Lost Light
Lost Light
CITY,
MO PUBLIC
LI
BRARY
DDD1 D31DM23
fi
THEOSOPHY:
New York City, stands as the only acacademic work dealing with the great
University,
credited
Western world.
Series of
"New
1.
2.
Wisdom":
3.
4.
5.
6.
7-
8.
MOON
ON GENESIS
DEVILS
BY
PH.D.
WORK HAS
ELIZABETH, N.
J.
COPYRIGHT, 1940,
INC.,
RAHWAY, N,
J.
To
THE MEMORY OF
DR.
ROBERT NORWOOD
WORK
IS
AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED
6(11 7;>H
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
I.
II.
HOMO
ECCE DEUS
17
35
51
63
V.
79
VI.
93
III.
IV.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
COLONISTS
FROM HEAVEN
IN DURANCE VILE
ALIVE IN DEATH
THE
MUMMY
156
IN
AMENTA
xiv. FIRE
105
128
AIR, FIRE
ON HEAVEN'S HEARTH
176
210
232
264
303
332
XVI.
385
XVII.
422
XV.
XVIII,
XIX.
44!
480
497
536
573
NOTES
PROLOGUE
COMING forth in a day when theology has long been discredited
even in its own ecclesiastical household and religion itself is threatened with obliteration by rampant forces hostile to it, this book aims
to rehabilitate theology and to stabilize true religion. It must be said
at the very outset and with blunt insistence that it is for religion and
not in any way against it. It is written to establish religion again as the
cornerstone of human culture, when civilization has largely turned
away from it to seek elsewhere the guiding light. It is designed to redeem Divine Theology from her outcast condition and place her again
beside Philosophy and Science on the throne in the kingdom of man's
mind.
It
many
will
pronounce
it
the
It
is
it
ecclesiastical
sweeps away
common
acceptance of biblical and theological meaning. But it makes no war on anything in religion save the
idiocies and falsities that have crept into the general conception of
orthodox belief. Finding that the chief enemies of true religion were
nal significance to gross repulsiveness, the errors and distortions perpetrated upon it by those of its own household must be ruthlessly dismantled. Hence to many the book will seem like a devastating assault
ous gesture to affront a settled and rooted growth o beliefs and dochave been cherished for centuries around the
hearthstone of Christian culture and become hallowed by age-long
trinal statements that
The Western world has too long and fatuously labored under the
delusion that a pious and devout disposition fulfills the whole requirement of true religion. Ancient sagacity knew that piety without intelliwas insufficient and dangerous.
gence, or religion without philosophy,
not safe from aberrancy, folly
was
intent
It knew that
general good
and fanaticism unless it was directed by the highest powers and resources of the mind.
And
the
mind
itself
had
specific
to
be fortified with
knowledge
between the two. Following the dictum of the
sage, Hermes
vice of a soul is ignorance, the virtue of a soul
"the
that
Trismegistus,
is
knowledge," the scriptures of old inculcated the precept that with
relation
The
down
mology and anthropology, which have become by immemorial tradition the Bibles of humanity, universally reverenced. In them were
given the ordinances of life, the constitution of the cosmos, the laws
governing both nature and mind. They still constitute the Magna
Carta of
all
human
first Institutes
were the
moral
all
behavior, the only true chart and compass to guide human effort in a
line of harmony with an
overshadowing divine plan of evolution for
the Cosmos.
The
corruption and final loss of the basic meaning of these scripwhole of time, the greatest tragedy in human
history.
Like Shakespeare's
tide,
and quicksands,
following Plato's
torical barbarities
philosophical
have attended
its
perpetuation.
then, must be the importance of a
scriptures of ancient wisdom the lost
What,
book which
light
restores to the
meaning?
In a very real and direct
in the world
way
and a
free
is
mentally dealt with in the sage tomes of antiquity. To effect that control in a perfect balance and harmony, and to train the reasoning init, was the aim and end of the Arcane
Western
world has endlessly vacillated back
Philosophy. Ideology in the
and forth between the cult of the inner spirit and engrossment in
tellect in
mastery of the powers engaged in working out the evolutionary advance, so that the aspirant might be able to align his cultural effort
in consonance with the requirements of the problem
to
be
achieved.
Without
man
is
this
totally at a loss
how to focus
Hence he
plunge
tune.
after another, learning sporadic lessons from pain and misforancient torch that was lighted for his guidance he has let
The
This lamp was the body of Ancient Philosophy. In this critithe mesepoch in the life of the world this book proclaims afresh
burn
cal
travels the
He
out.
renaissance
The
last
alchemy, astrology.
vogue, but on a basis which
science
and scholarship
superstition." In
looked
its
at askance.
sciences
interest: symbolism,
has particularly come into a general
still
to regard
scientific
it is
generally
predictive or "fortune-telling" aspect
is another side on which it has
pertinence
But there
and value that has not been recognized in the modern revival and on
which perhaps its most legitimate claim to consideration rests. This is
function as symbolic theology. Unquestionably cosmic operation,
cosmic significance, lie behind the twelve constellations of the zodiac
and the thirty-six or more other stellar configurations. The planisphere
or chart of the heavens was doubtless the first of all Bibles, pictorially
its
Not quite simply and directly but intrinsically, all Bibles are
amplifications and elaborations of the original volume of ideography
first written on the
open face of the sky, charted in the zodiac and
heavenly maps, and later transferred to earth and written in scrolls
edited.
and parchments.
Man
was
new body
of
heavenly
And
history of this
celestial
was
sketched
the
Personage
by
enlightened sages in the constar
clusters.
Zodiac
comes
from
the Greek word zodton, a
figurated
of
verse, or of
God, made
God. Man's
in
its
own
image and
small body
likeness.
The
a replica of this
body of
vast frame of Cosmic
is
Man
was outlined
trinism
is
group of
its
ology that
and
galaxies
immense organism.
data that strikes so deeply into the heart of general thegiven here at the outset for the sake of its overwhelming
it is
It
impressiveness.
must prove
to
Biblical theology rests more solidly than has ever been believed on
zodiacal backgrounds that its presentation will be admittedly a matter
of great
the house of Virgo at the western equinox point and that of Pisces
directly opposite on the eastern side. The simple fact that they stand six
months apart
Gospel determination.
The exposition must begin with the puzzling and hitherto unexplained item of ancient religious myth, that the Christs, the Sun-Gods,
the Messiahs, all were depicted as having two mothers. How, one asks,
could there possibly be rational significance in this? It has been put
aside as just
some more
Paganism. The
mic truth under glyph and symbol, has not been dreamed
of.
The
born again." Nicodemus asks if this means that we must enter a second
time into our mother's body and experience a second birth in the
natural manner. Jesus replies that we "must be born of water and the
Attention must be directed a moment to the fact that the Latin
spirit."
word
9*
many
of the physical or natural man was conceived as being composed of the two lower, earth and water, while air and fire, representmind and spirit, commingled to make the higher or spiritual man,
body
ing
Jesus' statement to
And
ele-
ments when he
(omitting
than himself who shall baptize us with the holy spiritus (air) and with
two
fire. Jesus thus affirms that we have two births, necessitating
two
have
we
must
that
adds
the
and
baptisms.
mothers,
John
Baptist
Since man's spirit is an indestructible fragment of God's own mighty
a tiny spark of that cosmic Intelligence and Love which
Spirit, truly
the divine element in
we call the Mind of God, the ancients
typified
man
by
The
fiery
fire
The crossing of
seven-eighths water by actual composition!
seas and the immersion of solar heroes in water in olden
in theology, signified nothing bemythologies, and the rite of baptism
the fact of the soul's immersion in a physical body of watery
which
rivers
is
and
yond
nature in
its
successive incarnations.
Now man
"Man
is
God
is a
fiery
god." To create man
his life in the watery confines of material bodies.
of
spiritual principle
That is the truest basic description of man that anthropology can pre-
through
sent.
intellect it
incarnated the
All problems spring from that foundation and are referable for
solution back to
it.
Man
is,
then, a natural
We
which
is
which
is
spiritual."
Again he
transfigured, lifted
up
into a superior
he can cognize spiritual things. Evolution will thus transform him, and
nothing
else will.
Using
and
man
These
was the
life.
The
first
became known
him
his birth
On
the other side there are the Fish Avatars of Vishnu, such as the
Babylonian Joannes, or Dagon, and the Assyrian goddess Atergatis
was called "the Fish-Mother." Virgo stood as the mother of birth by
water, or the birth of
mother of birth
as the
man
by
the
spirit
first,
or
fire,
described by St. Paul as "the Lord from heaven." Virgo was the watermother of the natural man, Pisces the fish-mother of the spiritual
man.
There must now be brought out an unrevealed significance of the
fish symbol in the zodiac and in mythical
religion. It is of astonishing
import.
Water
is
all
natural birth
proceeds in and from water. All first life originated in the sea water.
The fish is a birth in and from the water, and it stands patently as the
generic type of organic
life
The
fish typifies
water is the
spiritual consciousness, son of the fish-mother! In brief,
of all
life
that
we
motherhood of
states,
life.
Primordial matter, the sea of (to us) empty space, is the first
of all living forms. This is the primal "abyss of the waters" in
Genesis. The Latin word for "mother" is our very word "matter/*
levels.
mother
left
out
mater.
And how
close to
mater
is
water!
And
organic structure
is
it
Or
names of Juno,
Egypt they were first
Isis and
and
later
and
Neith;
Nephthys. Massey relates Neith to
Apt
"net," i.e., fish-net! Clues to their functions were picked up in the great
Boo\ of the Dead: "Isis conceived him; Nephthys gave him birth."
Or: "Isis bore him; Nephthys suckled him," or reared him. The full
sense of these statements was not discerned until they were scrutinized
in the light of another key sentence which matched them; "Heaven
conceived him; the Tuat brought him forth." With this came the flash
of clear insight into the mystery. For that which is to eventuate in the
cycles of evolution as divine mind in an organic creature man is
they were the wife and
Venus,
Isis,
Ishtar,
sister
matter. This
is
first
its
invisible,
Isis is
inorganic state
was
the
Isis
womb
of
conception.
virgin,
to spiritual tenuity. The Tuat, on
the type of physical matter, or matter
i.e.,
as
empty
space,
we must now
brought
spiritual
house or
womb
and
down from
heaven, that
if
man
eat of
it
he
shall
hunger no more."
Jesus broke a loaf into fragments and gave to his disciples, saying that
it was his
body, broken for them.
brought along
to a
more
What
are
specific evolutionary reference.
as
states
at
the
two
of
are,
first,
They
matter, but
now
to
life
of
man
on earth. They are in the final stage of the meaning man's body itself,
which consists of matter in both its invisible and its visible forms.
For man has a natural body and a spiritual body. Man's body itself
houses the two mothers. The body is this double house of Bread and
of Fish.
And
body
is
is
seen
when
it
is
It is
its
modem
where the sun of soul sank to its death on the cross of matter, to rearise in a new birth, was called the
city of the sun, or in Greek, Hcliopolis,
Egyptian
Osiris or
Horus were enacted each year; but the name bore a theoit was
given to a geographical town.
The name is obviously made up of NU, the name for the mother
heaven, or empty space, or abyss of nothingness, and Alpha
privative,
meaning, as in thousands of words, "not." A-NU would then mean
10
"not-nothingness," or a world of concrete actuality, the world of physiPrecisely such a world it is in which
units of virginal consciousness
go to their death and rise again. A-NU
is then the
of
man
on earth. The soul descends out of the
physical body
cal substantial manifestation.
its
undifferentiated unity,
negative.
come
lish
its
unity
The NUN
is
indeed
is
negative.
To
be-
must differentiate itself into duality, estaband later split up into untold multitension,
positive-negative
positively manifest
it
endlessly. Unit
ments in order
life
of deity
must break
itself
up
fill
seed should multiply till it filled the earth with offspring countless as
the sands of the seashore. And if life was symboled by bread, as the
first birth, and by fish, as the second, then we
might expect to find in
old religious typology the allegory of a Christ figure multiplying loaves
and fishes! Are we surprised to find that the Gospel Jesus does this
very thing, multiplying the five loaves and two small fishes to feed a
multitude!
This
is
to the next
it
yields in wonder
to our notice
came
Who
of sensational interest
Boof^ of the
came
to light
to
when
Anu
"the -place of multiplying bread"! Here in the long silent tomes of old
the
Egypt was found the original, the prototype, of the miracle of
loaves and the fishes in the Gospels of Christianity. And a meaning
never before apprehended had to be read into this New Testament
wonder. At last we were instructed to catch in the miracle the sense
an
infinite
number
creatures,
of the
of fragments
enhungered
after
reaching
plane
inner meaning of the Christian Eucharist: the broken but multiplied
fragments of the body of the god, distributed to feed hungry humanity.
And
units, there
of Bread."
setting as Virgo, they called it the "house
their word for "house/ which, as
their adding to
This required
ANU
anyone knows,
Beth. This yields us Beth-Anu. Now it is a fact of common philoGreek and Egyptian "U" is renlogical knowledge that the ancient
dered as "Y" when the words are brought over into English. The "U"
is
became
But
let
ask
if
fish
typology. Here we encounter material enough to provide another nine-days' wonder. For we
find the Gospel Jesus marked with
many items of the Piscean sym-
bology.
He
as well carpenters,
reapers, harvesters, sailors, rowers,
;
under
Rome
Greeks denominated the Gospel Jesus as Ichthys, the Fish. All this fish
symbolism can not be explained away as sheer incidental material. It
the product of ancient custom, which
figured the Christs under the
symbolism of the reigning sign of the zodiac, according to the preces-
is
And
it
its
literalism that hardly anyone knows with definiteness that Joshua is just
a variant name for Jesus. The phrase is actually written in some old
documents as "Jesus, Son of Nun. At any rate Joshua is just Jesus, no
5'
So here is the Christ, called Jesus, son of the aboriginal space, or the
NUN. But the wonder increases when we turn to the Hebrew alphabet
and find that while "M" is called and spelled "Mem" and means
"water," "N" is called and spelled "Nun" and means of all things
"Fish"! Jesus, then, is son of Pisces, the Fish-sign, as he indeed is in the
less.
Gospels themselves.
And
who
is
unto him in the cave to rise and come forth. Anu, as we have seen,
became Bethany of the Gospels; and it was at Bethany that Jesus raised
Lazarus from death! And who was Lazarus? Here the greatest of all
the marvels in this chain of comparative data unfolds under our eyes.
According to Budge and other eminent Egyptologists the ancient designation of Osiris was ASAR. But the Egyptians invariably expressed
reverence for deity by prefixing the definite article "the" to the names
of their Gods. Just as Christians say, or should say, the Christ, they
said: the Osiris. It will be
article
cient usage.
Our
is
word
theos, God; the Spanish article, masculine, "el" is the Hebrew word
for God; and the Greek masculine article, "ho," is a Chinese word for
deity.
the
To
When
Hebrews took up
the
name
of "the Osiris" or
result
the "s" in Asar changed into its sister letter "z," leaving us holding in
our hands the Lazarus whom Jesus raised at Bethany! To evidence
that this derivation is not a fanciful invention or sheer coincidence the
Biblical
names
of
High
Priests
may
be
cited.
We
name
name
raising
tian dramatic mystery in which Horus, the Christ, raised his "dead"
father Osiris, or El-Asar-us from the grave. And the Egyptian recital
was
All this sets the stage for the crowning item in the correspondence.
In the Gospel drama John the Baptist bears the character of the firstborn or natural man, coming first to prepare the ground or make
straight the path for the advent of the spiritual man or Lord Christ.
therefore stand as the son of the water-mother, Virgo, and
He would
at the autumn equithe other side of the cycle of descent and resurrection Jesus, the Christos, would be the son of the
On
14
fish-mother,
These
houses are six months apart astrologically. The whole edifice of Gospel
historicity trembles under the impact of the strange dramatic circumstance, given in L,u\e, that the annunciation to
tion by the
Elizabeth's
between
Mary of her impregnaHoly Ghost came when John the Baptist was six months in
womb. The natural man, having covered the "six months"
his birth
had
arrived.
to
fire
baptism. And Justin Martyr adds an item left out of the Gospels, that
at the baptism of Jesus
by John, a fire was kindled in the waters of the
Jordan!
St. Paul declares that we come to birth
spiritually only as we die
carnally, which means that the quantum of divine character in us
grows in proportion as the quantum of raw nature declines. As the
spiritual man, Jesus, son of Nun, the fish, increases, the natural man,
John, son of Virgo, the Water, must decrease. Astrologically, as a constellation or star sinks below the horizon in the west, its
opposite con-
stellation
birth,
increase"!
On
human
new day
of
brotherhood in
Chapter
TRAGEDY
DIES IN
LAUGHTER
LITTLE could the ancient mythoiogists and sages have foreseen that
the "fabulous narrations" which their genius devised to cloak high
truth would end by plaguing the mind of the Western world with
sixteen centuries of unconscionable stultification.
sibly
truth
pos-
would
of half the
superstition
known
ings in philosophical truth than the inconsistency of its attitudes toward the sacred scriptures of antiquity. The general mind, indoctrinated by priestcraft, regards them as infallible revelations and holds
them
which it were a sacrilege to challenge; while theologhedges from pious veneration of them over to outright
skepticism of their divine origin, swinging more recently to a view
which takes them to be the simple conceptions of men just emerging
as fetishes,
ical scholarship
forest barbarism.
The
and
wisdom
They came neither from supernal Deity nor from common humanity,
but from humanity divinized! They were the output of normal humans
graduated to divine or near-divine status, St. Paul's "just men made
perfect." Their divinity is therefore not transcendent and exotic, and
their humanity is not crude and doltish. They bear the marks, therefore, of
human
When
to
have
Human
course.
to
some time
graduation
is
the attainment.
forced to attribute
of
understanding.
They
are the
by men grown
to the stature of
divinity.
for long centuries, even carried to the
bequeathed
Their veneration by the world
extreme of outrageous sycophancy,
literary heritage
attests
an indestructible tradition of
and
infallible.
Their
unshakeable foundations of their wisdom. They have withstood consistently the test of generations of human experience. Their wisdom
holds against
because of
it
life; it
its
rings true.
authorship by
does not miss immediate pertinence to our
life.
hypnotization by a
native energies.
The
fetish,
earth. It saves us
dictate a
amongst
that
to
volume
of asserting that
sity
business on this globe
to write the planet's "best seller," it preserves mental integrity by enabling us to assign scriptural authorship to human agency, where alone it
is
acceptable. It
to
knowledge
is
of the laws of
enlightenment of those
they must be accounted
less
for.
The phenomenon
of their existence
among
the nations, their hoary age, their escape from destruction through the
centuries, the ineradicable tradition of their divine origin and authority,
their almost universal veneration,
explanation.
The
must
all
find
some
factual
ground of
ones seems the only one that provides such a rational and acceptable
basis. And since the belief in their sacredness generally persists, it can
not be regarded as less than momentous that the world should know of
a surety that, while these revered relics are not the voice of the personi-
Cosmos, neither are they the mere speculative romancing of caveor scholastics. They are the sure word of perfected wisdom.
There was a time, then, in early human history, when enlightened
men possessed true knowledge, the passport to wisdom. Clear and concise answers to the profoundest problems of philosophy were known.
In so far as the human intellectual faculty is capable of it, an understanding of the mystery and riddle of life itself and the laws of its
evolutionary unfolding, was achieved by men who, as Hermes says,
had been "reborn in mind." Philosophy was no mere "speculative enterprise," or tilting at logical windmills; it was a statement of the fundamental archai, or basic principles, of the science of being. It formed the
fied
men
groundwork
reason which
make
lems.
of
all
other sciences!
They hold
They
means can he
man
is
answers to
all life's
prob-
They
learn to
finally to the
final
human
know what
Though
Briefly
and the deposit of many
precious, the distillation of ages of experience
out
not
be
lives of
could
loosely to the undiscigiven
painful earning,
no worthy
free culture.
The
Societies in
which
it
was
secretly
alike.
human
life.
The
fashion.
loss to a
We are
20
be
mirth for ages to come. Other egregious follies of history can be accepted or extenuated to the point of being condoned and forgotten.
But this colossal ineptitude, prolonged over sixteen centuries, can not
escape being laughed at for centuries more. A joke owes its character
to the miscarriage of the intended sense into
something ludicrously
different. This denouement will stand as the historical
joke of the ages.
No less than this quantity of hilarity can balance the weight of the
tragedy which loads the joke at the other end. For the ludicrously different direction in which the intended sense of the
great mythical
religions and dramatic rituals of the past took its perverted course
entailed as a consequence the greatest of all historical
tragedies, the
of
and
frightful chapter
religious bigotry
persecution. This worst of
all
to
man was
of the concealed
And
this
of religious myth,
history!
The promise of our coming awakening lies in the progress made and
made in the study of Comparative Religion, Comparative Mythology and Comparative Philology. What they will ere long make clear
to be
to us
ing
its
moral and
spiritual
had the
The
slightest inkling.
superior
Hence came
Holy Writ,
early
men
of antiquity.
that
when
in
later
began.
In mechanical exploit this is an age of marvel, and credit for this
should not be withheld. In study of life and its
type of achievement
it has labored with wondrous accomplishment. In
objective powers
of
human
enterprise the
mind
of this era
still
is
grotesque to
common
sense
and
fantastic to
mon
22
and brazenly
rom Sunday
to
Sunday. In sum
it
its
cantos
and
its
oracles
his
And
lay.
its
due cause.
great
or
it
>ver
it
to posit
another cause, one that casts the dark shadow of sinister motive
the whole course of that historical enterprise in which sinister
notive
is
of
all
places
politics
or in
can be understood in relation to the imperfecion of human nature, and in a measure pardoned. But designed coruption in religion is shattering to the very foundations of human
:conomic or social
It
.spiration.
life
It
greater or
is
md
being,
religion.
Whether
)f
And
whether the cause of the perpetuation of r^nk superday of alleged enlightenment is to be laid at the
or
of ignorance
knavery or a combination of both, must likewise
o disclose.
loor
It is certain that
fered at the hands of later incompetence. And it is designed to accomthe sharp contrast between the present disfigureplish this by setting up
ment and the past glory of the structure. This purpose entails the task
of revealing for the first time the hidden meaning of the body of
means of a clear and lucid interpretation of their
archaic
scriptures
myths and
fables
numerological
proportions
and
astrological pictographs
once seen to be a labor of no mean
and dramas,
be
at
Biblical
legend,
sense into
by
allegories,
outlines. It will
As
they
modern mind
the
common mind
this
would be
to rob
them of
will stand as a
to the
correctness of this estimate of the present stupefaction of modern inthis reaction. Riditelligence concerning religious philosophy than just
24
cule, contempt and flat rejection will be the greeting accorded the proclamation that Biblical myth is truer and more important than Biblical
history. Our book aims at nothing less than the full proof of trn's con-
with an analytic
into realism can
convert
its
narratives
gersols
when
drama
myth"
To
to fairy-tale, a
is sheer fanci-
is to toss it
mind toward
decadence of
this age.
25
true,
its
it
"characters," but
it
was true
mankind.
used a
It
one.
While it never happened, it is the type of all things that have happened
and will happen. It is not objective history, but it embalms the import and substance, the heart's core, of all human history. Such authors
as Spengler and Lord
Raglan have begun to see that the ancients regarded
it
of far less importance to catalogue the occurrences of objecthan to dramatize its inner "spirit." The outward actions
tive history
of
humans
are in the
main
trivial,
when
it
will
history.
Such being the portentous function of the myth in the early stages
life of
humanity, it becomes in some degree apparent what blindness must have fallen upon the mental eye of
practically a whole
world to have blotted out in little more than a single century the
of the
knowledge
the data
No
matter
how
conclusively
probably remain forever incomprehensible to unstudied folk that whole bodies of ancient
mythology and
spiritual typology suddenly became metamorphosed into alleged his-
may
tory. It is incredible
tragedy of history.
enough, in
And
because
it
all
it
will,
supreme
26
through dangerous terrain that the lost wisdom would have enabled it
to avoid. It has been a journey made without the
guiding light that
had been given to render the road more easily passable. Civilization
has floundered in the shoals and quicksands of ignorance.
And
its
con-
misinterpretation cannot be seen as such until its product has been set
down alongside a true rendering. The crudeness and baseness of a
possible purely
scriptures
27
is
it
when
the evidence of
and crudity into the text. If early literature did not manifestly read
as folly, it had to be made to do so. The inviolable
presupposition in
the case was that by no
could
it be admitted that the ancients
possibility
knew a modicum of what we know today. If it was to be granted that
the seers of yore knew life truly and profoundly, it would be
gall to modern intellectual pride, and the very walls of boasted modern
superiority
would be breached. The content of old scripts, mysterious and haunting as it often appeared, had to be explained on the basis of primitive
naivete of mind. By no right were the
supposed aborigines of remote
ness
ment
spirit
never yielded
its
buried
light. Supercilious
eyes of inquiry and closed the mind to all discovery. Obdurately refusing to admit the possibility of the presence of knowledge, no amount
of search would reveal it. All the surer was
inquiry doomed to failure
in this field,
when
been
at pains to
disguise the outward
It was
only when at last the arcane
knew had
knowledge.
on the part
intelligence
of
numerous
sages.
At
a period remote
28
enough
to
be con-
temporary with the times incorrigibly marked as "primitive" by historians, the ancients possessed books of such exalted spiritual and
intellectual content as to lie yet beyond the
comprehension o vaunted
modern
else in the
humanity as an entity. But the presence of sapient writings, the evidence of great lost arts, and the remains of structures surpassing present achievement, attest incontrovertibly the uniform working of the
law of parenthood here as elsewhere. The human race was parented.
It was not left to
struggle through its helpless infancy without guardianship. Ancient legend in the mass bears this out. Prehistoric lore
of
teems with the stories of heroes and men of divine stature, demi-gods
and sons of God who mingled with humanity, and who left codes of
laws and manuals of civilization that manifest a mastery not possible
of acquirement
by
primitives.
The Laws
and
of
Manu
as the prototype
of
Hermes, Orpheus taught
legal
the nations agriculture, writing, astronomy, language, religion, philosophy and science, the saga runs.
all
Hence
answer
there
to
is
first
29
question
of
the
authorship of
The authorship of
primeval books overpassing even present capability.
the sages removes these books at once from the category of merely
human
speculation
and
places
them
and
first
handed down
to
it
by
its
parents,
who
stand to
it
in loco Dei, If
They
to the failure to
their intrinsic
meaning
not as
fetishes.
The books
years
B.C.
none can
are of
When
say.
unknown
Hundreds
writer of the Pentateuch. Yet the last of the five books describes Moses*
death and burial, and adds that not in a long cycle since his day (estimated by scholars at six hundred years at least) hath there been found
one like unto him in wisdom and piety in all Israel! To ascribe any
of the Bible books to any named writer is to
trespass on the ground of
knowledge. They
lines of a
great universal
wisdom
of those
tradition formulated
by the accumulated
were
finally
first
committed by
scribes to written
and moral
codes, that have survived the test of time and still stand as sacred commitments. Their material presents the substantial truth of life, and not
The
spirit-
renaissance of Oriental
The mask
ancient scripture,
them
mundane,
spiritual
and
narratives
myriad
and
of gods and
children.
We accused them o
dogs,,
Circes
dragons, their griffins, naiads, Cyclops,
actualities.
enough
We
their fire-breathing
sure-
we
were sure
We
could
our unintelligence in the comprehension was unthinkable.
our
of
our
hold
by
shifting
enlightenment
ground
supposed
only
to
was no
The comics in
Not they, but we,
judgment.
ancient.
sense in them.
will be
And we
of a treasure
we
cannot grasp.
Perhaps there will be wanting to us the powers of discernment
needed to catch the grandeur of arcane systems of philosophy under
their covering of allegory. Habits of thought and postures of mind
hostile to the presuppositions of the archaic knowledge will not easily
adjust themselves to new views. The attempt at a full revelation of
The
release of the
will challenge
many
of the
relics of
lingering
theological inculcation. It will republish the postulates of ancient
knowledge that have been lost or discredited and establish
as the
principia of understanding for both the
phenomena o life and the deep lore of the scriptures. Some of these,
long without the pale of orthodox acceptance, will strangely have been
found corroborated by late scientific discovery. The philosophical
method was
finding
is
that "evolution
is
theories of materialism,
affirming that "evolution is prot-empirical rather than meta-empirical;
the organs developing before there is any actual need for them rather
womb
the
embryo
of that
arises."
which
will
Nature already
come
to
carries in her
visioned by the cosmology of old will enable the mind to see the working of design. Mr. Clarence Darrow asks skeptically if the Lisbon
to destroy Lisbon,
man
lives, so
enough
life have been lived all awry because the philointo the structure of archetypal design has been dulled
insight
sophical
and obscured. The outlines of the pattern of evolution formulated in
the
by Cosmic Mind were known of old, but lost in the
Centuries of world
beginning
of a divine
long interim. The world being the crystallized projection
the
lines
of
of the patthe
out
slow filling
thought-form and history
of
the
tern, what man can know of the structure
original ideation, or
the Great Plan, becomes of incontestable importance. This was the base
and content of the Ancient Philosophy. It must be restored to knowledge. Fortunately it has never been lost beyond recovery, merely lost
common thought. It was safe even while unknown, being preserved in the amber o a subtle cryptography. Ignorance came along
and swept out of ken the esoteric purport; but at the same time it perout of
petuated the myths and allegories, believing them to be history. Deluded piety made a hash of the sense of the scriptures, yet all unwit-
On
the one
ignominy
ticism.
it is
necessary to stigmatize its historical caricature, ecclesiasbe declared on its falsities to vindicate its truth.
War must
is
to shine forth
34
again. Plato's
Chapter
ECCE
II
THE modern zeal to exploit "the practical" is about one part good
philosophy and nine parts sheer fatuity. The whole matter has been
involved in the utmost fog and mental haze. The groundlessness o
current notions of what constitutes "the practical" is readily disclosed
by asking the question: What does modern man do with the gains
which his practical effort has brought to him wealth, comfort, means,
satisfactions,
no doubt,
late.
what
attest
constitutes
35
in the outer
which
man
form and
more or
The profound
on
less definite
this life
the evolution of the organism. Philosophical understanding thus in large measure could be made to obviate the toilsome
methodology of trial and error, and both conserve available force and
effort to direct
ignorance
sorrow, then
antiquity
knowledge
make
is its
antidote.
And
all
the great
religions of
vice of a soul is
Hermes: "The
The Boo\
of Proverbs
placed
second to Love or Christly Charity.
By an invincible dialectic Plato
and Socrates work out in dialogue after
dialogue the proposition that
one cannot be good until one %nows what the
good thing is, and even
what it is good for. According to Rhys Davids in his Hibbert Lectures
36
unto the
feet. It
seems
to be
bitterest persecution
movement
tory
is
ism and
or
to violent reaction in
in the
main
soulless naturalism.
spiritistic
faith
dead materialism.
on one
side,
37
to
man
revulsion
from
antidote
eccentric mysticism
And
essential truth
between both
It
wrong
attitudes.
presented
such knowledge of
mystic elements without irrationality, and advanced
of such values impossible.
the
as
make
to
negation
spiritual experience
Ancient theology was the science that dealt with the more sublimated
essences
and
human endowment,
life.
It
exploiting
them
human
springs
the laws ruling the higher octaves in the diapason of consciousness. It
was firmly grounded on premises which authenticated the existence
of the soul as an entity. The soul has ever been the scarecrow in the
garden of positive science. But modem science has itself re-established
the ground for such a predication in its recent findings with
regard
to the
more sublimated
constitution of matter,
making
way
for the
it
for the
first
time
38
components of man's
constitution.
Human
pound
man
finer
held in linkage to
feeling.
The
tech-
The
is
giving
birth again to the knowledge that man may pass from unconscious
drifting with the tide pf evolution to a conscious self-directed mastery
of his progress.
forces,
He may
ranks of those
step
from the
such as he
is
of
its
plan.
Hence he can
is
flint flash
Rock
how
it
holds on to
its
"ghost"
was
through his soul, but with the ancient hierarchical grades of intermediacy torn out of the gap between the two. Early Christian revolt
against esotericism threw down the ladder of linkage between man
below and his soul above, and now has no resources to
the
diagram
The gap
left
vacant
the
God. A historical
personage was called in to implement a junction that was originally
assigned to one of the principles of man's own constitution. This was
one of those consequences which the little blunder of
mistaking myth
historical Jesus as
mediator between
man and
his
by modern
science, pres-
limated and potent than any of the energies so far discerned in matter.
It will then be in position to take counsel
again with the primeval
divine revelation.
It will
human
soul
spirit in
When
the lower
man
to the
god
value of spiritual culture, and theology and philosophy now go abegging for recognition, bereft of their former kingly renown. And now
their continued abeyance threatens civilization itself. No
age calls so
piteously for the certain knowledge of the science of the soul, since to
soul alone can be attached the anchor for all shifting human values.
Without the
scientific
is
itself
built
up
lac]^ stability
Such a
and prime
human
utility.
through the ranges of the elements and the kingdoms, harvesting its
varied experiences at the end of each cycle. It was described by Greek
philosophy as "more ancient than the body," because it had run the
as
cycle of incarnations in many bodies, donning and doffing them
it
treasure
that
of
contact
with
lower
so
worlds,
might
up
garments
the powers of all life garnered in experience in every form of it. The
mutual
relation of soul to
body in each of
its
incarnate periods
is
the
nub of the ancient philosophy, and the core of all Biblical meaning.
As the Egyptian Boo\ of the Dead most majestically phrases it, the
soul, projecting itself into one physical embodiment after another,
No more solid foundation for
"steppeth onward through eternity,"
laid than this rock of knowledge, and civican
be
salutary philosophy
lization will flounder in perilous misadventure until this datum of
intellectual certitude is restored to
The
common
thought.
41
the poison of
down its integrity and racks even the body. Philosophy, reduced now to tedious and jejune speculation, is that very bread of life
for which we starve. It was once a body of positive truth. To it the
mind could anchor. Only intelligence can save motivation from rank
exuberance of eccentricity. Despoiled of the early truth, later ages have
been in the position of a person trying to think without true premises.
breaks
It is
premises.
god functioning
is
in the
body
of a
man
is
human
all.
which
man
strives to relate a
which
it
the miraculous
terms are misnomers and can become misleading. But relative to the
viewpoint of the merely natural man, the work of the god in his nature
is transcendent and is indeed
fittingly termed supernatural. For it is
the province of religion to
transfigure the natural life of man with the
irradiance of cosmic romance,
magical potency and unearthly splendor.
It is
designed to refashion the natural man into the likeness of a glori-
ous spiritual being, the cosmical man of the heavens. To lower orders
life the
capabilities of beings of a superior kingdom of life are justifiably designated as supernatural. Our brain power is supernatural to
the dog.
of
theological
dogma. For
the
God
demand
It flouts
it
will
movement
ance that Christianity arose like a stately phoenix out of the ashes of a
decadent paganism, to save a benighted world from sinking into a
message.
No
theology are identical with those held at the start. One of the most
and admittedly the most learned of the Church Fathers,
influential
its
original inspiration.
"Origen, the pupil of St. Clement of Alexandria, and the best informed
and most learned of the Church Fathers, who held the doctrine of rebirth
and karma to be Christian, and against whom, 299 years after he was dead,
excommunication was decreed by the exoteric Church on account of his
beliefs,
known
to the multitude,
been taught,
cal
is
made
have
"
esoteric.'
And
itself,
which
The
Issue
if
religion is to live
of the entire problem is the conception of
deity in a form perennially available for man in the heart of his otvn
nature. This conception is the core of all religious theory, and loss of
and
The crux
has been the cause of doubt, confusion and despair. Light and truth
lost are once more at hand to illumine minds now
groping in
it
long
mankind
the loss of
its
The
and Judaism is that they alone have prepurest concept of deity in the form of the One
Monotheism. The claim is by no means true as fact. They may
boast of Christianity
sented to
God
mankind
its
correctly be said to have been the first to present the One God
without the ancient train of the subordinate gods. They boast of hav-
more
evils of
organs.
The gods
of primeval religion
faculties, organs of God himself. Nature was his body, elemental forces
the agents of his
operative economy, universal mind his thinking
faculty and ultimate beneficence his spiritual heart. The ancient
sys-
God
it
as
organically apprehended
an abstract "nonity."
God
theologians
a body, parts and divisions. The
mind could
only be saved from defiling his purity by keeping him an empty abstraction. Unknowable and Absolute, he was to be
kept ineffable. He
was not to be dragged into the
purlieus of mortal description, degraded into the semblance of a creation of man's low thought.
But the astute Greeks kept the one without
foregoing the other.
They reverenced the One as beyond the reach of thought, yet portrayed
blasphemy
to give
44
his
emanations in the
field of manifestation.
And
being in
all
from nature.
immanence.
And
thought problem,
problem to fill this need. It has this dialectic utility. But it must ever
remain a contentless abstraction. As such it turns out that the chalice
of divinity that the Church proffered to benighted nations as the supreme boon o religion, was well-nigh an empty cup. And engrossing
the mass mind with a philosophical concept that is unassimilable and
must forever remain meaningless, ecclesiasticism perpetrated the far
worse crime of condemning to desuetude that more realistic conception of resident deity which alone is fraught with pregnant power to
apotheosize human life. Holding out a supreme Ineffability to its followers, it withheld from them at the same time the knowledge of that
deity that is lodged immediately within their own selfhood. Giving
a God who is utterly inaccessible, it blocked their approach to the
them
This
is
content, description,
we
its
necessary being.
Whatever good will flow from our knowing that the Unknowable is
back of all phenomena is ours. We can hardly love or worship what
we cannot know. The boundary of our reach is wonder and speculaa
about the
attempts to worship it are the flutterings of moth
at. Ancient religion was suspected of having left
look
dare
not
light
the monotheistic God out of its picture. It did not leave it out, but it
tion.
Our
we
had the
discretion to leave
by a becoming
silence!
it
alone!
45
tween man and an Absolute God in the cosmic heavens. But the pagan
world provided a contact with a god dwelling immediately within the
human breast. No reaching after the moon of the Absolute diverted
conscious purpose from actual touch with the god who stood at one's
elbow, fthe seers of old held
it
humanism
or affront to deity. It
it
was
was
accessible.
The
of
it is
to be
had
apostasy,
in the blind
Deity for man is at home, not afield in distant skies. The kingdom
heaven and the hope of glory are within. They lurk within the un-
fathomed depths of consciousness. Divinity lies buried under the heavier motions of the sensual nature and the incessant
scurrying of the
superficial mind. It is the still small voice, drowned out mostly by the
raucous clamor of fleshly, material and mental interests. It is a
pure,
mild Presence, awaiting the day when the outer man will
give more
heed to its quiet speech. The Supreme God is not available; but within
the quietude of his
own
being every
wisdom
of the lost
of
his
not present with man; but he has not left man without
that measure of his
grace that man can utilize. He has projected into
our nature a portion, a ray, of his own life. He has
apportioned
wholeness
amongst
each
is
all
measure of
his ineffable
power which
hardly
and
The
womb
indwelling god
of humanity.
is
Each individual
46
deeps of his
into the
own
empyrean
of
daemon
of the individual.
in philosophy
On
the plane of
all
practical living value,
useless to look to
higher evolutionary forms of deific expression
unless and until that was brought from infancy to maturity of func-
it
was
human
psyche. If
man
utterly.
from
all
the values
its
divinity.
An
and meanings in
The
<e
Greek ^orwgene/
as "ftftix^ggltpn]' was an error fraught with the most terrific consequences for Christendom. It properly means
(the Father, Spirit), in contradistinction to the idea of being born of
the union of Father and Mother, or spirit and matter. It was a referlarge of
its
birthright.
mistranslation of the
nature alone, as distinct from its progenation from the union of spirit
with matter. The doctrine was primordial in the Egyptian conception
of the god Kheper or Khepera, symboled by the scarab, which, the
the male or father
Egyptians asserted, produced its young through
of
on
was
the
sole
If
alone.
earth, then the promJesus
deity
epiphany
are assured again
ises of our universal sonship are made nugatory.
We
are
all
sons of
upon
the
47
Highest. Christhat
was appor-
tioned amongst us all, but also, in its confusion and ignorance, forced
upon his mortal person the function, power and office of the Cosmic
on
earth.
How
cal brain
of Alexandria
sibility
stature.
What has not been recognized is that the solitary exaltation of the
man Jesus has inevitably demeaned humanity. His lonely apotheosization has disinherited us. And the general revolt of the intellectualism of
this age against the resultant debasement of human nature to the level
of the worm of the dust through Augustinian and Calvinistic impositions should stoutly attest the falsity of the orthodox characterization.
The mythical as opposed to the historical interpretation of the Gos-
pels has
of the evidence
Adonis,
Atys,
Orpheus, Mithras,
Zoroaster,
Krishna,
Bala-Rama,
its
adherents to
move
doctrinal
meaning
that
is
in unique magnificence,,
in the
freedom of a
spiritual
it lets
is
lie
ment
is
the disinheritance of
way
power and
chamber of the
heart.
outward
The
dom
firms the sorry truth of this statement. And the earlier Christian history lends further corroboration in its record of bickering, heretical
If it
And
all this
historical Jesus
has stood as a loadstone and beacon to inspire and attract the hearts of
millions of devotees, and that the contemplation of his excellency will
work
of "demonstrations."
Much
as
man-
kind needs
own
To
It
clips
of perfection outside
is
him, to match
yond compare, the ever-receding
He
ideal.
thought
them
To
it
mount of fellowship.
sense poignantly the degradation to
into the
spiritual
King
of Glory.
50
Chapter
III
obliterated. All
this day.
secret
It
guard
Plato, Heraclitus,
Empedocles, Anaxagoras;
was embodied
in the
poetry of
in the
into their
Valentinus.
ample
nascent Christian
hierarchy to check the growing trend of the
the complete exoterization of its esoteric message.
ment toward
movewas
Maxi-
It
whom
St. Paul,
many scholars
rectly into Christian documentation by
claim on evidence to have been himself an Initiate in the Greek Mys-
teries (as were Clement and Origen in the Egyptian), and also by St.
John, whose Bible writings are decidedly more Platonic than distincof its transmission runs on to Plutively Christian. The visible thread
tarch, after
whom
it
Hermeticists, Therapeutae, Rosicrucians, Platonists, Mystics, Illuminati, Alchemists, Brothers of various designations and secret frater-
nities in
one
re-
groups
Romance
52
Features of
it
common
of
came
to
"superstition." It
was
aspects of
acknowledge
came
the
Coming
principles.
to the surface
again in recent years it is being revived
by
its start,
and equally
It is desirable to trace
the
room
to vindicate itself.
This work in
The
its
entirety will
amount
to a
so that the
reproduction of the substance of the archaic world religion,
clear outlines of the great pristine doctrines of theology as they were
schools,
may by
53
dom
become
discernible.
The stream
summate
as the con-
it
into alleged history. This has been perpetrated in spite of the obvious
impossibility of explaining how a people that produced Plato, Aristotle,
of the
solid
opaqueness.
measure the impetuosity of this rebecame the embodied expression of a vehement assault on the
esotericism of the Mystery
Religions. It was evidently motivated by a
resentment
popular
against the exclusiveness and aristocracy of the
cults.
a
restricted
and tested minority was eligible to admission
Only
into the Associations. The hidden
teaching was withheld from the
under
the
strictest
secret
of
bans. A wave of hostility to the
populace,
ture. Christianity carried in
large
volt. It
54
doctrine for general behoof. Distrust of the possession of any real truth
beyond ordinary grasp and perhaps the degeneracy of the Mysteries
movement
mediocrity to tear
attempt
like the
wisdom
to the level of
When,
later,
movement
When
more concrete idea of a personal Messiah, who would be so obviously factual and realistic as to preclude the possibility of being misconceived by the most doltish. The swell of this tide of force carried
the
the
Church Fathers
Gospel in the
human
terms of a
ture shielded beneath the literal narrative a secret profundity of meanfour distinct levels in
ing, which was its true message. Philo specified
scripture
was
to
55
literal,
garded
and
basest.
The
upon
means
attempt to utilize
it
as a
to suffer the blighting of its best spiritual effort. If by the tactic the
be said to have gained the whole world, it lost its
Church
own
may
That
Christianity after
its
by
menting on the
social
his
complexion of the Christians of
clay.
He
wrote:
"It
is
slaves
and women-
wool-dressers and
and children whom they wish to persuade
\vhosoand
uneducated
the
most
and
cobblers
fullers,
vulgar persons
ever is a sinner, or unintelligent, or a fool, in a word, whoever is god-forfolk
Edward
God
tianity in relation to
contemporary
56
will receive."
o
Carpenter, an unbiased and kindly student
its
faiths, says:
early Chris-
notice of
Many
but
needless to enforce
it is
what
is
known and
indisputable.
gram.
truth vitiated, devoid of nourishing sense, corrupted and corrupting as witness its own unconscionable history. It attempted to
furnish to the uncultured the easily digested provender they required,
bread
swung with such zeal into this labor that it denied the need of
strong meat to more capable digestions. Christianity's culpability was
but
not that
it
fed the outcast and the sinner, but that it denied the Gnosis
or to any. Its Roman revolt against the spiritual
to the intelligent
esotericism constituted
its
all
re-
against the high-minded groups that again and again in the whole
course of its history essayed with sincerity to restore to it the lost mes-
sage of the Gnosis. Students of the situation in the early Church will
the factual ground beneath the Emperor Julian's caustic obser-
know
murder
is
no wild
of the learned
beast like
of the Alexandrian library are sufficient attestation of the level of savage ferocity to which the reaction against the lofty wisdom of the past
had reduced its uncultured opponents. Christianity now lives to witness a
to the
esotericism of revived Oriental philosophies for the deeper nourishment of the human spirit.
must be seen
Christianity can not shake off its pagan parentage. It
that in spite of the almost complete dismantling of the esoteric interall the outward vestments of
pretation, the system retained practically
the hidden truth. That Christianity presented to the world a complete
new
to be
unknown
from ignorance
to
wisdom
is
before
it
is
failed to
of course
now
understood
make any
not so obvious to
its
single advance
partisans or to the
on the evidence.
general public, but seems nevertheless indisputable
It sadly bedimmed the old splendor of knowledge. For it threw away
the golden grain and kept only the husk. The legitimacy of such a
dogmatic assertion can become evident only in the light of the entire
study here undertaken, since such a lengthy scrutiny is required to
demonstrate that in dogma after dogma, rite after rite, and parable
after parable, Christianity substituted a mean and valueless literal sense
for the original inspiring message. If this was the sacrifice it made on
behalf of the lowly masses, it wrote off the payment by a total sup-
Devising nothing new and retaining the outward form and dress
of pagan systems, Christianity has ever been hard put to explain the
undeniable similarity between antecedent religions and its own faith
and
practice. Intelligent
But
futility
denying
and have
the fact
religion.
The
device
amazing
is
excellent work,
ments
at length
Pagan and Christian Creeds, Edward Carpenter comon the subterfuge, as follows
:
"The similarity of these ancient pagan legends and beliefs with Christian traditions was indeed so great that it excited the attention and the undisguised wrath of the early Christian Fathers. They felt no doubt about
the similarity, but not knowing how to explain it, fell back upon the innocent theory that the Devil in order to confound the Christians had cen-
we may
He
bap-
this purifies
their crimes!
Mithra sets his mark on the forehead of his
he celebrates the oblation of bread; he offers an image of the
resurrection and presents at once the crown and the sword; he limits his
chief priests to a single marriage; he even has his virgins and ascetics/
them from
soldiers;
dom."
modern
"And
testifies:
Church
There are many accusations against "the devil" in the same strain
from Christian apologists. Not only were the theory and practice of
the
but
cults.
"If
we
clearness, that the figure of the Redeemer, as such, did not wait for Chrisbut was already present
tianity to force its way into the religion of Gnosis,
writes:
Discussing the doctrine of a Savior, Carpenter
"Probably the wide range of this doctrine would have been far better
and more generally known, had not the Christian Church, all through,
made the greatest of efforts and taken the greatest of precautions to extinguish and snuff out all evidence of the pagan claims on the subject.
There is much to show that the early Church took this line with regard to
9
pre-Christian Saviors."
Carpenter makes
it
sense a belief distinctive of Christianity. He explains that the Messianic prophecies of the Jews and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah In-
Hebrew word
which
Christos,
also
that the
word
280
B.C.
"the Christ"
B.C.
170, the
is
The
Christians
explanation that Satan had teased them with some anticipatory resemblances. They resorted to the most violent measures to blot out all
a black
own
treatises
to obliterate, as
Carpenter says, "the evidence of
tells of their destruction of elaborate
dishonesty." Porphyry
on Mithraism.
summed up
And
his
work
is
in the
of record.
words of
Sir Gilbert
60
not gained, by its masking the truth about its origins. Rabid fanaticism
and the destruction of literature are always the resort of a bad cause,
revealing a want of a good defense on open ground. The frenzy of
zeal to wipe out all the testimony that pointed to derivation from
pagan forms argues a weak confidence, if not a bad conscience.
It
may
second, third
and
It is
earlier
paganism
believed
commonly
Greeks and Romans of the early Christian days stood far closer
the great Egyptian and Chaldean cultures than we do today. Such
that the
to
far from the truth. The Egyptian papyri, monuments and tablets
were a sealed book to the Christian Fathers, and remained so until
Champollion worked out the key to the hieroglyphics from the Rosetta
Stone in the early nineteenth century. The connection between the
Christian cult and its antecedents in India, Chaldea and Egypt was
not seen then as it can be today. We can in a measure understand the
indignant surprise of the propagators of the new faith on finding that
their alleged novel truth had been copied ahead of them by the
is
heathen!
by studied
intellec-
tuals. Its
is
win high
status
them
its
by disparaging
to their
sources
its
it
parentage.
disastrous.
61
The outcome
has been
"I
It is
this
must
perish.
when
Christianity, therefore, as
it
must
either
acknowledge
its
affiliate itself to
I
frankly forward and, acknowledging its parentage from the great Order of
the Past, seek to rehabilitate that, and carry mankind one step forward in
the path of evolution
tive."
or else
it
must
perish.
There
is
no other
alterna-
10
tempt. Convicted of its error the Church must go the whole way in
making the correction. No course but that of candor and honesty will
now
suffice, if
indeed
it is
now
to
save a bad situation. Further concealment and evasion will only prove
the more surely disastrous. For the sun of the moral zodiac has
swung
around into the sign of Libra, where the good and evil of historical
action are weighed in the balance, and
piled high on the adverse pan
are the knavery and ignorance of early
policies, the violent treatment
of earnest esotericists, the destruction of
priceless books and the cruel
persecution of sincere sectaries. The way in which ecclesiastical Christianity
meets
determine
its fate. If it
confronts
it
with
glow
of righteousness.
movement now
62
through the
Chapter IV
WISDOM HIDDEN
IN
A MYSTERY
WE
have remained stodgily and stupidly impervious to the infiltraancient truth because we have remained blind to the method of
presentation and preservation. We have lost the power to grasp the
tion o
its
gained
The
age its general and quick distribution. Secondly, it had to be safeguarded from the undisciplined who would misuse it. And thirdly, it
had to be preserved. To this end it had to be embalmed in the amber
of such myths, legends, folk-tales, parables and structures of natural
symmetry as would become unforgettable mnemonics through the
power of tradition. And finally it had to be expressed in a language
would be
universally comprehensible a language of living symTherefore truth was dramatized and symbolized. The figures in
the drama were the elements of divine and human nature; and the
symbols were an alphabet of truth because they were phases of truth
that
bols.
in the world of flesh and matter. They carried to the mind their
message of invisible truths because they were those invisible truths
themselves appearing in man's cognizable world clothed in a garment
itself
63
And
Universal
Mind
did throw
where mortal
of matter,
its
man may
that
is
not
Unable
false, as
to
mean is inane nonsense; what it does acmean is splendid truth. And the gross perversion and loss of its
sense have come solely through our unfamiliarity with the special and
involved techniques employed in writing the sacred books. Our efforts
Bible has been declared to
tually
The
ancient scribes were, first of all, esotericists and wrote esoAll spiritual wisdom was held in secret brotherhoods and
terically.
pious faith could not alone gain one admission into the Mystery
Schools. Actual discipline of body and mind, and certain inner unfoldments of faculty were held as requisite for the grasp of deeper truth.
Initiation was to some real extent a matter of the
mastery of
theurgic
life.
Esotericisrn arose
primarily from the necessity of safeguarding the use of dynamic knowledge. Religion was far from being the jejune shell of social or mystical
processes
of which nature's dynamic
energies had to be controlled and intelligently directed. What we have derided as "magic" in the religion of
old was just the control of subtle
to
powers which we mostly
permit
slumber in dormancy beneath the surface of our
superficial life. Religion touched man so deeply in olden times that it awakened the
64
And
teries, of which
from nature by the payment of
life
schooled to har-
frequently
really,
by
follows
And
is
weight:
"But it was then lawful to survey the most splendid beauty, when we
obtained, together with that blessed choir, this happy vision and contemplation. And we indeed enjoyed this blessed spectacle in conjunction with
Jupiter
is
...
lawful to
at the
call
To Renouf s
sure, there
initiation,
we became
or
no
it
which
it
Likewise in conse-
ill-founded assertion
is little
Mysteries.
."
that, to
be
good reason
that esotericism
nature to leave
is
little
by
its
mem-
On
but conceal
archaic
literainterpret
to discern the intent of truth under the disguise
of designed duplicity in the telling.
And it is further absurd for a Christian apologist to protest the fact
tiated,
ture
it
of ancient esotericism, seeing that Christianity itself perpetuated esoteric distinctions in its own practices for two centuries. To this effect
is
largely a secret
cedure that has bred the prevalent wide confusion with respect to
past
wisdom, and find the solution of our bewilderment and ineptitude in
face of ancient
mythology. Our childish misconstruction that has written the record of our dull incomprehension across the scroll of literature for a millennium and a half, comes out in
silhouette as
glaring
we fathom
We have mistaken
have pitying condescension
We
We
We
pridefully
the case.
We, not
66
We
myth os was
matic
consummate
poetic
and dra-
art!
The
were devised to convey cosmical history, theogony, anand finally individual experience of humans in the
psycho-physiological development of mortal life. The whole cycle of
the history of unfolding divinity in humanity was dramatized for
stage enactment in the annual round of Mystery festivals. And portions/
of this drama have filtered down into the ritualism of
practically every
stories
thropogenesis,
ment was
The
epic of the
human
the
symbolizing afresh the old, old story of the immortal spirit's immersion in the sea of matter. In all, combats with dragons, wrestling with
serpents, harassments by brute creatures, enchantments by Sirens,
plottings of conspirators, imprisonment in dungeons and a struggling
through to an ultimate return to the original home of felicity, find their
one type of adventure after another the many features of the
place. In
were
Ego
in
allegorically portrayed.
its
progress
to the skies
its
appropriate myth.
Indeed there is every presumption in favor of the belief that the
mytkos was an infinitely more profound instrument in the hands of
its
inventors than
unseen forms of abstract truth out into physical representation for the
that mittheomai, the
grasp of thought. There is warrant for believing
is derivable from the
would suggest a form of direct
the intuitions. The myth made an outward picture of ideal
dramatized truth. It had the graphic impressiveness of a
It
we
literal
statement
is
a fabulous one,
and
Philo's statement
is
it is
not
less
age.
Reluctant as
is
the
modem
belief or tradition.
In the light of such true words from one of the most eminent of
it becomes next to
incomprehensible that modern schol-
Egyptologists
68
That they shadowed the greatest of spiritual truths has not yet
mind of any man highly received in the ranks of orthodox
scholarship. No one has yet been able to tell these savants that they
have been handling pearls, and not rubbish.
Yet they have been told, and by no one more courageously and
vehemently than Gerald Massey, a scholar of surpassing ability whose
sterling work has not yet won for him the place of eminence which
he deserves. The wrecking of the mythos by ignorant literalism stirred
Massey to bitter resentment against the perpetrators of the crime. His
own words will speak best for him, while they support our own constition.
entered the
tentions
"The
we have
mis-
taken the primitive method of representing them. It is we, not they, who
are the most deluded victims of false belief. Christian capacity for believing
the impossible is unparalleled in any time past amongst the race of men.
Christian readers denounce the primitive realities of the mythical representations as puerile indeed, and yet their own realities alleged to be eternal,
from the fall of Adam to the redemption by means of a crucified Jew, are
or nothing more than the shadows of these primitive simplicities of
an earlier time. It will yet be seen that the culmination of credulity, the
meanest emasculation of mental manhood, the densest obscuration of the
inward light of nature, the completest imbecility of shut-eye belief, the
nearest approach to a total and eternal eclipse of common sense, has been
little
attained beyond
creeds.
direct
work
all
the
her
man
of
common
sense.
The
idealities.
Modern ignorance
realities
him
of the mythical
mode
with delusive
of representation
has led to the ascribing of innumerable false beliefs not only to primitive
men and present-day savages, but also to the most learned and highly civilized people of antiquity, the Egyptians."
He
asserts
less,
that their
own
which
it
all
mythologizing
it
it
is
Elsewhere
".
(II,
Si) he repeats:
and
Pythagorean."
has
interpreted
and
mythology has
criticism that
it
so profoundly infected
religion, poetry, art
asserts that "a
Massey
insists that
He
theology
is
and
a diseased state of
primitive mythol-
The mythos
myths.
passed over into the folk-tale, not the folk-tale into the
contends that in truth the
myths were the earliest forms
mythos. He
taken by primitive
reality.
70
this
work,
to
is
show
that the
They knew
They took
the latter.
rected
life,
they saw the bird soar into the airy heights. They found in the mole
a fit symbol of the soul immersed in the dark underworld of flesh,
because the analogy was evident and under their eye. Nature supplied
the suggestive identity, and they used it to teach subjective truths.
Primitive man may well know the simple processes of nature from
Whole
foundly elaborated that the united intelligence of the world for centuries has been unable to fathom their hidden significance. Millions of
astonished comprehension only by the books of ancient Egypt. Hundreds of celebrities in the field of Egyptology have mulled over the
same material and have not yet lifted as much as a corner of the veil
Primitive simplicity could not have concocted what the agelong study of an intelligent world could not fathom. Not aboriginal
and intellectual acumen, formulated the
naivete, but exalted
of
Isis.
spiritual
was known, You can not see that nature reflects spiritual truth
you know the form o spiritual truth. And such knowledge
lower,
unless
to
making
the comparison at
all!
Did
man
of subjective truth?
primitive
possess such profound knowledge
But whence, it will be asked, came such exalted intelligence amongst
the early undeveloped races ? This question has been answered by the
earlier statement that graduates of this or other cycles of growth had
parent or guardian gives to
parented and tutored early mankind.
we
plication;
some
We
We
The
arise
negroes."
He
adds elsewhere:
texts
associate
was
astic
mind
ethics
at the contemporaneous
presence of elevated spirituality or
with alleged primitive culture. We see the same inadequacy of
the "primitive" theory to meet the facts again in the following quotation from Budge:
others that
for a literal eating (!), Budge traces the practice to a savage custom
of cutting out and eating the vital organs of the bodies of captives in
order to imbibe their courage, and says that "it is hard to understand
and
filled
It is
ity of
modern academicians
"The Egyptian Christians also associated the frog with new birth and on
lamp described by Lauzone, is a figure of a frog surrounded by
a Christian
73
He
That
eminent a scholar
so
understanding
and the
beetle
as
the difficulty of
why
the frog
The
the beetle, the snake, the worm becoming the chrysalis, were the
frog,
obvious visible types of transfiguration and regeneration, the outward
mark
question today by asking: "What age would not be ashamed to confess that it could not tell the difference between
myths and actual
history?"
corrupted until
ligions
is
marked by
a blurring of the
original light. Their fiery motivating
ever
tends
to become static. Early
spirit
passion for radical regeneration of the life dwindles into a conservative
The
tendency.
early
Hence
religious apprehension; they are the crumbling ruins of once noble structures of wisdom and genius. Modern insight has entirely failed to sense this status
74
mind
'savage'
of study convinced
Massey
known
that
all
the
today
the
He
myths
is
as a
product of the
15
Years
fatally in error."
Marchen were
the flotsam of
avers:
"We must go back to the Pro to-Aryan beginnings which are Egyptian
and Kamite. In Africa we find those things next to Nature where we can go
no further back in search of origins. Egypt alone goes back far enough to
touch Nature in these beginnings, and
Egypt alone has faithfully and
.
10
intelligently kept the record."
Here
of
faith."
"All this
ties
is
only theory as far as the Egyptians are concerned, but authorireligions tell us that this is exactly what has taken
on modern African
the peoples of West Africa. Thus Col. Ellis says that there is
among the negroes of the West Indies, who have been
Christianized for more than half a century, than amongst those of West
place
among
more
fetishism
Africa; for side by side with the new religion have lingered the old superwhose true import has been forgotten or corrupted." 17
stitions,
75
events as the frame for the allegorical depiction. And this mixture has
made the determination difficult in places. It is not an overstatement
of truth to aver that the systems of mythology have served little better
purpose in the Christian era than to derail the entire train of meaning.
"This was the fundamental idea of the so-called 'Egyptian animal-worship' which provoked the merriment of the cultured Greeks and drew
down upon the Egyptians the ridicule and abuse of the early Christian
7
writers/
Budge
1S
is
was
doubtful
to be enjoyed."
ours
is
ualistic offerings?
Budge goes on
who
views
minds and
In his sorry effort at interpretation of the Egyptian Myths and Legends Lewis Spence adds clinching evidence of the utter incapacity of
academic brains to discern in the least degree what the sages of old
were laboring to do, when he permits himself to place the following
terial
so
by reason of
his
... As the Egyptian everywhere craved the manifestation of and communion with his gods, it thus came about that incarnations of deity and its
many
attributes
were multiplied."
The consummate
19
ancient Egyptian seers of the flat incapacity for abstract thought may
not be comprehended in its bald grossness until the reader has fin-
We
science
we
are
still
the barbarians.
kind they did not have. What they had was representations
which is a whole kingdom's length away from the other
Their
"gods" were in reality the actual energies of nature,
conception.
of matter and of mind in the universe, graded in a wonderful hiercisely the
of the gods,
77
archy. These are intangible powers, and what can puny man do other
than represent them by one or another type of image? The Egyptians
had quite unaccountable knowledge of these sublimer forces, with
some of which, as the ethers and the rays, modern science is now
slowly becoming acquainted, and they poetically imaged them under
deific
Set, Isis,
sonation) they expressly did not have. Budge wastes pages over the
discussion as to whether Osiris was a living character; and decided
that his tomb, with his actual bodily remains, was at Abydos. The
time has come to cry out against such incompetent muddling and to
Budge was a few times astute and fair enough to admit that injustice
had been done to pagans by Christian aspersions as to their addiction
to idol-worship and fetishism. He well recalls that the
Portuguese
Christian explorers adjudged the African tribes to be practitioners of
witchcraft and sorcery simply because they were themselves familiar
with it and gratuitously translated observed African ceremonies as
quotes Dr. Nassau as a final authority in stating that "the thing itself,
the material itself, is not worshiped.
Low as is fetishism, it nevertheless has its philosophy, a
philosophy that is the same in kind as
.
Vol.
I,
p. 198;
"From first to last there is no evidence whatever that the Egyptians worshipped a figure or symbol, whether made of metal or wood, stone, porcelain or any other substance, unless they believed it to be the abode of a
spirit
of some kind. So far from fetishism being peculiarly characteristic of
Egyp-
tian religion,
it
seems
to
me
-free
from
it."
all
events in
its
oldest
Chapter
itself.
that the
shadow
of the truth that the book portrays has yet fallen across the
threshold of modern understanding. No suspicion of the grand completeness of its message has yet dawned upon us. Nineteen hundred
years of theological digging has not unearthed the treasure buried
its
allegorical profundities. And this failure has been due to our
stubborn refusal to reject the Bible as history, and to accept it as cryptic
typology. From beginning to end the Bible is nothing but a series of
spiritual allegories traduced to history or interwoven with some history.
under
to religion
all
out of the elements of the one cosmic and racial situation in which
the
human group
is
involved; and
all
79
wholly discarded from religion since Milton's day, yet a cosmical situation provides the ground for all adequate interpretation of Bible representation. The one central theme is the incarnation.
Beside esotericism and allegorism the Bible composers had recourse
method which is less readily demonstrable and which has
to another
From remote
which
soul's
map, on
had essayed to depict the features of the
experience in the scenes which their enlightend imaginations
times the ancients dealt with a celestial chart or
had traced about the star clusters. The stellar zodiacs left at Denclerah,
Pylae and elsewhere are impressive reminders of the influence of this
heavenly scenograph. The discovery in quite recent years of the Somerzodiac in England, a giant zodiac wrought, it is calculated, 2700
in the natural features of the countryside covering one hundred
set
B.C.
square miles, with the figure of Leo, the Lion, four miles from nose
another most authentic attestation to the basic signifi-
to tail-tip, is
cance which symbolical astrology has held in ancient religious formulations. Present students have as
yet little conception of how generally
it
ture without a
we
where
it
had
first
occurred,
before
it
80
the heavens."
The
the behoof of
mundane humanity.
In the
uranograph.
motif bac\ of
all
its
blessings of fertility,
down
into the
Lower
his initiations,
tempta-
blematic of the four pillars of man's constitution, his physical, emowarfare between the
tional, mental and spiritual bodies and natures.
their kings
History of Egypt, expresses his puzzlement over the fact that nearly
every Pharaoh of the dynasties had to conquer Lower Egypt afresh
and unite the two halves of the country under a common hegemony!
In all likelihood the physiography and organic structure of the heavenly
man was to some extent copied in the distribution and construction of
pyramids, tombs, temples and other sanctuaries, and the pyramids
themselves were quite obviously astronomical graphs with ceremonial
design and conformations. There was a mountain or holy hill of the
Lord, and there were points of entrance and exit from and to the
lower world of Amenta.
The celestial typology having been engrafted on the topography of
the country itself, the next measure was to weave the dramatic features
into the national history.
Egypt and the Hebrew tribes are perhaps
the most outstanding examples of the operation of this
methodology
on an extensive scale, how extensive the general student of the present
age is unprepared to believe. Thus the names associated for ages with
cosmic and spiritual typism were spread out over the maps of the different lands;
religious scripts
82
mountains were on the uranograph long before they appeared on national maps! They were transferred from the
uranograph to the maps!
The occurrences of Bible "history" had been enacted annually or
nightly among the stars of the sky long before they became incorporated in the epics of religion. And they had been in the epics before
they became assigned to actual localities and personages. Heavenly
regions and spiritual transactions were finally brought to earth and
given a local habitation on land and in history. In short, the naming
of geographical features was done by the sacerdotal castes in each
country, in which task they simply sought to pattern their country
and its history after the scheme of the uranograph! Their map and
their history were cast as far as could be done in the mold of the
cosmic chart. Each nation designed to make its configuration and history reflect and fulfill the heavenly model!
own American
encies.
