The following is a listing of variations of the name of the Hebraic and Christian God, Jehovah from the Theosophical Society's on-line glossary:

El Elion 'el `elyon (Hebrew) [from 'el divinity + `elyon what is high or above] The God on high; "a name of the Deity borrowed by the Jews from the Phoenician Elon, a name of the Sun" (TG 111). See also ELON; also El Elyon.

Jah yah [from hayah to be, come to pass, become] An abbreviation of Jehovah -- although probably the original from which Jehovah is derived -- occurring especially in the phrase "Jah is his name." It signifies cosmic being, albeit in a restricted sense. In the Qabbalah, Jah is the divine name of the Sephirah Hochmah; also the masculine aspect of the hermaphrodite conception of Jehovah. See also JAH-HOVAH; JAH-VEH; JEHOVAH

Jah-Havah, Ja-Heva, Jah-Hovah Also Jah-Eve, etc. Western Qabbalist term designating Jah or Yah as the masculine aspect and Hovah (or Eve) as the feminine aspect of Jehovah: the two when joined forming an androgynous being; it also refers to the time when humanity was androgynous, later separating into sexes. See also JEHOVAH.

Jah-Veh YHVH (Hebrew) One transliteration of Jehovah, referring specifically to Genesis 4:26: "then men began to call themselves Jehovah," i.e., they knew themselves to be then males and females.

Java Aleim Yehovah 'elohim (Hebrew) More commonly Jehovah Elohim. Lord God -- in Genesis (ch 1) the word 'elohim' is used; in chapter 2, Yehovah or Lord makes its appearance; and elsewhere the words are combined into Yehovah 'Elohim. In the esoteric philosophy of Mesopotamia, used as a term for the head of a college of priests ('Elohim) which at one time flourished in Chaldea; the possessor of the "word," passing it on to his successor only at the moment of death. See also ALEIM

Jave, Javo See JEHOVAH

Jehovah yehowah (Hebrew) In the Bible, the god of the Hebrews; a modern mispronunciation of the Hebrew alphabetic characters, resulting from the combining by the Jews themselves of the Hebrew consonants of this word (YHVH) with the vowels of the word Adonai (my lords) because the Jews, while always writing or copying the alphabetic characters of the name correctly in their manuscripts, when reading it never pronounced the word YHVH, but read "Adonai" in its stead -- writing the Massoretic points of Adonai to vocalize YHVH to produce Yahovah. Consequently when the Bible came to be studied by those unfamiliar with the real pronunciation of YHVH, it was read in various ways, commonly as Jehovah. It is now held by some scholars that YHVH should be pronounced yahweh or yave. It is also given as Yihweh (he will be, or it will be) (SD 2:129). However, Josephus, a priest who undoubtedly knew the correct pronunciation, wrote that it would be highly unlawful for him to divulge it as the Jews regarded it as too holy to pronounce aloud.

Blavatsky writes that the rendering Ja-ho-vah is "a perversion of the Holy Name": that the majority of the Jews themselves were ignorant of the true pronunciation. "Alone, out of all their nation the high priests had it in their possession, and respectively passed it to their successors," before their death. "Once a year only, on the day of atonement, the high priest was allowed to pronounce it in a whisper" (IU 2:398-9).

The Hebrews were not the only ones who knew of and revered a divinity whose name when written was conveyed by vowels mainly, as for instance the Gnostic Iao, Ieuo, or Iaou. All these ancient peoples by these vowel-words desired to express the fluid life-giving energy of the globe, of the moon, and of the planetary source -- in this case, Saturn.

The early Christian Fathers connected the moon and its functions with Jehovah -- as the proximate but not causal "giver of life and death." Moreover "With the Israelites, the chief function of Jehovah was child-giving, and the esotericism of the Bible, interpreted Kabalistically, shows undeniably the Holy of Holies in the temple to be only the symbol of the womb. . . . This idea must certainly have been borrowed by the Jews from the Egyptians and Indians . . ." (SD 1:264). Jehovah is likewise identified with the serpent or dragon that tempted Eve, the dragon often standing for the primordial principle.

In the Qabbalah, Jehovah is regarded as hermaphrodite and connected with the female Sephirah Binah. The Qabbalists show the word to be "composed of the two-fold name of the first androgyne -- Adam and Eve, Jod (or Yodh), Vau and He-Va -- the female serpent as a symbol of Divine Intelligence proceeding from the One-Generative or Creative Spirit" (IU 2:398).

