Index: The Sovereign Great General Inspectors, XXXIII and last degree of the A. A. S. R. - The Bilateral Alphabet from De Augmentis Scientiarum by Lord F. Bacon - The code book of the Kabbalah, plus a relevant aspect - The Holy Names of God and of His Sacred Graces - The secret Science of the Tannaim
The Sovereign Great General Inspectors, XXXIII and last degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
At the highest degree of White Masonry, the Initiatory Tradition still holds intact its Mysteries, jealously preserved by its Greater Adepts, which pass them on uniquely with the ‘mouth-ear’ method to those who, once reached that level, are able to make themselves known by demonstrating the possession of the Keys of Rule and Art; otherwise they will be invisible to the minds of the Lesser Adepts.
Again, I want to remind you of the method: «by recognizing you will be recognized».
But because of our level of interest, which is esoteric and not initiatory, we must only consider various methods of language and nothing else; therefore I think that among the many methods available I chose the most representative and perhaps the most original used by the Sovereign Great General Inspectors.
The Bilateral Alphabet from De Augmentis Scientiarum by Lord Bacon
From what Lord Francis Bacon, author of "De Augmentis Scientiarum"says, the use of bilateral Codes among the highest Hierarchies goes back to the period previous to the Council of Nicaea, but it officially appears in the Masonic Order only in 1640.
We can reasonably group the Bilateral Codes in seven main sets according to the analogies in their characteristics. Because of the necessary brevity of our journey in the subject, we will only consider some of its fundamental expressions. But the Brother who wishes to study the topic further will find a huge amount of information in books such as:
Polygraphiae and Steganographia by Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim; Mercury, or the Secret and Swift Messenger by John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester; Oedipus Aegyptiacus by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher; Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae by Gustavus Selenus.
Table 1
The initiate is instructed on the use of a "personal jewel" that contains two circumferences, where the internal one is mobile.
The latter, moved according to a pre-established code, creates an alphabet with the double combination of letters.
The jewel is by itself a badge and a first "invisible sign".
Another method to create a Bilateral Code consists of joining several letters to form one, like the image in Table 2 shows.
When the document to be decoded has been reduced to equivalent "a"s' and "b"s', it is "broken" into groups of five letters and the message is read with the help of the following table.
Table 2
Another very complex variation of bilateral alphabet is what follows.
This alphabet, created by F. Bacon, quite likely the most complex, is very difficult to intepret, because it is based on ortographic details that change the direction and shape of the characters, so much so that it is often necessary to use a magnifying glass to be able to understand it.
Table 3
Each capital or lower case letter, written in two different forms, is represented by "a" and "b". The bilateral system didn’t always use the two alphabets where the differences were quite noticeable as in the example that follows, but two alphabets were always used.
In order to avoid a much too complicated explanation, let’s examine an example of decoding for this Code.
Table 4
The apparent meaning of this statement is obvious, it says that «Wisdom and understanding are more desirable than wealth».In actual fact it hides another meaning, which is what we are interested in.
Keeping the order of meanings shown in Table 3, we should start considering the difference in the writing of the various letters. The difference between the "D" in Wisdom and the one in the word "and" which might appear at a first glance irrelevant, are in actual fact the main key to the Code.
Another change of meaning comes from the analysis of the differences between the letter "I" of Wisdom and that of understanding, which appear similar but different.
The bottom part of the first ‘i’ is rounded, whilst that of the second one has an acute angle. A thorough Bro. will not miss the intentional difference between the two letters "E" in the word desired.
The letter "O" of more is different from that of Wisdom and the difference is the lack of the little tail at the top of the second one.
The same difference among the letters "I" can be found between the letters "A" in the words and and than; indeed the bit at the bottom is round in the first one and pointy in the second.
Another more obvious difference is the difference between the letters "R"of riches and desired.
These "minor" differences show the presence and the simultaneous use of two Alphabets on the writing of the same document. One is based on the encoded combination of the various letters of the alphabet and another on orthographic differences. On certain documents there are obvious traces of the simultaneous usage of both systems, despite the building of such composition is extremely difficult.
