I'm not "belittling" it; I'm saying that the philosophy doesn't follow the money. You may have done a lot of work, but it's by no means at root in my opinion, having written three books and several major articles on the topic. Consider this example.
It was during their exile in Babylon that apostate Jews developed their own magic way: Kabalah. After the dispersion some Jewish initiates of the magic way went East, into India, etc., while others went West (I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Rev. 2:9)
Albert Pike – the most influential Freemason that has lived – has this to say about the Kabalah in his Morals and Dogma:
"The Kabalah is the key to the occult sciences; and the Gnostics were born of the Kabalists. (Morals and Dogma, p. 626)
The Jewish Encyclopedia affirms that the Babylonian Mystery Religion is the mother of Kabalah, Gnosticism and other occult pagan traditions:
"....especially does Gnosticism testify to the antiquity of the Cabala. Of Chaldean origin... Gnosticism was Jewish in character long before it became Christian... Gnosticism – that is, the cabalistic 'Hokmah' (wisdom) – seems to have been the first attempt on the part of the Jewish sages to give the empirical mystic lore, with the help of Platonic and Pythagorean or Stoic ideas, a speculative turn; hence the danger of heresy...of which the systems of Philo, an adept in Cabala...show many pitfalls...Jewish gnosticism unquestionably antedates Christianity, for Biblical exegesis had already reached an age of five hundred years by the first century C.E. Judaism had been in close contact with Babylonian-Persian ideas for at least that length of time, and for nearly as long a period with Hellenistic ideas. Magic, also, which,...was a not unimportant part of the doctrines and manifestations of gnosticism, largely occupied Jewish thinkers. There is, in general, no circle of ideas to which elements of gnosticism have been traced, and with which the Jews were not acquainted." (Cabala, Jewish Encyclopedia)
The famous scientist, engineer, religious writer, mystic, and practitioner of the magic way, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) claimed to have been instructed by beings on other planets as well as by angels during his astral plane travels. Swedenborg has influenced a long line of scientists, philosophers, modern science fiction writers and movie producers as well as Joseph Smith.
According to Pike, Swedenborg described Masonry as a search after Light:
"That search leads us directly back, as you see, to the Kabbalah. In that ancient and little understood medley of absurdity and philosophy, the Initiate will find the source of many doctrines; and may in time come to understand the Hermetic philosophers, the Alchemists, all the Anti-papal Thinkers of the Middle Age, and Emanuel Swedenborg. (Morals and Dogma, p. 741)
The Babylonian Kabalah holds to the neoplatonic conception that the manifest universe (One Substance, Divine Mens) of which material creation is a part, arose as a series of emanations or evolutions from the godhead or divine Cosmic Spirit or Mind.
In his Dictionary of Mysticism and the Occult, Nevill Drury writes that the Hermetic Kabbalah's Tree of Life consists of ten spheres,
"...or sephiroth, through which – according to mystical tradition – the creation of the world came about. The sephiroth are aligned in three columns headed by the supernals and together symbolize the process by which the Infinite Light...becomes manifest in the universe." (A Short Guide to Occult Symbols: The Tree of Life, Carl Teichrib)
The sephiroth also have a role resembling that of the "...charkas [sic] in yoga."
The sephiroth symbolize the consubstantiality or oneness of the initiate's intellect with the Divine Substance or Mind (i.e., ancient Egyptian Nu, Chaos, Brahman, Omega Point, Singularity) as well as Masonry's seething evolutionary energies of Lucifer (Mind of the Universe) while chakras refer to psychic centers that lie along the spine of the etheric body that awaken by way of kundalini serpent power yoga.
For the initiate, the deeper meaning of the Hermetic Kabbalah is the Tree of Life 'above' as well as the inward path 'below' (ancient Egyptian Hermeticism) in which the adept who has mastered the seething energies of Lucifer discovers and experiences the "inner light" (also called the divine spark and inner Christ).
In “The Making of the New Spirituality: the Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition,†James Herrick writes that modern physicists now claim to have irrefutable scientific proof for the foundational premises of mystical pantheist spirituality. (p. 169)
The ultimate discovery of quantum physics is trumpeted as scientific proof of the basic correctness of mystical pantheist theology---matter, collectively speaking, is the divine one substance (i.e., World Soul, Brahman, Omega, Mind).
The physicists (Zohar and Marshall) call their divine one substance the quantum vacuum. Their quantum vacuum is strikingly similar to some Hindu and Buddhist accounts of the origins of everything that exists as emanations from the One Substance and/or the Void. Nor do Zohar and Marshall deny the similarity:
“The vacuum spoken of by quantum physicists, like the Buddhist concept of Sunyata, or the Void, to which it is so similar, is replete with potentiality.†(ibid)
From Babylon to our own age, the Void (Light, Mind) has been viewed as the ultimate ground of being and true mystical religious experience. As the beginning and ending of all reality, the Void or vacuum is “the vast sea of all else that is.†Moreover, humans are uncreated excited aspects or modes of the Void:
“…the vacuum has the same physical structure as human consciousness.†As this is the case, then the soul of the Void and soul of the human are one and the same substance.
This means that 'god' is within the human mind. Reality is therefore within human consciousness because man is an aspect of the divine substance.
As it was in the days of Noah when men declared their own godhood so it will be again.