript pagination (pp. 87–91 in the 2014 Eastern School Press edition). It was first published by C. Jinarajadasa in The Theosophist, October 1933, pp. 14–16, and November 1933, pp. 143–146, and was subsequently incorporated, under the same title, as Section XXIII of the posthumous third volume of The Secret Doctrine (1897), pp. 211–214.
The later text follows the manuscript with exceptional closeness. Its discussion of the Zohar, Chevalier Drach, the solar “Rector,” the “Sun of Initiation,” Julian, Hermes Trismegistus, Philolaus, and the central Spiritual Sun is retained in essentially the same sequence, as is the lengthy note on Julian, Socrates, Ovid, and Edwin Arnold. Revision consists chiefly of stylistic and grammatical polishing and the correction of evident scribal errors. The principal change is one of placement: in the Würzburg manuscript this subsection belongs to the larger solar and stellar sequence of Section V, whereas in the 1897 volume it was relocated to the earlier group of sections devoted to the Kabalah and the Zohar.
2. What the Occultists and Kabalists have to say.
The Zohar—an unfathomable lore of hidden Wisdom and Mystery, indeed—is very often appealed to of late by Roman Catholic writers. A very learned Rabbi, now the Chevalier Drach, having been converted to Roman Catholicism, and being a great Hebraist, found fit to step into the shoes of Picus de Mirandola and John Reuchlin and to assure his new co-religionists that the Zohar contained pretty nearly all the Dogmas of Latinism in it. It is not our province to show here how far he has succeeded, or failed—save to bring one instance of his explanations and preface it with the following:—
The Zohar as already shown is not a genuine production of the Hebrew mind. It is the repository and compendium of the oldest doctrines of the East, transmitted orally at first, and then written down in independent treatises during the Captivity at Babylon, and finally brought out together by Rabbi Simeon Ben Iochai, towards the beginning of the Christian era. As Mosaic Cosmogony is born under a new form in Mesopotamian countries, so the Zohar is a vehicle in which are focused rays from the light of Universal Wisdom. Whatever the similarity found, the editors of the Zohar never had Christ in their minds.
Otherwise there would not be a single Jew of the Mosaic law left in the world by this time. This is self-evident. Again, if one wants to accept what the Zohar says literally, then any religion under the Sun may find corroboration in its symbols and allegorical sayings; simply because this Work is the echo of the primitive truths, and that every creed is founded on some of these, the Zohar being the veil of the Secret Doctrine. This, is so evident, that we have only to point out to the said ex-Rabbi Drach to prove the fact.
In Part III fol. 87 (col. 346th) the Zohar treats of the Spirit guiding the Sun, its “RECTOR,” explaining that it is not the sun itself that is meant thereby, but the spirit on, or under the Sun. Now having every proof to the contrary, Drach is anxious to show that it was Christ who was meant by that “Sun,” or solar spirit in it. In his comment upon that passage which refers to the Solar Spirit as “that stone which the builders rejected” etc. (Psalms CXVIII, 22) he asserts most positively that this “Sun stone (pierre-soleil) is identical with Christ, who was that stone” and that therefore, “the SUN is undeniably (sans contredit), the second hypostasis of the Deity”1 or Christ. The latter statement settles the question. If so, then the Vedic and pre-Vedic Aryans, Chaldees and Egyptians as well as all the Occultists past, present and future, Jews included have been Christians from all eternity. Either this, or—the modern Church Christianity is paganism pure and simple exoterically, transcendental and practical Magic or occultism—esoterically. Because this “stone” has a manifold significance, and as dual an existence with its graduation as regular progression and retrogration: It is a “Mystery,” indeed.
The Occultists are quite ready to agree with St. Chrysostomos, that the infidels (the profane rather) “being blinded by Sun-light, thus lose sight of the true Sun in contemplation of the false one.” But if that Saint, and along with him now, the Hebraist Drach chose to see in the Zohar and the Kabalistic Sun—“the second hypostasis” this is no reason why all others should be blinded by them. The Mystery of the Sun is the grandest, perhaps, of all the innumerable mysteries of Occultism. A Gordian knot, truly, but one that cannot be severed with the double-edged sword of Scholastic casuistry. It is a true deo dignus vindice nodus—and can be united only by the Gods. The meaning of this is plain and every Kabalist—if really one—will understand it.
