The Tetragrammaton, the Ineffable, the sidereal '
Sum Total,' was invented for no other purpose than to mislead the profane and to symbolize life and generation. The real secret and
unpronounceable name -- 'the word that is no word' -- has to be sought in the seven names of the first seven emanations, or the 'Sons of the Fire,' in the secret Scriptures of all the great nations, and even in the
Zohar . . . This word, composed of seven letters in each tongue, is found embodied in the architectural remains of every grand building in the world . . ." (SD 1:438-9).
"Some students, in view of the sacredness of Tetraktis and the Tetragrammaton, mistake the mystic meaning of the Quaternary. The latter was with the ancients
only a secondary 'perfection,' so to speak, because it related only to the manifested planes. Whereas it is the
Triangle, the Greek
delta, , which was the 'vehicle of the unknown Deity' " (SD 2:582).
Other forms of this same name were current among the nations surrounding the Jews, as among the Syrians, some sects of whom worshiped their Iao, sometimes spelled Iaho or Yaho. Iao was one of the most sacred divinities of the Phoenicians and was supposed to be the spiritual light understandable only by the highest human intellectual faculty, and this is the idea or spiritual light of the spiritual sun. The Gnostics likewise had a mystery-god of the same name, and with the same variations in spelling, and with the same significance that it had with the Phoenicians as representing the intellectual power or potency of the solar system.