The theory here advanced is not without support from other authoriThe following brings the weight of a very venerable document
ties.
to the
celestial
localities
according to the
celestial
Nomes and
83
scenery
is
described in the
inscription of
of the south,
up
their landmarks,
An
"
is
contained in
Mount
in the heavens."
of divine ideation,
So far from grasping the uranographic art as the key to the hisproblem in all scriptures, late writers vent their skepticism on
torical
this
"What
even, of
proof
is
there
we
all this
they regarded the various divisions and towns, and the river and name of
2
Galilee, as mystical and earthly reflexes of these celestial phenomena!"
There is proof enough in the very fact that the ancient seers were
poets and allegorists, and not historians. Practically conclusive evidence
that Bible names are not
objective or historical (in the first place) is
to be found in the fact that there are in the Bible some scores of allusions to such local
names
as
and
localities
on mundane maps do
in the
Land
temple bore a
of
before there
Egypt.
It
human
realms,
"The picture of this paradise in the Hebrew writings, the Psalms, the
Boofys of Isaiah, Ezetyel, Zechariah and Revelation, were pre-extant long
ages earlier as Egyptian. What the so-called 'prophets' of the Jews did was
to make sublunary the vision of the good time in another life. There were
always two Jerusalems from the time when Judea and Palestine were appenages of Egypt. Two Jerusalems were recognized by Paul, one terrestrial, one celestial. The name of Jerusalem we read as the Aarru-salem or
peace in the heaven of the never-setting stars. The burden of Jewwhich turned out so terribly misleading for those who were
ignorant of the secret wisdom, is that the vision of this glorious future
.
Thus
should be attained on earth; whereas it never had that meaning.
fields of
ish prophecy,
Jerusalem on earth was to take the place of Jerusalem above and the Aarru3
hetep became Jerusalem simply as a mundane locality."
From numberless texts in the Bible itself which point to the correctness of the uranographic interpretation of names we take one alone,
which by itself is enough to substantiate the claim made in this con-
whom
it is
"And
their
spiritually
There
is
is
dead bodies
called
Sodom and
enough
which
it
says,
was not
85
crucified in
an earthly Jerusalem,
is left
The
to take
its
crucifixion was,
and
allegory:
"And
if
doubtful
and
his-
torical sense,
then
They
to the
suspect
their indirect
poetical
method would
so outrageously befuddle
modern
"intelligence."
all
theory that
life
life reflected
heavenly life in its bosom. The seers who knew that
nature was a dramatization of cosmic archai,
sought for the evidence
of the
phenomenon on
earth.
With what
we shall see clearly as the story unfolds. So, in the end, in their religious life they labored to represent their history as conforming to the
86
From
it can be
viewed properly as a setting for the spiritual dramatization, or as the
clothing in which the drama was garbed. At times, perhaps., the writers
appear to have utilized the data of actual history to stage the symbolic
figurations.
It
ture
To
becomes evident on
element of scrip-
phy
As exhibiting providential design in world life it becomes of epic
moment. The Hebrew race has exploited this phase of the old methodology to its highest possibility, only, however, as Egypt had done
before it; and has been so successful that it has left the impression of
a unique and exalted hierarchical status for the Jewish race. The outcome of our correction of vision will be that we shall for the first time
properly regard the Old Testament books as, in the main, the universal
drama of the spiritual life masquerading in the disguise of Hebrew
history subtly woven into the great cosmic epic! The Biblical title
Israelites is a spiritual designation purely, and is wrongly taken in the
name
of an ethnic group. "My people Israel" or "the children of Israel" of the Hebrew deity are just the divinized humans,
mortals who have put on the immortal spiritual nature, men graduated
sense of the
Latin and Greek roots, "gen" "gent" meaning simply "to be born."
They were those born as the first or natural man, but not yet reborn
as the spiritual Christ. It can be given no ethnic reference. The name
"Israelite" is obviously compounded of "Is/' abbreviation of Isis, or
Eve's original name, Issa (See Josephus); "Ra," the great Egyptian
male and
solar god,
then
i.e.,
spiritual;
would
It
(the merely
human
state),
IU
name
The
all
It was
hardly expected that any positive documentary evidence could
be found in support of the evident fact that these names had simply
been appropriated by the race using them as illustrious titles abstracted
from the uranograph. But a direct statement to that precise effect was
found in the Hebrew Grammar of Gesenius, a learned German scholar,
(on p. 6)
national
This
is
from
latter
was more a
with
to themselves
illustrious ancestors;
of vast significance as
affecting the historical
."
view of the
the present.
The fourth consideration found essential to a grasp of archaic
from a
ing is the knowledge that religion was an
outgrowth
specific
mean-
is
coma
It is
It
took
its rise
compactly viewed, there are the human-animal and the divine. Religion
is
man and
fact
to
God.
According
to Plato's
own
progress and that of the animals they were to uplift, that the two races,
the one germinally conscious and immortal, the other dumbly brutish
all
mental
the
status.
god." Our earthly task, according to St. Paul, is to link together the
two natures in "one new man," bringing to an end in a final "reconciliation" "the battle of Armageddon," the aeonial warfare between the
"carnal
warfare
is
between
mind
god. This
spiritual
noesis, the spiritual intelligence,
of the
is
here in body to
at the
ment This
No
the
animal to
must be noted
life
human estate.
when the intelligence
that
of the animal,
it
of the
god
is
its
its
joined to
power
to
it
carry.
expression
push
body
which
90
sequel) this
religion.
is
interpretation ever
tion, discipline
Together with
its
made
and
and
racial
it is
complement
of value
and
human!
Its rites
to
which man,
had pledged himself under the Old
Testament covenant and "the broad oaths fast sealed" of Greek theology. In coming to earth to help turn the tide of evolution past one
of its most critical passages, he bound himself to do the work and
return without sinking into the mire of animal sensuality. We must
loss of
which
it
to the
to the
sages.
We
was once
vitally related to
The
our evolutionary
security,
religious desuetude.-
interpreted at
all,
modern
bility of the
92
Chapter VI
rectification of
work
of irrefutable data. This material has not been marshaled for this use
The story most properly begins with what is called in theology "the
descent of the gods." Traditional lore is replete with legends of the
"expulsion of the angels," "the fall of Lucifer and his hosts," "the fall
from heaven," and the more philosophical "descent of the
soul."
These
and
The effort to overcome matter's inertia and the sense urge of the flesh
would develop more dynamic spiritual initiative for the gods. They
would be forced to deploy more of their potential and as yet static
divine
cal
power
to
world.
home
93
scripts to
of blissful rest in
the ethereal spheres and suffer the hardships of earth life in gross animal bodies was in some part at least a measure of karmic retribution
for past dereliction elsewhere. Pride and insolence are ascribed to them
minor deities to our globe. It is the expulsion of Satan and his hosts
from heaven in Paradise Lost and Revelation. So presented, it has been
taken either as a mythical unreality or an inscrutable chapter of celestial
history, and discarded from serious consideration in religious sys-
tematism.
It is,
stream o
incident thereto.
At
now
tions for each individual member, they will return to their celestial
abodes, transfigured and further divinized. The allegory of the Prodigal Son is a short glyph or graph of this evolutionary descent and
To
not as a calamitous
"fall," it is
quite necessary to
expound a portion of
Orphic-Platonic cosmogony.
But in such
conscious,
Pralaya
it
state
asleep,
it is
inert.
if
unrnanifest,
it
is
Pralaya,
94
And
out of
with waking
activity, as
do
all its
creatures
made
in
its
them,
It virtually
of being
at a tension
which tension
inchoate energies. It must therefore maniof a polarity, positive and negative. It must
become polarized in relation to itself; and so it takes on the doubleaspected characterization of spirit and matter, male and female, conit
can exert
two ends
its
and vehicle, function and instrument, attraction and repuland invisible, real and actual. Positively, like the proton of
the atom, it must stand stably in the center, governing, holding, regusciousness
sion, visible
lating the cyclical whirl of negative force about its eternal rock of duralike the electrons, it must revolve in the
bility. Negatively,
periodic
of
active
life. It must
provide the dual grounds for living exswing
istence, a conscious nucleus presiding at the heart of
moving, changing
embodiments. It must become, out of itself, subject, knowing, and
object, to be known. Its entire purpose is obviously to arise out of unconscious slumber and become ever
conscious. Since there
itself,
is
Therefore
is
nothing of which
it
concretely
more
Self-conscious!
itself. It is
it
the seeing eye and the thing seen, as all profound esoteric
philosophy asserts.
As Genesis puts
gratification
it,
God
and pronounced
it
good.
To
He
95
come
to visible
So
it
is,
hended. As
divided as
it
illustration
gestive
as one unit
is
resistance of matter.
sug-
sheer motion
from the
numberless streamlets,
dividing as
itself,
itself.
brings
The wind
to earth.
commonly blow
does not
rhythmic
impulses,
and the
96
underworlds,
hells,
limbos, Isles
meadows
of
divinity
down
to
man
and passes the stream of creative force on down the line. Thus
the succession of waves of projection runs down the scale, each one
level,
On
and on it goes,
on them.
The contiguous planes form a link of connection from top to bottom
of the series, and this is the golden chain of life. And each level bears
a definite relation to its neighbor on either side.
The explication of this relationship involves a law that is basic for
living citizens
all
of
evolution.
man.
why he
Under
it
its
Its
It tells
Law
is
a soul
and father
together. It
may
be
of Incubation.
is
to that of the
plane
life
womb
of
its
soil,
or matter, gestates them and eventually gives them their new birth.
This is the function of motherhood. And matter (Latin mater,
mother)
culine to
But
is
life
beneath,
it is
at each
step of transmission the
two worlds.
heavy a
life
97
plane beneath. Hence the unit charge received from the plane above by
each life structure on any plane must, in falling one step further downward, be again broken up into a large number of fragments, each of
which will become the energizing soul of a lower body. The Greek
5
distribute divinity,'
philosophers say in this connection that "the gods
the units multo
units
abroad
from
its
plane,
higher
plane
scattering
as the stream flows on.
in
in
but
number,
diminishing
power,
tiplying
This
is
river of life."
The
Orphic system speaks of "rivers of vivification," which, they say, "proceed from on high as far as to the last of things," or to the lowest
stratum of the mineral kingdom. And as the gods distribute divinity,
the secondary ranks in each case are said to "participate according to
their capacity." The gods pour out their life for the vivifying of all
lower beings, and the latter partake of this bounty or "grace" to the
measure of their receptivity. Nothing other than this is meant by the
"shed blood" of the gods, given for the life of the worlds. All old theologies aver that the blood of the gods, or of God, mixed with the clay
of earth, makes the "red earth" which is given as the etymological sig-
Adam
nification of
in
Hebrew,
i.e.,
man.
Man
is
compounded
of the
red life-blood of deity and the dust of the ground, which in Hebrew
is Adamah,
purely the feminine or material aspect of Adam, spirit,
itself.
spirit
and matter
to
make man.
One more
Law
of
multiplied
individualization, it becomes necessary for any living creature on each
plane to produce a multiple progeny of the seeds of its own life and
"plant" or bury them in the soil of the kingdom immediately below
There they go first to their "death," after which they are reborn or
resurrected in the sprouting of the seeds and their
growth back to
maturity. Each generation lives anew in its regeneration, but multi-
it.
times
number
plied by as
many
successfully
itself as
the
of seeds
it
produced and
The vegetable buries its seeds in the soil of the kingdom beneath it,
the mineral The animal's life is embodied in a
corpus built up of
vegetable material taken in each day as food. The human is rooted in
an animal body. And now comes the pivotal fact in
theology. The
lowest ranks of gods, in their position
just above humanity, must, by
the Law of Incubation, send down their seeds,
plant (incarnate) them
in the bodies of
di-
vine
life
soul of
to
its
man
is
in his
"death" in the
body
soil
as a seed of divinity
planted, buried,
gone
of the
of a god.
As
is
to cultivate the
growth of
womb
in
the beginning.
tal
It is
and immortal
your business
natures."
to
do the
The upper
soil or
rest; to
garden. Divinity
is
planted in "the
on
its
renewing the parent life in its fullness, and of carrying its eternal
unfoldment one step ahead. As no living thing can subsist save as a
result of a linking together of spirit and matter, a germinal unit of
must be incubated as the god in a body of material structure.
spirit
This divine economy gives every creature its soul, which is its god.
In the long chain of linked lives, from God down to mineral crystal,
no being is deprived of its possibility of immediate communion with
deity, up to the border of its capacity. But the "arm of the Lord" that
is
potent to bless and to save is within, not without. It is Emanuel,
God with us, the hope of our glory. God is everywhere, within and
without; but his son, the Christos, is only within. If he is not sought
there, he will not be found. His inner presence is the provision of life
that no entity should be bereft of instant contact with its parent god,
who dwells on the plane just over its head, though rooted in its very
of
99
is
of his
arouse
knowledge
its
is
in himself
may
latent faculties.
which
it
was pur-
be
be
buried in the depths of the sea, so that he would not easily find and
abuse it. Another advised placing it on the most inaccessible mountain
top. Finally the
The
ter,
in the
basal truth that every living thing is a union of spirit and matand body, was put in a graph by the Egyptians. It is perhaps
soul
the oldest
The
circle is the
The
it,
all
are joined. It is the cross-line between them. The word Ankh means
three most significant things: love, lije and tie. It is a formula of all
life, signifying that life is the resultant of a tying together of two
things, spirit and matter, by the force of an attraction, which is love.
The
great doctrine of the "descent" or "fall" can now be clearly envisaged. Deity, in the form of its seed potency, must descend from its
own plane into the soil of the plane below it and be incubated there.
must leave its own home, its father's house, and go out into another
country, where it will be an exile and a stranger. And like the youth
going out from home into a rough world to make a fight of it under
temptation and gross influences, he must undergo a long toilsome trial
and testing and crucifixion to become an eventual victor and return
with laurels. Said Jesus: "I came forth from the Father and am come
It
it is
comprehensible.
Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist of the third century, who gave the doctrine to Christianity through Augustine, has
given us an analogy with
a natural
phenomenon by which
it is
possible,
He
can understand
sun,
its
how one
and
light
its
match;
forth
it
its
it. The
fire stays; but it generates and sends
the light. This is the second
aspect or "person." It is of
essence with the Father, yet not he. And the Psalmist
sings:
son,
same
"Send out thy
the
light"!
Now
We
body
to the size of a
pin-point,
one would be in
total
though the sun be glaring overhead. The ray is imuncreative and can generate no life until and here
inactive,
potent,
is the nub of all
philosophy it falls upon a surface of a material body,
^intensest cold,
its
"mother" of
life,
while
spirit
(God)
is its
father.
And,
as everywhere,
father spirit can not become creative until it unites with and fecundates
mother matter! His ray of power, his son, is in a sense the phallic
emanation of
his seed,
unfructified egg of
life
101
no end. The
fables of the
gods represent
the son of deity as turning about and creating upon his own mother.
Horus is called "the Bull of his Mother"-~~Isis. The sons of God marry
own
their
"J"
is
deep
The
down from on
upward
high, goes
to return to deity.
represents
aspects, spirit
who
is their son,
realm of the mother, matter. The
activity into the
does the
down in his turn into matter and returns. Now,
goes
why
HV
would
up
And so the H,
And the holy
thus a descriptive form for all creation. For spirit is crelike the sunlight, without the co-operation of its
atively helpless,
is dramatized as its wife and sister. Hence every
which
posite, matter,
was linked with his sha^ti or spouse, his creative
name becomes
op
mythological deity
he would remain forever ungenerative. The
potency, without whom
this determination are tremendous, for if spirit can not
of
implications
birth to its archetypal conceptions without the implementation of
give
102
Of
Hindu
He
is
with-
Of
the
tentialities
out into
all
that he "proceeds." He bears the Father's pothe universe. He is the radiating arm of his
Father's power. He goes out to do the will of his parent and become
his vicegerent in the worlds. He becomes God's
spoken Word. He
conveys the Logoic ideas out upon the bosom of his Father's emana-
perience and
He
will
become
subject to ex-
unmoved.
He
suffering
that he enjoyed with the Father.
will endure all experience in every kingdom, will be fragmented into "partial natures/'
will enter a moving stream of endless change, and will be reduced to a
the loss of
He
all
minimum
Of
the
converted" by matter to
ness; "is
its
its
own
like-
"returns."
What,
then,
of divine
agency.
is
life,
the
Holy
Spirit, the
undergoing
It is latent
power
its
final
Third Person?
It is
the
become
first
Ray
working
at
in
work; no longer
moving
force
static,
kinetic. It is
fynesis.
may
103
spirit.
It is
all
SUN
FATHER
LIGHT
SON
ABIDES.
PROCEEDS.
f
HOLY
EARTH
SPIRIT.
[CONVERTS
(Matter).
J 1 IS CONVERTED
[
(By Matter).
RETURNS
All "history" takes place at the point where the light, or latent radiation of divine force, comes in contact with matter, earth, the mother.
is
brought to a halt and, spirit being implanted
within the heart of matter and awakening its slumbering potencies,
there is begun at that point a new growth of life, actuated by the union
And this new growth begins the
with sheer
of
energy.
intelligence
or parent, status.
evolutionary stage, or the return unto the father,
When Trinities are given as Father, Mother and Son, the aspect here
characterized as the Holy Spirit is the "Son," the product o the union
of Father and Mother. When given as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the
the material element necessary at all times.
Mother is
The
process
implicit, being
Son's, or the ray's, impregnation of Mother matter begins a new
of growth from seed to adulthood, which through a cycle of
The
is
cycle
to
life
Having
make
set forth in
much
as
having been
strated with
laid
down,
its
Its
sufficient fullness.
104
Chapter VII
knowledge
interpreters
now
"I
teries
says
that
"the descent of the superior intellect s into the realms of generated existence
becomes, indeed, the greatest benefit and ornament which a material nature
is capable of receiving; for without this participation of intellect in the lowest department of corporeal life, nothing but the irrational soul and a brutal
life
would
subsist in the
The whole
was
himself,
ginning, we
tions of the Thyrsus or reed used in the Mysteries was connected with
the descent of the soul, for, "as it was a reed full of knots," it became
"an apt symbol of the diffusion of the higher nature into the sensible
world." Bacchus (the divine self) carried a reed instead of a scepter,
and it betokened the god's "descent into our partial nature." "Indeed
the Titans are Thyrsus-bearers; and Prometheus concealed fire in a
Thyrsus or reed; after which he is considered as bringing celestial light
into generation, or leading the soul into the body."
The Greeks allegorized the descent of the soul again in the fable of
is
Edward Carpenter
says
"that there were ritual dramas or passion plays [in the Mysteries], of which
an important one dealt with the descent of Kore or Proserpine into the
No
less
applicable to the same fundamental situation is the Greek
fable of Eros and Psyche. Love, the divine Eros, descends into the
celestial nature; to
pristine felicity;
And lastly, on the ninth day, when the soul falls into
and becomes united with a terrestrial body, a libation
as
is
Plato's
wards."
man,
io<5
down-
down
ble works."
when he
He
first,
might
when speaking
of the gods
the universe,
same manner."
He
utters a
strange sentiment
when he
by the soul on
Orpheus descends
it.
earth, not in
some
underworld
Aeneas
finds the
epic
to the
vowels, and the "o" is shortened to "e." It would therefore read "not
birds" or "no birds," with the implication of "not a good place for
birds." When it is known that in all arcane systems the bird was the
universal symbol for the soul, the meaning comes clear that this earth
was regarded as the place where souls were poisoned by the noxious
fumes arising from the carnal life, since the birds were lethalized by
mouth
107
became
stupe-
and fell into the underworld. The allegory tells the story of our
descent with a force that no philosophical descanting could match. So
deftly has ancient philological skill woven a theosophical meaning into
fied
is
a treatment of
the old myth, with political and other connotations. Ulysses' visit to the
cave of Polyphemus is again a form of the representation, and Theseus
and
it.
Hades
of
instituted
underground
account
(II,
another rendering of
122) of the descent into
is
who
Yama,
tees
to
Tibetan BooJ{ of the Dead (p. 130) warns devo"be not attracted towards the dull blue
light of the brute
kingdom
of nature. It asserts
(p. 125) that the predilection of our immortal nature toward animal
grossness will cause it to "stray downwards." The text represents the
human soul as beseeching the "Knowledge-Holding Deities" not to let
drift further
exults that
paradise
108
who,
from lower
to
still
bodiment.
Museum
re-
stars
of
thousand those
who
blasphemies."
Of tremendous
was intimately
allied
dom of environing cults, is a fragment called the Naasene Hymn, preserved by Hippolytus (Haer. V. 5). After describing the woes and sufferings of the human soul during its wanderings on earth, the hymn
continues
But Jesus
A
It
war
Man
Bearing thy
seals 7 will
it;
I will pass;
will unfold,
Godhead
I will unveil,
The
I will
Jesus, or leou,
centuries
B.C.
hymn, whether A.D..or B.C. The possibility that it dates B.C. has already
9
been repudiated with great speciousness. The name Naasene, of aprelation to both
parently Ophite connection, seems to have etymological
the
If
109
an Essene production
it
could
spiritual
Sophia (Wisdom)
age of the
assist
flesh.
Turning
to the material of
of peace. As Jesus descends into hell (Apostles' Creed) so Horus descends into Amenta, the dark underworld (our earth). Horus came
,
from heaven into the realm of darkness as the light of the world. It is
said that he descends into the funeral land, the abode of darkness and
The Speaker
of death.
human
of
it
"I
(another name for Amenta) and finds there the soul of the sun, and is
united thereto. The Manes (again the human soul) says: "I am he that
cometh forth by day ... I descend upon earth and mine eye maketh
to walk thereon." It is said of him "Thou enterest in to the
place
where thy Father is, where Keb [Seb, the god of earth] is." Again:
"Thou descendest under protection. Ra ferries thee to Amenta." In the
me
Ritual (the Boo\ of the Dead) it is said: "This is he who in his resurrection says, 1 am the Lord on
high and I descend to the earth of Seb
"
that I may put a stop to evil.'
from heaven
hundred
folk-tales
110
down
of
some
object
em-
blematic o
Looking now at the Christian Bible we shall find in plenty the feasame myth. Bible students are not generally aware of the
directness with which the descent of the gods to earth is there told.
There is first the well-known declaration of God himself (distorted
tures of the
man
down from
heaven."
From Lu\e
to save that
out of heaven
form.
The
is
torted
men,
it is
6: 17) before
fact that
in
is it
He
that descended
is
first
all
heav-
ens.
.")
has studied
The
life
as in evolution without
descent.
announcement of
such
of
it
is
as bread for
"I
am
the bread of
Jesus'
life
and
shall
"distribution
of
divinity"
employed to depict the Platonic
In
the parable of the sower we have a portraiture of the
men.
among
seed
is
meaning
pulpits,
impinging upon
significance
10
or Plotinus. Chrisof Platonic theology, as outlined by Proclus
tian interpretation has merely shuffled along in the darkness without a
"Like the streams in the circle of heaven I besprinkle the seeds
ciples
light.
of
men," runs a
The
him. As the Timaeus of Plato reports, the deity was to furnish the
lective seed of what was to be immortal in humanity.
col-
to be the core of
112
Son of the New Testamant he was sent out from his home, country
and kinsfolk (in the heavenly Eden) to go to a strange land (incidentally to the West, where was the Tuat, or gate of entry to the
earth!). There his seed was to multiply until it filled the earth with
his children, the heirs of supernal
grace.
But the hidden sense of the name Abraham or
notice,
and
of great
it is
moment,
Abram
has escaped
names. Scholars
may
protest,
but
Self of
Brahm;
it
the
first
to
To
fill
for "fire," the celestial empyrean, out of which all souls, as fiery sparks,
are emanated. Kasadim, or Kasdim, was a term given to the highest
celestial
who fathered the production of the divine sparks of
spirits,
soul. It is practically equivalent to "Archangels."
Then Abraham went straight to Egypt from the
land of Canaan,
and
is
declare,
on evidence that
is
"Egypt" of the
on
on
earth.
it.
It
sages in
which
it
known
Had
"3
Egypt, that slave pen/ as the Eternal repeatedly calls it (in the Moffatt
translation), has been in some way interlocked with an historical servitude (as may have been the case), it still does not prove that the
allegory intended to recount the bondage of a nation. It was a bondage
of spirit under sense that was thus portrayed. Many passages from
Egypt
scriptural line
In
Lufo
is
history, but another brief figuration of the descent. In an EgyptoGnostic fragment the same ideograph is repeated under the double
11
representation,
when
thence with great radiance," and both the young men entered the
tomb* The seer in Revelation descries an angel in flight toward the
earth and also sees the holy city of Zion, radiant with the
glory of
divine nature
suppose that
manna
is
"manas"
And
all
deity
is
described
soul
is
Massey points
is
shown by
out,
"The Elementaries
it is
said to
him "Thy
:
soul
is
13
sinking
stars,"
fall
Among the ancients the stars that dipped beneath the horizon were
emblematic of souls in physical incarnation, in contradistinction to
set, which typed the non-incarnating gods. Souls in
incarnation were dubbed by the Greeks "moist souls," since they were
immersed in the body, which is seven-eighths water by composition.
The redeemed souls rejoiced in the Egyptian Ritual (Ch. 44) at being
lifted
up "among the
stars that
never
set."
Those condemned
to de-
down below
stars in
the horizon."
wurm" was
stars."
hosts
that
One
of the
phenomena
of the Crucifixion
earth, the
we
moon,
is
read that
"when
upon
the earth."
Another
it
of the fifth angel. The various legends, then, of falling stars become
invested with unexpected significance as being disguised allusions to
the descent of the angelic myriads to our shores, to become our souls.
But nowhere
is
made more
man." Our material will show that the idea was common to many
it is stated with more definiteness
early nations, in whose literature
than in the Christian.
If the descent was in partial degree a karmic punishment for sin, an
enforced expiation of evolutionary dereliction in past cycles, as is hinted
in Greek philosophy, it was also pictured as a seeking of refuge or a
hiding for
safety.
fully divulged,
hosts to flee heaven
cance.
Adam
hid himself
is
when
commanded
The
child Jesus
had
to
to be
In Egypt, Buto, the nurse, concealed Horus, the
analogue
of Jesus, in Sekhem, "the hidden shrine and shut
place," our earth.
Horus' birth was in a secret place.
similar legend is related of the
mythical Sargon in the cuneiform tablets. He says: "My mother, the
Princess, conceived me; in a secret place she brought me forth." The
king in
Israel.
116
14
Amen, an
Hidden Spheres"; and
is
"The Master
of the
aspect of Ra,
Amen
itself
was termed
means "the
hidden god." In the Ritual (Ch. 22) Osiris cries: "I rise out of the egg
Under another name, Qem-Ur, he addresses the
earth (Aukert, the underworld) as the land "which hidest thy com-
panion
who
cast light
in thee."
is
upon
his-
it is
He
Hidden Shrine
hiding in the secret place of earth, as the bases of the whole theological
situation are involved in this dark background. Two causes can be
assigned for the descent, a normal evolutionary one, and another rising out of the motives of karmic punishment for error, stubbornness,
pride or wrong. As to the first, the Greeks postulated the Cycle of
Necessity,
which required
must
The second
cause
is
less
philosophically rationalized
and
hints are
given us grew out of a special situation involving the recalcitrant behavior of twelve legions of angels, who, in retribution for evolutionary
their part, were forced into an earthly incarnation
irregularities on
distasteful to
who were
souls
punished through
its
Egyptians, Chaldeans and Assyrians, p. 133) states that a partial motive in the celebration of the Mysteries of Sabazius was the
appeasing
of "the ancient divine anger." Clement of Alexandria (Stromata, III)
preserves a passage from a celebrated Pythagorean, Philolaus, which
runs: "The ancient theologists and priests also testify that the soul is
united with body as if for the sake of punishment." The BooT{ of
Enoch
when
Proclus in his
Hymn
And
locked by
hell's
There
of our adventure
them
them with
degradation,
hanced
and
struction of
Mankind" a
parallel to this
somewhat anomalous
situation
supremacy. He
against
tation and says to them:
his
"You ancient gods, behold the beings who are born of myself; they utter
words against me. Tell me, what would you do in these circumstances?
Behold, I have waited and I have not destroyed them until I should hear
what you have to say." 15
The
enemies
who
rebels are then destroyed by being cast down for three days. Here is
the distinct clue to true meaning, for the three days are a glyph for the
many
exaction of the penalty, the "majesty of Ra" declares that he will now
men on this account. "I raise my hand (in token) that I shall
protect
and
favor,
the Lord caused the earth to open and swallow them up. It should be
noticed that they were engulfed by the earth. It is known that two
different groups of Psalms, thirteen to forty-nine, and eighty-four to
Sons of Korah." It is to
eighty-eight, are specialized as "Psalms of the
119
What
can
this
mean
is
Happily Chaldean
were swallowed
as well as
Hindu
Massey
alive.
says:
of a
human
sin as a
cause of the deluge. The sin against the gods, however, is described as the
But these
cause of the deluge in the so-called 'destruction of men.'
,
in
beings
human."
the
case
sin
was not
17
An
"the children of impotent revolt," and tell of their "inroad into the
Eastern part of heaven, whereupon there arose a battle in heaven and
in all the earth." And another
passage alludes to the "carrying out of
the sentence upon those who are to die," and
says it is "the withhold-
is
The meaning
here
impotent
obviously their expatriation and consequent cutting off from participation in the life of their celestial estate.
In general summary of this
point, it may be said that the implicarevolt."
tions
is
traditions of rebellious
same
refractoriness
down
we
We
in our racial
refused at first to
history.
and we still are rebellious in our refusal
120
to take full
ment
to this realm,
and
human
constitution accounts
Hebrews (i: 14) it is asked: "Are they not all ministering spirits
sent forth to minister for them who should be heirs of salvation?"
the
The
on
to the earth,
Keb
"if
Pepi falleth
here
stands
for the
up." Pepi
to earth. To him in another
place it is
[Seb] will
him
lift
dragon or serpent.
"There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels went forth to war
with the dragon; and the dragon warred and his angels; and they prevailed
not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great
dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the Devil and
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast down into the earth
and his angels were cast out with him."
It is of
on
earth, as has
down
make war with
cast
to
prime
to
by day," the
spirit
of the descending
121
god pleads
me
"Let
of offerings
all things soever which were offered rituin the nether world. Let me have possession of the table
have possession o
alistically for
me
for
me
on earth!'
He
asks "that he
may
upon the bread of Seb [the earth god] or the food of earth!' Proceeding he urges: "Let the Tuat be opened for me. Here am I."
feed
This
is
an announcement of
afford,
his advent
is
resurrection, he says:
rise as a god
among
men," he exclaims.
If there are
men
elsewhere
than on earth, they are not those referred to in the old scriptures.
He
described again as
be established and
it
heard by
me
"My body
in
shall
upon
this earth."
Egypt will
to the thesis
superabundance of testimony
under discussion, the relevance of which can not be so
work
is
undertaken to
establish,
and
122
its
which this
must
alter all
implications
The
of the Gnosis
met
its
wrenched out of
all relation to
the Nativity at
The passage in Revelation (22: 16) that has left theological thought
in such deep obscurity, may find acceptable rendition of its
meaning
in the light of the thesis of the descent: "I, Jesus, have sent mine angel
to testify unto you these things in the churches." To
apprehend the
"
statement clearly we are required to read the name "J esus in the light
of its Gnostic meaning as an Aeon, or emanation of divine spirit, an
is not at odds with its
usage in the Boo\ of RevelaStudents have been impressed with the evident resemblance of
the Apocalypse to Gnostic literature, and one writer has ventured the
interpretation that
tion.
Many
passages
to
show
that the
fall
or debasement of pristine
The
"And
of the
image
and of creeping things."
An
of birds,
God
and of four-footed
beasts,
earlier
meaning
man, and
would be
the mere
which has
mind
an evolutionary
accident of non-membership in a religious
degeneration to
caste, or nation of allegedly "chosen" people. The Gentiles were the
as yet undivinized "sons of men," as distinct from the "Sons of God,"
or Israelites, and it was their unpurified natures that dragged down
for centuries. It
illogical
to ascribe so dire
the gods who incarnated in their bodies and dimmed their glory.
The Gentile is the man "from beneath"; the Israelite is "from above,"
as Jesus affirmed. "The first man is of the earth,
earthy; the second is
the
The immersion
of the latter in
And
here
is
the evolutionary "descent" into the theological "fall." The two terms
Gentiles and Israelites can not be attached to any historical nationals.
flourish.
literary
of the
use of the
word
word
"Philistines"
somewhat
"Gentiles."
in evolution,
of the
their
first
part
glory into
with
deity.
The advent
of the
word
124
cosmic policy to be
hosts.
and
The
and a quenching of
moist humors, or "water," of the body. The adventure brought privation, torture, woe. It was an exile from a home of beatific happiness.
To
be plunged from a
realism
is
we
are
from
And
the Prodigal
Son
is
From
the
this I
That
e'er
my
Moses' son was Gershom, which the Moflfatt translation gives as meaning "Stranger.," with the parenthetical explanation: "For I have been
a stranger in a foreign land."
In this connection there is the possibility of a rational solution of the
meaning of a text in the Bible which, in its conventional reading, has
Lu%e
2, p.
great
341) a text runs
"For this cause have I said unto you aforetime, 'he who shall not leave
and mother to follow after me is not worthy of me.' What I said then
father
may
all
be children of
ing
all
home
in an apparently ruthless
disruption of the most
of earthly loves, bore no
original reference to human
ties
commendable
and kindred, but was another
parents
of the
many
was
him
in his
commanded
to
Many
126
ian or Assyrian captivities, and were not in any mundane sense exiles.
Empedocles describes mortals as "Heaven's exiles straying from the
orb of light." In line with our thought are the words of the Christian
Advent hymn:
come,
come, Emmanuel,
And ransom
captive Israel,
Nor
less
lines of the
"Gospel" hymn:
Heaven
The
Israel
is
my
home.
were not
127
Chapter VIII
IN
HAVING
earth.,
DURANCE VILE
enlighten the mind with reference to this cardinal item has been lost
by the Church's flouting of the early Gnosis. The doctrine has been to
ecclesiasticism such a bafHing conundrum that it was shelved to a place
of happy security in the person of the historical Jesus. Indeed the evidence grows stronger, as study proceeds, that the theory of a carnalized
or personalized Savior, comprehending in himself every divine attribecame established in early polity from the sheer fact of its serviceableness, it being found an easy solution of many a knotty problem
bute,
of.
God
To
a theology plunged into dialectical difficulties by its rejection of esotericism, a Jesus who
"paid it all"
has indeed been "a very present help in trouble." By cramming all
body and
of the
life,
all
of the divine spark, as their hope of a link with the order of responsible free agency and self-conscious intelligence. They stood at
The
ing were at hand in the legions of Asuras, who had evolved the desired
element of mind in former cycles elsewhere, but yet required some
rounds of incarnate experience to complete the perfection of their
destiny.
We
we
The
gist of Plato's,
may
either,
by the
129
men
of the previous
Moon
race,
Lunar
Pitris, at
life
principle,
spiritual
the sun.
of
We
can see
now why
own
Manas
Spirit
was
mind as mind controlled emotion. With the decame potential mind and the germ of undying spirit.
to control
scending Asuras
fleshly
They
fully executed their commission. The remaining group of five legions, profiting by their example, at first refused
to run the risk of the same abortive effort, and were known as the
prophetic
Old Testament. They were the younger and wayward son in the
Prodigal Son allegory! But they did go out from home, as the elder
brother did not. Therefore
they were worthy of the fatted calf and the
shining robe on their return, victorious. The elder brother, though
obedient, had not earned the reward. This is the solution of the difficult
situation in the
allegory, in
universally defeated the exigetical efforts of the theologians. The parable of the five wise and five foolish
virgins is likewise a glyph of this
same cosmic predicament. For one of the names of the Asuras was
"celibate young men," or
"spiritual virgins." They
are the "Innocents" of the Gospel story and the Hamemmet
Beings
of the Boof^ of the Dead. Their virginity is
by virtue of the fact that
they were entities of pure spiritual nature, radiations of basic Spirit,
who had not yet had full incarnation, which was ever symbolized as
a "marriage" of spirit with flesh! They were
cosmically unmarried,
hence "virgin" young men.
Kumaras, meaning
We
have here a
new
unwedded
to spirit, never
impregnated by
spirit,
so likewise
were the
who were sent to be the "Bridegroom" of New Testament dramatism to wed these immaculate virgins of the material
spiritual units
tian chronology has had to shift the "date" of Christ's "birth" to the
year 4 B.C. in order to be able to include Herod in the story. But
Cyrenius (Quirinus), the "Governor in Syria" at the time of Jesus'
The Kumaras
B.C.
Will
from the
serpent threat with the cry: "Apap hath not found my nest.
egg
has not been cracked!" The infant Hercules in his cradle strangled
My
the
and
his cat
the Titans were styled Thyrsus-bearers, as having "led the soul into
the body," or "brought ungenerated into generated existence." Their
part in implanting the seed of intelligence in
forth in Proclus'
to Minerva:
man
is
poetically set
Hymn
A
Massey
tells
we
find
us that
"in the Latita-Vistara eight heavenly beings are enumerated as the Gods
or Devas. They are the Nagas, Yakshas, Gandharvas, Asuras, Garudas,
They
Israelites
my
who
say to the
my
people."
Yama, Lord
unfragmented
North Polar
nature
regenerated by
of a spiritual consciousness.
132
The
point
now
to be demonstrated
beyond
nance. It appears to
make
evolution
jump
and human, and suddenly presents man endowed with self-determinative intelligence with no provision made for his
having earned it in
But
does
the
ancient
wisdom
development.
orderly
supply the link
that to science
is
missing.
It reveals
kingdom above
want of
It has been
searching
the understanding that
it.
"one long immortal chain, whose sequence is never-ending, reaches by impact with that immediately above and by contact with that immediately
4
below, from the very lowest to the very highest."
possible to discern a replica of this same linkage of principles
in the functioning of our bodily organism, reaching from spirit at the
top to flesh and bone at the bottom. Spirit touches and influences mind,
It is
mind
ing in actual
flesh
spirit
in the
human body
is
like a
member
of the series
is
133
above
to
is
new
Ego
my
egg
is
not cracked"
And
my
when
found Mary,
who
is
the incubation
Jesus says:
called
my
im-
first
It is
work
The mother
in
all
which the radiant Christ-body of spirit is brought to birth. Is Christianity to fall below heathenism in its inability to rise above the level
of the symbols to the discernment of the abstract truth behind them ?
in
Proclus speaks of the soul having fallen li\e seed into the realms of
5
generation. Paul's characterization of the nature of man as sown in
is
process;
the
possible for those creatures their transition across the gap of the "missof humanhood. The link between brute beast
ing link" to the
plane
is
missing on earth; for it was forged by evoluin
another
realm, on another planet, and transferred
tionary process
to earth at a given critical
epoch in mundane history. As Plutarch tells
us,
is
derived directly
from
the earth; the other three parts are brought here and linked to his
was
and may
When
the cor-
away
more enduring
is
etheric substance of
its
com-
position.
From Greek
we draw some
and
dialec-
essential
tically
support for the thesis of the bodily incarnation.
From
Platonism
of the
most
direct
of Plato
we
take the
fol-
lowing:
"It
is
necessary,
is
first
of
all,
sympathize with the image, as being of like idea. For every eternal form or
is wrought into an identity with its interior substance, through an
substance
We
are here enlightened about the interior affinities which the two
that draw
partners to the union manifest toward each other, the bonds
Oracles:
intellect in soul,
but soul
we shall find nowhere else so detailed and analytic a stateof the principles on which life and nature regulate the metamorphoses which divine consciousness undergoes as it descends the Jacob's
Perhaps
ment
rendering:
"In order likewise that
this
may become
ment,
soul
was united
soul, departing
to the Gods,
from
this
longer possessed real being unitedly and in one, but apprehended and
surveyed them by simple projections and, as it were, contacts of its intelIn the next place, departing from intellect, and descending into reason
and dianota, it no longer apprehended real being by simple intuitions, but
lect.
that
with
it
much
irrationality
should recur to
from whence
it
came."
its
and perturbation.
It is
necessary, therefore,
Nothing would
ful results in
ened
activity of a spiritual intelligence that on the heights above functioned by flashing intuition.
Clearly outlined are the several steps
which the soul takes from piercing light into murky darkness as it
first
sion of consciousness in
from
and
downward
direct inclu-
form
it;
which apprehends by immediate intuition; again the dip
into the more sluggish
processes of logical reasoning, in which, the
inner relations o things being lost, the mind must establish them
slowly by syllogistic process; and finally the dropping altogether from
then the plunge
of intellect
136
into that
what
St.
From
"So that all things are full of divine natures; terrestrial natures receiving
the plenitude of such as are celestial, but celestial of supercelestial essences;
while every order of things proceeds gradually, in a beautiful descent, from
the highest to the lowest. For whatever particulars are collected into one
above the order of things, are afterwards dilated in descending, various
souls being distributed
under
From
(2V-
"The Deity (Demiurgus) himself formed the divine; and then delivered
over to his celestial offspring (the subordinate or generated gods), the task
of creating the mortal. These subordinate deities, copying the example of
and receiving from his hands the immortal principles of the
their parent,
human
soul, fashioned after this the mortal body, which was consigned to
and in which they placed also another kind of soul,
which
mortal and
is
is
worth whole
libraries
modern
emanated
animal, not the god-soul of the man. It is this lower soul, called often
the "elemental," the seat of the animal's instincts, that the god has
come
to educate,
dwell.
When
Plato describes
it
it
has
and
come
to
fatal pas-
sions,"
which
Oracles,
vessel."
declares
"The wild
Edward
significance
from a
scholarly authority:
man and
beast,
among lower
races.
god's
the lower mentality of the beast at the start. The god could put little
of his full power and capacity into expression through the imperfect
brain of the animal. For a long time, or until the angel's presence in
the brute body could refine the latter's impulses and proclivities and
increase brain expansion, the deity could only lurk in the background
of consciousness, becoming what we now so ignorantly term "the subconscious mind." There was obviously little difference between the
humans and the nearest animals. The difference did not assume
marked proportions until ages had rolled by and the slow march of
more and more of his
development had enabled the god to project
the beast he was tutorof
nature
the
into
endowment
innate
sluggish
first
We
essentially
transaction.
The
Bible sets forth the implications of the incarnation in sensaDaniel. Addressing the king (altionally direct form in the Boot{ of
ways a figure for the god) Daniel tells him that he will be taken away
from human beings to dwell with the wild animals; and he condenses
volumes of Platonic philosophy dealing with the obscuration of deific
intellect in the descent, into the pithy statement,
in the
first five
mal"!
"An
beasts.'"' Also: "He ate grass like cattle, and his nails
of a bird." (Incidentally, here is positive proof of
claws
the
grew like
the non-historicity of Bible narrative, since these things did not happen
138
to the historical
incarnation
over,
I,
was regained
lost in the
lifted
up my eyes unto heaven; my reason
blessed the Lord,
praising him and honoring
period of the duress in animal habitat is given as
Nebuchadnezzar,
him
"When
The
forever."
life
this
and indubitable
direct
bits
num-
Thou
As Amenta
is
"A
Gill
Lord of
cattle;
."
the verse
art the
Lord o
is
p. 34),
is
the
Mangaian
*te
all
kinds, says
heavenly family. This 'celestial race includes rats, lizards, beetles, sharks
and several kinds of birds. The supposition was that the heavenly family
had ta\en up
their
"
fishes.'
"Plutarch refers to the idea 'that the Gods, being afraid of Typhon, did,
were, hide themselves in the bodies of ibises, dogs and hawks,' and
repudiated it as 'foolery beyond belief.' This, however, is a matter of inas it
terpretation.
the Mysteries.
Many
of animals."
We
weird ritualism
still
to the lost
meaning
of most of the
The
importance and gripping significance of this remnant of ancient symbolic dramatism is not dreamed of today. The masks worn were origiat the time
nally those of animal faces or hides. The festival, coming
of the September equinox (with a forty-days' interval), when the sun,
eternal
soul,
was descending
139
which
religious ritual
11
esoteric significance
patent hint of strong
is
ing:
it that the gods were at one time hard pressed by the
while under the form of
and
compelled to conceal themselves for a
giants,
12
animals, which in consequence became sacred."
"Diodorus has
Here
is
straight anthropology
of a vast amount of tribal
It
is
the
and such
The incarnation was incontestably the most fateful event that had
ever taken place in the evolutionary career of animal-man, giving him
a status far above that of his former condition. It was the far-away
was his passport of entry into the kingand Marc hen of the nations carry the
crisis in evolution in an apparent melange of
story of this mighty
childish fancy, flippant caprice of invention and forms of the grossest
have been the means of derailing
imagery. These seeming qualities
dom
of
mind. The
It
folk-lore
We
raphy
140
meaning, and
finally into a
"Herodotus was told that the Neurian wizards among the Scythians,
about the Black Sea, became each of them a wolf for a few days
settled
once a year.
The Texan
tribe
of the
clothed in wolf-skins, they celebrated the resurrection of the wolf from the
Hades. The head of a wolf was worn in the Mysteries of Isis, because the
wolf (Anup) was her warder and guardian during the search for Osiris in
the underworld.
still
enters as a
The
young wolf."
13
Chinese remnant
Mary.
The
"Nyakang then
created
men and
women
all
animal experience in
its
New
Testament
Romans, an apocryphal
characters
in
the
as
one
of
the
the
drama,
soul, speaking
Gospel,
most beautifully poetizes his nature and mission in this remarkable
when
utterance: "Suffer
me
to
beasts,
by
whom
I shall
am
bread of Christ."
The
upon
was done by
And
is
beyond
such lowly incarnation the soul shall attain unto God should restore
to theology the lost conception of the importance of the bodily life.
The Bible's declaration that we "shall be as sheep among wolves" is
Christ spirit tenanting the
of the
hint at the
a
gentle
the scene of Daniel, the man of
another suggestion that the soul may safely
or "den," if it holds true to its divine ideal
picture
slanting
bodies of the wild beasts of earth!
God, in the
lions' den, is
And
body
An
thousands."
An Arunta legend
in the
reproduce themselves by incorporation
on earth in the course of becoming men or animal."
It was the fundamental Egyptian conception that the god, on deThe word Karas, which was used
scending to earth, became "fleshed."
to designate the mummy, is traced to the Greek l^reas, flesh. The taking
on of a carnal form was in its true connotation the mummification of
14
An Egyptian text asserts most positively the
the Osiris or
as the "ancestors
who
life
spirit.
union of soul and body. Chapter 163 of the Ritual says: "Let his soul
have its being within his body, and let his body have its being within
his soul." And another chapter (89) is entitled "the chapter by which
the soul is united to the body." This can not mean the dead body,
cadaver.
separated from, not united 'with, the
soul
with
the
It can mean nothing but the conjunction of
incoming
the body at birth or a little later.
since obviously the soul
is
of so
much
is still
The amassing
The
from
appear a labor of supererogation.
been assembled with the purpose of restoring the
Far
it.
dogma
to its pivotal
142
infinitely
soul
If
and
flesh
theology
is
affective
relationship?
it must be mounted
influence,
benignant
ancient bases of anthropology. If the advent, the incarna-
to rise again to
experience in present living, the temple of theology can not be expected to be rebuilt on a foundation of mystical sentiment alone. If
the cosmological and anthropological aspects of the original esotericism
had not been disdained, theology would not now stand in such forlorn
case before a world styling itself intelligent. Thrown down from her
pedestal of ancient dignity, she lies prostrate in the courtyard of the
Church, and the busy populace hurrying by on worldly bent mocks her
or heeds her not. She has no place in the hall of science, no true home
human heart. Hardly even in the somber pulpit does she stand
in honor. Her only place is in the dim and darksome alcoves of the
in the
ecclesiastic's library;
and
win back
for
On
passing
trine:
"The
the Osirian religion at least four thousand years, and possibly ten thousand
15
years, before it was purloined and perverted in Christianity."
"The legend
tion of the world, did not originate in a belief that God had manifested
once for all as an historic personage. It has its roots in the remotest past.
repeated in
many
M3
dom
ever looked
none of the
lusa, or Gnostic
Horus,
TammuZj
Jesus,
1G
more
truly taught."
The
human
now
It is
impossible to
surpass in lucidity the language of Greek philosophy in delineating
17
these matters. Proclus, as reported by lamblichus, avers that
cording to the
whole of
1S
itself
sustains
many
fractures
it is
fettered
and turnings."
"it is
tions
to energize theo-
retically
And
assertion of the
same
Water
is
contained by one form and is on all sides darkdenominates the River of Negligence or the
who
of Oblivion, or ignorance
will not
by such appellations
fore
is it
become
sufficient to
adds a forceful
idea:
which
an energy of
this
is
detained by so
kind?"
144
20
many
How
evils
there-
can ever
his
philosophical ideas from Orphic
a
poem, fragment of which speaks of the "joythe souls on earth
Mystery
less
cultism, has a
region" in which
"Through
The
Ate's
soul descends
"She
flies
from
To
serve
mad
stray."
Cave Myth
is
was
the Republic
and elucidating
"Hence,
its
as Narcissus,
embodiment. Out
to
a slavery incident to
numerous evils that disorder the mind and becloud the reason. Indeed
he shows with convincing dialectic that evil is just this breaking up of
the vision of whole natures into distracted particulars where the interconnection of part with part is lost sight of. Evil is seen to be due to
the condition of partiality and multiformity inseparable from the incarnate state, "into which we have fallen by our own fault." The rational
element, formerly in full function, now falls asleep. Life is thereupon
more generally swayed by the inclinations of the sensual part. Man becomes the slave of sense, the sport of phantoms and illusions. This Is
the realm in
for
state of
mental dimness
myth, in which
Thomas
we
see
is
them
only shadows, mistaking
the Platonic
for reality.
enforces these ideas for our benefit:
"Such indeed
merged
is
in a corporeal nature.
23
Proclus, an expounder of Plato rated nearly equal with his great inspirer, writes:
different
from the
rational essence." 24
we have
Indeed
On
won
man
motions of the flesh and to rise to the delight and freeof the noetic consciousness, Paul couched the
process in the
language of religion, and called it spirituality or "grace."
to abjure the
dom
wholly
dangerous employment and abandons the proper characteristics
is
the dialectic
statement of the
the
mal
bodies.
The modern
student
must adjust
his
146
mind
to the olden
conception
life as
essence,
Mulaprafyiti. This basic substance was held to make a transit from its
most rarefied form to the grossest state of material
and back
objectivity
in ceaseless round. Darkness was the
again,
only lit symbol to give to
the mind any suggestive realization of the condition of
living intellectual energy when reduced in potential under the inertia of matter.
So severely curtailed were the soul's powers in bodily life that it was
denominated her incarceration. The soul was a captive, caught in a
prison, the doors of which were clamped fast upon it. Its jailer was the
body with its sensuous nature. And like Paul in prison at Philippi, the
soul
would have
likeness of her
own,
The
prin-
We
vancement.
We
came
and
and the
and
The Greeks
and the
an
hire-
"found a ransom."
believed "that
as in a prison, a condition
discourses, that
different allot-
Here
is
".
soul
It
We
to
modern
many
incarceration. Physical
psychic
realities.
One of the Egyptian texts says that it is impossible for the shade
(soul) to leave the body on earth until the latter is raised up. After the
telestic or
perfecting work is finished, it is shown (Rit., Ch. 91) that
the soul "does not [any longer] suffer imprisonment at any door in
Amenta," this lower earth, "either in coming in or going out."
David echoes the Egyptian idea when in the cave (Ps. 142) he cries
Lord: "Bring my soul out of prison." In the great Kamite religion Horus, exactly as the Christian Jesus, comes to "the spirits in
to the
prison" to set them free from bondage and darkness and lead them to
the land of light. The Manes, or soul in the body, cries to the
keepers.
"Imprison not my soul, keep not in custody my shade. Let the path be
open
to
my
soul.
Let
my
shadow"
"Horus
(Rit.,
the
it
not be
made
captive
soul,
Kamite prototype
Isaiah,
is
who came
'for
"
prison-house/
An
allied
their cells."
27
148
Again the Manes in the prison o Osiris cries "Let not the Osiris enter
dungeon of the captives." "Let not Osiris advance into the
:
into the
from
"this land of
bondage."
comes
come
as deliverer,
is
said to
who
An
in the
the prayer
fall
head-
In the Egyptian fable of the lion and the mouse, the mouse, a symbol
of the quick energic life that descends into the underground and lives
in subterranean darkness, comes like Jesus and Horus to gnaw the
bonds of the great lion, here seemingly standing for the animal soul
in the toils of flesh
and matter.
In the Egypto-Gnostic
Israel,
who
are fig-
ured
to
as these
work
bondage
to the flesh
149
was "Egypt,
"Remember,
passage from the Logia, or recovered "sayings o the Lord/' de"Whosoever followeth the Beast, into captivity he goeth;
clares that
maketh
captive all
who
Beside Plato's immortal allegory, there are many uses of the cave
as emblem of the dark chambers of the body. David's pleading in the
cave to be delivered from his prison is paralleled by Osiris' crying for
deliverance in the cavern of Sut in
Thomas Taylor
union with the
Amenta.
was used
to "signify
terrestrial
body."
In the fables of the Hercules cycle the hero (the soul, as always)
tracks the Nemean lion into a cave where its capture is effected. As it
was in the body that the divine nature in man was to "capture" or
to
lift it
body
again indicated.
In the Egyptian Ritual (Ch. 28) the soul affirms: "This whole heart
of mine is laid upon the tablets of Turn, who guideth me to the caverns
of Sut," or through the dark passages of Amenta. The tablets of Turn
are records of the law, or Maat.
of
both the birth and the resurrection scenes, not less than in the raising
Lazarus at Bethany, in Palestine, and of El-Asar(us) at Beth-Anu in
Egypt.
direct employment of the cave emblem in
Egyptian scripCh. 182 of the Ritual: "Taht says: 'I gave Ra to enter the
mysterious cave in order that he may revive the heart of him whose
Another
ture
heart
is
in
"
As Ra
motionless.'
is
is
scholarship or not, the mythologists of old did at any rate conceive the
body to be that mysterious hidden dwelling, that shadowy cavern into
150
which the
legionaries
With
physical experience.
the great stones in the arch of ancient interpretation will have been
put in place and one of the supports of the structure of a correct the-
mind
is
and ad-
monishes him as to the fluctuating issue of his battle with the flesh:
"He keepeth back his soul from the pit." "The Lord is gracious unto
him and
saith, deliver
2S
on, as did the Manes in the Egyptian Amenta. As the earth opened
swallow these rebels (ourselves), the pit is equated with our mundane home. In the Hebrew writings the pit is identical with the region
to
known
Amenta. Horus
Jonah, upon being saved from the sea-monster, exclaims: "Yet thou
hast brought up my life from the pit,
Lord, my God." Ezefyel contributes a reference both to the pit and to Egypt in a passage which
The prophet
myth
of Joseph in Egypt.
As "a
lioness she couched among lions and she brought up one of her
he
became a young lion" Jesus as lion of the house of Judah
whelps;
"nations also heard of him; he was taken in their pit, and they brought him
with hooks into the land of Egypt."
On
Massey comments
as follows:
in the
fast the
In Revelation (20
2,
of heaven,
having the keys of the abyss, or pit, and a great chain in his
hand, with which he bound the dragon, the devil or Satan, for a thousand years, and sealed him fast in the pit. Horus makes war on the
powers of evil for what they have done to his father Osiris, and calls
to the
gods to strike them and "punish them in your pits." To them he
says:
"Your
particular duties in
Amenta
made known
to you."
how
is
Bringer?
spiritism,
picted as a
air
body. Another Egyptian text, the Boo^ of Am-Tuat (Division 20) describes the mutilation of the gods and their being cast down into
pits
of fire. Revelation tells of the horsemen, ten thousand times ten thousand, going forth to battle with those forms which had come up out
smoke that ascended from the pit of the abyss, emitting fire.
These may be taken as the forms of evil generated in the struggle be-
of the
tween the gods and the animals whose natures are long in combat with
each other.
Massey links the Egyptian Tepht, the abyss, with our "depth," He
equates it also with Tevthe, and that with the Babylonian Tiamat, as
well as the old Egyptian underworld monster,
Typhon, the Dragon of
The
152
is
common, we
are
Akkad, China, Egypt and inner Africa. It is but a step in etymology from Tepht to the Hebrew Tophet, the dark pit.
There were said to be "seven sons of the Abyss," 30 or the seven
powers generated in nature, to be matched later by seven phases of
told, in
literature.
The
typical
emerging
The
Amenta were
The Quiche Popul Vuh
furnished a
this wilderness."
portrays the
guide "through
"wandered
it
upon
their
way
ised land of
Numbers
Kane"
to
prom-
Canaan!
this wilderness
this wilderness."
The
spiritual
die, as the
ground in generating
its
and black
night."
of the Biblical Israelites are a symbolic graph of this
racial experience, and have no other meaning, historical
The wanderings
spiritual
or
literal,
and
whatever. Hagar's fleeing into the wilderness under the comis but another similar
picture of the same
earth of
153
or secret
the full
action of which
is
and significance
which we have not been fully informed by the archaic writers.
Earth, it is clear, is but an appanage of heaven, and our history here
is without full
meaning when detached from its celestial base. The old
books of Greece, Egypt, Chaldea, Persia, India are priceless for what
of
We
was precipitated into a darkness profound and repugnant to the intellect," which was obscured by it. The body is "night's dark region" and
the soul's "sojourn on earth is thus a dark imprisonment in the body."
One of the riddles of Greek mythology why so intelligent a people
Greeks symbolized deity
as the
as
is
solved by the keys here presented. Intoxication was used to image the
befuddlement and mental darkness, the scattering of the god's high
intellectual
powers in mundane
life.
Says
Thomas Taylor:
And
Revelation declares that even the Saints (the gods) have been
the power of the lower contacts. Soul had been
The body
is
wine of
sense.
The Speaker
in the
"O
deliver
Sekari dwells
me from
is
the god
Horus
who
terrifying to the
seizes souls.
weak."
The darkness
in
which
82
suffers, supplicating
darkness."
dozen sections of the Pyramid Texts and the Records of
the fast describe the
journey of the soul through a "valley of darkness." The
to
which
the soul in the Egyptian scripts was conplace
154
ducted was termed "An-ar-ef, the house of obscurity, the city of dreadful night." The mole or shrewmouse was the animal symbol used by
them to depict the god groping his earthly way in an underworld
region of darkness. Horus, coming as deliverer, says: "I have sung
unto those that dwell in darkness." The chapter in which this
praises
occurs is entitled "the chapter of making the transformation into the
god who giveth light in the darkness." He comes to set prisoners free,
and also, it is said, "to dissipate darkness." Incarnation being necessary
for the higher birth of the soul, an Egyptian text reads: "The soul is
brought forth through the embrace of the Lord of Darkness. He is
Babi, the Lord of Darkness." In Ch. 175 "saith Osiris, the scribe Ani:
Hail, Tmu! What manner (of land) is this into which I have come?
... it is black as blackest night, and men wander helplessly therein.
In
it
man may
may
the longings
The very name of the great Egyptian script, the Eoo\ of the Dead,
hints at the realm of darkness from which the soul emerges in its resurrection; for the
translated,
title,
sat in the
And
sat in darkness
.
saw a
and
to
them
that
is 'it
the deific
great light;
155
Chapter
IX
ALIVE IN DEATH
SUCH then was
high,
its fall
is seen to be the
on the basis of this revised
understanding, it will be far overshadowed in theological importance
by a still more radical reconstruction arising from the ancient use of
the figure under which life in the body was mythically represented.
For everywhere throughout antiquity earthly life was depicted as our
all
scripture
death!
as
We
We
existence here.
We
Be the
figure apt or be
it
considered unthinkable
as
it
will be at
and
And
and
relative only.
it
the other
goes to death
rises to life.
The
the soul to a higher life; conversely, the "death" of the soul as it sinks
in body opens the day of life to that body. The theological death of the
soul in incarnation is a death that does not kill it in any final sense. It
is
a death
rebirth. It
from which
is
it rises
And
sixteen centuries of
inane misconception of the resplendent glory of the greatest of all doctrines, the resurrection from the dead, will be resolved at long last into
its true
meaning when the dust of ignorance is
brushed away.
For animal man the advent of the gods was propitious; indeed it was
"death and
all
The plunge
soul,
That was part of its purpose. The gods came to "die" that we mortals
might "live." They came that both they and we might have life more
abundantly, but at what a cost to themselves a long "walk through
the valley of the shadow of death." Theirs was the death on the cross
of flesh and matter.
The use of the term "death" must be in any case a comparative one,
for there strictly is no death, in the fgrm of total extinction of being,
for any part of real being. All death, so called, is but a transition from
state to state, a change of form, of that which is and can not cease to
be. Life and death are eternally locked iri each other's arms, for as
Thales
"Air lives the death of water; fire lives the death of air,"
So body lives the death of the soul, and soul lives the death
of the body. It thrives by virtue of that death. The germ and young
shoot of any seed live the death of the body of the seed. The law of
incubation brings high deities into their Hades, into Pluto's dark king-
and
says,
so on.
The
volume
to obviate all
doubt as to
its
validity.
Upon
its
successful vindi-
cation hinges the final determination of meaning for hundreds of pastheses of all theolosages, and the ultimate interpretation of the main
gies.
As
will be
shown
later, it carries
with
it
where
that
tomb was whose gates and bars were rent asunder by the
Modern theology little dreams, to this day, the truth
resurgent Lord.
back of
The
Our
inability to
atrociously than
fetishism or totemism.
The
is
so
voluminous that
Nothing
less,
however,
much
material will avail to carry conviction to minds unalterably set to opposing views.
Proclus advises us that the incarnating Egos were forewarned that
achieved
it
ing through the nervous system of the animal. They were thus to be in
position to pour down streams of vital power into the body, but were
not to sink their
total
quantum
of the beast.
touch
it
life
come under
was the
first
death.
But
to sink farther
in the
murks
of animal
to impossible, was
stood in fear and terror in the old
was
The first death was the incarand "return unto the Father."
texts.
failure to rise
on high,
there ensued
Dead
(44)
is
by step into the lower and lower states of consciousness. Each step downward is preceded by a swooning into unconsciousness; and possibly that
which constitutes his mentality on the lower levels of the Bardo is some
mental element or compound of mental elements
separated during the
.
to earthly death
is
."
likened to
a falling asleep. Jesus' assertion that Lazarus was not dead but only
sleeping, and needed only to be awakened, is a picturing of the same
condition. Incidentally the same thing is said of the earth-bound Osiris
in Egypt. "That is Osiris, who is not dead but sleeping in Annu, the
place of his repose, awaiting the call that bids him come forth to day."
Massey comments:
"Osiris in Annu, like Lazarus in Bethany, was not dead but sleeping.
In the text of Har-Hetep (Rit., Ch. 99), the Speaker, who personates
Horus, is he who comes to awaken Asar (Osiris) out of his sleep. Also in
one of the
Great
funeral texts
earlier
One waketh,
the Great
One
it
is
riseth
said
.
.'
Horus
go
to
says (Rit.,
comfort him
of Egyptian
is
it
"I
in a
The swoon
grees until
Ch. 64)
who
awaken
to
science.
attending each further step matterward deepens by deamounts to the full "sleep" or "dream" of mortal ex159
Istence,
Oriental Maya.
life
of ecstatic realism
He
life
might be said to
as
die, as far as
by "philosophy,"
through this union with the body."
have the whole idea most tersely expressed in the Gorgias of
"suffers death
We
Plato:
is a
grievous thing. For I should not
when
he says: 'Who knows whether
truth
the
Euripides spoke
not to die, and to die is not to live?' And we perhaps are in reality
"But indeed,
wonder
to live
is
as
you say
also, life
if
body
is
burden of
this death,
it
must
of theology. Even Massey and Taylor have fallen just short of that
filial
step in comprehension which would have taken them into the
temple of truth, the threshold of which they never quite crossed. They
knew that the ancients styled this life "death," but they were unable,
apparently, to apply the connotations to the Bible and theology. The
obsessions of current thought were too strong for them, and overrode
I, Iviii)
"When
the soul had descended into generation (from this first divine
condition) she partakes of evil and is carried a great way into a state the
opposite of her first purity and integrity, to be entirely merged in it ...
and death to her is, while baptized or immersed in the present body, to
160
descend into matter and be wholly subjected to it. ... This is what
falling asleep in Hades, of those who have come there."
is
meant by the
worth noting that he uses the word "baptized" to describe incarnation. To incarnate was to be plunged into the watery condition o
the body! This is the whole of the meaning of the baptism in ancient
It is
theology!
To the above
may
we
see
when awa\e
is
death; and
when
it
the continuity of the experience of the days. But as our waking days
are the important parts of our earthly activity, the nights being but
interludes of repose and renewals of strength, so the positive incarnate
periods of our larger lives are the primarily significant phases of our
mundane history. The ancient seers both knew more about the sub-
when out of the body and were less conmodern Spiritualists. They regarded the phemanifestation as but the more or less automatic
nomena
of discarnate
They
sum
tion, a
kind of
reflex,
the spirits for the tenets of a religion. They were but the products of a
mental automatism set up by the engrossments of the last life. The
post
mortem
on
and regarded
and dying, in its comprehensive unity. Activity in the body during the
waking phase of the "death" was alone determinative of destiny. By
unfortunate diversion of the original cryptic sense, the unimportant
portion of the experience, the interlude between
lives,
became the
locale
practically
religious values were shunted when esoteric
was
lost. The
knowledge
meaning of all religion has in consequence
to
which
all
161
fled
from
value
little
is
earth,
where
it
alone
properly belongs and where
realized, to heaven,
utility for
of
its
true
meaning has
man.
priests
as
"Hades
supposed by
classical
Virgil adds significant testimony. In the Aeneid, writing of that "inheavens and earth, men and beasts,
spirit" which sustains the
terior
whom
and a
the rudimentary
by noxious bodies. They are deadened by earthly forms and members subject to death; hence they fear and
"In
all is
a potency
celestial origin as
desire, grieve
and
Plato's able
rejoice."
life to
life to
the body,
destroys both herself and her own intellect (in as great a degree as these
are capable of receiving destruction). For thus the mortal nature participates of intellect, but the intellectual part, of death, and the whole, as Plato
observes in the Laws, becomes a prodigy composed of the mortal and the
immortal, of the intellectual and that which is deprived of intellect. For
this physical law which binds the soul to the body is the death of the im-
mortal
life,
Wilder in
teries
his Introduction to
Taylor's Eleusinian
comments again:
"The soul was believed (by the Greeks) to be a composite nature, linked
on the one side to the eternal world, emanating from God, and so partaking
On
of Divinity.
external world,
and so
liable to
it
was
phenomenal and
as in a prison or a grave!'
