The
ancient Egyptians believed that when equilibrium had been
established, terrestrial and extra-terrestrial life were created by
the fertilizing force of Osiris, the seed and tree of
life, in conjunction with the generating force of
Isis, the fecund power, reflecting the primitive
concept of the Mother Earth Goddess. Monotheistic
beliefs of the Egyptian religion were explained to the illiterate
peasantry through mythological gods illustrating a multitude of
divine attributes. By the second half of the third millennium BCE
the mythological gods had become an instrument of power for the
priesthood in Egypt, which they used to exercise their control over
the peasantry. During that period such a relapse from monotheism to
polytheism was common in the religions of most people inhabiting the
countries in the Mediterranean region, including the Canaanites, the
Greeks, the Romans and even the Israelites.
According
to the most recent chronologies, Akhenaten assumed the throne as
Amenhotep IV and ruled as pharaoh from 1350-1332 BCE,
abolishing the mythological gods and restoring the religion of one
absolute God, Aten, of whom the pharaoh was a prophet.
He was greatly influenced by his wife, a Mitannian princess named
Nefertiti, which means “the lovely one who comes”.
Akhenaten “created every man equal to his brother” and
completed the pylons his father started at Karnak. He also built
four temples to Aten at Thebes and then constructed
his new capital city at Tell el-Amarna about 450 kilometres north of
Thebes, which he called Akhetaten, meaning “the horizon of
Aten”. Akhetaten became the new seat of religious power,
with a peak population of about 20,000. When Akhenaten died his son
assumed power as Tutankhaten, but after the priesthood had regained
power they persuaded him to return to Thebes and change his name to
Tutankhamen to honour Amon, the Spirit of the
Universe,. The city of Akhetaten was completely destroyed, a
long period of anarchy and misery ensued and the deceased Akhenaten
was called the “heretic pharaoh”.
There
is an interesting sidelight to the relationship between the
Egyptians and the Israelites and the influence that the Egyptian
religion had on Judaism. In the eighteenth century it was suggested
that Akhenaten was Moses who led the Exodus of the Israelites from
Egypt, but archaeological investigations have not supported this
theory. Another suggestion is that Moses was a high official in the
court of Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III, but this also seems
unlikely. The date of the Exodus cannot be determined with
certainty, but the suggested periods range from as early as the
Hyksos expulsion from Egypt in about 1570 BCE to as late as
about 1220 BCE at the end of the Merneptah’s reign, neither of
which is considered likely. As there are insufficient historical
records in the Hebrew scriptures, attempts to determine the date
must be made by correlating the Exodus with other events. The
earliest possible date seems to be about 1440 BCE, during the
reign of Amenhotep II, which is not absolutely precluded by
contemporary Egyptian history.
Nevertheless,
all of the available evidence suggests that a date not later than
about 1300 BCE is more likely, soon after Tutankhamen’s death
and possibly at the beginning of the reign of Seti I. On this
basis Moses could have been born during the reign of Akhenaten, when
one of Nefertiti’s six daughters might have found Moses in the
basket among the bulrushes and taken him into the royal household.
Notwithstanding these possibilities, Moses almost certainly was born
during the reign of the Pharaoh Seti I, during the period of the
Pharaoh’s edict that every Hebrew son should be drowned in the River
Nile at birth. There is considerable evidence that Moses received
the classical schooling then provided in the Egyptian courts and he
certainly would have been influenced by the powerful monotheistic
beliefs of Akhenaten, which even then would still have been quite
strong. The best evidence available indicates that the Exodus
commenced during the reign of the Pharaoh Ramses II, probably in
about 1280 BCE. In this context we should not forget that, even
while Moses was on Mount Sinai in communion with the Lord, the
Israelites made a golden calf to go ahead of them on their journey.
At that time calf cults were prevalent in the delta area of Egypt
where the Israelites were enslaved immediately before the
Exodus.
The
Hindu Trimurti, from the Sanskrit meaning “of
three forms”, is an expression of the interrelationship
between three essential manifestations or characteristics of the
Being of God. They are Brahma,
Vishnu and Siva, which embody the three
Gunas, from the Sanskrit meaning strand
or cord. The Gunas are the three
components, qualities or attributes of material nature called
sattva, tamas and rajas,
of which everything mental and physical consists in varying degrees.
Only pure consciousness has none of these attributes.