Our curiosity as researchers must stop here.
I can only remind you of the existence of other Alphabets made of Numbers and Dots, as well as letters, results of the particular language of the various Supreme Councils, Priorships and Commendams.
However, we can add a last Table of Languages (Table 5) that claim their reference to the Hebrew Kabbalistic Tradition.
It is a peculiar alphabet, invented by the first medieval philosophers in order to preserve their principles and doctrines from profane people. Some of these alphabets are still in use among the Anglosaxon and United States High Masonic Degrees.
Perhaps the most famous is the angelic writing, shown in the table as “The writing called Malachim”. Its figures are supposed to be derived from constellations. The most advanced researchers in the sphere of occult philosophy will have found many important documents where these figures are used. |
Table 5 |
Table 6
|
In table 6 the Three-fold Cryptogram of the Great work by Kircher is represented.
The capital letters of the words written on the external ring form the word SULPHUR. The capitals of the middle ring form the word FIXUM. The capitals of the innermost ring spell EST SOL. Therefore we can read Sulphur Fixum Est Sol, which in the hermetic interpretation means in the Fixation of the (animic) Sulphur is achieved Gold (of the Philosophers). |
The code book of the Kabbalah, plus a relevant aspect
The study of the Kabbalah is said to be immense; I am convinced, though, that the right adjective is infinite.
Since in its most known part it deals with numbers and the combination of them with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the study of the Kabbalah is subject to an infinite variety of these possible combinations. In other words this means that venturing superbly in that area of study without the help of a certain guide, will certainly lead the unwise researcher to get lost in the nothing of an immense arithmetic speculation, made only of mental mirages, as charming as they are useless for the achievement of the goal of God and to fall in that immense speculative Maze always set up by the Initiates to the Temple of Israel, with the purpose of misleading the profane people trying to reach the Santa Sanctorum of their Mysteries, the Name of God. Indeed, not one of them reached the goal.
It is impossible to overcome this initiatory deceit placed to protect those Mysteries unless we have the help of a safe guide. But let’s ask ourselves, seriously, which Greater Initiate will offer to truly guide a ‘gentile’? (Term used to describe people who don’t belong to the Hebrew Communion; it is a synonym of profane, then).
On the other hand a gentile, researcher and esotericist will always place JHWH at the top of the Pillar of Binah, because it is the manifestation of a feminine and passive religiosity of the trinity emanated by ‘Ehjeh ‘Asher ‘Ehjeh, the Shapeless, Him of which nothing can be said, placed above the top of Kether.
At this point there is the possibility of a compromise between the gentile and the Hebrew based on the mutual respect for each other’s creed.
But perhaps this concept will appear clearer with the help of an image; as a consequence an aspect of the Symbology of the Temple connected to the Sacred Geometry will appear clearer as well:
The Kabbalah has been created with the precise purpose of re-veiling quite definitely the ineffable Name or Sacred Sound, later covered by JHWH, which allowed, through a Ritual known to the Great Priest, the evocation of the presence of God-Jehovah in the Blessed Tabernacle. But this Sound has been cancelled from the concrete minds of men. From this loss derived the myth of the Lost Word, which has nonetheless remained present, impressed in the Spirit (Monad) of each of us.
This research is the occult meaning of the Greater Initiation.
All the numerical meanings that have entered this science must be considered by the esotericist as deviations from the original purpose to guard the Pontifical and Mosaic Ars.
From here originates the first fundamental point for us.
All that an Initiate can wish for himself in the achievement of His final destination is possible only through the construction and conscious use of the Bridges between "Personality and Triad" first and between "Triad-Personality and Monad" second.
This consideration marks the boundary between Lesser and Greater Mysteries.
Despite being carefully veiled, the Sounds that make the synthesis of the Sacred Names used in the sacerdotal Rituals and in the purification and evocation Ceremonials are still accessible.
