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He was only talking to himself; she pushed the door and called to him. "Oh, it is you?" he said; "you have come sooner than I expected." "Then you expected me, Ulick?" "Yes, I expected you." "Expected me ...to-day! But, Ulick, what were you saying when I came in?" "Only some Kabbalistic formula," he replied, quite naturally.
Martinists, Gnostics, Kabbalists, and a score of orders or fraternities of which we vaguely hear about the period of the French Revolution, began to manifest great activity; periodicals of a mystical tendency not spiritualistic, not neo-theosophical, but Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and theurgic were established, and met with success; books which had grievously weighted the shelves of their publishers for something like a quarter of a century were suddenly in demand, and students of distinction on this side of the channel were attracted towards the new centre.
Impelled by an enthusiasm for which he himself was unable to account, he now lent a ready ear to all dispensers of degrees; Memphis initiates of Manchester allured him into Kabbalistic rites; he fell among occult Masons like the Samaritan among thieves; he became a Sublime Hermetic Philosopher; overwhelmed with solicitations, he fraternised with the Brethren of the New Reformed Palladium, and optimated with the Society of Re-Theurgists, from whom he ultimately received the veritable initiation of the Magi.
The radical transformation in the character of Kabbalistic teaching which is connected with the name of Rabbi Isaac Loria likewise is an evidence of Elijah's activity. Elijah sought out this "father of the Kabbalistic Renaissance," and revealed the mysteries of the universe to him. Indeed, he had shown his interest in him long before any one suspected the future greatness of Rabbi Isaac.
It was not our province to treat of the mystic movement in mediæval Jewry as it developed in the Kabbalistic works and gained the ground yielded in the course of time by the healthier rationalism.
To make the case still clearer the writer gives us, by the current Hebrew Kabbalistic method, the number of the Beast, that is to say, the numerical value of his name. Each letter of the old alphabets has a numerical value. This is the exact numerical value of the six Greek letters composing the Saviour's name, 10+8+200+70+400+200=888.
Judah Halevi and Nachmanides represent to him the true Jewish attitude. The mysteries of the Jewish faith are revealed not in philosophy but in the Kabbala, which Maimonides did not study, and which he would not have understood if he had studied it, for he had no Kabbalistic tradition.
Like Plotinus, Gabirol conceives of the universe as a process of a gradually descending series of existences or worlds, as the Kabbalistic writers term them; these cosmic existences radiating or flowing out of the superabundant light and goodness of the Creator. The two extremes of this graded universe are God at the one end, and the corporeal world at the other.
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