Brahma embodies rajas, the passion that
creates; Vishnu embodies sattva, the
goodness that maintains balance; and Siva embodies
tamas, the fire that destroys. Thus the
Trimurti is an expression of the creative,
preservative and destructive powers that are three of the
fundamental attributes of the Being of God.
Symbolically,
the Trimurti is represented by three concentric
equilateral triangles, in the centre of which is the sacred
trilateral name Aum. This trilateral Name of
God, which is Nam in Hindi and Punjabi, is a
formula that Hindus and Sikhs use in an endeavour to encapsulate
divine reality. The formula is repetitively chanted in the three
distinct syllables of Aum that respectively point to
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva,
which are followed by a silence to express the attainment of
Brahman, a Sanskrit word literally meaning
growth or expansion. This mystical name
is represented by a symbol of three concentric triangles, of which
the innermost triangle represents Brahma,
Vishnu and Siva; the middle represents
Creation, Preservation and
Destruction; and the outermost represents the three
fundamental elements Earth, Water and
Air. In the Adi Granth, the first volume
of the Sikh scriptures, we are told that salvation does not depend
upon caste, ritual or asceticism, but upon the constant meditation
of God’s name and the immersion of oneself in God’s
being:
Lord,
mighty River, all knowing, all seeing,
And
I like a little fish in your great waters,
How
shall I sound your depths?
How
shall I reach your shores?
Wherever
I go, I see you only,
And
snatched out of your waters I die of separation.
To
conclude our discussion on ancient concepts of the threefold essence
of God, it would be appropriate to mention briefly the
San-I in Taoism and the Trikaya in
Buddhism. San-I is Chinese for “the three
ones” and refers to the threefold action of the one
Tao or Way. This is the central concept
of Taoism, the philosophical and religious system of Lao-tzu, the
old master and founding figure of Taoism who said:
“Tao gave birth to one, one gave birth to two, two gave birth
to three, three gave birth to all the myriad things.” The
creative three may be regarded as the guardians of life and energy
and may be personified as T’ai-I who is the
Supreme One, Ti-I who is the
Heavenly One and as T’ien-I who is the
Earthly One. Alternatively they may be regarded as
representing shen as the mind,
ch’I as vitality and ching
as the essence. The Trikaya, from the
Sanskrit meaning “three bodies”, is a doctrine of
Mahayana Buddhism. The doctrine says that the Buddha
manifests himself in three bodies, modes or dimensions and that in
their essential nature, or “first body”, all
Buddhas are identical with the ultimate
truth or absolute reality. The doctrine also
says that Buddhas have the power to manifest
themselves in celestial form, which is their “second
body”. It is further held that Buddhas can
project themselves into the world of suffering beings and by their
boundless compassion provide what is most useful and necessary to
relieve suffering.
The
background to the development of the Christian Trinity
has already been mentioned in relation to the Hebrew Scriptures, but
some further explanation would be appropriate. The Christian
Trinity is an attempt to understand and explain the
relationship between God and the created or manifest world, more or
less in the fashion of the Hindu Trimurti, the
San-I in Taoism and the Trikaya in
Buddhism, though perhaps with more complexity. The
Trinity affirms the belief that there is only the one
God, but that God actually exists in three persons, the Father, the
Son and the Holy Ghost. The origins of this belief can be found in
various passages from the Hebrew Scriptures, especially Isaiah 6:3
that refers to the Lord sitting upon a throne:
“And
one cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of
hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
This
belief is founded on the Hebrew Scriptures in the Old Testament and
confirmed in New Testament passages such as Matthew 28:19-20, when
Jesus spoke to his disciples in the mountains after the
crucifixion:
“Go
ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to
observe all things I have commanded you . . .”
The
doctrine of the Christian Trinity has not always been
the same. During the first three centuries of Christian thought only
the Father and the Son were defined as
being coequal and coeternal. After the Council of Nicaea in 325 the
Cappodacian Fathers opposed Arianism, which held that the Son of God
was a creature and not truly God. The Cappodacian Fathers were three
Christian theologians all born in Cappodacia, now in modern Turkey,
who were influential in the defeat of Arianism at the Council of
Constantinople in 381, when they proposed the doctrine of one
Being in three Persons. This doctrine of
the Trinity was canonised by the Council of
Constantinople and has remained the orthodox formulation ever since.
A well-known monogram associated with the Trinity is
IHS, originally an abbreviation for Jesus and
comprising the first three letters of the name in Greek, Iota
eta sigma omicron ipsilon sigma, in which the
H is the uncial or rounded form of eta.
