Israel and Humanity - The ritual of the scapegoat and the Kabbalah

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III.

The ritual of the scapegoat and the Kabbalah.

YKVK the God of Israel, and an unknown named Azazel are set parallel in a strange rite we read the description in Leviticus among the requirements for the annual feast of Atonement. The spell is cast over two goats, one lot for Avaya and one for Azazel "and the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before Avaya, so that it serves to make atonement and to let him go in the wilderness for Azazel "Leviticus xvi. 10, 11 </ref>.

Is not this the index of dualistic beliefs in the Mosaic? This is what we are obliged to admit inevitable if we refuse to see a scapegoat in the attributes of God, his strict justice as hypostatic. This is indeed in this respect the teaching of the Kabbalah, which only professes the distinction of divine attributes and can only explain a special sacrifice is established in honor of one of them, since it agrees that we go to God in many ways it has attributes and that the intent of the worshiper stops on one of them that meets its particular needs of the moment. Kabbalah gives us so she assumed that in this rite of the scapegoat, and Avaya, which represents God in its perfect unity, is in conflict with one of his attributes? The doctrines which it proposes to avoid this interpretation shocking because they show us in the Tetragrammaton, as in every other divine names, one of the emanations of God, or its aspects? . There is little doubt that this explanation is in the spirit of the Mosaic distinction after the famous Moses established between Shaddai and Avaya, as after the fact that God himself Moses between ehie and Avaya's vision of the burning bush.

In the character of Azazel in the Pentateuch, we see the dawn of a confused idea of an antagonist and demonology originate in the source from which we shot the polytheism of the plurality of the divine attributes and the opposition that the is assumed to exist between them are respectively the cause. This is also a fact recognized and confirms our assumptions that the demonology and angelology were initially a single thing. Similarly angelology largely indistinguishable from the theory of divine attributes, angels mingling with God they took the name, voice and prerogatives. Thus demonology itself has its roots in the first order of emanations of the divine world. She begins to emerge when the distinction is emerging attributes and states increasingly, as the river emanationist away from its source and, by degrees, unlike the limit further accentuated . This is not necessarily in this lies the evil, because there are good and bad limit, as the harmony is maintained between things become distinct or discord enters them, love and hatred then look like the two opposite principles, and wanted one of the ancient philosophies of Greece. Understood in this sense, demonology is connected to the divine world as the gods of polytheism to the one God, not only because, according to a very old view, the pagan gods were only demons, but because the world that 'They composed largely indistinguishable, originally, the angelic world, nor the angelic world of the divine world, everything is reduced to the unit which is the supreme source of all life and that everything must ultimately absorb when , the teachings of Kabbalah, the poison ( Sat ) is subtracted from Samael , the devil, there will be more than God (El ), when hell itself will be purified and attached to paradise.

Mr Havet noted with great reason that the doctrine of the devil was very vague, poorly defined property before the Babylonian captivity, since, according to the book of Job, Satan, despite its already vicious, still took place among the son of God. In an earlier period, who will one day Satan is still far less of the Divinity, we mean Azazel, which contains the seed of Satan, is closer to the divine source Satan in his best days, when sitting in the congregation of the children of El-ohieme.

Let us say here that if the successive changes that roam the doctrines as taught by the sound criticism, a safe rule to determine the date of the books that contain them, there is no doubt that the state we see the Satanic theory in Leviticus is the one that best fits this document in the case of the classical origins of the Pentateuch, while one would expect to find a very different doctrine or significantly expanded, if the book dated from the last years of the First Temple or the time of the Babylonian captivity. It is easy enough to believe in comparing eg Azazel of Leviticus and the Satan of Zechariah. It is true that there is a contemporary book that we believe in Leviticus and contains a doctrine of Satan, however, more complete than the last book and therefore more similar to that of Zechariah on the same subject. We refer to the serpent of Genesis and its eminently satanic, especially the character of God is eternal antagonist explicitly stated therein. This is not the place to dwell at length on this anachronism. Suffice it to say that two explanations are possible. Religious thought, though in the paths and limits determined by revelation, which only indicate the direction and forward movement, sometimes with expectations for the future, as happens in all other levels of thought. One can also say that the scale of evil is immense, and its more distant roots, that is not evil, but his possible starting point, its potential strength, is to limit itself to the first distinction between the attributes in the divine world and that, in harmony with them, it is capable of goodness. It's really the first root that would be connected Azazel.