Before continuing our journey, I would like to save some work to the Brothers who feel attracted by the Kabbalah and I will deliver to Their free will the 72 Blessed Names of God and the Sacred Names of the 72 Virtues through which there is the manifestation of the "God-Holy Spirit", Supreme Pontiff of the female and passive Church.
In order not to incur in any mistakes I drew what follows from the Enchiridion. It is a treaty of holy psalms, evocative rituals and magical orations that the power of Rome, Pope Leo the Third, secretly sent ‘as the most precious of gifts’ to the Emperor Charlemagne, who represented at the time the other side of power to which the domination of the elements in the Name of god must be revealed, in order to appeal to their support.
This book was made public after being purposely modified in 1660.
The two ill-advised operations of revealing the deep tissue of the Christian fides to the profane and obscure side of the world of man ended up in a further work of vulgarization that created, clumsily, the catholic hierarchy of the time.
But I would like to highlight the historical mood of the time when the Enchiridion was compiled and perhaps understand its raison d’être, referring to a source that is certainly neutral as well as reliable, the Mondadori Encyclopedia:
«...Owner of this huge amount of land, which demonstrated the superiority of the Frankish people on all the others, certain of the support of the Pontiff Leo the Third, which owed him the preservation of the Episcopal chair, Charlemagne felt he had the right to connect to the Roman tradition and had the Pope crown him emperor in Rome on Christmas 800.
But the empire which Charlemagne and Leo the Third looked at was not that of Augustus; rather the empire made Christian of Constantine; the Roman Church as well, by then, had elaborated the falseness of the Constantinian donation, so during official ceremonies the new emperor showed his devotion for the model he had chosen.
After all the inspiration to that model was strictly connected to the concept of power, but also with the reality where Charles lived, viz. the close connection and interaction between religious and civil events, between ecclesiastic and political institutions. Charles, as well as emperor and therefore ‘father’ of all people, was also patricius Romanorum, viz. protector of Rome and its Church; as we said, the ecclesiastical aspect was all that survived and was acknowledged of the Roman world.
Therefore, as protector of the Church, he felt invested with a religious mission and wanted to commit to a (political-religious, Note of the author) conversion, even with the use of force, of those subjugated peoples that were still pagan (?), such as the Saxons.»
The Holy Names of God and of His Sacred Graces
For the most distract readers, the three traditional names of the Sephira that refer to the trinity in the Sephirotic Tree are marked in italic.
The secret science of the Tannaim
Wanting to create two precise historical and esoteric references, I will quote what follows from the kind of Hebraism that explains itself with its own words, the occult sense of that secret Science that only much later will be called Kabbalah:
(of the descent of Knowledge in Abraham, the Blessed Holy Spirit, 3rd Aspect, Note of the Author)
Sepher Yetsirà VI,4
«Since when Abraham our father participated to the vital flow, he saw, looked, articulated, traced, cut, combined, structured and erected with his own hands and Adon Akol’ (the Master of the Universe, may his name be blessed) filled him, revealed himself to him, received him in his bosom, kissed him on the head, called him ‘my friend’ and made an alliance with him and his offspring that certified with Hè and gave him an exact measure of justice.
And he clinched with him an alliance among the ten toes, which is the alliance of circumcision and among the ten fingers, which is the alliance of the tongue and he attached twenty-two Autioth to the tongue and he revealed to him their foundation and he washed them with water, burned them with fire, moved them with breath, he consumed them with the seven and directed them towards the twelve constellations.»
The teachings of the Christ, Gospel of Thomas, sentence 83 «The images are manifest to man but the light in them remains concealed...» Gospel of Thomas, sentence 22 «When you make the two one and when you make the inside like the outside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female, and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, ...then you will enter the kingdom.»
Table of the numeral values of the Hebrew alphabet preserved by the Kabbalah and made of Sounds and Numbers.
It is certain and comprehensible, like the Universal Spirit (3rd cosmic Aspect) in his voluntary descent (immersion) towards the matter of our Logos has thus abandoned a part of itself at every level of the Form of man, for the "miraculous" process called individualization of the specie; originating the form (mentis) of the lower Self or Personality.
