Tetragrammaton

“ Thus the Tetrad is Microprosopus, and the latter is the male-female Chokmah-Binah, the second and third Sephiroth. The Tetragrammaton is the very essence of number seven, in its terrestrial significance. Seven stands between four and nine—the basis and foundation, astrally, of our physical world and man, in the kingdom of Malkuth.
For Christians and believers, this reference to Zechariah and especially to the Epistle of Peter,1517 ought to be conclusive. In the old symbolism, “man,” chiefly the Inner Spiritual Man is called a “stone.” ”

“ Both include psalms which are most naturally understood as referring to the persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes and to the Maccabaean victories, and cannot therefore be separated by a long interval of time. Moreover the scruple as to the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton seems to have arisen earlier, as in the LXX. version of the Pentateuch יהוה‎ is represented by Κύριος. And further, if the Elohistic redaction was due merely to a desire to avoid pronouncing the divine name, why was not the presumably earlier collection of psalms in book I. subjected to a similar redaction? ”

“ The triangle has, in all ages and in all religions, been deemed a symbol of Deity.
The Egyptians, the Greeks, and the other nations of antiquity, considered this figure, with its three sides, as a symbol of the creative energy displayed in the active and passive, or male and female, principles, and their product, the world; the Christians referred it to their dogma of the trinity as a manifestation of the Supreme God; and the Jews and the primitive masons to the three periods of existence included in the signification of the tetragrammaton--the past, the present, and the future. ”

“ The Tetramorph, i.e. the union of the four attributes of the Evangelists, in one figure, is in Greek Art always angelic or winged—a mysterious thing. The Tetramorph in Western Art has in some instances become monstrous, instead of mystic and poetical. In a miniature of the Hortus Deliciarum, we find the new Law, or Christianity, represented as a woman crowned and seated on an animal which, with the body of a horse, has the four heads of the mystic creatures; and of the four feet, one is human; one hoofed, for the ox; one clawed like an eagle’s ”

“ How can you possibly know, you ask, whether all is not a secret process? may not the work of a thousand years take from you the power of recognition, since they return unknown to you? But I am quite certain that such is not the case, for you yourself present Pythagoras to me as (the restored) Euphorbus. ”

“ He understood, therefore, that he had been created, and that there must be a creator of a creature of some sort or other. How happens it, then, that he seemed to himself to be the only being, notwithstanding his uncertainty, and although he had, at any rate, some suspicion of the existence of some creator? ”

“ Oblivion, however, is uniform and identical. Therefore bodily peculiarity, with its manifold varieties, will not become the cause of an effect which is an invariable one. There are likewise, according to Plato’s own testimony, many proofs to show that the soul has a divining faculty, as we have already advanced against Hermogenes. But there is not a man living, who does not himself feel his soul possessed with a presage and augury of some omen, danger, or joy. Now, if the body is not prejudicial to divination, it will not, I suppose, be injurious to memory. ”

“ In the first place, I cannot allow that the soul is capable of a failure of memory; because he has conceded to it so large an amount of divine quality as to put it on a par with God. He makes it unborn, which single attribute I might apply as a sufficient attestation of its perfect divinity; he then adds that the soul is immortal, incorruptible, incorporeal—since he believed God to be the same—invisible, incapable of delineation, uniform, supreme, rational, and intellectual. What more could he attribute to the soul, if he wanted to call it God? ”

“ For Him, accordingly, Hermogenes has reserved nothing which he had not equally conferred on Matter, so that it is not Matter which is compared with God, but rather God who is compared with Matter. Now, inasmuch as those qualities which we claim as peculiar to God—to have always existed, without a beginning, without an end, and to have been the First, and Alone, and the Author of all things—are also compatible to Matter, I want to know what property Matter possesses different and alien from God, and hereby special to itself, by reason of which it is incapable of being compared with God? ”

“ The truth does not desire antiquity, nor does falsehood shun novelty. This notable saying I hold to be plainly false, though ennobled by antiquity. How should that not be false, which depends for its evidence on a falsehood?—How can I help believing Pythagoras to be a deceiver, who practises deceit to win my belief? How will he convince me that, before he was Pythagoras, he had been Æthalides, and Euphorbus, and the fisherman Pyrrhus, and Hermotimus, to make us believe that men live again after they have died, when he actually perjured himself afterwards as Pythagoras. ”

“ In the present question two gods are propounded, the unknown and the known. Concerning the known there is no [11] question. It is plain that He exists, else He would not be known. The dispute is concerning the unknown god. Possibly he has no existence; because, if he had, he would have been known. Now that which, so long as it is unknown, is an object to be questioned, is an uncertainty so long as it remains thus questionable; and all the while it is in this state of uncertainty, it possibly has no existence at all. You have a god who is so far certain, as he is known ”

“ Bull appears to have given an accurate representation of the matter, when he says that, according to our author, the Reason and Spirit of God, being the substance of the Word and Son, were co-eternal with God; but that the titles of Word and Son were not strictly applicable until the former had been emitted to arrange, and the latter begotten to execute, the work of creation. Without, therefore, attempting to explain, much less to defend, all Tertullian’s expressions and reasonings, we are disposed to acquiesce in the statement given by Bp. ”

“ Amidst all this excitement, and amidst all the unruly fighters, Telramund, strongest, fiercest, most unruly of them all, has to open the drama; and to command our respect, to make us feel that it is he who is making the drama move, that it is because all the barbarians are afraid of him that the drama begins to move at all, he cannot possibly look too ferocious and hot-blooded, too strong of limb and tempestuous of temper. ”