It
has been claimed in some quarters that the death here mentioned
of the incarnation,
of
it.
The
a matter of vast
imporreflection. There was a de-
it is
life.
prodigious.
It must be
prefaced that the Egyptian writings use more than one
character to personate the incarnating god.
may find Osiris, or Ra
himself, or Turn, Atum or Horus taking the role. Then there are the
We
two characters which we meet most often, the "Speaker" and the
Manes in the Ritual. These appear to be distinctly the human soul.
Sometimes again
it is
represented as the "deceased," again as the "Osirinames of four or more kings are used to
stand for deity: Unas, Ani, Pepi and Teta, frequently with "the" prefixed.
It is
from
central
god
we
deity, is
to rule this
kingdom, according
to the
A passage
"About the middle of the Ptolemaic period the attributes of Osiris were
changed, and after his identification with Serapis, i.e., Pluto, the god of
death, his power and influence declined rapidly, for he was no longer the
god of life. In the final state of the cult of Osiris and Isis, the former was
5
the symbol of death and the latter the symbol of life."
This change does not betoken what Budge supposes, but quite the
contrary. It hints at the fact that the Egyptian conception of the character of Osiris as Lord of the Underworld of death began to weaken
In the later days, as foreign influences crept in, and the profound eso-
of
The
actual issue
In confirmation of our claim that death in the ancient usage did not
imply extinction, the Manes in the Ritual (Ch. 30 A) says: "After being buried on earth, I am not dead in Amenta." Horus knows that
though he
He knows
as he adds,
that he is that
he
which
Even though,
final resurrection.
Such a passage
as the
following carries in
its
with
cries of
Amenta and
164
god
was dead and buried" in Amenta. Massey's succinct statement covering the point is: "The buried Osiris represented the god in
matter," not in a hillside grave. The hillside grave, however, was the
into Hades,
upon
Amenta, which
his brother
when he
Sut, the
betrayed
him
power of darkness,
s
?
"The
to his death"
9
was removed
in
quite apparent that the land in which souls lie down in "death"
is this old earth of ours. For nowhere else are souls
joined unto their
bodies! This is the only sphere in the range of cosmic activity where
it is
and this fact is sufficient warrant for focusmass of vague meaning for which theologians have
seek a locale in various subterranean worlds whose place
ing upon
been forced to
is
that
found
at last
Horus
says in
only in their
own
imaginations.
one text: "I directed the ways of the god to his tomb
in Peqar
and I caused gladness to be in the dwellers in Amentet
when they saw the Beauty as it landed at Abydos." 10 Abydos was
claimed to be the place of entry to the lower world where the "dead"
lived, but in this use it was another of those transfers of uranographic
.
locality to a
the spiritual
town on
map
in
165
underworld
realize that
he
is
when he
says:
"But about Osiris' burial-place there is no doubt, for all tradition, both
in upper
Egyptian and Greek, states that his grave was at Abydos (Abtu)
Egypt/'
He
11
deified.
gods
personifications
The legend that his body was cut into fourteen pieces,
intelligence.
scattered over the land and then reassembled for the resurrection could
and
as herein
king he is not dead unless the new interpretation of "death"
13
The souls as deities entered
advanced and supported be applicable?
the realm of death, our world, but were not dead; philosophy drama-
tized
them
as such, however.
Eye was
Of
this
in the
god
is
body.
It is
that
show
life
its
totally figurative
and unreal
character.
Nobody has
egion into which the soul passed after death, somehow, somewhere
'under," but under what, it was not apparently ever determined. The
:ause of bafflement was the ineradicable assumption that its "under-
was
to
its
Lewis Spence cautiously admits that the court of the Mayan undervorld seems to have been conducted on the principles of a secret society
vith a definite form of initiation, and that the Mysteries of Eleusis
md others in Greece were concerned with the life of an underworld,
14
He admits
in the story of Demeter and Kore.
especially dramatized
hat the Greek deities were gods of the dead. But he mars his tentative
ipproach to the truth by advancing the conjecture that the Boo{ of the
Dead may have been the work of prehistoric Neolithic savages!
We
efrain
)f
the
from
caustic
Dead was
comment, save
Egyptian Eoo\
which
must
by inference
nessage,
modern
its
high
two below that level.
The Mystery Rituals did dramatize the life of an underworld, but
nentality
lie
a stratum or
167
the gods, as kings of this nether realm, were not subterranean deities.
The gnomes and other nature sprites were the only "deities" that were
believed to subsist beneath the surface of the physical earth. The gods
of the underworld were always the gods of the dead. And as the souls
of deceased mortals were in all religions asserted to ascend to heaven
and never to remain in the burial ground with the corpse, it was again
impossible to place the underworld down with the gnomes. But it
from heaven equate the descent of all the divine heroes and sun-gods
dark underworld of earth.
From the great Egyptian Ritual, which so cryptically allegorizes this
earthly death, we learn that the mystery of the Sphinx originated with
into the
the conception of the earth as the place of passage, of burial an'd rebirth, for the humanized deities. An ancient Egyptian name for the
Sphinx was
the underworld.
quake
clearly defined if
mortal
The
life,
its
blind doorway which neither Manes nor mortal knew the secret of
and none but the god could open. Hence the need of a deity who
should come to unlock the portals and unbar the gates of hell, and
be "the door" and "the way." The god came not only to unlock the
door of divinity to human nature, but to be himself that door. The
giving of the keys to bolt and unbolt the doors of the underworld
this evolutionary reinforcement of the human
Descriptions of this dark realm of our present state are given in the
a land without an exit, through which no
passage has been
made; from whose visitants, the dead, the light was shut out," "The
texts. "It is
168
The
first
Boo^
of the
of
Dead
Dante
as
the
chapter of the Boo^ of the Dead was repeated in the Myson the day when Osiris was buried. His entrance into the
tery festivals
do not
it
rot. I
shall not
154).
do not putrefy.
Inasmuch
My
flesh is firm;
be destroyed;
it
Christian theology has been able to tell us of, the term "flesh" in the
excerpt can not be taken as that of the human body. And that it is not
is obvious from other
passages. It refers to the substance
body which does not rot away.
The same sense may distinctly be caught in the term "body" as used
to be so taken
of another
in the prayer uttered by the soul in the body when it says: "May
body neither perish nor suffer corruption forever." Such a prayer directed to the physical body would be obviously irrelevant, expecting
my
"The wilderness
dead awaited the coming of Horus, Shu, Apuat (Anup), the guide, and
Taht ... as servants of Ra, the supreme one god, to wake them in their
coffins
17
number
of animals
etc.
it of the animal
prosubjection to the constant beat upon
bodies of the lower
it had taken residence in the
since
very
pensities,
creatures. In a measure detached, it was yet not immune to being
soul of
its
drawn down
be remembered
the
mind
of an animal."
Etymology
the tomb of
ously in accord with the Greek theory that the body, as
the soul, is at the same time the womb of its new birth. In the Egyptian
addressed as he
is
"who cometh
forth
tomb.
In the Christian Bible the textual evidence
excerpts only can be culled. First
down through nineteen centuries
death and
its
is
multitudinous.
will shine
upon
thee." Job,
few
combining
slept; I
is St.
his
down
in
cries in
the anguish of the fleshly duress, "Who shall deliver me from the body
of this death?" And it is an open question whether the final
phrase
might not
as well
Jonah, correlative
name with
Jesus, cries
from the
body."
And
allegorical whale's
"Out
belly:
And
this
"death" until
better.
down
and
learn
is
undeveloped, buried
170
we
The Psalms
say
we
that
though "God
will
redeem
And
yet shall
he
wholive."
Assurance
is
earth?
Then
there
is
God
in the
is
alive again."
The thing
earth.
just the sojourn in that "far country"
most direct and unequivocal declaration,
however,
is
found in
the
first
"death" in the sense here analyzed. He says first that "the interests of
the flesh meant death; the interests of the spirit meant life and peace."
And then he says: "For when we were in the flesh, the motions of
sins,
fruit
unto death."
in our
members
to
bring forth
He
And
he replies
Law equivalent
is
this
What
us
"under
Law."
the
mysterious Law that the
veloped in
with
such
on
Apostle harps
frequency? Theology has not possessed
the resources for a capable answer, beyond the mere statement that it
asks: "Is the
to sin?"
171
is
the
power
man.
It is that,
Cycle of Necessity.
sub-cycles or stages,
is the seven-coiled
serpent of Genesis that encircles man in its folds.
Now, says the Mystery initiate, by the Law came sin, and by sin
came
death.
Here
is
man on
the cross.
The
Law
brings the soul to the place where it sins and sin condemns it to
death. Death here must mean something other than the natural deall men be they
pure or be they
Reserving a more recondite elaboration of the doctrine of sin
for a later place, it may be asserted here that the great theological
bugaboo, sin, will be found to take its place close along the side of
"death" as the natural involvement of the incarnation itself. Sin is just
the soul's condition of immersion or entanglement in the nature of
the
flesh.
And
happily
much
of
its
taint by
and needless
Neither as animal below our status nor as angel above it; can man
sin. For the animal is not
spiritually conscious and hence not morally
is
under no temptation or motivation from
culpable. And the angel
the sensual nature, which alone urges to "sin."
Law
Romans
become possible.
(7: 7)
.
.
expressly declares: "Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law
without
dead."
one
time
the
sin
Paul
even
that
at
he
was
Fo5
says
law^
him.
law himself;
this
this
command? Again
it
has
lost ancient
Then
the Apostle states the entire case with such clarity that only purblind benightedness of mind could miss it: "When the command came
home to me, sin sprang to life, and I died;
." He means to
say that
.
sprang to life as
172
"the
further:
used
sin;
beneficent character of
In / Samuel (2: 6)
it is
written:
"The Eternal
kills,
the Eternal
life
meaning
made
note
lifts
is
honest enough to
"He hath
A marginal
his grave
tell
us that the
word "death"
no other possible sense can "death" be rationally considered in the plural number. In one incarnation the Christ soul is
cast among the wicked; in another among the rich. This is a common
tions," for in
173
in disgust and revulsion away from the fold of orthodoxy. Paul states
in the verses immediately following that the dead will rise in a spiritual body.
And
then
overcome
we
is
death.
enemy
to
be
we
thought has ever believed that in some way this promise meant
should overcome the incidence of bodily decease, and live on in the
evolution. It would
physical vessel indefinitely. This would paralyze
wreck the Cyclical Law. The Trinity is the Creator, the Preserver and
the Destroyer. Without the periodic destruction of form there could
be no renewal of life in higher and better forms. Life would be imprisoned forever in matter, and choked to
its
from
liberty is its periodical release
also limit. What, then, means the passage? If death
the incarnation,
last.
"Death"
me
The same
"I
am
more!" The
down
Law
here, but
There
is
no
precipitates us
lifts
us
from the
life
up
again.
sublimer chapter in the entire Bible than the fifteenth of
I Corinthians.
therein. It
wing our
the
flight like
"So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal
have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that
written: Death is swallowed up in victory."
shall
is
"O
death,
where
is
thy sting?
grave,
where
is
thy victory?"
pit,
the underworld
"We
Our
175
still.
they
Chapter
WE
the correction of
approach a phase o the general theme,
will be attended with the most
which
about
popular misconception
momentous consequences for the whole of world religion. Only one
or two other items o our revision of current belief will prove to be
of more sensational interest. The matter that promises so largely is
the Egyptian mummy and the practice of mummification. When the
of this mysterious custom of a sage race begins to
true
now
signification
in clear light,
dawn
Ego
that they
returning
or soul
upon
its
return to earth.
Common
belief asserts
176
were
first
One
coffin.
to preserve. If this
feet
be not conclusive,
jars at the
were cut
Canopic
off!
same weird
fashion.
frame an
the declaration
studies
confirmation
is
mighty
rite of
it
embalmment was
noth-
item of
relatively
few
this
know
we
vital
ceremony
The
effort is
day
to
One
ground
fied to serve as a
powerful
matter, and the various features of the meaning of this mundane life!
Nothing more. But this far transcended in graphic impressiveness and
cathartic virtue any theoretic dramatization of the philosophy of life
made by any
was
people since the days of Egypt's glory. The
whole moral of human life in a form of over-
mummy
whelming
lifeless
body became
mighty emblem.
The custom was an attempt
the ritual bore the message that the divine part of man, the
soul, though in this body it has gone to its "death/' is immortal still. It will defy death and corruption, as will the mummy.
this,
immortal
The
mummy
because
it
was
dead thing!
It
mummy
symboled
life as
death,
and death
as the gate to
immortal
life.
And
the
of eternal
mind
raised to eternal life out of the realm of decay. To associate ritualistically the idea of undying existence with the defunct relic was to im-
whose
death,
is "life
its
mutilations and exsections, symbolizing the dismemberment or fragintellect when cast into the
distracting turmoil
life.
The
facial
mask
nature of the physical man, the personality, which was the mask
(Latin: persona, a mask) the soul donned over its true self. The bound
and arms symboled the limitation and motionlessness which matimposes upon active spirit. The four Canopic jars at the corners
of the coffin stood for the physical world, which is ever four-square
legs
ter ever
all
case itself signihigher life. The
earth, the physical house and habitat of the soul. The
coffin lid served as the table for the mortuary meal, or the partaking of
mummy
upholds
body or
to return to the
upper air
are
and
matter
ankh-cross, symbol
spirit
tied together, the ankham-flower of immortality, the Tat cross, symbol
of eternal stability, the level of Amenu, symbol of the balance of
nature's forces, the scarab, symbol of the resurrection, the vulture, the
or another the
greenstone tablet of resin, all shadowed in one way
of heaven.
The
body
of life
when
vehicle.
immortality of the spiritual principle lodged within the mortal
The spices and balsams were preservatives, sweet of savor. And the
179
many
and
Ishtar, a goddess, a
inference
is
that
the
brimming
The
mummy
is
to
mummy
"Hence the chapter of 'introducing the mummy into the Tuat [underworld] on the day of burial' deals not with the earthly mummy, but the
mummy of the dramatic mysteries as a figure of the living -personality!' x
mummy
This
is
mummy
was
to
in function.
all
to the
mummy's
true function.
But
this scholar's
"Amenta
is
we
will be
Hebrew
of
as the city of
dead
carcasses,
Sekari or Osiris-Tat.
where
also their
who
180
Lord was
crucified as Ptah-
mummy
the lower Egypt of the nether earth. The Manes were likewise imaged as
mummies in their coffins. They also rose again in the mummy-likeness of
their Lord, and went up out of Egypt in the constellation of the
Mummy
(Sahu-Orion), or in the
Bear."
Can we miss
mummies
it
tomb
of
all
ancient theology
is
no
is
possibility of the
to earth for a
new
body or for a re-entry into the old mummy. As the Manes says, 'his soul
not bound to his old body at the gates of Amenta'" (Chs. 26, 6). 3
is
That the soul would not re-enter the old mummy is a vital point of
and Massey deserves all credit for discerning it. But that it
would not return to enter a new body flies in the face of all ancient
and universal belief in reincarnation. This is just the point of issue to
be clarified. The soul returns from life to life to be re-clothed in new
truth,
it
assuredly does not take up life again in the mutilated
and decomposed old hulk. The Manes positively states that he is not
bound to the old body; but a score of times he says he will construct,
garments, since
new
body of the
But
resurrection.
earth. It is the
product of
it is
many
new
physical
"He was
the buried
life
on
And we
a
earth,
mummy.
is spiritual
in the eschatology." 4
"In the Osirian mythos, when the sun-god enters the underworld, it
mummy or 'coffined one' upon his way to the great resting place."
181
is
as
deity.
He
is
the
"And just as Ra, the holy spirit, descends in Tattu on the mummy Osiris,
and as Horus places his hands behind Osiris in the resurrection, so lu 7
comes to his body, the mummy in Amenta. Those who tow Ra along say,
'The god comes to his body; the god is towed along toward his mummy,'
(Records, Vol. X, p. 132.) The sun-god, whether as Atum-Iu (Aiu or Aai)
or Osiris-Ra, is a mummy in Amenta and a soul in heaven. Atum or Osiris,
as the
sun in Amenta,
is
the
mummy
buried
down
in Khebt, 8 or lower
Egypt."
These passages conclusively indicate that the mummy was the type
of the god in the body.
Conquest of the carnal nature and escape from it is in another place
called the "overthrowal of your coffins." (Boo\ of Hades, Fifth Division, Legend D.) Again, the earth is denominated "the coffin of Osiris,
the coffin of Amenta."
In his descent to open the tombs for the release of the sleeping captives
Horus
says
"I
am come
as the
mummified
one," that
is,
in fleshly
embodiment.
It
other assurances that he comes to "those in their coffins," must be admitted to certify the truth of our contention throughout that it is the
Magi
the
mummy
more appropriate
182
stage of senility,
matter and
was
to
It is
mummy
to see corruption."
But occasionally an
Hebrew
transcription.
original Egyptian
Such a term
is
mummy
is
Sechem
Kamite
fields of
The
fields of
Sechem
original.
The word
mummy
is
the world of material inertia was, as we shall see, the only, if fateful,
path leading to the "initiation" of the spirits into the higher mysteries
of life. The Sphinx riddle of life can be solved
that lurk in the
depths
only by a living experience in
Life's
own
all
183
was de-
Nilitic rite
nothing more.
Attention must now be given to the Egyptian word which was used
signed to express
to
It
may
KR
KR
S T.
S with a suffix T, giving
indeterminate, as it always was in ancient writing.
before the R and another after it, makScholars have introduced an
It
The voweling
is
KARAST
authoritative warrant
probably no
been a stout
or
suggestions that the alternative vowels, E, I,
be used in the form. Yet scholarship would be hard put to substantiate
resistance to
all
Kerist or Krist.
to the
spellings Karist, Karest, Kerast,
Indeed, as the root is very likely a cognate form with the Greek fyeas,
flesh, there would be more warrant for writing it Krast, Krest or Krist
any objection
we know how easily a "Kr" consonant metaGreek Chr, we can not dismiss the suggested close-
the
word
If
to the
name
Christ,
we
crust.
(Greek %reas) Not far away also is our word crystal, which
meaning of any process of intmtfation, or the preof
into forms of solidification around an accipitation
spirit energies
force.
nucleus
of
The
tuating
large idea behind all these forms that
with
flesh
word
chruseosj golden, points to the end of the process to be consumin matter, when, metaphorically speaking, all baser
spirit
forms of the encrusted covering or
will be transmuted by the
mated by the
mummy
divinity's
glowing
sea" that
is
fire
the chemicalization,
first
The
"crystal
two ends of
in one
Our fyeas or
here on the cross of
mummy
coherence.
case, that
life
about the soul and as such became not only the cross, but
or
cruse containing the golden liquor of life. The partaking
the cruet
our
of it was
Eucharist, and our final transfiguration will be the putting on of the golden hues of immortality, symboled by the insect
crystallized
11
is
an
defenses
the Father.
mummy
is the mystery
Finally, then, the mystery of the
it is allowed to be forever inexplicable. As Osirian
the mystery can be explained. It is one of the mysteries of Amenta, with a
more primitive origin in the rites of Totemism." 12
of Christ.
As
Christian
As
as the
Osiris-Sekari
represented the
god
Karast-mummy was
he was the
185
"Indeed the total paraphernalia of the Christian mysteries had been made
use of in Egyptian temples
Osiris in the monstrance should of itself
suffice to show that the Egyptian Karast is the original Christ, and that the
.
Rome."
13
significant suffix
As
Qbzdiah, Isaiah, Htzekiah and a long list more. The name Messiah
then denotes the "divinely anointed" one or the "born (reborn) deity."
When the first or natural man was anointed with the chrism o Christly
grace,
An
this
ritual
was
its
performance
my
N H
to
life.
The
is
the
two
life
energies, with the "j" left off the word. Therefore the
the pouring of the "oil of gladness," the spiritual nature,
is
"anointing"
upon the mortal nature of living man. The "unguents" of the mummification were the types of the shining higher infusion, and they pre-
for,
And
these that
were
to preserve the
as the
found in the baptism allegory, where the lower man, John the
anoints with his element, water, the very deity, Christ, himBaptist,
is
not only dual in themselves, but may generally be interchanged without damage to the ground signification. This strange and practically
unknown
itself;
but perhaps
specific
situations
burial in
body
potencies,
its
thus both
its
is
where
the cause
it
and occasion
active
is
it
soul
and
is
man
latter,
and
spiritual unction
have strengthened thine existence upon earth. I have given thee thy
I have
given thee thy victory. I have anointed
thee with offerings of holy oil." 15
"I
soul,
The whole
procedure of incarnation from its inception to the Prodibe seen as an anointing, first of spirit with flesh, then
to
gal's return, is
of flesh with spirit. Massey says that anointing was the mode of showing the glory of the Father in the person of his Son, and that Horus
was anointed when he transformed from Horus the mortal to Horus
the divine
man.
The
usual material for anointing was oil, but at least one other
comes in as symbol.
are familiar with Jesus' mixing his spittle
with a little earth to anoint the eyes of the blind man in the Gospels.
We
Hawaiian legend also has it that the first man was created from
red earth (the meaning of "Adam") mixed with the spittle of the gods,
and the triadic god then blew into his nose and bade him rise a living
human
In
the
"He
tals.
anointed
He
placed
mother's
This
my
me
forehead as Lord of men, creating me as chief of morin a palace as a youth, not yet come forth from my
womb."
is
yet resurrected, not yet come forth from mother nature's womb! The
entombed is like Joseph in "Egypt" and Daniel in "Babylon"
spirit
before they rose from out their "prisons" to become the rulers of the
kingdom.
We
birth, this
are
still
to
incarnation
is
188
is
to
spirit.
Our
be our second
famous
verse:
"The
spirit of
to preach
broken-hearted,
16
to
."
The
"Having had
my
flesh
embalmed,"
Ritual (Ch. 64), "my body does not decay." Hence flesh, inoculated
with spirit, or the
embalmed, becomes immortal And the
mummy
flesh!
And
flesh will
be immortalized!
But the Egyptians had a correlative phrase with "the Word made
flesh." It was "the Word made Truth." The Logos or spirit made flesh
produced the first birth, the natural man, the first Adam. This was not
the true Word, for it was falsified by the admixture of the earthly,
natural element, by which it voiced the animal note. As the boy's voice
at the age of manhood changes from a feminine to a masculine timbre,
so the speech of the mortal had to swing away from the tones of its
mother nature and issue as the voice of the spiritual Self. Figuratively
human
the spiritual
God
race's
life.
The
race
to Father
It is
quite noteworthy in this connection that one of the most eminent of modern psychologists, C. G. Jung, has divided human life into
two periods, which he calls the forenoon and afternoon of life, the
boundary
line
the forenoon
noon" to a
being placed
mankind
life
at the
age of
thirty-five.
He
says that in
of "nature," but turns in the "afterof "culture." So that we find even the span of mortal
lives the life
spiritual,"
St.
us.
189
The world
men
In us
god
is
striving to
stamp
mummy
dom, power and love could be achieved only by the spirit's encasement
in a body. Matter, so derided by extreme "spiritual" theory, is the
womb in which alone divine conceptions can be brought to birth. So
that the fleshing of soul works the miracle of its own anointing. Flesh
is
the
way and
the
measure of the
is
christ-
oil
mummy
discussion,
earth
itself.
here
made
and
that
it
on the determination of
this issue.
Likewise the
the body were enacted in Amenta, the underworld, the final meaning
of the whole structure of theology is bound up with the correct location of this realm of gloomy shade. It is believed that the correction of
the error under which the academic world has labored for centuries
with regard
most sweeping
nothing
altera-
short, in fact, of
Amenta, the Egyptian term for this underworld, is given as a compound of the Egyptian "Amen" meaning "secret," "hidden"; and
"ta" "earth" or "land." In this formation it becomes "the hidden earth"
or "secret, hidden land." It is the land where the divine sons were
hidden away in "Egypt" till the "wrath" of the Karmic Lords should
be appeased. "Amen" was the "hidden deity," "the god in hiding." His
hieroglyph pictures him as kneeling under a canopy. The "wrath" of
190
God, be
it
proclaimed
at last, is
sense of the word, but the universally burning, consuming, transformand destroying energy of Life itself, always anciently
ing, building
of
all this
of description is just to carry the idea that the soul must be tied
in its linkage with the deeply hidden energies of matter and
down
body
until the fiery potencies burning at that level refine and purify its
Biblical text speaks of its
elements.
being "thrice refined in
grosser
and Egyptian
scripts abound with statements of its purification "in the crucible of the great house of flame." Maintaining the
revolutionary thesis that Amenta is this earth, and not some realm
elsewhere into which men relapse after earthly demise, the exposition
the
fire,"
it
pertains to
own
our
him down
Khebt But the Egyptian
to take
version gives us
more ground
for understand-
of Prince
entirely strong, he will attain the dignity
the throne of his father." This is highly important, since
.
lowed by the
child's return.
it is
seen
that the dip into Lower Egypt is that necessary incubation in matter
that must continue until it has brought the infant potentialities to
actualization and function. As the seed in the soil, so the god in the
body and the "child" in "Lower Egypt" all are hidden away
the
growth that only thus could be attained. The secreting of
earth of the divine seed in its
on
is no more than the
planting
earthly
for the
child
secret."
Of Ptah
it is
also said:
"Thy
am
he whose stream
secret dwelling
is
in the depths
supporting the
mundane
location
of a debate
largely the semblance
with Massey. If our study seems overburdened with his material,
be found in the explanation that, in the first place, he has
of
apology may
earned
fairly
this
amount
of recognition,
his presen-
it
No
Amenta than he
in
experience of the soul or divine child
the following excerpt:
has done in
"In the eschatology Horus, the child, is typical of the human soul which
was incarnated in the blood of Isis, the immaculate virgin, to be made
flesh, and to be born in mortal guise on earth as the son of Seb (god of
earth) and to suffer all the afflictions of mortality. He descended to Amenta
as the soul sinking in the dark of death.
Everything in
earth. Clearly as
."
17
192
worse.
He
fought his
keep the judgment, hell, purgatory and the underworld in the after-death realm. He was forced to split the term "earth,"
to
He
He
it
state,
we know. But
and segregated
little
reflection
have told him that the term "earth" has no possible appropriateness
to
by grace of euphemism or figure. Massey must have felt this, but it permitted him to use the word "earth" in reference to a purely celestial
locale. This could not have been other than a bit disingenuous; and it
cost
him
his place in
years in
He
Amenta
we
Egypt
as recorded in
as has
is
shall
precisely
been shown, a "sub-terrestrial" residence for man is meaningimagery without possible counterpart in actuality. The
less verbiage,
"sub-"
was
to
sub-celestial,
figure, there
but never
on the surface
dom
of this earth, for the inexpugnable reason that the "wisis the wisdom
pertaining to this earth!
recorded in Amenta'
'
Amenta and
this earth are one and the same place. Religion must
back
this earth the core of all those meanings which took
to
bring
their flight from this sphere on the wings of scholarship's egregious
mislocation of the mythical region of Amenta.
His mistake, as that of all other scholars, was occasioned by loss of
must
their
rituals
hence
and
must
humans,
the departed on "that other shore." It
spirits
of
seen that the phrase "deceased in their graves" had already been approhere on the
priated by the sages of Egypt to type the living denizens
globe.
Amenta with
a post
mortem
state
In
after decease! It
but
is
its
asphodel meads!
Happy
Isles,
the Aarru-Hetep
and the
most amazing want of acumen in reaching conwith the data of scholarship. Massey
"Except when lighted up by the sun of night, Amenta was the land
of darkness and the valley of the shadow of death. It remained thus, as it
was at first, to those who could not escape the custody of Seb, the god of
"
earth, 'the great annihilator who resideth in the valley.'
Amenta was
If
its
darkness,
localization
indicated.
Or was not
to inhabit his
Egyptian could
Hebrew
teries,
its
god
drawn
typified cosmic
ritual.
of earth
are
scriptures
which
dramatic
the
own kingdom,
largely
from the
and
The
scenes in
early Egyptian
racial history
not events of either
Egyptian or Hebrew
objective history. They did not "occur" anywhere on earth, but they
portrayed the interior meaning of all that did occur on earth. The
myths must be
veridically true
caught half the truth only.
objectively true on earth.
were only symbolic language telling human dullness of
He
life
meant.
The moment
heaven or anywhere
else,
The myths
mind what
Nothing could occur in Amenta as a place disfrom this earth, since it was a mythopoetic name for earth itself.
But the sad part of Massey's story and the reason it is important for
us to scrutinize his mistake is that it is the story o a whole race's de-
The
localization of
Amenta
in heaven in-
by them ungrasped
the while!
all
When
religion gave
up
its
effort to
from earth
earth.
lie
to
and bred the rank growth that covered the whole terrain of
is needed no other warrant for the extension
the material of this chapter to some length. As things have turned
fallow,
the
of
And
out,
may
experience
turning
Scholars have not sufficiently or capably reflected on the significant
fact that ancient sacred books or Bibles have been largely Books of the
by
this fact
to occur to students. It
first
boo^s were available! Only the heavy tradition that religion was a
preparation for a life to come, instead of a way of life here, could have
stifled this
.
is
odd enough in
all
con-
all
."
the sobering realization for present reflection of the fact that the pri-
meval revelation given to early races for the guidance and instruction
of all
humanity has missed entirely the world for which it was intended!
The
is
land, but here in the inner arena of man's consciousness. Life's ac-
196
We
to
fabric
earth, not
when we
creation of ourselves
It is
the other
way around:
rest is a
positive expression of life is the exertion of effort to achieve progress. Rest is just the cessation of the effort,
and needs no preparation. The character of our effort may, to be sure,
determine the nature of our rest, yet one should say, rather, its comRest is in some degree correlative with the effort. Still the
pleteness.
is indefeasible, that we work to achieve our
purposes, and not to
logic
gain rest. The presumption that this life is of minor consequence and
has value only as the stepping-stone to another where true being is
alone achieved, is one facet of that enormous fatuity of which we are
It is
the last
mark
of the mis-
carriage of primal truth in the scriptures that its meaning and application have been diverted from that world it was intended to instruct,
and projected over into another where its code can have no utility
whatever. The offices of religion have fled to heaven, and must be
brought back to earth. This return can be effected only by the right
interpretation of the term "the dead" and the true location of Amenta,
the scene of the judgment, hell, purgatory and the resurrection, and
the seat of
Massey
all
evolutionary experience.
half of this"
and
that the "Gospel history has been based upon that other earth of the
Manes being mistaken for the earth of mortals." But he errs on both
For the "other half of this" life is lived in a sphere which all
have located above this one, and not nether tow it. The spirit
world can in no way be localized as under our world. His second
counts.
faiths
statement misses truth through the fact that the events in the life of
the Manes are not, as he supposes, actual transactions in the after-
death
life
of the
history in this
spirit,
soul's
life.
197
"They
cal representations ... in the drama of the Mysteries, that was as nonhistorical as the Christmas pantomime. The miracles ascribed to Jesus on
earth
who was
non-
But
Jew in Judea, we are sud-
was provably
pre-extant."
vision
He
midst of Amenta!'
Amenta.
He
Amentho"
is
is
1S
Moreover a
called
Aber-Amentho ;
ruler; so that again Jesus and Horus are exactly matched in title.
If Jesus delivered his discourses to his
disciples "in Amenta," all
For unless
Tuat.
It is
198
world. But
Budge
gives
as "the
it
name
heaven nor upon earth, where the dead dwelt and through which
the sun passed during the night." Where else the Tuat might be, if
neither in heaven nor on earth, deponent saith not. In another place
(Egyptian Literature, Vol. I) he defines the Tuat once more. "Tuat is
a very ancient name for the Other World, which was situated either
in
parallel
"learned"
men
candor and
"Is
is
be called his
may
it
its
own
general importance,
is
more
its
downright
it is
known
oughly justified and every honest worker will admit that there are at the
present time scores of passages even in such a comparatively well-known
compilation as the Boo\ of the Dead which are inexplicable, and scores of
allusions to a fundamentally important mythological character of which the
meanings are
still
unknown." (Gods
The sun
passing through the Tuat depicted the divine soul as passing through its incarnation, which being in the darkness of the body
was charactered as the "dark night of the soul." As it entered the gate
called the Tuat, it crossed the horizon line
dividing the
of
or
heaven
from
or
earth
and
there it
embodiment,
region
spirit
stood in the twilight. Budge says that "the Tuat was a duplicate of
Egypt," laid out in nomes, with a river valley and other similar fea-
of
Amenta,
tures.
it
was said to receive a new heart shaped "by certain gods in the nether world according to the deeds done in the body
whilst the person was living on earth." Here again is confusion and a
missing of the intent. The award of a new heart is not made like that
of a prize on graduation day. The larger meaning is that the whole
long experience of many lives creates a new heart, which is the reIn
Amenta
the soul
is
gradually accomplished
to
draw intelligible meanthe
It
is
whole
by
quite impossible
process.
we
limit
to
a single span of earth
our
the
survey
ing from
scriptures if
life
as a prelude to
an
tf
infinite
199
Reason forbids
Many
Massey
felt
world.
He
did not
dream
brought the soul here instead of taking it away. The soul's statement
that it came "to overthrow mine adversaries upon the earth" should
have enlightened him. The soul descends here to battle the lower
nature, the only adversary contemplated in the whole range of holy
writ.
The
"We put
human, man
of the Ritual
is
human
the
characteristics, scholars
human. Later
we
see that
it is
a being once
still
to this
underworld pilgrim
."
19
all
Manes
in
Amenta
all
the traits
and
tangled
him
is
how
"The lower paradise of two is in the mount of earth, also called the
mount of Amenta. [Identification again.] The departed are not
funeral
His own exegesis convicts him of shallow thinking here. For he has
stated repeatedly that the soul enters his
spectral Amenta with character already formed
'"the deeds done in the
His Amenta
by
body."
could not be the arena of moral conflict or
fight to win immortality.
200
He
it
is
and wrestle for moral victory when that "Amenta" is entered. The
earth is the one and only theater of spiritual struggle. So he errs in
reiterating:
it
by hard
labor
Massey's mistake, in
common
with that of
much
general religious
opinion on these matters, lies in his affirming that after the termination
of life in the body the soul first descends into Amenta, then later rises
into Paradise. This
itself.
The
flies
in the face of
soul descends in
coming
all
to earth,
region left into which it can further descend on quitting the body. Its
incarnation in flesh drags it down, its release at decease lets it free to
return upward. The false downward direction assigned to the soul on
leaving earth is a perversion of true original conception due to the loss
of the meaning of the term "death" in world religion. Profound philothe instinctive unconditioned idea which
sophical insight corroborates
rises in connection with physical death, that the soul when released
begins its ascent to celestial habitat. Only perverted theology incul-
cated the thought of further descent when the war between flesh and
this
is over. The
dissipation of that idea is ample justification for
mind
chapter.
"The
Another sentence
sub-terrestrial paradise
how
salvation
call this dark, murky, dismal underworld of suba "paradise"? In no religion is paradise pictured as a
gloomy and forbidding place. This obsession of his, that the soul must
first go down into a region of agony and bloody sweat and fiery tor-
But
can he
terrestrial life
ture after separation from the body and be purged of its earthly sins
this dissertation upon it
it can rise into
paradise, warrants all
before
because
It is
it is
to
throw
oflf
201
a stage
life. If
The
is
is little
is
foundation for
it
teaching.
We
we
must reap
as
St. Paul's
long
fight.
The
arcane
tality of
sages.
The
divine
word
202
made
truth in the
life
lived
spirit
own book
its
were,
when
life,
states;
but
how
infinitely
more mean-
its
evo-
Returning here again and again, the soul brings its own record
book of life with it, written in its own character. Character can be
built nowhere else than on earth. No religion has ever said that we
would be judged for deeds done in the spirit world! We are asleep then
lution.
and
inactive,
Paul
moral agent,
sin
says,
springs to
The
life,"
title
mummy
the mummy
into the
No
could a
burial
is
is
more than
mummy
Amenta" and
still fails
pillar of earth"
writes :
"Thus we can
Mother, with
Were
not
identify
Adam
Adam
or
Eve
Atum
or
in the
striking pronouncement
awakened true intelligence in
in the Papyrus of
Osiris in
203
But
all students of ancient literature are aware that earth was the
where
the collecting and unifying of the seven constituent souls
place
of man were accomplished. Again a most direct hint of the truth was
ignored by the savants. Also Greek metaphysical science asserts that
the soul came down through nine stages "and became connected with
the sublunary world and a terrene body, as the ninth and most abject
2S
Here is philosophical testimony that
gradation of her descent."
negates the existence of any hell or underworld below life in the body.
Any
observer of
fall to
human
life
knows
that
it is
of the hells
We
Amenta.
Again and again the texts say that Amenta is the dwelling of Seb,
the god of earth.
Massey states that in the resurrection "man ascended from the earth
below, or from below the earth." The first point of departure is corbut the alternative, meant to be an appositive, is ruled
rectly placed;
out of court.
Man was
whom
Eternal as recorded in one of the prophetic books of the Old Testament, before their descent, calls: "The underworld awaits
with
you
eager joy. It watches with open jaws to receive you." (Moffatt Trans.)
In the Egyptian this is matched by the statement that "the
reptile, or
is
its
his
form
of
typology the twelve are called "the twelve reapers of the harearth, which was reaped in Amenta by Horus and the
24
twelve."
If the
spiritual harvest was reaped "on earth" and "in
vest
on
place.
Massey places the habitat of those "people that sat in darkness" and
who saw a great light, in Amenta. When Horus descends to them to
bring the divine light, he is declared to "descend from heaven to the
204
darkness of
surely,
and
Amenta
the world
light of
this is
as the
if
When
Satan takes Jesus into a high mountain for his trial (against
the powers of matter) it was a place whence "all the kingdoms of the
earth could be seen."
Horus
in his
coming
bring
light.
When he
said to kindle a
light in the dark of death
in
Amenta."
But he came to earth to
image
is
Amenta
in his rising
Horus says: "I arrive at the confines of earth." Says Massey himself:
"He was to be the light of the world in the mortal sphere." And when
Horus comes to give the breath of life to the inert Manes in Amenta
and delivers his message, it is declared in the Rubric (to Ch. 70) "If
:
he (the
upon the
An
earth
among
is
power
the living."
form
the phrase "after death" must here be taken in the peculiar theological
sense delineated in this analysis. For only after the death and burial in
body could the god begin the work of welding the seven principles
an aggregate harmony. We are now put in position to grasp the
true import of all those religious phrases which speak of the various
works that take place "after death." For in the light of the new-old
into
meaning
and the events of life thus come "after (the beginning of) death."
Even that redoubtable verse in the Bible, "It is given unto man once
to die, and after that the judgment," does not overrule the exegesis
here .advanced.
The
man
Budge writes "Ani is here depicted in human form and wearing garments and ornaments similar to those which he wore on earth." To
:
205
explain
this, to
jecture that
"the body which he has in this hall of judgment can not be the body with
which he had been endowed on earth, and we can probably understand
that
it is
we
see."
But what more natural than that the hierophants should portray the
in the likeness of the
personage in the drama representing the human
in human form and
Ani
o
The
scrolls
old
human?
Egypt depicted
that
the meaning of the
it
was
to
him
a
human
as
dress because
being
the trial of the
first
allocates
drama applied. Budge (and all others)
then
wonders
and
to
world
the nondescript astral
deceased
why the
human
character in
have it
realm of
that the
it is
Amenta
flitting specters,
to solve the perplexities of
preconceptions. But
own
Amenta
of course.
Another chapter
inerrant:
is
title
"The chapter
Dead gives
a clue that
come back
to see his
-is
said to
Masonry,
it
is
its
on
earth.
come
206
Manes (Ch.
179).
"He
sitteth as a living
do not sound
like the
expressions of the real defunct.
Budge
to the
Osiris
was the
ruler of the
The
kingdom
on
this
is
globe.
26
noteworthy:
Here
They
Amenta. The Egyptians were taught in the Myswas that Amenti of stupor and darkness, and out
of it they would pass to rest and brighter scenes in the
empyrean.
Budge supposes the call of "death" to be from the earth to heaven,
when it is from heaven to earth, on the thesis here established. The
call of death was the summons to
bright angelic spirits to enter the life
in body. It was St. Paul's "command." No wonder the noted
Egyptologist has to register some incomprehension over the fact that the
Egyptians were cheery in the face of passing at death into what he
supposed was the fearsome Amenta. Pluto's rape of Proserpine should
scholars'
purgatory
human
trial.,
into the
is
of "death."
when
ready
The
other Egyptian
kingdom
notable: "'Devourer of Millions of Years' is
Smam-ur, the
is
And
Earth-soul."
to live
on
There
is
no escaping the
in-
earth.
themselves which should prove conclusive as to the point under discussion. Massey himself gives one of them:
"In the inscriptions on the sarcophagus of Seti the earth
2S
lent to Arnenti and opposed to heaven."
He
was
is
used as equiva-
destructive of his
own
says further:
"Also the sun descending into the underworld is thus addressed: 'Open
Hades and the Sky! Ra, come to us!"
is that,
if the bodies
through which
are
neither
But
they enjoyed forever
implemented disappear.
in the spiritual existence which the soul has in the interim between
lives. But the
great and momentous question then arises if they abide
in perpetuity neither on earth nor in heaven, where are they preserved? The answer is: in the inner spiritual entity of the man wherever he is, be it on earth or in heaven. It appertains to him wherever
he goes; it is his permanent possession and he takes it with him always.
It is his, whether in or out of the
body, as St. Paul says. But and this
is
And
real to
depict the unreal. As to the
current
holds,
that
its
mummy,
misconception
preservation was to sugan
unreal
future
for
the
defunct
gest
absolutely
body that could have
208
it.
On
human
And
guidance through
this
himself the
mummy,
Amrit or Soma
209
first,
to
that
man
is
immortality by
Chapter XI
answer
of the material
adduced in
ciated.
it
was
and the minds of the sons of earth to dull the thrill of the "good
news." On the day of the Advent heaven's arches rang with the proclamation of peace and amity among men on the basis of the fact that a
fragment of divinity had been lodged in the holy of holies of the temple
of each human body. Emanuel had come to dwell with man. But the
exuberant joyousness of all mortal hearts over the event has been
clogged. No longer the substance but only the shadow of the truth
gers
The
stable or cave
divinity.
nature of but one. The paeans of sacred hilarity that are raised for the
birth of our Savior are appropriate and efficacious only as that Savior
stands as symbol of the glorious birth within ourselves.
Long ago Angelus Silesius, a Christian mystic, admonished Christendom:
"Though
210
The
cross
of the
is
redeem a
single
heart
wayward
if
not
is
its
This miscarriage of the vital significance of the event has come about
entirely through the desuetude of the doctrine that may be denominated by the Greeks' philosophical term, the god's dismemberment.
The
reconstruction of pristine
How
in every breast,
if
he came
as
is
It is
life
were
to
a matter
he had
to
be mortal
possess a share of
forces of life
own
capabilities,
kingdom
and fragment their
embodiment
is
The
accomplished
by the partition of that upper unity into fragments, after the analogy
of the oak tree in its annual production of a thousand embryonic units
of its potential nature, each of which, when incubated in the mothering
womb
it,
is
capable of regenerating
211
its
dying
And so every divine son of God raises his Father from the
dead, as did Jesus and Horus. The god in man can not move across
the dividing line between the kingdoms, stepping from the divine level
parent.
down
He
and
mind would
And Daniel
duced in strength and luminosity, could function in the brain mechanism of animal man. In short, the gods could not transplant their
full and mature selfhood into man, but only the seeds of its next cycle
of growth. Indeed all projection of deity outward into matter is in
embryonic form. Divine thought is sent out to take root in matter,
there to have its cycle of new growth. The analogy of the oak and its
acorns leaves nothing wanting for understanding of the evolutionary
method. And it clarifies for us the incarnation, as being the planting,
germinating, budding and flowering in mortal life, of the seed-germ of
of man's
divinity. Jesus is the embryonic deity, born in the crib or crypt
mortal nature.
is
is
cut into
matter. She
was
must be formed
to
in the
image
of the higher.
Man is
ing
down
life
flesh,
to reproduce, as the
is
an intimation that
by his bend-
of sense, depicted
(Cf. the fable of Narcissus) to gaze delightedly at his rewater of generation, that preceded his fall and divulsion
flection in the
into
new
generation, emerges,
and about
he
is
"Throughout the Egyptian texts it is assumed that the god suffered death
and mutilation at the hands of his enemies; that various members of his
body were scattered about the land of Egypt; that his sister-wife Isis
'sought him sorrowing' and at length found him; that she fanned him with
her wings and gave him air; that she raised up his body and was reunited
with him; that she conceived and brought forth a child (Horus); and that
he (Osiris) became the god and king of the underworld. In the legend of
murdered
fourteen pieces,
.
pieces.
."
which he
tion.
was not the only sun-deity whose body suffered dismemberin the Egyptian pantheon, for Ptah, an earlier god, shared the
same mythic fate. Under his name of Ptah-Sekari he underwent fragOsiris
ment
mentation as did
For
"Sekari
the title of the suffering Ptah,
to cut; cut in pieces; sacrifice; or, as we have the
2
in English, to score or scarify" Ptah was said to be the earliest
Osiris.
is
word
"The darkness
Egyptian
in
festival
is
The
god
to Dec. 26,
Osiris-Ptah-Sekari,
alive
again; cut to pieces and reconstituted with his vertebrae sound and not
a bone of his body found to be broken or missing." (Cf. the
Gospels:
"And they brake all his bones." This was the form of the dismember-
dead in
"Dead
rise
was considered
Osiris, because
to
it is
like his
ensampler
matter, the
first
they
are) in the form of feathered fowl, and their hind parts shall be on the
earth in the form of animals. . . ." It is even directly stated that "Ra
mutilates his own person" for the benefit of mortals. Thoth later came
214
them hast embraced thy bones, thou hast gathered together thy flesh."
In far India the Lord of Creation, Prajapati, was represented as having undergone dismemberment. Likewise Sarasvati. There is no ques-
tion as to the
Nothing
more
is
shattering to our
modern
some ashes of the dead, who are with him. These would represent
the lower natural body. Having received this, they were told to sacrifice over it, sprinkling the blood from their own bodies upon it. This
or
typify the impartation of their own divine natures to the morAfter consultation they dispatched one of their number, Xolotl,
down to Hades. He succeeded in procuring a bone six feet long (a cer-
would
tals.
tain identification
started off
with
it
with the
at full
speed.
fall,
Mistlanteuctli
and
in
in
pieces.
and sprinkled
it
all
movement among the wetted bones and a boy lay there before all, and
in four days more of blood-letting and sprinkling, a girl came to life.
If the Bible student is inclined to disdain this
him turn
to
reflect
myth
on what he
as profitless, let
finds there.
For the
Biblical fable of the valley of dry bones contains five or six distinct
the
points of identity with this legend: the operation of the gods upon
lifeless
with
flesh
their creation as
as in Genesis.
The
215
dismem-
The
way
for the
One
to manifest
multiplicity and diversity, there is no
to multiply itself save by an initial division of itself.
Life proceeds from oneness and identity of nature into number and
differentiation, and the structure of thought requires that multiformity
arise
from unity by
self into
pieces,
meaning
of the
mutilations and exsections of the gods. The One must give himself to
division. And with division comes addition of forms, multiplication
of units
deific
power in the
divided parts.
their
own
next lower
level.
and each part an integral unit of the total, his life is semiin each.
lives in the parts and the parts live in
distributed
nally
him. The fragments are the cells of his body. "We are all members of
division,
He
one body, and Christ is the head." So Greek philosophy states that
"each superior divinity becomes the leader of a multitude, generated
at last there
is
in the phrase "the Lord of Hosts." Each deity is the lord of a host,
who are the fragmented children of his own body.
but we have
hath shined in our hearts
The ancients oft termed this presence
.
the
is
life,
counsel
our inner shrine, patiently awaiting the hour of our discovery and
recognition of its presence.
must take time to hear the voice of Greek
We
wisdom anent
the dis-
memberment:
"In the first place, then, we are made up from fragments (says Olympiodorus), because, through falling into generation, our life has proceeded
into the most distant and extreme division; and from Titanic fragments,
and stand immedifrom them. But furthermore, our irraTitanic, by which the rational and higher life is torn in pieces.
tional life
is
Hence when we
is
artificers of things,
constituted
secret recesses of
form of our essence, and which communicates, as it were, both with things
we become the Titans (or apostates); but
when we establish ourselves in union with this Dionysiacal or kindred
form, then we become Bacchuses, or perfect guardians and keepers of our
whom
in this respect
we
resemble,
is
himself
we
are
bound
to body,
and which
is
"Now we know
which
is
perfect
is
in part
217
away."
Had we
We
phy we
are
should have seen the whole of things more clearly.
the Titans who tore the divine philosophical fire away from the central
altar in the
mortals.
empyrean and
And
compounded
its
felt
their reduction
to
poverty. Says
Taylor:
"And thus much for the mysteries of Bacchus, which, as well as those of
Ceres, relate in one part to the descent of a partial intellect into matter, and
its condition while united with the dark tenement of body; but there appears to be this difference between the two, that in the fable of Ceres and
Proserpina, the descent of the whole rational soul is considered; and in that
of Bacchus the scattering and going forth of that supreme part alone of our
nature which
In Proclus'
we
Hymn
to "Minerva
we have
"The Titans
And
with
fell
relentless rage
(i). It is
is
simulacrum and
which she
from the
formed in the mirror of matter, and thus was carried downward and
scattered into fragments. But Apollo collected the fragments and restored them to union in the heavens.
If the Bible student
of his
Book
of
judges
Wisdom,
let
all this to
him
Judges, and read the story of the rape and destruction of the concubine
man whose name is not given, but described as "a Levite ... in
of a
spiritual principle.
The
would seem
concubine,
to identify him
left for her
who
fit of
rage, would perhaps correspond to Proserpina,
the detached incarnating soul. The man sought her, and after long
dallying with her reluctant father, started home with her, "from
Bethlehem
man finally to send out his host's virgin daughter and his
concubine to be ravished by the crowd. In the morning he lifted
the concubine's body on his ass and took her home. Here "he took
a knife and cut up the concubine's body, limb by limb, into twelve
forcing the
own
pieces,
which he sent
all
messen-
gers to ask all the inhabitants, 'Was ever such a crime committed since
the Israelites left Egypt?'" Twelve baskets of -fragments in the
New
instruction or appeal for the mind of man. And the proof of this
that on the level on which he keeps them nobody pays any atten-
lift such
nega
lected allegories to
height of impressive significance.
In the "miracle" of the Lord's feeding the five thousand with the
tion to them.
loaves
and
fishes in the
Gospel narrative
we have
a repetition of the
219
broken for the multitude of humans. We have set the stage certainly,
however., for the first full and clear comprehension of the meaning of
twelve bas-disciples' "gathering up" (the Egyptian reconstitution)
kets of fragments. In multiplying the bread, he dramatized the doctrine of the dismemberment, which was in twelve main sections or
the
groups.
But Christian intelligence is not aware that in the very heart of its
own chief rite of formalism this great doctrine lives in unsuspected
announcement of it in / Corcompleteness. St. Paul makes a specific
inthians (11:23) :
"I pass on to you what I received from the Lord himself, namely, that
on the night he was betrayed the Lord Jesus took a loaf, and after thanking
God he broke it, saying, 'This means my body broken for you; do this in
memory
of
me/"
Here
is
main symbol
into fragments
And
all
and
theological
distributing
is
was not
Greek
to state that
made to relate its meaning to the Greek doctrine of dismemberment here suggested. But the quarrel is gratuitous. There may
attempt
is
be dispute about the word, but there can be no dispute about the act
of breaking the bread, which dramatizes the meaning. For Jesus dismembered the bread as the indisputable outward symbol of the cosmic
truth of his fragmented body of spirit; and to avoid the use of the
would be a faithless betrayal of the
participle "broken" in the verse
obvious meaning of the text. Here then is Greek esoteric philosophy
and
strengthened
envisaged and included in living presentation. But, the true meaning
lost, and the spiritual signification deeply buried under the outer debris
of the myths, the Church has nothing more sublime to offer
220
its
devo-
wooden
mortal
flesh,
is no truth in ancient
scripture outside of
a spiritual rendering of the material. As soon as the Church returns to
the true original meaning of the "broken body of our Lord," it may
many
kinds of disfigurement.
in matter,
he
The
wizened babe
allegorism was converted over into realism. Some of the disfigurement material from the Scriptures must be presented here
when
briefly:
all
who
Manes
to
again as spirits, are blind and deaf and dumb and maimed and impotent
because they are the dead. Their condition is typified by that of the mortal
rise
Horus who is portrayed as blind and maimed, deaf and dumb, in An~ar-ef,
.
. where all the citizens
the abode of occultation, the house of obscurity
were deaf and dumb, maimed and blind, awaiting the cure that only came
.
who
is
Horus
Khnum,
When
Horus, the
is,
Amenta he
of the dead
is
who
is
repro-
hailed as the
are sleeping
in their prison
cells.
He
comes
to shine into their sepulchers and to reon earth. Horus is designated "he who
darkness
dissipates the
to the
gods in obscurity."
"The
What becomes
answer open to
sincerity:
the
New
Horus, prince in the city of blindness, as his father was king in the
realm of the dead, comes to reconstitute his father whole and entire,
and to give lost sight to all those dead as and in Osiris. The Manes
were
all blind,
to
We
have the Gospels dramatizing the god's opento restore their sight.
when at the typical age of twelve years
intellectual
of
faculty
up
ing
he makes his transformation into the adult. The Egyptian emblem of
the hawk's head given
him
at that
sight.
from him by Sut, is then restored. Under the astrological sign of Orion Horus was typed as the god of the night or dark,
the blind god who received sight at dawn. He describes himself as the
mortal born blind and dumb in An-ar-^f the abode of occultation, but
His
eye, stolen
who
in regaining his
own
at seeing Horus
prisoners in their cells. The circle of the gods rejoices
take his father's throne and scepter and rule over the earth, replacing
March 24
ness.
The
222
the blind
days and the three kingdoms below the human, figured the period of
the god's burial in the material worlds. "As Jonas was three
days in the
whale's belly, so
Man
of
the earth."
his
after
Jesus
them
to
that are
Jesus Christ,
"who
Of
Jesus
but
it is
shall fashion
anew
many
spiritual.
The story of Samson, the luni-solar hero, does not omit the feature
of loss of sight, when, as the god in incarnation, he is shorn of his
power and bound helpless. He is eyeless in Gaza, pitiful and forlorn,
Orion hungering for the morn" the return of the lost
a Talmudic tradition that Samson was lame
in both his feet, which was also the status of the child-Horns, who was
like "the blind
light.
pictured as
as
he
is
called
"His visage was so marred, more than any man, and his form more than
the sons of men.
Disfigured
till
Deformed out
he seemed a
Horus bewails
it.
He
man no
more,
of the semblance of a
cries: "I
man."
the loss of his eye to Sut who has pierced it, or stolen
Horus. I come to search for mine eyes." In the
am
all
employed
as
sym-
The term
223
word
"infant/'
Jesus was silent when accused. This is all to typify the infant god in
the flesh, who has not yet learned to articulate the living reality of
truth. As the human infant is speechless for an initial period
spiritual
is silent in the expression of his divine
so the
of some two
god
years,
speechless,
that
of
life.
A further anthropological
velopment
to think
thought.
made
speech possible.
Deprivation of breath was another form of typology for "the dead."
And with breathing stopped, there was also the motionless heart. The
Osiris says:
"I
shall
am
wake, and
my
who
are
dumb
But I
Lord of
in death.
Annu."
For
it
words
words to him who
to the
is
men
deprived of breath"
Ch. 36).
224
much that the multitude wondered when they saw the dumb speaking,
the maimed whole, the lame walking and the blind seeing." (Matt.
I
5 :29
ff.).
A festival known as
Upon the Gnostic monuments in the Roman catacombs Jesus is portrayed in one of his two characters, matching Horus, as the little, old
and ugly Jesus; in the other he corresponds to Horus of the beautiful
face.
The
first is
acquainted with
was never more than twelve years of age, "Old Child was
name." In the Pistis Sophia Jesus is again pictured in his two characters, the first being that of the puny child, the mortal Horus, born
of the virgin mother (nature) as her blind and deaf, her dumb and
impubescent child. It was the human Horus again who was pierced
and tortured by Sut in death until the day of his triumph, when he
character
his
rose to
his turn.
We
are
by
this ex-
figures of the
role of the
buried deity.
In the Orphic Tablets the dead person is thus addressed: "Hail, thou
who hast endured the suffering, such as thou hadst never suffered
before; thou hast become god from man!" One portion of the Mystery
ritual recited the sufferings of Psyche in the underworld of Pluto and
her rescue by Eros, as described by Apuleius (The Golden Ass) y in the
Isis.
"Almost always,"
says Dr.
the neophytes were prepared for the glorious breaking of the light by
the preliminary ordeal of darkness, fatigue and terrors, typical of this
10
earth life. Carpenter
compares with the wounding of the side of
Jesus an Aztec ceremonial of lighting a holy fire
225
and communicating
it
to the multitude
breast of a
human
victim, cele-
cries:
"Decree
this,
Atum,
that
is
if I
at
see
In Lu\c
thy face, I shall not be pained by the signs of thy sufferings."
these
suffered
have
to
Christ
asked:
not
is
it
things
(24:26)
"Ought
and enter into his glory?" And John declares that in the world we
shall
have
Budge
tribulation.
describes a
form of the
suffering Messiah
to her his
hidden name."
ai
is
coma upon
which
is
his incarnation.
Homs
perfect
human
visage,
god made
flesh in
the im-
dumb and
12
altogether imperfect."
But the most appealing portrayal of this phase of the Christ experience, save that of the crucifixion of Jesus, is the picture of the "sufferIt is so striking that we must
in the beautiful language of the Moffatt translation:
it,
And
We
226
make
yet he
fell
was
to
chastised;
him
And
the guilt of
He was
Dumb
all
him
of us.
he bore it humbly,
he never would complain;
ill-treated, yet
unjustly;
They
laid
him
down
fell,
in a felon's grave,
and
let
himself be numbered
among
rebels,
and interposing
men."
for rebellious
office of
the Christos,
historical Jesus!
The
records,
wounded,
match each other with
unmistakable fidelity.
The diminished glory of descending godhood
the figure of disrobing.
As
under
is also
portrayed
the soul descends from one plane to another
divested of one of her robes of glory at each
represented as being
The student of esotericism will see at once the meaning of this.
step.
Each plane clothes the soul with a body of its proper matter, pneuAs the
mati\on f fsychi\on, fhysifyn, or spiritual, psychic, physical.
she
is
227
down
to
is
with
reality.
and tomb of
At
last
In the Ritual (Ch. 71) we are told that in his incarnation Horus, or
lu, the Su 3 (lusu, Jesu, or Jesus) "disrobes himself" to "reveal himself"
when he "presents himself to the earth." The Babylonian goddess
Ishtar is said to have made her descent through seven gates, at each of
3
which she was stripped of one of her robes of glory/ Massey gives us
"The mutilation
and
him
a scarlet robe.'
" 14
"Thou puttest on the pure garment and thou divestest thyself of the
apron when thou stretchest thyself upon the funeral bed. Thou receivest
a bandage of the finest linen."
Which is to say, that on the return, the coarse bodies are thrown off
and the robes of radiant light resumed. And what more apt symbol of
the fleshly body than an apron? It is a garment put on to fend off the
grime of earth, to hang between the purity of spirit and the smudginess
of matter!
It is
said that
shame the
first
into nakedness.
were
their
time, but
The
sense
still
comparative
228
It is
And
garment
male and female segments here on
earth, to its pristine whole, or androgyne condition.
In the Ritual the judgment is designated as that of the clothed and
the naked. If the Manes appeared naked before the
judges, it meant
that he had not overcome the grossness of his
physical nature and
robed himself in more radiant spiritual garb. To appear clothed was
to have resumed the
shining vestments of light. There is comment on
earth
and
flesh
to cause
many
of the
Thus disrobed
Manes
to
of their finer
"The Manes
who
pass the judgment hall become the clothed. The beatified spirits are
invested with the robe of the righteous, the stole of Ra, in the garden." 15
flight
face."
(Ch. 34 ):
"Whenever he went
took the
veil off,
till
229
In this symbolic fashion the wise seers of old represented the incarnational going in and out before the Lord, the adventuring of the
immortal soul out into body where it put on the veils of matter and
flesh,
and
its
its
where it
and again became "clothed in light
dropped
as with a garment."
In the Hindu, Egyptian and Greek Mystery rites the ceremony of
round the Cycle of Necessity was perindicating the soul's pilgrimage
formed over what was called the "Snake's Hole/' and the "Inevitable
Circle." It
soul to be clothed
its
anew
was imaged by a
coiled snake.
Horus
comes to
tures
their
garments to
new
when he
This act
is
Japheth go
Noah. The drunkenness of Noah here betokens the
swooning which accompanies the descent, as already set forth.
A number of verses in the Bible yield new and impressive evidence
of their father
if
The
"coats of skin"
made
for
Adam
The
priests
that "drowsiness shall
speaks of the joyful ones being clothed with the garments of salvation
and the robe of righteousness. Jesus declaration that he was naked
5
fact.
230
have
am
then,
my
confident;
is direct
and naked;
that thou
may
may
be
I counsel thee to
buy from
rich,
see/'
is
the
And
is
THE
The
basis of fact
veridical
superior-
ing.
231
Chapter XII
We
food for our consumption, in the Eucharistic cake and the sacrificial
meal on the altar. Jesus says that we must "eat" his body, and the
Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans (Apocryphal) says that the wheat
of God must be ground between the teeth of wild animals, our animal
bodies, to be made the pure bread of Christ.
The breaking of the bread and the libation of the wine are now
clearly seen to be emblematic of the partition of the unified energy
of the god's life for distribution to the races of men. The banquets of
the gods, the Passover feasts, the funerary meals, the last suppers and
the Totemic repasts were all forms of a primary Eucharist. Man was
given the transcendent privilege of feeding upon the life of the gods!
And
can be freely admitted that nowhere is the necessity of transmeaning over to a spiritual one more definitely
than
here.
apparent
it
232
of the material body and blood or their inner essence, finds its resolution in the premises of this interpretation. Strangely enough it is now
seen to be possible to give up the physical meaning of the sacrament
and yet take it as a thing of literal reality. Man is literally to eat his
Lord's body; only it is not a physical body. The eating is literal and
real enough, but neither it nor the
Stout human
body eaten is
physical.
at a rite of
how
or
The
rite
which can be
Says
St.
was only
literally,
though not
"shun
idolatry, then,
the symbols.]
am
my
The cup
is
physically, true.
Paul:
of blessing
which we
my
words
for yourselves.
bless,
The bread we
break,
that not participating in the body of Christ?
(for many as we are, we are one Bread, one Body, since
1
partake of the one Bread)."
is
we
all
wine, nectar, ichor, honey and liquid forms of nourishment can mean
only that same divinity when liquefied to be poured out in streams
of nourishment for
man. The
wine
is
to liquefy
it
cutting of
to render
meat
is
to render
it
macerable;
is
it
233
tion of the bodily integrity of the food, and a fragmentation for better
The ritualism of Christianity thus still dramatizes the
Greek spiritual philosophy, which it persists in denying
of
principles
assimilation.
body of Christos
and the second
liquefied.
more
cation," for the feeding of "secondary natures." Also in its descent god-
hood became admixed with the "watery" elements of the life down
here and were further liquefied thereby. Solid food was the emblem of
of that mobile essence which was to
stability; liquid food the sign
run out in blessing.
The several symbols must be looked at more minutely, for they
We
(6:47
fl).
Says Jesus:
"I
am
the bread of
life.
Your
Manna
in the wilderness
and have died; such is the bread that comes down -from heaven, that a man
shall eat of it and shall not die.
"And in truth the bread which I shall give for the life of the world
is
my
flesh.
"Verily, verily I say unto you, Unless you eat the flesh and drink the
blood of the Son of Man, you have not life in you.
that eateth
flesh and drinketh
blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at
He
my
my
the
last
"For
eateth
day.
The bread
The blood is
"Horus was not only the bread of life derived from heaven and the producer of bread in the character of Amsu, the husbandman; he also gave
his flesh for
234
Horus says (Rit.f Ch. 53A) "I am the possessor of bread in Annu.
have bread in heaven with Ra." Again the deceased says: "I am the
lord of cakes in Annu; and my bread is in heaven with Ra, and my
cakes are on the earth with the god Seb." The distinction here between
bread in heaven and cakes on earth is perhaps of vast significance,
:
matching, as
it
many
does,
is
in heaven
and
the body on earth. The cake form of the divine pastry must have
been regarded as a state of soul more highly advanced or refined by
organic evolution. Many texts carry out the two types. The soul continues: "I eat of what they [the gods] eat there; and I eat of the cakes
which are
or bread
with the gods in heaven and cakes with the "dead" on earth. And in
the Rubric to the yrst chapter of the Ritual this meaning is confirmed:
"Sepulchural bread shall be given to him and he shall come forth into
the presence of Ra day by day, and every day, regularly and continually ." Sepulchral bread, like the funerary meals, undoubtedly refers to the "bread of Seb," or food of earth, earth and body being the
Wheat
in matter
is
much employed
is
as a symbol.
The law
of divine incubation
tion in Egypt:
"The grain which is put into the ground is the dead Osiris, and the grain
which has germinated is the Osiris who has once again renewed his life." 4
The
resurrection of Osiris
is
closely
tion of wheat. Jesus announces: "My father giveth you the true bread
out of heaven: For the bread of God is that which cometh down out
of heaven
and giveth
life
And
as Jesus
Horus in
am
who
am
a soul
and
my
soul
am
divine. I
he
produceth food. I
we
is
read "divine
no truth found
in our
embody
in
it
gods)
intellect.'
there
lives,
actual "bloodshed" in
European history!
body of deific mind.
On this divine wheat, it is said, Osiris and his followers lived. It
was a form of Osiris himself, as the god who brought it from heaven,
and those who ate it and lived upon it nourished themselves upon
their god. As he came to feed them, he is declared to have "provided
them with food and drink as he passed through the Tuat." How the
partaking of the divine body would affect man is set forth by Budge:
for us out of his earth-bruised
spirits raised
feeling of separation
the living
spirits,
men
or
Manes
in this underworld.
