part i., page 46. This text relates that Sargon, an early Babylonian

monarch, was born of royal parents, but concealed by his mother, who placed him on the Euphrates in an ark of rushes, coated with bitumen, like that in which the mother of Moses hid her child (see _Exodus_ ii.). Sargon was discovered by a man named Akki, a water-carrier, who adopted him as his son; and he afterward became King of Babylonia. The capital of Sargon was the great city of Agadi--called by the Semites Akkad--mentioned in _Genesis_ as a capital of Nimrod (_Genesis_ x. 10), and here he reigned _for forty five years_.[851] Akkad lay near the city of _Sippara_,[852] on the Euphrates and north of Babylon. “The date of Sargon, who may be termed the Babylonian Moses, was in the sixteenth century and perhaps earlier.”

G. Smith adds in his _Chaldean Account_ that Sargon I. was a Babylonian monarch who reigned in the city of Akkad about 1600 B.C. The name of Sargon signifies the right, true, or legitimate king. This curious story is found on fragments of tablets from Kouyunjik, and reads as follows:

1. Sargona, the powerful king, the king of Akkad am I.

2. My mother was a princess, my father I did not know, a brother of my father ruled over the country.

3. In the city of Azupirana, which is by the side of the river Euphrates,

4. My mother, the princess, conceived me; in difficulty she brought me forth.

5. She placed me in an ark of rushes, with bitumen my exit she sealed up.

6. She launched me in the river which did not drown me.

7. The river carried me to Akki, the water-carrier it brought me.

8. Akki, the water-carrier, in tenderness of bowels, lifted me, etc., etc.

And now _Exodus_ (ii.): “And when she (Moses’ mother) could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein, and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.”

The story, says Mr. G. Smith, “is supposed to have happened about 1600 B.C., rather earlier than the supposed age of Moses[853] as we know that the fame of Sargon reached Egypt, it is quite likely that this account had a connection with the event related in _Exodus_ ii., for every action, when once performed, has a tendency to be repeated.”

The “ages” of the Hindus differ but little from those of the Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews. We include the Mosaic computation advisedly, and with intent to prove our position. The chronology which separates Moses from the creation of the world by _only four generations_ seems ridiculous, merely because the Christian clergy would enforce it upon the world literally.[854] The kabalists know that these generations stand for ages of the world. The allegories which, in the Hindu calculations, embrace the whole stupendous sweep of the four ages, are cunningly made in the Mosaic books, through the obliging help of the _Masorah_, to cram into the small period of two millenniums and a half (2513)!

The exoteric plan of the _Bible_ was made to answer also to four ages. Thus, they reckon the Golden Age from Adam to Abraham; the silver, from Abraham to David; copper, from David to the Captivity; thenceforward, the iron. But the secret computation is quite different, and does not vary at all from the zodiacal calculations of the Brahmans. We are in the Iron Age, or Kali-Yug, but it began with Noah, the mythical ancestor of our race.

Noah, or Nuah, like all the euhemerized manifestations of the Unrevealed One--Swayambhuva (or Swayambhu), was androgyne. Thus, in some instances, he belonged to the purely feminine triad of the Chaldeans, known as “Nuah, the universal Mother.” We have shown, in another chapter, that every male triad had its feminine counterpart, one in three, like the former. It was the passive complement of the active principle, its _reflection_. In India, the male trimurty is reproduced in the Sakti-trimurti, the feminine; and in Chaldea, Ana, Belita and Davkina answered to Anu, Bel, Nuah. The former three resumed in one--Belita, were called:

“Sovereign goddess, lady of the nether abyss, mother of gods, queen of the earth, queen of fecundity.”

As the primordial humidity, whence proceeded _all_, Belita is Tamti, or the sea, the mother of _the city of Erech_ (the great Chaldean necropolis), therefore, an infernal goddess. In the world of stars and planets she is known as Istar or Astoreth. Hence, she is identical with Venus, and every other queen of heaven, to whom cakes and buns were offered in sacrifice,[855] and, as all the archæologists know, with _Eve_, the mother of all that live, and with Mary.

The Ark, in which are preserved the germs of all living things necessary to repeople the earth, represents the survival of life, and the supremacy of spirit over matter, through the conflict of the opposing powers of nature. In the Astro-Theosophic chart of the Western Rite, the Ark corresponds with the navel, and is placed at the sinister side, the side of the woman (the moon), one of whose symbols is the left pillar of Solomon’s temple--Boaz. The umbilicus is connected with the receptacle in which are fructified the germs of the race.[856] The Ark is the sacred _Argha_ of the Hindus, and thus, the relation in which it stands to Noah’s ark may be easily inferred, when we learn that the Argha was an oblong vessel, used by the high priests as a sacrificial chalice in the worship of Isis, Astartè, and Venus-Aphroditè, all of whom were goddesses of the generative powers of nature, or of matter--hence, representing symbolically the Ark containing the germs of all living things.

We admit that Pagans had and now have--as in India--strange symbols, which, to the eyes of the hypocrite and Puritan, seem scandalously immoral. But did not the ancient Jews copy most of these symbols? We have described elsewhere the identity of the lingham with Jacob’s pillar, and we could give a number of instances from the present Christian rites, bearing the same origin, did but space permit, and were not all these noticed fully by Inman and others (See Inman’s _Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names_).

Describing the worship of the Egyptians, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child says: “This reverence for the production of life, introduced into the worship of Osiris, the sexual emblems so common in Hindustan. A colossal image of this kind was presented to his temple in Alexandria, by King Ptolemy Philadelphus.... Reverence for the mystery of organized life led to the recognition of a masculine and feminine principle in all things, spiritual or material.... The sexual emblems, everywhere conspicuous in the sculptures of their temples, would seem impure in description, but _no clean and thoughtful mind_ could so regard them while witnessing the obvious simplicity and solemnity with which the subject is treated.”[857]

Thus speaks this respected lady and admirable writer, and no truly pure man or woman would ever think of blaming her for it. But such a perversion of the ancient thought is but natural in an age of cant and prudery like our own.

The water of the flood when standing in the allegory for the symbolic “sea,” Tamti, typifies the turbulent chaos, or matter, called “the great dragon.” According to the Gnostic and Rosicrucian mediæval doctrine, the creation of woman was not originally intended. She is the offspring of man’s own impure fancy, and, as the Hermetists say, “an obtrusion.” Created by an unclean thought she sprang into existence at the _evil_ “seventh hour,” when the “supernatural” real worlds had passed away and the “natural” or _delusive_ worlds began evolving along the “descending Microcosmos,” or the arc of the great cycle, in plainer phraseology. First “Virgo,” the Celestial Virgin of the Zodiac, she became “Virgo-Scorpio.” But in evolving his second companion, man had unwittingly endowed her with his own share of Spirituality; and the new being whom his “imagination” had called into life became his “Saviour” from the snares of Eve-Lilith, the first Eve, who had a greater share of matter in her composition than the primitive “spiritual” man.[858]

Thus woman stands in the cosmogony in relation to “matter” or the _great deep_, as the “Virgin of the Sea,” who crushes the “Dragon” under her foot. The “Flood” is also very often shown, in symbolical phraseology, as the “great Dragon.” For one acquainted with these tenets it becomes more than suggestive to learn that with the Catholics the Virgin Mary is not only the accepted patroness of Christian sailors, but also the “Virgin of the Sea.” So was Dido the patroness of the Phœnician mariners;[859] and together with Venus and other lunar goddesses--the moon having such a strong influence over the tides--was the “Virgin of the Sea.” _Mar_, the Sea, is the root of the name Mary. The blue color, which was with the ancients symbolical of the “Great Deep” or the material world, hence--of evil, is made sacred to our “Blessed Lady.” It is the color of “Notre Dame de Paris.” On account of its relation to the symbolical serpent this color is held in the deepest aversion by the ex-Nazarenes, disciples of John the Baptist, now the Mendæans of Basra.

