THE NEW WINE
247
Are hairs upon
my body.
Rivers roll
To make
one tear in my superb caresses ,
When on myself myself begets a child ,
A system
of a thousand
planets
piled !
I wheel in wingless flight
Through
lampless
space, the starless wildernesses !
Beyond the universal bounds
that roll ,
There is the shrine and image of my soul. '
Many of the believers
in
the Qabalah , as those in
the Vedas , will give
an
almost
endless antiquity
to
the
ideas contained in their books .
In one degree
at
least they are right, for the mysticism as contained in
these systems of thought
is as old as thought itself .
The great system of the
Qabalah is one of emana
tion -- a type
of spiritual
monism ,
an
attempted
ex
planation
of
the
nature
of
the
Deity ,
within
the
limitations
of mind .
Its
correspondence
with
the
Talmud
is
more
of
method than material
.
That
it
was
of
slow growth
is
very certain
,
that
it
is
a
conglomer
ated
mass
of
a
multitude
of
efforts
is
also most sure
.
The
Zohar
is
its
corner
-
stone
,
and
the
date
of
its
construction
extends probably from the second
to
the
seventh century
of
the present era
.
Much
of
its
logic
,
psychology
,
metaphysics
,
philosophy
,
and theology
,
is
drawn directly from the Midrash
.
To make
it
superior
to
profane literature
its
simplicity has
at
various times
been cloaked
in
a
truculent obscurantism
,
many
of
its
students delighting
in
paraphrases and hermeneutical
constructions
.
Because
of
their unintelligibility
words
were
transposed
,
numericalisms
added
,
till
at
last
much
if
not all its sense was lost
in
a
maze
of
mental
legerdemain
,
and
in
such
exegetical
methods
as
1
Orpheus
,
vol
.
iii
,
pp
.
156
,
157
.