Page images
PDF
EPUB

seems whispering of the day about to dawn and in the East a faint streak of light is suggested. One who has experienced this awakening of nature and has let that experience speak to his Soul, knows better than any words can tell it the meaning of number 15. This is a very important number, for it symbolizes that man's darkest night is now behind him, the vague stirrings within him belonging to the new day. It is also man standing in the balance, with all the forces of the Christ like the rising Sun quickening him and with the promise of his highest and grandest achievements vaguely foreshadowed in his mind. It symbolizes a phase of development all must pass through as individuals and which the Race as a whole is today facing.

Like all things that are divine, number 15 is a trinity; God, man and the devil; or God the Light trying to manifest, man with his back to the Light and the devil or black shadow cast by man which has become all the more noticeable because of the brilliancy of the Light behind him. It is man in a threefold aspect, divine within but not yet divine without, although being quickened and unfolded by the Divine Fire of the Christforce or eternal motion and creative energy ever piercing the density of man's darkness and disobedience and through karmic readjustment redeeming him. At this step he is played upon by the dual aspects good and evil, for just as the devil is an embodiment of anarchy, evil and injustice, so the Lord is an embodiment of law, order and justice.

Another aspect of 15 is as 5+5+5 or man with his five senses functioning in the 3 worlds, which can be understood, balanced and mastered only as he permits these three fives, or his five senses in the 3 worlds, to be permeated by the Christ-force (6) and permit it to include all (5+5+5=15=6) and open his eyes to the realities of the 3 worlds. According to the numbering of the planets revealed to John Hayden and recorded in his Holy Guide, "It will be seen that an extension of these numbers according to their cosmic order yields the glyph of the divine number 15, which, as expressing the name

of Jah, the Hebrews replace in their enumeration by the 9 and 6... Then the sum of the five planetary numbers, plus half the value of Sun and Moon together equals positive 35, and negative 34. The sum of those is 69=15.”1

Among the Hebrews 15 was looked upon as a divine number since it expressed the name Jah, and as they were forbidden either to speak or represent this sacred word, they always expressed 15, which they called the unmentionable number, by 9 and 6, at least this is the reason generally given for thus expressing 15. But we think it far more likely that 9 and 6 were used to express more fully the true meaning of 15. For as we have pointed out, 9 is the Number of Initiation, and 6 is the Number of the Christ Principle. It will be noted that number 6 lacks just one trinity of becoming 9. In other words, number 6 is two interlaced triangles, man and nature, while 9 adds one more, i. e., the trinity of God. Hence to gather the full significance of the Hebraic meaning attached to 15 we must take this fact into consideration; at 15 man has not yet developed the God in him, hence is not yet ready for Initiation, but the Christ is striving to prepare him for it. He has attained his supremacy in the two worlds, mental and natural, but has not yet learned to govern them by the divine God-power. He is awakening from his sleep and is beholding appalled that which in his ignorance he has created. He realizes that the appalling perversion of both nature and man himself has been his own work. Through the suffering and terrible consequences he endures he learns his power and determines to turn around and add Good, or the third triangle, to his creation.

This idea of the 3X5 is expressed in the Book of Enoch in regard to the Moon. "When the Moon rises, it appears in heaven; and the half of the seventh portion of light is all which is in it. In 14 days the whole of its light is completed. By 3 quintuples (3X5) light is put into it, until in 15 days

1 The Kabala of Numbers, Sepharial, 15.

its light is completed, according to the signs of the year; it has 3 quintuples." Of course this is both mystical and symbolical language yet if we take the Moon to mean intuition and personality and the word "quintuple" meaning as it does fivefold or of 5 parts, at once we see that the idea sought to be conveyed is that the Light of Intuition illumines his personality in 3x5 parts. The first although perfect is but a seventh portion, i. e., the intuition of the childhood of the Race the recognition of oneness with nature being very marked in all primitive Races. The second part is his power intuitively to create through his own Will and thought either good or evil. The third part is when his intuition begins to awaken the personality to its higher God-like possibilities; for the Moon being full in 15 days is nevertheless but a reflection of the light of the Sun. Thus the personality is completely filled with the Light of the Spiritual Sun only when it has reached the point of unfoldment symbolized by number 15.