The
recovered Logia, or "sayings of the Lord," give a most direct allusion to the dismemberment doctrine of the Eucharist in the line: "the
flesh o
the
By
The divine mania, declared by Plato to be better than laborious reason, was the heady transport resulting from the
imbibing of
the spiritual liquor of life. The Bacchic feast of intoxication was,
of drink.
however sensual in
later
for
him
that he
may
things whatsoever that were offered ritualisin the nether world, the "table of
offerings which was
all
heaped" for him on earth, "the solicitations that were uttered'* for him,
"that he may feed upon the bread of Seb," or food of earth
experience.
"Let me have possession of my funeral meals."
fact that should
loom
with the
which
burial,
is
mummy
body of
when
rite
of a symbolic feeding
spiritual
upon the
and barbarity,
by the celebrants. In very early periods of
the matriarchate, when the mother was the only known giver and
fount of life, a living mother was dedicated to the office of hostia or
victim, and her body cut up and eaten as a token of the distribution of
her fecund life. "The primordial Eucharist was eating the Mother's
6
A converted phase of this custom
flesh and drinking her blood!"
exhibits the idea of the "disrobing" combined with the Eucharistic
pieces
and
actually eaten
rite:
Human
to a
were
sacrifices
later
commuted
to
animal
offerings.
And
when
conception, passing
from hand
one time
to
hand in the
237
lapse of time
to a brutal literalism
peoples,
and again
rises to
all
One
"Shesmu
cuts
them
in pieces
and
cooks them in his fiery cauldrons." Another line runs: "O, OsirisPepi, the Sma-Bull is brought to thee cut in pieces."
human
and Horus
is
Two
"May
the underworld;
And
and his body shall be like unto the bodies of the gods." Here is perfect
matching of Egyptian script with Paul's statement that Christ shall
"change our vile body into the likeness of his glorious body,"
especially consecrated by the Roman Church
commemoration of the Last Supper, and the institution of the
Eucharistic meal was fixed, at which the
corpus of the Christ, already
was
laid
be
out
to
eaten
dead,
sacramentally. In the Gospels the Last
to a
238
Supper, with Jesus present, is eaten before the crucifixion has occurred.
There is obviously confusion of ancient ritualistic
practice here, yet
strangely enough no grave violence is done to the inner significance
either way, since the Christ was "dead" in the one sense, and alive in
the other.
The whole
of incarnation
is
and
After the raising of Osiris Taht says: "I have celebrated the festival
of Eve's provender," or the meal which came to be called the Last
Supper. The raising of Lazarus is likewise commemorated by a supper. "So they made him a supper there" (John 12:2).
In the Greek Mystery play the candidate for initiation underwent
the taurobolium or bull's-blood bath. He stood under a
grating and
received upon his naked body the
dripping blood of the sacrificial bull,
the
sign of the sun in the spring equinox determined the zodiacal type
under which the Christos was figured. Elsewhere animal blood was
actually
drunk as a more
literal
partaking of the
emblem
of divine
life.
In the Ritual the evening meal depicted the absorption of the higher
nature into and by the lower, and the occasion was called the
"Night of Laying Provision on the Altar." Not in a given moment of
time, but in the total course of the cycle, each physical body was to
The whole round of human incarnaspirit.
be transubstantiated into
was provided to this end. As the physical was converted into sublimated essence, we have an explanation of the strange disappearance
of the physical body in all resurrection scenes. In one of the texts cited
tions
him who
is
supreme of
attributes" (Rit.,
239
Ch. 18).
We
Ritual prays: "Grant unto me ale, and let me cleanse myself by means
of the haunch and by the offerings of cakes." In Chapter 65 cakes of
white grain and ale of red grain are mentioned. The juxtaposition of
the statements in the following citation is noteworthy, as identifying
the emblems with their non-material references: "Thou descendest
under protection; are given unto thee bread, wine and cakes
thou art endowed with a soul, with power and with will." "He
,
He
hungers not, for he eats bread-cakes made of fine flour
on the daily bread which comes in this season" of incarnation.
.
lives
"He
have offered wine and cakes and roasted fowl for the jour-
shall
ney
."
The
bread."
Horus
is
"And
life
(Rit.,
Ch.
which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be,
it
may chance of wheat, or of some other grain. But God
a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body."
that
it
The remarkable
the
nitely states that the soul comes to be food to the wild beasts, by
it will attain its new
of the soul as wheat,
godhood. The
whom
ground
figure
be
made
to
laid in a
thou beer to him, of the bread of eternity, and of the beer of everlastingness." "This bread which can not go mouldy is brought to Pepi,
240
and
this
states of spiritual
ing the general position of the purely figurative nature of the symbols.
found in the chapter "of not eating filth in the underworld":
It is
and
let
me
live
me
live
letting a
man
shall
Four is the number of the lower physical world of the body, three
number of the soul as the triad of mind, soul, spirit. Horus was the
soul in matter, Thoth the cosmic spirit.
Massey writes that a three-days fast was ended by the feeding of
the multitude on what the Ritual terms "celestial diet," i.e., the "seven
the
the
New
the Gospel "miracle," instead of the seven loaves we have the five
loaves and the two small fishes, the latter being introduced evidently
to
bring in the Piscean house along with Virgo, the house of bread.
closely matches Egyptian. In Exodus (29) one
Hebrew symbology
reads that
"With the former lamb you must offer about seven pints of fine flour
mixed with nearly three pints of beaten oil, and nearly three pints of wine
as a libation
This
is
241
oil
and wine stand for the three elements of divine consciousness that
mixed with the seven elementary powers of nature or physis,
are to be
the brotherhood of
human body
body and
is
soul,
man might
The
tion to the Eternal before the entrance to the tent indicates that the
compound
symbolism
their
tells
live
upon
therein."
Even
The Manes'
life is
fed
Jesus,
as the zodiacal Pisces, or the Fish, offering themselves as food for man
while he is immersed in the sea of generation! The Egyptians saw in
the tortoise,
which
when
the
two
and
and took
natures, divine
half
it
nourishment,
body.
When
says to
elect, are
yours.
Now
eat.
labored at cultivation
Ra
and
warmed into
The radiance of
They have
the god in
appearance.
seed buried in us to sprout and
grow
as the
The
"the white liquor which the glorified ones love," and it was
supplied
by the seven cows, providers of plenty in the meadows of Aarru. The
seven cows, of course, emblem the seven modifications of cosmic en-
242
and
which
irradiate
go onward
life,
man's being and formulate his basic conThe uplifted Manes says: "I eat of the food of Sekhet-Hetep
terparts of
to the
domain of the
starry gods."
The
zodiacal
Manes
of
god."
As
the living rivers flow forth out of the heart of eternal matter,
of all life, the godly nutriment is again proffered to man
streaming from the breast of the Mother Isis or Hathor. "She giveth
the
him
womb
writes that
and
drank the same supernatural drink (drinking from the superRock which accompanied them and that Rock was Christ)."
Revelation (2: 17) enlightens us with the following: "To him that
overcorneth, to him will I give of the hidden manna." When the deall
natural
of fruit juice,
gift
he
is
world of the
that
which
is
sent
living, unless
down
243
twelve fruits are the completed unfoldment of the twelve original types
Kumaric infant deity that will be brought to their maturity by cultivation on this planet. The bread of Seb becomes metamorphosed
of
man
vesture,
"Instead of being damned eternally through eating the fruit of the tree,
Manes in Amenta are divinized piecemeal as the result of eating it."
the
(Bit.,
Ch. 82). 10
to reflect that
known
theology been
the
first
that
is
of
lower natural
man
then
it
is
is
used
essence, the mother's milk, a higher nutriment than her blood, or with
the father's seminal essence. White universally
that which is
types
up
to the
244
colors.
Ra
are for
up
bright!
light."
No
And
My
is
is
benefits
is itself
the Solar
Chaldean
import.
food to that which understands."
Looking now
by Massey,
typified
by the wine
man's
for
is
of the
Horus came
the
of
Uaka
all later
The form
its
interior
is
said to be "full of
festival.
become
lost.
wine"
at
the prototype
of lofty deity.
The
same old
effort to
commemorate
"Thou didst put grapes in the water that cometh forth from
The seven thousand had no explicit numerical significance
the
number seven itself, the thousands only adding the idea of
beyond
wine.
Edfu."
multiple division and diffusion. Horus came to distribute to the thousands of mortals the divine essence in its seven-fold expression in the
full
gamut
of
cal Gospels,
its
nature.
Who
prove that the Jesus of the canonigained notoriety as a wine-bibber and came eating
not a frayed copy of this Kamite original? For Greece
shall
who
and drinking, is
in her Bacchus repeated the
same
type. Christ
came
to intoxicate
man
at the
The
Christ treading the grapes in the winepress is all very like the
his despoiled
portrait of Har-Tema (Horus), the mighty avenger of
father, and he came at the end and the re-beginning of the cycle of
incarnation,
which
discloses that
Edom
is
is
be fed with pottage, translated in one text "red." Edom, not identiwith Eden, seems to refer to earth as the "red land." In all its
Biblical usages Edom refers to the lower kingdom of human nature,
to
cal
not the
celestial
the Eternal,
vants,
and they
Edom was
it
heavily punished by
and reduced
its
people to ser-
read: "But
ures!" Edmonites
were
force the god's dying life. That the god trod the winepress alone is
evidence of the loneliness of his mission. Jesus' loneliness is accentuated
in the Gospel drama. That the god comes from the underworld stained
with the blood of his foes is an allegorical way of saying that he had
not kept himself entirely "unspotted from the world" in his
wrestling
with the
stained
flesh.
by
Plutarch
Greek philosophy
terrene contacts.
tells
sets
Man is
He
is
Adam,
red earth.
child, figured as the bearing tree, the genethe wornb, bird-cage and
significantly the tomb, not that of final
death, but of buried life about to germinate. The word Shekhem, hidden shrine, is from se\h, "liquid/ "drink." Te\a means "to
supply
trix,
The
Persea fruit
fig,
like the
is
pomegranate,
is
by fermentation;
to
fill
with aeriform
spirit force, as
now
by the bubbles
meaning
to sense the
more
it
would say unto this sycaBe thou rooted up and be thou planted in
As Revelation and the BooJ^ of the Dead both describe the entry of
divine fire into the "sea," causing a fermentation in it to
j/wrtfualize
or divinize it, the sycamore's removal into the sea to
power
in
it
mustard
of
mortal
self,
at last
comes
to clear significance.
To
lodge inspiriting
as a grain
have faith
seed, so tiny, is for the soul, buried in the deep soil of the
to have an instinctive assurance that, like the life in
any
Who
Urisip, the whitish one, not to eat of the raisin trees in the valley.
Heitsi Eibib in his travels came to a valley (the earth) in which the
raisin trees were ripe. There he was attacked by a severe illness. Then
his
being the
raisins;
not
first) said:
death
is
often called
And
is
them
he spoke
is
The
taken
old
man
further: "This
Of
247
Father of
this
who had
I,
And
unclean one;
and
died,
dying, live."
The
raisin tree
spiritous
when
is
when
of the same.
sion of unity
tural
life.
it
What
is
most singular
is
divi-
crea-
to another oft-used
typology, that of fleece, stating that the Greek
word for "wool," lenos, is practically identical with that for a "winepress," lends. The tearing and carding of wool matches the liqui-
248
it
be deemed
what strength
these symbols of
wine and
fleece,
is
along with
flour,
bring
rendering
symbolism of the mythological
Golden Fleece (Aries of the zodiac), as typing the Christ avatar who
came under that sign. Fleece, says Taylor, is the symbol of laceration
or distribution of intellect, or Dionysus, into matter; and he adds that
traces lana (Latin: "wool") from laniando,
"tearing," as
vellus (Latin: "fleece") from vellendo, also
"Delano"
"to
"tearing."
Isidorus
tear asunder,"
and
is
integrally
to Bacchic
discerption."
So succinctly
Massey explains:
"The typical tree of life in an Egyptian-Greek planisphere is the grapevine. This is the tree still represented by the female vine-dresser and the
male grape-gatherer in the decans of Virgo [W. H. Higgins, Arabic Names
of the Stars]. Orion rose up when the grapes were ripe to represent the
" 1S
deliverer who was coming 'full of wine.'
The
astronomical
The
phenomena
reflect
man's inner
history.
life
in
Need we pause
to point out the identity of this with the Biblical sentence (7 Kings 4:25) "And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, every man
under his vine and under his fig-tree"?
:
249
Jesus was the true vine of the Logos and we are his branches, destined to bear the fruit. Horus bore the same representative character in
The American
Egypt.
The
itself to
characterization as a festival of
if it is
hance
it
it
further.
must be seen
There
as
is
working
covered by intoxication
is
dual,
good and
(relatively)
bad.
The god
an
faculties
when he becomes
evil intoxication,
filled
intellect
and begins
and
animal sensual enjoyment, and the animal mind, intoxicated with undreamed-of delirium, reel onward together in the dance of life, and
who
an outward demonstration of
mode
of representing spirit,
250
chil-
when we come
to study the
Egyptian
spirit
body, the
Sahu.
Honey,
as
tables of the
Olympian gods.
scended from Paradise. Virgil (Georgics IV) celebrates the neverdying bee that ascends alive into heaven. The faithful diligent insect
thus an image of the immortal soul, or the god.
Egyptian typology
makes the Abait, or bird-fly, the guide of the souls of the dead on
is
their
way
The
"bee-
"Jerusalem the Golden, with milk and honey blest" of the Christian
of the astral or ethereal body of man in Egypt
may be related to "bee." For ba is also a word for "honey." Honey
Also the bee reproduces the new life in plants by acting as the intermediator between male and female flower elements; and the divine
soul likewise links
male
spirit
in
man.
The myth
source, as "letting
water
from
his eyes;
divine generative
blessing
over
the
fall
earth,
like
it is
Shakespeare's
"gentle
rain
from
heaven."
The Samson
251
the strong
his return.
lution.
The
The
return types evolution, as the outward journey, invogod, as the lion, is "slain" on the outward arc or descent,
overcome by matter. But in evolution, the bees (the soul) have built
their nest of sweet honey in the very midst of the old decay, in the
very body of corruption. In the Persian myth we see the lion depicted
with a bee in his mouth.
There
are,
and the
lion.
is
on Luniolatry. The
types the fiery solar heat (Cf. the lioness in heat) and the bee the
cooling influence of the waters. For the hero, Samson, fairly immersed
number
a soli-lunar character,
thirty, obviously is
in the lion sign rose in conjunction with the sign
of Aquarius, the Waterman. The moon brought the cool waters that
conquered the solar heat. The application of the typism may hint at
in symbols of the
and the
full
moon
summer
to allay the
types of divinity
season are the reverse of those appropriate to the winter.
judgment
The
coolness
stantly borne in
mind.
and
exerts
252
in
it
the
fire
spirit,
and
in
it
was often
called
fermentation was Sekhet, and her pictures show her carrying the sundisk on the head of a lioness. Her name is also, says Massey, the name
in the
as were fleece and grape, seven and peace, star and soul.
whose
Isis,
original variant names were Hes, Hesit, Sesit, Sesh, etc.,
also carries this element of Sekhet's function. Sesh means primarily
"breath," which is the inspirer (Latin: spiro, I breathe) in the sense
name,
of wine."
From
is
it
Massey
to
be shaped by
fire.
by heat was the primitive illustration for breath which gave a creature
its soul. It was a natural marvel, this emergence of a principle of fiery
253
Horus and
man
out
Feast of the Tent or Tabernacle was a ceremony embodying the turning of water into wine.
There are many instances of rivers and seas being turned into blood.
Revelation reports that at the sound of the angel's trumpet a mountain, around which lightning played (symbol of the divine emanations, Jove's thunderbolts), went down into the sea and changed its
waters into blood. As the first forms of life were generated in sea
water, their initial body plasms were just that water. In eras of evolu-
tion this primitive life fluid was gradually transmuted, by the operation upon it of ever higher voltages of life force, into that which
eventually in man became human blood! Sea water has been turned
into blood in man's constitution! Blood is the fluid containing the liv-
ing dynamic, and the Bible states that the soul dwells in the blood.
reveals that sea water and
for science
us the
Few
Chris-
capably why it was that the human race had to be redeemed by the blood of an innocent victim poured out for its guilt.
There is so glaring an inference of vicariousness here that common
tians
can
tell
sense has halted long before giving credence to this dogma. It seems
and leaves an unstudied laity incredu-
lous
and
and
fitness in
made
Even Massey
revolts in
horror from the Biblical verse, in the words of the Son: "My father!
This day shalt thou refresh thyself in blood." The picture of a bloodlustful deity terrifies us.
is
gratuitous.
The primal
implications hold nothing to cause us horror. The Son is only reminding the Father that the descent of his germinal essence into, the blood
of this human body would give him his next cycle of rebirth and renewal. "Day" is one of the glyphs for cycle, aeon, round of incarnation,
as in Genesis with its seven "days" of creation. The
god finds fresh
and
new
in
each
renews
like the
himself
he
life;
conquest
experience
when
bathed in
new
blood-bodies in incarnation.
overwhelmingly, justified. To a degree distressing to contemplate religion has befogged the mind of the world by converting the forms of
ancient tropism into a sense repugnant even to the
intelligence of
children.
The
entire theological
Old Testament
theme of blood
sacrifice, so literalized in
the
reduces
itself to
our
sin in the
blood
of the Tauric emanation of deity. On the other side, however, the consuming of the animal on the altar by fire that flashed down from
animals on actual altars for his sensuous delight of sniffing the odors
of roasting flesh a sweet savor unto his nostrils well nigh destroys
faith in
human
intelligence.
The imputation
2 55
of gory sensualism to
supreme
deity, the
own
creatures,
sins
The cleansing power of the blood was in part at least borrowed from
the fact of the menstrual process. The ancient allegorists did not hesitate to
It is
outwardly easy
of cosmic analogues.
of
ill
tion.
in this until sordid sensuality invades the realm of pure depicin earthly bodies subjected the soul to a sort
Each incarnation
the system of god-man. It linked him with a body of flesh which came
"under the law" of periodicity and purgation. Books on primeval re-
blood.
like to
this
back-
ground looms
as essential for
This general typism is all that could ever have been hinted at
under the figure of the bloody sweat. The emission of life-fluid is accompanied by sweating. The male and female aspects of the meaning
birth.
Center side
by
side.
Smen,
says Massey,
256
god
in
Osiris
Smen
is
the
is
god in
Where the outpouring of deific power was not as yet linked with
Mother Nature's body, was not yet implemented by its proper Shakti,
or force in matter, the god was figured as "masturbating." Kheper-Ra
was the Egyptian deity fulfilling this function. His type was the beetle
or scarabaeus, which, according to Egyptian belief, created its young
by itself alone, without the female. There was hidden in this symbolism the truth that would have settled the famous "filioqtie" dispute
that split the early Church into Greek and Roman Catholicism.
"O
am
me
Who
They are the drops of blood which came forth from the phallus of Ra when
he went forth to perform mutilation upon himself. They sprang into
being as the gods Hu and Sa." [In another legend Shu and Tefnut.]
The
Ritual states that "the sun mutilates himself, and from the
streams of blood
all
things
come
into existence."
Here
is
so-called phal-
with sublimity.
Matching the Assyrian and Egyptian jugs of wine and pitchers of
mixed drink, the Hebrews (Leviticus 4) were ordered to sprinkle
licism, yet
some blood seven times before the Eternal in front of the curtain of
was for a sweet savor and soothing fragrance
to deity. In their sacrifices they were instructed never to consume the
blood of any animal: "The soul of any creature lies in its blood
the inner sanctuary. This
He
is
Tradition shows
257
hawk, which symbolized blood "because they say that this bird does
not drink water but blood, by which the soul is nourished" (HorApollo, Bk. I, 6). The soul lives on natural forces, its Mother's blood,
before it is born into Christhood in man.
One of the marvels in Exodus that were to persuade the reluctant
Egyptians to let the Israelites go was the turning into blood some
water that Moses poured on the ground. The pouring it on the ground
would point to the necessity of making the transformation on earth.
A Mexican legend sets forth the vivification of the dead remains of
former races by the blood of the gods.
spirit.
as a
woman
It
her wastage.
If the
red types the mother's blood giving generation, the white types
life of
The union of the white of divinity with the
spirit.
the seminal
it is
new
meaningful
blood that releases the stream of the mother's white nourishment for
the
new
Adam
child.
So the
first
or natural
man, born
or "red earth,"
ing essence
is distilled
is
Our
divinization
The
in man's lower
self.
An
Kamite
is
instructive pic-
description: the
"Said by the majesty of the god, Let them begin with Elephantine and
bring to
me
And when
(Lacuna).
Sekti (miller) of Annu was grinding the fruits, while the priestesses
the
juices into vases; and those fruits were put into vessels with
poured
the blood of the beings, and there were seven thousand pitchers of drink.
"The
"And there came the majesty of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt,
with the gods, to see the drink after he had ordered the goddess to destroy
the beings in three days of navigation"
The
membered
This
earth.
vastly significant.
Massey comments
instructively:
fruit of earth were the two primitive forms of the offerand these are blended together in a deluge of intoxicating drink." 14
The
gods
of animal-man
An
the base of
all
religion.
is
The
We
259
In the drama the Lord assigned immediately a pointed reason for his
rite. And in this reason we come
upon one of the
institution of the
broken frag-
ments of his body and to drink the flowing stream of his life-blood
with the command: "Do this in memory of me," he set Plato's great
doctrine at the very heart of Christianity. But Christianity could not
catch the relevance of the statement because it did not have the correlative tenets of the
restoration
tion of shattered
its
resurrection.
Divine
intellect,
The
oblivion;
must weave the tangled strands of mental fleece again into a garment
with pattern matching archetypal ideals.
The figures of both Jesus and Jonah, fast asleep in the holds of their
260
it."
15
Amid
former
known
before.
and grandeur.
And
pology
lost
out of
modern
strives to
whole
office
practique of education. Subtle principles of cultural technique are involved in the incarnational situation which make learning not at all
the acquiring of something new and alien to the soul, but the remem-
Of
of
"Hermes disperses the sleep and oblivion with which the different herds
of souls are oppressed. He is likewise the supplier of recollection, the end
16
of which is a genuine intellectual apprehension of divine natures."
As man
of
is
Mercury
to impress
dream
life,
the province
upon
261
of Universal
Mind
that
own
world.
"O thou who restorest memory in the mouth of the dead through the
words of power which they possess, let my mouth be opened through the
words of power which I possess."
of Chapter 25 is itself convincing: "The chapter of making
is the whole
possess memory in the underworld." This again
earth be exa
on
man
Of
could
office of
what, be it asked,
religion.
The
title
man
bound
must be
practiced with a view to awakening in earthsouls lost divine memories. This is the import of all its song, its
nificance,
it
rekindled
memory
of slumbering divinity.
In an address to Pepi it is written that the god "setteth his remembrance upon men and his love before the gods." Indeed the Ritual records the fact that the deceased in Amenta was shown his Ka (higher
soul body)
and assured
that
it
earth in order that he might not utterly forget his divine moorings,
or as he says, "that he might not suffer loss of identity by forgetting
his name." Man is on earth like one stricken with amnesia.
Showing
him
his
Ka
bestirs the
Manes
name and
is
nature.
effected only
by
means
principles, to call upon the name of the Lord, or to know the deity's
to have come en
rapport with his higher nature. This pre-
name, was
god
alone."
is
words to the
vogue of religion in
If it
Memory and
holds true to
human
is
society
its
abundantly warranted.
Max
German Schmerz,
come from
this root.
"pain,"
is
only the memory of
former transports and ecstasies of the glory the soul once had with
the Father before the worlds.
When,
of his death
till
he come
his
self-
hood in their lives. The Ritual of Egypt assigns a name to the ship of
Horus as it passes across the sea of this lower life, which name shows
the archaic origin of the sage philosophy of Greece: "Collector of souls
is the name of
my barque"! Recollection is the soul's office on earth.
We are to
up in the boat of our life the twelve baskets of scatand restore the broken body of our Lord "whole and
gather
tered fragments
entire."
Out
accrue to the
ordinance:
figure in ancient Judea, but from the living god within, begging all to
drink the cup of communion with him and thus hasten to forge that
recollection of
him which
263
Chapter XIII
EARTH, WATER,
AIR, FIRE
THE possibility of making an effective interpretation o arcane scriptures will be seen to be closely interwoven with the part played in
symbolic structure by the four elements, earth, water, air and fire.
Grasp of the ideas hidden under the use o these four emblems comes
one in possession of the key to most of the mystery.
revelation of the full force of their application will prove astonish-
close to putting
The
in&*
Much
chemistry. This
is
folly.
future. It
Aristotle a
fifth
element, called by
264
It
and un-
The
them by means
of a
body composed
the four bodies under pressure of the swing of his interests. When we
grandiloquently speak of living within the whole range of our being,
we are unwittingly repeating a conception of ancient theory, the literal
truth of
which we have
comprehend.
Of an
festation
as
it
does one
We
four bodies are typed by earth, water, air and fire, symbolically.
The matter of the contemporary existence of these four (or five)
bodies within the single space of the physical may occasion some incredulity as to the ancient theory. But modern science has itself opened
the door of explanation here. It is a matter of the fineness of molecular
particles
vaster ones. It
is
Each one
which
it
interpenetrates.
interpenetrates
its
interpenetrated by its
occupying the same three-dimensional area, yet with a "great gulf"
fixed between each pair, the abyss of difference of electronic vibration,
length, frequency and radial orbit. This
divides each world from all others. It is not a
wave
is
it is
requisite that
265
are not on the same plane, or in the same world. Their failure to harmonize puts them into different areas of the field of life.
The five planes were represented by the five geometric figures, the
cube for earth, the sphere for water, the triangle for
fire,
the crescent
of the
tip for aether. Certain significations
will be presented in the sequel, but it is doubtful if anyfigure-symbols
one at present knows authoritatively the full range of meaning attached to them. In some drawings of the series, air, the third, and fire,
for
air,
the fourth, are reversed in position. Their relative place in the order
doubtless of vital importance, but for the ends of religious symbol-
is
ism,
of
it
make
many
fire
their
Moses lifted up, and the water dragon of Revelation, of the Aeneid
and other classical works. There is the Good Serpent, Agathodaemon,
and the Evil Serpent, Ka\odaemon, symbol of Satan. Water, too, became a dual sign, with a higher and lower translation. As the first it
was an emblem of the outpourings of divinity, the water of life that
that
Jesus promised to the woman at the well; as the second, it typed the
fluctuating, restless, sensual nature in which the divine fire was so
nearly drowned out. Even fire shares the dual meaning, for it symbols
the celestial life, the fire of Prometheus, Jove's thunderbolt, as well as
and clear flame; on earth it was fed with damp, coarse fuel, and became lurid in hue and charged with noxious, sulphurous gases, and
turned to steam and smoke. A large part of the whole significance of
the incarnation can be seen reflected in the imagery of fire introduced
into a semi-watery condition. Our
not succeed in imprinting on
is
work
will be
wasted
effort if it
does
For that which began as heavenly passed into earthly embodiment, and the pertinence of the symbols had to change with the
change of milieu. All the heavenly symbols became inwrought with
incarnation.
On
with meanings almost completely reversed, or with their purity besmirched, so to say. It is not surprising that the wise Egyptians should
have given us a picture of this very reversal in one of their typical
vignettes. For, says
Massey:
267
the underworld.
same monument are the dead. Thus the Osirified de(people) on the
1 do
ceased who had attained the second life, in the Ritual says exultingly,
and the
not walk on my head.' The dead, as the Akhu, are the spirits,
Atua
a spirit
is
One
all its
forms
to type
condition here, there was employed also the idea of an entire reversal
of position to portray the true state of the soul in its untoward predicaare heavenly spirits turned upside down on earth! Earth
reverses heavenly lines of motion. It reflects the pattern of things in
the mount, but inverted. The highest symbols of heaven therefore fall
ment.
We
at the very
who
gifts
to
We
the bright
have, then, the angels of light turned into demons,
flame of divinity metamorphosed into the lurid fire of hell, the waters
seas that engulfed the boats of Jonah and
the
of life
becoming
raging
and in actuality.
Man's lower nature, as seen in any diagram, is composed of the elements of earth and water, his higher nature of fire and air. Any time
either of the two upper is crossed with either of the two lower, there
with
rough symbol of incarnation, or combination of the divine
the human. But the two that together comprise either our lower or
is
admirably seen
higher nature may also be found in correlation. This
is
in the
268
of
now
as the
glyphs of the
human
physical -body,
compounded
of earth
and water. The body is itself about seven-eighths water and the remainder earth. The lotus, papyrus or reed has a number of meanings,
but in the main they typify the new life springing up out of the mud
and water, to flower out in the air and the fire of the sun. The risen
Horus is figured seated on a lotus pad above the water.
Mud, as the type of matter (and matter, mud, and mother all come
from the same linguistic root), is dialectically analyzed in the Greek
philosophy:
"Matter," says Simplicius in his commentary on the
first
book of Aris-
totle's
things, indeed, which are the properties of sensibles are irrational, corporeal,
distributed into parts, and passing into bulk and divulsion through an ulti-
mate progression
(or highest)
as it were,
life,
a certain mire!'
life
by the crystallization of ethereal forces, prethe sedimentary deposit of vaporous states of water,
subjected to a reduction of temperature. Nature furnishes a perfect
analogy for every truth.
cisely as
snow
is
common
meadow
269
cries:
"Save me,
God!
come
in unto
am come
my
soul. I sink in
from them
me
His gratitude
me
Yet
my
let
me
feet
me
be delivered
let
up."
"He brought me up
set
and
to
upon a
also out of
rock,
and
an horrible
established
pit,
my
form
(Ps. 40)
goings."
"he hath founded the earth upon the waters and established it
floods" (Ps. 24), because out of the water and the mud of
upon the
mortal
life
was
as the
his
members
on such a
Horus
them Isis
fiction as this:
To
find
was
Man
is
perfected always in a
a symbol
is
irrelevant, since
it
turning
all softer
natures to stone.
of the
plunged
water most pointedly dramatizes the basic import of the whole incar-
is
verting into steam the heavy humid nature of animal-man. Fire must
dry out a path across the sea of generation, so that it may cross this
out of emotion.
We
dormant within
his
as also the
its feet!
life,
It
was a plea
for the
self,
god
to
come and
sub-
water, by unifying
it
with
by
fire
(spirit).
By
their simple
arises
and
when
air
goddess of Love
is
is
It is
the god, descending, brought air and fire to energize the elements in the sea water (of the body). Froth would intimate the elevaof thought, or the thorough mixing of
tion of emotion to the
when
plane
also the emotionalizing of thought.
thought with emotion, perhaps
Bubbles rising to the surface suggest the evolution of thought out of
of the physical and emotional departments of man.
the
very depths
life
emanating from
the primordial waters. And the rising of Aphrodite into breathing life
and beauty out of the foam marks this idea as Egyptian in origin.
of the early
Nu-ti, "froth," is the same word as Neith, who was one
Neith
waters.
Karnite personifications of the first life rising from the
character
in
the
is
Venus, the mother of life, twofold
Hathor,
as liquid
Egyptian
celestial representative
pole,
it
was
symbols
all
things.
life
272
fog or dew.
heaven holds the celestial water, the type of divine life embosomed in
emotions germinally latent in thoughts. And when this water has
air
fallen to earth, it takes the action of fiery spirit to convert it back
again to heavenly state, and this can only be done by the superior
energy transmuting its nature from liquid to vapor or "spirit" form.
The deceased, awaiting his resurrection, cries to Nu: "Give me
water and the breath of life!" The reply comes: "I bring thee the vase
containing the abundant water for rejoicing the heart by its effusion,
cation."
The
may
tween the four elements in the outer world. Living physical bodies of
earthly constituency hold water, the water embosoms air, and in the
air is the hidden potency of fire. The elements consistently interpenetrate each other, the finer in the coarser. We have already traced the
vivid symbolism of fermentation, or the generation of air in water,
type of the enkindling of spirit. At the baptism of Jesus by John, ac-
cording to Justin Martyr, "a fire was kindled in the waters of the
Jordan." This matches the Egyptian "a burning within the sea." Spirit
sets its ferment and its blaze
a-going amid the watery elements of the
body.
Seeking in the heights and depths of the natural creation for symbols
of truth, the mythographers could not miss so patent a type as that of
the fish leaping out of the water. It was a vivid suggestion of the soul
in matter leaping in aspiration for short breaths of air in the kingdom
above it. Whether it be seeking a moment's breath of a diviner air in
the
kingdom
2 73
it
projects itself
from the
purer realms of
spirit.
The
soul,,
must
occa-
two
and
it is
said the
world below.
with she becomes a catcher of men out of the waters, and draws them
up into the world of air and spirit.
The
waters of
an emblem of
metaphor when he
with a
Two
new
Ritual
such
it is
life,
It
signified the
lower
shut
life
up and
safe
spiritual se-
curity.
Nun
in the Chaldean
Mem is
it
water.
The
is
the Great Fish; Nuna in Syriac is the conNun of the Hebrew alphabet is the fish, as
Whale.
to be personified as the
the breath of
life.
The Egyptians
The
also
made
number of languages by
swim" and "to be born."
practically
water,
life
was pictured
be born into
life,
as a
therefore,
womb
is
first
to catch
act of the
its
first
babe new-born
breath!
Immersed
in the waters of generation, of sense and desire, man can not come to
his real life, or second birth, until he can rise out of the "water" to
breathe the
more
mind and
spirit.
The
power of the sun (god) to stimulate life and growth could not reach
him effectively in the kingdom of water (nature) he had first to lift
his head out of the water into the kingdom of air (mind) before the
rays of the god could breed spirituality within him.
;
From
the na stem
we
and
the water.
The
from a higher
plane,
is
whom we
god, through
of our being.
275
of water,
of soul,
ing life. These were Tefnut and Shu. He became the inspirer
she the former of flesh. It was the god, masculine, who breathed the
breath of life into the nostrils. In the Ritual the Speaker, coming to his
his Mother"
life, says he has been "snatched from the waters of
and "emaned from the nostrils of his Father Osiris." The Chinese
matched this with their Ying and Yin, the male and female, or breath
and water sources.
The water and the lotus were both female emblems at first. The
feminine nature of
papyrus-scepter of Uat is the express sign of the
wet
and
heat, water and
Uati, who represented the features of both
new
breath, or
body and
soul, heat
or breath.
is
and air
motion
to
imparts
driven by the mind!
wind
(intellect)
The body
is
visible.
Very suggestive is the request in the Ritual (Ch. 55) "May air be
given unto these young divine beings," a reference to the Kumaras or
:
Innocents
when
first
plunged into
more
is
And
and having
again Chapter 57 is
dominion over the waters of the underworld." When Horus rises he
is
exultingly welcomed as escaping from the dark lower region, "without water and without air," as the conditon of soul in matter.
In Africa and Central America the god Houragan (Hurricane) was
world."
hieroglyphics
Khan
is
identical
Hura
is
air.
Hura^an
down. In the
and another
to fly along the surface, became a symbol of the soaring free soul,
which was nearly always pictured as winged or feathered.
Naturally all species of aero-aquatic birds came under the scope of
this typology. The bird that could rise off the water and soar
away was
a
of
the
soul.
the
But
ancients
type
inescapably
rising
joined the two
kinds of life in one creature which became one of the most universal
of
all
symbols, the winged serpent or feathered snake. Recent reAmerica have brought to light the wide prevalence
searches in Central
of this
emblem
in the
And
since
continent.
Mayan and
it
more
in
should once again become wise as to his dual origin. And modern man
should cease to belittle the mythopoetic genius of his ancestors who
endeavored, with almost incredible sagacity, to embody important
knowledge of cosmic facts in imperishable glyphs. In the terms of evolutionary biology the swan is the feathered snake, and Hansa, the bird
of primordial life and intelligence that floats above the waters of the
abyss,
is
the eternal
emblem
air
is
and
fire in
symbolized the swift-darting and lofty-soaring motion of divine intelligence. The French Swan-Dragon unites the bird's head with the
serpent's
tail.
An
ancient Greek
work makes
the
first
godly nature a
serpent which later transmuted into a hawk. One form of the gryphon
was the body of a beast, the tail of a serpent and the head of a peacock.
This is the mythical cockatrice. It was so named because of its origin
serpent.
The
divine
is
hatched
Earth with water yielded mire, or sensuousness; water with air suggested mingled emotion and dawning thought; spiritous wine hinted
at a fiery element in water, or "fire-water." Beside Isis, whose name derives from stems meaning to breathe and ferment, there is the goddess
Uati, a name congenital perhaps with our "wet" and "heat," if not the
277
basis of "water" itself. She was the genetrix, and signified wet and
heat in conjunction; and her function suggests the conversion of water
into breathing life by the mother in heat, or gestating! Unleavened
the natural man unspiritualized by the ferment
bread would
represent
of divine efficacies. It would
show the first Adam, the man unregenerborn of water, the natural body, but not of the spirit. Leavened
bread was "spiritualized" bread. And oddly enough the little leaven
that leaveneth the whole lump does indeed generate by its ferment a
sort of breathing in the dough, for the latter becomes permeated with
air bubbles which work to the surface. Bring the god of fire into matate,
and the latter begins to manifest the breath of life. Fire rises, and
the ultimate type of evolution, in which life sparks ascend to the
empyrean. Water falls, and is the type of involution, or life descending
ter
is
transto the
mother has
The upper
her language.
air,
its
it in
fragments to the earth to nourish the
an item or detail of the theological typism
As
is
lacking in the
phenome-
non.
the
fire
its
its
fragments
pure spirit
man
likewise a
life,
runs
down
the
gamut
of
fire, air,
bosom
of the
life
the waves
wear and
tear
worth.
But a
man
we
still
at the
ing the
life
of
all
the rain, in token that "never again will he destroy mankind." For
at the end of his sojourn in the
watery habitat of body, will have
man,
completed his perfection in seven stages and will not need further
immersion in the sea of generation. As the rainbow disappears with
the last rain, the sun reigns alone again in its one white light.
and breaking into its seven colors, is a memorable certification of cosmic creational method. Man actually presents a three-faced transparent
medium
for the first light in the upper levels of his nature to provide
the requisite condition for this phenomenon in his life. The immortal
unit of spirit itself has segmented already into a triad which hovers in
the upper sphere of consciousness. It is the great solar triad of Mind-
Will-Wisdom-Activity.
screen of
Still
human
life
It is
on
when we
consider
goddesses Tefnut and Sekhet respectively. Tef(n) connotes the meaning of "dew" and "moisture" from its primary signification of "to
drip, or drop."
Then
279
is
superseded by
tion.
title (Ch. 163) is
deeply suggestive: "Of not allowa
man
to molder away in the underworld." (The spirito
the
body
ing
ual body is meant here, as the physical body does molder away.) The
Another Ritual
Manes
addressed:
is
"Hail, thou who art lying prostrate within thy body, whose flame cometh
into being from out of the fire that blazeth within the sea (or water) in
raised
is
up on high out
of the fire
thereof."
If there are
structions, let
sea could
knows
any who dispute the mythical nature of ancient conthem demonstrate how a fire blazing in the midst of a
still
be spoken
of otherwise
flesh
allegorically.
spiritual
than
it
fire
represent
can be seen
how
and trying
to
"When thou
passest
I shall
the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; when thou walkest through the
fire thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle on thee."
The underworld,
in affective relation;
then,
is
fire
they are carried into particulars! The god (fire) stood in danger, as
the Greeks clearly intimate, of
suffering from the exhalations arising
from its contact with the humors of the carnal
body. It must be seen
280
that the god's entry into the body o an inferior being would result
in the injection of an increased voltage, as it were, in the activities of
all its forces.
Animality would be more keenly energized as the trans-
forming ferment began its work. The god stood in danger of being
"burned," "scalded" by the "steam" engendered by the heightening of
all lower
psycho-chemical powers. The enhanced potential of the sense
and emotion functionism provided by his own alliance with them,
might overpower him.
One
Venus when she was bathing. Acteon, seeing Diana at her bath, was
turned into a stag. David was punished for his relations with Bathsheba, whom he saw bathing. What is the significance of the punishment of all these solar heroes for contacting the woman during her
period? It is but one of the forms of cryptic typology under which
ancient sagacity limned in outline the "fall" of the god when he linked
his life with the feminine or material
powers in a cycle of manifestation.
He
is
dramatized
as
nature in the sky. But the rainbow comes at the end of the rainstorm,
and union of spirit with matter at the end of its outpouring is the time
propitious for fecundation and the new birth. At any rate the punish-
ment
all
the earth!
This
is
advanced animal
species,
by the
will
because incarnation had not yet been fully achieved, and the forms
of flesh were of ethereal tenuity. But miscegenation began prema-
which the
solar heroes
must be
cast,
after
being awakened, to
is
And
that neither Jonah's venture nor Jesus' burial is historical is indicated by the fact that both were held captive in this cavern of death for
three days!
In the Eternal's promise to Noah that the rainbow after every storm
would remind him of his compact not to bring further destruction on
the earth, he concludes with: "and the waters shall never again become
The structure of this sentence is
enlightening; for it is to be noted that the Eternal does not say that
there shall be no waters to cover the earth, but that the waters of living
force released for evolutionary purposes shall not again
get out of hand
"When
now
shall
shall not
men on
is
over,
it is
stated
"
282
my hand
'I
Here
it is
was drowned
This points clearly to the racial biological nature of the deluge and
away from any historical imputation whatever. Cosmology, biology,
racial origin
and individual
woven
The
together in
thread
The
correlations
We
at great
length. It is readily
truly is, the nethermost stratum of matter to which
intelligence descends to manifest. The mineral kingdom of earth, the
seen for
what
it
physical base of man's body, marks the nadir of the downward sweep
and the turning point or pivot. On its descending arc life undergoes a
subjection of its finer forces to sluggish inert matter, on the analogy
of a fire being reduced in burning potency. The earth is thus the
the schedule of
this is the
life's
endless journey.
profound mystery of
all
its course,
perfects its products and
then annihilates these products (to outward sense), leaving their seeds
of new life, however, to flower in the next cycle.
Archaic wisdom expounds more intricate cosmic and evolutionary
data than
modern
existing, like
man's vestures, in
four types of matter symboled, again like man's bodies, by earth, water,
life wave
air and fire.
emanating from the Father darts outward and
courses around
this
fact,
a kingdom of kindred matter on each plane. The direcdownward or matterward for the first four globes, after which
and creating
tion
it
is
turns again spiritward and sweeps upward through the last three.
on the plane of
is, the life wave builds a planetary spirit body
That
a
spirit (fire),
through
on the plane of the empyreal fire. On the fourth or lowest
spirit body
dense physical
it builds
up, lives in and then retires from, the
plane
globe which
The earth
The
life
life.
Now
the earth.
is
is
wave
is
it is
matter that
it
brings
own
its
own
potentialities
to birth.
Abiding eternally
remains non-producplane,
tive. It must
go forth, seek adventure, meet with opposition, wrestle
with the powers that would choke it, and achieve its new cyclical vicnot enough for
tory in a world of adversity. As Plotinus writes, "It is
on
its
as Platonic
philosophy
says, it
the soul merely to exist; she must show what she is capable of beHere is the model and the genius of all romance, all drama.
And the earth is the scene of this conflict between the embryonic
getting."
titanic
mortal forces.
And where
human body
the seat
method
soul.
And
it is
it
284
In the Ritual (Ch. 19) the chapter of the Crown of Triumph shows
meaning of placing a floral wreath or crown upon the mummy in
the
the sheta or coffin. It was to depict that the "garland of earth in the
nether world becomes the crown of triumph for eternal wear." The
crown of life was given to those who had suffered on earth. Earth and
the body were the double arena in
its
per-
could not have been forged into strength, power and beauty. The soul
comes into the underworld of darkness to win the immortal crown of
and glory, for only by victory over the powers of darkness can
light
the light be brought to shining.
The Ritual makes it clear that the underworld of the earth is the
realm to which the father Osiris, or Amen-Ra, or other deity pictured
as aged, comes to regain his youth. "The old man (Amen-Ra) shineth
in the form of one that is young"; "the old man that maketh himself
young again"; "the unknown one who hideth himself from that which
cometh forth from him"; and finally the one who is "deified in the
underworld." In the Boof^ of Breathings the Manes is told:
"Then doth thy soul breathe forever and ever, and thy form is made
anew with thy life upon earth; thou art made divine along with the souls
of the gods, thy heart is the heart of Ra, and thy members are the members of the great god."
Again:
"And
the
god Ap-uat
(i.e.,
The Manes
cries to
Saying that the divine speech of Ra is in his ears in the Tuat (underworld) the Manes prays that "no defects of my mother be imputed
to me." This is to say: let no stains from my contacts with mother
earth adhere to me. Yet to the unit of undivinized spirit it is told:
dost
become
a spirit." Apotheosis
is
on
285
Apap!"
physical domain
But earth
part the waters. These keys are virtue, discipline, wisdom.
closes to block the way to Apap, or evil and ignorance. Earth provides
the conditions that induce every quality of spirit to burgeon in beauty;
but it brings to nought the counsels of the ungodly through karmic
The
next element
is
man
The
first is
all
called in
more
stands in
pertinent symbol of
two senses, first, for
mother principle of
is
It
all
Nu
(Nnu,
equated with Noah by Massey). The Greek Nux (Nyx), Latin Nox,
perhaps matches this goddess of the infinite void, in whom there is
nothing but the sheer potentiality of life. As this is the primal dark-
and the
is
apparently the linguistic original
in
as
"no," "none," "not," "nought,"
things negative
speech,
"never," "negative," German "nichts." But out of it flashed the first
ness
of
void,
all
ray of light. It was the water of source, and life is born out of water.
But the primal abyss splits into two firmaments, and there is the
water above to match the water below. So secondly there is the water
of
life,
and
is
that falls
its
from the
skies,
type.
with
This
286
amid
the senses
and the
Life cast
Like the
clitus said.
restless
We
From remote
highlands
it
and bays, and finally rejoins its primal sea of source. The circuit brisdes
with analogies to the life cycle at every turn. The sun's function in
masses of vapor invisibly to heaven types the spirit's power to
lifting
refine the unseen elements of consciousness and elevate the substance
of
life.
tion
The
reduction in temperature symbolizes a procedure in evolusouls back to earth. The condensation of the
vapor
which leads
deity.
The
fall to
the
work
heaven
of the
sterile
earth
sterile, spiritually, as
The
return to primal unity in the sea is manifest in the conversion of individual selfishness back to social and spiritual solidarity. Then comes
a step in the cycle that yields the utmost of instruction for thought.
Every phase of the round is visible except that in which the water is
lifted from the sea again into heaven. The entire cycle is perceptible
except the one arc in which matter is returned to spirit (vapor) form.
In every visible round of life process there is always the one stage that
is
invisible!
process of
life
in
full truth.
287
its
dynamic
realities are
The
the Lord,
is
And
in Isaiah
when
it is
dumb
shall
break forth into singing, it is added: "Waters are to well forth in the
wilderness, streams in the desert." Jesus cried:
"If any man thirst, let me come unto me and drink. He that believeth
on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
In the Ritual the god says: "I flood the land with water." There
were various pools and lakes which the Manes was to cross on his
journey through the underworld. Pepi, the soul, is called "the efflux of
the celestial water, and he appeared when Nu came into being." For
the Manes the promise is made: "He shall quaff water at the fountain
head." In an Irish
forth
effluence
is
from "Counla's
in seven rays or
The
first
outpouring,
288
is
The water
called "the
of
dawn,
water of
Tefnut," twin sister of Shu, god of life by air. And it is notable that
in the Hebrew version the first to make the water come forth by
miracle for the people to drink is Miriam, whose relation to Moses
is identical with that of Tefnut to Shu. This Shu, as the son of Nun,
the firmamental water, is the life in breath; and almost unquestionably
furnishes the prototypal character for Joshua, the son of Nun in the
Hebrew
book.
And
Joshua
is
identical
by name with
Jesus.
The
text
pictures the goddess Nut standing beneath her sycamore tree, from
which she pours out the water of life, as Hathor offers her fruit juice
from the tree.
with a rod.
Heaven
of the
water
is
It is
is
the
Neptune is traced to the Egyptian nef, "sailor," and this god was the
sun over the waters, the god who completed the circuit round or over
the waters.
Water was
the
first
creation,
and up out of
its
to get the breath of life. Could one find a more astonishing replica of this cosmic situation than that furnished by the modus
of human birth? Every child who in this life is to travel from nature
emanating gods
to
God
and the
first
thing done
"Tefnut
the water of life down to mortals had thereendure the drenching by this same elements in its earthly
form. Says Daniel: "He shall be drenched with the dews of heaven."
As the original cosmic water was the Nun, or the negation of all positive life, so the earthly shadow of water, that is, matter, is
similarly a
after to
life.
It is inert.
wave
of water!
And many
of
Indian languages
have a similar term for "he dies" and "water." This indicates the idea
by drowning, the paraphrase of incarnation. The gods descend to drink of the waters of carnal life at the peril of their im-
of death
in
mortal
souls.
289
water not above, but below, the horizon. Isis sought her drowned
son Horus in the waters of the underworld, from which he was fished
out by Sevekh. Bacchus, lord of the humid nature, in being raised
enters the air and conies then as the
again, ascends from the water,
Fanman
or
et Osiride}
of death":
"For thou didst cast me into the depth, in the heart of the seas, and the
was round about me; all thy waves and thy billows passed over me
The waters compassed me about, even to the soul. The deep was
flood
.
Job (26)
my
head."
He
the sea by his power," as did Jonah and Jesus, Horus and
Tammuz and others. "He turneth back the waterflood which is over
stilleth
prays to
Herod
i :
22) This is a depiction of the general danger menacing the god during his incarnation
in the watery realm of the body. The Psalms express it indirectly (74)
breakest the heads of the dragons in the waters." The .gods had
to break the power of the el^mej^ar^liv^,^ engendered in the Ip^er
"Thou
or water kingdoms. Sargon says that his mother gave him to the river,
"which drowned me not."
"He drew me out of great waters," sings the Psalmist. Moses is
water-born. Josephus explains the name as signifying "one who was
taken out of the water." Moffatt translates it as "removed" (from the
water). Pharaoh's daughter called the name of the child Mosheh, and
said "because I drew him out of the water." (Exod. u: 10). Maui, of
New
Zealand legend, like Moses and Sargon, was drawn out of the
290
And
water at birth.
"I
am
coffined in
an ark
like
Horus,
to
whom
The Speaker
his cradle
is
says:
brought."
tree of life
sycamore
the Ritual, of
of his
whom
mother"
it is
"He hath
written:
nature. In another
form
this stands
the
power
power
the mother-material nature, symboled by water. The god descending into the sphere of "water" was imaged by the duck, goose or swan,
who all dive for food under the water. In a beautiful myth of the
life,
body.
The
prays:
"May
One
(Shu-King).
291
We
have in
It is
final release
Aquarius
sign
urn the water of life in a double stream. The sacred literature is filled
with references to the two waters, or the water of the double source.
In many myths there are two streams, two springs, two wells, two
lakes. Cosmically the two indicate the original fission of God's being
into the two poles of positive and negative life, or spirit and matter.
This was the divine life that emanated in two streams to fructify creathe
tion. In the lower world it is reflected in the division between
water of the air above and on the earth below, vapor and liquid, cloud
Apt,
the terrestrial;
productive
and the milch-cow of heaven.
The
token the seven creative Elohim, the living energies of matter. The
two living streams of water were put in the uranograph in the form
of a water-course with two branches, one of which was the larutana
Eridanus (Greek), Jordan (Hebrew); and the other the milk
(Egy.),
stream, the Milky Way, Via Lactea. The Eridanus, or earth water,
was the stream that had to be passed over in incarnation; the Milky
was the water course by which the soul ascended again into the
Way
The cow
spirit.
of earth
292
She
alternates
with Diti
as
seven parts, the seven Elohim. As Aditi she was the undivided Absolute; as Diti she was the divided one, mother of the two streams of
outpoured
Of Ra
life.
The Egyptians figured the two waters in the Nile, with its two arms,
the Blue Nile and the White Nile. In the planispheres the south was
the region of source, and the Nile rose in the highlands of the south,
Upper Egypt (by elevation) ; so the heavenly chart depicts the celestial
Nile or Eridanus (Jordan) as pouring forth its divine stream from the
southern sky, rising from the star Achernar in Eridanus constellation,
The
and male
blood is that of the females." The two waters, or blood and milk, were
both typed as feminine at first, to represent nature as productive without spiritual fecundation. To symbol the latter, the one was afterwards
made
The
first
pair
that
in human racial history the body of man was built up by nature without the ensouling presence of mind. Matter and its inherent force, the
feminine aspect of life, alone occupied the field. Marvelously this phase
is
some
2 93
only
was obscurely known. The mother and later the daughter, or the
mother and her sister, were the only known bonds of blood relation
the male
for the children. As in the cosmos, so in human society,
of sight and knowledge. A
out
hidden
was
while
element,
operative,
and daughter,
child was related only through two women, mother
that these
hundred
in
a
asserts
aunt.
and
pages
mother
or
Massey
who
women
two
or
two
the
of
forms
wives,
the
are
two
archetypal
are dramatis personae in nearly every religious
myth
of origin.
Adam,
Two
by
the world."
The sowing
flight
we
As
the
mummy
from
unguents,
dis-
in the case of
man
decay.
its
phase
is
294
Nature, running to waste without fruitage, was healed by divine impregnation or vivification. Christianity has been content to take from
comments
directly
upon
is
is
above
shall
and
all shall
be destroyed."
Jesus said that he was from above and natural man from beneath.
It is found in the Ritual that in the Pool of Natron and the Pool of
Salt the
"I
The
Seven
to a rebaptism
The
circuit
man
(sun)
and renewal of
"seven") was an
early
form
obviously
of the primordial water. Beer-Sheba in
The twin
greatest
Pool.
"Spirit"
The water
"And the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof towards the
East and towards the West, and half of the mountain shall remove toward
the North and half toward the South."
a glyph for a cycle of any length, here an incarnation. The
the two mountains is just the time between
period of openness between
the soul must
in
this
birth and death
life, during which brief moment,
"Day"
is
fall
to
fill its
And
was
as referred to by Zechariah.
supplanted by the north-south one,
of
both sexes, denotes the eunuch
The
being
in
whom
drogyne.
the
two were
From
the
united.
mouth
of
He
Hapi
is
issues the
296
two other
figures
stream. This
is
it is
In Egyptian and
is
in a double
Aquarius.
Hebrew
ding two
emaned
represented as shedwaters.
two
and
is
"He
who knows
The Hermaean
Zodiac
shows the Great Bear with streaming breasts, and the zodiacal Virgin
is
represented by the Bear as unproductive in Virgo, but the "bearer"
in the sign of Pisces, where she is half fish and half human. Ishtar,
another personification of the genetrix, was dual. One of her names
was Semiramis, the daughter of Atergatis. The latter has the tail of a
fish, but the daughter was wholly human. The fish denoted water,
and the dove on Ishtar's head signified air, again throwing sense and
soul into relation.
came from
name
is
"that which
mouth
rises
life
source,
297
Animal man can not cross it until he has been bathed in its waters
and been purified and transformed. We are crossing this boundary
line between our lower and higher natures.
There is plentiful use of the water symbol under the special form
of the sea. "The angel descended until he reached the sea of the earth,
and he stood with his right foot upon it." This matches Horus-Orion
in the starry chart standing with his foot upon the end of the Jordan
The Dragon poured forth the water flood to overwhelm the
River.
Woman
This points
surging
The watery
was
reflected,
and upon
it
fire
the
Ra brings
The Manes
in the north of heaven, like a star passing over the Great Green Sea
... as far as the place where is the star Seh (Orion) ." This matches
the location of the Eridanus.
ing souls
"waded
safely
Hawaiian
through the
sea."
One
varying
298
statements of
fact.
life,
yields up
living "dead" at the end of the
Then
the
seer
"beheld
the fashioning of the earth
cycle.
accomplished
anew; for the sea out of which the Beast had risen was now no more."
"There
shall
its
be ... no more
sea."
god
ing outward toward matter. It is the outrance, not the entrance, of life.
The whale spouting out its water stream is suggestive. The Eridanus
poured forth from the mouth of the Southern Fish. The os tincae, or
tench's mouth, was one of the religious symbols of frequent occurrence. Watching a fish, one notes an apparent expulsion of water from
the mouth with the semblance of chewing. It is the door of life's
emanation, and it is the denizen of the waters out of which life
streams.
The
zodiacal Pisces
is
swan or duck,
for
it
must swim
their ignorance." It
to be caught again
is
it
and again
represented
body
of the lower forces of life. Man's feet are in the water of
tail
life,
of a fish.
creative
299
The
tail also
life.
Ishtar-
portrays the, as
It
shows
The mummied
combs, with legs bound helplessly together, depicts the god strapped in
the bonds of the natural elements., not yet having manifested the dualHe can not use his two legs and walk, like a god. He is only the
ity.
first,
conjoined.
young sun-god
or for the period of the Piscean era in the precession. Previous to that
will figure him now as the
he was Aries, the Lamb of God.
Who
Waterman?
by Ra.
Gathering up some scattered fragments of the water emblem, we
note Homer describing the river Titaresius flowing from the Styx as
pure and unmixed with the taint of death and gliding like oil over
the surface of the water by which the
gods made their covenant. Oil
on troubled waters may be seen to be a profounder symbolism than
was conceived before. For the god, oil is no chance symbol, as it was
a
it
300
In the
Hebrew
the water of
life
flows
and the
gentle-
till
the
mand
Mm
of Moses. This
is
water,
in the Egyptian
In Judges (30) God split the rock as sign of the dual nature, and
water flowed forth to quench Samson's thirst, as in the case of Moses.
But
life is to
be established through
it
upon the
its
floods."
certain fountain of
it."
The
The
Sanskrit
because
it is
is to
sweep out the chaff of sensuality and free the golden
Those
initiated
into the Greater Mysteries were washed with
grain.
water and then breathed upon, fanned and winnowed by the purifying spirit. This was the dual baptism of water and the spirit, or fire.
One of the two great symbols held in the hands of the Gods in Egypt
was a fan called the Khi, the sign of air, breath and spirit. The other
was the Hek, or Aut-crook, which denoted laying hold, in the downward direction, of matter by spirit; in the reversed direction, of spirit
Intellect
Lack
of
air,
or smothering,
limitations of incarnation.
for the
"whose
throat stinketh for lack of air." In descending to seek her lost brother
and husband
Osiris, Isis is
her feathers; she made air to come into being by means of her two
wings/' another personation of the fanner or winnower. The god
fans the mortal to keep him from being suffocated for lack of air,
mind. The god brings us intellect, which indeed keeps us from being
smothered by the intolerable life of sense. The cogency of leaven as
a symbol lies in its
generating air within the material mass. The raising of dough is synonymous with the resurrection of mortality. In the
Ritual there is a "chapter of giving air to the soul in the underworld."
Mind came
as our savior.
302
Chapter
FIRE
XIV
ON HEAVEN'S HEARTH
It rises
full
is
at Gizeh,
and
others,
seem
to
to sidereal
life.
word
for "fire."
prefix, in the
To
itself traces
this the
fire
first
of creation.
The
33
with the theosj the god whose symbol everywhere is the swift-darting
shaft of fire, whether in the heavens or in the uplands of reason and
The "flash of intelligence" is the exact sign and token
intelligence.
of the swift activity of the
souls originate
"From
Like
One
"The
immortal,
body."
And
The
first
fire."
Tartarus to the
bearing
fire. It fills
is
and pours on the linked natures of matter and spirit the fertile
strength of a fire endued with mighty power. Concerning divine Love
the Oracle speaks:
"Who
fire,
of his
own
When
ter
first
that he
fire."
Ceres delivered
up the government
to Proserpina, her
34
with Apollo, the sun-god, as thus the god would beget "famed offspring, with faces glowing with refulgent fire."
The upper fire, the Grades affirm, did not shut up its power in matter, nor in works, but in intellect. "For the artificer of the fiery world
is an intellect of intellect!' Saturn, who in the Oracles is the first
fountain, the strong spirit which is beyond the fiery poles, endues
the lower principles with his essence. These, through his
all
pervading
might, "become refulgent with the furrows of inflexible and implac-
able fire." They "are the intellectual conceptions from the paternal
fountain, plucking abundantly' the flower of the fire of ceaseless time."
And that our progress upward is a return to a fiery nature is shown by
these excerpts:
"A
."
"A
duced."
An
echo of
One
of their initiations
is
apparently the analogue of the whole basic structure of religion, represented in a fire drama. In the puberty initiations the lads were
frightened by a large fire lighted near them, being told that the DhurMoolan was about to burn them. This god was supposed to take them
norance
may
ignorance
able
is
old
power of
tradition.
35
God and
the daughters o
men
ing
unworthy progeny
hybrid
divinity.
typical
suggestive.
first
the hail of the fire was mingled with the blood of the Lamb; these
were cast upon earth to consume away its evil." Horus had said that
he came to put an end to evil. At the second angel's blast lightning
flashed forth and u/ent down into the sea, which it changed into
blood. We have seen that a hail of stars or sparks over the earth was
the typical figuration of the descent of the bright deities. The Egyptian ceremony of flinging a blazing cross into the Nile conveys the
same connotation. The deities in incarnation were styled by the Greeks
water-nymphs.
cross
on
fiery serpent
kindred emblem.
The hawk
is
divinized with
When
symbol of
solar fire,
fire.
fell
upon the earth and with his key unlocked the pit
of the abyss, there issued from it clouds of smoke like that which proceeds from a great furnace, and it obscured the light of the sun! That
Lucifer
is to
say, the mingled steam and exhalation from electrolyzed "water"
and "burning flesh," or the carnal nature vivified by currents of deific
potency, rose all around the god and well nigh obscured his inner
glow. And out of the smoke came forth locusts and scorpions, having
power to sting and poison. And these went forth to torment all the
306
on earth; only they could not harm those who had not the
of the Beast on them. The army of horsemen that came forth to
dwellers
mark
battle these
fire."
Another angel descended with a rainbow on his head, his face was
sun for brightness and his feet were resting upon pillars of fire.
This lower fire searched the lives of all on earth and filled with pain
as the
those
who
bore the
mark
of the Beast.
the
Apap
this arch-fiend
and
his associ-
and consumed
daily
urging the reptile to consume the enemies of his father. In the Boo\
Am-Tuat
of
there
is
also a
to
is the
Eye of Ra." Ra
from thy mouth, (who
makest the two lands bright with thy radiance)." The Manes who
addressed as
"Thou who
Lady
of Flames,
come out
The
segment in man. The god came into the natural man to transfigure
him. To achieve this aeonial labor his fire had to burn out slowly the
grosser elements, earthy and moist, by spiritual alchemy and replace
them by subtle and pure essence akin to its own diviner substance. A
Buddhist phrase, "the gross purgations of the celestial fire," attests the
37
nature o the chemistry that must take place. The burning up of dross
to refine pure metal is a glib poetic shibboleth in philosophy, but few
know
that
place in
it is
human
ism
is
And it is significant
higher under the action of fiery spiritual energies.
that the ancients swore, not by the altar, but by the fire which was on
the altar. One would not swear by the impermanent part of his nature,
but by the stable and abiding. This was the fire of soul and conscience.
The inner fire, imprisoned in body, strives to burn its way into flame.
But its fuel is moist and damp green wood and it must first slowly
"the
dry out the resistant mass. The grossly misunderstood phrase,
of obstructing material
is
just this steady consuming
when he notes that his
in
the
Eternal,
then,
(32),
Deuteronomy
Says
sons have sacrificed to "demons, to no-gods, to gods who are utter
wrath of God,"
strangers,
to
new-comers of gods":
"For a
My
wrath
Jias flared
up,
itself,
all it bears,
From
It is
given in the Ritual (Ch. 108) that "the Osiris, triumphant, know'Dweller in his fire' is his name."
eth the name of this serpent.
.
the abode of the gods; he advances through the fire which is about the
home of the gods, who make a way for him, to make him pass onwards,
for
he
is
Horus."
life.
Both were
man, and
the fire within the very borastrologically united in the star Sut-
hawk brought
aborigines.
who had a firebrand, but refused to share it. This was the rebelThe hawk and the pigeon were deputed to get it. The pigeon
made a lunge for it, whereupon the bandicoot desperately hurled it
toward the water to put it out. But the hawk deflected it into the grass
over the sea, which caught fire. The hawk and pigeon (dove) are birds
coot
lion.
of soul-fire, the bandicoot the bird of darkness, a type of the water that
put out the solar fire.
All through the world's Marchen one finds that fire is often dual,
first
being the natural fire, as of lightning, flint-fire and other
forms; the second is a fire that is human in origin, requiring mind to
the
achieve
it.
transforms from black to white (or into the golden hawk) and from
white to black in its passage to and from the underworld, which is
called
Kanukh's
flue.
prayer in the Ritual (Ch. 163) begs the god to "grant that the
flame may leave the fire, wherever it may be, to raise up the hands of
Osiris," which were bandaged to the sides of his inert body in the
39
Lake
of Fire
fire
in order on the
brow
of Osiris and
The Rubric
four fires made
on
his breast,
and
is
fixed
specifies that this chapter shall be reof anointed atrna* cloth, and the fires
be placed in the hands of four men who shall have the names of
the four pillars of Horus written on their shoulders. It is promised that
the soul that undertakes to perform the offices of this chapter of the
shall
Four Blazing Fires each day shall find release from every hall in the
underworld and from the seven halls of Osiris. The four men are the
four guardians of the cardinal points, upholding
ners of his being, or in his four bodies.
says again: "I
Fire, son of Fire, to
am
off."
The Manes
I
man
The
intellect
The
was
lost.
is
called the
keeper of
fire,
the spark-
holder.
Sut
signifies "Fire-stone,"
according to Massey. Oddly enough, lightas the dart of a fiery stone, and it has the
name
flint is a
graphic symbol of the presthe physical world. In the same fashion a
god
buried invisibly within the
body of physical humanity. Flint
ence of hidden
(fire) is
fire in
nurses the
potentiality of the birth of fire within
pent-lightning darted out of the cloud it buried
310
it!
"When
itself
the Ser-
in the earth,
The element
It
was
called
effort, force, a
now
endorsed by
late science.
crystal."
(Ch. 125.)
ultimately.
of the
Lord was
The
darkness his secret place; a smoke issued from his nostrils and devour. and he hurtled stones and coals of fire."
fire out of his mouth
.
ing
He
called the "Lightning-sender." In Exodus (20) the Eternal descended in fire upon a cloud. Here is the mingling of fire and water
is
again.
terribly."
explained later.