Later IHS was said to represent the initial letters of
the Latin words Iesus Hominum Salvator, signifying
Jesus, saviour of men. Another Christian monogram is
IHSV, often confused with the former. This monogram
comprises the initial letters of the Latin words In Hoc Signo
Vinces, meaning “In this sign thou shalt
conquer”, which refers to the vision the emperor
Constantine had of a cross in the sky. Finally we should mention
INRI, which in some respects may be regarded as a
parallel of the Hebrew Tetragrammaton that will be
discussed later. The monogram INRI comprises the
initial letters of the Latin words Iesus Nazarenus Rex
Iudaeorum, the inscription on the cross of Jesus meaning
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. This inscription
on the cross was also written in Greek and Hebrew.
With
regard to Islamic beliefs it is important to understand that,
although Islam is founded on the same traditions and truths as
Judaism and Christianity, the Islamic faith maintains that there can
be no subdivision of God into separate or competing aspects or
beings. This is a conviction that derives from the overwhelming
belief acquired by Muhammad during his long periods of isolation and
prayer in a cave on Mount Hira near Mecca, which led Muhammad to
postulate that if God is indeed God, then there can only be what God
is, that is the One who is the source of all creation
and the disposer of all events and lives within it. This absolute
unity of God is called the tawhid, which is derived
from the Arabic at-tawhid meaning “the
Unity”, through the verbal noun wahhada
meaning “to make one”. This explains why the unitarian
beliefs of Islam are in conflict with the beliefs of the Hindu
Trimurti and the Christian Trinity. The
Islamic belief in tawhid, not only implies that God is
required to be believed to be One, but also implies
that God’s unity must be affirmed in strenuous negation of all other
beliefs. This emphasis on the Oneness of God, from
whom all creation and life is derived, was the core element of
Muhammad’s mission.
The
Muslim rosary, or subha, consists of a
yad or pointer symbolizing the
“unity of God”, together with either ninety-nine beads
or thirty-three beads to be repeated three times, representing the
“ninety-nine beautiful names of God”. These are the
names of Allah in Islam, which are mostly derived from passages in
the Koran. The lists vary and are divided into two categories, those
of al-dhat or essence and those of
al-sifat or quality. The names are
further categorized as those of mercy and those of majesty or
judgment. According to Muslim tradition, that is the
hadith from the Arabic meaning
narrative, anyone who repeats all the names of God
will be assured of paradise. Typical names of God in Islam include
Allah the Absolute, Allah the Knower of All Things, Allah the Light
of Heaven and Earth, Allah the Mighty, Allah the Most Conclusive of
all Judges. Finally, the two probably most frequently used are Allah
the Beneficent and Allah the Merciful, because they introduce the
Sûrahs in the Koran.
Many
of the Hebrew names of God, of which there are twenty-six or more,
have a prominent place in the teachings of freemasonry. The Hebrew
names of God comprise two broad groups. One group includes the basic
or personal names of God and the other includes names intended to
define some of God’s attributes and characteristics.
El is the primitive generic word for God in the
Semitic languages, from which the Aramaic Elah was
derived. The Arabic Ilah usually written as
Allah in English, as well as the Akkadian
Ilu, also were direct derivatives. El
was the personal name of the supreme God of the Canaanite pantheon,
the “high God” whose son was Baal. Both
El and Baal are referred to in the
earliest Ugaritic texts of Ras Shamra, an ancient city of the Middle
East. The Elohim, the plural noun for El
or Eloh the “Lofty One”, were the early
Gods of Canaan brought in from Mesopotamia, “the land between
the rivers”. El, which means
mighty, strong and
prominent, became a Canaanite proper noun as well as
signifying a god in the widest possible sense. In Hebrew the title
El or Yod Ayin Lamedh is used to signify
a god in the widest sense, while the title Baal or
He Beth Ayin Lamedh means master,
possessor or husband.
