The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The text in which we learn of the Makroprosopos and the Mikroprosopos, the Zohar (zōhar, “light, splendor”), is a collection of esoteric Hebrew writing given to the world about 1305 by a learned Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon. It was claimed that the material had been drawn from secret originals, going back to the teachings of Simeon ben Yohai, a rabbi of Galilee in the second century a.d. Threatened with death by the Romans, Simeon had hidden for twelve years in a cave; ten centuries later his writings had been found there, and these were the sources of the books of the Zohar.

Simeon’s teachings were supposed to have been drawn from the hokmah nistarah or hidden wisdom of Moses, i.e., a body of esoteric lore first studied by Moses in Egypt, the land of his birth, then pondered by him during his forty years in the wilderness (where he received special instruction from an angel), and finally incorporated cryptically in the first four books of the Pentateuch, from which it can be extracted by a proper understanding and manipulation of the mystical number-values of the Hebrew alphabet. This lore and the techniques for rediscovering and utilizing it constitute the Kabbala.

It is said that the teachings of the Kabbala (qabbālāh, “received or traditional lore”) were first entrusted by God himself to a special group of angels in Paradise. After Man had been expelled from the Garden, some of these angels communicated the lessons to Adam, thinking to help him back to felicity thereby. From Adam the teaching passed to Noah, and from Noah to Abraham. Abraham let some of it slip from him while he was in Egypt, and that is why this sublime wisdom can now be found in reduced form in the myths and philosophies of the gentiles. Moses first studied it with the priests of Egypt, but the tradition was refreshed in him by the special instructions of his angels.

The white beard of Makroprosopos descends over another head, “The Little Face,” Mikroprosopos, represented full face and with a beard of black. And whereas the eye of The Great Face is without lid and never shuts, the eyes of The Little Face open and close in a slow rhythm of universal destiny. This is the opening and closing of the cosmogonic round. The Little Face is named “GOD,” the Great Face “I AM.”

Makroprosopos is the Uncreated Uncreating and Mikroprosopos the Uncreated Creating: respectively, the silence and the syllable AUM, the unmanifest and the presence immanent in the cosmogonic round. 3. Out of the Void — Space

Saint Thomas Aquinas declares: “The name of being wise is reserved to him alone whose consideration is about the end of the universe, which end is also the beginning of the universe.”^[17] The basic principle of all mythology is this of the beginning in the end. Creation myths are pervaded with a sense of the doom that is continually recalling all created shapes to the imperishable out of which they first emerged. The forms go forth powerfully, but inevitably reach their apogee, break, and return. Mythology, in this sense, is tragic in its view. But in the sense that it places our true being not in the forms that shatter but in the imperishable out of which they again immediately bubble forth, mythology is eminently untragical.^[18] Indeed, wherever the mythological mood prevails, tragedy is impossible. A quality rather of dream prevails. True being, meanwhile, is not in the shapes but in the dreamer.

As in dream, the images range from the sublime to the ridiculous. The mind is not permitted to rest with its normal evaluations, but is continually insulted and shocked out of the assurance that now, at last, it has understood. Mythology is defeated when the mind rests solemnly with its favorite or traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were the message that they communicate. These images are to be regarded as no more than shadows from the unfathomable reach beyond, where the eye goeth not, speech goeth not, nor the mind, nor even piety. Like the trivialities of dream, those of myth are big with meaning.

The first phase of the cosmogonic cycle describes the breaking of formlessness into form, as in the following creation chant of the Maoris of New Zealand:

Te Kore (The Void)

Te Kore-tua-tahi (The First Void)

Te Kore-tua-rua (The Second Void)

Te Kore-nui (The Vast Void)

Te Kore-roa (The Far-Extending Void)

Te Kore-para (The Sere Void)

Te Kore-whiwhia (The Unpossessing Void)

Te Kore-rawea (The Delightful Void)

Te Kore-te-tamaua (The Void Fast Bound)

Te Po (The Night)

Te Po-teki (The Hanging Night)

Te Po-terea (The Drifting Night)