It is certain, I said, that before that huge effort of energetic investment made for "universal Love", the Intelligence of that Spirit predisposed a series of causes that would have allowed those parts of It (self), left latent in the Forms in constitution of men, it is able, after a first inner reawakening (emersion) to recognize It by ‘recognizing It in itself’ (Law of Resonance and Law of Magnetic Attraction).
Through that apparent individual and separating detachment (spiritual insemination of the earthly forms, see the parable of the Sower told by the Christ in esoteric key) that would lead it (the 3rd Aspect) to exteriorize itself completely in every individual Form up to be able to project itself outside it, working to build by rectifying the environment it is immersed in (the world of effects, World of Chaos) through the growth of the Thought (creation of thought-forms in the projects connected to the egocentric Personality first, then connected to the universal will of the Triad; the Initiatory Path), of the sound (of the word that creates and destroys) and of the energy of the Action (the Gesture of the Initiate) connected to the manifestation of the Will (lower first, then higher).
Those causes have been arranged in the Ego of man and initially they are stimulated by the memory of Tradition, with the example of what happened in the past to "illuminated" men by "grace" and not for a real conquest and realization of one’s own spiritual sphere (by placet motu proprio ([Assent of its own accord, Note of the Translator] of that Intelligence).
From all those teachings and symbols that protect the realities (truths) contained in them and that keep them intact even in their exterior differences, produced by interpretations and codes of the Form, those causes, when reached by man through his thoughts, trigger unconscious mechanisms of identification impressed in the low part of the Ego, which attract the reflections and desire of Personality towards the vertical axis of the Path (Masonic Plumb line) that leads to the joining with the Soul and the illumination of the Form.
As an ancient Commentary states:
And the three (Personality, Ego, Triad) will meet on the burning desert (the metaphysical vacuum of the Spirit, the primordial Sulfur) and by embracing they will blend into forming the One (the Monad, the image of god in the world of manifestation).
But continuing on the Topic proposed by that Commentary will divert us towards the central key of Spiritual Alchemy.
This cyclicaldescent of Intelligent Activity towards the exteriorization of the dense Worlds of the Forms that inhabit Chaos, is measured in the strange "astronomical calendar" that for the Initiates beats the predictable rhythms of manifestation (in billions, millions, hundreds of thousands and thousands of years). Above that ‘calendar’ there is the concept of metaphysical and shapeless absolute, whilst below it there is the ordinary history of man.
Therefore it was certain that the last stage of spiritual exteriorization in the dense Worlds of the Form would cause this momentary but total detachment from the spiritual matrix and produce that "phenomena" of blindness and oblivion called Age of Iron (Dark Era, Common Era, Kalj Yoga) whose lesser curve was worn out in the great world war (1913/1943).
At the realization of the Regenerated Form, with the restored control in the Initiate of the elements of Nature that make him, with an experience lasted many lives and using many Forms, the Man come to the physical maturity feels in the vacuum of his own inner space the call for transformation.
I would like to remind you, once again, of the analogy of this signal that we find in the Animal Kingdom, an indistinct but compelling instinct, even if carried out in the physical aspect, with the example of the salmon (see article).
This time this call for transformation obeys to the animic drive, now manifest in the Form and Personality (the Mind of man) and stretches it to the construction in himself of the Path towards the Ego and the realization of the real Self.
Here we see the highlighting of the recognition mechanisms stimulated by the right teaching by affinity (Yesod the restoration of the foundations of Tradition) and the emulation of examples by aspiration.
At this point, though, a fundamental clarification is necessary.
Whilst with the example we remind man of the gaining of initiation "occurred" by "divine grace" and the more or less loyal acceptance by the initiate, of the Alliance offered to him by that Intelligence (passive and egocentric stage of reception), but often concluded with the abandonment or betrayal of that man, still immature and unprepared to support the "spiritual cause" of that Entity, in the instance of a "natural" Initiate, oblivious of astrality and passion, which has already voluntarily soothed by "smoothing the inner Stone", he will offer (with an Action of Initiatory Will) his own steady alliance to that Intelligence, to operate with it and for it at the Great Planetary Work.
