88
But one hardly
dare comment
upon
a theme which
has been
so fruit-
fully treated
by Ludovicus
Carolus,
that
most
holy illuminated man of
God.
His masterly
treatment
of the identity
of the three reciprocating
paths of Daleth, Teth, and Pe, is one of the most wonderful
passages in
all the Holy
Qabalah.
His resolution
of what we take
to
be the bond
of slavery into very love, the embroidered
neckband
of honour bestowed
upon
us by the King
himself,
is one of the most sublime
passages in this
class of literature.
Peter,
Peter,
pumpkin
eater,
Had a wife and couldn't
keep her.
He put her in a peanut shell;
Then he kept her very well.
This
early
authentic
text of the Hinayana
school
of Buddhism
is
much
esteemed even to-day by the more cultured
and devoted
followers
of that school.
The pumpkin is of course the symbol
of resurrection,
as is familiar
to
all students of the story of Jonah and the gourd.
Peter
is therefore
the Arahat who
has
put
an
end
to
his
series of
resurrections.
That he is called
Peter
is a reference
to the symbolizing
of Arahats
as stones in the great wall of the guardians
of mankind.
His
wife is of course (by the usual symboHsm)
his body, which
he could
not
keep until he put her in a peanut
shell, the yellow
robe of a Bhikkhu.