Again 1+2+3+4+5=15 and if we take the digits composing 15 and arrange them in a magic square, they can be made to add up to 15 in 15 or more different ways. This indicates that 15 represents not individual man, but humanity. It also shows that no matter what the differences among men, either of race, education or condition, yet all are brothers and are common heirs to the karmic conditions produced by the wrong use of their power. These conditions can be squared only when all find their places in the magic square of 15. It also indicates, firstly, that there is a great magical Arcanum, the heritage of the Race, now black because besmirched by man's ignorance and disobedience, yet through the united efforts of humanity, capable of being "washed in the blood of the Lamb" (the life-force or the Christos-6); and, secondly, that the accomplishing of this task is the Great Work given to all, hence that all are united in one mighty chain. This chain can bind man to misery, suffering and degradation or it can' unite him in one strong abiding band of brotherhood. And as a chain is no stronger than its weakest

link, so individual man can never attain perfect freedom alone. Hence we might say that the slogan of 15 is "one for all, and all for one."

The Lamb of God is associated with Aries, the first sign of the zodiac. It has been slain from the foundation of the world, i. e., not permitted to function as the river of lifeforce of the Race. The tenth sign (Capricorn) which is the cradle of the Christ, has been degraded and worshipped as the devil under the name of Baphomet or the Goat of the Mendes (the river of astral forces) and it is 15 that must turn both these rivers back into their true beds.2

Again, 15×15=225 and 2+2+5=9. Thus when man as an individual reaches 15 and then through his awakened powers multiplies himself in humanity (or loses the sense of separateness), the entire Race will stand facing 15, confronted with the possibility of the Initiation which shall confer upon it the god-like possibilities of mastery as a Race. Then the whole Race, rather than an individual here and there as at present, will stand before the judgment seat of God or before the highest judgment of Good, when Good alone shall be the measure of a man and of a Race. Only when the majority stands for righteousness will we enter the Golden Age. Then the City of Confusion shall become the City of the New Jerusalem, the City of Peace, and all mankind shall walk its golden streets and there shall be no more night, because man has turned to the Christ so that his own dark shadow no longer obstructs the Light of the Sun of Righteousness; for 15 has reached its final adjustment.

The terrible carnage of war, and other karmic adjustments which are today overwhelming the world, is not the final Initiation, for just as man must face many minor Initiations on his Path of Attainment ere he reaches the Portal of Mastery, so the Race must face minor readjustments (15) at the end of every great period or sub-race. Ere mankind can

[blocks in formation]

enter into a new day the darkness of the past night must be dissipated. Ere the world can begin a new era, all of evil that was created in the past era must be wiped out or ground fine in the Mills of the Gods and its substance made into Good (experience). And since man has refused to be nourished by the Blood of the Lamb as the vital life of the Christ, but has lived in his own physical sphere where the physical blood is the only idea he has of life-force-and he has even materialized the grand symbol of the blood of Jesus the Great Avatar, the Son of God-he must learn his lesson through the literal shedding of blood. Hence it is this literal physical blood that must be poured out to wash away the sins (or misunderstandings) of the past and prepare for the new day. But it is not the blood of the Son of God, but the blood of his brother man, for only through such experience can he learn the mystical interpretation of "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Through this shedding of man's blood, man as a whole is slowly learning that physical blood is after all but the life of the physical body, and that there is a life-force (blood) which still animates his inner bodies; that in consciousness he is just as vitally alive, or even more so, after every drop of the physical blood has been drained from his body on the battle-field and the physical body torn to pieces. Moreover, he has learned that this physical, shedding of blood has not washed away the sins of the world, for sin still exists in the Astral World in all its hideousness and constantly precipitates itself into the physical world. Hence, the Blood of the Christ that taketh away the sins of the world and also washes clean the astral spheres is the mystical life-force of the Christ, of which each Soul must indeed partake, and not the physical blood of the man Jesus.

« PreviousContinue »