The sacralization of the Planet through ourselves, since we are its most advanced elements.
If we wanted to narrow down our argument in a ‘bottle-neck’ fashion, we might forcefully discriminate, separating them, the elements that are for us fundamental and absolute from formal mannerisms and thus obtain the fundamental nuclei that respond, in the initiate, maturing the desired transformation; they can be summed up as follows:
Science of Form (universal because it supports the structure and geometry of every form, even thought ones);
Science of Numbers (universal because it supports the synthesis of every Form making it possible to conceptualize the changes and to evaluate the necessary variations);
Science of Sound (universal because it supports and demonstrates the energetic fluidity of every Form before its concrete manifestation; the motion of that energy in the matter and in every solid Form; the continuity of life of energetic forms even when they are freed in space after the dissolution of the vehicles that make the physical Form).
Those three Sciences are the intellectual equivalent of the Trinity on the physical plane.
They are universal because through them we reach the synthesis of the One and they don’t belong to any language or doctrine, even if all languages and doctrines talk about them and emanate from those three Sciences.
This is why I am describing, on this part of the journey, the Kabbalah in such an apparently atypical manner, unsuitable to the principles of ordinary uses. On this topic I am trying to discriminate the (occult) sense of Tradition from speculative images of traditions.
Therefore stripped of the many frills used either to hide or to unveil, to attract or to reject, the Kabbalah remains a badly defined language among those that gathered the same divine spark (the Pythagorean School emerges brightly unsurpassed in this). It wants to go back to its lost Word, but it falls into the speculative emphasis of the art of Numbers. It tends to recompose the genesis of that divine matrix, now only a memory in the darkness of a lost chance.
This, though, doesn’t mean that for the ‘world of man’ it cannot be called ‘science’, or deny that it can have mathematical value and speculative interest.
As a race Code it can master and correct the intentionally distorted and incomplete vision passed on to us by the people of Israel with the Bible that is a result of the expropriation of Rome’s hold on its culture. It can (divinely) reconstruct its symbolical and magical contents that little have in common with the pure historical and chronicle sense that the modern ‘gentle’ interpretation of the Bible, called Vulgata* demonstrates to have.
__________
*Vulgata is the last and most important "revision" of the sacred text oriented towards the ideological policy of the Roman Church due to S. Jerome and officialized by the council of Trento in 1546. This version, on its turn, comes from another series of previous cuts and revisions, of which the version called Itala of 382 represents the most substantial and accommodating elaboration, taken from the original Hebrew Rolls. Other numerous "arrangements" were made later by will of Sixtus V in 1590, Clement VIII in 1598 and Pius X in 1912.
__________
To discover the symbolism hidden in those sacred scriptures, stripped of childish meanings often lacking sense, due to the simple literal reading of the concept passed on, means to open a window in space and time, otherwise it will be like reading an equation on a blackboard without knowing the value of numbers.
The Kabbalah holds, through the use of the alphabet and its numeral values, a sonorous reality but, we must add, no more than any other alphabet created by a Sacerdotal Caste.
For the Initiate it is a good idea to distinguish how the Science of Numbers is the means to reach the synthesis of every Form and transcend it up to reaching the concept of those same Forms in their permanent essence, fluid and mobile, "the motion of Sound", being even able to surpass the Archetype of the metaphysical Zero, the absolute infinite of Philosophers "where everything is still" (R&C).
Whilst with the art of Numbers the concept of Form and every concept connected to it can be developed and widened by changing their inner symmetries, infinitely, but only on the horizontal plane of the World of manifestation, the relative infinite of Philosophers.
Absolute and relative "become" and "appear" as sensitive concepts only in relation to the mental strength of the observer or percipient that forms in himself a specular image.
Indeed, a Commentary states: only God can look at (conceive) himself.