In most of these illustrations the
fire
till
the people
all
trembled
alluded to
is
ligence flashing forth to enlighten the natural order. But this fire, in
its contact with the
watery and earthy elements of the carnal self, stirs
in this transformation
Nevertheless
the purifying
up steam, sulphurous
emblem
it is still
fire.
of purgation, so fumigation
Massey:
fire.
Kamite
Vulcan." 4
If, then, the earth is the furnace of fire, there can be no quibbling
about the meaning of the vivid narrative of Shadrach, Meshach and
who were
only another allegory of the solar triadic god, in his three prin3 11
ciples of mind-soul-spirit,
as a fiery furnace. The Manes,
of flesh, typed
now
who
damned,
man'' "at the angle of the pool of
is
fire."
Here
is
the
man and
animal
fire!
In the Psalms
it is
said,
"They go through
fire
and
body
he rose
burning garment
to heaven."
The Boo^
of the
wand in
members
The
boil;
first
when
had
boiled the
them in
fire.
and
was
all
of the process
The immolation
nature after two and a fraction aeons. For she asked permission to
bewail her unfruitfulness for two months in the hills. Hill or hills is a
To burn
312
we
torches,
is
of ex-
tremely apt relevance in the terms of the symbology of fire and water.
is a water container, but these were
pitcher
empty. The water had
been dried up, and the fire burned unquenched. The water of sense
burned out, the only remaining task for the spirit, to consummate its
from
full release
its
prison,
was
to
body. This was achieved in the shattering of the clay pitchers. The
Midianites are the multitude of lower impulses, ever the adversaries,
They flee and vanish the moment they see the divine
glow forth in its full release of hidden power!
The story of Samson, a typical solar hero, provides splendid exemplification of the fire symbology. When he was delivered over to the
Philistines (the lower propensities again) he was bound with two new
But when the Philistines were about to punish him, "the spirit
ropes.
of the Eternal inspired him mightily, the ropes around his arms became like flax that has caught fire, the bonds melted off his hands."
The god within burned away his bonds. A whole chapter of exposition could not add force to the sublime meaning here pictured.
It is appropriate to consider the beautiful emblemism of the "pillar
of cloud by day and of fire by night," whereby the Eternal manifested
his guiding presence with his children on their mundane journey. In
the full glare of the blinding light of divinity, some watery veil is
necessary to intervene between us and the overpowering glory. The
Eternal put his hand over Moses eyes while his glory passed by.
Man's face must be veiled in the presence of deity. God interposes the
veil of matter between us and his hidden spirit. This is the cloud by
day. But in the evolutionary night time, when the soul is deeply subthe enemies.
fire
merged
of
fire. It is
needs
light.
sible.
The
gross physical sense of the moving pillars is imposmarching column of some two million people, and some
would presuppose
to rest at night,
their
whereas the
literal
turnal march.
3*3
Then
there
is
humanity.
Many
nations felt
most powerful
it
to
known, death by
burial alive
garded
The
ancients
knew
that
if
on the hearth of
was
life
fire
re-
out.
go
kindled in
the moist nature of the earthy man was permitted to die out, it was
the second and irretrievable death to the soul. That portion or frag-
ment of deity that was sent into the flesh could be divulsed entirely
from its linkage to heaven the silver cord could be cut and the soul
lost,
is
to
for the rest of the aeonial cycle. The 64th chapter of the Ritual
be recited in order that the person may not die a second time,
may come forth and escape from the fire." To escape the second
death the Manes had to keep the sacred fire aglow.
In the elaborate ceremony conducted over the mummy, there was
"but
one
act
The Rubric to
its
meaning.
mummy
and a type of the hidden things of the other world.' 6 Again we see
the scholar's mind stultified by want of that one key to ancient books
that this world is Amenta. For the mystery pertains to the hidden
things of no other world than this one we know. But it is, of course,
:
314
The
boled by a bush.
more
mother's
tree.
new
No
with more
felicity to
the
idea of
life
the "golden unbu" In the texts the unbu is the symbol of the son reborn from the dead father. There is a figure of the disk of light raying
to
now
is
is
Adam, being
to flower out at
Yule
its
summit
in radiant colors.
And we
set fire to
the
log.
An
and
my mother
in the abode of
is
"I
Nut." Again:
occultation," or in the fleshly world of hiding. Possession of the golden bough in classical mythology was the passport of
release
3*5
much mystical,
knowledge and of life," There is doubtless
other occult symbolism in the sign; but in relation
and
astrological
to the human situation its meaning seems to be simpler. Man's life
here is cast between the two fires of heaven and earth, the bright fire
the tree o
two
They
Hence
are of course
his life is cut
him on both
nature.
The
doubleness of the
fire
sides,
that has
come
to deify us
is
an-
in the line in the Ritual: "Pepi is the country (or the god)
the
Lands, whose flame receives its two
Setit,
conqueror of the
are bathed in "the Pool of the Double Fire" The
nounced
Two
Two
portions" We
Man
is
to con-
new
creation.
the
The
Two
pacifies
"he cultivates the crops
on both
John
Again our
by "scripture."
lamblichus
tells
icked shall be put out and the spark of his fire shall not shine. The
be dark in his tabernacle, and his candle shall be put out
jht shall
ith
line
upon"
if
jht
and
.y
his salvation
light shall
we
sown
"When
He
rs
a flame of
fire.
is
a sun
and a shield"
the pillar
id the cloud, the meaning of which, clear at last, is simply spirit and
Latter. When there was darkness over the land of
Egypt, "the Israellight in their dwellings." And this is not speaking of rush
in
Egyptian huts, but spiritual light in physical bodies. Jesus
jhts
as "the sun of righteousness" and at the end of human evolution
is
had
he righteous shall shine li\e the sun" And if there is needed a point.ank utterance from the Bible to cover our claim, it might be found
the line
xies of generations
Many
of
The
rebirth
is
317
of earth.
first
bringer
Mary Mag-
dalene
who
myth
is
human
and
earliest
benefactor of the
feet,
way
It
He
The
^
r"
its
~,
heads,
j^
jsj
six
666
was the
head
figurative equivalent of the loss of the
or intellect to be regained in the evolutionary sequel.
318
The
minus one
Man,
six.
of
its
then,
is
to restore or heal.
head of
one.
intelligence.
The
temporary
There
fabled Mt.
is still
Meru
more
and
west. Six
being intersected by
ranges running
typed by the hexagon
or space in six directions" a symbol of our life in this three-dimensional world, where the cube of six sides is the typical shape of any
existential object. The six parallel ranges are the six planes beneath
east
six parallel
is
the topmost level, where the "heart of Bacchus" was preserved when
the mental body was dismembered. Says Proclus in the Timaeus: "The
Framer made the heavens six in number, and for the seventh he cast
into the midst the fire of the sun." This
six
nature's
first injec-
mal-man,
or Mind.
is
sufficiently sensitized to
Job (5 19) relates six and seven mysteriously in a remarkable statement: "He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven, there shall
no evil touch thee/' Trouble is associated with six and deliverance from
it with seven. Life is
captive and harassed during its long peregrina:
tions
upward through
dom
from
it
its
be cultivated for six years and to lie fallow the seventh. But
when the Messiah came and his Egyptian name lu-em-hetep means
"he who comes seventh" he was allegorized as coming under the
dominance of the six lower forces; and so the number seven later took
on in the texts the evil implications of the number six and is the nu-
were
to
319
merical type of servitude. Jacob is made to serve seven years for Leah
and an added seven for Rachel. In some old texts the ten plagues of
Egypt were
originally
The profounder
seven.
significance
of the
first
spiritual
And
went up
into
divinity.
the
stitution.
And man,
in composition!
The "year of the
physically,
comes
close to
The sun
zodiac.
them to
passes through
achieve its mastery of all life. His victory in the seventh kingdom
the beginning. The Christ adds the
regains for him all that was lost in
natural order. The seventh and "lost"
seventh head to the
his
own
man
decapitated
Pleiad will be recaptured by Orion, the mighty hunter, Egypt's astrofor Horus. The Christ will restore the lost light.
logical figure
The Titans, of whom Prometheus was one, appear in a dual and
character in the mythology. They are both man's
somewhat
confusing
of theology
good angel and his devil. The solution of this enigma
will be fully expounded in the next chapter. But, briefly, it can be said
that the Titans of mythology match the Lucifer character of theology.
Teitans,
abyss."
(Theogony
I, 207; II,
717).
The
fire
who brought
us our divine
from the empyrean, was in part converted into the Beast when
320
his
Titanic intellect
his life-blood
went
with
and
myths tend
this is a natural
higher mentality did commingle with the lower instincts. The god
who was angelic, because untested, in heaven, became demoniacal on
earth,
attribute
is
altered as
he indeed
"suffers
by
by Massey and others.
The meaning
is
and despoiled
was in turn worsted
planetary cosmology
on
its
own
plane.
The
functions
Saturn were alleged to have been transferred to the sun, who became
the new lord of the six. Saturn is identical with the Egyptian Sebek
(Sevekh) whose
in the early
deity
ruler
forces
with completion,
as their
"The sun and Saturn both became the lord of the seventh day, the Sabbath, the day of rest and peace, which is Hept, [Hetep] the name of No. 7.
But in the cult of Sebek . . the original of the solar Sabazius, son of
.
Kubele, the sun and Saturn were combined as Sabat, Sabaoth, or Sapt,
which, read as Sebti, shows the dual form of Seb, for the sun and Saturn
.
.
Sabazius was reported to have been torn into seven parts by the
.
Titans, corresponding to the seven days of the week and the seven planets
10
to which they were dedicated."
.
That
is
to say,
of intellect
name
to the day of peace that follows the hurly-burly of the six secular
In
days.
general we devote six days to bodily interests; the seventh
should go to the interests of the soul. Ancient discernment of primary
321
constitution
is itself
And
ment
is
which
stills
the storm
on the passional
waters and brings peace to chaotic nature, based on its six lower mindless energies. lu-em-hetep (Imhotep of the Greeks) is he who comes to
"The radiance
it,
from
in a verse
It is
ment
is
"For
this
same chapter
that a very
noteworthy
state-
made:
six years
crops, but
pick up
you worship
their
gods
it
let
will
endanger you,"
The
of
it
if
from unplanted
How
left alone,
there
would
fields?
The command
most recondite
fact
modern
was
ears, it
the teaching of the abstruse biological science of old that at the discomponent principles of the multiple human
322
both sufficient vitality to preserve it from disintegraa semblance of mental automatism. In this condition it was
entity, possessing
tion,
and
utilized
It
mentitious matter.
forms of
life.
Our
tion
in creative evolution
made
picks
to serve
up our emo-
it as a model. Man's
part
he imagines. Every phase
this item seems strange, it
his
is
The animal
or grade of
is a
passage directly pointing to it, since
The seventh
intelligible in its literal sense.
round in all cycles of life in nature is always the epoch at which soul
level
and retires to its
consummates its work in an
occultism,
mean nothing
organism
proper
above, leaving the physical bases of life to stand without further cultivation until the beginning of the next series of seven rounds. During
the retirement the lower animal
We
have already equated "the poor" and also "the people" with the Gentiles, who were the "sons of men" in contrast to the "Sons of God";
the
humans
in
whom
made
con-
And
the second startling item of this excerpt asserts that what those
in a third order of
"poor" semi-humans leave may be picked up,
This
is informative indeed. The
wild
the
animals.
process
gradation, by
3 23
By
measure of divine
is it
vivification.
the
possible to see
meaning of the
final
hint of danger expressed by the line: "for if you worship their gods it
will endanger you." This work has already set forth the peril involved
for the heavenly visitant in taking residence in animal forms, if it peritself to
"worship their gods" of sensuality and beastliness.
mitted
and three
lifted
up
to the
God when
(4) Paul clearly states that when we were children in evolution "we
were in bondage to them that by nature are no gods." We were in
slavery to the elementals of the earth and of the air, as he distinctly
not to come under the power of these
says! He warns his brethren
elementals, as
it
would endanger
with the
fire
symbolism.
They
are
like tears
from
were
his
offspring,
centrally nucleated by his solar fire. He was the parent of the Kumaras.
Stars were held to be a race of higher beings, having souls of the
essence of light coming from the sun. "I have shed my seed (of light)
and
11
In the Boo\ of
wished
sun's children
of
to his sons.
Khabsu the
Seb. Souls in
were
to
says: "I
Adam and
made
Eve,
thee of the
called Ruti, or
stars are
synonymous with
Amenta were
represented by
in their resurrection they appeared above the
324
name
of
stars.
is
why
mankind was
guardian
the
Lower Egypt
of
their
our
in
were in
man
is
deity
his star.
of seven stars
and gave
drew the
first circle
or cycle of time
and
periodicity to
From
mother
lives as well.
who wrote
that at the
dawn
of creation
all
shouted for joy and "the Morning Stars sang together" (70^38). The
music of the spheres began with the first swing into symmetrical order
would seem
mar
the music
until
it
learns of itself
anew
may
contra-
rhythm and
measure to a
a reasoned or an
to fix the
we have
who had broken
before. In a
former reference
complain o
the spirits
The Rubric
to
for
he
shall
be established
(Ch. 102)
"Let
me
be
among
It is
promised
(Ch. 164) that "he shall become a star of heaven." Has orthodoxy held
out to its votaries any such thrilling cosmic view of their future? The
Osiris-Nu pleads (Ch. 188) "May I enter into the house of his body,
which, behold, hath become one of the starry gods!" This would be
the higher spiritual body, not the corporeal. It is said to the soul:
:
art purified with the libation of the stars. The stars that never
bear thee up; thou enterest in the place where thy father is, where
Keb [Seb] is ... thou becomest a soul therein." The soul (Pepi)
to be an imperishable star before thee."
pleads "Make thou this Pepi
The acme of directness is attained in the next statement: "Pepi is a
"Thou
set
To
Teta, the soul, it is said: "Thou seizest the hands of the imthou art one of the gods." "The imperishable stars ... for behold
thee." Pepi is addressed:
perishable stars follow and minister unto
star."
"Thou
art the
traversest
Again "Pepi takes his seat among you, O ye star gods of the
finally in grand simplicity stands the categorical pronouncement: "Thy soul is a living star at the head of his brethren."
For the six elementary powers were his natural brothers, of whom he,
like Joseph and like Jesus, was made the chief or head. From brethren
they were reduced to children when the god principle took charge and
synthesized their functions. The fiery soul of intellect became king of
the lower six elementary powers in man's make-up. The Christos came
Osiris."
Tuat."
And
force.
Amenta
until the
day of
his manifestation in
the heliacal rising of the star Sothis (Sirius), the morning star of the
in Egypt, which heralded the birth of Horus, as the opening of
year
the year. John dwelt in the wilderness until the time of his theophany
or "showing forth in Israel" (L,u\e 1:80). The soul was held out in
the wilderness of the six elemental energies until the arrival of the
Christ. Anup was only a star god, but as such he was the precursor of
the greater solar light. As the sun in its splendor far outshines the total
galaxy of the stars, so the deity whose association with man was
presaged by the star-god, was far to surpass in glory any product of
And
this is
made
of the
born of
nature.
The
kingdom
woman, that is,
god
clear
is
Much of the
planetary; the third racial and individual in mankind.
endless confusion in the interpretation of creation legends has arisen
because of failure to distinguish which of these creations was being
What
is
the
larged picture of the anthropogenesis. As man was formed in
creative
of
and
the
the
likeness
Elohim,
seven-rayed
Logoi, the
image
septenary constitution pictured in the first and second creations appertains to him by reflection. All ancient philosophy referable to man was
see the
built upon the human constitution as a septenate of powers.
We
creation in the
hebdomadal formation of
all
first
physical creation;
the second in the septenary solar systems; the third in the human
formed of seven principles or natures. Of the first the Mother alone,
the Virgin,
Isis,
Hathor, Rerit,
Ishtar,
become
Saturn, and the Sun, as the leader of the seven Rishis, Archangels,
Elohim, Kabiri, were the progenitors. Of the third the twelve legions
of Asuras, Kumaras, Titans, Deva-Angels, Rudras, Adityas, who came
as Prometheus and Lucifer, individually as sons of the solar
collectively
radiance, sons of Ra, or sparks of the divine fire, were the chief agents.
They still supervise their continuing creation from their citadel deep
within the shrine of man's life. In one form or another, solar light,
essence,
power
is
of solar glory.
sanctuary of life dwells the spark, the ray, the flame
sun is the central type and embodiment of the highest divinity.
The
The
the soul in
its
spends
its
aeonial
myth os,
Septet
is
The
And
Morning
women, the two women,
feminine always types the natural as distinct from the spiritual, the
religious myth depicts the youthful solar god as being born of woman,
328
Star giveth birth to him." In another it says: "Pepi giveth birth to the
Morning Star." The apparent contradiction is a matter of viewpoint,
or a matter like the priority of hen or egg. Did John the Baptist bring
Jesus, or Jesus John? John himself solves the riddle by saying: "He
who cometh after me is preferred before me." The star brings the
Of
the
coming god,
as of the
Christ, the Ritual says: "His light appeareth in the sky like that of a
star in the East." There, in finale, is our Star of Bethlehem!
great
The
is
told:
being that of septenary man. That the god in his coming was to enter the waters of incarnation and the mires of earth is
betokened by the following: "He places thee like the Morning Star in
ization, the last
come
a star out of
And
ing Star."
cast
upon
the earth!
Here
is
In the Logia
beheld yet another sign in the heavens, which was marvelous in
these details are
329
its
in
its
human
race.
custom in religious
to keeping alive the Vestal Fire. In the Old Testament all cereal was
to be mixed with oil and sprinkled with incense a double seal of
divinity.
The Manes
is
we
thee,
"Thou
read: "Incense
One becomes
is
pure with
presented unto
art
gift of that
great
was often pictured as seven-barbed. This usage estabthe seven-forked emanation that endefinitely as a figure for
Lightning,
God on
lishes
it
earth,
resident in latent
gendered the creation. It is the type of a fiery power
in the air and water elements. So the god is latent in the water of
form
The
physical nature.
swift
power
was
typical of the
word
for divinity
which
translates "light-
peoples had thunder-gods, and the Bible is full of allusions to thunder. The fiery dart of Intelligence into the bosom of the
ning."
Many
worlds produces or carries the Voice of the Logos out into nature, in
seven primary tones. The Hebrew male god of thunder, Kak, or lacbu,
probably equates with the Hindu Vach, the Word. As the forerunner
and prophet of rain, the thunder held the office of Mercury and Anup,
the announcers of divine advent.
We
fire,
she
is
the soul
come
to desolation
and
on
be dight with
flame that ramifies out in seven tongues is the
original figure of the seven-branched candlestick. Deity comes to earth
to manifest himself in seven flaming aspects of his being. And still
fire.
radiance again.
sisters
fits
herself to
The
33 1
XV
NOXIOUS FUMES AND LURID
Chapter
FLARES
one
from
its
primary bearing, and has afflicted the mind of mankind with
so outrageous a delusion, that every consideration
points to the necessity of a vigorous handling in the interests of sanity and social benefit.
The perversion of original teaching regarding the lower fire has cast
332
For the
of "the devil." It
is
too
never to
tive
his
of truth, unless taken purely as the symbology they are. For Satan
the god himself on earth! This broad assertion is incontestable. It
is
is
proven by the very name. The descending god was the Light-bringer,
Lucifer, the bright and morning star, which is precisely the character
Biblical Revelation!
The
Christian devil,
the hated serpent of evil, Satan, is Lucifer, the god of light on earth,
Prometheus, the "benefactor of mankind," "the god" himself.
Indoctrinated orthodoxy
ghastly mistake will
may
identification.
rise to
protest the
It
Some
will be in vain.
Erudite theology has at times perhaps known the truth, but has kept
an advised silence. The general mind has lost the key to the mystery.
By dropping the name Lucifer and clinging to that of Satan alone, the
mischief has been bred and perpetuated. That Satan and Jesus are
as true as that
identical
is
god and
are the
two
of the
aspects or manifestations
one.
They
may
is
333
same
force. It
on
For an ancient
DEMON
earth.
esoteric
"the devil
is
problem,
As
the world does not possess such knowledge in full measure, the
in some obscurity.
great problem is enveloped
But the sages of the early dawn vouchsafed a portion of this knowledge deemed sufficient to yield to reflection an intelligent comprehension of the issues involved and a philosophic attitude toward them.
The rank of the gods sent to earth, their endowments and capabilities,
their attitude toward their mission, their obligation in relation to past
dereliction, and the implications of their tenanting the animal bodies
theoassigned to them, were broadly revealed to the initiates and
and
all
interests
relations
an
these
the
dida^toi of
early period. With
"evil"
are
concatinated.
This
of
the
term
connotations
intimately
knowledge, elaborated to much detail, was the treasure of the Mystery
Societies and Brotherhoods, and formed the esoteric motivation of their
regimes of discipline, instruction and consecration. The modern revival of interest in this
The
mine
is
the
making
it
difficult to
know
334
is
and
heart.
The
difficulty,
made by
the
mistaken
leading.
Good can
only be absolute
if
and
this
can not be, since there can not be two different and opposing absolutes.
The
absolute
is
evil alike.
There
is
an
abstract
and
we would
statements about
it
things
must be thought
of
by us
as
good.
is
empty sound.
are
predication whatever.
It
all
The
ultimate
It is
is
and relates itself to itself as spirit and matter, positive and negamale and female, light and dark. And, be it proclaimed in clarion
tones, the whole matter of the theological bogie of the devil, or incarnate evil, arose solely from the miscarriage of the dramatic necesan adverse, opposing and relatively evil character to
sity of ascribing
the negative or material pole of life force! The bifurcation of the Unmanifest into the two nodes of being to become manifest threw both
each other. The spiritual, or
poles in contrariety and opposition to
be
active and conscious end came to
represented as the "good" and the
end
carried
the dramatic imputation of the
inert and negative material
of
their poised interrelation with
"evil." The two can never step out
lute
tive,
each other, since they have existence only in the terms of such relation. They are only and always relative to each other. Good and evil
have no
human meaning
its
Manifestation of
life
335
two
comes
"the opposer," of the active building power of life. This is the role that
has all too easily become misunderstood for one of absolute evil, when
should have been judiciously envisaged as but relative, and as conducive to the awakening of the positive energies of life itself. For
without the necessity of exerting itself and deploying its as yet un-
it
He
Hence that which in human and worldly affairs wears all the outward appearance of evil defeat, disaster, loss, crime, treachery is to
It subserves a karmic
purpose,
the challenging of some hidden power to come awake and rouse itself
to function. Later on, its hidden beneficence is seen, and we say
Now
something nobler.
It is
the antithesis of
good and
evil,
336
of the bird of
life,
and the
resultant deposit of
wisdom
in our
own
And
overleaps
of as
good
can
is
opposed by
evil;
bogieman
simple-minded
Our
picture,
and hence in
mask
their beneficence.
More
piercing vision
would
it
The
assumes
its
apparent
grim
aspect.
sin ? Again has a baleful theology terrorized the minds
of millions with an apparition that is as unsubstantial as the bugaboo
And what is
of
evil.
situation
337
the
it can become creative in new generations.
entified spirits in the laws and nature and motivathe
of
entangling
tions of the flesh, not to add the world and "the devil/' and its free
Sin
which alone
is
nance of these
The
the opportunity of manifesting her creative faculties through her conThis is grandly refreshing amid the welter of
junction with the body.
life
of sense with
grown up in the
wake of a morbid religionism turned ascetic when the lighter play of
drama was burdened with the lugubrious weight of misconceived ideas
of sin and the devil.
A portion or degree of cosmic divine spirit was to become creative
in man, and was sent here to try its intellectual powers upon a formative work. It had thence to show its lordship over the elements and
the matter with which creative intelligence had to work. It had to be
thrown in strategic relation to the. world of matter at its appropriate
place and station. Like both Jesus and Jonah, it had to be thrown into
the "sea," to subdue its ungoverned raging. It had then to take charge
of the seven lower furies and range them under its higher command.
The unregulated play of these subordinate and irrational forces of
sense in the field of
life,
and
ually rises
two
forces,
the soul,
powerful at
to assert
first
its
still
338
As
its rise
become
parent of each
and Eve
stigma of
social
of
offshoots,
its
Edenic
cal
spiritual
mode
clings to
it.
of procreation.
possibility
of regaining the
human
And
and Virgin Birth doctrines have been haloed about with intimations
of the same sort. This is all, however, the result of incomprehension
turning charming and luminously suggestive typology into crass
realism.
Why
does
God
create?
Why
is
he not content
announced
is
own
it,
perfection?
339
long
frame*
Any man
yearning to
rise
muscular activity outdoors, is a sufficient analogue. The opposition, tension and zest for the game are
the two teams of matter and spirit.
provided by the playing forces on
him adequate thrills, since in it he will
The
or battle will
work
game
yield
coming to function still unevolved latencies of his own measureless being. Each act will enhance his sense of power and glory. That
he may live again and enjoy a new joust with matter he must plunge
his nucleated units of consciousness into a state of "death" and burial
in material inertia. Paul asks if this is evil; and his own answer, overlooked and never understood, must become the keynote of a new
world attitude to life: "Never! The law was holy, just and altogether
find
righteous."
There
is
word
and connec-
built
up over the
is
still
"astral"
molds
left
men on
There
34
end or
head.
The
materials are
now
ready for
St.
Paul
to use in
making
for
"Which
things are an
The name
Sinai, then, is
most
revelatory.
great
341
and matter, and that all growth is the outcome of the "war"
between these two energies. Clearly apprehended in a philosophical
view, this is knowledge of high verity, knowledge that stabilizes the
on the ultimate beneficence of the scheme. On the
mind with a
spirit
grasp
distortion of it is a horrendous fallacy, devasto faith in the salutary operation of cosmic law. Between the
tating
two there is the whole vast gulf of the difference between sanity and
other
dementia.
composure and the practical certainty of a monstrous
The devil is just the god on earth; and how the radiant son of the
into the dour
morning, bright angelic Lucifer, became transmogrified
person of Satan
is
and
for
humanity. This problem could have been solved readily enough if the
Western mind had not lost the data for thinking. Logic can not proceed
when the due premises are wanting. These lie buried in forgotten
books dealing with cosmology and anthropology. To supply them
to modern reflection is a major purpose of this work.
again
The
basic item
is
the duality of
man
the god. The animal is unmoral, incapable of either morality or immorality. He has no sense of good and evil. He has not eaten of the
fruit of the tree of good and evil. The "god" in man is the first being
who
in evolution
steps out
342
thrown its opposing forces into the duality of spirit and matter, positive and negative, and provided thus the basis for experience. Consciousness can not
is
come
to
self-consciousness
unless
the subjective
aspect
or rather, as Plotinus adds, are really non-existent, until they interact
in "opposition." It is this "opposition" that stabilizes them in relation
to
each other.
after the
scious.
Monism
worlds
And
is
are! It takes
both
Nux
won
and Lux
to
make
life
and
con-
The opening
the beast.
It
marks the
gence. He stepped across the line from the kingdom of bondage to the
natural mindless forces into potential rulership of them. He ceased
being the son of Hagar, the bond-woman, and became the son of
Sarah, the free-woman. He became, collectively, children of the promise and of the adoption, sons and heirs of the Father. He stepped
from bondage under the law to the possible "liberty of the sons of
God." Liberty! The animal can not sin; man can. He has this freedom! He may choose good or evil But he must face the consequences. These are the terms of his evolutionary education. The good
or evil consequences would instruct him. Choose he well or badly,
karmic compensation would advise. But his new freedom was his
highest prerogative, his badge of incipient divinity. That he was prone,
of necessity, to make many bad choices until his karmic education had
sobered and enlightened him is indicated from a most significant
passage from Plotinus:
"They began to revel in free will; they indulged in their own movement;
wrong path. Then it was that they lost the knowledge that
they sprang from that divine order. They no longer had a true vision of
they took the
the
Supreme or
343
love of
it,
upon
it;
so they broke
away
as far as they
were able."
the whole story of whatever there is intrinsic in the perverted idea of the "fall." It was Just the fall of the child learning to
walk! It was nothing but the floundering of ignorant innocence before
was inherent in the very
it has
grown wise through trial and error. It
more or less inevitable.
was
It
conditions of the evolutionary situation.
in the vicissitudes of
absorbed
be
were to
And its "evil"
This
tells
consequences
He
god
came to
suffer
many
his
things, because
him on
his arrival.
coming threw a
stable
tition
is
He
re-
sult.
god who could not do evil is a marionette, not a god. There is
no merit in compulsory good. Reward must come with victory. Trial
and error was to result in knowledge, which therefore could not be
its
Wisdom
start.
Freedom
and ignorance are the two ingredients in the problem of evil. Error
and blunder were means to an end. The smooth harmony of natural
law was bound to be thrown, for a time, into discord. This is the
meaning behind the
344
may
be seen
possibly
let
new freedom
it.
While the god was thus to be buried in the very belly of the great
Abtu fish, his immunity from complete drowning and loss of his deific
life was provided for. It is hinted at in various
typographs. He was to
be protected, as Plato says, like an oyster in its shell. He was as the
fish in the water, that would be able to breathe even under the water.
Again he was shown as learning to walk on the water without sinking into its depths. The Ritual of Egypt speaks of his being immersed
in the water of the underworld, but not drowned thereby. Other types
portray
prominent in the Ritual for the "dead." More than one passage repeats
that while "my dead body lies in the grave, my soul is in heaven."
"Thy material body liveth in Tattu and in Nif-urtet, and thy soul
liveth in heaven each day." "Heaven holdeth thy soul, O Osiris Aufankh, and earth holdeth thy form" (Ch. 163). "Thy soul is in heaven,
and thy body is under ground" (Ch. 169). "Ra grasps his hands, a
spirit
parts are
ground
He
is
(if
through
he
is
on earth
his
physical body.
All this situation was part of a larger divine plan. The god was to
touch the tip of the head or inchoate mental faculty of the animal with
the flame of his intellect, but not further embrace the animal's life.
was to light the wick of intelligence for the lower being. He was
to kindle a fire in the body, but not be burned thereby. But it is said
He
that the
the work.
to
345
them, swept them into forgetfulness, and they truly lost their divine
heads and were carried down into sensuous life and sexual procrea-
The passage from Plotinus tells why the first essay of Phaethon to
drive the chariot of the Sun resulted in a wild orgy of uncontrolled
tion.
movement. The seven chargers drawing the chariot proved unmanageable for the untested powers of the young god. He gave himself to
the delight of a wild revel in the sensual enjoyment of life, and the
adventure tingled through his blood as he indulged his fancy
in free creational direction of energies. His drive was outward, and he
thrill of
interests of the
lower vehicle.
And
here lurks
and
He
threw the added power of his own dynamism into the life of animal
man. This is the evil aspect of his kindling a fire on earth, or in the
sea around the earth. He in fact kindled a fiercer fire under the cal-
lower
human
constitution,
newt, the snake; of herbs gathered under the light of waning moon; of every noxious and venomous thing; and under it all
burned the fire of the god! Around flitted the three witches, the maslizard, the
And
as
principles of mind-soul-spirit, the solar triad, poking the fire.
they revel around the eerie scene, the fire burns and the caldron
being
spiritual sublimation, so that it returns to heaven as vapor, in the midst of which the
geni can be seen taking form. So the animal ingredients are trans-
"He himself will captivate the sons of men by the allurements of cunning
delusions and will imbrue them with blood and
monthly pollution/'
346
Yet both
parties find
consciousness
with the fuel of his pride, rebellion and lust for sense, and enjoying
with the animal the mutual exchange of their polarized forces. Fantasy
his body reeking with sweat (Cf. the
.sets up the portrait
bloody sweat
of Gethsemane), his countenance grimy and lurid in the glare of the
fire made murky with the commingled smoke, steam, ashes and soot
(Sut) arising from his effort to "burn" the damp green material. This
the ancient ficture drawn by high poetic fancy to convey the recondite philosophical principles actually involved; and the failure of
heavy ignorant zealotry to catch its fanciful import has cost a crassis
The Logia
of this tradition:
"There was one who reigned over them all, even the Star of the Mornwhich had fallen upon the earth, Lucifer, but they named him Abaddon, for he was the Destroyer."
ing,
Here was in fact proud Lucifer, rebel against the too long protracted passivity of life in the higher worlds, come to earth, baptized
in the waters of the Jordan River on the boundary between the two
kingdoms, kindling a fire in the water itself, throwing his reed or
rod into the Nile of earth and turning it into blood, injecting his own
fiery energies into the sluggish life of the beast, himself torn
tracted, abased
and
and
dis-
semblance of his
God
also
lusts of their
own
hearts,
dishonor
to
their
own
whom
from
between themselves:
bodies
lie,
.
."
Who
is
With
its
From
self
sprang
physically
that sense of revulsion at the change, the shadow of which has clung
to his consciousness in spite of all rationalization or sophistication.
The
soul sensed
reflected this
its
answer to her question, that his kingdom shall come "when you shall
have trampled underfoot the garment of shame" and returned from
the divided life of sex to androgyneity.
If the sense of shame was not inherent in the anthropological situation at the beginning, it was developed and strengthened by the wild
license or "Harlotry" in
which the
first
God
indulged with the females of the higher animal species after reaching
earth. There seems to have been a long period of sexual miscegenation,
the experience of which would have imprinted the reaction of shame
lastingly
upon
is
mind
348
moment
Reverting for a
to the
philosophic analysis of
evil, it is
desirable
"unmixed
an
eternal idea,
evil;
but moral evil is mixed with good, and so far as it is good, it subsists from
divinity; but so far as it is evil, it is derived from another cause which is
impotent. For evil
is
nothing
else
than a greater or
less
declination, depar-
and privation from the good itself ... in the same manner as
darkness from (want of) the sun. It is debility and absence of power. And
that which is evil to partial natures, is not evil to the universe."
ture, defect
Christian aberrancy
only a by-product of the good on its march to full development. Proclus has further enlightenment for us, which should not be
missed
Evil
is
"Evil in souls
is
natures and to the good. Hence arises their descent to things subordinate,
their oblivion, their malefic inclination to things conversant with body,
and their discord with reason. According to some, matter is that which is
primarily
evil,
and
is
evil itself,
and the
from
their
But we owe
evil
to
Thomas Taylor
a reminder that
it is
error to impute
gratuitously to matter:
"This Proclus denies and says that both body and matter originate from
and that both are the progeny of divinity. He adds . . that souls
sinned before they were thrust into matter; that there are not two principles (matter and deity); and that matter is neither good nor evil, but a
.
deity
last
itself."
with
making
to
it
and systematic thought. Modern spiritual cultbe enlightened with the assurance that matter is in itself
neither good nor evil, but neutral. It has no moral quality in itself, but
receives such from the good or evil use made of it, as any mechanical
of matter in evolution
ism needs
to
invention.
It
is
to
of the good,
and
is
hypostasization
inane.
and
Whatever seems
evil
personification of
evil exists
is
discovered to be equally
"To divinity, therefore, nothing is evil, not even of the things which are
For he [the
called evil. For he uses these also to a good purpose
.
The
35
healing is effected. Fittingly the Logia are found saying: "The Beast
that was, that is, and that is soon to be cast down into the bottomless
pit,
is
made full of
The Beast
dwelling
is
in the lake of
fire,
banquet
"eats the livers of the princes." This personation is identical with that
of the Beast in Rev elation (10) who makes war on the "Logos of
God," but
The
is
defeated and cast into the lake that blazes with brimstone.
angel invites
daily to
process,
in vital
economy would probably enable us to read further astonishing significance in the symbology. The myth may perhaps simply
the
signify the soul's periodical visitation to earth to pluck the fruits of
purgative and purificatory experience, by which through bodily suffering evil is transmuted into good, as the liver cleanses impurities of
the body.
human
sets
breast:
as
you
objects of
rest of
men."
Again
must be
human
use of the
and upon the elements of the body. "Ire" is "fire" with the
Greek digamma dropped off, and "wrath" is the original fire of crea-
efficacy in
tive force.
Paul's admonition
was
to "abstain
from
fleshly
lusts
which war
the head of a
head
of a
list
list of
corrupt practices,
of virtues.
Through
meaning
at the
the god, then, became regarded as the instigator of all evil in the
moral situation. It is noteworthy that in the Jonah legend, the god,
storm-tossed vessel, is found, by casting lots,
asleep in the hold of the
features here deserve elucidation.
to be responsible for the storm.
Two
He
who
The
should have
god,
asleep.
control the sweeping surges of sensual thought (water agitated by air,
mind, symbolically) was asleep. While he lay inert the storm of air
and water raged. He was thus responsible, for he was sent to be the
master of these very elements. He waked in time and his destiny de-
was
manded
that
and
them.
still
he be thrown
alert to
quieted.
Next, he lay in the hold. This was called Akar (Agar, Hagar), a
of the organregion of Amenta. It types the lower self, the lower part
had
and
his divine
He
been
man.
carnal
the
natural,
ism,
captivated
genius and
memory were
ences of incarnation.
belly of the mortal
He
man.
And
narcotized by the oblivion-producing influlay in a torpor in the hold of the ship, the
from benefactor
to
became
demon,
found in the assumption a ready subterfuge for percruelty. Since embodiment had to be found for the Evil
bigots everywhere
secution
and
352
was
let loose an
and there
orgy of vicious despotism in religion that
has stained the record of Christianity almost past repair. Nothing but
philosophical understanding of the real issues involved will clarify
the error in religious attitude on this matter. Nothing but the realization that Satan was and is himself the angel of light, our heavenly
benefactor, will restore sober sanity to a race rendered next to demoniacal by an infernal theology.
There
at first
is
documentary evidence
regarded as the
evil
Agathodaernon, or Guardian
Spirit.
the
is
Good
was not
genius of
The
Ritual (Ch.
83) affirms that "The Great One shining with his body as a God is
was the seven-headed serSut." Sut was strictly not the evil one.
He
The same
"Whatever may be the explanation of the fact, it is understood that, notwithstanding the hatred with which he was afterwards regarded, this god
Seth, or Set, was at one time highly venerated in Egypt. Bunsen says that
who
monuments and
the
353
This
is
father of intelligent man was the Titanic host, typified by the fiery
infant humanity as the bestower of light
serpent. Once revered by
later suffered a transformation of imand life, this collective
being
of all ill. Some of
puted character and became thought of as the father
the dramatic implications worked over into popular belief, and the
dramatic character of the Adversary overbore the true understanding
of the hidden beneficence of the son of the morning.
The
away from
intelligible
meaning.
It
sense.
Chemically
is
a slower
of
burning, as in rust. All decomposition is a burning. Disintegration
Hence
is a
a
of
a
burning.
superior
potency
by operation
composite
all
life is
thought of as the
energic activity among the elements of
of fire. Man's whole life, then, is cast in the midst of a veritable
work
welter of fiery forces, and so Egypt described the world as the lake of
fire, or again "the crucible of the great house of flame" and "the Pool
of the Double Fire." "Higher" fires and "lower" fires, or the rays of
cosmic thought and the purely chemical energies embosomed in matter, called by the Egyptians "the seven Uraeus divinities," unite on
earth in a combat
To
divine afflatus of
divinization.
spirit,
Coming
purge his floor." The floor is the physical base of life. The higher
potency will cleanse the lowest. More than once the Egyptian Ritual
harps on the soul's "acquiring dominion over his feet." The rite of
feet-washing can be immediately divined as a type of cleansing the
lowest nature. Texts in the Ritual state that he
all
he needs to do
354
who
has
won
to insure salvation.
control
"And
I will turn
my hand upon thee and purely
and take away thy tin." After purging his floor,
wheat into the garner; but the chaff he will burn
thy dross
purge away
"he will gather
his
ment
Some semblance
The
latter is instinct
at least of the
conceived from the fact that even in the distorted rendering, the souls
in hell burn, but do not burn up. Their torment, says orthodoxy, is
eternal; and the true and sane original meaning of this whole doctrine
"aeonial."
for
last
in-
struction
and
am
Manes. "In one of the hells the shades (Manes) are seen burning, but
they were able to resist the fire, and consequently it is said 'The shades
live; they have raised their -powers'"
The lower fires burn with smudge and murk; they must be trans:
muted
to
its
quality
is
The
briars, thorns
sensualism, which
briars
and thorns,
will
flames.
fire.
is
She
made
is
355
air,
swing,
this instance
it
is
became once
more
in turn.
As Sekhet
is
Massey's studies
We
356
is
instruc-
"The
was
itself
She
serpent-goddess
Heh
first
is
called the
serpent that
power that
sting.
The
first
existed invisibly. The fury of the solar fire suggested the fangname of the Sirocco, the very breath of fire, identifies itself with
Serkh, the (Egyptian) name of the Scorpion, which further shows the
hard form of Serf, the blast of burning breath." 2
must be paid
fire:
of incarnation
to the
The Maker
is
manifestation
And
God.
in a fixed structure o
matter, to imprison
it
The
and
sluggish.
He
The
was stung
man
is
poisoned the
in keeping with
in the October-
god.
the position of Scorpio in the zodiac, which falls
November date, when the sun likewise is going to its death in winter.
He
comes with power to tread on serpents and scorpions and put all
will
things under his feet; but his victory is not won at the start; it
357
come
at the end.
Like
Jesus,
first
come under
the
of
several
Ra
his
ensuing
is
only when the god is bound in
glyph of incarnational truth. It
oblivion in the lap of matter that he imparts to matter (Isis) the
his mind. She must reduce him and his intellectual fire
qualities of
essence
Isis
sense.
It is
hardly
less
field of
He
manger, where
his dying body
the animals eat. The god goes to his
the
nutriment that susand shed blood the young generation draws
tains life. Job and Isaiah refer to the sting that poisons the god.
Budge seems to have become so entangled in the dual relevance of
the serpent symbol that he gave up the effort to grapple with it in
commanded
was
laid in the
despair:
"In short, the serpent was either a power for good or the incarnation of
3
cunning and wickedness."
diabolical
He
know
it
is
in
many
lifting
can
mean
lift
up the
fallen
god to
his
self,
the lifting
involve the redemption of the other. In the famed caduceus of Merare united
cury the two serpents intertwined around the staff or wand
at
the bottom, because spirit and matter are joined in man's physical
life.
for
which
and in-
to build a tabernacle in
matter of his body, as lower fires are transmuted to higher. This transformation is made by man here on the cross of material life. The seven
359
Uraeus
embosomed
below
swimming
them into
They
They
are
the energy in the atom, seven blind forces, which, however, draw the
chariot of creation and must therefore be directed by intelligence.
One form
of the uranograph,
Horus crossing the
He
Lake
is the
great Hydra monster
swims alongside the ship of
who may
life,
ready
overboard. In the planispheres his elongated body stretches across seven signs of the zodiac,
and his head, with open mouth, comes directly under the feet of the
to devour
any
careless sailor
fall
Virgin. Her feet are over his head, fulfilling the Biblical promise that
her heel should bruise his head. He is the serpent or dragon of many
myths.
The manner
in
which
this
monster
is
to
be overcome or beaten
off
is
thing that
conversant.
modern
It indicates
We
360
put
truth on the analogy of natural and other images. Much ancient ceremonial in religion was repetition of magical formulae of the sort. In
the mind's grasp of subtle correspondence between physical phenomena and hidden truth there was liberated a psychic dynamism
which was cathartic of the whole nature. To repulse Apap, to trans-
form
skillful
handling of subtle forces. Thought, will and feeling must be harmonized in a delicate balance. Theurgic magic and spiritual therapy were
with "the mystical representations of things."
closely bound up
To prevent the serpent from stinging, to meet this massive brute
force of primal instinct and tame it to reason, required that the godsoul should learn to "charm the serpent." The significance of this
"charming" is profound. "These are the gods who charm for Har-
their nets,
charm
those who are in the nets." In the scene portrayed in this chapter of
the Ritual men walk before Ra to charm Apap for him. They chant:
"O
of the Serpent-Charmer."
"Who
is
was sent
361
The
is
in the mythical
Singular verification of these interpretations is found
is shown seated amidst
He
the
Greek
of
hero-god.
Orpheus,
episodes
counted as eight with
eight animals (the elementary seven powers,
their
Lord) playing upon his lyre of seven strings. Massey traces the
to the Egyptian Uarp, "the harper." The word is from
name Orpheus
powers of Hades. Circe's charming was at once followed by a transformation, but in this case from men into beasts, marking the god in
his descent charmed by matter, and it had to be followed by a countertransformation back to men. In most legends of classical mythology
in which the solar hero faces the task of rescuing a maiden (the soul)
from the cave in which she is guarded by a dragon, he is represented
as first lulling the
talisman.
Immediately
he beheld Satan
as
fall
they exclaimed: "Lord, even the devils are subject unto us in thy
name." The power to tread on serpents and scorpions was the power
to rule not necessarily to crush the elementary nature. They were in
Egypt the Sami and the Sebau and the minions of Sut. The latter was
itself.
"dragon," denotes the keen-eyed seer, as does the Sanskrit Naga, "serpent."
autumn equinox,
sky the (former) pole star Alpha Draconis, and in the southern heavens the star Eta Hydri. On this dual pivot of the dragons the starry
skies revolved. As in the uranograph between the two Dragons was
run the
in man's
is
running
upper serpent
the lower one of animality. All cosmic stability
a line of force plying between the two
poles of vital
wisdom and
spiritual
fixed
upon
because
spirit
Apap, the water monster, grasps at souls to devour them. The souls
on board Horus' ship exult at having escaped his jaws. Appropriately
he is also called the "eater of the heads" of the dead in Amenta. He
subverts the intellect in man. But even his nature is finally changed
and exalted/iand he, along with the seven Uraei, is lifted up. They all
become the servants "of the god of light in the sun-cults. They at first
war in fierce opposition to man as the Seven Adversaries; later they
fight for
Ra
evil.
The Scorpion
even-
tually stings
When
of
the gods, that which had been most deadly was transformed into that
which was divine. It is said of each serpent emitting jets of fire in
"Its flame is for Ra." The death-darting dragons became the
watchers of the gates of heaven and guardians of the tree of knowland every treasure of
edge, the three golden apples (mind-soul-spirit)
first described as Wicked Spirits
The
seven
light.
elementary powers
are promoted from that character to become the "Seven Great Spirits
Hades,
363
in the service o
their Lord,"
of the solar
Ra
The
and
chaotic,
and
is
that the
first
mind
man
put these wild forces for the first time under rational control in
an organic being. From the status of enemies and opponents, the first
As a reward of service they will
principles were tamed to man's service.
lifted
to
of
man's
be
higher nature. The text (Ch. 85) has
up
partake
the Osirified dead saying: "I pass through substance. I pierce the
darkness. Hidden reptile is my name. The soul of my body is a serpent
of life." Chapter 87 of the Ritual carries the expressive title "of making
the transformation into the serpent Sata." Allusion to the danger encountered by the god in the underworld is found in the "chapter by
bitten
by the
The frequent
summit
the
stellar,
individual.
The
is
said to be
on the
hill of
the
Lord
of Bata.
The
was
serpent laying its eggs and coiling about them for incubation
the true type of natural gestation, which brought forth fixed cycles
of revolving
life
arising out of the primal chaos. By shape the egg itself
symbol of revolution. Each seven coils or revolutions of the
mother life engender a new creation. The seven non-intelligent powers
is
3 64
old giant dragon was simply a type of primordial darkness and chaos.
It gave birth to seven powers which fought blindly until they were subdued and synthesized under the last and highest of them, the Christ
mind. This great dragon was pictured with its tail in its mouth. The
betokened the cycle returning into itself or back to source, or the
figure
the
its own
products. Kronos, Father Time, in
parent life reabsorbing
devoured his
own
great myths
individual consciousness to be
The dragon
of the original
earth herself,
children.
The
who swallowed up
closed over them. Also she swallowed the sun each evening
stars as
they
set.
He
god
and
sun-god and was defeated, but never slain. Horus attacked him
with
he
and
him
three
with
wounded,
for
though
escaped
days,
fought
his life. He suffered rout periodically and perpetually, but was not de-
He
He
this
it is
all
life
as
the crocodile
and finally
dragon, the hippopotamus, cow, sow, lioness, water-horse
woman, "the great harlot," who all meet in Kep, or Kefa (Heva,
Chavvak, Eve), "the mother of the living," was the gestator of Sut and
who are born twins! They typify the two aspects of life's ex-
Horus,
pression, activity
darkness.
The
and
and
passivity, positive
story of life
is
he knows
all.
The
arcane
wisdom exhorted
In Egypt the
It
stellated as the
two sons of
Adam ( Atum)
fact that
Abel
is
phase."
and
rises to victory in a
new
birth.
Cain
may be
a type of Khunsu,
under
He
is
two
kingdom
of the god's intelligence in the upper portion of the body and the
J>
animal soul or Sut below the diaphragm, in Jonah's "belly of death.
The
is
that the
moon
is
the agency
The moon is
366
because
it is
of the flower. In
Roman
possible.
it
And
in
human
history
it
and gropes in darkness, there comes to its aid the principle of Manas,
the hidden intellect, to intervene, like the moon that relays light from
an unseen source, between man and the god who seems to have deserted him. The moonlight is the symbol of that spiritual light that
shines not directly in full power, but refracted through intervening
media, into our prison of darkness. Cut off from our full solar light
we still have
The moonlight
lives.
it
somewhat more
difficult to discern.
The
solar heroes
mothers, a heavenly and an earthly one. The one conceives the son,
the other bears him. "The Two Daughters of the king of the north
It is added, signifigave birth to thee, the great ladies of his head."
thee up on thy right side, earth on thy left
cantly: "Heaven beareth
The
us that
we
intent here
is
to tell
ceive
manifestation in
all
until fructified
367
life
of nature back
from matter
to the
closed
As
typed
sky.
sonation. Krishna asks the other:
say
half the paternal kingdom.
one occasion when Horus
On
in the face of
away
the procreative powers of matter for the time. His release finally from
the dominance of carnal instincts and his graduation from sexual gencreation would be the general significance of
eration back to
spiritual
his circumcision.
him
who
loves
him, brings him his Eye; Set, who loves him, brings
and Thoth, who loves him, brings him his arm and shoulder." Set
in friendly colors. So in another text: "Nut gives
is here
(Sut)
thee to be a
he
is
places
his testicles,
painted
name
of Ta-tcheser.
Horus makes th.ee to grasp Set by his middle; he shall not get out of
thy hand." Here is evidence that the elementary powers were to be
taken in hand by the god and utilized in support of his life. The subordination of the beast under divine faculty
is
The
material.
He
him, he escapes not from thy hand. Hail, be thou master of him."
"He
thee.
sets
When
thee
to bow beneath
thou escapest his member."
thee,
again one kills the other. A common early tradition in the world
founding of a city by a fratricide.
Greek version
of the twins
is
He
is
the
and Ant-Eros,
The
man and
natural
369
is also
a younger Horus, the one born to suffer and die ignominiously, the
other to rise crowned with light. So the Hindu Prajapati was one-half
life he feared death.
mortal, the other half immortal, and in his mortal
a biune Bacchus, a two-faced Janus and the
There was a double
Horus,
supremacy
struggle
the abyss of matter the two forces struggle before they come to manihave seen that hair, as in Samson's case, stands as the
festation.
solar radiance or power. Esau is the "red, hairy one." Jacob
of
type
Hak, Hakh, or Hakekh) is the dark twin. When Rebecca
They
We
(Egyptian
lie
rival races
and
nations twain,
from
terrified
their birth;
shall gain,
Esau emerged first and Jacob came out grasping the other's heel.
Much the same story comes to light in the delivery of the twins of
Tamar, who had been impregnated by Judah, her father-in-law. Durand the midwife tied a red thread around
ing labor a hand appeared,
and the other babe was born first. The
drew
back
the
hand
But
it.
find the pointed significance of the Jacob and Esau birth. The grasping
of Esau's heel by Jacob can not be seen in its full import without com-
370
god
nature, the head, of the brute elementary forces; but he would not
come off unscathed. He would bear the mark of the beast on his heeL
Esau
is
The vulnerability of the gods in one point, the heel, was not confined
to Hebrew literature. Osiris was wounded in the feet and had to recover the use of them. The classical example of Achilles, whose mother
Metis held him by the heel while she dipped him in the waters of the
him vulnerable in the heel which was untouched by the
Styx, leaving
the god in
water, occurs to every mind. The mother, nature, holds
her realm with her grasp only on his lowest part, the heel. If he is
are dipped in the river Styx of this life to
be there.
stung, it must
render us invulnerable to further attack.
The serpent fulfilled his prophesied mission of enmity against the
woman's seed, the Christ nature in man. He pursued the woman
clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and with twelve
We
stars in
her diadem,
down
to earth
its
rays
upon the
The moon
to
and "clothes
it
with light as
is the generator of the forces that conso the moon is under her feet. And the
nature of
man
371
was
in
its
character by astrologers.
swallowed up
and
is
and paralyzing
its
system in the
fires of
version into natures of finer purity. The Christ then moves out of the
control of his mother nature and seeks the things of his father, spirit,
at the perfection of his twelve facets of intelligence.
of the utmost significance that the new heaven and new earth,
which the tree of life was to bear twelve fruits upon its branches,
It is
in
was
to
new
rule the
372
The statement in Revelation is that the fifth angel poured out his
bowl upon the throne of the Beast in his kingdom of darkness, overthrowing the reign of that power which had filled many with sore
disease and made them cry out against the Most High, Occult books
reveal that we are now in the fifth race of the fourth round of life
energy on this globe, and are developing the fifth principle, Manas,
the intellect. The reasoning mind, then, is destined to put an end to
the reign of bestiality.
When the seven angels had poured out upon the earth the fires
of "the seven bowls of the judgment of him that lives for ever," it is
said that the temple (St.
is
the body)
became filled with the smoke from the seven bowls, so that the power
and the glory of God could no more be seen, nor could anyone enter
the temple again until the seven angels had poured out the fires of
judgment upon the earth. This is clearly an occult reference to what
we have described as the smudge, smoke, vapors, soot and murk arising when the powers of god and beast first mingled in the body. It
may also cover the unnatural intermixture and miscegenation of godmen and animals that seems to have been a fact of history. The
"temple" had of course to be purified before the true Ego of the
individual could enter and rule. Hence the whole earthly experience
is
woman
elements were the powers of material darkness; the Christ power was
that of light. The darkness of the seven "woman" powers was changed
into light. The unevolved soul goes into darkness to become irradiated
with
light.
The lower
passions
Satan, who turn and flee as the light of virtue shines forth, like the
host of Midianites when Gideon's three hundred broke their clay
pitchers
lights
hidden within.
when
by the serpent, the Lord Jesus says to his playmates, "Boys, let us go
and kill the serpent." He proves his power over the reptile by making
it suck the venom from the wound. Earthly and Satanic influences
their power
poison the descending soul; yet experience in overcoming
in the milling grind of life extracts the poison in the end. "God sends
to death;
it is
he
her unfruitful
womb
to
make
intellectual delivery.
As Joseph
to
passed. And as "the earth helped the Woman" in the Revelation version, so Seb, the earth deity, helped- the woman and child in Egypt.
The dragons
issue
ac-
cording to the Gnostic story, and they adore him. So the demons cringe
before him in the
Testament. In the Ritual Horus saves his father
New
from the four crocodiles. "I am the Son," he says, "who saves the great
one from the four crocodiles." He orders them to go back one by one
and they obey him. For Ra has given him sovereignty over Lower
Egypt, with power to tread down serpents, scorpions and dragons. But
there
is
child
on
It is
is
374
hering even in celestial beings. It is evolution's cure for lack of development, the prime cause of all that is named evil. The god needed further
tempering and purification in "the crucible of the great house of flame"
sense. He was. carried far down toward dissolution in the
but was re-welded into finer temper by the ordeals of earth,
water, air and fire, and rebuilt to more perfect wholeness. The goose
portrayed on the head of Seb in an Egyptian planisphere (according
of flesh
and
fiery test,
to Kircher) types the earth as "the goose that laid the golden
a poetograph for the new-born daily sun of
daily." If this be but
egg
golden
light,
egg of
new
divinity
is
"sea."
The
The earth being our common mother, we have before us the Egyptian
source of "Mother Goose," and the mysterious sagacity concealed in
her catchy jingles.
The
dragon in
its
mental
its
The
or dragon of
significance of slaying the beast
and light
mind
darkness by sinking the symbol of incipient
elemental
The
elaboration.
little
forehead should need
giant
of the forehead.
into
is
conflict
undoubtedly
pebble
middle of the skull, the opening of which
is
proven
to
375
Horus,
him
to earth.
The
lance
pins
red flame for effective piercing
the paramount symbol of living force, and the Christmas tree tipped
with the blazing star, or the main stem of the pine made red hot at
the top, was an instrument in the hands of the sun-heroes. There is
outside of Egyptian sources a most famous instance of the occurrence
of this emblem. Ulysses bores out the single eye of the massive Cyclopean giant Polyphemus with a great pine stake fired at the tip. And this
in a cave, which had become the prison of death
operation takes place
for the hero and his men the underworld. The solar hero wounds
of fire into his head! And fire
the
of darkness
the
by
giant
injection
Horus
at
the
thirty days, thirty being
in a lunar,
number
month.
Demiurgus
stability.
work of creation, they meditated and forgot. They slumbered and fell
from their posts one by one. The seven sleepers of the myth, and those
in the cave at Ephesus, with their dog, answer to the seven
and his jackal at the pole in the Egyptian porwith
specifically
sleepers
Anup
trayal.
376
In its human application the myth is reflected in the seven elementaries, which, being the original founders of man's constitution,
fell from their status as rulers of his life when the
crowning principle
of conscious intelligence placed mind on the throne and superseded
the reign of the seven. The seven giants that have been "slain" by the
young
solar
Killer,
were subdued,
like wild
horses, until they bore the spiritual ruler on their backs. All domestication of wild animals to serve man is a type of the conversion of natural
the mother or nature again), the seven plagues of Egypt, the seven
lean kine that ate the fat kine, the seven lean years, the seven ages of
They were
servitude.
now and
cast
down by
human
stars,
intellect,
asserts that
we
fall
ele-
when we woo
seven,
when mind
the world,
when
vital forces
ex-
pression. Apap is being bound, but he is yet far from being securely
tied by the thongs of reason and disciplined mind.
"Come,
let
us
make man
first
after
ing furnished them with the idea of a man, they formed a giant of
immense size. But he could only crawl along the ground until the
Father had breathed into him the breath of life, emblem of mentality.
From
it
can be seen
who
in
it is
the Genesis story that propose to make man after their image not at
all
Supreme Deity, but the seven lower archangels, one of whom was
Jehovah. But Jehovah is used in the Bible myth to represent the entire seven, as are also
And
in the Divine
Pymander
is
of
at times.
Hermes one
reads: "This
is
the
377
by
Elohim,
principle,
who
could
endow
their creature
with the
six
(often called
and emotion,
or mind and soul.
passed from Lyra
in sensation
seven) elementary constituents, culminating
air and fire,
the pole star
when
came
twelve-part
Hercules, the sign of the Man, whose twelve
The
into
division
labors
are the
river, the
Gilgal circle
which became
it
is
seen in the
on
the solar ray within us, after crossing the boundary between the two
kingdoms of our nature, before it can institute its twelve-act regime,
378
must
natural
operated there
new
blasts
Sut, the
mals?
And
there
is
down
the
Was
Gospel
litera-
ture? In the Egyptian judgment scene, when the person whose life
record marked him as evil was condemned and rejected, he was delivered over immediately to the Typhonian beast, crocodile-hippopotamus-pig all in one. And he was, as thus indicated, sent down again
into incarnation in the
body of the
beast! In short,
he was not
Horus in the
desert of
Amenta and
carried
is
him
released,
said to have
to the top of
the
Mount
379
good one. In some of the Apocryphal Gospels the bad boy, who in
Pseudo-Matthew (29) is called the Son o Satan, runs at Jesus and
thrusts at him in a way to injure his shoulder and paralyze his arm.
The Gospel
of
Thomas
down
his
fulfill
in the typology.
He
is
He
versatile adversary.
him; he ties his arm;
the locusts and other plagues; he entraps Horus and his company in
the ark; he swallows the falling stars and devours the damned (those
condemned
to earth life).
He
good
When
Jesus
was
seized in the
on
Horus by
the forehead of
Horus and
(Rit. f Ch. 134) . The magical efficacy of the double crown of Horus lay
in the fact that it signified the god's control over both Lower and
Upper "Egypt." When Judas and his associates came to take Jesus he
said: "I am" (not "I am he" Massey). Then "they went backward
and fell to the ground." Scene for scene the two are the same.
The seven stars of the Lesser Bear were figured as the followers or
reflections of the greater creation, the
first,
image of the cosmic one. The
microcosm was formed over the grand lines of the macrocosm. In the
center of the great Denderah zodiac there is the hippopotamus (identical with the Bear) and her dog, fox or jackal. The two are
TyphonSut, or the mother and her child at the center of all. This is nature's
ancient stellar picture of the Madonna and her child before it was reduced to the human phase. The dog, fox and jackal, with their instinctive faculty of following a trail in the dark, were limned as the
guide
of souls in the darkness of incarnation; and the little bear,
dog or fox,
of the
380
pivotal star was the pole itself, thus became the "cynosure"
("dog's tail") for night-bound mariners in a literal sense, the spiritual
whose
meaning being evident to all who are not obtuse. The guide or watchdog was double-headed, a watcher by day and by night, or guardian
of the two segments of our life, the heavenly and the earthly. The
great
stellar universe served as the model for the formation of the smaller,
though higher, universe in man's
life,
said they would create man "in their own image." The Great
Little Bears type these two creations. And the Little Bear,
and
symbolizing
man's divine
beasts.
part,
is
forms of
life
below man,
as
naturally
man
himself.
fidelity,
if
not
was
fixed
in,
the
and out
are
of
is the
power that limits
they bring sin to birth. In astrology Saturn
and
Sut
Horus
native.
or constricts the
alternately bind each other
instincts are given rein to
The
lower
the
and as often escape
bondage.
the god and develop his fiber when he comes to fight them. They
do not succumb without a battle. And here at last is the Qnd of the
test
why
381
mythos
moment
this point of
Apap
those gods
He
feeds
upon
clammy
and thus supply him with food and fuel to keep alive his
He feeds upon the livers of the princes. The degenlives. The
erate gods become the damned, on whom the monster
Manes, personating Horus, addresses Apap:
seductions,
natural hunger.
put a
way toward
veil
in the valley, as
was ordered
to thee before."
he has grap-
As
We
moral character
is
the issue.
The
man's
own
382
moved
the
meaning
it was
individual as
it
by every act of
from the Egyp-
zons."
And
its
The Sebau
really the
word
Seb pluralized. They are Paul's "elementals of the earth" and those
"that by nature are no gods" (Galutians: 4). In the legend they were
finally defeated on the night of the judgment, when the last adver-
saries
is
to
Apap.
who cometh
one"
(Rit.,
forth
and proceedeth
Ch. 42).
He
tells
inflict
an injury on him
is
the divine babe, the mighty one. One of the representations shows
Horus as a cat, cutting off the serpent's head with a knife. The god is
a cat because he can see in the dark and his eyes shine in the dark
of
incarnation.
One
Two
Worlds."
is
addressed:
him
to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderbe a reference to the Good Dragon, the gods de-
This treatment of the entire theme of the Titans, Prometheus, LuciSatan, Sut, Apap, Seb, the Sebau, the two serpents, fiery and
watery, the dragon and the crocodile, under all their mythical representations, has made a long and perhaps prolix recital. But it is justified if it will demonstrate the original good character of the Saturnian
fer,
up
the cryptic
384
Chapter
XVI
and theological
insufferable misconception.
It is questionable i today any hierophant of orthodox religion has the
most distant idea of the esoteric meaning of the rite of baptism. People
water symbol yields a
interpretations
which
receive baptism or
will correct
impose
it
on
much
their children
with a sanctimonious
may
it is
waters of the river Jordan. Jesus was there baptized as part of the
process of his further divinization. The water baptism was the god's
submergence under the waters in the body of man.
What, then, is the basic meaning of the ceremonial? It is simple
indeed. Reverting to the four elemental signs, we have the adequate
the
data for
Bluntly, water is the symbol of bodily life,
interpretation.
baptism
obverse of the meaning usually intended in symbolism, and would involve the baptism of water by or in water, which wrecks the typism. It
that is the theme of
is the god's immersion in the waters of generation
correct
view
is
competently
at-
the
tested by the zodiacal signatures used in the typology. The sun in
immersed
lower half of the zodiac is symbolically pictured as being
in a sea of water; and according to one derivation the word "Galilee"
"water-wheel." The Sea of Galilee is the lower material
signifies
woria in man the watery body itself through or across which the
soul must pass in rounding its cycles of necessity.
fiery spark of
Heraclitus' statement that "man is a portion of cosmic fire, imprisoned
in a body of earth and water" (Plato's "mire") is apt here. And earth
and water stand for the physical and emotional aspects of man's life,
both sub-mental. The soul in its rounds must dip
or sense and
feeling,
down
is
irrational,
sweep
mythograph
the lower segment of man's constitution, for they blow through his life,
for the long first cycle of his evolution, in nearly uncontrolled intensity.
in upon his spirit, which is as yet unawakened, asleep like
a welter of animal
and
Jonah
Jesus in the hold of the ship, and stir up
the
man.
lower
soul, was held for
in
and
instincts
Proserpine,
rapacities
Pluto.
of
underworld
the
in
duress
in
each
half of
Merely put
year
under water symbolism, this is the soul's baptism. It is earthly em-
They rush
bodiment.
386
dom
man
of God.
ff)
be born of water and the spirit he cannot enter the kingis born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is
That which
not,
how
The elemental man, child of Mother Nature and her seven powers,
can never enter the kingdom of conscious immortality except he be
reborn of the spirit. His chance to be so reborn arises only through the
great sacrificial oblation of the sun-gods. For they came to share their
nature with him, to tabernacle with his flesh, and to suffer that he
might be quickened to a new expansion of capacity to know life. Jesus
is
stating the
rudiment of
all
practical
knowledge. Unless a
man
unite
the two fiery elements, the mortal and the imperishable, he can have
no access to the kingdom of divine mind. For flesh and blood can not
inherit the legacy of spiritual consciousness.
Herein lies the necessity for the twice-born experience of every initiate. Hermes describes the form of the second birth:
am
was
before, but
God: And
now what
am
begotten in
mind"
To this may be added Paul's inspiring statement that we can transform ourselves by the renewing of our mind. Hermes also says of the
physical and spiritual natures:
"He
is
that looketh
carried
downward
upon
that
as earth, that
bloweth or
which
is
The
387
primary condition.
makers
as
The
air.
fact
Amenta by
was out of the primordial "waters" of space that the first forms of
life were generated. From the infinite bosom of watery night
flashed out the first rays of that light which was to be the life of all
fire is born out of the banks
things. So in the rain-storm of summer,
the
Hence
water.
or
moisture
or
very deities had to be insuspended
It
cosmic
cubated in bodies of water like the foetus in the watery egg. This
accounts for the presence of the god in the lake of the moist human
in the water, as Venus from
body. Horus is born from the lotus plant
the sea-foam. So the souls that come forth to populate earth are born
of the
Lake
the "waters of
"spirit";
life
life."
another
One
is "soil
two
of the
or basis."
in the water
and mire
of the earthly lake beneath. The Lake of Sa genwere to be brought to lotus growth in the
The one was the Pool of Sa(lt), the other the Pool of
Natron (Nature). The upper was the pool of life, the lower the pool
of death, which is ever the gateway to new life. The spirits from the
Lake of Sa needed further cleansing. The sa(lt) may lose its savor.
