Book of GodV2

THE BOOK OF GOD.
An Introduction
to
The Apocalypse.
BY
)rq) sy#) skyl)

.sd) ynbx-l) ylwqw
Unto you, O Men, I call :
And my voice is to the sons of ADAM.
P . . 4.
LONDON :
TRÜBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
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LONDON
PRINTED BY S. AND J. BRAWN, 13 PRINCES-ST., LITTLE QUEEN-ST., W. C.
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CONTENTS.
B I.—Introductory remarks on former Volume,

1—6. The Ancient Mysteries founded by A , the
First Messenger of God, 7—9. The Secret of God, 10.
Universal diffusion of the Mysteries, 11—20. Difficul-
ties in the way of their elucidation, 21—26. Ænigma-
tical secrets of the ancients, 27—42. Sublime nature of
old theology, 43—54. The internal nature of the
Mysteries, 55—68. Legends illustrative of some of the
secrets, 69—76. The ten mystical secrets of the Mysteries,
77—80. The Unity of God; the revelation of the Holy
Spirit, 81—105. Curious symbolism in Ireland, Greece,
and Wales, 106—112. Notes, 113.
B II.—The Messengers of God, Messianic and
Cabiric, 154—167. Kabir and his teachings; Oriental
notions on these points, 168—183. Alternate destruction
and reproduction of worlds and beings, 184—206. The
Doctrine of Transmigrations, 207—224. The worship of
Adonis, 225—244. Notes, 245.
B III.—The Mysteries traced through various
legends, C and P , &c., &c., 261—298. Cere-
monies of Initiation in Europe and Hindostan; the Boodh-
Cymric doctrines, 229—348. Notes, 349.
B IV.—Symbolism of Fire, Stones, Mountains,
Waters, 370—380. Its origin traced, and its essence
developed, 381—390. Modern ignorance of symbolic
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iv CONTENTS.
language, 391—410. Some of the ancient mythi explained,

411. Serpent, Dove, and Bee symbolism, 417—428.
Water, Fish, and Fountain symbolism, 428—436. The
Scarabæus and Butterfly symbol, 437—441. Letter and
number symbolism, 441—461. Notes, 462.
BOOK V.—Dissertation on Mythology, 486—493.
High Pagan notions of the Divine, as contrasted with the
Hebraic, 494—510. Greek folly, the parent of much super-
stition and ignorance, 511—516. Rabbinical frenzy, 517.
Unity of all the gods, 524. The Holy Spirit, 532.
Jupiter as God, and a Messianic name, 532—544. Juno,
as a symbolic name for the Holy Spirit, 545—560. Diana
as the same, 560—570. Venus as the same, 571—582.
Minerva as the same, 583—602. Vesta as the same, 602
—619. Hades, meant all Spirits, 620—622. Hermes
as a Messianic name and symbol, 623. Apollo as the
same, 628. Vulcan as the same, 647. Mars as the
same, 650. Dionysos as the same, 655. Invocation of
the S , 677. Appendix on Isis, 681. Notes, 687.
Index.
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The Book of God.
BOOK I.
I the first part of the B G I have given

proofs that, from a very early period in the history of
man, a belief in God and the Holy Spirit was the univer-
sal religion: that this belief originated in a heaven-
descended Revelation given to the first Messenger of
Truth in the Apocalypse, and by him communicated to the
earth; and that all antiquity held it for a holy doctrine
that God uniformly sent messages and legates from
himself to mortals, to illuminate their souls with sacred
science. I showed also what constituted the real Triad,
or Three Powers, One in essence, which forms so great a
feature in the religious history of all peoples; and I ex-
plained in clear language, as I hope, the origin of all that
we now see or feel; of the Spirit-existences that fill the
visible Universe; and the primary cause in which that
visible or material Universe itself originated; namely, that
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2 THE BOOK OF GOD.
it might be a receptacle for those Spirits who, by their

