“The Talmud gives the story of the four Tanaim, who are made, in allegorical terms, to enter into the garden of delights, i.e., to be initiated into the occult and final science.
“According to the teaching of our holy masters the names of the four who entered the garden of delight, are – Ben Asai, Ben Zoma, Acher, and Rabbi Akiba. Ben Asai looked and – lost his sight. Ben Zoma looked and – lost his reason. Acher made depredations in the plantation”, (mixed up the whole and failed). But Akiba, who had entered in peace, came out of it in peace, for the saint whose name be blessed had said, ‘This old man is worthy of serving us with glory.'”
“The learned commentators of the Talmud, the Rabbis of the synagogue, explain that the garden of delight, in which those four personages are made to enter, is but that mysterious science, the most terrible of sciences for weak intellects, which it leads directly to insanity”, says A. Franck, in his Kabbala. It is not the pure at heart and he who studies but with a view to perfecting himself and so more easily acquiring the promised immortality who need have any fear; but rather he who makes of the science of sciences a sinful pretext for worldly motives, who should tremble. The latter will never withstand the kabalistic evocations of the supreme initiation.
The licentious performances of the thousand and one early Christian sects, may be criticized by partial commentators, as well as the ancient Eleusinian and other rites. But why should they incur the blame of the theologians, the Christians, when their own “Mysteries” of “the divine incarnation with Joseph, Mary, and the angel” in a sacred trilogue used to be enacted in more than one country, and were famous at one time in Spain and Southern France? Later, they fell like many other once secret rites into the hands of the populace.
It is but a few years since, during every Christmas week, Punch-and-Judy-boxes, containing the above-named personages, an additional display of the infant Jesus in his manger, were carried about the country in Poland and Southern Russia. They were called Kaliadovki, a word the correct etymology of which we are unable to give, unless it is from the verb Kaliadovat, a word that we as willingly abandon to learned philologists.
We have seen this show in our days of childhood. We remember the three king-Magi represented by three dolls in powdered wigs and colored tights; and it is from recollecting the simple, profound veneration depicted on the faces of the pious audience, that we can the more readily appreciate the honest and just remark by the editor, in the introduction to the Eleusinian Mysteries, who says: “It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what they do not properly understand. The undercurrent of this world is set toward one goal; and inside of human credulity – call it human weakness, if you please – is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest truths of all existence.”
If that abstract sentiment called Christian charity prevailed in the Church, we would be well content to leave all this unsaid. We have no quarrel with Christians whose faith is sincere and whose practice coincides with their profession. But with an arrogant, dogmatic, and dishonest clergy, we have nothing to do except to see the ancient philosophy – antagonized by modern theology in its puny offspring – Spiritualism – defended and righted so far as we are able, so that its grandeur and sufficiency may be thoroughly displayed.
It is not alone for the esoteric philosophy that we fight; nor for any modern system of moral philosophy, but for the inalienable right of private judgment, and especially for the ennobling idea of a future life of activity, and accountability.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 