They came down to bathe in the lake of the world, where, linked to
him
forth."
and
earth, they
The
to
and come
forth!
Come! Come
forth!"
388
They
call
him
to
come
forth
and the
at twelve,
mother matter and experience repeated new births. This was another
esoteric hint beneath Jesus' answer to Nicodemus.
We are conceived in spirit and born to actual power in nature. The
natural
man
is
We
should be
re-
minded here
tisms of the Gnostics were recognized by them as the animal and the
In olden times children were baptized first with water,
spiritual."
later with
Every seed cast into the ground for incubation undergoes the
of the
baptism by water or moisture, followed by the fiery baptism
fire.
sun's rays.
flesh to
natural
to spiritual.
Hermas
it is asked:
"Lady, why
it is because the
She
water?"
is the tower built
replies that
upon the
soul's life is saved and shall be saved by water. The necessity that
forced the gods into this low life was that of purification. In (the
Alexandrian version of) John (5:2, 4) we read: "An angel of the
Lord washed at a certain season."
The Manes
ern tank, and
in the
I rest
me
Boo\
me
389
in the peaceful
ping into the ordeal of bodily existence he had to rest
fields of the northern Aarru-Hetep. The first chapter of the Ritual
contains the saying by the priest: "I lustrate with water in Tattu and
anoint with
oil
in Abydos."
The
sheen of
oil
here.
The
is
gives him her hand. He appears in the Field of Reeds and purifies himself
therein." [The diseased in the Gospels were promised healing if they
Hymn
intellect
fell
into
the sea
and was
many
religions the
we
made with
his baptism
of the body
on
earth
is
all
meant by the
baptism.
An
390
was the
rite
of feet-washing.
potency
cleansing
baptism of the lower nature of man. For he himself poured out the
water in a basin. The Speaker says that he comes that he may purify
this soul of his in the most high degree. The Teacher in the Pistis
Sophia says that he tore himself asunder to bring unto mankind the
them
otherwise no soul in the whole
mankind would have been saved" (Bk. 2:249, Mead). Here is one
dismemberment anywhere
to
be found.
In the text of Unas
his
of the purged soul: "He hath been purified in the Lakes of the Tuat,
he hath undressed in the Lakes of the Jackals." The unregenerated
Manes was always pictured as black or black-haired. But when he
kneels before the throne of Osiris his hair has become white. This is
the mark of his having been washed pure in the waters. The four sons
of
Horus
are said to
wash
his face.
soul
is
The
fire,
with the
"saliva that comes from the mouth of Set, wherewith Horus was purified,
whereby the evil which appertained unto him was cast to the earth when
Set performed the censing for him; wherewith Set was purified, whereby
the evil which appertained to him was cast to the earth, when Horus performed the censing for him. This Pepi is purified thereby, and the evil
which appertains to him is cast to the earth."
The symbolism
God and
the
The god
Each
human
reciprocate purification.
alternate baptism of
John by
Jesus.
39 1
in the purifying
fires.
Lamb
of
it is
God
declared,
until
"washed
their
garments of
raiment in the blood of
it
mummied
deceased
is
said to
go "purified in the
won on
earth. Else
why
did
we
leave the
empyrean?
rises from
passage later to be noted says that the body-soul which
Amenta has to suffer "purgatorial rebirth" before it can become pure
spirit.
Apollo,
who
collected
is
the contaminations of
life
in the flesh.
the earth,
girl enters
she was like brass in
and
it is
body
and
purifi-
beautiful
glistened, for
and body
shining.
the Yorubas a remarkable
ceremony of purification is performed over both mother and child seven days after the latter's birth.
The water which is always in the earthen vessels placed before the
images of the gods, is brought to the house and thrown upon the
thatched roof, and as it drips from the eaves the mother and child
Among
cycle
The
rite
392
released
its
celebration followed
What
Another
am
which
is
in
text affirms:
off
general trend of the evidence suggests that circumcision was pracSudan, as well as in Egypt, from time immemorial, that it had
ticed in the
nothing to do with considerations of health, that it had a religious significance, and that it was originally connected with some kind of phallic
2
worship."
The
rite indicates
this interpretation:
body of the
.")
Gershom
(Stranger)
and touched
his
are
bride(apparently, Moses') feet with it, crying, "There, you
in blood ... by this circumcision." Then the Eternal left him
my
groom
alone!
393
matter. Yet
of male
virility, spiritual
creative
was a type
tion
upon
in matter.
latter's
identically
reconstitution
Foreskins were piled in a heap in the circle of the twelve stones set
up at the Eternal's order by the Israelites at Gilgal. The meaning can
be taken in any of the three ways suggested: (i), The twelve legions
of angels were sacrificing their foreskins as types of their lost divine
power; (2), They were coming into generation, typed again by the
foreskin; (3), They were, in the exodus, cutting themselves loose from
generation, typed by the removal of the foreskins. Herein is demonstrated the advantage of myth over dogma; the former leaves the mind
its own
application of the truth adumbrated.
umbilical cord served as a companion symbol with circumcision. Its cutting betoken the severance of the
god from his connection
free to
make
The
from
same
its
It
was thus a
fashion.
We,
394
which are the deposit of earlier ignorance and error have to be dissolved, burnt out, washed away, by the pedagogical agencies of physical contingencies. There is no power in heaven, where the soul is
detached from body, to< cleanse or purify it. Only earth can provide
the requisite conditions of suffering and hardship to burn out the
crudities of undevelopment. Nature must have our hard predicaments
of bodily life in order to reach and impress our souls, which, apart
from body, float in dreamy irresponsibility and unrealized potentiality.
Nature casts us here in order to furnish the conditions c*f realism
which alone can wake our slumbering faculty. We can not in the
world be linked with an animal by whose tutoring on earth we
spirit
own progression.
children of Israel were "tried as silver
advance our
The
is
hazy
spirit
realm.
Meshccf^, or Mesfyt, was the Egyptian place of scourging and purifying in Suten-Khen. It is the Karaite purgatory, the place of cleansing,
identical
the Great Bear cluster, as the old first mother, Apt or Typhon, from
whose thigh emerged all birthing. The purging took place in the
lower part of man, the oft-mentioned Suten-Khen, the dwelling place
of the Sut powers; \hen meaning birthplace.
Examining the baptism of Jesus, we find it in itself a complete
is
Lord
rejoined:
you can
know
"No;
little
to
you
forces
it
me
may seem
to
so.
But a
395
which
and baptism
necessity of
be subject unto
if
I
only for a cycle,
through your good offices. must,
realm. And
in
to
educated
watery
further
your
divinity
you and be
him:
answered
"But
won."
be
Jesus
can
too,
thus only
your salvation,
"
to God'
our
all
fulfil
should
we
(Man.
how
is
this
duty
'Come now,
immersion took place. And it was at the conclusion
3: 15). Then the
from heaven descended upon him in the
the
that
the
rite
of
spirit
the dove. This bird, sharing the role with the hawk and
of
symbol
life-giving
power
of the
third element, air (mind). Dove is traced to "Tef," the breathing force.
soul. In the planisphere
It stands in general for the divine energy of the
somewhat farther south, stood in position
another star beside
Sothis,
announce the coming of the solar year and the sun-god. This was
the star Phact, the Dove. The hawk, allied to the dove, was the divine
divinized Horus received the hawk, Jesus
symbol of Horus. When
the dove. Horus rose as the dove as well as the hawk; for he exclaims:
"I am the Dove; I am the Dove!" Seven doves, showing the sevento
fold nature of
all deific
man
on Mt.
Olympus.
finally
sojourn was to place
In this exposition is to be found the reason for the forerunners of
the Christs, as John, Anup and Mercury, performing the function of
the baptism. The earth-soul is to subject the heaven-soul to its immersion in matter, and must precede and prepare the ground. John says:
"After me cometh a man who is come before me." "I make way," says
Horus, "by what
What
is
obviously implied
a
in John's statement is that the Christ principle,
superior and therefore older evolutionary product than the man of earth, will come to
house when nature has made it ready. Earth has
the
Anup
physical
occupy
but recently fitted a tabernacle to be occupied by a guest who is of
venerable age and station in the cosmic family. The house is new,
never constructed before; but the coming visitant from celestial spheres
is of the family of the Ancient of Days and has been abroad many
times before and lived in other houses. John means to say that he is
the physical self, a new and late creation, but that the Christos had
preceded
him
in manifestation
is
designated
as the "preparer of the way of the other world/' the power making
to the upper heaven. Anup was the guide of the
straight the paths
sun and the sun-souls in the nether earth. The Ritual (Ch. 25)
speaks
of "the
made him
more
(De hid.
ct
twilight or dusk
of descent
and
resurrection, it
is
Anup." It is Anup
and if he finds the
judgment
balance even between the heart and the feather, reports the verdict to
Thoth. This he does as watcher on the two horizons or the scales of
nature, where spirit and matter are exactly balanced in our constitu-
who
in the
tion.
Aan, the
scribe, records
it.
history of the sun-gods between the ages of twelve and thirty. Both
numbers are purely typical, standing for the completion and perfection of cycles, the end of an age, or stages of transition and transformalife
tion.
The
same thing. It
and demands
is
sufficient
religious figurations,
397
its
function and
scope. This
is
fancy to
symbolism.
salmon fighting its way from the vast primal ocean up the waters of
an individual stream to the sources, there to deposit the spawn of new
was indeed a vivid emblem of the soul fighting its way
generation,
back
The
the lake of Sa(lt), works its way into the channel of an individcurrent of
its way far up the stream in the face of the
uality, battles
animal propensity, and there plants the germ or seed of new life, which
sea. It is a
in the next generation will run down and join the mother
of man's incarnation history.
nearly complete analogue
The crossing of a stream was a serviceable allegory of the passage of
the life spark through and across its span of experience in the watery
involved the use of a boat or ark, the chain of
body. As the crossing
ideas carries the research into the whole mass of material dealing with
the Passover, the cross, the ark and the flood or deluge.
the
life,
crossing,
mount where
the crowd
and
god
mausoleum
there.
But the journey of the Manes across the sea of this life, over the
"waters beneath," was from west to east, from the gate of entry to the
underworld on the west to the gate of resurrection on the east. That
which dies in the west must rise again in the east. The level stretch
of "water" between, over which the voyage is made, is the "sea of life."
to sail in the "boat
expanse of stormy water the soul essays
the
in
himself
the
of Horus," with
pilot house directing
young god
comhis
twelve
the course, and with
(collective) sailors, rowers or
Across
this
panions,
who man
393
reptile,
me
had made
a boat to
go by."
A boat
is
now
In the chapter "of breathing air and of prevailing over the waters in
Hades," the Manes have to escape from the devastating flood by means
of the Makhu, or ark of plaited corn, with paddles formed of straw.
Here
is
background
phrase several times used symbolically is: "going into the cabin."
This might be taken as the equivalent of the soul's going into the
"belly" or hold of the ship.
intelligence of a ship,
spirit
Yet
as the cabin
might again
is
refer to the
into
in
it
the utterance
"The
On the
is:
valves of the door open, the gateway of the god opens. He has unHe has opened the doors of the cabin. Shu has
given
him
(Ch. 130)
The
is
very com-
The
men by
safety, as
from
this
admixture. Massey
is
puzzled a
399
trifle
death."
the inscription of Shabaka the baptism occurs without
He
adds:
or
"Either way, the baptism or death was but figurative of the regeneration
from which the second Horus
rebirth which was affected in this
region;
Sheru or
issued at the age of thirty years as the Adult God, the
the
Christians, although
Fait. The baptism for the dead was continued by
its
Homme
origin
and
significance
As we have
seen,
the sort
ence of
seed of
to
Massey lacked in
seem
the round of
which water
all
is
to
the elements,
predominantly
it
in
subsistent.
men
The
cross in safety,
ax, as in the
Roman
fasces,
land!
through
it
it.
Makhu
which I do give thee, even to the children of Israel." "All Israel passed
over on dry ground."
The eastern shore was the terminus of the voyage. There a plate of
tahn was given each disembarking sailor, as a type of protection and
400
salvation. This matched the recovered "eye of Horus" and the white
stone given to the redeemed in Revelation. It may be seen at the place
o the vernal equinox, between Aries and Pisces in the zodiac of
new-won immortality.
The Manes-soul entered or embarked on
marge, plunged into the
eastern horizon of light.
the sea
on the western
in the bark,
and a
The
attack of
Apap or Sut and the storm of sensual riot of the carnal passions are
made while the deity is asleep in his bodily tomb, the belly of the flesh.
Then the god awakes to his task, exercises his sovereignty over nature,
and the elemental forces obey him.
Other solar heroes beside Jonah crossed the sea in the belly of a
fish. Both Horus and the Greek Hercules crossed inside the fish
during
the three days at the winter solstice. In some ancient calendars three
to five days were intercalated at the winter solstice, additional to the
360 days of the twelve solar months 30 days each and corresponded
to the three dark days of the lunar "solstice," or dark of the moon.
They typed the time of the incubation, when there was a calm or
balance or stasis in the cycle, the solstitial stasis or balance between
and matter in evolution.
spirit
After these
lands
the
is
it is
number
presumed
many
three
is
the three
to this view.
forces of the solar triad, mind-soul-spirit, according
may be
This
regarded
sprinkling,
But Christian baptism is alleged to be modeled after the Biblical bapAnd if the ceremony is that of
tism, which is that of Jesus by John!
the three immersions under the water, as performed by many sects,
the threefold spiritual nature
it can not then signify the downpour of
Or it could do so only by reading the
above on the
from
recipient.
god
is
as
is
somehow immost
indirect.
of
brings his three aspects
implied, of course;
and here
higher
as else-
resurrection. It
the tomb.
is
Under
New
Man
belly,
Jonas
days
three days in the bowels of the earth." In its broad cosmic reference it
outlines the great truth that the soul of life must evolve upward through
three earthy kingdoms of nature, the mineral, vegetable and animal, in
The fiery spark of consciousness
its
pre-mental period of gestation.
must lie dormant in "death," its conscious functions unawakened, for
its
eight days,
the orb's surface (visible to us) are the
part of
emblem.
of
and
But Egypt adds a most pertinent
apt phrase to this group
from
another
in
connection,
designations In a passage already given
an inscription called "The Destruction of Mankind." Atum-Ra de402
creed that he would punish the rebellious angels who broke in upon
his song with raucous shouts by destroying them "in three days of
navigation." This carried the meaning that he would commit them to
incarnation in lower ranges of being characterized as the sea or realm
They would have to sail across the water of mortal life
of "water."
its
identity of
graphs.
In addition to the cited instances, the three days as glyphs of incubating life are quite numerous all through the Bible and in other
Exodus
renew
their testimony.
important treatment in
(The "portion
its
God
rose
upon
their feet to
proper place.)
The
detail
its
very
given here as to
face to the
water signs, those of spring being air signs, and those of summer fire.
Amsu, the rejuvenated Horus, rose in a new body of light on the
third day. Horus, the child, is crowned in the seat of Osiris at the end
of three days. In the lunar typing,* Osiris dies at the winter solstice to
as Horus on the third day in the moon. He then rose
be reborn
again
403
phrase
relevant meaning except in the sense of the fourth
hardly be given
earth. It is to be noted here that
kingdom of life, the human, on the
"the hour of night/' and "the fourth hour of
since the two
.
of
phrases,
the earth/' are obviously matched in this passage, this must be the
the Gospel's "fourth watch of the night."
Egyptian origin of
contain a hiding or seeking of refuge for three
of the
Many
myths
A clear intimation
of the resurrection
:
again
of the dead Pepi, the Ritual says: "Pepi is
speaking of the rearising
where the gods are born, The star
brought forth there in the place
cometh on the morrow and on the third day." Mary searches for Jesus
for three days as Isis sought the hidden Horus. In Matthew (15: 29-32)
him into the
Jesus takes compassion on the multitude that followed
desert "because they continue
eat,
and
with
me
three days
to
The
sustenance of the solar light, the divine bread of life. In the story of
the dismembered concubine in Judges (19), previously noted, the girl's
father detained the husband three days. With the reference to Herod,
Jesus enjoined his followers to "Go tell that fox, Behold I cast out
devils and I do cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall
is
his
will raise
404
Land.
And
the river.
boundary
To
we must
cross the
boundary line separating the two
soul plunges in this water on the western
marge,
or sails across and reaches the "farther shore" on the eastern
kingdoms. The
swims
boundary where he rises to a new day like the sun. As the final stage
and termination of the passing over came at the equinox of
spring,
this date, the first full moon after the
equinox, was invested with the
cumulative and culminating significance of the whole pass-over. It was
the fourteenth or the fifteenth of the Hebrew month Nisan. But after
all it is a
question of minor difference whether the term "Passover" is
taken to embrace the whole extent and duration and experience of the
passing across life's sea, or more specifically the crossing of the final
lines at
boundary
may mean the passing into, the passing out of, or the
the
realm of bodily life, and has apt significance in any
passage across,
between them.
It
case.
The sun, typing ever the immortal fire in man, dipped down into
the sea at evening and underwent his
baptism during the night. He
405
Nun
struggling
in which
material night At any rate this is the symbolical
language^
the ancient sages try to delineate our experience. This is "the dark
and "the twHight of the gods." The "dead" are
night of the soul,"
described as those who have voyaged in the boat at night, bound for
the city of Akhemu at the polar Paradise.
flood of light is released by the statement of the Ritual that the
described in the "chapter by which one saileth a ship in
ship of Nnu,
the nether world," was ordered built with three decks or stories. It
was to bear the crowd of Manes in safety across the abyss in which
the devourer
Apap
lurked.
The Manes
thou who sailest the ship of Nnu over the void, let me sail the ship.
be brought in as a distressed mariner and go to the place which
thou knowest."
"O
Let
me
And
exclaims:
again he
He
is
told
he has
to
know
which
is
void, let
name and
to
first
intoxicated
with lethargy and drowsiness. The ark was built first with one story,
then two, then three. The lower was earth. The next was lunar, that
the lower mind body; and the
is, the emotion body; and the third was
each or all of the three according to its focus.
In the "chapter of bringing home a boat in the underworld" the
several parts of the ship are specified and their correspondences given.
at stem and stern are "the two columns of the nether world,"
The
in
spirit lives
posts
406
or the points o entry and egress, west and east. The ribs are the
four sustaining gods, or the four bodies typed by earth, water, air and
fire. The boat is said to be
brought in over the evil lake of Apepi,
that
coil
up
its
ropes "in peace, in peace." Bringing in the boat must be taken to figure
the soul's final uplifting of the animal self to the human
kingdom,
or "landing it." The wood of the right and left sides constitutes the
Lord
of the
Two
The rudder
is
the
leg of Hapi, one of the four supporters of the world and of man. The
towing rope is the hair of Anup. Spiritual guidance is indicated here,
as Anup is the keen-scented guide of souls in the dark of incarnation.
He also helps
tow
The
to
after she
is
protector of the Manes, who sees that they do not fall overboard into
the jaws of Apap. The sail is Nut, the original
driving power of
nature. It is that which engenders moving
matter
power by opposing
exerting
The
He is
the
god
in the bark
who
my
is
dismemberment
407
doctrine,
and would
original unitary
of fellowship. As it sails along it will collect again the fragments
of spirit
scattered broadcast in the descent to earth. Whatever unity
life the
make
extent
that
to
will
achieve
will
mankind
action
and
scattered
bond
dismembered
Ra.
The Horus
spirit
in
man
Osiris.
credulity,
fancy
time to resplendent illuminating power. Nothing
word has been to scholars and the
beyond a meaningless Egyptian
world the name given to the boat of Horus in which we cross the
lower main from west to east from birth to death: the Semketet
first
the voyage back again from the eastern morn to the western eve
to repeat the cycle, and that it was named the Maatet boat, or "boat of
rethe
sun," has remained hidden in dry-as-dust Egyptological
made
rising
search as a pretty poetism, but nothing more. Yet these two boats and
their two journeys are almost the two facts of prime import for mankind in its life. For the Semketet and Maatet boats are respectively the
in which the soul makes its way across the river of life
physical body
in the flesh, and the spiritual body of solar light in which it ascends
in its summertime of disembodied
to heaven and traverses the
sky
another descent into matter. The one is
being toward the autumn of
his "spiritual body." The latter is
other
Paul's "natural body," the
as its womb, and upon its delivother
now being gestated within the
morn on
the side of the rising sun, the soul will transfer its residence from the old body to the new one. Since flesh and
o heaven, the soul prepares for its
blood can not inherit the
ery at
its
Easter
kingdom
habitation there a
All this
is
fit
told in Egyptian
myth
who
fied
are the
human Manes
humanity on board,
brings
it
down
to the
and on
sun then
till
sails
upward
Man
at
Easter, or at sunrise, steps out of his mortal vesture into his immortal
vehicle to live forever in non-physical realms, robed in
spirit
light as
sunlight, to
make
In this boat, along with Ra, there sat the gods Khepera and Tem;
but these were only the personifications of Ra's own forms as descending and rising god of evening and morning, or of incarnation and
resurrection.
who had
the
two
as
Hu
and
Sa, the
two gods
of the risen Horus, is denominated "the great god within his boat."
Another name for the sun-boat was the "bark of Millions of Years."
The lower
Dragon Law
(35: 6)
the number typing the elemental forces that built the physical body.
The lower boat is the earthly refuge for spirits fleeing from heaven.
The
some
river
409
Vimur.
ascend into
may
of the
proper sphere
its
air, is
a type of salvation
A mound
must find a place or means of stability amid the flux of life. The early
and swimming shadowed the stage of evolution
symbols of wading
when the soul was deeply mired in matter. The boat typifies the time
when the higher entity was able to cross over dry-shod.
an extraordinary confirmation of the theses here presented that
in all rethe entry into the boat to begin the underworld journey was
coffins.
This
in
their
identical with the burial of Horus or Osiris
It is
spects
the identity of the physical body of man with the boat of the
lower Nun. The boat and the coffin are the same symbol in effect,
both typing the physical body. For the Manes says: "I am coffined in
an ar\ like Horus, to whom his cradle is brought." For he is to be
his coffin
reborn in the same body in which he "dies." He transforms
certifies to
into his
new
cradle.
This cradle
is
and
indicates that the "death" and burial take place in the same realm
where a new birth is to occur. The lotus was a type of the boat or
in the water and of the womb of birth in one. Some of
ark of
safety
the later ships were lotus-shaped at prow and stern. The cabin was the
or the womb of the mother. The constellation
Hindu
Argha-Yoni
Argo Navis, the Pleiades, the
Little
his children,
Moses to
the Israelites, and
is
of the sun, or boat of Ra. The exchange of passengers from the boat
Horus to the ship of Ra betokened the successful completion of
It was the index of their new birth, which was
the incarnation
of
cycles.
not
now
that of water.
that point,
and were
to enter
410
was to pick up
transport them across
the expanse of a
airy
and
of air
kingdom
fiery texture.
The happy
and
about the heavens and voyageth along with Ra." The material of the
ship of Ra is imperishable stuff, formed out of the indestructible
essence of solar light. Imprisoned for many incarnations in the tabernacle of the flesh, we finally are released from it, to
pass over into
another temple of shining glory, our true spirit body. One of the
great
purposes of our coming into the world is to build this fabric. When
it is finished we
exchange our house of darkness for this vessel of
light.
is
In the glorious vesture of the sun-body the soul of man can traverse
all realms and worlds with electric
alacrity. When the Osiris obtains
command over the upper sea he exclaims: "Collector of souls is the
name
of
my
bark.
The
picture of
as the
solar boat
is
The
were drawn
The
it is
canal
The
first
later
by the
twelve
by
suggest the seven principles which carry evolution along. The Ritual
(Ch. 89) contains an apostrophe of sublime beauty to these basic energies of life:
"Hail, ye gods
who
bring
it
whose hands
.
are filled with your ropes
destroy ye the enemy; thus shall the boat
of the Sun be glad and the great God shall set out on his journey in peace.
May it (the soul) look upon its material body, may it rest upon its spiritual
.
body, and
may
its
boat of Ra to pass
is entitled: "of sailing the great
Manes
the
it
in
And
Flame."
says: "I am the
of
over the circle
Bright
of divine right and truth made by
lord
the
of
body (sah)
Chapter 1366
spiritual
at
one burst
is
the declaration took them at once from the realm of personal history
into that of cosmic hierarchism.
them a more definitive naming and function. Accom-
Egypt gave
were astronomical powers, rulers or
panying Horus or Ra, the twelve
"saviors of the treasure of light" As light was the crowning product
of all cosmic operation, the saviors of its treasure were the culminatof dynamic agency. They became the twelve great
ing depositories
of Ra's unimaginable might. With Horus they became
spirit-children
the god to earth as sowers of the seed and
the twelve who
accompany
in
reaped on earth for enjoyment
heaven. When the Gnostic Jesus of the Pistis Sophia (1:5) rises as the
twelve on
first fruits of them that slept, he becomes the teacher of the
the
Mount
of Olives (the
Mount
Dawn,
or the
He
scene on the
appearance
him." Here
at the
is
The
"When I first came into the world I brought with me twelve powers.
took them from the hands of the twelve saviors of the treasure of light."
412
There
is
power
in these
The
many
and harmonized
whom
bark for Ra, with Horus at the prow. These were the twelve knights
about the table of King Arthur; they were the twelve sons of Jacob;
and the twelve gods with Odin in their midst. And they were the
divine powers which were said to be unfolded, one each year, for the
twelve years of the solar god's life, bringing him to the stage of
first
age of thirty.
twelve were called "the saviors of light" because they upheld
radiance
of the spiritual sun. They are described as the emanathe
at the
The
and the
five supports.
The
the seven primary radiations of tonal vibration that carries the energies
of the Elohim or Logoi into manifestation. The five supports are ap-
parently the five basic elements, earth, water, air, fire and aether, that
support the edific of the being of man and planets alike. The twelve
said they "go forth three by three to the four quarters of heaven to
preach the gospel of the kingdom." This "preaching" does not sound
it meant the Sabbath
pulpit oratory. The four quarters of heaven
a description of their location on the zodiacal chart.
The Gospel Jesus repeats some of the features of the sea voyage of
as if
is
413
storm on the waters into the calm of daybreak. Jesus comes walking
his
over the water to the boat, while the lower soul (Peter) implores
who
am
exclaims: "I
the
Kheru
[ruler, controller]
becomes master
of Ra, who brings the boat to land" (Ch. 63). Jesus
the
that
appears
is
sun-god
It
Gospel
in the ship.
again noteworthy
of the night.
watch
the
in
the
watch,
fourth
water
the
on
morning
of intellect rises after "three days" in the tomb of matter
The
god
and the sea of earth. The Manes prays: "Grant that I, too, may be able
without making
to walk on the water as thou walkest on the Nun
In another place he
issues from Osiris."
that
flowing
Before the sun-boat can begin
any
halt."
its
eastern
out of the
womb
of lower nature. In
powers
would connote the parturiand from the physical body. If the
man
it
now
one would be
asseverated
at a loss to
think of a
more
forceful one.
The
is
crossing
meaning,. yet the
by
crossed in union.
The
opposite
but the badge of our incarnation, the
in one
body, consciousness and substance,
cross
and
is
is
By
come to betoken a range of emotional repercussions, but it still carries no basic meaning other than
that of the god immersed in matter. Whatever is sacred in human
ecclesiastical
life is so
psychologization
by virtue of that
it
has
single fact.
However,
conveys to the mass mind the strong intimation that this life itself
haloed with august significance, is essentially sacred and worthy of
being lived with deepest consecration of purpose and effort to its
If it
is
was physically nailed some nineteen centuries ago, its effect on thought
must be stultifying and deadening.
Plato says that the divine man was "bicussated and was
stamped
in the likeness of a cross." When
primal unity of
bifurcated into spirit and matter, the two forces had to be crossed
in interplay in order to engender the worlds and all manifestation.
The coming of mind in man to rule nature brought the figure of the
cross into symbolism because it brought the upright line to cross at
right angles the horizontal line denoting the feminine or natural creation. Man was the first to raise the animal from horizontal position to
the vertical; yet both natures live in him, considerably at "cross purAt any rate typology figured the mother creaposes'* with each other.
the
minus
415
the
number
alphabet
is
multiplied
is
when
life
Life.
the Tree of
or rod
is
and
fire,
of
renewing
principle
establishing forever."
That the cross betokened the basic idea of the impregnation of elemental matter with divine potency typed as male is evidenced by the
who was
is
416
all this
The Logos
is
on the plane of the cosmos, in the heart of the atom, in the solar
systems, or on the nuptial bed. A crossing is consummated or a cross
made wherever the positive and negative poles of life cross each other
be
it
Christ,
itself,
also proclaims its own meaning as being the boundless inwithout beginning or end, self-contained, ever returning unto
embosoming all things, yet, as the Absolute (that is, released
from
all
The "O"
finite,
And we
are
O. It
great Gnostic name for the sun-god or Logos, son of Sophia I
reads under our eyes: "I" am the "A" (Alpha) and the "O" (Omega),
the beginning and the end. But, seen with a bit more philosophical
penetration it reads again: I, the first emanation of being (typed by
:
the straight vertical line, the No. i), split into two phases, joined (in
the "A") in incarnate and manifest existence, and end in a return to
infinite Be-ness, "O." The "Y" near the end of the alphabet is an "A"
reversed, and the two separated streams returning into the "I." The
in incarnation,
indicates
417
The Horus
mummy
upon
entering
body
as
an emblem of
re-
The
cross has
figure
except
religion
The
itself.
cross of Calvary
initial,
form of the
According
Massey
the cross
is
Not
418
that of Jesus! It
is
emblem. But
Lamb
added
sun-god
acters
pagan
II,
Lamb,
"Forasmuch as the shadow hath passed away and that Christ is very
man, he ought therefore, to be represented in the form of a man."
"The Lamb of God must not be depicted on the cross as a chief object;
but there is no hindrance to the painting of a lamb on the reverse or inferior portion of the cross where Christ hath been duly portrayed as a
man."
No
man."
It
name
of an alleged gentle Galilean peasant, call out a vigorous chalthe procedure of turning an innocuous symbol into a veridical
to
lenge
historical personage, when the change entailed, as the sequel showed,
was not
419
God was
place
symbols that the figure of the personal
o immolation, and the cross as emblem became the cross of wood.
In John's account the crucifixion takes place at the time of the Passthe victim in human
over, and for the Paschal Lamb is substituted
of the Lamb of God (the Logos under the sign of
form. The
killing
had been the Bull in the preceding 2155 years) was the
divine sacrifice; and his slaughter, with the sprinkling of the doorof the new life, with his blood, was the sign of the new
posts, or gates
birth of spiritual life. In one sign humanity was washed in the blood
of the Bull, in the next in the blood of the Lamb; and again in the
Aries, as
it
whom
the Greeks
named
Ichthys, the
Fish.
The
was symboled
mother's blood, too, was believed to fertilize the fields for the new
is
assigned both to Sut
sowing. The function of fertilizing the ground
and to Judas, the adversaries and betrayers of the sun-god in the
Christian and Egyptian myths. Sut was said to fertilize the fields with
his blood "on the night of fertilizing the field in Tattu." The coming
of divinity to dwell with man was to make the soil of his life produc-
by enriching the natural self. What more apt symbol, then, than
that of fertilizing?
An ancient festival not copied by the Roman Christians was that of
the Hiding of the Cross in the Nile, followed in the opposite sign by
tive
by name,
ocean of
420
itself,
on
man
still
more
and bondage.
Baptized with the god in his death on the cross, we shall happily
disburden ourselves of this weight of toil and suffering when we have
finished the crossing of the waters and see the golden sun rise at the
night.
421
Chapter XVII
THE
grand
sweep o their import.
From one angle of approach the ark symbolism duplicates or paralthe two boats analyzed in the previous chapter. For the
lels that o
manifests the dual aspect o the meaning porexegesis here again
arks pertinent to man's life, one floating on
two
shows
and
trayed,
the terrestrial water, the other soaring across the celestial sea o crystal.
of the
for
The one above is the
glorious chariot
Apollo's
paraphrase
sun climbing across the sky by day; the one below is the raft, boat or
ark in which the "dead" soul makes its passage by night across the
Charon or Christ for pilot. In
Styx of the nether world, with Horus,
of
man's
is
one
the
glowing spiritual light; the
body
short,
upper
lower is his ark or temple of flesh. And the peculiarity of the operation
of the great Law of the Two Truths comes to view here in the fact
that in the alternate arcs of the cycle each body becomes in turn the
ark that houses and preserves the other. In the earth cycle the physical
treasures the spiritual; conbody becomes the ark that contains and
and treasthe
the
discarnate
in
spiritual body contains
cycle
versely,
ures the seeds of the physical. It exemplifies the eternal alternation
and matter, soul and flesh, discarnate and incarnate existence
of
spirit
in the universe of
life.
422
The one
literal
history. They are in this case
so glaringly preposterous that their brief review for the sake of shaking
thousands of stubborn minds loose from literalism appears to be par-
donable.
In the
first
place
no
house the
number
with
men
go
now and collect the two or fourteen specimens of every living creature.
And many types of animal and insect can not live when transported
to different climatic habitats. Many insects live only a few hours and so
could not possibly be taken a long journey to the ark. Noah and his
army
of
many
family were given by the Eternal just seven days to make this collection, impossible to begin with! Then, if by some miracle there were
space on board for all the animals, birds and insects (not to say fish
and reptiles), there certainly could not be found space for the supply
of food necessary to tide them over one hundred and fifty days' im-
prisonment in the ark. And nearly all animals and insects require different kinds of food, impossible to provide, even to know what to
secure and where to find it. Carnivorous animals would have to be
given other animals to eat. And the imagination can depict the living
conditions on such a boat after a few days.
Then
423
mythical heritage.
cycle
the centuries would have prevented Chrisparative Religion through
constructions in the
and
its
from
spiritual
allegories
wresting
from kindred material of the
scripture so utterly apart
of their meaning.
frightful distortion
tianity
When we
from
pagan world in
the spiritual body that enwombs the seeds of physical creation. From the moment of first entry into incarnation the soul is borne
across the waters of earthly existence, from west gate of life to east
dark underworld, in the ark of the physical body.
gate through the
But when the six water signs of the zodiac have been traversed, and
the ark
is
company
The ark
gods
in inbut
ark
the
above,
below matches and reflects the structure of
the
after
verted form. The tabernacle was to be fashioned
pattern of
were
tabernacles
the
lower and
higher
things in the mount. And the
enwomb
to
The
figure of the
womb
as
on
womb
is
womb
of the
soul after death. Mind gestates in body, but body also gestates or is
matter gives
engendered in mind. Intelligence conceives the creation,
Life has
the
and
of
water
be
born
must
it birth.
(matter)
spirit.
We
life is
conceived
in the
womb
of
Nut
or
Isis
birth in the
body of
Nephthys, Egypt told us five millennia ago. The great Ritual of that
land condenses this mighty truth into a sentence in the discourses to
Pepi:
"O
Ra, the
womb
of
Nut
is filled
which is in her." Our word "nut," the fruit of the tree, may be derived
from this venerable source. The Hindus had their Argha-Yoni, the
feminine or uterine symbol of all creative source. And Argha is cognate in root derivation with "ark." The ark is the inner shrine and
new
birth in the next generation. Matter and soul eternally reciprodominance and leadership in living nature. And the flesh is no
more the ark of the soul than the soul is the ark of the flesh. Spirit
conserves the gains in matter, to reproduce them in later form, as
cate
As soon
spirit.
its two
opposite but complementary
motion the operation of mutuality and reciprocity,
rhythm and balance, between the two. Deep inside the ark was the
nodes, there
is set
in
shrine for Deity; buried in the secret depths of every physical man is
Amen-Ra, the hidden Lord. But when the form of material man has
vanished off the scene, deep within the heart of the god is the conception of the next organic form to be deployed into the visible world.
And
passing out.
has
As noted
now announced
modern age
now
happily
first
in the
qualities that were already implicit
vision not been beclouded by crass theological
system of nature.
of materialism
in the
Had
425
obsessions,
and symbolic
Exodus (25) the Lord's instruction to Moses is given: "Inside the ark
This is not an order to deposit
you must place the laws I give you."
documents in a
chest, as childish
It is
the
when
symbol
the ark of the Biblical flood and the ark
important identity between
of the covenant in the Old Testament the boat on the water and the
chest in the temple has been entirely lost sight of. Egypt kept the
intimate relation in view
ried
when
the chest
car-
on the shoulders of
The
The fire on
inside a boat.
womb
of
Nut
(nature) is filled
with the seed of the spirit to which she is to give birth, the passage
us the one central clue to full comprehension of the whole strucgives
ture. It
is
by which
the
understanding.
The
is
its
it
The
From
426
its
The Hindu
Trinity
expresses aspects of truth that the Christian Trinity has never con-
of each cycle
when
all
ing on
its outer
periphery, just before the end of its career or of each
"year" of growth, a miraculous embryonic reproduction of itself, its
child in its own image and likeness, which has implicit within it the
tiality
can
into
its
retire unseen,
dissolution
is a
type of materiality, as heaven is the type
of spiritual consciousness. The astute reader will already have divined
that the Flood or Deluge is nothing other than the tide of Shiva's
force that, under water typology, sweeps away all living forms and
creatures. When that flood has washed away all foothold for soul or
life to
spirit,
stand upon in cosmic waters, matter being the resting place for
the indestructible nucleus of consciousness must retire into the
invisible
spiritual tenuity.
The innermost
realms
is
beginning
ark is the inner shrine or seed body
The
cycle.
invisible
man
and
into
which the
of
life
any being
principles
spiritual
retire to be tided in security over the period when the waters of dissoluall other foothold on earth. And at the end of the
tion wash
away
Flood
will
it
to set foot
on or in matter once
The
ward
The
off,
seed
is
the waters of
But who
authority
ar^ein is not a slight variant or modification of the primary stem
arch-? In this stem at any rate is the source of the basic meaning of
the typism underlying the ark symbolism. For arche (Greek) means,
significantly, "the beginning"; and the seed is the beginning of
most
ates according to a
methodology that
is
basic for
knowledge of
its
laws. In every
of soul begins
ning of
itself.
Every minor cycle becomes a miniature
whole cycle of life in manifestation. It starts each
the point where first life started, or as the first word
and
all
evolution
reflection of the
new round
in the
at
it,
428
the beginning" of
for
creation.
all
Each round
it
and must
starts
primeval
arche,
being, at the
beginning of
More
the next.
ulates
cycle,
first
its
spark of that Infinite Being which is neither young nor old, but is ageless. Its new physical vehicle in each
generation, however, traverses
the successive stages of the entire evolution up to the
point which
the soul had achieved in the last activity, to go on a step farther from
there. The immortal principle of soul retires into the
primordial abysmal arche at the end of each active period, and
from it at
emerges
each
new
the worlds of actuality it retires into just what Plato denominated it,
archetypal form in noumenon. It comes out of this bosom of pri-
its
What
guage that
tion.
The
it
no-
The names
comes
is
basis of such a
to
its
of
form of No-ah f ah being a feminine terminaown word "know," and of course the
word
as "Gnosis."
Noah
is
therefore the
name
of the
solution of
word
429
three aspects or modifications o the one single first emanation o cosmic mind. They find Biblical typing In the persons of the three angels
who visited Abraham under the oaks of Mamre, the three men in the
furnace in Daniel, and the three magi who come with the in"adore" him. They even find a physiological recarnating Messiah to
threefold segmentation of the spermatozoa of the male
the
in
plica
creative fluid, which is often the type of creative mind. Noah's three
be taken as the three primal
sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, must
of the first ray of divine consciousness. They are somesegmentations
times equated with the first three patriarchs of Israel, Abraham-Isaac-
fiery
parentage
activity,
line
called
principle
of the aeon"-
upon
most disastrously
when
the conscious
the "end
aboriginal arche at
translated "the end of the world" it
to retire into
its
Is
appear
which
is
and but two of each kind of "unclean beasts" into the ark
has been an item of puzzlement to exegetists. This is simple enough.
To be "clean," the lower animal nature would have had to be perfected
attained at the end of the entire
by its development and purification
were figured under the number
that
Those
cycle of seven sub-cycles.
of the primal duality, which represents the condition in which they
of evil has but only begun, were the
begin the cycle, when purgation
finished
and "clean"; the "twos" were
were
"unclean." The "sevens"
beasts"
and "unclean."
imperfectly developed
the "inundation/ which
rain
The forty days of
types the period of
in the womb of
or
incubation
incarnation
another glyph for the
still
Is
43
The
in the womb of the mother before birth. The 120 days of durance in
the ark seems to represent this typical period of forty, number of
incubation, considered as threefold, in conformity with the kindred
emblemism
of the three days in the tomb, that is, forty taken three
basic significance of the three numbers three, seven and
forty which occur endlessly in Bible symbolism, is uniformly that
of the gestation of incarnation. They all betoken the period life spends
times.
The
is
Jordan.
dove, which could not find a landing to settle on the earth until the
waters had ceased raging and the time of the new cycle was at hand.
The raven is the type of the first, natural, carnal nature, the animal
its
Adam, and
And
when
move
lastly
comes the
principles could
out into material organization once more. This is a most important item of the allegory, and that it has been missed utterly bespeaks the gaucherie of centuries of Bible elucidation. Again the name
reveals the hidden sense. In the case of a human being, the principles
at death flee from earth habitat to heaven or higher consciousness.
When
ready for their next embodiment in flesh, they return from heaven and land again on earth, where alone a body of
the time
is
And
is
on
earth.
scriptures,
ark
that
is
when
precisely
the earth
is
designated as "the
mount
of earth";
and
mount amid
horizon."
his
We
It is
that
Mount
of the
Lord on which
to
humanity. This
is
no far-fetched
may
by bigoted
bring
symbols
Ararat."
The
ship or ark
was
the idea of the soul's voyaging over the waters in the ark of the body,
its new birth therein.
sacred chests that play a part in many myths of creation find
their clue in relation to the ark. In them always are kept the most holy
of the covenant. In the Mysteries of Bacchus a
things, as in the ark
sacred box was carried in procession. There is the legend of Pandora's
and finding
The
box containing the seeds of all good and evil; the Argo of Jason;
the moon-shaped boat in which Isis floated over the waters and
limbs of Osiris; and the whole
gathered together the dismembered
the various gods rose from a
which
of
out
list of coffins and chests
world. That the ark was
the
of
the
state of death for
redemption
is attested securely by that
of the Manes: "I am
utterance
the
remarkable
quoted before,
cradle
is
to
whom
his
like
coffined in an ark
Horus,
brought." The
and mummy-case
line
432
the sea,
and the
is
the coffin
womb
Woman who
fled
under the mighty tide of sensuality that swept in upon their souls at
their entry into animal bodies.
deluge of passion and beastliness
broke loose to engulf all humanity and carry the Christ principle
down
mass of legends center about the fact that in the early stages of
human history an Eden of happiness was submerged under a deluge
that covered the Mount. An initial Paradise was overthrown and
buried under waters that flooded the earth. Various peoples even
localized this drowned garden under the waters nearest them. The
Black Sea, Lake Van in Armenia and Lake Copais in Egypt were a
few of the seas on whose bottoms the sunken Eden might be found.
A typical deluge myth that preserves the sunken Eden feature is one
related by a Miztec tribe of Indians, to the effect that "in the day of
433
rock was called 'the Place of Heaven.' It was the primary dwelling
The children of the gods then planted a garden of fruit
of the
gods.
But the universal fate of such gardens overtakes it: there comes
a deluge; the garden of delight is submerged and "many sons and
are swept away" (Bancroft: Native Races, Vol.
daughters of the gods
that "inevitably at times our earth gets sub3, p. 71). Massey says
whatever
stituted for the mound (mount), island," or eminence of
trees."
name
by
of the gods. The gods sank the Eden of spiritual mindedness and
semi-Nirvanic blissful dreaminess under the deluge of the carnalism
released to overwhelm them as they enter the lower
that the
Dragon
sea of bodily life. There was for a time a Golden Age of angelic
the globe itself. But this was in the incipient stages of the
delight on
rather than fully
descent, when as yet the higher mind hovered over,
under the
inhabited, the physical constitution. Then it passed away
were
as the angels
swept deeper
encroaching waters of sensualism,
into the coils and toils of incarnation. The gods transferred their
focus of consciousness and interest from the heaven world of intellect
of sense and lust for physical life. They moved
down into the
belly
air
and
fire
down
and
material existence.
water, all, however, within the frame of man's
we are gods
intellect
Egypt and Plato both remind us that through
The god
on
earth.
animals
are
in heaven, while through body we
The
substable.
in
his
live
to
descend from his tower or parlor
may
The baptism
upper
and flooded
the land of
takes this
sense
is
434
the
human
abundant
earth.
life.
air,
in the
firm landing place for souls destined to wrestle with matter's inertia to
achieve greater power.
Eden? Yet
art
shalt
The Ovaherero, an African tribe, say that the sky was once let down
in a deluge by which the greater part of mankind was drowned. This
falls into
agreement with the general Egyptian conception of the
downfall of stellar hosts due to the shifting of the polar axis and the
resultant dropping of
many
stars
this
was
set
Egypt
superseding of the earlier gods, Nnu, Seb, Shu
and Taht by Ra, the supreme god of Intelligence, or their reduction to
subserviency under him. Ra rose to hegemony over all the elemental
forth in
as the
was the
The
merged, one of the seven provinces inundated, one of the seven rulers
dethroned. These seven were imaged under many forms of description, as seven kings,
435
seven angels. The dragon that falls from heaven and goes to perdition
The fall of the seven as
is none other than these seven collectively.
clearness in
with
stated
is
the
in
islands sinking
surprising
abyss
were
mountains
the
and
fled
island
Revelation (16:20): "Every
away
seen that the
have
earth.
to
down
had
not found." They
gone
mountain went down into the sea and turned it into blood.
In Wales there is the legend of the destruction of the seven divisions
or provinces of Dyfed, when the drunken Seithenkin let in the deluge
and drowned the land. The Mangaians recognize the seven islands of
which
the Hervey group as the seven islands of Savaiki (Sevekh!),
or beneath the waters.
they say lie in the underworld,
read of the "deluge that afflicted the intrepid dragon." The
seven heads of the Dragon were cut off one by one and thrown down
creational
as the seven cycles rolled around. The crowning stroke of
was the dethronement of the last of the elemental seven by
We
We
activity
the solar god,
its
seven
god
him
the passage of the pole from Lyra, the Harp, into the constellation of
Herakles, the man, typing the inception of the reign of intelligence.
One of the labors of the all-conquering sun in his journey through
the underworld
is
to obtain
command
judgment
is
One
of
the deluge! In the Ritual (Ch. I36A) there is this: "He turneth back
the water flood which is over the thigh of the goddess Nut at the
or the ascending grades of evolution on earth, in
staircase of Seb"
the thigh or
womb
of matter.
out the fullness of its waters in July, the sign of the Lion. Hence the
of the lion, or two lions, from whose
universally adopted symbol
in fountains!
water
streams of
mouths
gush
HoruSj who was born of the water, has given his name to the month
in which the waters of the inundation have their birth in Egypt, June
436
in Egyptian nomenclature is Mesore. Mes is "to be born/' "to be reHor(Har) is the divine child, Har-Makhu, Har-Tema. Mes-
born";
Hor
or
Mesore
is,
Many
congruity
typology of the Nile flood, as the inundated earth re-emerged from
the waters at that time. In sculptures at Karnak the autumn equinox is
represented as one of the divinities and the first month of the year;
the vernal equinox appearing as the seventh month, when the seven
principles of deity were born, or perfected.
From the deluge imagery rises the symbolism of a ladder,
or tower, tree or rock, that should be built high enough to be
mound
beyond
the reach of flooding waters. This is but another variant of the Rock
of Ages, that eternal principle of divinity in man, which
though cast
into the midst of the sea of turbulent natural forces, becomes the ark
of safety or the rock of stability outlasting all decay and movement.
Bab-El means "the gate of God," and equates Cancer in the zodiac,
summer
turns to
ity is dissipated
fall, it is
and
its
to
cast
many
various dialects.
There
is
a detail omitted
story in Genesis.
Again
it
where
all
is
and being
by catching
down
up thereby.
at first unaccountable element of mystery
437
close
lifted
and
many
o the monkey. For instance, the Tlascalans say that after the deluge
later
those who were preserved were changed into monkeys, who
evolved into human beings. In the Codex Chimalpofoca the result of
A
the great hurricane was to change men into monkeys (Bancroft).
had been
belief of the Catalans is that after the deluge those who
into
previously changed
transformed
monkeys were subsequently
into
to eat,
of
life,
to
be
let
sweep
gushed
of similarity of these fables with that of
ing things besides. The points
Pandora should be noted. Many other legends charge the monkey
with being the villain in the deluge piece.
the significance of this connection? In the cosmic sense
adumbrated by the astrological mythology, Hapi, the ape, was one of
the four (of the seven) elemental powers holding up the four corners
of the earth. The Kaf-Ape, Hapi, personated the element of air, and
embosomed in the air that an outpouring of
it is from the
What
is
powers
water takes form. Hapi
is
air in
motion,
we have seen,
engendering the hurricane and the deluge. Hurricane,
storm wind,
of
the
the
of
is a derivative of the name
Quiche deity
man through
Hurafytn (French ouragan), he who brought life to
the
Shu.
of
the
Ape, is one of
Hapi,
breath, Shu. The ape was
zootype
and man; in
lion
the
EzekieFs
in
the four who are,
vision,
eagle, bull,
calf, bird and man; and in Egypt Amsta, Hapi,
Amsta was the human, Hapi, the ape,
Kabhsenuf.
and
Tuamutef
the hawk. These, so mystifying
and
Kabhsenuf
the
Tuamutef
jackal
in
various
and so confusedly presented
forms, must be conceived to
man's
of
basic
four
life, the four elemental
supports
represent the
which substances man
of
of
each
and
air
fire,
essences, earth, water,
has a body. These four are placed symbolically at the four corners
438
on the horizon
at the
equinox
is
vastly appropriate.
The
hori-
zon
is
divine.
animals, according to
much
books as Enoch, the Avesta, the Gilgamesh Epic, the Bundahish and
the Vedas. The monkey is by parentage equally man and beast, and
can stand as the type of man, who is man and god together. When
the legends hint that the result of the deluge was to change men into
monkeys, and as in one version to restore men, changed into monkeys,
back to human form, it is, in the guise of a Marchen, the statement of
a great anthropological datum, for the truth of which science is still
groping. The gods were told not "to marry the women of that place"
or to "make alliances with the natives of that land." But it seems they
so,
the god's biological sin, that released the flood of the lower waters to
enmire the feet of deity, and bring the "destruction" of mankind.
Archaic fable reports that early races and continents had to be destroyed as a result of the breach in evolutionary law, for it is stated
that there were bred monsters terrible and great. Paul has told us that
439
and creeping
things.
The monkey
is
like-
the
celestial
with material
revealed the
momentous
significance of the
of the Horizon.
440
Chapter XVIII
on
earth
is
cance in the total of twelve times thirty degrees. And all of these are
to mystify the unenlightened. Of
illumination
to the mind is the study of the four "corners,"
particular
the points where the four arms of the cross in the circle intersect the
circumference, that is, at the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The
is both concealed
"story of mankind," collectively and individually,
and revealed in the recondite significance of these four poles. The
cardinal
story will remain sealed in dark unintelligibility until the four
are seen to denote four critical epochs in the life
zodiac
the
of
points
of evolving man, namely, his entry into the four planes of consciousness, sensation, emotion, thought and spiritual intuition, on and over
which his life of awareness extends. Any life cycle exhibits these four
a key to
turning points, so that the zodiacal chart will be seen to be
March
June 21.
North.
September 21.
West.
December
South.
East.
Morning.
21.
21.
Noon.
Evening.
Midnight.
ZODIAC:
Cancer.
Libra.
Capricorn.
Aries.
ELEMENTS:
MOON CYCLE:
ANIMAL SYMBOL:
KINGDOM:
Fire.
Earth.
Water.
Air.
First Quarter.
Last Quarter.
Dark Moon.
Man.
Beast.
Fish.
Bird.
Human.
Mineral.
Vegetable.
Animal.
Full
.
Moon
44 I
FOETAL CYCLE:
Love.
Impregnation.
Quickening.
Birth.
HUMAN
Death
Birth.
Puberty.
Adulthood.
THEOLOGY:
Descent.
Incarnation.
Awakening.
Resurrection.
FESTIVALS:
Fire Festival
Michaelmas.
Christmas.
Easter.
Harlequin.
Pantaloon,
Columbine.
Clown.
Ra.
Seb.
Uati
Shu.
LIFE:
MYSTERY FIGURE:
EGYPTIAN GOD:
.
This chart
fancy. If so,
may seem
to be
is
it
to
many
like the
remembered
work o
that nature,
sheer analogistic
and mind are
life
correspondences
indicated
norm
and provide a
and epochs. By
a certain systematism
means
of
what
is
cerned in another
known
significance
circle horizontally
less
from
points,
east to west, or Aries to Libra, or
March
to
to
mankind.
be seen that the June quarter of the circle suggests the point
of ideal conception in the noumenal world, when as yet no relation to
has been established. The
matter or
point marks the
It will
September
form into matter in embryo incarnation, the Word
flesh. Here matter and spirit join, or spirit is subbeginning to put on
our enlightenment, marks the point
merged in matter. December, to
of the awakening or germination of life after death under matter's
well seen in the foetal cycle in what is called
This is
body
power.
particularly
the "quickening" of the child in the womb half way through the gestation period. If Christmas is celebrated in the December solstice, its
can not be strictly that of the "birth" of the Christ in human-
meaning
ity,
but rather
birth at Easter.
its
to its true
quickening after torpidity, preparatory
womb of matter takes
the
place, introducing
ness. The point of release
is
at
the
March
first
which
who
is
activity, at
final stage of
birth in the child's delivery. The four stages are: the ideal conception
in love's mind; the actual junction of spirit with matter; the quickenlife after
apparent death; and the final victory in release from
matter. Transferred to theology these basic conceptions yield a wealth
of new discernment.
ing to
The
We
was the primal celebration of the death and burial of the god in body.
Then came Christmas at the winter solstice, Easter at the vernal
equinox, and in June the great fire festival, revived recently by the return to "pagan" ideals in Germany, and perpetuated down to the present in a few parts of Ireland. The September festival commemorated
the birth of spirit or soul into flesh; the spring equinox denoted the
second birth, or birth out of body into a higher world. The upper
half of the circle of signs is the home of soul when detached from
flesh,
half
and
is its
443
the meaning for humanity obviously lies below the line, or at least
water of this life, which surface is marked
upon the surface of the
is the boundary between the two realms.
which
the horizon line,
by
Whether advancing clockwise or downward to the left, we enter body
on the west; we leave it on the east to join the gods above. "Pepi
born." The
saileth with Ra to the east of heaven, where the gods are
is that "the Heavenly Man faces South." Having
Egyptian statement
heaven and passed through the Babel gate in
of
the
climbed
steep
down upon the world of matter below, and
look
to
turns
he
Cancer,
thus faces "south." Yet the north was considered the "hinder part of
the
Menken,
Egyptians portrayed
of double animal types, such creatures were always male in front and
female behind. The Sphinx is so constructed. If the north is the region
then conceivably the heavenly
of matter and the south that of
spirit,
man would
swung
east direction.
The important
fact
emerging from
on the west
that
man
a falling
is
as
actually placed
on the wrong side of the year!
festivals
Since the
number
The
at a season in
which
it is
utterly out of
is
it
was chosen
as the
fasting
lack of true spiritual being suffered by the
god in the flesh. Forty days
of lamentation and grief were set aside to commemorate the death
and
tomb
of matter. For ten thousand years B.C. it was part of the celebration
of the cult of lusa, the ever-coming or annually-coming solar god, to
keep the forty days and nights in which the sun-hero in the under-
battle
his
formation of Apis,
when
its
days shut up on an island in the Nile. The spies sent out returned
after forty days. For forty days Goliath came out to
fight each day
(/
Samuel:
17).
David reigned
forty years.
Mount
forty days and nights. Jesus was forty days on earth after
his resurrection. Forty
appears in the Old Testament some sixty-three
times. Forty days was the length of the incubation period of
in
the
grain
mud and
ing to their
own
German
is
the
consummation of her
is
sadly
effort to release
awry
here.
445
not to
Nature
kill
and bury
the
mark
of error
in the spring.
autumn
season,
out of harmony with the spirit of nature in the spring. In the vernal
season all life is being reborn; the intrusion of the idea of death into
the midst of nature's happy rejuvenescence is a monstrous anachroThe ancients celebrated the Lord's death and
nism and
ineptitude.
burial (in the grave o matter only) for forty days following the September equinox, the period ending on October 31, the date of our
Hallowe'en. This is the true Lent, no matter how it is taken. The
of
waning sun of autumn is the natural hieroglyph
fixion and death, and it is a foul blasphemy against
opening
ing
can
it
ment
of
life
With
his
own
commonplace expression
is
Egypt. The
446
incarnation, or
life
in the actual.
The
false face.
And
the animal covering, they could but make ridiculous grimaces and
awkward gestures through the coarse vestments of flesh. Distorted by
the animal nature, "marred in his visage, deformed out. of the semman" (Isaiah}, the god was little better than a clown
blance of a
Likewise the
worn
than words the dual nature of the human, when, on this night, god
and animal became tenants of the same household, and shared each
a half of man's nature.
from Massey:
"But there was a diversity of opinion amongst the Christian Fathers as
whether Jesus the Christ was born in the winter solstice or in the vernal
equinox. It was held by some that the twenty-fifth of March was the natal
to
day. Others maintained that this was the day of the incarnation. According
to Clement of Alexandria the birth of Jesus took place on the twenty-fifth
of March. But in Rome the festival of Lady Day was celebrated on the
twenty-fifth of March in
the womb of the virgin,
took place."
447
The
early Fathers
light
We
come
at last to grips
zon symbol. Here there is offered by ancient Egypt a feast of enlightenment rich beyond expectation. The horizon and the equinox! In these
zodiacal and seasonal positions, symbolizing both the same inner data,
man will find the delineation of his nature and mission with clearer
than in elaborate treatises on the subject. The horizon
specification
and equinox lines tell of man's definite place in evolution and in nathe terms of his progress. The
ture, and announce most distinctly
horizon symbol becomes the open sesame to the clarification of more
doctrinism than
any other natural feature. There is
perhaps
religious
concealed under
it
the true apprehension of whose meaning has not yet been achieved
elucidation of the meaning of
by modern exegesis. Indeed, the proper
the sun standing on the two horizons, or at the two equinoxes, may
of the mysteries of ancient
be said to be the first actual
unlocking
will
in
sweep away errors of ghastly consequence
history.
Perhaps the
even awaken
opening of this closed mine of priceless intelligence may
and a new
mission
of
consciousness
the age to a new
humanity's
inspiration to achieve
The prologue
it.
Amenta
in an
earlier chapter emphasized the truth that religion had been instituted
man's efforts upon the energization
its
sagacious founders to focus
by
of his
life
arena of
here on earth.
human
destiny.
It
The
location of
that earth
Amenta on
was the
critical
What was
there funda-
mentally posited on strong supports receives its final and unimpeachable confirmation in the implications of the horizon and equinox
import
horizon meaning.
The
numbers
scriptures.
If,
three
are twelve
a place cryptically
cycle series, then
the astute is that
marked by
it is
man
the
number
three
and a half
in a seven-
stands at
purveyed to
a point which is half way through his
half way between the two ends of the
is what is
conveyed by
both the numerical and the horizontal suggestions. Three and a half
is at the half
way point between the upper and lower termini of a
seven series. And the horizon is half way between heaven and earth,
449
and matter, the two ends of being. The motyping, as always, spirit
mentous information, then, which is vouchsafed to man in this recondite fashion is that he, as a creature in a stupendous cyclical evoluand
Man
complete
midmost point.
from this datum. The first is that
the line marking off three and a half stages in seven would equate
the horizon line in the zodiacal chart, and that this fateful line would
in man's
at the same time mark the boundary between the two natures
It would indicate the border
the
and
the
heavenly.
constitution,
earthly
his evolution
and stands
at its
where the two natures, separated by life's aboriginal act of bifurcation into spirit and matter, remain contiguous to each other. It
would be the fence between the two kingdoms, from the opposite sides
of which they face each other. If there is warfare between the two, this
would be the battle line, the front of the Battle of Armageddon. And
that this aeonial conflict is fought on
amazingly does the Ritual say
the horizon! At last weird speculation as to the meaning and location
Biblical symbol is settled by, and as, a bit of Egyptian
of a
line
pertinent
imagery.
man was
The
implication
the arche.
at once.
And
Put
is
that
clearly, then,
great kingdoms
the further deduction is that he stands in two worlds
it can be said that the two worlds are in him,
differently,
by
Ra, and his body on earth in the form of an animal, asserts the text.
Man stands with both feet in the "grave," but his soul is in heaven.
And to crown this knowledge with inspiring impressiveness, it is inti-
"Know
ye not/' says St. Paul, "that we are to manage angels, let alone mundane affairs?" And "he hath made man for a little while lower than
are in exact equilibration with each other. If man stands at the middle
the
point in his journey from matter back to spirit, then he is also at
point where the two nodes of his being, spirit and matter, exactly
counterbalance each other in efficacious influence. And this at once
opens the way for the introduction of the whole range of symbolic
values connected with the sign of Libra, the Scales of the Balance,
and the Scales of the Judgment. And precisely at the horizon's western
The sun
autumn and
life.
life's total
area.
And
after
nature, reconcile
them
He
Two
occupies the
it
will
long cycles
warfare between these two
Lands, or
be
in harmony,
like the
Disk
at daybreak."
45 1
Ancient
quiet
ments.
be the
chaotic tempest
and harmonize
its
ele-
Every
creative life
consciousness
on
it
And
three forma-
the first
to capability of embodying the kingly mind.
in the
tive impulses work with matter in its sub-atomic states, which are
invisible world.
The
first stirs
the
ele-
sides of polarity; the third granulates the substantial essence of the material half. It is not until the forth wave strikes
of
brought out onto the stage
elements of the mineral kingdom on earth.
that matter
is
eral elements to organic structure of the vegetable type, and the sixth
lifts these up to the forms of animal bodies. Only in the seventh comes
vehicle
is
And man
is
just
under the
foot, or
dividing spirit
Two
Halves of Egypt."
life energy taking root-matter through its
of
activities
The three
three primary formative stages in the invisible world prepare finally
the mineral kingdom on a globe Earth which represents the nadir
title:
"Lord of the
452
of descent o
life
energization in dense matter. Life has descended to
in matter in the mineral state. Its involution ends
death
deepest
and
its
evolution
there,
through form begins. The mineral kingdom,
its
We
from
the
it.
is
The
human kingdom
divinity comes out on the surface of conscious existence and takes responsible control of the processes thenceforth. Arcane texts state that
humanity
itself
We
scheme of evolution.
NIRVANIC
ATMIC
5
FlWE~mMAN~7'
^"
BUDDM1C
AKMMAL-HUMAti
ANIMAL
VEGETABLE
MINERAL
B B represents the dip o the wave of purely matterand controlled by higher agents of the
unconscious
building energy,
into the heart of matter. It goes as low as the bottom of the
The curved
line
hierarchy,
its
Mount
Sinai.
AA
than the
human
body,
it
reaches
its
human
its
mid point
present station.
We are
and
statement
life.
The
head and
balance,
heel,
is
new
salient
meaning.
Theology has gone on blindly for centuries, never dreaming that the
zodiacal sign of Libra was all the while the
cryptic sign and seal of
the great doctrine of the
and
that
man
was being weighed
Judgment,
in the scales of the living balance between
spirit and matter in the
life
in body.
inner
spirit
region
454
life
is
where
man
for the first time in evolution onto the plane of open conscious being
in a world constituted of matter. It comes out of the depths onto the
we
men
men on some
former planetary
stage,
and
and
shall rise in
One aspect of the typology touches the opposition of light and darkThe sun on the horizon is midway between the kingdom of light
ness.
between
full
as
Human
it
spiritual light
dimmed splendor.
that the tabernacle
life is
We
are
We
are neither in gross darkness nor in unenough the Talmud preserved the statement
Oddly
which man was ordered by deity to build was to be
erected "half in light and half in shade." The equal arms of the cross
likewise carry the same idea of balance between dark and light. And
the cross was set up on a hill, the hill of the horizon. The Scales on
the horizon were the cross on the hill. Horus and horizon both spell
horf which is the same as hel, and means "light." Izon is in all probability the Greek ison, meaning "equal." So then we have the horizon
as the place of equal light and darkness, as in the day period on September 21 and March 21.
Salvation is won on the cross because the place of preservation, in the
Ritual, is stated to be where "the body and soul are united to be saved."
Death on the cross of matter, as we have clarified previously, is at the
same time the preservation of the soul's integrity. It was earth, the
455
fleeing
from Massey
quotation
"The opening
of the
mount
and
takes charge
where Horus enters the earth or earth-life, Seb, as god of earth,
lower
the
to
the
on
them
Egypt of
to
way
of the child and mother
convey
Amenta/'
Seb, however, does not convey
own, but
fosters
them
them
to
there.
The horizon
line
is
to
enduring
everlasting
Rock
split
itself
into
two
at the
beginning of creation.
The
line of cleavage runs midway through the center of its being, dividing
the upper millstone of spirit from the lower one of matter. And right
into that aperture between the two nodes of being deity placed man.
this depicted in the Old Testament. The Eternal says
Graphically is
to Moses (man) that he will hide him in the deft of the roc\ and will
hand over his eyes, so that as his glory passes by man will
place his
not look full in the face of his overpowering effulgence; but when he
have passed, and his hand is removed, man may then look safely
of God over mortal eyes,
upon his hinder part Matter is this hand
and it is the veil that deity has suspended between his mighty glory of
shall
and our feeble powers of sight. We see God only through the
which he has flung over our face. So man, standing on the horizon, gazes upon deity with its light dimmed to twilight by its admixture with the powers of darkness. God veils his face, or veils our power
of vision, as Moses put on a veil every time he went into the Mount
But it is in the Cleft of the
(of the horizon) to commune with deity.
line between heaven and
horizon
on
the
Rock of Eternal Being, or
spirit
veil
456
earth, that
"Rock
Let
cleft in
twain for
me
with pious unction, no one has ever told us that God has thrust our
life into the fissure made by the
cleaving asunder of the two aspects
of divine
The
rock
is in the human
body of man itself.