lapse from God, had become terrestial in nature and in
desires. I proved also that the most sublime articles of
religious faith were inculcated in the Greater Mysteries;
and that the Apocalypse was the secret volume which was
used on full Initiation, and whose magic pictures were
presented to the disciple. This development of hallowed
truth in great part constitutes the first Book.
2. In the second Book I alluded to the arts and
sciences, and the profound knowledge which belonged
to ages that are usually considered to be so barbarous
as to be called pre-historic. I shewed how all learning
flowed, as it were, from one mighty centre, until it
gradually encircled the whole populated earth; and how
with it came the hallowed teachings which the F
M propounded to mankind, and which were
based alone on the Apocalypse, with such corollaries
or conclusions as necessarily sprang from that divine
Tree. For this purpose I did not hesitate to make use of
the discoveries of all who had preceded me; and I pre-
ferred to use their own language rather than to recast it,
as I might, in composition of my own. I did this for
two reasons: firstly, because I do not value literary fame
as an original writer, or rather new-fashioner of what has
been before committed to the press: secondly, because I
thought it safer, as I was citing witnesses, to use their own
language as evidence of the facts for which I called them,
rather than to express in my own words the result of
their researches. I hoped thus that I should avoid all
pretext for saying that I misrepresented; and as I knew
the arts for which priestly critics are noted, I thought
that I might by this way avoid one of those false
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INTRODUCTION TO THE APOCALYPSE. 3
accusations which they always introduce into religious

controversy.
3. And I shall pursue the same course in all that I
may write. I shall cite my authors, rather than give the
substance of what they say; willingly enduring the charge
which I may thus bring upon myself of laziness, or igno-
rance of composition, or inability to condense. The fame
which might be won by a different course I disregard.
My sole object in putting forth these volumes is to teach
rather than to dazzle. I do not write for applause or
gain, but to fulfil a sacred and imperative necessity. I
am indifferent to criticism. I care only to instruct; and
if I can do so by means that may be called easy, or even
elementary, the object of my life will be accomplished.
4. In the third Book I shewed that the Messengers of
God are of two kinds, Messianic and Cabiric: that the
first are Teachers, that the second are Judges; that God is
not responsible for their acts, but that they are themselves
alone responsible for them, as being voluntary emissaries
from heaven, to whom permission to descend is simply
accorded by the Supreme. I proved, however, that the
judicial power is quite as consistent with their true
character as Angels of Truth as the doctrinal; and that
archangelic men, like Amosis, Mohammed, and Chengiz
Khan, are as necessary to the cause of God, as Brigoo,
Thoth, Lao-Tseu, or Jesus. The first are heroic, the
second are Minerval; orders of the highest rank in heaven.
5. The fourth Book was devoted to an examination of
the authenticity of the common Apocalypse. I showed
that the authorities against it were far stronger than those
that were in its favour; and furnished evidence of an
extraordinary kind to demonstrate that it is the most
B2
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4 THE BOOK OF GOD.
ancient writing in the world; and that it is in reality a

translation into a modern though incorrect dialect, of the
very Revelation which Adam himself received from God.
I pointed out some of the facts which conclusively esta-
blished that there were Pre-Adamites, and gave reasons
why the true Apocalypse should have disappeared from
sacred literature. And I believe there is no such powerful
testimony in favour of the authorship of any sacred
scripture of any people, as there is of this, being the
absolute composition of the First Messenger of Truth.
6. In the fifth Book I proved that parts of the Old
Testament of the Jews were made up of extracts from the
Apocalypse, which came into the hands of their priests out
of Egypt, the crypt of all primeval lore. I demonstrated
also that the Old Testament itself is a modern forgery or
fabrication;—the proofs of this are unanswerable; and
having shewn how rotten was the basis on which Christian
or Petro-Paulite Europe founds its hopes of the future, I
invited attention to the Apocalypse as a work which
could not deceive, and which gives grander views of God
and the life to come than any other work that ever has
appeared.
7. The sixth and last Book glanced at chronology; a
subject that, for want of the earlier literature of the
earth, never can be made clear. All that we can do is to
speculate: absolute proof cannot be had. I shewed, how-
ever, that all authorities on that subject were so widely
opposed, some saying that the race of man had been only
6,000 years on earth, others declaring that it had been
20,000 years, that no one could decide anything about it
on unassailable grounds. But I intimated that the space of
about 10,000 years since the advent of man on the earth,
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was the true and probable period. I concluded with the