Among the beautiful plates of Maurice, there is one representing Christna crushing the head of the Serpent. A three-peaked mitre is on his head (typifying the trinity), and the body and tail of the conquered serpent encircles the figure of the Hindu god. This plate shows whence proceeded the inspiration for the “make up” of a later story extracted from an alleged prophecy. “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his _heel_.”

The Egyptian Orante is also shown with his arms extended as on a crucifix, and treading upon the “Serpent;” and Horus (the Logos) is represented piercing the head of the dragon, Typhon or Aphophis. All this gives us a clew to the biblical allegory of Cain and Abel. Cain was held as the ancestor of the Hivites, the Serpents, and the twins of Adam are an evident copy from the fable of Osiris and Typhon. Apart from the external form of the allegory, however, it embodied the philosophical conception of the eternal struggle of good and evil.

But how strangely elastic, how adaptable to any and every thing this mystical philosophy proved after the Christian era! When were ever facts, irrefutable, irrefragable, and beyond denial, less potential for the reëstablishment of truth than in our century of casuistry and Christian cunning? Is Christna proved to have been known as the “Good Shepherd” ages before the year A.D. 1, to have crushed the Serpent Kalinaga, and to have been crucified--all this was but a prophetic foreshadowing of the future! Are the Scandinavian Thor, who bruised the head of the Serpent with his cruciform mace, and Apollo, who killed Python, likewise shown to present the most striking similarities with the heroes of the Christian fables; they become but original conceptions of “heathen” minds, “working upon the old Patriarchal prophecies respecting the Christ, as they were contained in the one universal and primeval Revelation!”[860]

The flood, then, is the “Old Serpent” or the great deep of matter, Isaiah’s “dragon in the sea” (xxvii. 1), over which the ark safely crosses on its way to the mount of Salvation. But, if we have heard of the ark and Noah, and the _Bible_ at all, it is because the mythology of the Egyptians was ready at hand for Moses (if Moses ever wrote any of the _Bible_), and that he was acquainted with the story of Horus, standing on his boat of a serpentine form, and killing the Serpent with his spear; and with the hidden meaning of these fables, and their real origin. This is also why we find in _Leviticus_, and other parts of his books, whole pages of laws identical with those of _Manu_.

The animals shut up in the ark are the human passions. They typify certain ordeals of initiation, and the mysteries which were instituted among many nations in commemoration of this allegory. Noah’s ark rested on the seventeenth of the _seventh_ month. Here we have again the number; as also in the “clean beasts” that he took by _sevens_ into the ark. Speaking of the water-mysteries of Byblos, Lucian says: “On the top of one of the two pillars which Bacchus set up, a man remains _seven_ days.”[861] He supposes this was done to honor Deukalion. Elijah, when praying on the top of Mount Carmel, sends his servant to look for a cloud toward the sea, and repeats, “go again _seven_ times. And it came to pass at the _seventh_ time, behold there arose a little cloud out of the sea like a man’s hand.”[862]

“_Noah_ is a _revolutio_ of Adam, as Moses is a revolutio of Abel and Seth,” says the _Kabala_; that is to say, a repetition or another version of the same story. The greatest proof of it is the distribution of the characters in the _Bible_. For instance, beginning with Cain, the first murderer, every _fifth_ man in his line of descent is a murderer. Thus there come Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methuselah, and the _fifth_ is _Lamech_, the second murderer, and he is Noah’s father. By drawing the five-pointed star of Lucifer (which has its crown-point downward) and writing the name of Cain beneath the lowest point, and those of his descendants successively at each of the other points, it will be found that each fifth name--which would be written beneath that of Cain--is that of a murderer. In the _Talmud_ this genealogy is given complete, and thirteen murderers range themselves in line below the name of Cain. This is _no_ coincidence. Siva is the Destroyer, but he is also the _Regenerator_. Cain is a murderer, but he is also the creator of nations, and an inventor. This star of Lucifer is the same one that John sees falling down to earth in his _Apocalypse_.

In Thebes, or Theba, which means ark--TH-ABA being synonymous with Kartha or Tyre, Astu or Athens and Urbs or Rome, and meaning also the city--are found the same foliations as described on the pillars of the temple of Solomon. The bi-colored leaf of the olive, the three-lobed fig-leaf, and the lanceolate-shaped laurel-leaf, had all esoteric as well as popular or vulgar meanings with the ancients.

The researches of Egyptologists present another corroboration of the identity of the _Bible_-allegories with those of the lands of the Pharaohs and Chaldeans. The dynastic chronology of the Egyptians, recorded by Herodotus, Manetho, Eratosthenes, Diodorus Siculus, and accepted by our antiquarians, divided the period of Egyptian history under four general heads: the dominion of gods, demi-gods, heroes, and mortal men. By combining the demi-gods and heroes into one class, Bunsen reduces the periods to three: the ruling gods, the demi-gods or heroes--sons of gods, but born of mortal mothers--and the Manes, who were the ancestors of individual tribes. These subdivisions, as any one may perceive, correspond perfectly with the biblical Elohim, sons of God, giants, and mortal Noachian men.

Diodorus of Sicily and Berosus give us the names of the twelve great gods who presided over the twelve months of the year and the twelve signs of the zodiac. These names, which include Nuah,[863] are too well known to require repetition. The double-faced Janus was also at the head of twelve gods, and in his representations of him he is made to hold the keys to the celestial domains. All these having served as models for the biblical patriarchs, have done still further service--especially Janus--by furnishing copy to St. Peter and his twelve apostles, the former also double-faced in his denial, and also represented as holding the keys of Paradise.

This statement that the story of Noah is but another version in its hidden meaning of the story of Adam and his three sons, gathers proof on every page of the book of _Genesis_. Adam is the prototype of Noah. Adam _falls_ because he eats of the forbidden fruit of _celestial_ knowledge; Noah, because he tastes of the _terrestrial_ fruit: the juice of the grape representing the abuse of knowledge in an unbalanced mind. Adam gets stripped of his spiritual envelope; Noah of his terrestrial clothing; and the _nakedness_ of both makes them feel ashamed. The wickedness of Cain is repeated in Ham. But the descendants of both are shown as the wisest of races on earth; and they are called on this account “snakes,” and the “sons of snakes,” meaning the _sons of wisdom_, and not of Satan, as some divines would be pleased to have the world understand the term. Enmity has been placed between the “snake” and the “woman” only in this mortal phenomenal “world of man” as “born of woman.” Before the carnal fall, the “snake” was _Ophis_, the divine wisdom, which needed no matter to procreate men, humanity being utterly spiritual. Hence the war between the snake and the woman, or between spirit and matter. If, in its material aspect, the “old serpent” is matter, and represents Ophiomorphos, in its spiritual meaning it becomes Ophis-Christos. In the magic of the old Syro-Chaldeans both are conjoint in the zodiacal sign of the androgyne of Virgo-Scorpio, and may be _divided_ or separated whenever needed. Thus as the origin of “good and evil,” the meaning of the S.S. and Z.Z. has always been interchangeable; and if upon some occasions the S.S. on sigils and talismans are suggestive of serpentine evil influence and denote a design of _black_ magic upon others, the double S.S. are found on the sacramental cups of the Church and mean the presence of the Holy Ghost, or pure wisdom.