Hebrew imagery is expressly called in Egypt the
horizon." Humanity is born in this rock cleft, and primi-
life,
cleft of
"rock of the
tive necessity
It is
by name
was
laid for
Osiris rises to
of the
gate of the rock, to approach the land of spirits." It is at this rockgate that Shu stands when he uplifts the heavens (Ch. 17). This god
is the up lifter of buried divinity, raiser of the
grave rock, or opener of
the sepulcher
now
awakened.
Shu's counterpart is Anhur, identical with Moses, and he is hyphenated with Shu as Shu-Anhur. He is represented as being the medium
of communication between God and mortals. "His substance is identi-
with the substance of Ra," which is the truth about humanity likeHe makes divine law known to men, as did Moses, when he
brought the twelve tables of the law from the Mount. As the breathing
cal
wise.
transubstantiation
is
in his cycle of earth life, itself typed by the nine months of gestation,
at the end of which his apotheosis into the being of Ra occurred as "he
who
and
does not die the second death" (Ch. 42). He then escapes Apap
Sutenin
death
to
on
and
Innocents
the
o
conquer
the slaughter
goes
Khen. Shu-Anhur is equated in another cult with Atum-Iu, who as
holds the
the opener and closer of the gates in and out of Amenta,
of
keys of death and
hell.
titles
and
of Shu-Anhur, guardian
further exege-
exit, yields
sis
and
edification.
west and
east, is
of
ing of "the divine sun-god
on the horizon.
Now
spirit
Shu was
the "lion-god,"
Leo signatures.
of a lion-god upon the Mount of the horizon as the "lion
he says.
of the double force" of spirit and matter. "I am the twin lions,"
the double force
rose or stood between the two lions which
cessor, inherited
in the
form
He
image
of being, betokened by the fore and hind parts of the lion, or the
The male lion is spirit, the female hinder part is the material
sphinx.
Science has dealt
power requisite to implement spiritual conceptions.
with "matter and force" as the two exclusive factors in the living
The spiritual or
world, but omitted the invincible king of all, spirit.
fore part directs, but must use the material hinder part, its shatyi, as
the fulcrum against which to exert power.
The two lions are much in evidence as representatives of the two
natures that are balanced on the horizon line. The two leonine figures
the guardians of doorways, driveways, steps and
placed as
now have their arcane riddle unraveled for an oblivious
portals, may
world. They are survivals through many millennia from the time
when Leo was at the point of the autumn equinox in the reckoning.
that are
still
of divinity born anew, condying divinity; the lion east is the figure
of humanity.
of
graves, lifter-up
queror of darkness and death, opener
The two are Horus the Elder, decrepit, wizened, disfigured, ready to
458
and give place to his seed; and Horus the Younger, radiant, bloomlion and the "lion's whelp" of the Old Testaing, triumphant. Dying
ment, they were the two phases of godhead at the two opposite sides
of the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. At once a large segment of
die
cherubim, the angelic powers that support the ark of the covenant at
its
And
two ends.
from
it is
this con-
stated that
Moses (Man) was bidden to commune with deity "from between the
two cherubim"! The best that literalism could do for us in this matter
was to leave us with a picture of Moses ensconced atop the ark of
testimony crouched under the two overarching wings of the cherubim
trying to meditate! Now we can see the portrayal redeemed from nonsense to positive and gripping meaning for us. Naturally all communication must come across at the point where the two natures,
human and divine, can effect a contact, and this is on the horizon line,
in the body of man. Where mind and body meet is our holy mount.
Our life stretches from the western gate of physical birth across the
dark nocturnal sea of earthly experience to the eastern horizon of
bursting light. The space between the two cherubim is the span of
mortal life. In this life alone we have our chance to commune with
deity.
Our
one gleaming
the
two divine
its
labor
Man
if it
brought us
this
dawn. The
place between
two
trees,
two
mounts,
altars,
we may approach
Word
close
of Truth,
into
whom is called "Yesterday" and the other "Tomorrow." Nothing could be more instructive than these titles, for, of the
two natures of man, the lower has been built up as the result of past
horizon, one of
A variant
giraffe
it.
all
this
crocodile,
which was
breath and
placed in the sign of Scorpio. The Scorpion represented
at the station of the
one
Hence
the
water.
crocodile
the
typed
dryness,
other suggested the god and animal in union in one organism man.
The crocodile at the place of the equinox limned the idea of equal
balance of the air and water. The ape, hah: man and half animal by
horizon
as
mankind were
human, such
and
others.
man
in a
midway
last of
things
460
medium between
the
both."
Greek statement
that
The
he is in
freedom
(21: 8)
of
life
call
mystic seer
we
find:
"Thus
And Deuteronomy
this
In Jeremiah
you the way
have
set
life
rested the crossbeam of the balance, with the natural constituting the
one end and the supernatural the other. As intimated in other connections, the
Hebrew
Sinai plays a
in this exegesis.
After the passage of the Red (Reed) Sea in the Exodus, the children
of Israel arrive at the "Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and
thee."
The
is
god's passings can mean nothing but that the soul has passed over the
west and east horizon lines time after time in his descents and ascents,
in his pilgrimages from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. That
men
are turned
on the boundary.
461
upon us
It is
as
we
"The
Light-God
of Egypt."
rolleth over thy body. Thou art the Lord of the two halves
these are the two kingdoms which every noted Egyp-
And
Horus
leaves us in
no doubt
And
I sit
my
my
is
of
more
When
Lakes.
water symbolism
On
resorted
is
approaching the
two
to,
the
lakes, the
Two
Two
Speaker says:
come that I may purify this soul of mine in the most high degree.
be purified in the lake of propitiation and equipoise. Let me plunge
into the divine pool beneath the two divine sycamores of heaven and
"Lo
Let
me
earth" (Ch.
97,
Renouf)
Revelation states that the two witnesses "are the two olive trees."
It also states that
the tree of
life is
of water.
Already noted is the statement that the soul "makes to flourish the
crops on both sides of the horizon." It cultivates either mundane or
celestial interests.
"He
is
night he
is
The
climactic utterance
is
Two
rejoice at meeting thee." "The doors are opened and the gates
thrown wide open to Ra as he cometh forth from the horizon." In
gods
are
Nu
"I
462
flame which cometh forth from the horizon ... in the Pool of the
Double Fire. I am pure at the place of the passage of souls" which is
the horizon.
"Thou
Ra
is
apostrophized:
who
and
at eve."
At "noon" Ra
is
celestials; at "eve"
He
he
And
The grand
simplicity
"A
Are
To Pepi (the soul) it is said: "Thou takest thy seat in the two halls
.
Thou art Ra appearing at the horizon, Ra is born
of the horizon.
.
we
read:
sails to
"He
sails
is
man
are born."
is
im-
"The water
earth.
The
The
"Make him to embrace the two horizons of the sky; this Pepi saileth
Ra to the horizon. Make Ra to embrace the two horizons of
therein with
the sky."
463
and intimates the union of the forces of the two horizons. "The divine
in the horizon," Adoration is paid to
power hath risen and shineth
to thee, O thou that shinest from thy
the risen
sun-god: "Homage
thou living soul that cometh forth from the horizon."
Anubis was a double-headed deity, one of the twelve guardians of
the Light. One head could watch by day, the other by night; or the
disk,
who have
flame.
is
indicated in the
Litany of Ra:
Two
Sisters of the
"He made the two Rheti goddesses, the
did away with the hostility that
to be at peace before thee.
other."
hearts, and each became reconciled to the
He
Here
is
Hymn
Two
Lands,
was in
their
to Osiris
we
find:
"Thou rollest up into the horizon, thou hast set light over the darkness,
thou sendest forth air from thy plumes, and thou floodest the Two Lands
like the Disk at daybreak."
In Zechariah (14) there stands the following:
the very deft shall open into a deep valley, the living waters shall
front or
go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the southern sea (in
sea."
the
hinder
toward
them
half
of
and
before)
"When
The
valley
is
used
many
between the two mountains which open and close, giving man his
interval of opportunity to dash in and fill his chalice before being
caught.
The Zechariah
of two waters
passage uses the symbolism
464
dividing. What more could possibly be connoted by the Exodus typology of the waters of the Red Sea dividing to let the children of
God pass, and closing to catch those coming behind in hostile pursuit?
The great philosophical debate as to the Monistic or Dualistic view
is
largely gratuitous. All ancient systems of philosophy rise out
of a basic initial proposition stating that a primal Oneness opened out
to become a duality. The shell bursts asunder to release the seed; the
of life
seed splits in two to release the ideal pattern of form within. The first
beginning was from the bosom of the Absolute, which opened to generate the twins, Light and Darkness, Day and Night, Manifestation
called
The
hill
and
nouncement teaches that the root of all things branched into two
powers. Of these, one appears above and is the Great Father, the mind
of the universe, directing all things; the other appears below, producing all things, female. The Great Mother divided into the two heavrise to the Two Women, the Mothers
who
These
two
of
women,
brought forth the twin brothers of
laced
the zodiac six months a fart. They
in
light and darkness, were f
stand at the same stations as the two lion gods. This makes the one
the mother of incarnating deity in his first half, or the natural man,
the other the mother of resurrected deity, the spiritualized man. The
one, Virgo, was the virgin mother of the god-seed buried in body and
undeveloped; the other, in Pisces, was the mother, no longer virgin,
but impregnated by spiritual mind, so that her offspring was not
merely born, but also begotten of the Father. This double motherhood
and double birth of twin saviors is duplicated in L,u\e. Elizabeth, who
ens,
all life.
465
is
"Of the vivifying Goddesses/' says Proclus, "they call the one older
but the other younger (Timaeus: B. III).
The figure of Aquarius, the Waterman standing in the zodiac at the
January station and pouring out the two streams of the water of life
5*
name
Hu
and Sa.
sonifications of spirit and matter, Shu and Tefnut, or
a twin
is not a biune
"there
is no
that
that
being,
god
Massey says
form
of the 'double primitive essence' like Ptah." "Manifested exhand; unmanifested existences are in his womb,"
mummy
matching Bacchus and Serapis. Horus is shown with the cteis, Venus
with the beard, and Christ as Charis and Jesus as St. Sophia. Astarte
wore on her head a bull's horns (Philo). A bull-headed goddess is
found on Egyptian monuments; Neith and the vulture, her emblem,
were both depicted with the male member erect in front of them.
Aphrodite is sometimes written Aphrodites, the masculine form. And
men
first, and only in long slow develbecome Father and Mother. The human race, which
represents a miniature eidolon of cosmic creation, reflects the same
process. Humans were androgyne or male-female for aeons before, in
opment did
it
humanity
as a whole,
is
single life
matching early
of dual or epicene gender until
puberty unof sex. This is why Horus, the mummy and
466
the child Jesus of the catacombs, were represented with legs bound toThe two legs are the signs of bifurcation, the one typing spirit,
gether.
the other matter, and free to move in counterbalance with each other.
The human child represents the pre-Adamic races, the pre-manifestation deity, who was androgyne. The human race had its time of
Man
puberty.
The impubescent
diiferentiated.
Massey's
lost
long
summary
and
Horus or
so sorely
needed
to
the Christ, so
is
valuable:
is Horus in matter, feeble and
dwindling; on the east
in spirit. In the one he is the child of twelve years, in the other
the adult of thirty years. The first is the founder, the second is the
he
is
he
is
Horus
The
fulfiller.
first
the Resurrection
double force, the double crown, the double feather, the double Uraei, the
double life, or other types of duplication, including the double equinox!' 4
He
...
is
to
addressed: "Fearsome one, thou who art over the two earths
the double crown is given" at his second coming (Rit.,
whom
And
it becomes
imperative to dissolve in the clear light
a
false apparition of doctrinal accretion: the second
of understanding
coming of a god in bodily form to earth historically. Every god figure,
Ch. 17).
here
ondly
as
all
man become
The presentment
first as
is
is
Horus, who suffered as Horus the mortal and overcame as Horus the
immortal spirit. He "learned obedience through the things which he
suffered; and having been made perfect he became unto all them that
obey him the author of eternal salvation." The spirit of God came upon
in his adulthood, when he was divinized as the hawk; and he
him
who had been dumb and meek as the lamb or bull led to the slaughter,
became Horus Ma-Kheru, the utterer of very truth. The change of
467
is
a falsetto; the false word must become the Word made Truth.
of the western horizon, taking the plunge into matter, is,
The Horus
He
He
is
and
am
The
old
man
space between the two horizons he blends the powers of his two forces
first natural
potencies into the spiritual
The word
"child" in a
number
is
which
was of
Some
longing to eat of the earth. Tasting earth's fruit, they lost the power to
fly back to heaven. One Arunta legend tells of ancestors who were
double-sexed when they first started on their journey, but before
they
had proceeded very far, their organs were modified and their mothers
"became as other women are." The races emerging from Paradise were
hermaphrodite.
how God,
468
enamored
of their
own
man
in their likeness.
beauty of creative
And
seeing in the "water" of earth the fair reflection of his own beauty,
it and would cohabit with it.
(Here is probably the genesis
of the Greek fable of Narcissus.) In his love for it he wrapped himself
he loved
about
it
it.
And
man
above
double; mortal because of his body, and immortal because of his celestial part. Immortal and having power over all things,
all
creatures
is
themselves to be immortal, the cause of death being the too ardent love
of body. He that knew himself to be a mixture of high spirit with
Amenta
in the
its
it
can return to the Father. Bisexuality is for the journey in time, not for
all eternity. That which has been
put asunder by God must be remarried for the return to the invisible world. "This soul, divided in the
two halves of
sex,
Manifestation
is
the
two
halves, spirit
469
done in Tattu, our earth. We are sent to bathe in the Pool of Siloam
two halves of our nature may be made into the original
whole. Earthly human wedlock is but an emblem of the greater marelements of matter and consciousness in one organism.
riage of the two
"The Manes could only enter the kingdom of heaven as a being of
is
so that the
The
child
is
homiletics.
Gospels are not dealing with everyday
was
race that it
telling the
must reunite the
We
when he
must return
two divided
come when
the
cycle.
And no
"when they
shall arise
from the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but are as
the angels which are in heaven" (Mar\ 12: 25). Sex is an
appurtenance
of the body only. This is the meaning of the statement in Revelation
that "the dragon shall rise up and slay" the two witnesses, the two
thieves between whose opposite tensions the Christ has been crucified.
Unification slays duality. This
is
"where the body-soul in matter (Osiris) is blended with the holy spirit of
Ra; the female with the male (Tdrnut with Shu), or Horus, the child
under twelve years, with Horus, the adult of thirty years. The transaction
of blending occurs on the day that was termed
Ch. 17).*
470
'Come thou
to
me'
"
(Rit.,
cleft and bifurcation is the genesis of the horizon situThere could be no horizon line in man's life but for the primal
The primal
ation.
bicussating that Plato tells of. The duality of our nature is a trite retruth. Yet its consideration from the angle of the horizon typolligious
new
disclosures of piercing
meaning.
Jerome, the Church Father, states that the crucifixion was not signalized by the rending of the veil of the temple, but by the breaking in
The beam was the cross bar of the balnew and stirring significance of "the veil."
But we
The
rent veil
also catch a
is
symbolism. The
its
primal oneness. As seen, life can not come to view
broken into the two nodes of spirit and matter, to provide a
subject-consciousness which can become aware of object-matter. The
celestial rending of the veil was then the division of the All-life into
and negative phases, and through the rent thus made,
its
positive
manifest deity in
until
it is
archetypal life
the cleft rock.
emerged
to view.
Through
the horizon. It
was
The
the rent
rent veil
life
is
emerges
to
The rending
of the veil
The
an-
and striking
The form
Since
it is
is
God
which
is,
or
is
off spirit
female. All the root significance of the stem "rib, rif" which yields
The hymn
"rift," "riven," supports this interpretation. Riven is "cleft."
flowed." Deity mutispeaks of "the blood, from thy riven side which
body in twain by a
Shakespeare), and from the
kind was nourished.
lated, cleft its
rif" in
Reconciliation
Two
Lands."
is
And
life
the heart of Horus; and therefore are the northern and southern parts
of heaven at peace." Even Keb (Seb), earth-god, is dualized in the
and the other is to
following: "Behold, one arm of Keb is to heaven,
the earth, and he taketh Pepi along to Ra." In The Crown of Triumph
father Seb
(Rit.f Ctu 19) the announcement is made to Horus: "Thy
two
heaven
heir.
He
The two
earths are
Egyptians signified
the course of the sun in the winter solstice (the underworld) by two
feet or legs walking, a miracle, for the legs walked without a body or
a head.
and
other,,
and divine
his head.
It is
said
sun or Ra.
being.
It
is
on
the hori-
zon under the title of Makhu-El, the god of the dividing line. And,
true to type, Michaelmas was placed at the autumn equinox on the
western horizon! And Gnostic literature names the western hill Mount
Bakhu, while the eastern one is the Mount of Olives, or Mount Manu.
A prayer is made that the Osiris may be saved from the attack made
on
his
him
against
in his descent.
He
is
child.
472
at sunrise;
Venus
is
3, p.
196).
In the Ritual the soul must open thirty-six gates (the twelve decans
each of three zodiacal signs?) by as many transformations of character.
Chapter 145 is devoted to the opening of twenty-one of these gates.
The sun-god
is
the
King
of Glory for
and by
whom
of Glory!
"
powers/
The Eoo\
of
Enoch
diminution/' because
and descend."
"it is
"Pepi takes possession of the Two Lands, like a king of his gods."
seizes first the west or natural kingdom, then the
spiritual east,
after making the crossing via the solstice of winter. To
Pepi in his
He
announcement
is
made:
"Hail, Pepi, heaven has conceived thee with the star Seh (Orion), the
star Seh Life, Life, by the com-
mand
of the gods, thou livest. Thou comest forth (risest) with the star Seh
in the eastern part of heaven; thou settest with the star Seh in the western
part of heaven."
Again:
"This Pepi appears in the eastern part of the sky. Thou art renewed in
thy season; thou becomest young again at thine appointed time. Nut brings
forth this Pepi with the constellation of Orion/'
splendor in the east side, he "makes the hearts of the dwellers in the
expand with joy." "He strides over Akar, he stands up in the
east to
473
The glory of the Lord In Ezekiel's vision "went up and stood upon
the mountain which is on the east side of the city." The four fishers in
the Ritual pull the dragnet through the water in the act of fishing for
Horus. These are they who are described as fishers for "the great
at the east of the sky" (Rit. f Ch. 1536). Jesus was acprince who sits
companied by four fishermen.
The legend
Memnon which
sang at
is
gods
." are
spoken of. "In our mysteries/' says Jerome (cited by
and evidencing, too, a
Christian
Antiquities, Vol. I, 517
Bingham:
their mysteries along with
had
Christians
denied:
that
the
often
thing
horizon
with our
sin;
teaching!
The
here expressed
theological basis for the mythic hatred
cerned.
is
easily dis-
We
have seen that in Lufe Jesus delivered the sermon, not on the
mount, but on the plain. Nothing but our interpretative diagram will
reconcile the apparent contradiction, since by its aid we see that the
variant aspects of
horizon may be either a hill or the open plain.
a symbol chanced to cross or appear in conflict in this case. The theo-
Two
logians are saved the annoyance of having to explain a seeming contradiction. But the point of utmost moment in the matter is that the
fleshly lips
on
either hill or
on the
hill
meadow;
it is
of the horizon
The Greeks
And
in
man
apart of heaven
stands with feet (body) on earth
and
and
The meaning is
made by the cleaving
Man
is
the
Adas who
that the
god
head (soul) in the sky, supporting the two realms by the power of his
two equal arms. So the patriarch's two arms had to be held up till the
battle was won, in Old Testament copying of Egypt's deepest lore.
The sun-god came to relieve Atlas of his burden until he could go and
three golden apples from the garden of Paradise; which three
get the
golden apples, be it known at last, were the solar triad of mind-soulspirit.
The June
solstice
has rather
little
to offer for
mundane
instruction,
because
The
it is
or non-manifest
line.
solstice to
June
its
Nun
man. Maintained
state.
in a
few
the
and
human
It
shows soul
nificance
equinoxes light and dark are equal in quantity and sovereignty. But
two powers
flood of rich
475
solstice.
where
a shift o
For under
the hieroglyph,
winter
made
its
of
actual residence in a
body
and gone forth under primal impulse into the
heart of matter. But with the exhaustion of its projecting force, it
comes to a dead stop in the arms of matter's inertia. The material force
that was able to bring it to a stop must be exactly equal to its own
of the entire evolutionary
power at that point. For an aeon a section
round it stands motionless, locked in the arms of matter. Here, at the
the
bosom of
the Father
nadir of descent,
of
evolutionary solstice.
evolution.
is its
human
period
As sheer metaphor
it
And
male and female principles in each other's arms is the condition precedent and necessary to a birth. The Logos, and below him the Christ,
are both the products of wedlock and intercourse between spirit and
matter, and must therefore be born at the solstice. And so the Christ
birth (mes-, mas, in Egyptian) fell at the winter solstice.
All values are born out of the struggle between the opposing nodes
The
awaken
its
and matter, and their frictional interplay. The two parents must
spirit
cohabit to produce their child of divine consciousness. And they are
married at the solstice. Heraclitus adds a most pertinent observation:
"The harmonious
bow and
is
energies.
The
still") lies
still
Neither
is
ation in
human
losing or gaining. They are stabilized. In the parallel situevolution, soul and body stand in precisely the same
come down
in involution
476
and come
to a stop in exact
The
The
equilibration
is
Paul's corroboration.
equilibration
of forces, to a standstill.
Again
flashes into
thought the
brilliance of the
We
poise!
Egyptian phrase-name for this life: the 'La\e of Equiare in the pool of balanced, stabilized forces. The term
"pool" has great significance here because the water in a pool is stagnant, not in stream. At the angle made by the turn in direction of the
line of involution into that of evolution "the angle of the Pool of
the water of
Fire"
life is
Amenta." The moving forces coming from above and below meet and
hold each other still in the Pool of the Solstice. It is the lake or pool
of
human life,
The animal
Copulation and birth took place in this stable relation. Now a stable
a building erected by man for animals, a station where they may
is
come
word meaning
"to stand")
still
in a
stall
or static state or
along with soul. Along and together with the divine, animal
evolution was stabled for the night. Soul came to lift up the animal,
and to do so he had to build a stable for him and enter it with him.
station,
The
stable.
in
much
"The world
To
"O
little
How
town of Bethlehem,
still
we
477
And
Gospel of James.
whether this fact does not supply
a
obviously drama that one speculates
an all-sufficient reason for its being kept out of the official canon of
New Testament books. The recondite meaning of the solstice pause
gdium
to
And
flight.
3.
And
working people
they did not
sitting
move
around
5.
it,
saw a
table spread,
and
but their
to eat.
4.
down toward
looked
in their
their
back.
6.
And
7.
But
8.
9.
they
all
And
And
who
lifted
their faces
them up
to their
in.
beheld the sheep dispersed, and yet the sheep stood still.
the shepherd lifted up his hand to smite them, and his
hand
continued up.
close
10. And I looked into a river and saw the kids with their mouths
to the water, and touching it, but they did not drink.
Here
is
people,
The
caught by the
stasis,
or stand-
most
cry,
all
New
The
a
and
And
solstice
story of Hannah and the relief of her barren condition through the
birth of God's prophet Samuel: "At the turn of the year she bore a
son." As Hannah equates Anna, the mother of the mother of the
we have an
story.
And
manding
the sun
and moon
to stand
still,
was .won.
It
a variant of the solstice symbolism. The sun types soul always, the
moon, body. The battle of evolution could not be won unless these
is
two
were brought
forces
is
And
this
again
the victory.
The ox and
much
the
same
as circumcision.
stand at the birth of the Christ as indices of the beginning of humanity's return from male and female progenation to androgyneity
They
kingdom
of heaven's sake.
The
command
to all mortals
life
was
that they
should eat his very body. God and man conjoined were reciprocally
to nourish each other. An old script reports Adam as asking: "Am I
and
my
Now
ass to eat
indeed
is
we
479
Chapter
XIX
we were
region o
earth.
theological fiction
from the
is
spirit
world back
the Hall of
to our
Judgment of
good
Osiris
Amenta]
Orthodox religionism and popular belief must receive with what
composure they can the forthright declaration that the judgment scene
is enacted on this earth, not in the life of spirit following our sojourn
here! We arc in the scales of the Judgment now! For we are also in
Hades, Sheol, Amenta, now. The Egyptian trial of the soul and the
weighing of the heart in the Hall of Osiris are located by the old books
in Amenta, and this Amenta, according to our now corrected knowlin
480
edge,
is
the
taught humanity how to live in the world in which the teaching was
imparted, well assured that philosophic behavior of life here would
at night
life
by day.
We were led
the
the case.
The
demand
is
given
with what clarity and cogency are at our command. It could not be advanced with any expectation of intelligent reception until the long
exposition of the significance of the horizon was prefaced. The brief
summary of the position and relevance of the zodiacal sign of Libra
is
the link between the horizon and the judgment. The cross on the
hill is the
primary emblem of theological philosophy; but it Is
horizon
not until one transforms the cross into the Scales or Balance that there
introduced the idea of moral quality and judgment pronounced. It is
not until the two arms of the cross are made mobile to register any
is
man
dom
of
man, who
on the two
is
The
first
life. If the
arguthe judgment trial must necessarily take place in this
the
was
Amenta
with
sound,
earth
of
ment for the identification
that relain
data
the
presented
matter was established conclusively by
force of other material
tion. But the position is strengthened by the
contravenes it; all the data conancient tests.
^
drawn from
firm
Nothing
it.
entitled
Amenta,
Thoth, who is the "Attorney" at the trial
the
embodies
or
Balance."
Taht,
the
power symbolized
"Lord of
Thoth,
cross of Egypt, which was the emblem of eternal stability,
Tat
the
by
life which had fallen under the sway of
that raised
and the
in
is
up
power
matter.
He
passage
by
Ani and
Thoth, the strength of all the gods." And Pepi, Teta, Unas,
soul.
human
others are kingly puppet figures acting the role of the
that lifts us up when fallen under the seductions
Thoth is the
divinity
Thoth
matter's stain.
is
Thoth
is
the god
mind
who
also the
more
god of knowledge. What
ills
of mortal
combines
flesh
with
spirit
and who
is
body. Man's body registers the record of his life. Thoth is the power
that imprints the record of living experience upon the subtle ethers
of man's inner spiritual vehicles. As regards the individual human,
then,
Thoth
is
the
god
within,
who
binds
up our broken
hearts,
our
judgment
scales.
This name enforces the conclusion that all the weight of the material
concerning the horizon as the place of the two truths of life must then
bear heavily on the proposition that the earth is the Hall of Judgment.
This is additionally supported by the passage from the Ritual which
states that the Tree of the Two Truths stands in the place of the Judg-
ment
the
And on
Hall.
1 8th
The
of the Sacred Year), the "day of filling the eye in Annu" (the birthcame out at the end of the
place), "the great Inspectors (or Judges)
Dais under the trees of Life and Perseas." This was the place of the
south,
as lawgivers connects
then,
(east
is
trial
to the soul, to
its
end, of each fresh incarnation of the soul. The facing of the record of
the past began afresh for each individual every time he plunged into
earth life.
meet the boo\ of life at birth, not at death I For we bring
We
484
with us our
can transform
human
society.
With
man
there
is
the
meaning
that
it is
mine
whelmingly established
is
come
to their
judgment in
is,
is
of the deeds
done in the
life
will be
now
see,
it,
not after
it, is
the
trial
of the
value of
the
body
character
spirit
for
its
485
trial
and temptation.
know
that this
life is
the period o
its trial
The
and
soul
is
testing.
as Plotinus has so well told us.
undeveloped powers,
she would remain forever ignorant of her own latent capacity,
is thrown into
or would never bring it to expression. Here is where she
here is where
and
the
on
Libra
in
horizon,
the
of
the scales
balance,
the test of
under
measure
she
does
How
she is being weighed.
up
is she so situher
of
realm
other
In
no
earth?
evolutionary experience
testing
is
ated that her acts become decisive for good or ill. The human life
the
the only stage on which every act is an act of destiny. Standing on
bars of the scales, or arms of the cross, with spirit on
equally balanced
one side, matter on the other, her every motivation, word or deed
or down, and thus she frames her destiny. Man
inclines the arms
up
the only creature whose inner spirit writes the record of its character
on outer flesh, and receives the rebound or echo of this uttered word
is
on
its
spirit-essence,
cessive incorporations is the outer expression on the visible plane of
activities in the cycle. Whatever is hidden within will
all his
previous
body,
as the Faerie
body make,"
The
earth
Is
Queen states.
Judgment and
the Court of
Justice because it
is
the
person
of record of
all his
but earth
life
How
from
life to life
forth to
When
through
go
Dragon,
embodiment
many
There
is
last stages of
wrought upon
writing
begins.
At
pronounce
the
end of the aeon nature must reckon with her child and
on the aeon's activities and accomplishments.
the verdict
487
Nevertheless
When
is
revealed
from
hall of Osiris take place? To this no definite answer can be given, for the
reason that no text supplies the information needed. There are no grounds,
that
or heart which had failed to balance the feather, symbolic of the law, was
given to the monster Am-mit to devour; this punishment consisted of instant annihilation, unless we imagine that the destruction of the heart
extended over an indefinite period." 1
was
is
of the
Dead and
other
knowledge about
that modern scholarship has not yet learned
wisdom
of those texts.
on the
".
subject:
which was
of Amenta"
earth!] "and we should hardly expect the
to begin its career until after the trial of the heart in the
body
spiritual
balance, and until the verdict of the gods at this judgment was favorable
Osiris
was "Lord
to the deceased."
his confusion
and want
"of definite
we
texts,
Budge,
born
like others,
of foisting his own failure on the Egyptians themcan not make sense out of their texts, they could not
way
themselves have had very clear ideas, is the conclusion. But this work
refutes that verdict. In the face of the evidence presented herein the
claim that the ancients were unable to form definite ideas, and true
ones, upon the profoundest questions of being, can no longer be supported.
It
Day
of
Judgment commits its holders to the absurd premises that the law of
cause and effect, or action and reaction, is inactive or in abeyance
the time of our present energetic life in human society!
All consequences of action are somehow being absorbed in Infinite
throughout
all
Mind and
where
intelligence pre-
Moreover, the absurd delusion has so far worked its natural consequences in immediate precipitation that it has impaled the general
consciousness of the masses on the idea that somehow one can do as
sides.
one
and escape the Eye of the Law and of Retribuhas promoted in large measure the present age of lawlessness.
Ritual speaks of the secret knowledge o the periodicities and
tion. It
The
depended on
his
having the
facts treasured
489
up
in his
memory. As the
memory
come
New
Year's Day!
The
theological
Hebrews has
discussed at
some length
and
stated succinctly that the annual festivals were but a typical ritual,
merely a reminder of spiritual realities! In the ninth chapter we read:
"For Christ has not entered a holy place which human hands have made
"nor was it to
[parenthesis not ours]
(a mere type of the reality!)"
offer himself repeatedly, like the high priest entering the holy place every
for in that case he would have had
year, with blood that was not his own:
to suffer repeatedly, ever since the world was founded. Nay, once for all,
sin
... For
The
not to
New
fact
Thoth
490
final
of the case
summary
and presents
it
to the jury.
He
introduces
Ani
come
"I have
Osiris-Ani.
Horus
for ever
and
ever."
To come
judgment had been adverse, the soul would have been cast to the monster Am-mit, which only means, however, return to animal incarnation until final purification.
We
in the incarnate state only that the soul could meet the seven
enemies whose very existence is in the animal body and the carnal
nature. The seven early mindless rulers were to be displaced by the
twelve archons seated on the twelve thrones of judgment. Massey
writes in enlightening fashion:
"The seat of justice in the solar mythos was shifted to the point of the
equinox, and the balance was erected on the later mount of glory in the
zodiac. This is the mountain of Amenta in the eschatology. It is described
in the Ritual (Ch. 149) as the exceeding high mountain of the nether
.
. This was the mountain, as
world, the top of which touches the sky
.
judgment
seat."
491
an exceeding high mountain, but it is not in Massey's ghostAmenta, but in our world here. Its top touches the sky, which is just
It is
own
natures. It
is
important
to note that the scholar definitely places the judgment mount on the
horizon. The Scales figured, he says elsewhere, at the equinoctial level
and marked the division, at the same time being the link between
the two "heavens," and Libra was the express emblem of the Two
Truths of Life and Death.
The main Egyptian symbol of spiritual being in humanity's trial
was the feather. The appropriateness of this emblem consists likely in
the fact that, held in certain angles of light, the two sides divided by
the midriff reflect, the one a glossy, the other a somber dull appearance.
It was a sign, at any rate, of light and shade, and the two halves represent the deities Ma and Shu. And Ma and Shu were unified and pluralized in the
name
we
"The Balance is a. symbol of maat and its oneness in duality. The equilibrium of the universe was expressed by maat, which represented the natural,
immutable and eternal law. It was erected as a figure at the equinox . ,
Makjia is a name for the scales and to weigh. The scales were erected at
The sphinx was a
the place of poise and weighing in the equinox
.
figure of this duality in oneness at the equinox. The feather of Shu (or
Ma) was another type of the same duality of light and shade, which meet
and mingle
as
one
at twilight."
was against this feather that the heart of the Manes was weighed
judgment trial. It was either a symbol of mere balance and
equilibration, or its lightness was to test the purity of man's spirit. A
reduplication of the same balance between light and shade as symbol
of justice was later brought into use in the form of the black and white
ermine worn by judges. The two lion fyherufu (cherubim) at the two
gates were likewise symbolical of the idea. Chapter 1368 of the Ritual
It
in the
recites: "I
am
come," says the Speaker, "so that I may see the process of
the lion-forms." The soul comes here to have the
experience of weighing ephemeral values
against eternal ones, good against
Maat and
evil,
and seeing
waiting
how
to enter the
mount
is
The Manes
Is
"The Hall of the two Maat Goddesses, the two Goddesses of Truth,
shows one goddess presiding over Upper and the other over Lower Egypt.
One guards
Here
is
the clearest authentication of our analysis and characterizatwo Lands spoken of in the ancient texts, the one as soul,
tion of the
the other as body. Yet in spite o this clear statement of the esoteric
significance of the terms, the great scholar has joined the company
of those who constantly take Upper and Lower Egypt to refer to two
How
long indeed
geographical divisions of the Egypt on the map.
will it take them to learn that very ancient scriptures dealt with the
Manes
is tried.
of
remarkably suggestive statement is made in the 47th chapter
the Ritual, intimating that the judgment came as a result of the splitof not entering in
ting of primal biunity into duality. It is the "chapter
the
"I have joined up my head and neck, in heaven and on earth
goddess Nut hath joined together the bones of my neck and back, and I
beheld them as they were in the time that is past when as yet I had not
seen Maat and when the gods were not born in visible forms."
.
itself
whole, as
We
Hints have already conveyed the general relevance of the great old
scriptural term, the Battle of Armageddon, and we have traced its
Hebrew word
many
centuries that
its
sane clarification at
last in
the
glow of Egyp-
symbolism
is
and the judgment, this dreaded battle is takindeed partly over. For it is fought "at night"
and "on the horizon." These terms of description settle the question,
But, like purgatory, hell
is
there
is
494
Sut,
when
The
great contest
now waging; the war between Horus, the spiritual light, and the
seven-headed dragon of darkness. Great military conflicts on the continental plains may be a phase of the struggle in one of its manifestaare
coming
precisely
The
start,
is done!" The
struggle only begins when the seven
natures had been conjoined in the physical body on the horizon line.
With the coming of the solar triad of mind the battle was on between
proclaimed: "It
and the six (seven) evil spirits which had to be made subservient,
or "cast down." "Slaughter" was to be "dealt out to Apap" by Maari!
The batde of Armageddon was begun as the "war in heaven" and
it
continued on earth between the sun-god incubated in the body and the
demoniac forces of the natural "first man."
have long been
We
six
Goodwin)
twins, Sut and Horus, transformed themselves into wild beasts and
remained in that state during three days! This is not arrant nonsense,
inasmuch
human
stage,
Man
with the shadow of the two beams of the cross or the scales falling athwart his body. Every act, word and thought of his causes those
arms of the scales to move up or down, according as he gives an imtheir motion they write
pulse to spiritual or to sensuous expression. In
his
book
of
scroll
of
the
life, alternately upon outward feature and
tion,
movement
of the bars
495
is
a decree of judgment
for
book.
Who
is
third century
if this
trial in the
perpetrate
and wait a millennium before being brought to reckoning. The certitude of the instant judgment of the two Maat goddesses has been
obscured or denied. Western man has been deprived of the definite
acts are in immediate reaction
knowledge that the consequences of his
the law has been deludedly removed from
of
him.
The
shadow
upon
his mind and conscience, with the result that human life has proceeded
without consideration of the certainty of justice. And with this
largely
sense of
immunity bolstered by the concomitant doctrines of a vicarious atonement and the forgiveness of sins, the misguided mind of Occidental man has indulged in such revelries of license and heedlessness
has not recorded at another period. The assurance that the
as
history
world is under law, that acts carve the shape of destiny, is scarcely to
be found in Western areas. The habitual philosophy of the "average"
mind
of
modern
Eyes of Maati are mostly asleep, and that the theological Day of
Judgment, if it is to come at all, is a long way off.
All the while the arms of that Balance on the hiE of the horizon in
the twilight are moving,
the record.
and they
are the
49 6
Chapter
XX
SUNS OF INTELLECT
As
human
the universal form and dress of religion. The sun-myth was the heart's
core of all religion and philosophy everywhere before the Dark Ages
obscured the vision of truth. And world religion will not fulfill its
original function of dispelling
from the
soul of
mankind
the dark
earth-born vapors that envelop it until the mind once again is irradiated with the light of that transcendent knowledge. Christianity forsook its high station on the mount illuminated by solar radiance when
it submerged the Christly sun-glory under the limitations of a fleshly
personage and dismissed solar religion as "pagan." In converting the
typical man into a man of history, it forswore its early privilege of
basking in the rays of the great solar doctrine. Light, fire, the sun,
spiritual glory all went out in eclipse under the clouds of mental
fog that arose when the direct radiance of the solar myth had been
blanketed. Christianity passed forthwith out of the light into the dreadful shadows of the Dark Ages. And that dismal period will not end
until the bright glow of the solar wisdom is released once more to
enlighten benighted modernity. Ajax crying for the light is still the
appropriate heraldic figure on the modern shield, and until the myth
of the sun-gods is restored to its place in knowledge, there will be no
response to the cry but the echo.
Near the end of November, 1932, the public press reported the announcement of Dr. George W. Crile, noted scientist of the Cleveland
laboratories, that he had discovered in the heart of every cell of protoplasm tiny centers or foci of energy which he called "hot points" or
to 6,000 degrees
"radiogens," with estimated temperatures of from 3,000
497
"some
of heat. Protoplasm emitted radiations of various wave lengths,
'shines' in the
sun
"The
sun."
the
emitted
as powerful as those
by
of animals and plants, and therefore animals and plants
protoplasm
the
can confer on atoms chemical affinities such as are conferred by
sun."
"Who would think that there are 'hot points' in man and animals on
.If one could
the order of the temperature of the surface of the sun?
infinite
of
magnification, one
look into protoplasm with an eye capable
in infinite miniasuns
as
stars
like
might expect to see the radiogens spaced
to mean . .
taken
be
the
may
Without
.
concept
.
ture
exaggeration
of the sun, and that
that within the very flesh of man burns the fierce fire
*
within man's body glow infinitely small counterparts of the stars."
.
permitted
Crile and his fellow-moderns
happy glow of
sunlight.
The
Christ in
brief
sentence has stood in the silence of scientific scorn for nearly seventy
years :
"Every
man
has a
every atom."
The
ants
little
is
secret
still
498
spark of solar flame from its trammels of the flesh and unite it once
again with the radix or point of emanation in "heaven/' This was the
mysterious aim of the alchemical science, whose "gold" was that Lux
or Light of the Ineffable Source, into which all baser forms of conhad to be transmuted. The sun was typed as gold
and the moon as silver, a poetization to which nature has been a party
scious manifestation
in the coloring of the two orbs. For the gold was the radiant energy
of the sun embosomed in man's interior being. It was his spiritual fire,
that true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world;
while the silvery moon typed the feminine or bodily nature which was
to be raised by the alchemy of spiritual vibration into the golden glow.
human! That
is
the
center of light about which all religion and philosophy can again rally
their disconcerted forces of interpretation. That is the point of gravity
toward which all meanings can be seen to tend with perfect constancy.
This
is
mankind may
again see to read aright the ancient books of wisdom. And this is the
torch that will in our day illumine the darkened portals of the
temple of religion, so that the menacing hordes of materialistic devastators will see its beauty in time to stay their impious hands. It is only
because a benighted ecclesiasticism permitted religion to be divorced
from its basic principle which roots it in science, that the partisans of
modern
beauty or
it.
fancy, a hallucination
To them
thrown
On
can no longer find apology. For science now finds itself on bended
knee before this tiny glint of solar light at the heart of every atom;
and when religion finds that it, too, worships the counterpart of the
same fire in man's heart, the two estranged brothers, science and reit
ligion,
by
side at the
same
altar at
last.
Not
only
is
499
to its grade of being. Thus every man harbors a solar god or fiery spirit
within him Above man, the planets are cosmic beings with resplendent souls of unimaginable glory. The suns are the glowing hearts of
I
intelligent
soul
an
irradia-
own
They
of his
are
55
ties.
But the
ancients
knew
500
in a corral of flesh
light impounded
of that of the great solar orb itself.
on earth was a
reflected miniature
And
solar year,
which
course again reflected the round of the sun through the 25,868 years
of the Great Year of precession, and both were marked by the orb's
passage through the twelve stages of zodiacal meaning. He who will
interpret the zodiac with full intelligibility will depict the life of man
in all its reaches. The knowledge of this stellar script, this book with
seven, then twelve great seals, was imparted in full or in part in the
sacred Mysteries of old. It is gravely doubtful if anyone now living
knows the import of the entire wheel.
catch fragmentary glimpses
We
its
It is clear,
is
man
a marvelously precise
the individual and
man
soul in
signs, three
and three
The lower
fire
six,
as
water
reflects what
is to
say that
his
life
life
of
man
below
is
a
reflected
of
in
the
counterpart
spirit
above. And the soul's journey round the wheel through the alternate
is
above
it
in the air
As
nature
sets the
norm
life
comprises
its
cyclical history in
in her life-method
by her
alterna-
tions of
"night." The systole and diastole of the heart's action, the inhalation
and exhalation of breath, are but the common evidence and confirma-
of living procedure. The conscious imswings endlessly through the two phases o the
lower, of which circulation the daily and annual
mortal
spirit in
modus
man
movements
501
is
based solidly on the ground fact that the sun was not
religion was
essential essence of the divine soul of man, and
only the type, but the
of the soul's cyclical
that its annual course was graphically pictorial
a single life history;
of
is
annual round
typical, first,
history. The sun's
lives
entire series of single
making up the complete
secondly, of the
the
Like
stars, the galaxies and the
of the human cycle.
experience
is
gies,
ing
sun or
fire.
look on
is
fire,
and a
fire
man
is
in."
502
Wilson in
his
Parsee Religion
as the
desired
This
is
that dries up the "red sea" of the menstrual flow in the allegory
the subtle meaning behind the Exodus story of the drying up
be
may
of the Red Sea, alleged to be on the map. As we have seen, however,
spirit
modern
translation has
spirit
buried in the
flesh.
Hor-Apollo ob-
"This
is
lustre or cause
it
to suffer eclipse.
life;
do not dim
its
And
it is
"Give ye glory as to the Sun; he is the chief, the only one ever coming
from the body, the head of those who belong to the race of the Sun."
is
of the world."
with the
53
creative essence. It
energy.
to be a condensation of solar
which proceeds from Osiris
emanation
holy
part
the case of Bata, the younger brother of Anup, in the tale of the Two
the water and
Brothers, the phallus is torn away and thrown into
a fish. The
devoured
deity" matched on the male
"masturbating
by
female*
the beede, buried himself, with his seed, in the earth; there he transformed,
and the father issued forth as the son/'
The sun was the type of the male creative power in the universe, but
he was portrayed with feminine attributes to indicate his subjection
under matter when involving his energies in creation. He was a kind
of male-mother. His growing weak in the autumn was likened to the
feminine weakness in menstruation. "When the sun becomes weak, he
lets fall the sweat of his members and this changes to a liquid; he
bleeds much." Then he was called the sun bound in linen, and wrapped
woman. He was known as Osiris Tesh-Tesh, in his bloody sweat
Smen. The male as sole reproducer was spoken of in female terms.
He is god the mother. Num, Egyptian deity, was the Mother of
as a
in
Mothers
as well as the
is
in the
womb
Brahm
is
natural
womb." "The
in
it
the
place
womb
my
and
great Brahm," says Krishna, "is my womb
of
all
nature"
the
it
is
foetus and from
procreation
504
(Moor's Pantheon: Krishna, p. 211). Baal and Astarte exchange genNu was the original mother-heaven, the
feminine celestial firmament. Yet she is masculinized: "It is the water
ders in the Assyrian books.
or
Nu who
is
himself." Creative
But when the sun, Helios, came to govern planetary revolugender was conceived as male. Life was androgyne before
the bifurcation. The only quarrel in ancient religions was over the
question whether deity was male or female in its first manifestations.
Deity frequently had to carry the functions of both sexes.
The hidden purport back of the Egyptian symbolism of the beetle
and the self-begetting god was that which was really the nub of the
dispute in the early Christian Church over the creedal rendering of
the Greek term monogenes (Latin: unigenitus), translated "onlycreations.
tions, the
Had
Egyptian symbolism been envisaged understandingly, that grievous dispute could have been avoided. The god who poured out and
mixed his life blood with earth, and the beetle that goes underground
to
come
incarnating in
human
life.
two
quite possible that Onan's sin was a reference to the first group of five
legions of angels who, as it were, poured out their spiritual substance
in the direction of incarnation, but who nevertheless failed to plant
their seed fully in the soil of mortal flesh. Their effort proved abortive.
The
they had not already begun to look with scorn upon all things
alludes to the belief in an excerpt from his book
Irenaeus
pagan.
Heresies
2:1, 4, Ante-Nicene Library): "It was also
Against
(I,
getists if
CL
taught by the Egyptian Valentinus that the father produced in his own
image without conjuction with the female." Had a little analogical
penetration been displayed by the somber Fathers of the Church, there
might have been intelligence enough extant to save the translators
as "onlyfather or
born
of
the
of
course, simply
begotten."
male principle alone, without birthing in the womb of matter. Yet it
505
was at the same time the story of the father or spirit incarnating in
matter and reissuing on the opposite horizon as his transformed son.
of the incorrect translation can not be seen until it is
The
fatality
was designed
in
of
Ra
Atum
describes
Amenta, which
as the
is
sets as
form
is
that of a lion.
that of an old
He
supreme sun-god
at sunset, "his
is
the hidden
buried in darkness.
life, imaged by the nocturnal sun,
dethronement and exile in material darkness in order that
soul of spiritual
He
he
suffers
may
of solar
power
to birth, as in
dying he
He
is
There
is
many
lishing
archaic times observed the strange custom of sending the father, instead of the parturient mother, to the bed of confinement at childbirth,
the impression is that human mental processes had gone sadly awry.
But it is only necessary to keep ever in mind that the sages and formulators of conventional practice were before all else typologists, to see
that the eccentric
spiritual
practice
ritual of a very
high
was only a symbolic act
dramatize the fact that in the birth of a son or daughter the father
his seminal spirit into the bosom of matter, had buried his
had
to
injected
seed in incarnation in the body of the babe, or had himself gone into
confinement or "under cover" o flesh in the new babe! It only
into
"going
The Litany
"Homage
in the
of
Ra
contains
an apostrophe
to thee, Ra, the beetle (Khepr), that folds his wings, that rests
that is born as his own son!"
Empyrean,
506
Khepr
is
son." Ptah,
thine
of Khepr-Ra,
is
life
as its
own
thus addressed:
tition of thyself."
In another text
we
read:
own
pregnated his
mother."
Some accompaniments
made
or father, as
than that of earth, during
incubation period.
observes
interestingly
again: "They say also that the
beetle lives six months underground and six above." If he does, nature
its
Hor-Apollo
human
him
soul, figuratively.
But the
Hor-Apollo describes
twenty-ninth day, the day of the resurrection according to lunar markoccurs the baptism of the beetle. The Scarabaeus then casts
ings, there
his ball into the water. It opens to give birth to the young beetle. This
state, to
be rehatched
Man
which
is
the god in
ark symbolism.
hatched in the earth, and, expanding
like the chrysalis, flies away with body glistening in the golden light
"Adoration to
of morning. The sun-god arising is thus addressed:
thee,
who
out of the golden and givest light to the earth I" The
as the winged scarab. And the beetle follows the
arisest
again typified
wearing
with a disk encircled by an uraeus on its head. Seven apes stand, four
under or
in front and three behind, denoting that the sun has put
behind him three of the elementary powers, but faces the conquest of
the other four in
man.
forth,
the
first
of elemental fire.
original sea
to its death and rebirth in matter,
means the
is
given a
And when
it
has be-
injection of the
mythology or primitive
and types. This is confirmed by
theology its most striking analogies
Max Muller, who writes (Selected Essays, Vol. I, 604) "As soon as
solar principle into material creation lends to
we
in all earthly
from
its
its
renaissance
The Egypto-Gnostics
the
summit of
creation,
508
and the new earth are inaugurated. When the contents of the seventh
bowl are poured out, the book of life is sealed with the seven seals,
and the angel announces: "Behold I make all things new." A zodiac
of twelve signs was then requisite to portray the life experience of
the god in man. In the Boo\ of Exodus we see the one God Ihuh
other gods, El-Shadai and the Elohim, when he
superseding all the
assumes the suzerainty and orders that a sanctuary be built in which he
shall be lifted up. This shrine or tabernacle was to be the hitherto
unknown body
East."
divine harvest."
The Boo\
of the
Dead
is
is
Ammah,
The
seven
the loaves
and
The
Pistis
who
finally the
as
fishes in the
59
each to incorporate in his own person. He says that he took the twelve
the bodies of
saviors of the treasure of light and bound them into
the
circumscribed
he
that
to
is
This
operation of
say
your mothers.
was thus to
He
flesh.
mortal
of
bodies
in
deific
the twelve
powers
"tribes of
judge the twelve
of divine
Israel," or twelve segmentations
as the twelve
which
mind
cosmic
of
those
figure
rays
intelligence;
fishermen, sowers,
tribes, sons, stars, brothers, kings, reapers, rowers,
had
these
All
teachers.
and
voices
twelve
and
begun as powers of
groaneth
God, or
"Who
that
endowed with
upheld
spheres. When
and Sut, there
Seb
of
the
the fire that enlightens supplantecl
powers
unborn power
This
Sol.
or
soul
as
of
was present a new type
power
transformed
that
an
form
of
in
the
as
was personalized
Ptah,
embryo
the
It
is
itself.
to
like the beetle
sun-god performing his
reproduce
couvade
light,
to raise
Amen-Ra,
up both
the
He
creation.
fire,
510
He
is
them. They are called, in addition to other names already given, "the
Horus." Their slaughter is to be prevented, as is indicated by
the title of Chapter 42 of the Ritual: "Chapter by which one hindreth
issue of
is in Suten-Khen," the
birthplace. The Manes at
child-Horus himself, and he says four times over: "I
the babe." As the child of the incorruptible sun, no power can
the slaughter
which
am
heaven"
(Bit.,
Ch. 85).
fed."
Horus
says to
"Protection for you, flocks of Ra, born of the great one who is in the
heavens. Breath to your nostrils, overthrowal of your coffins" (Boo\ of
Horus
ment:
how he steps onward through eternity in the stateTattu and I repeat daily my life after death, like the
indicates
"I live in
sun."
It need hardly be repeated that the Christos was represented under
a different title and character during each 2155 years of a cycle of
the land; in
ing himself, the crab emerging from the water onto
511
life
twins, the
goat
of
the goat
man
half
is
and
emerging from the water
is
^to
it
equilibrium;
spirit
divine child of the mother and the wheat for the bread of Christ, as
well as the branch of the true vine that was constellated in Virgo.
The Ritual states that Horus "is united at sunset with his Father
the
Ra, who goeth round the heavens" in the zodiacal cycles. Perhaps
to this in the life of Jesus in his retirement
my father,
"I see
is
called "the
commune with
breathe."
Horus says:
Horus again
which
his Father.
Lord of the
embodiment, or in
this
world.
And
once more
test
The
."
declarations of ancient
wisdom
that
we
are divinized
on earth
and that the soul awakes as it sets, or incarnates, are mighty items of
forth that the
knowledge for benighted mortals. But it has been set
the
descent is a swoon and a going into oblivion,
very sleep of "death."
Here
as
an awakening.
it is
again is exemplified the
pictured
and
in
doubleness of esoteric methodology
picturing the two aspects
of
reversals
all
these
in
the
But
movements of
imagery
Now
being.
paradox
512
is
The
readily resolvable.
soul does
fall
its
true
world
is
awakening
under a
spell o
Lethe when
life,
new
which
is
birth.
Turn
Atum)
at rising
on the morrow he
is
self.
that
meaning
of the serpents
we
ascribe to
which are in
it."
Ra
tells
elementary
life
tune in the
primary
sea,
itself
Nep-
has three
implemented
their
of
Brahma;
There is the Hecate triad in Greece. The three Parcae or Fates of
Greece are matched by the Egyptian Neith, spinner of the web (net),
and her two sisters, Isis and Nephthys, and by the three Norns of the
5*3
Norse pantheon. Of the three Fates Atropos conferred the solar power
of generation; Clotho was lodged in the moon, as she who joins,
with the dark, spirit with flesh; Lachesis
mingles and unites the light
"and with her
is on the earth supervising the flow of mortal events,
does fortune very much participate."
The ancients conjoined the twin male and female triads and from
the interlaced triangles, or Solomon's Seal, the sixthe union
produced
man
consists
and derives its origin from the female; the spirit consists
and derives its origin from the male. The sperm-cell of
the male creative fluid is three-ply. The union of the two triads in man
he is. His life has six facets and manimakes him the
of three parts
of three parts
sextuple being
a world
it.
The
The two
is
triple
marked
in
man
is
male
one of the great keys in theology. The
humanity
is
which
sacrament
inner
an
mark
of
and female is only an outward
is
that
division
sex
most
the main theme of religion. The
important
which inheres in man's individual life, whereby everyone is male on
division of
into
5M
Man
is,
woman
the physical.
The ancients in their stellar configurations represented the great
Divine Man as facing the south, his back to the north. Hence the south
was
the lower, hinder part, the thigh or womb, of nature. The gods of the
four quarters, the bases of the human pyramid, the four "Sons of
Horus," "are they who are behind the thigh in the northern sky." They
are the hind quarter of the heavenly man and are the four lower elements in man's constitution. The haunch of the lion that is carried on
the head of
Anhur
The
In the Ritual chapter "of making the transformation into the god
that giveth light in the darkness," the Manes says he is the robe of
light that dispels the darkness, "which uniteth the two fighting deities
that dwell in
mouth."
Two
my
fighting deities in
The
words of
my
robe alluded to
is
garment without a seam," since the marriage obthe seam or dividing line. The unification of these two war-
spell of the
our bodies!
515
hymns
thou
"Hail to thee, Osiris, Lord of Eternity! When thou art in heaven
moon"
the
in
renewest
thou
and
the
as
thyself
sun,
appearest
The
soul of
life,
we have
seen,
in matter.
lowing cyclical death
renews
by eternal rebirth
itself
The moon
is
fol-
marvel
generations
eyes
since the days of ancient Egypt. In the various phases and aspects of
the registration of the sun's light upon its body, the moon stages the
entire symbolic drama of the blended physico-spiritual life of mortal
man with a precision so astonishing that a mind which once follows
the analogies can hardly escape the conclusion that Intelligence preof the movements of the three bodies, sun, moon
sided at the
ordering
and
moon
typical
prime
fully
loss of the
wisdom
it
paganism by Roman
known. The
world
As
was reborn
Horus and
phenomenon
of religion, rendering it impregnable to materialistic or agnostic assault. For while sacred Bibles may be brushed aside with scorn, the
chart of man's spiritual constitution, written ineradicably on the open
sheet of the nightly sky, can not be gainsaid. Here is an indelible scripwhose ever-turning pages the atheist must read alike with the
ture
theist.
Here
is
a book
flout.
Here
Now
in the
first
517
is
that note-
man
sent of
God
to bear witness to
that "light that shineth in the darkness." "He was not that Light, but
was sent to bear witness of that Light" He was himself not the full or
true light, but only the harbinger of it. This was John the Baptizer, or
leader of souls into the waters of generation in the dark lower half of
He
with
It is
sight. It is the
luminary is unable to shine on the world. It is the sun's lower or secondary self. The moon is the sun by night. So the Christos is that reduced and reflected ray of the Father's infinite glory. When the sun is
in full panoply in the heavens of day, the moon is eclipsed. It is man's
"noon." But she comes into her glory in the night. The moon stands
between man and total darkness, yet she has no light to give of herself.
She but transmits the brightness of one higher than herself. So the
body stands between man and his god and transmits what can not be
received directly.
Here, then, we have the two great characters in the drama, with man
the spectator and interpreter, and as he finally realizes to his amazement, the ultimate actor. Meaning begins to rise as soon as we have
fixed the
two
and
their roles.
moon
play the parts of man's soul and his body respectively, and their
interaction will be found to depict in detail the connected
history of
The stage is then set to register the play of the two great interof life, the positive and negative poles. The evolutionary
forces
acting
conflict between the two, the battle between Sut and Horus, the twins,
female.
which
is
is
transferred
now
to the
lunar surface and re-enacted there for man's eternal behoof. As the
moon encircles her lord in monthly course, she traces a stream of significant interrelations.
deification
and
From dark
to full
moon,
it is
MOON
SUN
Spirit-soul-mind.
Body.
Consciousness.
Flesh.
Intellect.
Sensation.
Male.
Female.
Light-giving.
Light-receiving.
Upper body.
Lower body.
Water.
Fire.
The
The
god.
animal.
its
divinization.
known
Hence
Anup
court of
life
the body holds the record and bears witness of the char-
the goddess Diana, who, says Proclus, "presides over the whole of generation into natural existence, leads forth into light all natural reasons,
5*9
and extends a
realms."
prolific
And we
nominated by
even
power from on high
theologists,
and
to the
subterranean
are told that "the sexual parts of this god are deDiana/' for no more subtle reason apparently
reproduces
regenerates
inchoate and lost to view if
all
all to light, as
the hidden
creation rather
crete form. That the moon is in affinity with the natural
than with the spiritual world is also attested by the Chaldean Oracles,
one of which recites that "the moon rides on every thing generated,
and
all
by
her, as the
Oracle says." She is the nature power, the woman, who becomes
clothed with the sun of intelligence, which lights up her head finally
with twelve facets of divine radiance.
of solar or spiritual history, and the
is the
The
moon,
then,
register
that the
increase of
light
nightly
crowning pertinence for us is
area on her dark surface is nature's cosmic hieroglyph recording our
It marks to what extent divine light
growth toward full divinization.
has spread over and through the physical body. From total darkness
the sun-god begins to impregnate the lunar body with his bright
her whole body becomes irradiated with his glory.
until
fact of
power,
finally
So the sun-deity of mind meets the physical man, first Adam, at the
dawn of racial history, and finds no spiritual light in him. He then
and life after life he adds to the growth until
implants his tiny seed,
at the end of the aeon the whole being of physical man is irradiated
with intellectual light. He lights the darkened prison from within with
that shining power that Jesus said his disciples had in themselves. Each
increases the area of light. And the material body,
night of incarnation
like the moon, records the measure of the god's occupancy of the vehicle.
Even
most
beautiful through
The
zation of humanity. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full
of light," is the Biblical assurance to this effect. The supreme message
of lunar symbology to man is that divine light is measurably spreading
over our whole being. At the fullness of his perfection the Manes cries:
"There is no part of me that is without a god. I am the god entire."
520
In phallic terms
imthe
the
the
the
Its life
first
of sensation
daily tides!
manner
repeat each month in identical
the
From
soul.
the
and
of
rebirth
incarnation
the story of descent,
beface
on
its
visible
o
the
sun-god
night of the full moon the light
Together
under surface to the upper. At the lowest ebb of the cycle the light is
for three days! While in this dark underworld which
totally hidden
lies below the horizon, the virgin moon is met by the sun ? who Has
521
are buried out of sight in the west below the horizon, or in the dark
of night. Transposing this situation to the kingdom of man, we find
that nature has reproduced the story of incarnation and its collateral
values once more. For here again nature records that it is in the dark
underworld of this nether earth that the only conjunction of spirit
This world is that place of
(soul) and matter (body) takes place.
and the moon of matter can
of
the
sun
darkness wherein alone
spirit
for reproduction. Says Massey: "It is only in the
darkness of Amenta that the two ever meet/' Sun and moon meet and
just at the
nether earth. Man's soul and his body meet in the same dark period
in the lower world of earth. Immediately the mother, impregnated,
and impregnated
it
and
is
that Isis
Osiris'
rilege.
Nor do we need
favorite
to ascribe
Isis,
spirit
He
Isis
fructifies
her
ovum, or
foetal nucleus,
tomb
or
is
522
seminal essence, typical ever of the solar light, threefold like the solar
and once again in nature's economy "sun" and "moon" copulate
triad;
in the
to
engender a
new
birth.
The
seed
is
life.
The
tale of the
beautiful
until
we
new moon
which
it
types,
it
is
is
born in
immediately
The west
is
life,
lurks
is
runner," the ancient term for a god. Born as man on the west, he is
now born anew as god on the east, "where the gods are born," and reincarnation
is
over.
Some
ism for copulation. Judas betrayed his Lord with a kiss, which is the
Gospel's continuation of former Egyptian imagery by which the bematter the woman, lured the sun or soul into her
trayer, seducer
darkened realm to give her the seed of
light.
The
allegory
was
later
applied to the resurrection, in which the slumbering soul was awakened by the kiss of Horus. The Prince awakens Snow-White with a
kiss.
The great Egyptian symbol, the Eye, stands for the solar light. Sut,
who swallows it at evening, restores it at morning. Nature, earth, the
of
mother,
all
again in
new
whom
made
to
reproduce
it
"Thus
might have
said.
is
clothed with the sun, bathed in its splendor, and periodically bringing
to devour
forth her man-child, with the great dragon of darkness ready
that Christ-birth that occurs to
of
the
type
him, re-enacting endlessly
man once. For three days the father's dwindling light disappeared in
the belly of the great fish. Jonah issues from the great fish, constellated
sea of
in Pisces, in the form of the Christ, who stills the storm on the
dark
her
men
in
of
of
out
retired
moon
As the
period
sight
carnality.
to copulate
was made by
Nor was
she to
The
Egyptians,
it
will
come
some
human
counterpart,
to retire
from the
verities. If their
work
was
respect, perhaps,
between animal trait and cosmical philosoastonishing correspondence
than in the case of the cynocephalus or dog-headed ape. This ani-
roning
phy
mal, be
it
Taht-Aan. To avoid
zootype of the moon-god
it is desirable to quote the datum
ancient source in the writing of Hor-Apollo, as cited by
recalled, is the
from
its
Massey:
and
sympathy
524
being unable to see, and being afflicted in the same manner as the male,
ex genitalibus sanguinem emittit; 6 hence even to this day Cynocephali are
brought up in the temples, in order that from them may be ascertained the
its
exact instant of the conjunction of the sun and moon. And when they
of the moon, they again portray a cenocephalus in the posture of standing upright, and raising its hands to heaven,
"
with a diadem on its head.' 7
Any
little
How
by speech.
astonishing that nature has dramatized this event in
the matutinal hailing by the apes of the physical symbol and embodiment of that intellect! The advent of divinity gave man speech; the
rise of the solar lord sets the
apes to clicking!
sacred
to
ibis,
Taht, the moon-god, emblemed the dark and
the
moon
of
in its two colors of white and black. The
light aspects
dark of the moon types the unspiritualized state of the first Adam, the
The
Gentile. Sut,
child,
The
Biblical narrative of
little
Samson and
Bambino or
Italian Christ-
seems
quite definitely to be a growth from lunar typology. With the sun (in
Hebrew) for his name, Samson is the sun-god; Delilah is traced (by
with Horus, Samson's eyes are put out, his light is lost. Delilah causes
his ruin, as her allurements lead to his being bound and shorn of his
for solar rays). Ishtar is also the ruin of her solar
hair (a
general type
lovers,
is
charged with being an enchantress, a poisoner, a demale potency. Izdubar, the sun-god, reproaches her with
and seductive murderous lust, and saves himself by refusbe her lover. The havoc wrought by Aholah and Aholibah, the
and
stroyer of
witchcraft
ing to
being
lost
sight of.
The
he
is
new
of the
on
own
mother.
The horn
is a
type of male
and
the
unicorn.
The
(nose-horn)
power,
"horned moon" represented the virile young sun-god exercising his
function of begetting light on his mother. Horus impregnated his
mother Isis.
The context makes it appropriate to introduce here the figure of
another animal used by the ancients in symbolism the ass. His mythi-
its
was figured by the ass, as well as by the jackal. As the lunar orb becomes illuminated with light, the mythicists framed the allegory of
526
the sun-god's riding into full glory on the back of the dark moon,
Anup, the ass, or ass-headed god, as he is depicted on the tomb of
Rameses Sixth. Hence Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the city
of heavenly glory, is only a fabulous construction of the mythicist to
portray the final triumph of the sun-god or soul in man over his lower
The
world.
climactic act in
flesh
Fields of Peace.
mundane
into the
life is
of
kingdom
And
same
cycle.
rides into glory on the back of the lower animal self. The
Ritual has told us that Horus would be set on Sut's back, to be upborne
The god
safely
by him. The
spiritual
world
rests
upon the
physical,
which
fact
let
idealists
the celestial
city.