true text of the Apocalypse, as we have it in the Greek,
and with a version by myself, which I cannot indeed call
new, but which I think I may call improved. I subjoined
also the text with a translation of the Seven Thunders,
which had been commanded to be sealed up; but which
forced themselves in some way into the Jewish tracts,
where their utter want of connection with what precedes
and follows, furnishes evidence that they were only inter-
polations. The First of these, which refers to the Atlan-
tean deluge and its cause, must have sorely puzzled such
modern Rabbis as found it in their books, but knew not
what it meant.
8. In the present volume I had hoped to be able to
include the Commentary on the Apocalypse, which I can
assure my readers is as full of mystic sacred wonders as
any of those which I have previously brought before
them. But this I find to be impossible. The reader’s
mind requires to pass through a novitiate state before he
can even approach the examination of that mighty Secret
of God. Were I to introduce him to the Apocalypse
without a previous knowledge of the matters contained
in the present Part, he would view it with a mind almost
utterly unable to comprehend or to appreciate truths that
have been kept hidden since the foundation of the world.
9. I must defer, therefore, to a third Volume the pub-
lication of that Commentary. But let the student be
assured that in so doing I consult best for his true instruc-
tion. The Essays that are comprised in the present work,
are absolutely essential to his right understanding both
of the Apocalypse and its hidden spirit. When he shall
have mastered these, and the substance of the preceding
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6 THE BOOK OF GOD.
Part, together with the Notes, he will be more than a

match for any common antagonist of the true Apocalypse,
or any ordinary defender of the Old and New Testaments.
And as I wish that every man who acknowledges the
truths revealed in these Volumes, should be able to give
strong and even overwhelming evidence in favour of the
faith that is in him: and should in addition learn to
regard himself as a disciple of the most holy knowledge,
and a soldier engaged under the most hallowed banner, I
defer for the present the publication of my Commentary,
however eager I may be to make the world participant
in the divine mysteries which it contains. And with
this brief prologue, let me begin the essay that follows:
invoking, as I do, the HOLY LIGHT, that it may
guide my pen according to true knowledge.
The Origin of the Ancient Mysteries
10. When the first Messenger of Heaven, the Æon,

Oän, or Adîm, of whom I have already said so much,
considered how he should propound among men the won-
derful Revelation of which he had been made the deposi-
tary by the Supreme, it was at once made obvious to his
judgment, that there was one mystic truth which, in the
existing state of society, it was inexpedient to disclose to
all. This was the secret of the Naronic Cycle (otherwise
called the Secret of God) and its accredited herald or
representative. To promulgate this dispensation gene-
rally among men, would be to invite imposture, and lay
the seeds of false pretence among all peoples. It seemed
absolutely certain that if the Naros were publicly revealed,
(and if the Apocalypse were published, it could not be
excluded from it), the earth at the end of each six
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hundred years would become the amphitheatre of fierce

rivalries and bloody wars; each religion claiming for itself
alone the presence and the evangel of the new Messenger
of God. (See Part I., page 81.)
11. In those early ages Monotheism, as a religion, had
already begun to grow sensibly weakened. The twenty-
four Ancients had indeed declared it to be the sole
sublime truth in the world; and among the nations which
had already begun to spread beyond the confines of Asia,
it was the leading creed; but even then Ouranism, or
heaven-worship, and idolatry had made a certain way.
The surpassing splendour of the Sun by day, and of the
Moon and starry worlds by night, had caused an impres-
sion of their divinity upon the many; and these glorious
representatives of beauty and order, which were at first
venerated only as signs or images of their All-Mighty
Maker, grew gradually to be regarded as gods them-
selves, to whom it behoved mankind to offer homage,
reverence, and adoration. The hunter, guided by the
moon and stars amid the mighty forests, was grateful
for the light they shed, and his gratitude gave birth
to a religious feeling: the shepherd from the plains,
the mariner at sea, looked upon the sapphire heavens
sparkling with their lustrous brilliancy, and kissed his
hand (Job xxxi. 27) or bowed his head in silent worship:
the orb of day, which in its brightness seemed the very
substance of God himself made manifest to the children of
earth, became a type of the Sovereign King; and though
at first men looked upon it but as the mirror of his glory,
they by degrees regarded it as their Lord and Maker, who
by his beams gave light and sustenance to all things, and
manifested his varied powers so as to win the world to
kneel to him in thankfulness.
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8 THE BOOK OF GOD.
12. A variety of interests had also begun. Man had