The Midianites were known as the _wise_ men, or sons of snakes, as well as Canaanites and Hamites; and such was the renown of the Midianites, that we find Moses, _the prophet, led on, and inspired by “the Lord,”_ humbling himself before Hobab, the son of Raguel, the _Midianite_, and beseeching him to remain with the people of Israel: “Leave us not, I pray thee; forasmuch _as thou knowest how we are to encamp_ IN THE WILDERNESS, _thou mayest be to us instead of eyes_.”[864] Further, when Moses sends spies to search out the land of Canaan, they bring as a proof of the wisdom (kabalistically speaking) and goodness of the land, a branch with _one_ cluster of _grapes_, which they are compelled to bear between two men on a staff. Moreover, they add: “we saw the children of ANAK there.” They are the _giants_, the sons of Anak, “_which come of the giants_,”[865] and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”[866]

Anak is Enoch, the patriarch, who _dies not_, and who is the first possessor of the “mirific name,” according to the _Kabala_, and the ritual of Freemasonry.

Comparing the biblical patriarchs with the descendants of Vaiswasvata, the Hindu Noah, and the old Sanscrit traditions about the deluge in the Brahmanical _Mahâbhârata_, we find them mirrored in the Vaidic patriarchs who are the primitive types upon which all the others were modelled. But before comparison is possible, the Hindu myths must be comprehended in their true significance. Each of these mythical personages bears, besides an astronomical significance, a spiritual or moral, and an anthropological or physical meaning. The patriarchs are not only euhemerized gods--the prediluvian answering to the _twelve_ great gods of Berosus, and to the _ten_ Pradjâpati, and the postdiluvian to the seven gods of the famous tablet in the Ninivian Library, but they stand also as the symbols of the Greek Æons, the kabalistic Sephiroth, and the zodiacal signs, as types of a series of human races.[867] This variation from _ten_ to _twelve_ will be accounted for presently, and proved on the very authority of the _Bible_. Only, they are not the first gods described by Cicero,[868] which belong to a hierarchy of higher powers, the Elohim--but appertain rather to the second class of the “twelve gods,” the _Dii minores_, and who are the terrestrial reflections of the first, among whom Herodotus places Hercules.[869] Alone, out of the group of twelve, Noah, by reason of his position at the transitional point, belongs to the highest Babylonian triad, Noah, the spirit of the waters. The rest are identical with the inferior gods of Assyria and Babylonia, who represented the lower order of emanations, introduced around Bel, the Demiurge, and help him in his work, as the patriarchs are shown to assist Jehovah--the “Lord God.”

Besides these, many of which were _local_ gods, the protecting deities of rivers and cities, there were the four classes of genius, we see Ezekiel making them support the throne of Jehovah in his vision. A fact which, if it identifies the Jewish “Lord God” with one of the Babylonian trinity, connects, at the same time, the present Christian God with the same triad, inasmuch as it is these four cherubs, if the reader will remember, on which Irenæus makes Jesus ride, and which are shown as the companions of the evangelists.

The Hindu kabalistic derivation of the books of _Ezekiel_ and _Revelation_ are shown in nothing more plainly than in this description of the four beasts, which typify the four elementary kingdoms--earth, air, fire, and water. As is well known, they are the Assyrian sphinxes, but these figures are also carved on the walls of nearly every Hindu pagoda.

The author of the _Revelation_ copies faithfully in his text (see chap. iv., verse 17) the Pythagorean pentacle, of which Levi’s admirable sketch is reproduced on page 452.

The Hindu goddess Adanari (or as it might be more properly written, Adonari, since the second a is pronounced almost like the English o) is represented as surrounded by the same figures. It fits exactly Ezekiel’s “wheel of the Adonai,” known as “the Cherub of Jeheskiel,” and indicates, beyond question, the source from which the Hebrew seer drew his allegories. For convenience of comparison we have placed the figure in the pentacle. (See page 453.)

Above these beasts were the angels or spirits, divided in two groups: the Igili, or celestial beings, and the Am-anaki, or terrestrial spirits, the giants, children of Anak, of whom the spies complained to Moses.

The _Kabbala Denudata_ gives to the kabalists a very clear, to the profane a very muddled account of permutations or substitutions of one person for another. So, for instance, it says, that “the scintilla” (spiritual spark or soul) of Abraham was taken from Michael, the chief of the Æons, and highest emanation of the Deity; so high indeed that in the eyes of the Gnostics, Michael was identical with Christ. And yet Michael and Enoch are one and the same person. Both occupy the junction-point of the cross of the Zodiac as “man.” The scintilla of Isaac was that of Gabriel, the chief of the angelic host, and the scintilla of Jacob was taken from Uriel, named “the fire of God;” the sharpest sighted spirit in all Heaven. Adam is not the Kadmon but Adam _Primus_, the _Microprosopus_. In one of his aspects the latter is Enoch, the terrestrial patriarch and father of Methuselah. He that “walked with God” and “did not die” is the spiritual Enoch, who typified humanity, eternal in spirit and as eternal in flesh, though the latter does _die_. Death is but a new birth, and spirit is immortal; thus humanity can never die, for the _Destroyer_ has become the _Creator_, Enoch is the type of the dual man, spiritual and terrestrial. Hence his place in the centre of the astronomical cross.

But was this idea original with the Hebrews? We think not. Every nation which had an astronomical system, and especially India, held the cross in the highest reverence, for it was the geometrical basis of the religious symbolism of their _avatars_; the manifestation of the Deity, or of the Creator in his creature MAN; of God in humanity and humanity in God, as spirits. The oldest monuments of Chaldea, Persia, and India disclose the double or eight-pointed cross. This symbol, which very naturally is found, like every other geometrical figure in nature, in plants as well as in the snowflakes, has led Dr. Lundy, in his super-Christian mysticism, to name such cruciform flowers as form an eight-pointed star by the junction of the two crosses--“the _Prophetic Star of the Incarnation_, which joined heaven and earth, God and man together.”[870] The latter sentence is perfectly expressed; only, the old kabalist axiom, “as above, so below,” answers still better, as it discloses to us the same God for all humanity, not alone for the handful of Christians. It is the _Mundane_ cross of Heaven repeated on earth by plants and dual man: the physical man superseding the “spiritual,” at the junction-point of which stands the mythical Libra-Hermes-Enoch. The gesture of one hand pointing to Heaven, is balanced by the other pointing down to the earth; boundless generations below, boundless regenerations above; the visible but the manifestation of the invisible; the man of dust abandoned to dust, the man of spirit reborn in spirit; thus it is finite humanity which is the Son of the Infinite God. Abba--the Father; Amona--the Mother; the Son, the Universe. This primitive triad is repeated in all the theogonies. Adam Kadmon, Hermes, Enoch, Osiris, Christna, Ormazd, or Christos are all one. They stand as _Metatrons_ between body and soul--eternal spirits which redeem flesh by the regeneration of flesh _below_, and soul by the regeneration _above_, where humanity walks once more with God.