Contra solis ne loquaris was not said by Pythagoras with regard to the visible Sun. It was the “Sun of Initiation” that was meant in its triple form—two of which are “Day” and the “Night-Sun.” If behind the physical luminary there was no mystery, that people instinctively sensed, why should every nation, from the primitive people down to the Parsis of today have turned during prayer toward the Sun? The Solar trinity is not Mazdean, but universal and as old as man. All the temples in antiquity were made invariably to face the Sun, their portals to open to the East. See the old temples of Memphis and Baalbec, the Pyramids of the old and of the New (?) Worlds, the round towers of Ireland and the Serapeia of Egypt. The Initiates alone can give a philosophical explanation of, and a reason for it, it[s] mysticism notwithstanding, were the world ready to receive it, which, alas—it is not. The last of the Solar priests in Europe, was the imperial Initiate—Julian, now called the Apostate. He tried to benefit the world by revealing at least a portion of the great mystery of the τριπλάσιοϛ, and—he died.2 [“]There are three in one,” he said of the Sun—the central Sun3 being a precaution of nature: the first is the universal cause of All—Sovereign Good and perfection; the second Power is paramount Intelligence, having dominion over all reasonable beings, νοϵροϛ; the third—the visible Sun . . . the pure energy of Solar intelligence proceeds from the luminous seat occupied by our Sun in the centre of the heavens that pure Energy being the Logos (of our system),—the “Mysterious Word.” [“]Spirit produces all through the Sun, and never operates through any other medium,” says Mercury Trismegistus.—“For it is in the Sun, more than in any other heavenly body that the (unknown) POWER placed the seat of its habitation.” “Quia in sole saltem et non alibi uspiam, sedem habitationis suœ posuit” (MINERVA MUNDI). Only neither Mercury Trismegistus, nor Julian, an initiated Occultist, nor any other meant by this Unknown Cause—Jehovah, nor Jupiter either—but that Cause that produced all the manifested “Great Gods” or Demiurgi, (the Hebrew God included) of our system. Nor was our visible, material Sun meant, for the latter was only the manifested symbol. Philolanus, the Pythagorean explains, and completes Trismegistus by saying—“the SUN is a mirror of fire, the splendour of whose flames by their reflection in that mirror (the Sun) is poured upon us, and that splendour we call IMAGE.”
It is thus evident that what Philolaus meant by this is the Central SPIRITUAL Sun, whose beams and effulgence are only mirrored by our Central Star the Sun. This is as clear to the Occultists as it was to the Pythagoreans. As for the rabble and the profane of pagan antiquity, it was of course, the physical sun that was [“]the highest God” for them, as it seems now to have virtually become for the modern Roman Catholics. If words mean anything then, the statement made by the “Chevalier Drach”4 to the effect that “this Sun is, undeniably, the SECOND HYPOSTASIS of the Deity”—mean what we say: as this sun refers to the Kabalistic Sun, and that “hypostasis” means substance or subsistence of the Godhead or trinity—distinctly personal. As the author, who, being an ex-rabbin thoroughly versed in the Hebrew and the mysteries of the Zohar, ought to know the value of words, and as moreover, in writing this, he was bent upon reconciling “the seeming contradictions” as he puts it, between Judaism and Christianity—the fact becomes quite evident.
But all this pertains to questions and problems which will be solved naturally and in the course of the development of the Doctrine. It is out [not] of worshipping under other names the divine beings worshipped by all nations in Antiquity that the Roman Catholic church stands accused; but of declaring not only the pagans ancient and modern idolatrous but every other Christian nation also, that has freed itself from the Roman yoke, whereas the accusations brought against herself by more than one man of science of worshipping the Stars like true Sabaeans of old, stands to this day uncontradicted[. Y]et, no star worshipper has ever addressed his adoration to the material stars and planets, as will be shown, before the last page of this work is written even though those philosophers alone who studied astrology and Magic knew that the last word of those sciences was to be sought in and expected from the occult forces emanating [from] those constellations.
1. Harmonie entre l’Eglise et la Synagogue VII, page 427, by the Chevalier Drach.
2. Julian died for the same crime as Socrates. Both divulged a portion of the Solar Mystery: the heliocentric system being only a part of what was given during the Initiation,—one consciously, the other unconsciously, as the Greek sage had never been initiated. It was not the real Solar System that was preserved in such secrecy, but the mysteries connected with the Sun’s constitution. Socrates was sentenced to death by earthly and worldly judges; Julian—died a violent death because the hitherto protecting hand had been withdrawn from him, and no longer shielded by it he was simply left to his destiny or Karma. For the student of Occultism there is a suggestive difference between the two kinds of death. Another memorable instance of unconscious divulging of secrets pertaining to mysteries is that of the poet, P. Ovidius Naso, who like Socrates had not been initiated. In his case the Emperor Augustus who was an Initiate, mercifully changed the penalty of death into banishment to Tomos on the Euxine. This sudden change from unbounded royal favour to banishment has been a fruitful theme of speculation to classical Scholars not initiated into the Mysteries. They have quoted Ovid’s own lines to show it was some great and heinous immorality of the Emperor of which Ovid had become an unwillingly cognisant. The inexorable law of the death penalty, always following upon the revelation of any portion of the mysteries to the profane, was unknown to them. Instead of seeing the amiable and merciful act of the Emperor in its true light they have made it the occasion of traducing his moral character. The poet’s own words can be no evidence, because not being an Initiate, it could not be explained to him in what his offence consisted. There have been comparatively modern instances of poets unconsciously revealing in their verses so much of the hidden knowledge as to make even Adepts think them to be Initiates and talk to them on the subject. This only shows the same poetic temperament is sometimes so far transported beyond the bounds of ordinary sense as to get glimpses into what has been impressed on the “Astral Light.” In [“]The Light of Asia” there are two passages that might make an Initiate of the first degree think that Mr. Edwin Arnold had been initiated himself in the Himalayan ashrums, which is not so, however.
3. A proof that Julian was acquainted with the helio-centric system.
4. “Harmony between the church and the Synagogue,” by Chev. Drach.