That the ass-riding legend is purely a mythical drama past all contradiction on ^the basis of the Biblical context is evident from the fact
that the Gospels state Jesus would be found "sitting on an ass and a
colt,
ruinous
two animals at once! And this is a fair sample of the ludicrousness which the entire theology has taken on in modern presentation from the sheer despoiling of the mighty allegories of past wisdom. Nothing but the derided pagan mythology can eradicate the buffoonery of this scene and restore it to dignity. Theology has gone far
to reduce the mind of Western humanity to imbecility; let mythology
astride the
And
it
was adopted
as a symbol of a
month
527
We have Balaam riding the ass, and Samson slaying the Philistines
with the jaw-bone of an ass. The jaw is the lower and moveable part
working up and down against a stable unmoved counteranatomy nature has typed again our duality and the
unmoved eternal nature
over
that
truth
against a stable and
deep
within, an activity in the lower levels of life moves out and back, to
of the head,
part. In this
bit of
and
fro, to
life's
and that after the illumination, they stood on either side of the
Christ light on the moon. They were dubbed "thieves of the light," in
contrast to the twelve solar characters who were guardians of the treas-
before
ure of light. Hermes, cognate with Anup, was in Greek mythology the
thief. In the zodiac of Denderah just where Horus is shown on the
cross or at the crossing of the vernal equinox, these two thieves Anup
either side of the sun-god. Here would appear
steals
away
only to
Orion, the mighty hunter, type of the sun-god, is represented as pursuing the moon which leaps ahead one hour's jump each night, like a
hare. In his chase of the hare he is accompanied by his two dogs, con-
On
of himself.
We
are
now
528
ment of
bolism.
off the
phenomena
The moon
first,
and the
fifteenth.
basic
moon on
Now
the implantation of the seed in the material womb could not be made
until the day after the completion of the five days of menstruation!
lunar dark period was three days; but the reckoning was made on the
basis of the woman's actual period of five days. This five-day period of
of five days with a Sabbath on the sixth. The five days signifying negation, it is curiously found that the Egyptian Nun, the abyss of nothinghave seen how ancient law
ness, is written with five successive N's.
We
insisted
re-
tirement, during the five days. In Parsee law even a woman who became clean in three days was not to be washed until the fifth day.
this account five became considered the evil or untoward number, and
On
the five intercalary days injected into the year at the end to make the
difference between the 360 days of twelve solar months (of 30 days)
and the 365 (364) of the thirteen lunar months of 28 days each, were
They came
at the
Hence it was that the sixth day, the first succeeding the five days of
was the time of a new impregnation, connoting new birth and
renewal. It was marked by the rising of the Pleiades, a figure of six
always. Hence the first five days of the moon cycle were made memotaboo,
the preliminary natural cycles of life in the kingdoms of darkness before the advent of the mind principle, solar intelligence, in the
world. The sixth was considered to have deified the early five as later
rial of
At any
this
is
first six.
it is
rate this
moon.
But the
o'clock to
moon came on
if
it
the love-feast or
of the
Horus with
was
From being held once a month, the two-day soli-lunar celewas later repeated every seven days, or weekly.
Annu was the Egyptian city where festivals were held in honor of
Osiris. One of these was
kept on the sixth day of the month. The
Speaker in the 'Ritual says that he is with Horus on the festival of
Osiris on the sixth day of the month. As Annu became Beth-Annu
(Bethany), it is instructive to compare with this the following from
mother.
bration
came
to Bethany,
dead. So they
whom
made him
Annu, corresponding
in Egypt. This
at
to the
supper at Bethany.
The festival of the sixth day is clearly the one known as the Ha\era
(as well as the Tenait), that was solemnized on the sixth night of the
Ten Mysteries. At this great festival was commemorated the resurrection of Osiris. This one of the Ten Mysteries was celebrated "before
the great circle of the gods in Abydos [city of death and rebirth] on
the night of the Hakera when the glorious ones are rightly judged;
when the evil dead are parted off and 'joy goeth its rounds in Thinis' "
(Ch.
18,
in
Amenta
and who
On
"Come thou
to
me," or the
sitteth
this
on the eastern
The goddess-mother
like
festival of
resurrection.
Ishtar (the
named from
moon
when
moon.
Ishtar
moon,
is
fifteen
that
steps
the History of Joseph the Carpenter Jesus says that Mary gave him
birth in the fifteenth year of her age, by a mystery that no creature can
And Mary
is
who
on the fifteenth
Sophia dates the Transfiguration of Jesus
of the full moon. The resurrection, or
the
day
Tybi,
day
new birth, was always reckoned in Egypt on the full moon of this
month, and as it came close after the winter solstice, about December
The
Pistis
of the
month
27 (Massey), it points to the Christmas nativity as being either igboth the Transfiguranorantly confused or knowingly identified with
tion and the Resurrection. An address to Isis in the Ritual runs
:
"I
have come
to see thee
in thy
name
of Heb-enti-ses
us
(i.e.,
."
is she who
"gives thee water on every first
month."
of
the
day
considerable amount of mythic construction has grown up around
and every
fifteenth
moon
as
drawn
to
form a
lyre or harp.
Many
Man
is
founded,
we have
seen,
on a natural
basic structure
Man
a spiritual
triangle resting on a natural quadrilateral the
Each
one
of the four elemental strata is itself subdivided
Pyramid.
is
532
into seven sub-planes. Hence man's foundation is numerically a fourfold seven, or four times seven, or twenty-eight. In Hindu literature
one finds this distinctly confirmed in a statement which says "the last
of the Buddhas advanced by 28 steps, seven toward each of the four
new
by the
The sun
of intellect added
its
make
the ten.
The
Hence a thirteen-month year, a lunar or "leftyear, was ill-omened; while the number twelve, as the final
numerical basis of the new heaven in man's constitution, was the acmaterial or female.
handed"
is
"sinister," in
French
it
is
awkwardness.
The moon
and rose
tell
mankind
533
renewed and
god died
rise again.
So
runs a
moon
as
We
is set
in the sky as
Wheii the
is
revealed.
The
light of the
sun on the
moon shows
spirit transfiguring
body.
And
this
nocturnal stage-play
Proclus
Here
ligion,
far
mighty sentence of
"The
needed
is
is
is
light of the
sun
is
to join matter
534
life,
if,
then, there
is
a nucleus
how
into
body
is
able spark o
builds a
body
to be
its
its
own
mind
inner
is
is
which engenders a
Mind
is
understand and accept their own Bible, this matter would have been
established long ago. For the Psalms (84) stated this truth to an uncomprehending world centuries ago: "The Lord God is a sun. . . ."
less has the New Testament
given witness to the same truth, for
has proclaimed that the son of the Father of
Lights is the "sun of
righteousness, risen with healing in his wings." The face of Jesus did
"shine as the sun" in his transfiguration; and the ultimate
Nor
it
promise
given to sincere mortals is that at the end of earthly struggle, with
victory won, "then shall the righteous shine li\e the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
535
Chapter
XXI
across the
anew on that other boat, the majestic ship of Ra, beginning its
across
the crystal sea. The door of the cabin is flung wide open
voyage
advances amid the joyous acclaim
to let the King of Glory emerge.
passage
He
of gods
and men
as they hail
him who
underworld.
To limn
the reality of that experience is beyond the power of lanwhy the ancients did not attempt to
it.
They
consideration of any living embodiment of truth will achieve a transformation into a new birth of spiritual vision and a liberation of currents of power not dreamed of before. If we are to effectuate some
measure of this release of latent efficacy, we must revive the ancient
figurative typology. We must align truth once again with natural
processes, so as to view it under the forms of its endorsement by outreality. The human psyche, tortured too long under the strain of
sheer unsupported faith, will leap forward in gladness if again it can
find the proffered truths of religion cast in harmony with living veracThe outer world is itself living mind come to view in its own fority.
ward
must then be the veridical images of truth. In conformity with this axiom the effort must now be made to portray the
later phases of the arc of the human cycle, in which the soul
mations, which
undergoes
summation
kingdom
mother of the gods and the body of physical man is the womb of
god who is struggling to come to being in it. It groans and travails
in pain until the Christ is formed within it. All nature is in labor to
the
the
generate the mind principle. Paul says that "even we ourselves groan
within ourselves," waiting for our redemption through the new birth.
that the
body
is
and
One
"Know
fact.
own
He fairly
shrieks
how
that
pic-
ye not your
selves,
We
new
birth.
Budge, in
that the Egyptians conceived the sahu, or spiritual body, the \a, or
double, the ba, or soul, the ab f or heart, the %hu t or shining spirit, the
sefyhem, or vital force, the ren f or name, and the \habit, or shade, all as
537
to furnish
coarser bodies
coming forth
is
are themselves the "death" spoken of, these bodies, having been born,
formed and matured within the womb of the outer body, then step
forth through the rent in the veil, the opened tomb door, and float free
of their old mother-womb, or "bird-cage of the soul." The ones below
life
commenting
spiritual
Ritual (Ch. 56) gives this utterance of the Manes: "I keep
watch over the egg of Kenken-Ur (the Great Cackler) I germinate
as it germinateth; I live as it liveth, and my breath is its breath." And
in Chapter 64 he says:
The
"I hide
one
who
therewith;
and
watcheth to
.
who
will
my khu shall be as
protect my soul and
my mem-
."
"the
shall
making
make
all his
The
prayer to be
let his
in Neter-khertet (the underworld)
The
of
the
that
a
of
li\e
god"
phrases indicates that the
sequence
in
the
of
the
seed
of
body was integrally a part of
divinity
sprouting
.
Nu
saith:
53 8
bennu
bird,"
am come
"I
into being
come
The
"unformed matter"
is
Egyptian discourses.
Germination parallels closely the other symbol of "quickening"
touched on earlier. Sent to die in matter, the latent power of the seed
its first
tendrils to take
hold
must
aspire
ward. Without
the analogue o
is
many minor
physical body,
particulars.
and the
Our
finer body,
crowning the
man's
transaction
is
life
as described
past.
embodiment
the
Boo\
in flesh
of the
Dead
is itself
The
title
The Com-
coming of a living
imprisonment into the light
entity out of
539
It is the
book
on
the quickening, germination, rebirth, reconstitution and final transin this life.
figuration and resurrection of the divine-human psyche
"It
is
amid
justly,
his
name had
which
his
dogma taught
that
home
the
enough the
"death." Naturally
would seem
to be complicated
with
translation
when nothing
difficulties
of the
cosmic history of the soul, the evolutionary states from and into which
it is to be resurrected, and other basic data, are known.
Difficulty van-
it
life
coming forth
life,
bright "day" of celestial being? With all its bright sunshine and vivid
sense of reality, this life is still the dark night of the soul, the twilight
of the gods, the burial in death
and
hell.
The coming
forth by
day
then must refer to the final transfer of the imprisoned soul from this
darkness to the Elysian meadows of supernal delight. This interpretation
is
language of Egyptian
[Why
life
on
not both?
is
the
texts
coming forth
to
day (Peri-em-heru)
heaven of
we
ask.]
The
540
first
resurrection
is,
as
it
were,
an ascension from the tomb In the nether earth by means of the secret doorway. But this coming forth is in, not from, Amenta, after the burial in the
upper earth. He issues from the valley of darkness and the shadow of
death."
The reader will doubtless share our own inability to assign definite
location to Massey's "nether earth" and "upper earth.'* They were
terms hit upon by him to enable him to go on talking without committing himself to anything definitely meaningful. As locations they
are perfectly pointless and fictional, in his usage. Nether and upper
earth are the two realms of man's nature, and surely in his resurrec-
Amenta
We
is
call
this life
the Ritual
itself to
And
again definiteness
is
seen in the
title
seem
it is
not.
He
He
phantasmagoria of transformation."
Though
a spirit
human
grave in
steps
Why?
first
characteristic shape.
The Manes asserts that
must
cometh forth
which is the
from the dusk
further
succinct
bears
"Behold
65
testimony:
body.
Chapter
physical
me, I am born and I come forth in the form of a living Khu, and the
human beings who are upon the earth ascribe praise unto me." He
must be where human beings can perceive him to render him this
be on earth.
he
rises as
who
resurrecting entity was styled
and whose birth is in the house of death"
The
"he
praise.
may
fall
differentiate
it.
make
this
"Thus the origin of the exodus, as Egyptian, was in the coming forth of
the heavenly bodies from below the horizon as the mythical representation.
This was followed by the coming forth of the Manes from dark to day,
from death
Egypt
The
to life,
from bondage
in the eschatology."
exodus, he says,
is
to liberty,
to
Upper
Manes
in
making
their
Amenta.
Lu\e's "multitude of the heavenly host praising God" fills also the
BooJ^ of the Dead with celestial chorus: "They rejoice at his beautiful
the
heaven.
And
that they
as the glory
were sore
who
up with
lifteth thee
day." And chapter 72 says that he may "come forth by day in all the
forms which he pleaseth to take." "He sails over heaven ... he arrives
the storm winds of heaven bear him
at the high place of heaven
.
him
to Ra."
The Manes
is told:
"Thy soul flieth up
on high to meet the soul of the gods ..." The famous Hymn to Ra
is
sung "when he [Ani] riseth in the eastern part of heaven."
It is likely that the "two men in white
apparel" in the Acts (i 10)
who say to the disciples, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing into
heaven?" are the Gospel counterparts of the two sons of Atum, Hu
and Sa, who attend their father in his resurrection in the Egyptian
:
scene.
it is
woman?" The
dross. The Manes
asked:
"How
can
man
be clean that
is
born of
The coming
must
from Amenu,
upon
"to come."
He
inceptive
ment.
The one
fire to
its
on the day of his birth, yet he only comes in his adulthood when a
man. And in a larger sense the whole of his life is his coming to what543
ever he
until
his
is
its
is
to be.
final act is
is
Easter.
whom
the prince, the heir. He was the original of all Jesus figures, of
there are some twenty or more by the name of Jesus (Joshua, Jesse,
Samson, Saul and Solomon are prior types of Jesus, all bearing the
solar character in their name. lusa, Solomon and Jesus were all temple
am
one of those
who
world:"
"My
my
body
underworld; but I shall enter in peace and I shall come forth in peace."
These and similar phrases of promise are to be fulfilled on that great
day, the name of which is itself significant the day of "Come thou to
"
me," or "the day of 'Come unto us/ or "Come thou hither." This
was to be the opening day of the resplendent new creation. Revelation
speaks of the same grand inaugural:
544
"The
spirit
bid us
The
natural
man,
prepared the
tors,
coming of the human sun, and the morning star is one of the seven
rewards promised to him that overcometh. The morning star (at one
time) was Sothis, the watch-dog that barked to announce the corning
of the Day-Star from on high, as the ape clicked at the
rising sun.
In the beginning of the cycle, "the god comes to his body"; in the
end Horus exclaims "I have come to an end for the lord of heaven, I
:
my
which the
book the
make
"By
this
and
living
anywhere
to those
who
It is
singular that Paul (Ephesians 3:31!) speaks in quite similar
terms of a mystery made known to him "which in other ages was not
made known unto the sons of men; as it is now revealed unto his
spirit"
of Christhood. It
would
seem, then, that the great aeonial mystery of this portion of the universe was the coming of the solar deities to link with the animal races
and
lift
them
greatest of
up. This
is
It is
545
for
own
man
being.
the
We,
As the
Isis,
man who
(Ch. 84).
It is
undeveloped
solar intelligence,
its
"theophanies" or actualization in
concrete worlds.
The
Messianic Son came ever as the manifester and witness for the
father,
name
He
bore a different
To
according to the
cult.
came "each day" in the Ritual; he came periodically; he came "reguand continuously." He came once through the cycle; but his
and lunar and natural types came cyclically and in eternal renewal. The Egyptian Messiah was one whose historical coming was
not expected at any date, at any epoch. The type of his coming was
manifest in some phenomenon repeated as often as the day, the year,
or the lunation came around. The constant repetition of type was the
larly
solar
assurance of
its
And
for
one
to
be saved in a
have
his Easter.
in
its
entirety.
Horus, a form of lu-em-hetep, was not an individual historical person. For he says: "I am Horus, the Prince of Eternity." Jesus was with
the Father before the foundation of the worlds. Horus calls himself
"the persistent traveler on the highways of heaven/' and "the everlasting one." "I am Horus who steppeth onward through eternity." Here
is wisdom to nourish the mind and lead it out of its infantile
stage
Horus declares himself forever above the charactime-bound personage, an indestructible spirit that advances
onward through one embodiment after another to endless days. He is
the Ancient of Days, who eternally renews himself in cycle after cycle.
Let moderns ponder his other mighty pronouncement "I- am a soul,
and my soul is divine. It is the self-originating force." It can perinto maturity of view.
ter of a
petually
renew
itself,
entering the
womb
of
its
mother, wife,
sister,
surprising reference to
average lifetimes of 71 years each, 994 years.
the division or cycle of fourteen generations is found in Matthew
(i: 17),
significance of the
it
number
again:
"So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations;
and from David until the carrying away into Babylon are fourteen genera547
tions;
into
generations."
Even
this
wrought
all
At
three years
a dead fish (Pisces, the
sparrows, which he
beautiful
little
"commanded
to
fly,
and not in
vain.
Here
is
in twelve
allegory of bringing the dead divinity to life
declares
that the
intelligence. Papias emphatically
aspects of evolving
were
who
be the deity
all
was the cradle of the Jesus figure, and in that cradle lay lusa and luem-hetep, Khunsu and Horus, Amsu, Khepr and Aten, all resurrected
sons of dead fathers. In a sense both humorously and ironically unsuspected, the proclamation of the God of Christendom has been true:
"Out of Egypt have I called my son." God sent his sons into this
"Egypt" of the flesh-pots to gain what such an experience alone could
yield; but in the turn of the cycle he called them home to him.
The coming of the ancient Christs was not historical. They did not
come as persons, but as principles. Being spiritual light, their coming
is in the form of an intenser
glowing, as man feeds their flame with
truth and love. They are the fire that burns with
unquenchable per548
sistence
substance.
They come
to transubstantiate the
itself into
body
that
more
is
ethereal
host to them.
in
more
was the
release of a
mind, but might, through repetition, penetrate to the seat of the deeper
consciousness and effect a liberation of latent power. Sincere performance of the ceremony might bring surprising repercussions in the
organism. Continued cultivation of the presence and power of the
god would gradually transmute baser elements into spiritual gold, and
end by elevating one to the rank and number of the gods.
The god
and sloughed
member
forth as
was
and
inert,
As he awakened
had
to
his faculties
of his
moth, the serpent, the human foetus, the boy at puberty, all were
images of the great transformation which should at some late day
metamorphose the man into the god. This work is gradual and is
accomplished piecemeal. The god finds his glorification coming day
by day, feature by feature; he is reconstituted limb by limb, member
by member, until he says there is no part of him that remains mortal.
He is given
Nu
Tattu; the shoulders of Neith; the back of Sut; the phallus of Osiris;
the legs and thighs of Nut; the feet of Ptah; and the nails and bones
of the living Uraei "until there is not a limb of him that
god." "My leg-bones are the leg-bones of the living gods.
549
is
without a
There
is
no
member
Lord
is
is
announced,
when
and bind up the "brokenhearted." Horus goes "wherever there lieth a wreck in the field of
with joy:
eternity." This redeemer is announced
He brings
Horus makes tHee to be joined to the gods.
gods in a body. None among them escapes from his hand.
Horus loves thee more than his own offspring, he unites thee to those of
He makes a spirit
his own body. Horus makes his Ka to be in thee. . .
"Hail, Osiris!
to thee the
to
be in thee."
And
the
Manes again
is
hailed:
"Ho, Ho! thou art raised up! Thou hast received thy head, thou hast
embraced thy bones, thou hast collected thy flesh, thou hast searched the
earth for thy body."
make him, like the resuscitated Osiris, "Neb-er-ter, the god entire."
Every member of the old Atum, deceased and defunct, had to be
anew in a fresh creation. Like a person recovering from
amnesia, he had to recollect his former knowledge, reassemble the
component elements of his dismembered integrity. He was so long the
fashioned
lifeless
mummy
forgotten
how
walk upon
my
to speak.
to
says,
"come
forth to day
and
He
says
delivered the
55
arm.
He
in bright
is
no longer bound
new
to the
came
forth
When
were made
a Pharaoh, offerings
to his
To Horus
life is
it is
declared to
he sings;
fix
said:
came out
as a
alive. "I
"My
He
"I
80).
and
phoenix"
that
is,
I shall
parts,"
is
to live for-
Horus reborn
as the
55 1
am
the babe.
am
of the Ritual
the
that "of
is
have gotten dominion over the beasts that are brought for sacrifice.
the light is beyond your
have set the gods upon their paths
knowledge and ye cannot fetter it; the times and seasons are in my body."
"I
...
To know
of a certainty that
with
all
our stupidity
we
the
is
The
soul
is
We
we
when
it
consummates
Easter.
made
fail to
of Persea
if
is
The
a type of a stage of
soul transforms into
progression
the various animals, fishes, birds; and his emphatic words are to the
effect that he becomes these animals. He crawls as a serpent, burrows
the water as a
fish,
tions like a beetle and breaks his eggshell like a chick. The passage of
the sun through the bestial signs was depicted as a series of transformations denoted by the signs. The Manes says: "I establish myself for-
ever in
my transformations
that I choose."
As he was
to
sum and
unify
and transform them into their spiritual form. He was thus to become
king over nature, and the angels from their seats would envy him. In
John's and Ezekiel's visions he was to rule the gods of the four corners
of life's temple, the lion, eagle, bull and animal man. He was to convert animality into divinity.
The misty specter of an unsolved
}
552
Totemism
So
we do
far as
life, is
set
down
as
due
to
But no student can bring his mind to grips with the implications of
Egyptian religion without confronting the steady insistence of an inference from the old data which, however incredible it may
appear, at
the first rational or plausible
ground for an understanding of Totemism. Even through the corruption of originally
pure conception can be traced the oudine of the profoundest intimaleast furnishes
Many ancient texts advance the suggestion that early man and the
animals were practically kindred. Perhaps the central fact of archaic
anthropology is the declaration that the sons of God took incarnation
in the bodies of animals. Genesis (6:4) assures that they had intercourse, in contravention of their demiurgic commission, with the
Whole groups
may have taken residence in the bodies of particular species, thus making their blood cognate with that of the animal in each case. Groups
seized
upon
became
different species,
distributed
animal would
members of the
species
would be regarded
porated by eating
when
body would be
of the inviolability, of animal life may spring from such an early conception of kinship and sanctity. It is certain that the line of division
tures,
intelligent rule,
it
to gather
is
them
all
no wild conception
553
to
mined. That the higher aspect of the allegorical rituals may have
been known to but few, or lost entirely for long stretches, does not
impugn
tinction
and
its
esoteric true
is
meaning
is
easily transgressed
when
perception
his incorporation in the animal orders in his tigerish ferocity, his foxy
cunning, his leonine courage, his eel-like slipperiness, his serpent-wise
of anger, his sheepish meekness, his dogged
slyness, his scorpion sting
wolfish rapacity, his cat-like stealth, his beaver perdreams of sweet purity, or his phoenix-like
aloft
at
times with his obvious embodiment of the
aspiration to soar
attributes of lower orders within himself man may not rationally
pertinacity, his
sistency, his dove-like
my
codification, as
alone on earth.
It
man
into
final
554
Much
instruction
is
is
in the
this great
first
mys-
place of tre-
this
it is
given that when Jesus had risen from the dead in his first
advent, he passed eleven (or twelve) years speaking with the disciples
and instructing them up to the stage of the first statutes only (the
Lesser Mysteries)
pels
came
Mount
"And while
they were saying these things the one to the other, Jesus sat
apart from them. It came to pass, therefore, on the fifteenth day of
the month Tybi, the day of the full moon, on that day when the sun had
a
little
going, that there came forth a great stream of light shining excame forth from the light of lights. And this stream of light
ceedingly.
poured over Jesus and surrounded him. He was seated apart from his
risen in
its
It
and was shining exceedingly. But the disciples saw not Jesus because of the great light in which he sat, for their eyes were blinded by the
disciples
The
on March
25.
The
full
moon
can type
full
forms of depicting that which is but one grand event, any critical
epoch of which is typal in a measure of the whole experience. The
statement of the disciples that they had "received the fulness of all
perfection" would point to the consummative nature of the events
555
to divine.
The
fact
that the Transfiguration took place on the Mount of Olives on the east
would indicate the culminative value of it. The eastern mount was the
sun and
his
the light." When the deceased mortal climbs out of matter and ap"his members
proaches the verge of the Paradisiacal Aarru, or Hetep,
become
He
It is to
When
ous.
in the Ritual
and
faces,"
"In a
moment
of time a
marked
differentiation
is
created; in a
mo-
ment
Ritual
mummy
is
renewed in an
when "he
instant." It
is
the
consumma-
and hides
his body."
We
The
the discarded swathings, the rolled stone and the opened tomb were
converted into occurrence and attached to a personal life. As the figure
of the Christos was nailed on a wooden cross, so was his body con-
gruesome realism by the maneuver has been more than overbalanced by the loss of the universality of the experience and of its
in
ineffable beauty as a spiritual mystery. There was neither reason, justification nor need for the literalization of the crucifixion and the resurrection.
and
People
who were
556
as veritable history.
Jesus, born as a
man
and
hills
that
lamp
that once
traces of a
from
decipher
writings, as well as
"pagan rubbish."
their sorry
by
doms in lower matter, rose in the middle of the fourth day. Aeons of
anthropological history were dramatized by the three dark days of the
lunar month. The seed of seminal light spent three "days" in the
bowels of earth and matter, and rose in the fourth round, or "watch
of the night." As history the resurrection after three literal days in the
falls into absurdity; but as ritual
symbolism it stands in such
tomb
to conceive.
Much
(6:1-3):
"Come
let
chapter as the
hath smitten and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us;
on the third day he will raise MS up; and we shall live for him.
His
.
going forth
The
is
."
is
557
ity for
man's
spirit
after departure
from
earth.
This
is
one of those
has afflicted
dreary delusions with which the despoiling of esotericism
the mass of humanity. Immortality we have, but it is not static. The
placid "at peace"
and "at
rest"
lives.
Life
on gravestones
is
is
immortal, but
immortality
is
won
and that is why the cycles of nature that are endlessly repeated
before our eyes are set as the symbols of our life. The imperishable
as the breath
spark of life that goes into and out of matter was typed
cycle;
of God, the spirit of the Father, the mind of the Logos, the pillar of
earth, the salt of the earth, the ark of heaven, the elixir of life, the
fount of youth, the backbone of the universe, the water of life, the oil
of anointing, the spark of eternal fire, the bread of life, the river of
renewal of itself in
blessing and the resurrecting soul. Each rhythmic
its
own
anew
as
its
own
child.
That the
by the date
set for
it.
In the
on the
fifteenth of the
moon
of a solar
on the
first
first
equinox.
The ancient type of resurrection and rebirth was the
tamarisk, persea, sycamore-fig, olive, oak, pine, ash,
palm,
tree.
The
acacia, cy-
clear:
is no possible
question of a corporeal resurrection. The mummy
god in matter or mortality rises from the tomb transubstantiated into
"There
of the
is
558
spirit.
dead."
Obviously not, when we see, as Massey did not, that they spoke not
dead as the defunct mortal. Budge lends corroboration:
at all of the
"The educated Egyptian never believed that the material body would rise
again and take up a new life, for he well understood that flesh and blood
could not inherit immortality." 4
The
from
its
on
the resurrection, as Paul says; but the rising again is not that of the
cadaver. Paul himself says that man re-arises in spirit body.
The
and
deceased prays that he may emerge from the world of the dead
This has been taken by many to mean a return
and central concern of religion. Misguided pietism has tended to contemn earth and glorify heaven. Egypt answers this false discrimination
decisively when the Manes says (Ch. 3oA, Renouf ) "Although he is
buried in the deep, deep grave, and bowed down with the reign of
annihilation, he is glorified [even] there."
:
After his 40 days in the desert of Amenta, tried under Satanic power,
Manes prays "Let me reach the land of ages, let me gain the land
the
my
therefore to
emerge transformed
in the resurrection.
He was
the
power
He
after another.
559
force. It
of
is
appropriate here:
"The self-erecting member was the type of the resurrection, as the image
Khem-Horus, the re-arising sun, and of Khepr-Ra, the re-erector of the
dead."
The power
up
fallen divinity
up at the risings." "Thou art raised up, thou art not dead," exults the
Papyrus of Teta. "Thy (spiritual) body to heaven, the empty case of
Horus to the earth," indicates the release of the immortal soul from the
shall
hold thee" (Ch. 92). Imprisonment was over; the liberty of the
sons of
whom Atum-Ra
is
new
that existed
itself.
is
And cometh
The
aged
riddle offers
man may
be
from
life star.
afar."
much
elsewhere before.
is
enjoined to perform his
addressed: "Rise up, Horus, son of Isis, and restore
thy father Osiris," the mummy. Then he bids his father: "Rise up,
then, Osiris. I have stricken down thine enemies for thee; I have deliv-
eastern task.
He
is
He
raises
him
in his youthful splendor. Then it is that the Hebrew Horus, that is,
Jesus, concludes his address to his Father Horus had given forty
life
addresses to Osiris
is
on
earth,
Could purblind Christian theology have rightly divined the cosmoand anthropogenetic truth so plainly expressed in this passage,
genetic
it
following to grope in darkness for futile cena clear statement of the coming and return of the solar ray
turies. It is
of the Logos,
left its
all
whom
there
is
when
is
Two
to heaven.
his shoulders.
Ra
soul
is
beautifully apostrophized:
"The Comer! The Comer! This Pepi cometh! The Lady of Tep is agitated and the heart of the goddess dwelling in Nekheb fluttereth on this
day when Pepi cometh in the place of Ra. Pepi hath carried away for himself
The
shown
in this
part that old earth has played
in these passages:
"Behold,
Keb
mighty consummation
is
cometh
to the
short excerpt:
"Each day right and truth come into my eyebrows. At night taketh place
the festival of those that are dead; the Aged One who is in ward in the
earth."
Chapters 96 and 97 are entitled: "of being nigh unto Thoth and of
giving glory unto a man in the underworld." Says the soul:
562
in the
am
bathed.
"Now
."
Christ risen
is
them that
slept!'
first fruits
of
the
first
of
them
wake
most mighty."
soul
sent the deceased as having opened the tomb door, with his soul by
his side, or as standing before the open door with hand stretch out to
embrace his
soul.
opened, that
is
The Manes
a
way may
The
to say,
chapter reads
he that lay
down
has prayed that his soul "may not be kept captive, but that
be opened for its release."
two men descending and entering the tomb, and three coming
Two powers united and brought forth a third.
"They beheld
three
men coming
forth.
supporting a third, and a cross was following them; and the heads of the
two men reached to heaven, but the head of him that was being led along
And
of "Yea" was
preached to them that are asleep?" And the response
heard from the cross. This scene is a version of the rising of Osiris or
Hu
cross,
coming
preached
and awakened them. For this was that commission which he had
taken an oath to perform with diligence and despatch.
Hosea (13: 14) sings of the release of the captive soul from mundane
thralldom:
5 63
will
redeem them
I will
be thy de-
struction."
This brings
to
mind
shout rises
chapter in Corinthians. Another triumphant resurrection
from the divine scribe in Revelation (i: 18) "I am he that liveth and
:
was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore." The Prodigal Son
"was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found," like the Tat
cross. "I am the resurrection and the life," announces Jesus; "he that
believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live"; "I will raise
him up
An
the bandages of burial were cast aside so that the mummy might
be invested with a lighter and brighter robe. Horus burst the funeral
rite
bonds and rent asunder the coffin in his awakening. He freed himself
from every bond and strode forth on uncramped legs, the most triumphant figure in "history." The dead were "the bandaged ones." Jesus,
the child,
freed
from
my
from
their
bandages
"O my
bandages!
to see
in swaddling bands.
father!
can
my
see! I
sister!
am
my
The
one of those
Egyp-
rising
mother
who
Isis! I
am
are freed
with
states that
the rent veil and loosened rocks and quaking earth, the graves were
opened and "many bodies of the saints that had fallen asleep were
raised."
rising
This
is
When
is
more
the
left
arm
which
Jesus'
mind
all is figurative.
Horus
is
(air), or of the Khu spirit, is held in its grasp. This is "the arm of
the Lord" which hath gotten him the victory. It is the arm of which it
is
arm foreshortened
that
it
can-
not save?"
Jesus is born in Bethlehem, "the house of bread" by name; Horus
comes forth in (Beth)-Annu, "the place of multiplying bread!" The
564
Gnostic Jesus says he comes now not as when they crucified him. He
comes now in spirit; he has passed from the afflicted one to "the active
the inert
death.
The
to the ninth
months or
three, the
Jews rejected the babe born at the winter solstice because their traditions committed them to the mysteries of Harmachis, Horus of the
double horizon.
mummy. He
dawn
as the
"dawn upon
the
Ra
of
Just previous to his asking the Father to glorify him Jesus had said
to his disciples "I know whence I came and whither I go." "I go unto
:
the Father." So
I
am
the
"I raise
highest demonstration of Jesus' possession of divine power, his sublimest and most convincing miracle. Yet, in a word, the examination
of Egyptian material reveals conclusively that it was not and could not
have been, a historical occurrence! It is nothing but a dramatic etching
565
The
of the resurrection.
and
actors
the same in name, had been depicted or enacted in Egyptian ceremonial for perhaps ten thousand years before Christ. The story even
in the Gospels stands as but another cinematograph of the resurrection.
There is the same rocky tomb, the same cerements, the same lapse of
three (four) days in the hall of death, the same women watchers, and other similar items of the old symbology. The correlations
have been outlined in the Prologue, but there are supplementary fea-
time
trace of a
was but another instance of their adaptation of purely reprenames to places and features of their local geography. But
whether there was a Bethany beyond Jordan or not, the practical
to have occurred there with
identity of the miraculous event alleged
an Egyptian dramatization of a purely spiritual initiation that had
been portrayed in Kamite ritual for some millennia prior to the time
salem,
it
sentative
history.
we have seen. It is
hem, sharing the latter's meaning of "house of bread." Both towns
were scripturally the place where the divine bread was given out and
"multiplied" in the persons of the Saviors, Horus and Jesus, "born"
We
there.
cite
as to the status of
"The tomb
under one of
Anu:
of Osiris
was
Annu, the
localized in
one in Annu.
Annu
is
Annu, my
Jesus goes to
was in Annu that the soul was united to its spiritual
body. Annu is termed 'where thousands reunite themselves,' soul and body.
Annu is the abode of *those who have found their faces.' The house
or beth of Osiris, then, was in Annu.
The house of Osiris in Annu
was
the abode of Horus when he came to raise Osiris from the
'I
to rest in
go
repose.
rest in Bethany. It
.
tomb!'
566
mummy
cells,
(Budge)
"I
am
summons
to the
mummy
awake, come to
to
life
coming
sleeping divinity, the breathless one, Urt-Hat, the god of the nonbeating heart, the silent Sekari. The sleeping god is vigorously ap-
O
O
sick-
ness
From an
obscure corner
bearing upon
it
these conclusions
and used
it
inappropriately."
567
Mead's surmise
is
ately
is
as to Tertullian's lack of
a likely
it
enough
inapproprinot so evident. In fact this remarkable reference of Tertullian
must be taken
as a
most
between Christian
Bible material and Egyptian sources of the same. Justin Martyr and
other second-century Fathers not only did not so suddenly conceal the
traces of relationship between Christian and earlier pagan literature,
but at times pressed the evidences of derivation and identity. At all
events, that
we
some
bit of Christian
support for
must be
And
as to the
sisters
of Lazarus,
Mary and
Martha?
When Horus
ing the blessings he has brought him, he says: "I have given thee thy
victory, I have given thee thy two eyes (Mertac)^ and I have given
thee Isis and Nephthys." Here we have the Egyptian prototypes of the
two Maries of Gospel legend, or the sisters Mary and Martha. The
much-mooted question of the identity of the "two women" of both
Old and New Testaments is settled by Egyptian lore at last. They are
the traditional replicas of the two great divine mothers of the sun-god,
Isis and
Nephthys, the Apt and Hathor of an earlier cult. They are
the two protectors of the hidden babe, the two eternal watchers of his
growth. They are also his two sisters who weep for him in his suffering state. In Egypt Anu was also "Rem-Rem, the place of weeping"
for the buried lord of life. In the Litany of Ra Horus says: "I tread the
dwelling of the god Rem-Rem," who is elsewhere denominated "Remi
the Weeper." It was at Bethany that Jesus wept! Isis lay watching in
tears over her brother Osiris when he had been cut to
pieces and deThe
two
also
both
watch
and
stroyed.
goddesses
weep over the dead
body.
Isis
call
They
him
in weeping, addressing to
him long
bewails:
thine abode!
Look
Do
Mine
568
supplications.
Will
it
be long ere
Beholding thee
I see
thee?
8
is
happiness.
Isis
all
wept
to
sisters,
who
"Thy two
to the
say:
sisters
in weeping, thou
who
his
bound
Meri
to the place
follows
where Asar
father,
name
lies
forth to
of
it is
whom
written, reaches
is
Meri.
He
him
follows
and announce the rising and the empty tomb. The risen Horus says: "The
goddesses and the women proclaim me when they see me." Everywhere in sacred scripts of old it is the world of nature that hails deity
in
rising from its bosom. The supporters and nourishers of solar deity
matter would be the first to witness the apotheosis in their domain.
But all the while the lord of life is inert in their realm they are the
ones solicitous about his rebirth.
They
lead the
way
to the cave
where
"Thy two
sisters Isis
And
this
life
of
spirit.
The two Eyes of Ra (or Horus) called "Mertae," who are the two
Maries, or Mary and Martha, symbolized the cosmic and the individualized divine powers of spirit-soul. Spiritual intelligence can find no
focus to open its inner vision on worlds of reality save through ma-
5 69
its
organ, the eye. The organ is
Sight must have
a material construction. The cosmic and the substantial forms of matter become then the two eyes of the spirit of Ra. As eyes they are
watchers, and as the two women they are likewise watchers. In their
terial instrumentality.
on
one
is
body
any
to stand in
of saying
primal sovereignty in evolution; and so the Gospels, instead
were
has
it that the seven devils
Maries
cast
that
the
seven
out,
directly
were
is
Horus,
handle
stars
570
his
existence.
whose
These four gods were four of the seven elementaries, whose powers
Horus had brought under control and raised up. They are changed
from brothers among the primal seven to sons of the chief power,
when he rose up as their king. An Egyptian vignette shows four fishermen drawing a net. These were the four cardinal gods, assistants to
him who came under Piscean signature as the Divine Fish to feed
mankind, and to make them "fishers of men."
Many
chapter
is
titles
entitled
Chapter 46
underworld." Says the Manes in it: "Like the Hamemmet beings may
I arise, even as Osiris doth arise and fare forth." Chapter 45 is headed:
"A chapter of not suffering corruption in the underworld."
:
The one consummate symbol of the resurrection, nature's own reof apotheosis, is the rise of the
splendent heliograph of man's moment
of
sun
above the line of the vernal
the
or
the
at
dawn
sun
ascending
the
of
The
morning light and the bursting from
breaking
equinox.
winter's captivity of the soul of life in verdant nature are the kindred
which were given as constant reoperations in the phenomenal world
minders to
man
light
istence. Insensible
that has grasped the reality back of the outer show, that the daily or
the annual solar, or monthly lunar, typology may work such minor
undergo
into ineffable glory. Nature recapitulates without end the physical type
that transfiguration which man has experienced in ever-recurring
scale is destined to occur once for each
but which on the
grand
cycles,
individual at the climax of his earthly career. At the end of each life
there supervenes a momentary opening of higher vision, giving the
of cosmic reality, and a review of its
soul a vivid if
fleeting
glimpse
own
summit
gathered
Then
in
its
powers
one transporting
thrill of
expanding
life it
of the dynamic significance of nature's gorgeous ritualism in poetry, odes to the deities and hymns to the Sun. These are
over the human
majestic, and capable of wielding transforming power
some measure
effort to convey
psyche. Liberty is taken to insert Thomas Taylor's
the
lord of day.
something of the grandeur of the coming of
"But you will ask, what has the rising of the sun through the Ocean
from the boundaries of earth and night to do with the adventures of
Bacchus? I answer, that it is impossible to devise a symbol more beautifully
accommodated to the purpose: for, in the first place, is not the ocean a
proper emblem of our earthly nature, whirling and stormy, and perpetually
rolling without any periods of repose? And is not the sun emerging from
its boisterous deeps a perspicuous symbol of the higher spiritual nature,
and
.
572
Chapter XXII
asks (7 Corinthians 15 35) a question which, had it been envisaged in the light of the succinct answer which he himself immediately gave to it, would have left world religion in far better case than
its
present position.
"But some man will say," he argues, "How are the dead raised up?
And with what body do they come?" Paul's first word of answer is a
rebuke to the stupidity of such a question. He says: "Foolish man!"
And by
a quirk of ironic fate the rebuke administered to such ignorance of basic Greek philosophy (in which Paul was steeped) as the
question implied, now falls upon the very institution which exalts him
as its original propagandist and builder. By one of the most arrant perversions of clear philosophy ever to be perpetrated in world history,
the Church he founded has put itself in the very place of the "some
man" asking the absurd question whether the dead rise up in their
corpses or in some other form. And this in spite of the fact that the
great Apostle addressed himself, in the remainder of his chapter, to as
lucid an exposition of the spiritual resurrection as is to be found anywhere in sacred literature. This i5th chapter of / Corinthians marks
the high point of spiritual sublimity reached in the New Testament.
41
Its
far above the mists of controversy that overhang it over the question
of the corporeal resurrection. But the later formulators of orthodox
with the policy of the literalizers of religious drama; he was the exand Egypponent of that Orphic-Platonic wisdom from the Chaldean
tian springs that they had come to revile. He indited more than one
of the grandest chapters of their Bible; yet they frowned upon him
573
because his writing was not in accord with their cult-Christianity. His
was cosmic Christianity. It was embodied in terms of Platonic Gnosticism, the flower of
Greek
rational mysticism.
is
The
sublimest chapter in
he
is
in
accord with pagan teaching. First he announces the great law of incubation, as the prelude to any understanding of the resurrection in
body .
gives each kind of seed a body of its own. Flesh
the same; there is human flesh, there is flesh of beasts, flesh
of birds and flesh of fish." Has it ever been noticed that Paul here enugives
is
not
it
all
merates precisely the four kingdoms on which man's life rests at its corners, matching the four figures in Egyptology, and in EzekiePs and
John's celestial visions?
Man, animal,
Hapi, Tua-
and
lion, eagle
the four quarters of the zodiac; the four bases
Paul's vital statement is that God plants "bare grain"
fish (crocodile)
of man's
life.
Then Paul
tells
it rises
sown
it
rises in
power;
a spiritual body.
574
As
there
is
***
'The
the last
Adam
is
a spiritual body.
Thus
it is
written:
first
is
a life-giving
spirit;'
second
as
so
you this, my brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the Realm of
God, nor can the perishing inherit the imperishable ... the dead will rise
imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must be
invested with the imperishable, and this mortal
body invested with imI tell
mortality;
then
Death
is
swallowed up in victory."
How in
its
second
Adam
Horus
two horizons,
Horus the younger,
of the
The
dies,
its
disintegrating elements, it will not live
old
material
seed
will never rise again; and the
again.
physical
man
of
will
not
rise
from
the grave. But the germinal essence
corpus
will come forth from decay shining in new life. That which is sown in
The
the earth will die; but out of its death will rise the stem that bears the
new generation of beauty aloft to sun and air. Well did Paul say,
"Foolish man!" to ask such a question. And well may the world say
The
A clearer grasp
some
of
its
significance
The
575
may
it.
him
type of
these
like
members; for
my
unto
my
saw
that never
who
corruption.
is
the divine
worms, but
deliver
me
as
... and I
existence. I shall not decay, I shall not rot, I shall not putrefy
of the god Shu. I shall have
beneath the
peace ...
the form of
my
shall
come
In
I
from any
shall
spite
shall
my
tongue
... and no
wake up
in
not decay;
become deaf;
shall not
be car-
of death the
I
the
off;
mine
neck;
shall
mine eye
defect;
my
me."
to
(Ch.
germinate ...
head
my
eye
...
...
shall
grow,
peace, I
154, Naville).
first
85):
am
the divine
the first-born
eternity."
The
soul
is
never perish, a
connected with the temporal and impermanent vestures in which the
itself to travel through Amenta.
seed-spark of divinity has embodied
of
does not touch the core
being itself, the Ka.
shall
Decay
But what specifically is this robe of immortality that the mortal must
as conis Paul's
"spiritual body"
put on if he is to live forever? It
a
is
what
But
"animate
natural
or
trasted with the
spiritual
body."
576
body, the world has been asking for these hundreds of years, and
"science" has also asked
contemptuously. The answer is to be found
in an early chapter, in the theses that modern science itself has now
reified or hypostasized matter of various
grades of ethereal fineness,
world
man.
invisible to
body"
is
Khu
structure that of
is
so high in
its
imprisoned ...
shades" of the
Manes
is
constellated as the
"Thou
ing on the
to that of a
hast
as a
lieved to be born without this Ka, the soul of animate life; and in their
pictures of it they made it resemble the physical body. They looked
it as the "double" of the
body. It did not die with the body.
In open contradiction to other reasons he had assigned elsewhere,
Budge gives a motive for mummification:
upon
"It has been urged by some that the custom of mummifying the dead,
which obtained throughout Egypt for so many thousands of years, was
577
This passage
is
a remarkable demonstration of
how
a scholar can
Budge
and "Sahu"
as
mummy
meaning "something
like"
"Concerning the form in which Osiris rises from the dead the texts are
silent, and nothing is said as to the nature of his body in the underworld;
that he dwelt in the [same] material body which was his upon earth there
is no reason whatever to suppose, for there are indications in the texts
which point to a definite belief in the resurrection of a spiritual body, both
in the case of the god and of man." 1
When
and haphazard
whether "the
and nothing
is
the body of Osiris in the underworld; also how futile seems to have
been the reading of these venerable texts by such savants as Budge
and others. In the present matter Spence has read somewhat more
intelligently:
"The
hawk and
Sahu, which
may
Budge endorses
this
578
"When
it
tomb
body
for burial
which was
Budge presumes.
Hu
was the
basis of Ihuh, or
meant the
son, or spirit
born of matter.
Atum-Huhi (Adam-Jehovah),
the spark
the spiritual body was built
of
and
up
spirit
matter in combination, the two basic
seem
to
have
been
god-names
of flame in matter.
As
combined to designate it. Massey says that the word "Sahu" means "to
incorporate." It is the incorporated spirit or its product. Chapter 47 of
the Ritual reads: "I am a spiritual
(sah), therefore let me rise
body
among
those
who
As
Osiris-Sekari, the
god was
grave (Ch. 99). In chapter 128 Osiris exclaims: "Horus hath made for
me a spiritual body through his own soul, to take possession of that
In the
Hymn
This
is
members "See
clarified
my
hands and
my
feet, that it is I
my-
to
579
it
will
and
to materialize for the moment its old physical semblance. Did not
Jesus pass through closed doors and appear to his disciples, so that
Thomas put his hands in the wounds in the flesh to resolve his doubts ?
Of
apparel of Thoth." In chapter 180 the soul says: "I stretch myself at
form of
from
the
text of
hidden qualities," And how striking
the following
and
of
a
nature
a
marvelous
Teta: "He receives bones
complete and
him
in
the
of
womb
his mother
imperishable body is bestowed upon
Nut!"
The Egyptians regarded the physical body as being powerless and
lifeless save for the more
magnetically powerful inner bodies. Of itself
it could never have arisen. It could not rise as flesh and blood; it could
my
desire, I
my
strides in
my
spiritual
is
ascend only after being transformed, like water converted into vapor,
by more potent spirit. It was only the presence in it of the Ba, the
latter
would not
annihilate
it.
Egyptians knew, before Paul, that "if our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens." When the deity descended to earth he
put on the mask of a crocodile, an ibis, a lion, or other zootype of the
primary powers. But when rising into spirit, he divested himself of
these "filthy rags" and stood forth clothed in the majesty of solar light.
personates in turn each of the gods and appropriates their strength
He
and
qualities.
"Their magical powers are in his body, the Sahu do not retreat from his
hands.
limit
is
He
eats the
wisdom
580
life is eternity,
his
"I
am
is
given to
me which
throw"
Here at last is that element which all philosophy, all religion, all
moral feeling has been seeking for ages as the indubitable foundation
of both faith and knowledge. All rationalism and mysticism alike are
the search for the enduring real, that which abides amid the flux. Here
it is, says Horus. Here is the ages' Rock of Certitude.
The soul was released from the khat or physical body when the latter
had been itself sublimated to such tenuity that it quickly vanished
away. Horus, coming out of Sekhem,
sepulcher, and was greeted as pure
him
in the glorification.
and ready
to stride
these salutations
He
came
They
spirit
by those
rejoiced to see
He
onward through
was the
dawn,
world
thyself in the
.
provided
is
is
stated that as
he
rises
he puts on the sheth garment of Horus and the apparel of Thoth. The
his incoming forth of Jesus as a spirit, or as the Christos, is called
vestiture. He says "The times are fulfilled for me to put on my vesture. Lo, I have put on my vesture, and all power hath been given to
:
me
by the
first
mummy
spirits,
of righteousness,
of the corruptible flesh, put on the pure white robe
the
them
is
This
truth.
of
god Taht for
by
called the vesture
given
is removed, and
Earth's
sun.
the
of
boat
the
their entrance into
apron
he receives a bandage of the finest linen "in place of the old garb of
shame." In chapter 64 there is this explicit statement: "I have made
soul's
My
The Manes were of two classes, the clothed and the naked. Those
were clothed who had passed the judgment trial and received their investiture of the robe of righteousness. "I hasten to the land (of
and
I fasten
my
stole
Aarru)
may come
forth and take possession of the wealth assigned to me" (Ch. no). "I
stole
of Hetep (Aarru) ; I fasten
upon
range within the garden
has said
in
Paul
forth
one
me." "I am the
triumph."
my
coming
glorified
that
we
me
me
How
Hermes
am
says: "I
not what
am gone
was
before,
but
am
582
propitious,
(p. 55)
theurgists in
Thus
also
is
powers of intellectual light to gain the victory for Horus over his enemies "on the day of making his triumph over Set and his fiends." For
a purpose of very great importance
length.
The
is
"on the night of the battle and overthrow of the Seba-fiend in Abtu; on
the night of Osiris' triumph over his enemies; on the day of the festival of
Haker (on the fifteenth of the month); on the night of setting up the Tat
in Tattu in the presence of the great sovereign princes; on the night of the
judgment of those who shall be annihilated in Sekhem; on the night of
laying the things on the altars in Sekhem; on the night of the establishing
of the inheritance by Horus of the things of the father Osiris, at the great
festival of plowing and turning up the earth in Tattu or in Abtu (Abydos);
583
mockery
suffering,
stages,
of his
his last supper, his bearing the cross, and every other phase
"death" and "burial" in matter could be "staged" on this night.
But
if
it
at a later
alleged
for downright
common
sense.
Jesus' life as
that
it
Supper
the incidents of the disciples
long watch in the garden of Gethsemane,
when Jesus upbraided them for not being able to watch
falling asleep
with him one little hour, the arrest, the severed and healed ear cut off
trials involving the
by Peter, then three separate and distinct judicial
the
of
attendants, officers,
populace in the
summoning
judges, juries,
if
can occur in the temporal span of one short night. The Gospels here
stand helplessly exposed to the attack of plain reason in view of the
raised. The Gospels are the old manuconditions of the
patent
scripts
problem
584
the sun-god,
which was
Hebrew and
first
dom
finally
to interpret
An
six
aeons on planets and the seventh in the sun of the system. In the
human kingdom, then, life would be preparing for the soul
seventh or
a
And
solar
energy
according to Proclus.
The
soul of
body of
intellect,
solar essence.
in an indestructible
nation unto
which
here
is
its
me
is
to clothe itself
am
death;
in the Tuat."
is
is
in incarnation
armor of
The
self-perpetuating.
echoed in Egypt: "7
is
humanity
of light, and
of matter
registered.
the whole gist of theology outlined in terms whose significance for human life could not have been missed save by minds
Here was
hopelessly
how
and have passed pure" (Rit., Ch. 148, Birch). Jesus insisted that each man had light within himself, and with its increase by
it would even supplant the sun and moon as lightspiritual cultivation,
In man all previous powers of creative light were to be synthe-
the gate
givers.
We
Osirified deceased to be
commandest the
which appears
585
in the shining place." This was the solar trinity of mind, soul, spirit.
Horus is seated in the decans of the Ram, the whip of rule in his left
right.
Thus
the dead
god
rose
book of making perfect the Khu we have: "And the majesty of the
god Thoth lovingly shall make light to rest upon his corruptible body."
The very gods "withdraw themselves when they see thee arrayed in
the awful majesty of Ra."
In Exodus we read that the vestments
worn by the
children of Israel
woven
were
to be
speaks of the sacred dress in which those initiated into the Dionysiac
Mysteries were invested, preparatory to their enthronement:
The mummy-swath
is
in the unseen
light."
made from
was the garment woven without a seam. The "young
man" who left his garment and fled naked from the resurrection
scene was the figure of the rising soul that had shed its mummy-cloth
and made its transformation into spirit that no longer needed earthly
covering. The seam was obliterated when the two halves o man were
made into one whole and new man.
shena,
and
Spence
which
this
spirits
of heaven "lived
upon the
rays of light
fell
586
sumably that light of the poets which never was on land or sea; the
gleam, of Tennyson's conception. "I live by reason of my splendor,"
chants the emancipated soul.
The
were
called the
and
let
air.
Mount
of the
Egyptians. Hence the Kimmerians of Homer may possibly be identified with the Egyptian Khemi, or Akhemu, the dwellers in the north-
ern heaven,
or Khuti.
as
The whole
course of evolution
individualized humans,
who
Khus
are the
which gradually
it
of currents of intellectual
and
spiritual
When
a certain degree of
sublimation has been achieved the lower bodies become capable of
forces
self.
established.
sonality.
this basic
587
datum of theology:
"The marriage of Cupid and Psyche is a fable that was founded on this
union of the two souls which we have traced in the Ritual as the soul in
4
matter, or as the human, and the soul in spirit."
Evolution's work in the moral sphere was to unite a soul inherent
in matter with a higher soul that was divine. This operation takes
soul was
place in the body and consciousness of mankind. The divine
heaven
spirit
it.
"As soon
thou enterest the Utchau and unitest thyself thereto, the beings
earth flourish."
as
on
with higher
"Thou
within
its
is
joinest thyself unto the Eye of Horus and thou hidest thyself
secret place; it destroyeth for thee all the convulsions of thy face,
it
The
soul
is
life,
and thou
livest
luminary."
most challenging
released in the personal life will destroy the convulsions of the face,
caused by the painful constraint of the soul under the
bondage of
matter. Like lovers' kiss, the embrace between the spiritual soul and
the psychic entity in the body
brought harmony and expanded life.
Budge
animal
soul,
with
Ka, or spiritual soul, took place in Heliopolis, the city of the sun,
Annu. This would correspond with the revival of Osiris, or Lazarus,
at Beth-Any. The ba comes forth
upon earth to do the will of its Ka.
its
This
is
The work
effort
having
of the exiled
prevailed to
body into the likeness of the glorious sun-soul, the risen deity
on the eastern threshold of heaven, ready to complete the last
the twelve-months' journey, and with the
of
stages
waxing sun of
to climb the steep ascent of heaven from March to June. This is
spring
of the
stands
who
heaven at the gate of Cancer. The summit of the mount of the zodiac
was the place of reunion and reconciliation; the paradise of perennial
plenty and everlasting peace, the land where there was no more sea
and no more night, where beings carried their own light eternally
within them. Hither the twelve companions of Horus bring the
sheaves of golden grain which they have reaped in the harvest fields
of Amenta. Horus tells Osiris at the festival of the Harvest Home that
he has cultivated his corn for him and reaped the golden crop in the
as
saying to Moses:
"When
thou
hast brought the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this
mountain." It was there called Mt. Horeb, and the first syllable, Hor~,
Moses precedes
"Thou
shalt bring
injunction to
them
in
their
the sanctuary,
The
in,
shall reign for ever and ever." This was the Mount
the
of Jerusalem,
Aarru-Salem, or Aarru-Hetep, the mount of eternal
the goal of refuge is the
peace. In escaping from Egypt or Amenta,
not
the
swampy Reed Sea of this life, are led to the celestial land flowing with
milk and honey. Here the Eridanus emptied its stream of purifying
water. This heavenly home was located and dramatized as the cirmaster
cumpolar paradise, the Homeland of exiles and captives. "I am
in the
mansion
this
has
attained
who
the
beatified
there," says
spirit
I
eat
am
in
re.
"I
the
his
homestead
built
there;
skies and
glory there;
"I
net
of
love."
fill
I
take
I
I
and
I
my
plough there;
reap there;
plant
ducks and I eat dainties." "I am united there to the god Hetep" the
seven powers completely exalted, unified and at peace.
There the risen spirit becomes one of the glorious stars that nevers
589
more
garden
Aarru" (Ch.
109,
"A
it;
divine
the
domain hath
name
of
it is
the
Renouf).
Instead of being
of
life
mutes the substance of its food into higher essence. In the Rubric at
the end of chapter 99 of the Ritual we read: "This chapter being
known, the deceased appears in the fields of Aarru. He receives food
there, the produce of its fields." The cakes, corn, bread and wine which
shall partake of there are described. "And he shall come forth in
Sekhet-Aarru in any form whatsoever he pleaseth, and he shall appear
he
"And
The
I
soul exults
array myself in
apparel and I gird myself with the sa garment of Ra." To have attained this blessed home the soul must have undergone the earthly
baptism
"I have
eth) and
city of An-Aarret-f (the place where nothing grownakedness with the garments which are there."
my
In the midst of Sekhet-Aarru was a door, with a sycamore of turquoise on each side of it, through which the sun-god Ra appeared
every day. The outgoing and return of the celestial glory was thus
depicted for the blessed each day, as it is for mortals on earth.
The
soul's
its
celestial
exile
on earth
is
the
the evolu-
blithesomely appeased by
its
and the sunny meads and shady bowers of the Homeland. Death is
indeed swallowed up in victory and the night of
gloom and the Gotare
followed
the
tresli
sweetness
of supernal dawn.
terdammerung
by
lamblichus presents beautifully the
of
our escape from
philosophy
the iron fetters of fate and return to the
of
the
sons of God:
liberty
59
all
tion, and through which we are capable of being united to the Gods, of
transcending the mundane order and of participating eternal life and the
energy of the super-celestial gods. Through this principle, therefore, we are
able to liberate ourselves from fate. For when the more excellent parts of
us energize, and the soul is elevated to natures better than itself, then it is
which
it
was connected."
body
is
and prevents
other,
mutable good.
Proclus
is
as
to an-
at every turn from obtaining a vision of imIntellectual union with the gods alone will anchor the
it
its
true felicity.
"The one salvation of the soul herself, which is extended by the Demiurgus and which liberates her from the circle of generation, from abundant
wanderings and an inefficacious life, is her return to the intellectual form,
and a flight from every thing which naturally adheres to us from generation."
For the soul, he continues, having been hurled like seed into the
realms of generation, should cast aside the stubble and bark, as it were,
which she accumulates about herself from contact with the fluctuations
in these realms, and preserve her pristine purity. Purging herself from
flower and
everything she touches, she should become the intellectual
rather than in the
delighting in the stable circles of sameness,
revolutions of difference. Having fallen from celestial harmony into
fruit,
the jangling diffusion of divine energies, she had, as Proclus says, become something belonging to an individual instead of to the universe.
irrational nature,
and
she will be led happily from her wandersteering her course by reason,
and from the passions which adhere
of
realms
about
the
sense,
ings
to us from generation, back to the blissful contemplation of the one
universal Life.
chamber the "old ones" and "the ones gone beIn a cosmic
upper
fore" gather to welcome the return of the exiled souls. There are re"welcome the pilgrims of the night!'
ception hosts who assemble to
The text of the Ritual gives some faint picture of the joy that thrills
arches when the solar sons return triumphant
the
through
from
heavenly
their
long expatriation:
The
is
like
unto themselves; and there are shouts and cries of gladness within the
shrine, and the sounds of those who rejoice go round about through the
and his majesty shineth as he shone in the primeval time,
underworld
.
when
The
script
first
upon
his head."
of Teta reads :
thy father
Keb made
for thee."
paring
unison.
Yet the paeans of heaven are hardly more intriguing than the more
pronouncements of Greek philosophy. Says Proclus
restrained
There
is
"the race of
more
excellent
59 2
raise themselves
as it
world; and there abiding, despise every thing in those regions of sense;
being no otherwise delighted with the place which is truly and properly
their
The
many
wanderings,
"The
after
is
at length restored to
morn
of heavenly re-
great and mighty gods cry out: *He hath gotten the victory/
With thy
"
NOTES
CHAPTER
None.
CHAPTER
i.
in the Tibetan
Quoted
from
to p. 234,
Boo\
Origeii's Contra
CHAPTER
For corroboration
II
see such
works
III
The
Six Boofys of Proclus on the TheMysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Assyrians, and Thomas Taylor's Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries.
2.. Vide From Orpheus to Paul, by Vittorio D. Macchioro, a
recognized world
authority on Orphisrn.
3. See such a work as Lothrop Stoddard's The Revolt Against Civilization.
4. See Bouck White's The Call of the Carpenter, which builds an entire economic interpretation of the Gospels on such specious material in the texts.
5. Quoted by Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, p. 22. Also in
Glover's Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire.
6. Pagan and Christian Creeds, p. 221.
7. Quoted in Pagan and Christian Creeds, p. 206.
8. Pagan and Christian Creeds, p. 130.
9. See Tertullian's Apologia, C. 16.
10. Pagan and Christian Creeds, p. 263.
i.
as
The
CHAPTER
1.
From Hibbert
2.
Quoted
3.
Phaedrus, p. 64.
IV
Lectures, p. 217.
in Preface to Lectures on Ancient Philosophy,
by Manly P. Hall.
5.
6.
595
it
portant misconceptions in his interpretation are dealt with in the course of our
work. Indeed we have used one or two of these as the most direct approach to
a correction of the profound misconstructions
scholars in this field up to the present.
which have
vitiated the
work
of
8.
9.
10. Osiris
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Osiris
17. Osiris
1 8.
19.
II, p.
201.
CHAPTER V
1.
I,
p. 168.
The Mythical
CHAPTER
VI
CHAPTER
VII
None.
1.
2.
is
Eleusinian
man
3.
The
4.
5.
superior intellect of
a deity," said Heraclitus.
all
is
p. 4.
p. 120.
of.
"Man's genius
p. 239.
596
7.
expounded.
See later exposition of the Law of the Two Truths,
passim.
The Natural Genesis, I, p. 332.
13. It should be understood that the Egyptians often used the names of kings
for the character of the Christos, or the sun-god.
11.
12.
15.
It
spiritual
man.
Gree^ Philosophy.
CHAPTER
VIII
and occult
2.
tras,
3.
4.
5.
science.
Known
also as
Agniswatha
The Natural
Gandharvas, Suryas, Kumaras, Rudras, Adityas, Manasapuand by some dozen or more other names.
Pitris,
Genesis,
I,
p. 315.
syrians, p. 364.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
An
celebrations
12.
13.
I,
I,
I,
p. 74,
p. 74.
597
later place
when
the
15.
16.
17.
1 8.
19.
20.
21.
23. Eleusinian
teries, of
Thomas
Taylor, p. vxiii.
noted, the use of the term "Gentiles" here bears out the interpretation (as the not fully humanized animal souls) given in a former place.
27. Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World, p. 479.
26.
Be
28.
p. 165
29.
it
II,
31. Eleusinian
and Bacchic
Mysteries, p. 104.
as
CHAPTER
1.
2.
3.
p. 508.
p. 131.
IX
Mistaken for the defunct human, but really the descending god.
Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World, p. 846.
Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, p. 7.
5.
9.
10.
p. 91
ff.
II, p.
8.
11. Osiris
12.
13. Cf.
14.
15.
Hebrew
Hades.
16.
17.
1 8.
59 8
much
life
Oriental philosophy which builds on the general thesis that the whole of
is evil, "a calamity to be avoided at all costs."
(Radhakrishnan:
on earth
I.)
CHAPTER X
1.
2.
3.
6.
7.
lu, a
4.
5.
name
flesh.
Sheol
11.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26. Osiris
and
II,
xc.
p. 144.
The Natural
Genesis,
I,
p. 525.
CHAPTER
1.
2.
XI
5.
6.
Eleusinian
3.
4.
and Bacchic
Mysteries, p. 152.
599
7.
8.
9.
p. 239.
10.
12.
13.
14.
15.
CHAPTER
1.
I Corinthians 10: 14
I).
XII
ff.
impossible to pass these verses by without a remark upon what is commented upon them by Sweitzer, one of the most popular European writers of the
2. It is
One
is
it
What
is
the poverty of
modern
spiritual dis-
wondered at that there should be complete befogging of vision when all but a
few Docetic wings of Christian thought have been bent on taking the eating of
the flesh and the drinking of the blood of the Son of Man in a physical sense?
There has not seemed to be present the matured capacity to assimilate the en3.
4.
Osiris
5.
Osiris
6.
tirely spiritual
7.
8.
9.
10.
II,
I,
p. 900.
p. 32.
p. 264.
1 6.
600
p.
7.
CHAPTER
XIII
2.
3.
1.
Thomas
2.
1.
I,
p. 344.
p. 147.
CHAPTER XIV
Taylor: Eleusinian
XXV,
1896.
3. If this
term
Vol.
is
6.
and Bacchic
Mysteries, p. 126.
Atma,
it
man.
p. 359.
II, p.
175.
8.
9.
7.
10.
11.
II,
p. 78.
Division, D.
CHAPTER XV
1.
2.
3.
in
Ancient Religions,
p. 47.
p. 324.
Resurrection,
II,
p. 236.
CHAPTER XVI
1.
2.
CHAPTER
XVII
CHAPTER
XVIII
None.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
CHAPTER XIX
1.
2.
3.
601
II, p.
p. 771.
482.
Inst.,
spiritual
CHAPTER XX
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
From an
New
The
article In the
p.
an.
II, p.
148.
CHAPTER XXI
Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World, p. 210.
Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World, p. 210.
3. Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World, p. 639.
4. Introduction to the BooT^ of the Dead, p. Ixxxv.
5. The Natural Genesis, I, p. 127.
6. T. J. Thorburn: The Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels, p. 131.
As
Thorburn is antagonistic to the mythical interpretation, his data are therefore
1.
2.
the
all
7.
8.
more
valuable.
years old.
9.
of
The
Lu\e (Ch.
16: 19),
is
man and
told
at
Egyptian.
CHAPTER
1.
Introduction to the
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Boo\
XXII
602
of Plato,
II, p.
272.
5="
130 164