We have shown elsewhere that the symbol of the cross or Egyptian _Tau_, =T=, was by many ages earlier than the period assigned to Abraham, the alleged forefather of the Israelites, for otherwise Moses could not have learned it of the priests. And that the Tau was held as sacred by the Jews as by other “Pagan” nations is proved by a fact admitted now by Christian divines as well as by infidel archæologists. Moses, in _Exodus_ xii. 22, orders his people to mark their _door-posts and lintels_ with blood, lest the “Lord God” should make a mistake and smite some of his chosen people, instead of the doomed Egyptians.[871] And this mark is a tau! The identical Egyptian handled _cross_, with the half of which talisman Horus raised the dead, as is shown on a sculptured ruin at Philœ.[872] How gratuitous is the idea that all such crosses and symbols were so many unconscious prophecies of Christ, is fully exemplified in the case of the Jews upon whose accusation Jesus was put to death. For instance, the same learned author remarks in _Monumental Christianity_ that “the Jews themselves acknowledged this sign of salvation until they rejected Christ;” and in another place he asserts that the rod of Moses, used in his miracles before Pharaoh, “was, no doubt, this _crux ansata_, or something like it, _also used by the Egyptian priests_.”[873] Thus the logical inference would be, that 1, if the Jews worshipped the same symbols as the Pagans, then they were no better than they; and 2, if, being so well versed as they were in the hidden symbolism of the cross, in the face of their having waited for centuries for the Messiah, they yet rejected both the Christian Messiah and Christian Cross, then there must have been something wrong about both.

Those who “rejected” Jesus as the “Son of God,” were neither the people ignorant of religious symbols, nor the handful of atheistical Sadducees who put him to death; but the very men who were instructed in the secret wisdom, who knew the origin as well as the meaning of the cruciform symbol, and who put aside both the Christian emblem and the Saviour suspended from it, because they could not be parties to such a blasphemous imposition upon the common people.

Nearly all the prophecies about Christ are credited to the patriarchs and prophets. If a few of the latter may have existed as real personages, every one of the former is a myth. We will endeavor to prove it by the hidden interpretation of the Zodiac, and the relations of its signs to these antediluvian men.

If the reader will keep in mind the Hindu ideas of cosmogony, as given in chapter vi., he will better understand the relation between the biblical antediluvian patriarchs, and that puzzle of commentators--“Ezekiel’s wheel.” Thus, be it remembered 1, that the universe is not a spontaneous creation, but an evolution from pre-existent matter; 2, that it is only one of an endless series of universes; 3, that eternity is pointed off into grand cycles, in each of which twelve transformations of our world occur, following its partial destruction by fire and water, alternately. So that when a new minor period sets in, the earth is so changed, even geologically, as to be practically a new world; 4, that of these twelve transformations, the earth after each of the first six is grosser, and everything on it--man included--more material, than after the preceding one: while after each of the remaining six the contrary is true, both earth and man growing more and more refined and spiritual with each terrestrial change; 5, that when the apex of the cycle is reached, a gradual dissolution takes place, and every living and objective form is destroyed. But when that point is reached, humanity has become fitted to live subjectively as well as objectively. And not humanity alone, but also animals, plants, and every atom. After a time of rest, say the Buddhists, when a new world becomes self-formed, the astral souls of animals and of all beings, except such as have reached the highest Nirvana, will return on earth again to end their cycles of transformations, and become men in their turn.

This stupendous conception, the ancients synthesized for the instruction of the common people, into a single pictorial design--the Zodiac, or celestial belt. Instead of the twelve signs now used, there were originally but ten known to the general public, viz.: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo-Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces.[874] These were exoteric. But in addition there were two mystical signs inserted, which none but initiates comprehended, viz.: at the middle or junction-point where now stands _Libra_, and at the sign now called Scorpio, which follows Virgo. When it was found necessary to make them exoteric, these two secret signs were added under their present appellations as blinds to conceal the true names which gave the key to the whole secret of creation, and divulged the origin of “good and evil.”

The true Sabean astrological doctrine secretly taught that within this double sign was hidden the explanation of the gradual transformation of the world, from its spiritual and subjective, into the “two-sexed” sublunary state. The twelve signs were therefore divided into two groups. The first six were called the ascending, or the line of Macrocosm (the great spiritual world); the last six, the descending line, or the Microcosm (the little secondary world)--the mere reflection of the former, so to say. This division was called Ezekiel’s wheel, and was completed in the following way: First came the ascending five signs (euphemerized into patriarchs), Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and the group concluded with Virgo-Scorpio. Then came the turning-point, _Libra_. After which, the first half of the sign Virgo-Scorpio, was duplicated and transferred to lead the lower, or descending group of Microcosm which ran down to _Pisces_, or Noah (deluge). To make it clearer, the sign Virgo-Scorpio, which appeared originally thus ♍︎, became simply _Virgo_, and the duplication, ♏︎, or Scorpio, was placed between Libra, the _seventh_ sign (which is Enoch, or the angel Metatron, or _Mediator_ between spirit and matter, or God and man). It now became Scorpio (or Cain), which sign or patriarch led _mankind to destruction_, according to exoteric theology; but, according to the true doctrine of the wisdom-religion, it indicated _the degradation of the whole universe in its course of evolution downward from the subjective to the objective_.

The sign of _Libra_ is credited as a later invention by the Greeks, but it is not generally stated that those among them who were initiated had only made a change of names conveying the same idea as the secret name to those “who knew,” leaving the masses as unwise as ever. Yet it was a beautiful idea of theirs, this Libra, or the balance, expressing as much as could possibly be done without unveiling the whole and ultimate truth. They intended it to imply that when the course of evolution had taken the worlds to the lowest point of grossness, where the earths and their products were coarsest, and their inhabitants most brutish, the turning-point had been reached--the forces were at an even balance. At the lowest point, the still lingering divine spark of spirit within began to convey the upward impulse. The scales typified that eternal equilibrium which is the necessity of a universe of harmony, of exact justice, of the balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces, darkness and light, spirit and matter.

_These additional signs of the Zodiac warrant us in saying that the Book of Genesis as we now find it, must be of later date than the invention of Libra by the Greeks_; for we find the chapters of the genealogies remodelled to fit the new Zodiac, instead of the latter being made to correspond with the list of patriarchs. And it is this addition and the necessity of concealing the true key, that led the Rabbinical compilers to repeat the names of Enoch and Lamech twice, as we see them now in the Kenite table. Alone, among all the books of the _Bible_, _Genesis_ belongs to an immense antiquity. The others are all later additions, the earliest of which appeared with Hilkiah, who evidently concocted it with the help of Huldah, the prophetess.