From the standpoint of the Jews, Jehovah was their patron deity, the regent of the planet Saturn. See also TETRAGRAMMATON

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.

Jehovah-Tzabaoth, -Tsebaoth, or -Sabbaoth The seventh Sephirah of the superior septenary, identified with Netsah (triumph), who "esoterically . . . corresponds with Haniel (human physical life), the androgyne Elohim, with Venus-Lucifer and Baal, and finally with the Letter Vau or Microprosopus, the Logos. All these belong to the formative world" -- also with Siva, Saturn, and the angel Michael or Mikael; "Mikael and his angels, or Jehovah-Tzabaoth (the 'Host') who refused to create as the seven passionless, mind-born, sons of Brahma did, because they aspire to incarnate as men in order to become higher than the gods -- fight the Dragon [of esoteric wisdom], conquer him, and the child of matter is born" (BCW 8:148). See also Tseba'oth. {SD 1:459}

Jehovists one of the two main trends of ancient Jewish religious thought, the other being the Elohists. "The portions belonging to these respectively are so blended together, so completely mixed up by later hands, that often all external characteristics are lost. Yet it is also known that the two schools were antagonistic; that the one taught esoteric, the other exoteric, or theological doctrines; that the one, the Elohists, were Seers (Roeh), whereas the other, the Jehovists, were prophets (Nabi), and that the latter -- who later became Rabbis -- were generally only nominally prophets by virtue of their official position, . . . That, again, the Elohists meant by 'Elohim' 'forces,' identifying their Deity, as in the Secret Doctrine, with Nature; while the Jehovists made of Jehovah a personal God externally, and used the term simply as a phallic symbol -- a number of them secretly disbelieving even in metaphysical, abstract Nature, and synthesizing all on the terrestrial scale. Finally, the Elohists made of man the divine incarnate image of the Elohim, emanated first in all Creation; and the Jehovists show him as the last, the crowing glory of the animal creation, instead of his being the head of all the sensible beings on earth" (BCW 14:183-4). David is said to have introduced this worship in Judea after living among the Tyrians and Philistines where such rites and beliefs were common: "David knew nothing of Moses, it seems, and if he introduced the Jehovah-worship, it was not in its monotheistic character, but simply as that of one of the many [Kabeirean] gods of the neighbouring nations -- a tutelary deity of his own [ ]to whom he had given the preference, and chosen among 'all other [Kabeiri] gods," (IU 2:45). Blavatsky holds that the Jehovists altered the Mosaic texts. { }

Iao (Gnostic) A three-letter mystery-name, parallel in one sense with the Sanskrit pranava, and reminiscent of triune deities represented by a triplicity of sounds. It occurs in many variations: Io, the Grecian moon goddess; Iaho, Jevo, Jehovah, and other Hebraic forms; Iaso, the possible origin of the name Jesus; Iacchos, the Bacchus of the Mysteries. It is at once threefold, fourfold, and sevenfold in meaning.

Iao Hebdomad (sevenfold) was one of the septenary mystery-gods of the Gnostics, given by Origen as the regent of the moon. The Gnostics had a superior hebdomad, an inferior or celestial one, and the terrestrial one. Iao was regarded as the chief of the superior seven heavens above the earth and is identical with the chief of the lunar pitris [ancestors] (SD 1:448).

Again, Iao Hebdomad is the septenary Iao or the collective seven cosmic rectors, each one representing a heaven, and therefore identifying this Iao Hebdomad at once with the seven mystery-planets of the ancients. Iao, sometimes connected with Yaho, from another standpoint is the collective seven or ten classes of the manasaputras. It is also connected with the Chaldean heptakis. Thus Iao or Iao Hebdomas, according to the point of view, is not only the septenary groups of the lunar dhyanis or pitris, but likewise the seven or ten groups of the manasaputras.

In its association with the moon, it is either male, female, or androgyne according to the particular relationship in which it is being viewed. It is also the serpent of Eden, the bright angel, one of the elohim clothed with radiance and glory, the Iao of the Mysteries, chief of the androgyne creators of mankind. Like Bacchus and other divinities, there was a degraded meaning, leading to phallic doctrines and rituals.

As a mystery-name, Iao or Yaho had a far higher and more spiritual significance, representing the triune forces and substances connected with the supreme divinity of our own cosmic hierarchy, whose seat was superior to the seven heavens, and which therefore made this divinity equivalent to the universal atman, or paramatman, the cosmic spiritual light whose radiations were the individual noetic monads.