now been upon the earth upwards of three thousand
years; tribes had come into collision with tribes; the
strong had prevailed over the weak; there were new
nations, and these had removed far from the cradle of the
first people; tradition had diffused many and contradic-
tory histories; rulers had contended with rulers, and
rivals with rivals; barter and the increase of knowledge
and artificial wants had given rise to commerce, and its
concomitants, a love of gold and power and monopoly
and dominion. Men were no longer as one family, nor
was it possible that in those ages they could be; and
there were powerful empires, and recalcitrant clans, and
conflicting forces; and agitation in the minds of men,
even as there is at the present day.
13. Seven great churches, or seats of hierarchical sove-
reignty, existed in Asia. Their pontiffs were as kings;
they governed kingdoms. These had grown up under
the auspices of the twenty-four Ancients; they were
theocracies with vast resources. The arts and sciences
had made immense advances. The priests were men of
extraordinary attainments. Asia itself was in a state of
high civilization and refinement. Africa had been reached:
the great Atlantis which connected Europe with the Ame-
ricas had been partially colonised; Europe itself was
beginning to receive inhabitants. The great bulk of man-
kind descending from Northern Asia was congregated,
however, about Western and Eastern Tartary, China,
Tibet, India, Irân, and Arabia. The motion of the earth
was circular, but the fierce volcanic fires that then existed
in various parts of the globe prevented perfect uniformity
of temperature.
14. The time had now come when the advent of a
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Messenger was indispensable. His high and sacred author-

ity was needed. The King of Men was to descend and
rule. He appeared accordingly as Gaudama, Adam
Oannes, or Adîm, which in Shanscreet means The First.
[Part 1, page 264.] God lifted him aloft, and gave him
the Vision which is perpetuated in the Sacred Apocalypse,
and which, as I have shewn, a traditionary knowledge
still exists in every part of this world of man. Adam, or
Gaudama, thus became as of right the Sovereign Pontiff
of the Earth; he came, he saw, he conquered; nor was
his sway long or seriously disputed. Though at first
despised, he became the centre of the hierarchical empires
which acknowledged his title; and received the Apoca-
lypse which he addressed to the Seven Churches. The
seat of his government was in Samarcand, the most an-
cient and the most holy city in the world (1). But Adam
was not a native of that district.
15. Yet though he was commissioned to declare the
Law of Heaven, it was impossible that he could commu-
nicate to all, the Secret of God—the Naronic Cycle. To
disclose this mighty mystery would have been destructive
even to men themselves: it would have been a truth re-
plete with ruin. Adam, therefore, did that which alone
he could do: it was not lawful to hide in darkness the
Book of Light—it was not salutary to publish it to all.
He made known its mystery, therefore, to a few—the
best, the wisest, the most trustworthy. These he called
Initiated: with these it remained safe. It was revealed
under a solemn pledge of secrecy; these men only had
the Apocalypse. This was the origin of the Mysteries,
which were subsequently divided into the Greater and
Lesser. Into the first none but the most true were
B3
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10 THE BOOK OF GOD.
admitted, and upon their full enrolment as brethren the

magnificent scenes of the Apocalypse were represented
before them in all the splendour of highest art (2).
Hast thou heard the Secret of God ? says the writer of
Job xv. 8, alluding to the secret of the Naronic Cycle.
And again: All the men of my Secret abhorred me, and
they whom I love are turned against me (xix. 19), where
the Hebrew is fraudulently translated: all my inward
friends. Again Job says: Oh that I were as in months
past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his
candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I
walked through darkness. As I was in the days of my
youth, when the Secret of God was upon my tabernacle,
(xxix. 4). So the Psalmist says: The Secret of the Lord
is with them that fear him; and He will shew them his
covenant (xxv. 14). In Proverbs: The froward is abomi-
nation to the Lord, but his Secret is with the righteous
(iii. 32). Who hath stood, says Jeremiah, in the Secret
of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard his word ? who
hath marked his word and heard it (xxiii. 18) ? In the
same spirit the writer of Ecclesiastes says: Let thy gar-
ments be always white (ix. 8), as if he had intended to ex-
hort those who, having once been initiated into the Secret,
and clothed in the white robes of purification, had vowed
that they should remain ever worthy of them by their
lives. And Jesus himself, before he made those re-
markable allusions to the Naros, which not only stamp it
for a most hallowed truth, but which also bring home its
knowledge to the Ninth Messenger (Luke xxi. 25, and
Matt. xxiv. 30), thus intimated his mystic science in a
passage which no longer exists in any of the Hebrew
books, though the annotators impudently refer it to
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Psalm lxxviii. 2. All those things spake Jesus unto the

