The Hidden wisdom in the Holy Bible vol 2

494 Pages·2017·2.6 MB·English

by  Geoffrey Hodson

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE ANGELIC HIERARCHY
Fairies at Work and at Play. English and French Editions.
The Kingdom of Faerie.
The Brotherhood of Angels and of Men.
Be Ye Perfect.
The Angelic. Hosts.
Man, The Triune God.
The Supreme Splendour.
The Coming of the Angels.
The Kingdom of the Gods. Illustrated.
THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
First Steps on the Path.
Thus Have I Heard.
Meditations on the Occult Life. English and German Editions.
The Pathway to Perfection.
Destiny.
The Inner Side of Chur ch Worship.
THE POWERS LATENT IN MAN
The Science of Seership. English and French Editions.
Clairvoyance and the Serpent Fire.
Occult Powers in Nature and in Man.
Man’s Supersensory and Spiritual Powers.
The Soul’s Awakening. American Edition.
A Yoga of Light. English, Danish and Spanish Editions.
Some Experiments in Four-Dimensional Vision.
The Psychedelic and the Yogic Pathways to Reality.
THE THEOSOPHICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
Theosophy Answers Some Problems of Life.
Vital Questions Answered.
Reincarnation, Fact or Fallacy? Indian, American and Arabic Editions.
The Miracle of Birth.
The Spiritual Significance of Motherhood. English and Spanish Editions.
Through the Gateway of Death.
The Seven Human Temperaments.
The School of the Wisdom Lecture Notes, Vol. I (Revised Edition).
INTERPRETATIONS OF SCRIPTURES AND MYTHS
The Hidden Wisdom in the Holy Bible, Vols. I. II and III, Indian and
American Editions.
The Hidden Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures. American Edition.
The Divine Wisdom in the Christian Scriptures. New Zealand Edition.
HEALTH
Health and the Spiritual Life.
New Light on the Problem of Disease.
An Occult View of Health and Disease.
The Way to Perfect Health, Spiritual, Mental and Physical.
Radiant Health From a Meat-free Dietary.
Plant Foods, Their Nutrient Properties.
The Case for Vegetarianism.
ANIMAL WELFARE
An Animal’s Bill of Rights.
The Humanitarian Cause, Its Extreme Urgency.
Animals and Men. The Ideal Relationship.
Authentic Stories of Intelligence in Animals.
Our Friends the Animals.
THE HIDDEN WISDOM
IN THE HOLY BIBLE
BY
GEOFFREY HODSON
VOLUME II
THE GOLDEN GRAIN OF WISDOM IN THE BOOK OF GENESIS
(Genesis—Chapters One to Twenty-five)
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE
Adyar, Madras 600 020, India
Wheaton, III., U.S.A. • London, England
© The Theosophical
Publishing House, 1967
First Edition 1967
Second and Revised Edition 1972
Reprinted 1986
SBN 0-7229-7057-9
ISBN 0-8356-7057-0
Printed at the Vasanta Press
The Theosophical Society,
Adyar, Madras 600 020, India.
DEDICATION
This work is dedicated to Philo Judaeus, the great Alexandrian Sage.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I acknowledge with gratitude the help in the production of this work received
from my wife, Sandra, who at dictation wrote out all the original interpretations
of Biblical passages, and is continuing to do so; my valued literary assistant,
Myra G. Fraser; and my friend Nell K. Griffith, who for many years cared for
my domestic needs and assisted in typing from the first draft of the manuscript. I
also wish to express my heartfelt thanks to my valued friends, Roma and Brian
Dunningham, for their unfailing support, their provision of stenographers, and
their generous help throughout many years of collaboration.
All quotations and references in this work are taken from the King James
Version of the Holy Bible.
THE HIDDEN WISDOM AND WHY IT IS CONCEALED
T greatest degree of power which occult science can bestow is to be
HE
derived from knowledge of the unity and interaction between the Macrocosm
and the microcosm, the Universe and man. “The mystery of the earthly and
mortal man is after the mystery of the supernal and immortal One”, wrote
Eliphas Levi. Lao Tzu also expresses this truth in his words: “The Universe is a
man on a large scale.”
The whole Universe with all its parts, from the highest plane down to
physical Nature, is regarded as being interlocked, interwoven to make a single
whole—one body, one organism, one power, one life, one consciousness, all
cyclically evolving under one law. The “organs” or parts of the Macrocosm,
though apparently separated in space and plane of manifestation, are in fact
harmoniously interrelated, intercommunicative and continually interactive.
According to this revelation of occult philosophy the Zodiac, the Galaxies
and their component Systems, and the planets with their kingdoms and planes of
Nature, elements, Orders of Beings, radiating forces, colours and notes, are not
only parts of a co-ordinated whole and in “correspondence”or mutual resonance
with each other, but also—which is of profound significance—have their
representations within man himself. This system of correspondences is in
operation throughout the whole of the microcosm, from the Monad to the mortal
flesh, including the parts of the mechanism of consciousness, or vehicles and
