A Wisdom Archive on Jews

Introduction and links to related topics

Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.


Sadducees - Sadducees. A sect, the followers of one Zadok, a disciple of Anti-gonus Saccho. They are accused of having denied the immortality of the (personal) soul and that of the resurrection of the (physical and personal) body.

Even so do the Theosophists; though they deny neither the immortality of the Ego nor the resurrection of all its numerous and successive lives, which survive in the memory of the Ego. But together with the Sadducees - a sect of learned philosophers who were to all the other Jews that which the polished and learned Gnostics were to the rest of the Greeks during the early centuries of our era - we certainly deny the immortality of the animal soul and the resurrection of the physical body.

The Sadducees were the scientists and the learned men of Jerusalem, and held the highest offices, such as of high priests and judges, while the Pharisees were almost from first to last the Pecksniffs of Judea.

Dayyanishi - Dayyan''ishi (Hebrew) (from dayyan judge, advocate + ishi my man, my self, everybody)

Judge or advocate of all. "The god worshipped by the Jews along with other Semites, as the ''Ruler of men''; Dionysos -- the Sun; whence Jehovah-Nissi, or Iao-Nisi, the same as Dio-nysos or Jove of Nyssa . . ." (TG 97).

Bel Shemesh - Bel Shemesh (Hebrew) Lord of the sun; a title also given to the moon, during the time when the Jews worshiped the moon as a male and when the sun was considered to be a female divinity. Later the title was applied to the sun (likewise to Jehovah), and then Ashtoreth became queen of the heaven or the moon.

See also ASHTORETH; SHAMASH

Bela-shemesh - Bela-Shemesh (Chald. Heb.). "The Lord of the Sun", the name of the Moon during that period when the Jews became in turn solar and lunar worshippers, and when the Moon was a male, and the Sun a female deity. This period embraced the time between the allegorical expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden down to the no less allegorical Noachian flood. (See Secret Doctrine, I. 397.)

Christos - (Greek: "anointed"). This is a direct translation of the Hebrew meshiach, "annointed, "which designates a king or venerated person. The Jews were looking for such a "king" who would lead them out of servitude. The practice of smearing kings and priests with fat, oil and blood goes far back into deepest Africa, where conquering warriors painted themselves with blood and witch-doctors ritually smeared themselves with semen.

Urim - Urim (Hebrew) [plural ''ur light, flame, revelation, illumination from the verbal root ''arar to curse]

Lights; the ''urim and tummim [plural of tom fullness, wholeness, complete truth]

of the Hebrews are said to have been placed in the breastplate of judgment of the high priest (Ex 28:30), the guilt or innocence of a person being judged by means of the urim and thummim. Some writers believe them to have been small tablets of wood or of bone.

"The ''Urim and Thummim'' originated in Egypt, and symbolized the Two Truths, the two figures of Ra and Thmei being engraved on the breastplate of the Hierophant and worn by him during the initiation ceremonies. Diodorus adds that this necklace of gold and precious stones was worn by the High Priest when delivering judgment. . . . Philo Judaeus affirms that Urim and Thummim were ''the two small images of Revelation and Truth, put between the double folds of the breastplate,'' and passes over the latter, with its twelve stones typifying the twelve signs of the Zodiac, without explanation" (TG 355-6).

The breastplate and the physical appurtenances were but emblems, much as a ring worn on the finger is an emblem of cycling time re-entering itself, of eternity, and therefore of utter stability, which is equivalent to abstract truth and reality. These physical appurtenances are of small moment, quite as much so as was the sapphire image worn as the symbol of truth by the high judges of the Egyptians. The ''urim and tummim among the Jews were mere emblems of initiation, whereby the adept came to know light or revelation, and consequently the fullness of truth, and because of this was enabled to interpret properly the secrets of the universe, and to give proper answers often in a prophetic manner or as prophecy of what might come before him. In later times among the Jews, as indeed in other nations, the emblems occupied nearly all the attention of students and the inner significance of nearly all these emblems was lost.

Jehovah Nissi - Jehovah Nissi yehowah nissi (Hebrew) (from nes lofty, an elevation + i mine)

Jehovah, my elevation; in the Bible the altar built by Moses (Ex 17:15); Blavatsky maintains that this aspect of Jehovah was equivalent to Dionysos or Bacchus, and that the Jews worshiped this deity (the androgyne of Nissi) as the Greeks might have worshiped Bacchus and Osiris.

Tradition has it that Bacchus was reared in a cave of Nysa, which is between Phoenicia and Egypt. As the son of Zeus, he was named for his father (gen Dios) and the place: Dio-Nysos (the Zeus or Jove of Nysa). Diodorus identifies this Dionysos with Osiris.

Pillars - Pillars The straight line and circle combined will make a cylinder, or pillar, which may be either a column or a disc, according to which element predominates. Thus the pillar denotes the positive creative potency or spirit as contrasted with matter.

One principal use of the pillars in ancient temples, especially when four were used in the form of a square, was for the representation either of the four cardinal points, or of the four lower cosmic elements. This idea was likewise followed by the Jews in their erection of the Tabernacle. "It is the idea taken from the pyramids in Egypt and in Tyre, where the pyramids became pillars, the Genii, or Angels have their abodes in the four respective points" (SD 1:347).

To all intents and purposes the pillars set up by the Jews in front of their temples were similar to the lithoi placed before images of Siva in India. The two pillars, Jachin and Boaz, placed before the Temple of Solomon, however, referred to the dual forces in manifested nature, producing the pairs of opposites. The two pillars are to some extent interchangeable with the two serpents of the Greek caduceus, and appear in India in mystical references to the two nadis -- pingala and ida, on the left and right (or right and left) of the vertebral column.

This duality has its geometrical analog in the right and left handed spirals. By taking the central or balancing third, as in the sushumna-nadi or the central pole of the caduceus (sometimes represented as s third serpent), we have the triad. This triad of pillars is represented in the three columns of the Sephirothal Tree, called the Pillars of Severity, Mildness, and Mercy. In one description of the Sephirothal Tree, it was surrounded by seven pillars: the world pillars or rectores.