multitude in parables, and without a parable spake he not
unto them; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by
the Prophet, saying: I will open my mouth in parables: I
will utter things which have been kept secret from the foun-
dation of the world (M . xiii. 35). (See Part I., page 58.)
16. From their primal site in Samarcand, the Myste-
ries diffused through Tibet and Tartary, were eventually
spread over the greater part of the earth. They were in-
troduced into India, as we are told, by Brahma (a priest of
Adam); into China and Japan by Fohi, into Egypt by
Thoth, into Persia by Zaratusht (Pococke, Specimen Hist.
Arab, p. 147), into Greece by Melampus (Herod. ii. c. 4)
or Cadmus, priest of Adam (Epiphan. adv. Hær. lib. i),
into Bœotia by Prometheus, a Messianic name (Etnæus.
Pausan. Bœot. p. 300), into Crete by Minos, a priest of
Menu or Fohi; into Samothrace by Eumolpus or Dardanus
(Bp. Marsh, Horæ Pelasg. 9), into Messene by Caucon,
the Priest Cai (Pausan Messen. 281), into Thebes by
Methapus, into Athens by Erectheus, into Arene by Lycus,
into Thrace by Orpheus, into Italy by the Pelasgi (Bp.
Marsh p. 9), into Cyprus by Kinyras, into Gaul by
Gomer, into Scandinavia by Odin (Mal. North Antiq. i.
62), into Mexico by Vitzliputzli (Purch. Pilg. viii. c. 10),
and into Peru by Manco Capac (Garcilasso i. c. 15).
And as in Egypt, says Warburton, they were sacred to
Isis and Osiris, so in Irân they were to Mihr and Mithras;
in Samothrace to the Mother of the Gods; in Bœotia to
Bacchus; in Cyprus to Venus; in Crete to Jupiter; in
Athens to Ceres; in Amphissa to Castor and Pollux,
[Lao-Tseu and Jesus. See A , section 28], in
Lemnos to Vulcan; and so to others in other places.
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12 THE BOOK OF GOD.
The nature and end of these were all the same, to teach
the doctrine of a future state. The Druids of Britain, who
had, as well as the Brachmans of India, their religion
from thence, celebrated the Orgies of Bacchus, as we
learn from Dionysius the African. But, of all the Myste-
ries, those which bore that name by way of eminence, the
Eleusinian, celebrated at Athens in honour of Ceres, were
by far the most famed; and in process of time absorbed,
and, as it were, swallowed up all the rest. Their neigh-
bours all around them very early practised these Mysteries
to a neglect of their own: in a little time all Greece and
Asia Minor were initiated into them: and at length they
spread over the whole Roman Empire, and even beyond
the limits of it. So Tully: Omitto Eleusiniam Sanctam
illam augustam; ubi initiantur gentes orarum ultimæ.
We are told in Zosimus that these most holy rites were
then so extensive as to take in the whole race of man-
kind: and Aristides calls initiation the common Temple
of the Earth. Their universality is faintly imaged in the
present day by the society of Freemasons, who might be
considered their legitimate descendants if they had not
wholly lost the mystic secret; and substituted in its place
some frenzy about Solomon, and some fanaticism about
Judaic-Paulism, which have no more to do with real
masonry than the river in Monmouth has to do with that
which is in Macedon. The very name of Mason, AM-
AZ-ON (God, Fire, Sun) is to them a source of inex-
tricable confusion; and they know not that the word Free
which is prefixed to their name, is in reality the old Coptic
Phre, which means the Sun. Had the revivers of Masonry
been philosophers, not Paulite Jews, what a noble insti-
tution it might have become !
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17. In the foregoing extract from the Bishop may be