As there is more than one meaning attached to the stories of the creation and deluge, we say, therefore, that the biblical account cannot be comprehended apart from the Babylonian story of the same; while neither will be thoroughly clear without the Brahmanical esoteric interpretation of the deluge, as found in the _Mahâbhârata_ and the _Satapatha-Brahmâna_. It is the Babylonians who were taught the “mysteries,” the sacerdotal language, and their religion by the problematical Akkadians who--according to Rawlinson came from Armenia--not the former who emigrated to India. Here the evidence becomes clear. The Babylonian Xisuthrus is shown by Movers to have represented the “sun” in the Zodiac, in the sign of Aquarius, and _Oannes_, the man-fish, the semi-demon, is Vishnu in his first avatar; thus giving the key to the double source of the biblical revelation.

Oannes is the emblem of priestly, esoteric wisdom; he comes out from the sea, because the “great deep,” the water, typifies, as we have shown, the secret doctrine. For this same reason Egyptians deified the Nile, apart from its being regarded, in consequence of its periodical overflows, as the “Saviour” of the country. They even held the crocodiles as sacred, from having their abode in the “deep.” The “Hamites,” so called, have always preferred to settle near rivers and oceans. Water was the first-created element, according to some old cosmogonies. This name of Oannes is held in the greatest reverence, in the Chaldean records. The Chaldean priests wore a head-gear like a fish’s head, and a shadbelly coat, representing the body of a fish.[875]

“Thales,” says Cicero, “assures that _water_ is the principle of all things; and that God is that Mind which shaped and created all things from water.”[876]

“In the Beginning, SPIRIT within strengthens Heaven and Earth, The watery fields, and the lucid globe of Luna, and then-- Titan stars; and mind infused through the limbs Agitates the whole mass, and mixes itself with GREAT MATTER.”[877]

Thus water represents the duality of both the Macrocosmos and the Microcosmos, in conjunction with the vivifying SPIRIT, and the evolution of the little world from the universal cosmos. The deluge then, in this sense, points to that final struggle between the conflicting elements, which brought the first great cycle of our planet to a close. These periods gradually merged into each other, order being brought out of chaos, or disorder, and the successive types of organism being evolved only as the physical conditions of nature were prepared for their appearance; for our present race could not have breathed on earth, during that intermediate period, not having as yet the allegorical coats of skin.[878]

In chapters iv. and v. of _Genesis_, we find the so-called generations of Cain and Seth. Let us glance at them in the order in which they stand:

LINES OF GENERATIONS.

_Sethite._ _Kenite._ 1. Adam. ⎫ ⎧ 1. Adam. 2. Seth. ⎪ ⎪ 2. Cain. 3. Enos. ⎪ ⎪ 3. Enoch. 4. Cainan. ⎪ ⎪ 4. Irad. 5. Mahalaleel. ⎬ Good Principle. Evil Principle. ⎨ 5. Mehujael. 6. Jared. ⎪ ⎪ 6. Methusael. 7. Enoch. ⎪ ⎪ 7. Lamech. 8. Methuselah. ⎪ ⎪ 8. Jubal. ⎫ 9. Lamech. ⎪ ⎪ 9. Jabal. ⎬ 10. Noah. ⎭ ⎩ 10. Tubal Cain. ⎭

The above are the ten biblical patriarchs, identical with Hindu Pragâpatis (Pradjâpatis), and the Sephiroth of the _Kabala_. We say _ten_ patriarchs, not _twenty_, for the Kenite line was devised for no other purpose than, 1, to carry out the idea of dualism, on which is founded the philosophy of every religion; for these two genealogical tables represent simply the opposing powers or principles of good and evil; and 2, as a blind for the uninitiated masses. Suppose we restore them to their primitive form, by erasing these premeditated blinds. These are so transparent as to require but a small amount of perspicacity to select, even though one should use only his unaided judgment, and were not, as we are, enabled to apply the test of the secret doctrine.

By ridding ourselves, therefore, of the Kenite names that are mere duplications of the Sethite, or of each other, we get rid of Adam; of Enoch--who, in one genealogy, is shown the father of Irad, and in the other, the son of Jared; of Lamech, son of Methusael, whereas he, Lamech, is son of Methuselah in the Sethite line; of Irad (Jared),[879] Jubal and Jabal, who, with Tubal-Cain, form a trinity in one, and that one the double of Cain; of Mehujael (who is but Mahalaleel differently spelled), and Methusael (Methuselah). This leaves us in the Kenite genealogy of chapter iv., one only, Cain, who--the first murderer and fratricide--is made to stand in his line as father of Enoch, the most virtuous of men, who does not die, but is translated alive. Turn we now to the Sethite table, and we find that Enos, or Enoch, comes _second_ from Adam, and is father to Cain (an). This is no accident. There was an evident reason for this inversion of paternity; a palpable design--that of creating confusion and baffling inquiry.

We say, then, that the patriarchs are simply the signs of the Zodiac, emblems, in their manifold aspects, of the spiritual and physical evolution of human races, of ages, and of divisions of time. In astrology, the first four of the “Houses,” in the diagrams of the “Twelve Houses of Heaven”--namely, the first, tenth, seventh, and fourth, or the second inner square placed with its angles upward and downward, are termed _angles_, as being of the greatest strength and power. They answer to Adam, Noah, Cain-an, and Enoch, Alpha, Omega, evil and good, leading the whole. Furthermore, when divided (including the two secret names) into four _trigons_ or triads, viz.: fiery, airy, earthy, and watery, we find the latter corresponding to Noah.

Enoch and Lamech were doubled in the table of Cain, to fill out the required number ten in both “generations” in the _Bible_, instead of employing the “Secret Name;” and, in order that the patriarchs should correspond with the ten kabalistic Sephiroth, and fit at the same time the ten, and, subsequently, _twelve_ signs of the Zodiac, in a manner comprehensible only to the kabalists.

And now, Abel having disappeared out of that line of descent, he is replaced by Seth, who was clearly an afterthought suggested by the necessity of not having the human race descend entirely from a murderer. This dilemma being apparently first noticed when the Kenite table had been completed, Adam is made (after all the generations had appeared) to beget this son, Seth. It is a suggestive fact that, whereas the double-sexed Adam of chapter v. is made in the likeness of the Elohim (see _Genesis_ chapter i. 27 and v. 1 of the same), Seth (v. 3) is begotten in Adam’s “own likeness,” thus signifying that there were men of different races. Also, it is most noticeable that neither the age nor a single other particular respecting the patriarchs in the Kenite table is given, whereas the reverse is the case with those in the Sethite line.

Most assuredly, no one could expect to find, in a work open to the public, the final mysteries of that which was preserved for countless ages as the grandest secret of the sanctuary. But, without divulging the key to the profane, or being taxed with undue indiscretion, we may be allowed to lift a corner of the veil which shrouds the majestic doctrines of old. Let us then write down the patriarchs as they ought to stand in their relation to the Zodiac, and see how they correspond with the signs.

The following diagram represents Ezekiel’s Wheel, as given in many works, among others, in Hargrave Jenning’s _Rosicrucians_:

These signs are (follow numbers):

1, Aries; 2, Taurus; 3, Gemini; 4, Cancer; 5, Leo; 6, Virgo, or the _ascending_ line of the grand cycle of creation. After this comes 7, _Libra_--“man,” which, though it is found right in the middle, or the intersection point, leads down the numbers:

8, Scorpio; 9, Sagittarius; 10, Capricornus; 11, Aquarius; and 12, Pisces.