their chakras,1 by means of which the Spirit of man is manifested throughout his
whole nature, varying in degree according to the stage of evolutionary
development. The human being who discovers this truth could enter the power
aspect of the Universe and tap any one of these forces. He would then become
endowed with almost irresistible influence over both Nature and his fellow men.
H.P. Blavatsky writes:2
“The danger was that such doctrines as the Planetary Chain, or the seven
Races, at once give a clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is
correlated to a plane, a planet, and a race, and the human principles are, on every
plane, correlated to seven-fold occult forces, those of the higher planes being of
tremendous power. So that any septenary division at once fives a clue to
tremendous occult powers, the abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to
humanity; a clue which is, perhaps, no clue to the present generation—especially
to Westerns, protected as they are by their very blindness and ignorant
materialistic disbelief in the occult—but a clue which would, nevertheless, have
been very real in the early centuries of the Chr istian era to people fully
convinced of the reality of Occultism, and entering a cycle of degradation which
made them rife for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the worst description.
“The documents were concealed, it is true, but the knowledge itself and its
actual existence was never made a secret of by the Hierophants of the Temples,
wherein the MYSTERIES have ever been made a discipline and stimulus to
virtue. This is very old news, and was repeatedly made known by the great
Adepts, from Pythagoras and Plato down to the Neo- Platonists. It was the new
religion of the Nazarenes that wrought a change—for the worse—in the policy
of centuries.”
In his Toga Aphorisms, Patanjali writes:3
“The (successful) ascetic acquires complete control over the elements by
concentrating his mind upon the five classes of properties in the manifested
universe; as, first, those of gross or phenomenal character; second, those of
form; third, those of subtle quality; fourth, those susceptible of distinction as to
light, action, and inertia; fifth, those having influence in their various degrees for
the production of fruits through their effects upon the mind.
“From the acquirement of such power over the elements there results to the
ascetic various perfections, to wit, the power to project his inner-self into the
smallest atom, to expand his inner-self to the size of the largest body, to render
his material body light or heavy at will, to give indefinite extension to his astral
body or its separate members, to exercise an irresistible will upon the minds of
others, to obtain the highest excellence of the material body, and the ability to
preserve such excellence when obtained.
“Excellence of the material body consists in colour, loveliness of form,
strength, and density.”
This knowledge of the relationship between Universe and man is also part of
the secret wisdom of Kabbalism, which teaches that in the chain of being
everything is magically contained within everything else. Where one stands,
there stand all the worlds; what is below is above, what is inside is outside and,
in addition, ceaselessly acts upon all that exists. Kabbalism thus stresses the
inter-relationship of all worlds and levels of being according to exact, though
unfathomable, laws. All things, moreover, possess their infinite depths which
from every point may be contemplated.
Such is a portion of the wisdom which is said to be implicit—and, indeed,
revealed under the veil of allegory—in the Torah4 This sacred book is for
Kabbalists a revelation of the laws of the Cosmos and the intimate and active
relationship between the parts of the Cosmos, the Spirit of man, and the vehicles
in which that Spirit is incarnate. The historv of the Jews forms a foundation upon
which the edifice of this secret knowledge is erected. Modern Christian theology
would seem to have fallen into the grievous error of regarding the sub-structure
of meta- phoricised history as a total and divinely inspired revelation of God’s
guidance to mankind.
The mission of the Jews and the purpose of the erudite and Initiated authors
of the Bible was, I submit, to preserve, to enunciate and to deliver to humanity
this wisdom of the Chaldeo-Hebrew Sanctuaries. It is for this and not for
lordship over the Earth, I suggest, that the Jews were a chosen people, a nation
or “kingdom of priests”5 in very truth. May not their tribulations have partly
arisen from their neglect of this mission, and may not their earthly wanderings
and centuries of physical homelessness have followed upon.and resulted from
their departure from their true Sanctuary and the real purpose for which they
were “chosen”? Happily the light still shines, however deeply veiled, in and
through this marvellous record of the Scriptures of the Hebrew Race.
The task of unveiling the hidden truth demands some knowledge of
Cosmogenesis, of the emanation of the Universe from the Absolute, the finite