“ And these names of the first Tetrad are understood to be the holiest of holy things, and cannot be spoken, but are known by the Son alone. The Father knows also what they are. Those named by Him in silence and faith are: Arrhetos [249] and Sige, Pater and Aletheia. And the total number of this Tetrad is 24 elements. For Arrhetos has 7 elements, Sige 5 [250] and Pater 5 and Aletheia [251] 7. In like manner also the second Tetrad, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia, show forth the same number of elements. And the spoken p. 322. name of the Saviour, that is Jesus, consists of 6 letters ”

“ But a writer who makes the first syllable in “clamor” and the last syllable of gerunds in do short, would scarcely be likely to hesitate about taking similar liberties with a genitive of the so-called fourth declension. It is possible, it is true, to take “vates” and “Spiritus” as in apposition, and render, “Then the seer-Spirit of the Lord begins to utter words inspired,” or “Then the seer-Spirit begins to utter the promptings of the Lord.” ”

“ What, then, by this time means that ancient saying, mentioned by Plato, [1] concerning the reciprocal migration of souls; how they remove hence and go thither, and then return hither and pass through life, and then again depart from this life, and afterwards become alive from the dead? Some will have it that this is a saying of Pythagoras; Albinus supposes it to be a divine announcement, perhaps of the Egyptian Mercury. [2] But there is no divine saying, except of the one true God, by whom the prophets, and the apostles, and Christ Himself declared their grand message. ”

“ For the rest, Tertullian is at bottom a Christian of the old stamp; the theory of any sort of finality in revelation is of no use to him except in its bearing on heresy; for the Spirit continually guides to all truth and works wherever he will. Similarly, his only reason for not being an Encratite is that this mode of life had already been adopted by heretics, and become associated with dualism. ”

“ So also in that other kind of magic, which is supposed to bring up from Hades the souls now resting there, and to exhibit them to public view, there is no other expedient of imposture ever resorted to which operates more powerfully. Of course, why a phantom becomes visible, is because a body is also attached to it; and it is no difficult matter to delude the external vision of a man whose mental eye it is so easy to blind. ”

“ Nay, but this whole world is the one house of all; in which world it is more the heathen, who is found in darkness, whom the grace of God enlightens, than the Christian, who is already in God’s light. [8] Finally, it is one “straying” which is ascribed to the ewe and the drachma: (and this is an evidence in my favour) ; for if the parables had been composed with a view to a Christian sinner, after the loss of his faith, a second loss and restoration of them would have been noted. ”

“ Those who would pursue the subject of Demonology, which Tertullian opens in this admirable treatise, should follow it up in a writer whom Tertullian greatly influenced, in many particulars, even when he presents a remarkable contrast. The Ninth Book of the City of God is devoted to inquiries which throw considerable light on some of the startling sayings of our author as to the heathen systems, and their testimony to the Soul’s Consciousness of God and of the great enemy of God and the inferior spirit of Evil. ”

“ And even this point also must have its own evidence, because it may be quite possible both that he has existence, and yet has not wrought the alleged deliverance. Now in that section of our work which concerned the question of the unknown god, two points were made clear enough—both that he had created nothing: and that he ought to have been a creator, in order to be known by his works ”

“ SALOMÉ
[Going up to the young Syrian.]
Thou wilt do this thing for me, wilt thou not, Narraboth? Thou wilt do this thing for me. I have ever been kind towards thee. Thou wilt do it for me. I would but look at him, this strange prophet. Men have talked so much of him. Often I have heard the Tetrarch talk of him. I think he is afraid of him, the Tetrarch. Art thou, even thou, also afraid of him, Narraboth?
THE YOUNG SYRIAN
I fear him not. Princess; there is no man I fear. But the Tetrarch has formally forbidden that any man should raise the cover of this well. ”

“ Everything which proceeds from something else must needs be second to that from which it proceeds, without being on that account separated. Where, however, there is a second, there must be two; and where there is a third, there must be three. Now the Spirit indeed is third from God and the Son; just as the fruit of the tree is third from the root, or as the stream out of the river is third from the fountain, or as the apex of the ray is third from the sun. ”

“ The immensity of the scale does not interfere with the vision of spirits, nor with such communications as Abraham holds with his lost son in the history of Dives and Lazarus. Here indeed Science comes to our aid, for if the telephone permits such conversations while we are in the flesh, we may at least imagine that the subtile spirit can act in like manner, apart from such contrivances. Now, so far as Tertullian is consistent with himself, I think these explanations may clarify his words and references. The Eastern Theology is less inconsistent and bears the marks alike of Plato and of Origen. ”

“ When we win this fight I’m going to get me a tetrarch, freeze it, and use it for a light in my fishing lodge.”
“Oh no, you’re not,” a barrel-chested earthman, incongruously named Bunny, informed him, “you’re going to contribute it to help spell Mona Darlanan’s name in lights on Broadway.” ”

“ As therefore both the Creator and His creatures [18] must have had knowledge of him, if he had been in existence, so, inasmuch as he had no existence, the demons really knew none other than the Christ of their own God. They do not ask of the strange god, what they recollected they must beg of the Creator—not to be plunged into the Creator’s abyss. ”

“ But it may be further observed, that if the soul is to merit being accounted a god, by reason of all its qualities being equal to the attributes of God, it must then be subject to no passion, and therefore to no loss of memory; for this defect of oblivion is as great an injury to that of which you predicate it, as memory is the glory thereof, which Plato himself deems the very safeguard of the senses and intellectual faculties, and which Cicero has designated the treasury of all the sciences. ”

“ Now, although they have allotted to the whole of these respectively certain parts of the body as their special domiciles, it does not from that circumstance follow that a like distribution will be suitable to the sections of the soul; for even the body itself would not admit of such a partition as they would have the soul undergo. But of the whole number of the limbs one body is made up, so that the arrangement is rather a concretion than a division. ”