The Law, the Letters and the Book of Nature

But lest anyone deny what we take for granted—Moses’s philosophy—I shall demonstrate from his own books, through both reasoning and his practice, that he was a natural magician.

First, it is most absurd, and therefore improbable, that someone wholly unskilled in God’s and Nature’s secrets should write about creation. Both must necessarily be known before undertaking such a work. But Moses did write about it; therefore the conclusion follows. Now I ask what he wrote: truth or a lie? If truth, how dare you deny his knowledge? If a lie—which God forbid—why believe him? Perhaps you will tell me he wrote only in general terms. I could reply that Aristotle

did no otherwise. But do you seriously think he knew no more than he wrote? Nothing you say on this point is beyond our refutation, for in Genesis he reveals many particulars, especially secrets closely related to this art. For example, he revealed humanity’s mine or source: the substance from which humanity and its fellow creatures were made. This is the philosophers’ stone’s first matter. Moses calls it sometimes water, sometimes earth. In one place I read: “God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life, and birds that may fly above the earth in the open firmament.” Elsewhere, however: “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air.” The latter text says God made every bird from the ground; the former says he made them from water. Aristotle and his Organon can never reconcile these places; a little skill in magic, however, will make them kiss and be friends without a love potion. This substance is therefore both earth and water, although neither in its ordinary constitution. It is a thick water and a subtle earth: plainly, a

slimy, spermatic, viscous mass impregnated with every heavenly and earthly power. The philosophers call it water and no water, earth and no earth. Why may Moses not speak as they do, or they write as Moses did? This is the true Damascene earth from which God made humanity. You who wish to be chemists, do not try to be wiser than God: use in your art the subject God himself uses in Nature. He is the best workman and knows the matter most suitable for his work. Whoever would imitate his effect must first imitate his subject. Do not talk, then, of flints and antimony: they are the poet’s pin dust and eggshells. Seek this earth, this water. Moses wrote more to this purpose. I could cite many further magical and mystical passages, but that would be too open, and I must refrain. I shall now speak of his practice, which no distinction or logical quibble can evade. Only experience can refute this argument, which runs thus: “Moses took the calf they had made, burnt it in the fire, ground it to powder, scattered it upon the water and made the children of Israel drink it.” Here was a strange kind of spice, certainly, and an art as strange as the

spice itself. This calf was pure gold, the Israelites having contributed their earrings to its construction. I should gladly know how a body so solid and heavy as gold can become a powder light enough to be sprinkled upon water’s surface and then drunk. Surely this was potable gold. Moses could never have brought the calf to this condition had he not ploughed with our heifer. But enough of this. If anyone thinks he did it with common fire, let him do likewise; once he has succeeded, he may sell his powder to the apothecaries. If I dwelt here upon the Mosaic ceremonial law, its many venerable shadows and their meanings, I might lose myself in a wilderness of divine and natural mysteries. That whole system is one vast screen, a majestic shade drawn over two worlds, visible and invisible. But these matters require a higher contemplation than our present discussion allows. I merely inform the reader that the law has both shell and kernel: the letter speaks, but the Spirit interprets. Gregory Nazianzen agrees, making a twofold law: [New translation of the Greek:] “of the letter” and “of the Spirit”; [Vaughan’s English:] one literal, the other spiritual. Elsewhere he mentions

[New translation of the Greek:] “the manifest part of the law” and “the concealed part”; [Vaughan’s English:] the law’s hidden and manifest parts. The manifest part, he says, was appointed [New translation of the Greek:] “for the many who lie below”; [Vaughan’s English:] for the many whose thoughts were fixed here below. The hidden part was appointed [New translation of the Greek:] “for the few who are borne upwards”; [Vaughan’s English:] for the few whose minds aspired upwards towards heavenly things. So that the given law might benefit people in both its spiritual and literal parts, the lawgiver established the Sanhedrin, a council of seventy elders upon whom he poured his Spirit, enabling them to discern, as Esdras did, the deep things of the night—in plain terms, the hidden things of his law. From these elders, I believe, Kabbalah originated. They imparted their knowledge orally to their successors, and hence the science was called Kabbalah, meaning reception. This continued while Israel held together. But when its structure began to fall apart and its house’s ruin became desperate, Esdras—an incomparable prophet, notwithstanding the stigma of “Apocrypha”—wrote upon tablets of boxwood the law which God himself had once written on stone tablets. As for its more secret, mysterious part, it was written at the same time in seventy secret books, corresponding to the number of elders

in whose hearts it had once been written.

This was the first time Spirit married letter. These sacred mysteries had not previously been entrusted to perishable volumes, but to the soul’s eternal tablets. Perhaps, however, some blind generation will believe nothing except what it can immediately see and therefore deny that Esdras composed such books. Against these owls—although an unequal match—I shall set Pico’s honour. He affirms that in his time he encountered Esdras’s secret books and bought them at a great price. That was not all: Eugenius, bishop of Rome, ordered their translation; but when he died, the translators too fell asleep. Something may indeed be objected here concerning Kabbalah, an art of which I do not approve. Neither do I condemn it before understanding it, as our opponents condemn magic: I have spent years investigating and contemplating it. Why, then, propose as truth to others what I consider error myself? I answer that I condemn not true Kabbalah but the inventions of scattered, wandering rabbis, whose brains contained more distraction than their fortunes. It is this thirteenth tribe I take the satirist to mean

when he promises so liberally:

[New translation of the Latin:] “Whatever dreams you wish, the Jews will sell.” These people, I say, produced an upstart, bastard Kabbalah consisting wholly of alphabetic tricks. It always ends in the letter where it began, and its vanities have grown into volumes. The more ancient natural traditions of Kabbalah I embrace as sacred truths. Yet those truths were unknown to most rabbis I have seen, even Rambam himself—I mean Rabbi Moses the Egyptian—whom the Jews have magnified with their famous hyperbole: [New translation of the Latin:] “From Moses to Moses, none arose like Moses.”

To deal frankly with my readers, the Kabbalah I admit has two parts: [New translation of the Greek:] “what is spoken” and “what is”; [Vaughan’s English:] name and thing. The former is merely symbolic in relation to the latter, serving as shadow to substance. I shall give examples. Literal Kabbalah, a veil cast over natural Kabbalah’s secrets, has three principles, commonly called the three mothers. In the masculine constitution the Jews call them Emes; in the feminine, Asam. They are aleph; mem; and shin. I shall now show how natural Kabbalah explains the