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We deny not the influence of the Starres, but often suspect the due application thereof; for though we should affirm that all things were in all things; that Heaven were but Earth Celestified, and earth but Heaven terrestrified, or that each part above had an influence upon its divided affinity below; yet how to single out these relations, and duly to apply their actions, is a work ofttimes to be effected by some revelation, and Cabala from above, rather than any Philosophy, or speculation here below."
Were my despised birth and religion published, my limbs would be torn asunder as an impostor; and all the arts of the Cabala could not save me." "Doubt not, great master; none in Granada, save thy faithful Ximen, know thy secret." "So let me dream and hope. And now to my work; for this night must be spent in toil."
The Catholic Church, the law of the land, and modern philosophy, in agreement for once, combined to prescribe, persecute, and ridicule the mysteries of the Cabala as well as the adepts; the result is a lamentable interregnum of a century in occult philosophy. So the art is still practised in spite of a certain amount of risk.
Although the secret meaning of all the allegories contained in the Old Testament is not fully understood, still the belief that Cain, Abel, and Seth represented the self-triplicated Deity at a time when the idea of man as a creator had been accepted, or when his power to reproduce was becoming the highest idea of a creative force, is consistent with what is known of the Cabala of the Jews, or of the esoteric meaning of the Jewish scriptures formerly known only to the priests.
In the Cabala, a hidden meaning is often deduced from a word by transposing or reversing its letters, and it was in this way that the Cabalists concealed many of their mysteries. Now, to reverse a word in English is to read its letters from right to left, because our normal mode of reading is from left to right.
I found her grown and improved; she looked lovely. We had scarcely sat down when she told me that she had become as skilled in the cabala as myself. "It makes my life happy," said she, "for it gives me a power over my father, and assures me that he will never marry me to anyone but the man of my choice."
He knew it had no correspondence with any natural reality; that it was no more than an instrument whereby cheats and jesters Casanova assumed these roles by turn, and was a master player in both capacities could lead credulous fools by the nose. Nevertheless, in defiance of his own better judgment, he now undertook to defend the Cabala as a serious and perfectly valid science.
Collecting around him the seers and magicians of orient-fanaticism, he lived in the visions of another world; and, flattered by the promises of impostors or dreamers, and deceived by his own subtle and brooding tendencies of mind, it was amongst spells and cabala that he thought to draw forth the mighty secret which was to free him from the meshes of the preternatural enemies of his fortune, and leave him the freedom of other men to wrestle, with equal chances, against peril and adversities.
When he read the paper to her, she smiled at that passage, and observed to Bacon, that old love, she saw, could not easily be forgotten. * Cabala, p. 78. Cabala, p. 83. * Winwood, vol i. p. 254., Birch's Memoirs, vol. ii p. 462.
After five centuries of Talmudists had exhausted all possible explanations of the Scriptures, the study of the Law eventually paved the way for the invention of the Cabala. A new bible was constructed. The pious were no longer content with a rational observance of the Mosaic command, but a hidden meaning must be found for every word and in many cases for the individual letters of the Pentateuch.
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