El
was worshipped by the descendents of Jacob in the early years of
their settlement in Canaan and it became one of the most prominent
names for the God of Israel. As well as being a personal name of
God, El was also revered by the Israelites for his
conceived relationship to places and for the many powers he was
perceived to possess. In this context el elohe Israel
was the altar that Jacob erected when he first settled near Shechem,
in Canaan. That title, which signified “God, the God of
Israel,” became one of the important names of
God to the Israelites. There are many other associated names of God,
but one of the best known probably is El Shaddai,
which means God almighty. Others important names
include El Elyon, meaning God most high;
El ‘Olam meaning the enduring God; and
El Berit meaning the God of the
covenant. The name El also appears as
Elohim, often being used as an emphatic plural to
reinforce the creative and governing power of God and to emphasise
the omnipotence and sovereignty of God. The name
Elohim is frequently translated as Almighty
God, the name given to the Son and Messiah
promised in Isaiah 9:6-7. Wider aspects concerning the adoption of
El as the name of God by the Israelites, as well as
its relationship with what probably has become the most widely known
Hebrew name of God, are discussed in some detail in relation to the
Ineffable Name.
The
Ineffable Name, also called the
Tetragrammaton, was a name of God that developed as
one of the utmost importance to the Israelites in later times. The
Tetragrammaton, from the Greek words
tetra meaning four and
gramma meaning letter, was a mystic
symbol or holy monogram that Abraham, the ancestor of the Hebrew
nation and its first patriarch, introduced from Mesopotamia. Among
the people in the lands of the Fertile Crescent, the
four characters of their mystic symbol represented the tetrad or
Heavenly Family comprising the Father,
Mother, Son and Daughter,
respectively El, Ashtoreth,
Ba’al and Anath. In his book entitled
The Hebrew Goddess Raphael Patai, an eminent Semitic
scholar, says the four consonants Yod He Waw He that
form the Ineffable Name represent the four
members of that Heavenly Family in the order set out
above. The four consonants comprising the
Tetragrammaton eventually became an acronym that
formed the Hebrew stem of the title that the Talmudists assigned to
the One God, which they called the Shem
Hamphorasch or Separated Name. Because the
Israelites were not permitted to pronounce the Ineffable
Name aloud, Adonai or Yod Yod or
some other name was substituted. The name Jehovah is
not only regarded as having predominantly male characteristics, but
also represents a vengeful god typified by the exhortation in Exodus
21:23-25, which says:
“And
if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for
eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for
burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
Before
considering the derivation and structure of the Ineffable
Name and some of the characteristics attributed to it, a
review of events concerning the female components of the heavenly
tetrad would be appropriate. By the time the Exodus from Egypt had
begun under the leadership of Moses the female duo in the heavenly
tetrad, Ashtoreth and Anath respectively
the wife and daughter of Jehovah, was called the
Shekinah. The title is a derivative of Shin Kaph
Nun, which is a Hebrew word of Chaldean origin meaning
to rest, to abide or to
dwell. The Shekinah was the glory or presence
of God “dwelling” in the midst of the Israelites. The
Shekinah originally was said to dwell in the
Holy of Holies in the tabernacle that Moses erected
after he had received the Lord’s command on Mount Sinai. We are told
in Exodus 40:34-35 that when Moses had finished and furnished the
tabernacle:
“Then
a cloud covered the tent of the congregation and the glory of the
Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the
tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon and the
glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”
Later
the Shekinah was said to dwell in the Holy of
Holies of the temple that king Solomon built in Jerusalem,
which is described as a temple of Ashoreth. The
Shekinah was regarded as the feminine portrayal of the
Holy Spirit and the personification of
Wisdom, compensating for all vengeful actions of
Jehovah. This aspect of the Shekinah is
extolled in Proverbs 8, which says:
“Doth
not wisdom cry? and understanding put forth her voice? . . . Unto you, O men, I call; and
my voice is to the sons of man. O ye simple, understand wisdom: and
ye fools, be ye of an understanding heart. . . . The fear of the Lord is to
hate evil: pride and arrogancy and the evil way . . . I was set up from
everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. . . . When he prepared the
heavens, I was there: when he set a compass on the face of the
depth: . . . When he established the
clouds above: . . . Hear my instruction and be
wise and refuse it not.
. . . Blessed is the man that
heareth me, . . . For those who findeth me
findeth life and obtain favour of the Lord. But he that sinneth
against me wrongeth his own soul; all they that hate me love
death.”
With
regard to the Tetragrammaton, the unpointed Hebrew
characters usually are written in English as JHVH,
which is transcribed as Jehovah. However, the more
correct transliteration is YHWH, which is transcribed
as Yahweh. The name is derived from the Hebrew verb
havah meaning to be or
being, which is very similar to the verb
chavah meaning to live or
life, in which a heth replaces the first
he in havah. In the Bible
Jehovah is usually translated as
LORD, to distinguish it from the substitute
word Adonia, which is also used quite frequently. The
name Jehovah first appears in Genesis 2:4 as
Jehovah-Elohim and it is used in that form to the end
of the third chapter, except in the story of the temptation where
only Elohim is used. The reason for this
differentiation appears to be of a spiritual nature. Thereafter
either or both names are used, sometimes alone and sometimes
together in a sentence.
