The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE KEY OF THE MYSTERIES all the flames which he belches forth, and pours with full hands upon the earth a vivifying light. Thus also it is said in the Zohar that at the beginning of our earthly period, when the elements disputed among themselves the surface of the earth, that fire, like an immense serpent, had enveloped everything in its coils, and was about to consume all beings, when divine clemency, raising around it the waves of the sea like a vest- ment of clouds, put her foot upon the head of the serpent and made him re-enter the abyss. Who does not see in this allegory the first idea, and the most reasonable explanation, of one of the images dearest to Catholic symbolism, the triumph of the Mother of God? The qabalists say that the occult name of the devil, his true name, is that of Jehovah written backwards. This, for the initiate, is a complete revelation of the mysteries of the tetragram. In fact, the order of the letters of that great name indicates the predominance of the idea over form, of the active over the passive, of cause over effect. By reversing that order one obtains the contrary. Jehovah is he who tames Nature as it were a superb horse and makes it go where he will ; Chavajoh (the demon) is the horse without a bridle who, like those of the Egyptians of the song of Moses, falls upon its rider, and hurls him beneath it, into the abyss. The devil, then, exists really enough for the qabalists; but it is neither a person nor a distinguished power of even the forces of Nature. The devil is dispersion, or the slumber of the intelligence. It is madness and falsehood. Thus are explained the nightmares of the Middle Ages; thus, too, are explained the bizarre symbols of some initiates, those of the Templars, for example, who are much less to be 203,