noticed a singular error of Cicero, whose ignorance of the
true nature of ancient theology I have already noted
(Part I., page 107). To assert, as he does, that the most
remote nations of the coasts were initiated into the Mys-
teries, which were really confined to but a select few, is
absolute absurdity; it is true, however, if taken in this
sense, that chosen hierarchs from the most widely-sepa-
rated nations were thought worthy of initiation, without
regard to their being foreigners by birth. But in no other
sense can either his assertion or that of Zosimus be re-
ceived; for if there be any one fact that is well established,
it is, that none but the most exalted in rank or knowledge
or piety, were deemed worthy of the honours of confrater-
nity. (See Part I., page 92.)
18. And here I think it expedient to premise, as a
basis for all that follows, that the Mysteries, though called
by various names in different countries, and fathered upon
different founders, were all originally the same; all ema-
nated from one source; all, before they grew corrupt,
taught exactly the same truths; all were regulated by
the same ritual. When, therefore writers talk of the
Orphic, Thracian, Isiac, Bacchic, Cabiric, Eleusinian,
Adonic, Mithraic, Venusian, Vulcanian, Druidic, or Osi-
rian Mysteries, the reader must understand that one and
the same series of sacred ceremonies is intended; one and
the same initiatory processions, ranks and revelations;
and that what is true—though not what is related—of
one, applies also with equal certainty to all the others.
19. I speak of the Mysteries, says Faber, wheresoever
they might be established, and by whatever nations they
might be adopted, as being mutually the same; and I do
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14 THE BOOK OF GOD.
not view the Orgies of one people as something radically

and fundamentally different from the Orgies of another
people: it will be observed, in short, that I propose to
identify with each other all the various Mysteries of the
Gentiles, in all their various settlements after the disper-
sion. This identification necessarily follows from the
palpable unity of the several mythological systems of the
pagans; for if each of those systems be nothing more
than a modification of one common primeval system, and
if the Great Father and the Great Mother of Gentile theo-
logy be still the very same characters under whatever dif-
ferent names they might be worshipped; it must plainly
be concluded, since the gods of each nation are truly the
same, that the Mysteries of those gods must in nature and
purport be the same also. All alike professed to reveal
the history of the popular divinities; all alike promised
the benefits of a mysterious regeneration to the Initiated.
If, therefore, we have been compelled by the evidence of
facts and by the positive assertions of the Pagans them-
selves, to identify the various gods and goddesses of Gen-
tile mythology, we must inevitably no less identify the
various Mysteries of all these kindred deities. We may
either prove from circumstantial evidence the identity of
the gods, and thence argue the identity of the Mysteries;
or, inverting the process, we may demonstrate the iden-
tity of the Mysteries, and thence argue the identity of
the gods. In each case we shall still be brought to the
same conclusion; for I see not how it is possible to assert
the identity of the one and yet to deny the identity of
the other. (See Part I., pp. 137—143.)
20. The Mysteries, though called by the names of
different deities, were in substance, as I have stated, all
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the same. Thus Strabo asserts that the Curetic Orgies

which were celebrated in memory of the mystic birth of
Jupiter [the Incarnation], resembled those of Bacchus
[the Incarnation], Ceres, and Phrygian Cybele, both of
which were but names for the Holy Spirit; and he fur-
ther observes that poets and mythologists were continually
accustomed to join together the Mysteries of Bacchus
and Silenus, the rites of Cybele [the Sibyl of Heaven, the
Sacred Mother], and the worship which was paid to Zeus
at Mount Olympus, which we know is the Burmese
sacred Mount Zion (3) [Part I., page 152]. Thus the
author of the Orphic poems identifies the Orgies of Bac-
chus with those of Ceres, Rhea, Venus, and Isis [all of
them being names for the Spirit of God]; and evidently
speaks of them as being the very same with the Myste-
ries which were celebrated in Phrygia, in Crete, in Phœ-
nicia, in Lemnos, in Samothrace, in Egypt, and in
Cyprus. Thus Pindar, after invoking Bacchus, immedi-
ately refers to the nocturnal rites of the Phrygian Cybele,
whom Euripides and the Orphic poet equally pronounce
to be the Mother of that god. And thus Euripides unites
the Orgies of Cybele, as celebrated in Asia Minor, with
the Grecian mysteries of the Bromian Dio-Nusus, and
with the Cretan rites of the Cabiric Corybantes. In a
similar manner Dionysius informs us that the ancient
Britons were well acquainted with the Mysteries of Bac-
chus: and Artemidorus asserts that in a sacred island
[Anglesea], which lay close upon some part of their shore,
Ceres and Proserpine [the Holy Spirit and the Soul], were
venerated with rites similar to the Orgies of Samothrace.
But we know that those Orgies were the Mysteries of the
Cabiri: and we are told by Mnaseas that the Cabiric
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16 THE BOOK OF GOD.
gods of Samothrace were Bacchus, Ceres, and Proserpine,