If the observer is Personality, Space "becomes, because it appears so", relative time; if the observer is the Triad, Space loses the time factor and "becomes, because it appears so", multidimensional infinite. Again, if the observer is the Monad, any expressible form of time, space and dimension falls and it is called metaphysical absolute, viz. the projection of the Space contained by the absolute Zero (later on we will talk about the Number 0).
The report of a scientific event on the use of the Kabbalah is testified by the researcher Carlo Suares.
He is the co-author of the work The Other Science; after deepening his research on a considerable series of quoted texts, he reproduced in a lab a very interesting scientific experience, which I would like to mention here, in order to leave a trace, as superficial as it might be, to the Brothers who would like to approach this journey.
After all I always stated clearly that at present I am more worried about showing the Brothers the existence in the Masonic Body of certain elements of thought, often underestimated and sometimes even ignored, than studying the reality of substance.
It is certain that if someone wants to speed up times through his own personal study, I believe he has all the introductive elements to face the breakdown of each individual topic.
In the logic of the reasoning on the possible combinations of the Hebrew alphabet, the Author wanted to create his own combination key that, despite not being absolute, has demonstrated to be functional.
For example based on the three-fold combination of:
Bet (numerical value 2), which expresses every recipient, every physical support, every form;
Resh (numerical value 200), which expresses the cosmic recipient, viz. the habitat of any energy;
Aleph (numerical value 1), which expresses universal energy, infinite because potential of conscience and speed;
with Schin, Yad and Taw it moved on to a reading of that alphabet in a key of sound; or more precisely of vocalization, avoiding a reading in literal, therefore profane key.
In the following image we propose certain combinations used by the Author.
At this point I will leave the description of the scientific test carried out by Carlo Suares and his staff to his own words.
«In 1973 thanks to Dr. Tomatis, who opened to us his labs of the Language Center in Paris, we were allowed to pronounce all the letters of the alphabet and record these sounds on a spectrograph. The results published in Les Spectogrammes de l'Alphabet Hèbraique, confirmed the code and also showed, thanks to many details, the energetic value of every letter.
The high voltage device was very sensitive and the repetitions made to check our results changed because the same letter was never pronounced in the same way.
One of the repetitions of Bet gave us the image that recalls the persons who pronounced it. The shadow that surrounds the face reminds us of the form of the letter.
We haven’t placed such phenomenon in any category, but our studies lead us to think that the phenomena of the Autioth could be three-dimensional objects, able to convey, so to speak, some parts of the subtle bodies of the person.
The original conscience, now buried in the heap of the Bible as we can read it today, might have been the result of such explorations’. (The series of examples that we already encountered follow).
Therefore we continue to be more and more certain, I hope, that the main objective of the aspirant Initiate is the access into the Chamber of Wisdom called Science of (sacred) Sound, which will lead him to the ability to manipulate all energies and their motion inside himself. But this will not happen before the aspirant has obtained the control of the lower side and the recognition of the higher side of his own Psyche.
In support of the previous considerations, we can extend our observations further back in time and towards the sources where the knowledge of the western world began.
Moses (1,200 B.C.), as Zarathustra did 600 years later with the Persians in Iran, opened for the Egyptian slaves and the nomadic tribes of the Bene-Israel the access to the ‘divine’. Around it, not without violence and bloodshed, Moses built the unity of the Hebrew Nation and the land of Israel. But it is well known that that access to the ‘divine’ was determined by His Knowledge, the characteristic power of Initiates.
This power of knowledge, also well known to researchers and historians, came to him from the belonging to the hierarchic top of the Temple of Osiris of High Egypt, in the kingdom of his uncle the Pharaoh. Well, going back in time, we find a chain of initiatory transmission like so: Hebrews, Egyptians, Babylonians, Chaldeans. But the source is at the East of those Nations, as still today the Rituals that preserve the memory of those events state.
The Rig Vedas, and later the Vedas trace through these three Sciences, Form-Number-Sound, a very advanced teaching structure, but most of all with such a talent for synthesis that was never reached again by any people who was able to master that knowledge at a later stage.
In order to give a clearer idea, it will be sufficient to study a single but explicit example, which we will see in the next chapter. 