While discussing the double sign of Virgo-Scorpio and Libra, Hargrave Jennings observes (p. 65):

“All this is incomprehensible, except in the strange mysticism of the Gnostics and the kabalists; and the whole theory requires a key of explanation to render it intelligible; which key is only darkly referred to as possible, but refused absolutely, by these extraordinary men, as not permissible to be disclosed.”

The said key must be turned _seven_ times before the whole system is divulged. We will give it but _one_ turn, and thereby allow the profane one glimpse into the mystery. Happy he, who understands the whole!

To explain the presence of Jodheva (or Yodheva), or what is generally termed the tetragram יהוה, and of Adam and Eve, it will suffice to remind the reader of the following verses in _Genesis_, with their right meaning inserted in brackets.

1. “And God [Elohim] created man in his [their] own image ... male and female created he them [him]”--(ch. i. 27).

2. “Male and female created he them [him] ... and called _their_ [his] name ADAM”--(v. 2).

When the ternary is taken in the beginning of the tetragram, it expresses the divine creation _spiritually_, _i.e._, without any carnal sin: taken at its opposite end it expresses the latter; it is feminine. The name of Eve is composed of three letters, that of the primitive or heavenly Adam, is written with one letter, Jod or Yodh; therefore it must not be read Jehova but _Ieva_, or Eve. The Adam of the first chapter is the spiritual, therefore pure androgyne, Adam Kadmon. When woman issues from the left rib of the second Adam (of dust), the pure _Virgo_ is separated, and falling “into generation,” or the downward cycle, becomes _Scorpio_,[880] emblem of sin and matter. While the ascending cycle points at the purely spiritual races, or the ten prediluvian patriarchs (the Pradjâpatis, and Sephiroth)[881] are led on by the creative Deity itself, who is Adam Kadmon or Yodcheva, the lower one is that of the terrestrial races, led on by Enoch or _Libra_, the _seventh_; who, because he is half-divine, half-terrestrial, is said to have been taken by God alive. Enoch, or Hermes, or Libra are one. All are the scales of universal harmony; justice and equilibrium are placed at the central point of the Zodiac. The grand circle of the heavens, so well discoursed upon by Plato, in his _Timæus_, symbolizes the unknown as a unity; and the smaller circles which form the cross, by their division on the plane of the Zodiacal ring--typify, at the point of their intersection, life. The centripetal and centrifugal forces, as symbols of Good and Evil, Spirit and Matter, Life and Death, are also those of the Creator and the Destroyer,--Adam and Eve, or God and the Devil, as they say in common parlance. In the subjective, as well as in the objective worlds, they are the two powers, which through their eternal conflict keep the universe of spirit and matter in harmony. They force the planets to pursue their paths, and keep them in their elliptical orbits, thus tracing the astronomical cross in their revolution through the Zodiac. In their conflict the centripetal force, were it to prevail, would drive the planets and living souls into the sun, type of the invisible Spiritual Sun, the Paraâtma or great universal Soul, their parent; while the centrifugal force would chase both planets and _souls_ into the dreary space, far from the luminary of the objective universe, away from the spiritual realm of salvation and eternal life, and into the chaos of final cosmic destruction, and individual annihilation. But the _balance_ is there, ever sensitive at the intersection point. It regulates the action of the two combatants, and the combined effort of both, causes planets and “living souls” to pursue a double diagonal line in their revolution through Zodiac and Life; and thus preserving strict harmony, in visible and invisible heaven and earth, the forced unity of the two reconciles spirit and matter, and Enoch is said to stand a “Metatron” before God. Reckoning from him down to Noah and his three sons, each of these represent a new “world,” _i.e._, our earth, which is the seventh[882] after every period of geological transformation, gives birth to another and distinct race of men and beings.

Cain leads the ascending line, or Macrocosm, for he is the Son of the “Lord,” not of Adam (_Genesis_ iv. 1). The “Lord” is Adam Kadmon, Cain, the Son of sinful thought, not the progeny of flesh and blood, Seth on the other hand is the leader of the races of earth, for he is the Son of Adam, and begotten “in his own likeness, after his image” (_Genesis_ v. 3). Cain is _Kenu_, Assyrian, and means eldest, while the Hebrew word קין means a smith, an artificer.

Our science shows that the globe has passed through five distinct geological phases, each characterized by a different stratum, and these are in reverse order, beginning with the last: 1. The Quaternary period, in which man appears as a certainty; 2. The Tertiary period, in which he _may have_ appeared; 3. Secondary period, that of gigantic saurians, the megalosaurus, icthyosaurus, and plesiosaurus--_no vestige of man_; 4. The Palæozoic period, that of gigantic crustacea; 5 (or first). The Azoic period, during which science asserts organic life had not yet appeared.

And is there no possibility that there was a period, and several periods, when man _existed_, and yet was not an organic being--therefore could not have left any vestige of himself for exact science? _Spirit_ leaves no skeletons or fossils behind, and yet few are the men on earth who doubt that man can live both objectively and subjectively. At all events, the theology of the Brahmans, hoary with antiquity, and which divides the formative periods of the earth into four ages, and places between each of these a lapse of 1,728,000 years, far more agrees with official science and modern discovery than the absurd chronological notions promulgated by the Councils of Nice and Trent.

The names of the patriarchs were not Hebrew, though they may have been Hebraized later; they are evidently of Assyrian or Aryan origin.

Thus _Adam_, for instance, stands in the explained _Kabala_ as a convertible term, and applies nearly to every other patriarch, as every Sephiroth to each Sephira, and _vice versa_. Adam, Cain, and Abel form the first _triad_ of the twelve. They correspond in the Sephiral tree to the Crown, Wisdom, and Intelligence; and in astrology to the three trigons--the fiery, the earthy, and the airy; which fact, were we allowed to devote more space than we have to its elucidation, would perhaps show that astrology deserves the name of science as well as any other. Adam (Kadmon) or Aries (ram) is identical with the Egyptian ram-headed god Amun, fabricating man on the potter’s wheel. His duplication, therefore--or the Adam of dust--is also Aries, Amon, when standing at the head of his generations, for he fabricates mortals also in “his own likeness.” In astrology the planet Jupiter is connected with the “first house” (Aries). The color of Jupiter, as seen in the “stages of the seven spheres,” on the tower of Borsippa, or Birs Nimrud, was _red_;[883] and in Hebrew Adam means אדם “red” as well as “man.” The Hindu god Agni, who presides at the sign of Pisces, next to that of Aries in their relation to the twelve months (February and March),[884] is painted of a deep red color, with _two_ faces (male and female), _three_ legs, and _seven_ arms; the whole forming the number twelve. So, also, Noah (Pisces), who appears in the generations as the twelfth patriarch, counting Cain and Abel, is Adam again under another name, for he is the forefather of a new race of mankind; and with his “three sons,” one bad, one good, and one partaking of both qualities, is the terrestrial reflection of the super-terrestrial Adam and his three sons. Agni is represented mounted on a ram, with a tiara surmounted by a cross.[885]

Kain, presiding over the Taurus (Bull) of the Zodiac, is also very suggestive. Taurus belongs to the earthy trigon, and in connection with this sign it will not be amiss to remind the student of an allegory from the Persian _Avesta_. The story goes that Ormazd produced a being--source and type of all the universal beings--called LIFE, or Bull in the _Zend_. Ahriman (Cain) kills this being (Abel), from the seed of which (Seth) new beings are produced. Abel, in Assyrian, means _son_, but in Hebrew הבל it means something ephemeral, not long-lived, _valueless_, and also a “Pagan idol,”[886] as Kain means a _Hermaic statue_ (a pillar, the symbol of generation). Likewise, Abel is the female counterpart of Cain (male), for they are twins and probably androgynous; the latter answering to Wisdom, the former to Intelligence.