The
first syllable of the Ineffable Name is
Jah, which is a name of God often found in poetry, as
in Psalm 68:4 where we read “extol him that rideth upon the
heavens by his name JAH”. The substitute name
Adonai also is used as a common name, variously
translated as master, sir and
lord, frequently used in the Bible to signify one or
another of these titles, though most commonly meaning
master. Nor should we overlook the passage in Exodus
3:13, when God revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush saying
‘ehyeh ‘aser ‘ehyeh, which signifies “I AM THAT
I AM”. There also is Jehovah-tsidkenu, another
descriptive Hebrew name of God meaning “Jehovah our
righteousness”, which is the name used in Jeremiah 23:5-6 to
foretell the coming of the Messiah. All of these and several other
names used in the Hebrew Scriptures are explained in great detail in
a book entitled Names of God by Nathan J. Stone.
The
Cabalists revere the Ineffable Name and have analysed
its meanings in several ways. Cabala or Qoph Beth
Lamedh, from the Chaldaic root meaning
to receive and Kabala or Kaph Beth
Lamedh, from the Arabic Qabala, meaning
to twist, are alternative names used in reference to
an esoteric Jewish traditional history of light and knowledge that
sets out to explain the ancient Sumerian “Table of
Destiny”, also called “The Book of Raziel”.
The Cabala or Kabala must not be confused with the Kabbalah, a
comparatively modern interpretation of the Hebrew texts that is
based almost entirely on material values instead of setting out
philosophical and mystical explanations of the texts in the manner
adopted in the original treatises. The Cabala examines many complex
subjects, including a detailed consideration of various esoteric
interpretations of the Tetragrammaton. The English
transliteration of the Tetragrammaton is equivalent to
IHOH which, when read backwards and subdivided, forms
the words Ho and Hi. This is considered
by the Cabalists to be a very important transposition. The Hebrew
words Ho and Hi respectively signify
He and She, therefore mystically
denoting both the male and the female aspects of the Creator,
elsewhere represented in freemasonry by the point within a
circle. The dual gender of the Creator has permeated all
major religious systems since ancient times. All Hebrew names of God
have one or more meanings and Ho-Hi is no exception,
because as well as denoting the Male and Female
Principle it also signifies an important attribute and
another vital principle:
The
Author of Time and the Arbiter of the Tide of Events; and
The
Eternal and Absolute Principle of Creation and
Destruction.
It
is important to realise that the Names of God in
Hebrew were almost entirely derived from the names of deities used
by the various tribes and nationalities that lived in the
Golden Crescent to the east of the Mediterranean Sea
before the Israelites lived in Egypt. It also is important not to
overlook the significant influence that the Egyptian culture had on
the Hebrew culture during their sojourn of more than 400 years in
Egypt prior to the Exodus. All of these aspects are examined in
great detail by Laurence Gardner in his informative book
Genesis of the Grail Kings, subtitled The
Pendragon Legacy of Adam and Eve, which throws a great deal
of light on many of the interpretations that have been discussed in
this chapter.
Comparisons
It
is interesting to compare the similarity in concept between the
Mesopotamian tetrad or Heavenly Family of
Father, Mother, Son and
Daughter, respectively El,
Ashtoreth, Ba’al and
Anath, with the triad of the Egyptians comprising
Osiris the Father, Isis
the Mother and Horus the
Son. However, the Hindu Trimurti of
Brahma, Vishnu and Siva is
quite different, because it projects three essential manifestations
of the Being of God that are all male. In that regard
the Hindu Trimurti is more akin to the comparatively
recent Christian Trinity of Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, which was only
established as a doctrine by the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.
Likewise the San-I or “the three ones”
in Taoism and the Trikaya or “three
bodies” in Buddhism are very similar in concept to the
three-fold aspects of the deity that are embodied in the Hindu
Trimurti and the Christian Trinity. All
of those concepts, however, are significantly different from the
perception of God as an absolute and indivisible unity, which is
stressed in the Islamic belief in tawhid that emphasis
the “Oneness of God”, as repeatedly proclaimed by the
muezzin when calling Moslems to prayer.
