Passages similar to: Secret Teachings of All Ages — The Bembine Table of Isis
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Western Esoteric
Secret Teachings of All Ages
The Bembine Table of Isis (53)
"Plato writes that it is needful for the philosopher to know how the seven circles beneath the first one are arranged according to the Egyptians. The first triad of fire denotes life; the second, water, over which rule the Ibimorphous divinities; and the third, air, ruled by Nephta. From the fire the heavens were created, from the water the earth, and air was the mediator between them. In the Sephira Yetzirah it is said that from the three originate the seven, i. e., the height, the depth, the East, the West, the North, and the South, and the Holy Temple in the center sustaining them all. Is not the Holy Temple in the center the great throne of the many-formed Spirit of Nature which is shown in the middle of the Tablet? What are the seven triads but the seven Powers that rule over the world? Psellus writes: 'The Egyptians worshipped the triad of faith, truth, and love; and the seven fountains: the Sun as ruler--the fountain of matter; then the fountain of the archangels; the fountain of the senses; of judgment; of lightning; of reflections; and of characters of unknown composition. They say that the highest material fountains are those of Apollo, Osiris, and Mercury--the fountains of the centers of the elements. 'Thus, they understood by the Sun as ruler the solar world; by the material archangelic, the lunar world; by the fountain of the senses, the world of Saturn; by judgment, Jupiter; by lightning, Mars; by that of the reflections, or mirrors, the world of Venus; by the fountain of characters, the world of Mercury. All these are shown by the figures in the center pane of the Tablet."
With the Egyptians, therefore, there is another domination of the whole elements in generation, and of the powers contained in them; four of these...
(2) With the Egyptians, therefore, there is another domination of the whole elements in generation, and of the powers contained in them; four of these powers being male and four female, which they attribute to the sun. And there is, likewise, another government of the whole of nature about generation, which they assign to the moon. But dividing the heavens into two, or four, or twelve, or six-and-thirty parts, or the doubles of these, they give to the parts a greater or less number of rulers. And over all these they place one ruler, who transcends all the rest. Thus, therefore, the doctrine of the Egyptians concerning principles, proceeding from on high as far as to the last of things, begins from one principle, and descends to a multitude which is governed by this one; and every where an indefinite nature is under the dominion of a certain definite measure, and of the supreme unical cause of all things. But God produced matter by dividing materiality from essentiality; and this being vital, the Demiurgus receiving, fabricated from it the simple and impassive spheres. But he distributed in an orderly manner the last of it into generable and corruptible bodies.
Chapter XIV: Greek Plagiarism From the Hebrews. (9)
Again the Barbarian philosophy knows the world of thought and the world of sense - the former archetypal, and the latter the image of that which is...
(9) Again the Barbarian philosophy knows the world of thought and the world of sense - the former archetypal, and the latter the image of that which is called the model; and assigns the former to the Monad, as being perceived by the mind, and the world of sense to the number six. For six is called by the Pythagoreans marriage, as being the genital number; and he places in the Monad the invisible heaven and the holy earth, and intellectual light. For "in the beginning," it is said, "God made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible." And it is added, "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light." And in the material cosmogony He creates a solid heaven (and what is solid is capable of being perceived by sense), and a visible earth, and a light that is seen. Does not Plato hence appear to have left the ideas of living creatures in the intellectual world, and to make intellectual objects into sensible species according to their genera? Rightly then Moses says, that the body which Plato calls "the earthly tabernacle" was formed of the ground, but that the rational soul was breathed by God into man's face. For there, they say, the ruling faculty is situated; interpreting the access by the senses into the first man as the addition of the soul.
Behold, again, the seven subject Worlds; ordered by Aeon's order, and with their varied course full-filling Aeon! [See how] all things [are] full of...
(7) Behold, again, the seven subject Worlds; ordered by Aeon's order, and with their varied course full-filling Aeon! [See how] all things [are] full of light, and nowhere [is there] fire; for 'tis the love and the blending of the contraries and the dissimilars that doth give birth to light down shining by the energy of God, the Father of all good, the Leader of all order, and Ruler of the seven world-orderings! [Behold] the Moon, forerunner of them all, the instrument of nature, and the transmuter of its lower matter! [Look at] the Earth set in the midst of All, foundation of the Cosmos Beautiful, feeder and nurse of things on Earth! And contemplate the multitude of deathless lives, how great it is, and that of lives subject to death; and midway, between both, immortal [lives] and mortal, [see thou] the circling Moon.
He continued further in his discourse and said: "The third order is called Triple-faced Hekatē, and there are under her authority seven-and-twenty...
(2) He continued further in his discourse and said: "The third order is called Triple-faced Hekatē, and there are under her authority seven-and-twenty [arch]demons, and it is they which enter into men and seduce them to perjuries and lies and to covet that which doth not belong to them. "The souls then which Hekatē beareth hence in ravishment, she handeth over to her demons which stand under her, in order that they may torment them through her dark smoke and her wicked fire, they being exceedingly afflicted through the demons. And they spend one-hundred-and-five years and six months, being chastized in her wicked chastisements; and they begin to be dissolved and destroyed. "And thereafter, when the sphere turneth itself, and the little Sabaōth, the Good, he of the Midst, who is called in the world Zeus, cometh, and he cometh to the eighth æon of the sphere which is called the Scorpion, and when Boubastis, whom they call Aphroditē, cometh, and she cometh to the second æon of the sphere which is called the Bull, then the veils which are between those of the Right and those of the Left draw themselves aside and Zorokothora Melchisedec looketh out of the height; and the world and the mountains are agitated and the æons become alarmed. And he looketh on all the regions of Hekatē, so that her regions are dissolved and destroyed, and all the souls which are in her chastisements, are carried off and cast back anew into the sphere, because they are dissolved in the fire of her chastisements."
"And he who hath received mysteries of the first Thrice-spiritual, which ruleth over the four-and-twenty mysteries all together which rule over the...
(5) "And he who hath received mysteries of the first Thrice-spiritual, which ruleth over the four-and-twenty mysteries all together which rule over the space of the First Mystery, of whose region at the expansion of the universe I will tell you--he, therefore, who shall receive the mystery of that Thrice-spiritual, hath the power to go down into all orders which are below him; but he hath not the power to go into the height into the orders which are above him, that is into all the orders of the space of the Ineffable. "And he who hath received the mystery of the second Thrice-spiritual, hath the power to go into all the orders of the first Thrice-spiritual and to pass through them all and all their orders which are in them; but he hath not the power to go into the higher orders of the third Thrice-spiritual. "And he who hath received the mystery of the third Thrice-spiritual, which ruleth over the three Thrice-spirituals and the three spaces of the First Mystery all together, [hath the power to go into all the orders which are below him]; but he hath not the power to go into the height into the orders which are above. him, that is into the orders of the space of the Ineffable.