"Jehovah" in Zohar.

A charming allegory is found in the Zohar, one which unveils better than anything ever did the true character of Jehovah or YHVH in the primitive conception of the Hebrew Kabalists. It is now found in the philosophy of I’bn Gebirol’s Kabbalah, translated by Isaac Myer. “In the introduction written by R’Hez’quee-yah, which is very old,” says our author, “and forms part of our Brody edition of the Zohar (I, 5b. sq.) is an account of a journey taken by R. El’azar, son of R. Shim-on b. Io’hai, and Rabbi Abbah.” They met a man with a heavy burden and asked his name; but he refused to give it and proceeded to explain to them Thorah Vol. 1, Page 394 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. (Law). “They asked: ‘Who caused thee thus to walk and carry such a heavy load?’ He answered: ‘The letter , (Yod, which = 10, and is the symbolical letter of Kether and the essence and germ of the Holy name YHVH) . . . . They said to him: ‘If thou wilt tell us the name of thy father, we will kiss the dust of thy feet.’ He replied: ‘As to my father, he had his dwelling in the Great Sea, and was a fish therein’ (like Vishnu and Dagon or Oannes), ‘which (first) destroyed the great sea’ . . . . . and he was great and mighty and ‘Ancient of Days,’ until he swallowed all the other fishes in the (Great) Sea . . . R. El’azar listened and said to him: ‘Thou art the Son of the Holy Flame, thou art the Son of Rab Ham — ’nun-ah Sabah [the old: the fish in Aramaic or Chaldee is nun (noon)] thou art the Son of the Light of the Thorah,” (Dharma) etc. Then the author explains that the feminine Sephiroth, Binah, is termed by the Kabalist the great sea: therefore Binah, whose divine names are Jehovah, Yah, and Elohim, is simply the Chaldean Tiamat, the female power, the Thalatth of Berosus, who presides over the Chaos, and was made out later by Christian theology to be the serpent and the Devil. She-He (Yah-hovah) is the supernal (Heh, and Eve). This Yah-hovah then or Jehovah, is identical with our Chaos — Father, Mother, Son, — on the material plane and in the purely physical World. Demon and Deus at one and the same time; the sun and moon, good and evil, God and Demon.