So with all other patriarchs. Enos, אנוש, is _Homo_ again--a man, or the same Adam, and Enoch in the bargain; and קיון _Kain-an_ is identical with Cain. Seth, שת, is Teth, or Thoth, or Hermes; and this is the reason, no doubt, why Josephus, in his first book (ch. 3) shows Seth so proficient in astrology, geometry, and other occult sciences. Foreseeing the flood, he says, he engraved the fundamental principles of his art on two pillars of brick and stone, the latter of which “he saw himself [Josephus] _to remain in Syria in his own time_.” Thus is it that Seth is identified also with Enoch, to whom kabalists and Masons attribute the same feat; and, at the same time, with Hermes, or Kadmus again, for Enoch is identical with the former; הנוך, He-NOCH means a teacher, an initiator, or an initiate; in Grecian mythology, Inachus. We have seen the part he is made to play in the Zodiac.

Mahalaleel, if we divide the word and write מהלה, _m_a-_h_a-_l_a, means tender, merciful; and therefore is he made to correspond with the fourth Sephira, _Love_ or _Mercy_, emanated from the first triad.[887] _Ir_a_d_, ירד, or _I_a_r_e_d_, is (minus the vowels) precisely the same. If from the verb ירד, it means _descent;_ if from ארד, _ar_a_d_, it means offspring, and thus corresponds perfectly with the kabalistic emanations.

_L_a_m_e_ch_, למך, is not Hebrew, but Greek. Lam-ach means Lam--the father, and Ou-Lom-Ach is the father of the age; or the father of him (Noah) who inaugurates a new era or period of creation after the _pralaya_ of the deluge; Noah being the symbol of a new world, the Kingdom (Malchuth) of the Sephiroth; hence his father, corresponding to the ninth Sephiroth, is the Foundation.[888] Furthermore, both father and son answer to Aquarius and Pisces in the Zodiac; and thus the former belonging to the airy and the latter to the _watery_ trigons, they close the list of the biblical myths.

But if, as we see, every patriarch represents, in one sense, like each of the Pradjâpatis, a new race of antediluvian human beings; and if, as it may as easily be proved, they are the copies of the Babylonian _Saros_, or ages, the latter themselves copies of the Hindu ten dynasties of the “Lords of beings,”[889] yet, however we may regard them, they are among the profoundest allegories ever conceived by philosophical minds.

In the _Nuctemeron_,[890] the evolution of the universe and its successive periods of formation, together with the gradual development of the human races, are illustrated as fully as possible in the twelve “hours” into which the allegory is divided. Each “hour” typifies the evolution of a new man, and in its turn is divided into four quarters or ages. This work shows how thoroughly was the ancient philosophy imbued with the doctrines of the early Aryans, who were the first to divide the life on our planet into four ages. If one would trace this doctrine from its source in the night of the traditional period down to the Seer of Patmos, he need not go astray among the religious systems of all nations. The Babylonians he would find teaching that in four different periods four Oannes (or suns) appeared; the Hindus asserting their four Yuga; the Greeks, Romans, and others firmly believing in the golden, silver, brazen, and iron ages, each of the epochs being heralded by the appearance of a saviour. The four Buddhas of the Hindus and the three prophets of the Zoroastrians--Oshedar-Cami, Oshedar-mah, and Sosiosh--preceded by Zarotushtra, are the types of these ages.

In the _Bible_, the very opening tells us that _before the sons of God saw the daughters of men_, the latter lived from 365 to 969 years. But when the “Lord God” saw the iniquities of mankind, He concluded to allow them at most 120 years of life (_Genesis_ vi. 3). To account for such a violent oscillation in the human mortality-table is only possible by tracing this decision of the “Lord God” to its origin. Such incongruities as we meet at every step in the _Bible_ can be only attributed to the facts that the book of _Genesis_ and the other books of _Moses_ were tampered with and remodelled by more than one author; and, that in their original state they were, with the exception of the external form of the allegories, faithful copies from the Hindu sacred books. In _Manu_, book i., we find the following:

“In the first age, neither sickness nor suffering were known. Men lived four centuries.”

This was in the Krita or Satya yug.

“The Krita-yug is the type of justice. The _bull_ which stands firm on its four legs is its image; man adheres to truth, and evil does not as yet direct his actions.”[891] But in each of the following ages primitive human life loses one-fourth of its duration, that is to say, in Treta-yug man lives 300, in Dwapara-yug 200, and in Kali-yug, or our own age, but 100 years generally, at the most. Noah, son of Lamech--Oulom-_Ach_, or father of the age--is the distorted copy of Manu, son of Swayambhu, and the six Manus or Rishis issued from the Hindu “first man” are the originals of Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, the Hebrew sages, who beginning with Terah were all alleged to have been astrologers, alchemists, inspired prophets, and soothsayers; or in a more profane but plainer language--magicians.

If we consult the Talmudistic _Mishna_ we find therein the first emanated divine couple, the androgyne Demiurge Chochmah (or Hachma Achamoth) and Binah building themselves a house with _seven_ pillars. They are the architects of God--Wisdom and Intelligence--and His “compass and square.” The seven columns are the future _seven_ worlds, or the typical _seven_ primordial “days” of creation.

“Chochmah immolates her victims.” These victims are the numberless forces of nature which must “die” (expend themselves) _in order that they should live_; when one force dies out, it is but to give birth to another force, its progeny. It dies but lives in its children, and resuscitates at every _seventh_ generation. The servants of Chochmah, or wisdom, are the souls of H-Adam, for in him are all the souls of Israel.

There are _twelve_ hours in the day, says the _Mishna_, and it is during these hours that is accomplished the creation of man. Would this be comprehensible, unless we had Manu to teach us that this “day” embraces the four ages of the world and has a duration of _twelve_ thousand divine years of the Devas?

“The Creators (Elohim) outline in the second” hour “the shape of a more corporeal form of man. They separate it into two and prepare the sexes to become distinct from each other. Such is the way the Elohim proceeded in reference to every created thing.”[892] “Every fish, fowl, plant, beast and man was androgyne at the first hour.”

Says the commentator, the great Rabbi Simeon:

“O, companions, companions, man as emanation was both man and woman; as well on the side of the FATHER as on the side of the MOTHER. And this is the sense of the words, and Elohim spoke, Let there be Light and it was Light!... And this is the ‘two-fold man!’”[893]

A spiritual woman was necessary as a contrast for the spiritual man. Harmony is the universal law. In Taylor’s translation, Plato’s discourse upon creation is rendered so as to make him say of this universe that “He caused it to move with circular motion.... When, therefore, that God who is a perpetually reasoning Divinity, cogitated about that God (man) _who was destined to subsist at some certain period of time_, He produced his body smooth and even, and every way even and whole from the centre, and made it perfect. This perfect circle of the created God, _He decussated in the form of the letter_ X.”

