The Kabbala, or, The true science of light : an introduction to the philosophy and theosophy of the ancient sages : together with a chapter on light in the vegetable kingdom / by S. Pancoast.

  • Pancoast, S. (Seth), 1823-1889
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Kabbala, or, The true science of light : an introduction to the philosophy and theosophy of the ancient sages : together with a chapter on light in the vegetable kingdom / by S. Pancoast. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

    46/337 page 33
    piece.] Doubtless, our reader readily sees Sophia of the Rosicrucians and Isis of the Egyptian Kabbalists in John's vision of the wondrous woman, and if he read John's narrative of that vision a little farther he will find the vanquished Serpent beneath Isis's feet in the Apocalyptic great red dragon. The figure of Isis clothed with the Sun is one of the most inter- esting of the symbolic pictures of the Kabbala; when a person by self-denial, meditation and devotion has attained to the high privilege of subjective vision, he sees Isis or the Light of the subjective Sun—this is lifting the Veil of Isis. The Celestial Sun, we have seen, is the fourth Se- pJiira ; the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth, called re- spectively Chesed, Strength, Geburah, Beauty, Netsah, Firmness, and Hod, Splendor, represent four of the component colors of Light: Red, Yellow, Green and Blue; the Kabbalists fully understood the colors, their influence in Light and in Nature, their distinctive properties and their action together and separately; this is indicated in a singularly forcible manner in placing the Red and Yellow in the mascu- line or active column and the Green and Blue in the feminine or passive column—recognizing the active, polarizing quality of the heat colors and the passive, decomposing quality of the chemical colors. The non- recognition of the Orange, Indigo and Violet does not indicate that the Kabbalists knew not of them, for we know from other sources that they were thoroughly aware of the seven colors of the chromatic scale, and of the proportion, position and character of each color; but Orange is only a combination of the Red and c
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3