But beyond that, below this primary source, further accentuated the limit, a further separation occurs. Then take birth forms, statements which discord and antagonism are becoming more pronounced. Then appear the serpent of Genesis and other similar figures. In a word the first distinction is based on a subjective difference in the progressive development of religious thought and the second is an objective difference in the nature of things. What is indisputable is that more or less said, the antagonism is visible everywhere in the Scriptures, whatever the date it appears and whatever name, shape or coating that role. But at the bottom of this doctrine, even the most developed, the unit is found, Satan enters the economy and universal when he apparently works against the will of God, his actions lead to the fulfillment of that resolve. It is the moral order as the field of history. "The conscious or unconscious acts of individuals," says Reinach, helping to hasten the realization of the supreme end, when even seem to fight it, the history and philosophy of all time we learn the obvious. It is not without profound reason that Goethe called Mephistopheles (the devil) part of that force which always wants evil and can only create good " The Talmud contains a legend which expresses an idea no less beautiful and not less philosophical: a rabbi who expressed this opinion to the day that Satan and Peninnah have done that in a religious intention, Satan appeared at once and came to kiss the feet of the doctor.

That is how the objection that it relied for the rite of the scapegoat against monotheism becomes simply an argument to justify the Kabbalah. This would allow us to go even further. Under the system of Berura or assimilation of what was good and true in paganism, it is not impossible that the name Azazel, known and revered in pagans, had been boldly adopted and sanctified by Moses to represent a divine attributes, which seemed fairly well expressed by that name and the idea attached to it. It was thus a point of view earlier and more concise than the Tetragrammaton alone becomes in this rite, one of the two aspects which we wish to honor. We can convince ourselves by consulting the family tree of Sephiroth where the Tetragrammaton, while applying to each of them after the punctuation is But undoubtedly the proper name of one of them. This sephira its place, marks precisely the antithesis of that which would be represented by the name of Azazel, for the word by its root azaz strength, expresses exactly the same meaning as the common name of this sephira which is gheboura force.

One and one, like other couples or syzygies, are unified in their common mother Bina , which is the unity of duality and because of that bears the double name of Avaya El-ohieme, or rather "YKVK" read El-ohieme, that is to say, which includes Avaya El-Oheim, Sephiroth , types or models of these copies that are shapeless false gods of the Gentiles. In this sublime height, and any distinction disappears as terrestrial distinctions have their cause and starting point for those above, they are no longer with them to Bina , ineffable junction point: then there is nothing in legal or illegal, good or bad, pure or impure, sacred or profane, everything is legitimate, good, pure and sacred, for it is Order extra-cosmic. That is why some mystics as the Gnostics, Kabbalists and some pseudo-Christian sects, already imagine living in the world to come on the terms of freedom , which is precisely the name given to the Bina , and not content to proclaim the abolition of the ceremonial law, even laws themselves independent legal and shocked the world by their excesses.

Neither Moses nor the Kabbalah should be held accountable for these abuses, because we live in the finish, under the influence of Sephiroth , and thus we are subject to the distinctions that are the effects of limit. However, just as in nature there is, from one kingdom to another, connecting rings, and there exists a plane to another in the supernatural world. It happens so often that Moses stands and raises his cult to the point where any distinction disappears and therefore it allows and punishes certain acts prohibited generally by formal precepts. Need I remind the two cherubim of gold placed at both ends of the propitiatory, that is to say, the most revered shrine, despite the strict prohibition of image-worship and the sacrifice of the red heifer solemnly celebrated out of the temple victims sacrificed by arris (part of the head from behind) against the ordinary rule of sacrifices offered the birds for the purification of leprosy, one of which was released alive; schaatnez , weaving wool and flax fabric, forbidden for any Jew and imposed the vestment of the son of Aaron prohibited work at all on the Sabbath day and ordered this same day in the temple to ministers of religion, the leavened bread for the proscribed ritual use of priests and made mandatory for the oblation of Pentecost. But we believe that the rite of Atonement, which places the scapegoat in front Avaya, far from indicating a radical and essential antagonism to the way of Manichean dualism, instead mark a climb to the top unit, it One of these contradictions are reconciled to a certain height, at this point is, as Hegel would say, the identity of opposites.

And here is a fact which may well be attributed to a strange coincidence, but in any case is a solemn confirmation of our ideas is that on Yom Kippur, the only day in the year accomplished the rite Azazel clear and where the cult was celebrated in front of the cherubim, is placed by the Kabbalists as the invocation of Bina , that is to say that higher unity in which all attributes merge, where no distinction is still visible, and everything is good, holy, self, in a word, divine.