Shaddai (Hebrew) [from the verbal root shadad to be powerful, strong] The omnipotent, the Almighty -- a form of the grammatical plural of excellence; commonly used in the phrase 'El Shaddai (omnipotent divinity), an epithet properly belonging to any cosmic hierarch, but in the Old Testament often applied to Jehovah. Shaddai corresponds to the Latin Omnipotens or the Greek Pantokrator, all signifying all powerful.

Yah, Yaho 'yahu, yeho (Hebrew) Yah is an abbreviation of Jehovah, but equally well Jehovah could be said to be merely an enlargement of the original form Yah. The Zohar says that the 'Elohim used this word to form the world.

"To screen the real mystery name of ain-soph -- the Boundless and Endless No-Thing -- the Kabalists have brought forward the compound attribute-appellation of one of the personal creative Elohim, whose name was Yah and Jah, the letters i or j or y being interchangeable, or Jah-Hovah, i.e., male and female; Jah-Eve an hermaphrodite, or the first form of humanity, the original Adam of Earth, not even Adam-Kadmon, whose 'mind-born son' is the earthly Jah-Hovah, mystically. And knowing this, the crafty Rabbin-Kabalist has made of it a name so secret, that he could not divulge it later on without exposing the whole scheme; and thus he was obliged to make it sacred" (SD 2:126).

Both Yah and Yaho were Hebrew mystery-names; Yah is "a later abbreviation [of Yaho] which, from containing an abstract ideal, became finally applied to, and connected with , a phallic symbol -- the lingham of creation" (TG 374). Thus Yaho and Yah are two forms of the same original Shemitic god-name found throughout Asia Minor, and which appeared in its Greek form as Iao. The Gnostics revived the Chaldean and Phoenician mystery-god Iao, placing it above the seven heavens as representing spiritual light. Its ray was nous, standing for the Demiurge as well as the divine manas. "Y-ha-ho was a sacred word in the Egyptian mysteries, which signified 'the one eternal and concealed deity' in nature and in man; i.e., the 'universal Divine Ideation,' and the human Manas, or the higher Ego" (TG 375). Yaho in consequence must not be confused with Yehowah or Jehovah, for Jehovah was merely the inferior reflection in the higher material worlds of the spiritual light called Yaho. Yaho, therefore, is equivalent in type, standing, and character to atman, the universal, of theosophical literature.

Yah-Havvah, Yah-Hovah See JEHOVAH

Yahweh See YAH; JEHOVAH; TETRAGRAMMATON

Ye-hou-vih, Yaheweh, Yahaweh (Hebrew) He will cause to be; a rendering for Jehovah (YHVH) given by Prof. Gibbs; Blavatsky cites this detail with some approval, stating that Gibbs, in the thought behind his rendering, had cut the Gordian knot of its true occult meaning (SD 2:129).

Yod, Yodh (Hebrew) The tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet representing the number 10. A great deal has been written about this Hebrew character by Jewish Qabbalists because it is the first character in the name of the Hebrew God (IHVH) transliterated as Jehovah or Yahweh. The pronunciation of this name for ages past has been lost, and the Jews, when coming upon it in the Bible, have either mentally or aloud substituted the word 'Adonai (my Lords).

The Jewish IHVH was but the ancient Hebrew form of the deity equally recognized, although with far less reverence, by other ancient nations of the Near East, called Yaho among the Phoenicians, Iao among the Gnostics, etc. It was an androgynous deity, recognized as existing in nature, and mystically having an intimate magnetic connection with the planet Saturn. The influence of this cosmic bipolar force is known everywhere, expressing itself as positive and negative or in human beings as male and female. This deity is by no means one of the highest or most spiritual in the solar system, being one of the manifested cosmic powers rather than one of the unmanifest spiritualities. In fact the four-lettered name, IHVH or Tetragrammaton, from one view is as Blavatsky remarks, "pre-eminently phallic." Ancient Jewish initiates equally with initiates of other countries turned to their 'eyn soph as the loftiest encompassing universal life-wisdom, very much as the ancient Hindus turned to parabrahman for the same reasons.

Yod-heva, Yodh-heva, Yod-hewa, Yod-havvah (Hebrew) [from yod a Hebrew letter, the number 10, and the masculine generative power + heva from the verbal root hawah to have life, breathe, desire or long for, signifying the feminine generative power] A Qabbalistic phallic term used by Blavatsky to allow theosophy to represent the androgynous aspect of the Hebrew creative deity Jehovah (Yehovah). It also in a sense represents the Tetragrammaton. See also YOD