The italics of both these sentences from _Timæus_ belong to Dr. Lundy, the author of that remarkable work mentioned once before, _Monumental Christianity_; and attention is drawn to the words of the Greek philosopher, with the evident purpose of giving them the prophetic character which Justin Martyr applied to the same, when accusing Plato of having borrowed his “physiological discussion in the _Timæus_ ... concerning the Son of God placed crosswise in the universe,” from Moses and his serpent of brass. The learned author seems to fully accord an unpremeditated prophecy to these words; although he does not tell us whether he believes that like Plato’s created god, Jesus was originally a sphere “smooth and even, and every way even and whole from the centre.” Even if Justin Martyr were excusable for his perversion of Plato, Dr. Lundy ought to know that the day for that sort of casuistry is long gone by. What the philosopher meant was _man_, who before being encased in matter had no use for limbs, but was a pure spiritual entity. Hence if the Deity, and his universe, and the stellar bodies are to be conceived as spheroidal, this shape would be archetypal man’s. As his enveloping shell grew heavier, there came the necessity for limbs, and the limbs sprouted. If we fancy a man with arms and legs naturally extended at the same angle, by backing him against the circle that symbolizes his prior shape as a spirit, we would have the very figure described by Plato--the X cross within the circle.

All the legends of the creation, the fall of man, and the resultant deluge, belong to universal history, and are no more the property of the Israelites than that of any other nation. What specially belongs to them (kabalists excepted) are the disfigured details of every tradition. The _Genesis_ of Enoch is by far anterior to the books of Moses,[894] and Guillaume Postel has presented it to the world, explaining the allegories as far as he dared; but the ground-work is still unexposed. For the Jews, the _Book of Enoch_ is as canonical as the Mosaic books; and if the Christians accepted the latter as an authority, we do not see why they should reject the former as an apocrypha. No more can the age of one than that of the other be determined with anything like certainty. At the time of the separation, the Samaritans recognized only the books of Moses and that of Joshua, says Dr. Jost.[895] In 168 B.C., Jerusalem had its temple plundered, and all the sacred books were destroyed;[896] therefore, the few MSS. that remained were to be found only among the “teachers of tradition.” The kabalistic Tanaïm, and their initiates and prophets had always practised its teachings in common with the Canaanites, the Hamites, Midianites, Chaldeans, and all other nations. The story of Daniel is a proof of it.

There was a sort of Brotherhood, or Freemasonry among the kabalists scattered all over the world, since the memory of man; and, like some societies of the mediæval Masonry of Europe, they called themselves _Companions_[897] and _Innocents_.[898] It is a belief (founded on knowledge) among the kabalists, that no more than the Hermetic rolls are the genuine sacred books of the seventy-two elders--books which contained the “_Ancient Word_”--lost, but that they have all been preserved from the remotest times among secret communities. Emanuel Swedenborg says as much, and his words are based, he says, on the information he had from certain _spirits_, who assured him that “they performed their worship according to this Ancient Word.” “Seek for it in China,” adds the great seer, “peradventure you may find it in Great Tartary!” Other students of occult sciences have had more than the word of “certain spirits” to rely upon in this special case--they have seen the books.

We must choose therefore perforce between two methods--either to accept the _Bible_ exoterically or esoterically. Against the former we have the following facts: That, after the first copy of the _Book of God_ has been edited and launched on the world by Hilkiah, this copy disappears, and Ezra has to make a _new Bible_, which Judas Maccabeus finishes; that when it was copied from the horned letters into square letters, it was corrupted beyond recognition; that the _Masorah_ completed the work of destruction; that, finally, we have a text, not 900 years old, abounding with omissions, interpolations, and premeditated perversions; and that, consequently, as this Masoretic Hebrew text has fossilized its mistakes, and the key to the “Word of God” is lost, no one has a right to enforce upon so-called “Christians” the divagations of a series of hallucinated and, perhaps, spurious prophets, under the unwarranted and untenable assumption that the author of it was the “Holy Ghost” in _propria personæ_.

Hence, we reject this pretended monotheistic Scripture, made up just when the priests of Jerusalem found their political profit in violently breaking off all connection with the Gentiles. It is at this moment only that we find them persecuting kabalists, and banning the “old wisdom” of both Pagans and Jews. _The real Hebrew Bible was a secret volume, unknown to the masses_, and even the Samaritan _Pentateuch_ is far more ancient than the _Septuagint_. As for the former, the Fathers of the Church never even heard of it. We prefer decidedly to take the word of Swedenborg that the “Ancient Word” is _somewhere in China or the Great Tartary_. The more so, as the Swedish seer is declared, at least by one clergymen, namely, the Reverend Dr. R. L. Tafel, of London, to have been in a state of “inspiration from God,” while writing his theological works. He is given even the superiority over the penmen of the _Bible_, for, while the latter had the words spoken to them in their ears, Swedenborg was made to understand them rationally and was, therefore, _internally_ and not externally illuminated. “When,” says the reverend author, “a conscientious member of the New Church hears any charges made against the divinity and the infallibility of either the soul or the body of the doctrines of the New Jerusalem, he must at once place himself on the unequivocal declaration made in those doctrines, that the Lord has effected His second coming in and by means of those writings which were published by Emanuel Swedenborg, as His servant, and that, therefore, those charges are not and cannot be true.” And if it is “the Lord” that spoke through Swedenborg, then there is a hope for us that at least one divine will corroborate our assertions, that the ancient “word of God” is nowhere but in the heathen countries, especially _Buddhistic Tartary, Thibet, and China_!

“The primitive history of Greece is the primitive history of India,” exclaims Pococke in his _India in Greece_. In view of subsequent fruits of critical research, we may paraphrase the sentence and say: “The primitive history of Judea is a distortion of Indian fable engrafted on that of Egypt. Many scientists, encountering stubborn facts, and being reluctant to contrast the narratives of the “divine” revelation with those of the Brahmanical books, merely present them to the reading public. Meanwhile they limit their conclusions to criticisms and contradictions of each other. So Max Müller opposes the theories of Spiegel, and some one else; and Professor Whitney those of the Oxford Orientalist; and Dr. Haug made onslaughts on Spiegel, while Dr. Spiegel chose some other victim; and now even the time-honored Akkadians and Turanians have had their day of glory. The _Proto-Kasdeans_, _Kasdeo-Scyths_, _Sumirians_, and what not, have to make room for some other fictions. Alas! for the Akkads, Halevy, the Assyriologist attacks the Akkado-Sumirian language of old Babylon, and Chabas, the Egyptologist, not content with dethroning the Turanian speech, which has rendered such eminent services to Orientalists when perplexed, calls the venerable parent of the Akkadians--François Lenormant--himself, a charlatan. Profiting by the learned turmoil, the Christian clergy take heart for their fantastic theology on the ground that when the jury disagree there is a gain of time at least for the indicted party. And thus is overlooked the vital question whether Christendom would not be the better for adopting Christism in place of Christianity, with its _Bible_, its vicarious atonement and its Devil. But to so important a personage as the latter, we could not do less than devote a special chapter.