Jephthah and Other Mysteries

NOTE. 71 of the written Qabalah, though, perhaps (a word to the wise is enough), truth lies hidden deeper yet in the ten volumes of that Qabalah which is unwritten, and which is only granted to those who by previous incarnations have fitted themselves for so sublime a knowledge. The brief sketch above will, however, make clear the Oath of the people and the Prayer of Jephthah, among other phrases which may seem at first sight less unin- telligible to ordinary analysis. That I have made Jephthah a Magician is also in accordance with tradition. Great captains were always great priests, in the secret Qabalistical sense. The priests themselves, then as to-day, were foolish old men trained to bolster up the externals of religion. The real rulers, then as to-day, were not, officially, priests ; the sceptre was wielded by those who, swathed in thick darkness, and enthroned on their own thunderclouds, looked with the eye of gods upon this earth, and carried out the designs of God with tranquil power. I have depicted such a Servant of God stepping down from his throne at the precise moment when his presence was required, and the tragedy represented in the play stands for the impotent spite of the Evil One, venting itself in personal malice. In short, I have ventured (I trust that in so doing the human pathos of the story has lost nothing, even from the merely legendary point of view), behind the veil of man’s blindness, and the inexorable Até, to hint at the cloudy conflict of the mysterious forces that rule beyond our vision or our comprehension ; and if, at the end, I have dared to lift that veil, and to put in the mouths of uninitiates words appreciative of those glorious destinies that overrule the cruelties of fate, let me find my excuse in that love for, and faith in, “the holy spirit of man,” which itself may do so much toward the final regeneration of humanity, and the uniting of man once more with that God of whom Porphyry has written, ‘ We are but a little part of Him.”