Kabbalism, Of The Religious Philosophy Of The Hebrews.

KABBALISM , OF THE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY OF THE HEBREWS .

( Continued from Page 25 . ) We have already mentioned the nine hierarchies of angels , which , with the human soul , answer to the ten Sephirotli ; many very different opinions are found among the Eabbalists as to their nature and office ; many seem to have thought that they had a sort of

¦ corporeity , an opinion shared by Origen and some other Christian Pathers . By some they were supposed to have been created on the second day ; "by others , on the fifth ; by others , on each day of the creation . We again find mention of a male and female principle ,. or , perhaps , of male and female

angels : among the latter is Lilith , so otten mentioned ¦ in the Talmud . She is spoken of by some as the first wife of Adam , discarded on account of her disobedience , and , by him , the mother of the demons ; by others , as the wife of Leviathan . Angels presided over the powers of naturethe sunmoonlanets & c .

, , , p , These were of two classes ; one engaged in the jierpetual worship of God , the other in actiug as His messengers and ministers . Of their fall , opinions , too , were various ; the commonest seems to have been that , discontented and envious of the high position that God assigned to man , as lord of the earth , they

determined to work man ' s ruin , so the chief of them , Saniael , tempted Eve . Here , again , opinions vary as -to both the cause and manner of the fall ; the idea of "lust being somehow the sin of our first parents ,, was very general , and appears in various ways ; it is sometimes that Samael seduced Eve , sometimes that , under the form of a woman , he seduced Adam : in either of these cases Cain was the child of the Wicked One .

This notion of demons being produced by a union between fallen angels and woman ' seems to have been universal : Naamah , the sister of Tubal-Cain , was the first who openly joined herself to these fallen angels ; then came the " daughters of men , " the mothers of the " giants , " before the Plood . In this latter case there seems to have been a belief in a second fall of

angels , since the term " sons of God" would not be given to angels already fallen . * The " giants " were demons , incarnations of angels , having the properties of either parentage ; thus the " mixed multitude that accompanied the Israelites out of Egypt were a mixed race , not of those whose one parent was an Israelite , the

other { an Egyptian , but were a mixed race of demons , half man , half devil . It was these who caused all the rebellions in the wilderness ; it was one of these who , taking the form of King Solomon , sacrificed to ' Ashtoreth and Milcom . Sometimes they united themselves with women , as in the ease of Sara , the

wife of Tobias ; f at others they are the beings who "possessed" people ; who tempt , who plague , and torment them in various ways . As partaking of angelic nature , they know the future , they fly over the earth in an instant ; as partaking of human nature , they eat and drink , marry and produce . J It is these beings that are controlled by magic ; and one of the great secrets of the Kabbala was , how to make one of

these a servant to do the behests of the magician . According to the Talmud , Solomon controlled all the demon - world , each of whom he compelled into his service . The above is but a slight and very incomplete sketch of the principal doctrines of the Kabbalists on the great points of the being of God and of man . We

have scarcely at all alluded to the works of the later Ivabbalists—all our quotations being taken from the Books of Zohar and Jetzirah , the earliest Kabbalistic books—since they would have led us into disquisitions far beyond the limits of ' an article . What we chiefly design at present isto trace the development of

Kab-, balism into regions and religions far beyond direct Jewish influence . Before doing this we must explain another part of the system , far more curious than the philosophical speculations ; we mean the esoteric interpretation of Holy Scripture . The Kabbalistthenbelieved that under the letter

, , of Scripture there lay a hidden meaning which could be discovered by the application of certain rules of interpretation ; and that each history contained an allegory , which was really the most important part of Divine Revelation . To give an instance of both of these kinds of interpretation : It is said ( Gen . xxxvi .

31 , et seq . ) that there reigned seven kings * in Edom , before there reigned any king over the children of Israel ; and who died one after the other . These " ancient kings , " as they are called , are ancient worlds , which existed and had been destroyed previous to the creation of the present ; while the kings of

Israel represent absolute Being in its double form of the male and female principle . These worlds were destroyed , because God did not descend upon them , nor manifest Himself in them ; and because man was was not yet created , for the being of man contains all things , and all things are maintained by it . Another proof is derived from the fact that the account of the

Creation commences with the second letter of the alphabet and not with the first , which it might have done ; it would have had equally the same meaning : had it commenced with dTi ^ X , and not been written as it is , rpEWD Qirba tt ~ a , but from its commencing with 2 it is clear that this was not the

first world ; — an important mode of argument , which we recommend to the attention of those who endeavour to reconcile the facts of geology with the Mosaic account of the Creation . The allegorical interpretation given by St . Paul of Hagar and Sarah ( Gal . iv . 22 ) will , no doubt , occur to many readers

as an instance of this mode of interpreting Scripture ; the writings of many of the Pathers , especially Origen , will afford numberless others ; some modern German writers—many of whom are converted Jews , or are pupils of such—who thus allegorise the whole of the earlier histories of the Old Testamenthave

, merely followed the steps of the Kabbalists in this matter , for certainly the later Kabbalists seem to have given up altogether the literal meaning . Thus in the histor 3 r of the Pall we are told that Eve means sensation ; the serpent sensuality ; Cain selfishness , produced by the union of man with with sensation ,