to whom Mercury was added in a subordinate character
as minister [for the purpose it should be stated, though
Faber knew it not, of blinding the profane, who did not
guess that Bacchus and Mercury were one and the same
name or symbol of the Messiah]. Hence it is evident
that the Samothracian deities were no other than those
whom the Druids call Hu, Ceridwen and Creirwy, in
whose worship Stonehenge was raised; and that the Mys-
teries of the Celtic divinities were the very same also as
the Mysteries of Greece, Phrygia, Cyprus, Phœnicia, and
Egypt. [The Cymric Hu indeed is the Arabic Hou ,
the Self-Existent. In Welsh it means the Overseer.]
Mnaseas teaches us that the sacred names of the Cabiri
were Axieros [the All-Powerful] Axiokersa, and Axio-
kersos [the Spirit in union with God]. But these titles
are evidently the same as the Indian Asi-Orus, Asi-
Otkersa, and Asi-Otkersas; for the Samothracian deities
who bear the former appellation, perfectly correspond in
character and attributes with the Hindu deities who bear
the latter. (As. Res. v. 297.) Such being the case, the
Ancient Mysteries of the Indo-Scythæ must have corre-
sponded with those of Samothrace on the one hand, and
with those of the Celts, the Greeks, the Phrygians, the
Egyptians and the Phœnicians on the other. Agreeably to
such a conclusion the Greeks had a tradition that the
hierophant Orpheus was a Thracian, and that the Orgies
themselves were of Thracian origin. Sometimes, how-
ever, they ascribed their invention to the old Pelasgi, who
at one period, in the course of their wanderings, tenanted
Samothrace. These two accounts are in substance the
same, and I entertain no doubt of their accuracy. The
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Thracians and the Pelasgi were the ancestors of those

Greeks who did not emigrate from Egypt and Phœnicia.
They were equally children of one great family; for
they were branches of the Indo-Scythic, or Pallic or
Gothic race, which sent out colonies in almost every
direction, and which communicated their religious insti-
tutions to their descendants, the elder Hellenes. Thus
we need not wonder at the perfect identity of the Indo-
Scythic and the Samothracian Mysteries; nor have we any
occasion to reject as incredible the well-founded opinion
that the Orgies of the barbarous northern and north-
eastern nations were really the same, both in nature and
purport, as those of the more civilized Greeks and Phœ-
nicians and Egyptians. On the contrary it will serve to
shew the justice of that remarkable classification by
which Clemens enumerates, as teaching much the same
doctrines, and as philosophizing in much the same manner,
the priests of Egypt, the Chaldeans of Assyria, the
Druids of the Gauls, the Samaneans of the Bactrians, the
Sages of the Celts, the Magi of the Persians, the Brah-
mens of the Indians, the philosophers of the Scythians,
and the various wise men among the Odrissæ, and the
Getæ, and the Arabians, and the Philistines, and (to use
his own sweeping expression) ten thousand other nations.
(Strom. i. 303.) From those misnamed barbarians Pytha-
goras, as he truly observes, borrowed very largely; and
of what nature, as well as of what extent, his obligations
were, Iamblichus informs us very explicitly. He taught
certain rites of purification; he initiated his disciples into
the Mysteries; and, uniting a divine philosophy with reli-
gious worship, he instructed them with the greatest
accuracy in the knowledge of the gods. What he com-
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18 THE BOOK OF GOD.
municated, however, he had himself previously learned:

For the speculations which he delivered were no mere novel
inventions of his own. He had derived them partly from
the Orphic rites of the Thracians, partly from the Egyptian
priesthood, partly from the Chaldeans and the Magi, partly
from the Mysteries of Eleusis and Imbros, and Samothrace
and Delos; and, in addition to all these, partly from the
Celts and the Iberians. He taught then, we find, certain
Mysteries blended with philosophy, which he had bor-
rowed from various kindred sources. But Herodotus
speaks of the Orphic and the Pythagorean Mysteries as
being the very same (ii. 81). Now, we know that the
Orphic Mysteries were no other than those of Samothrace,
Egypt, and Phœnicia: such likewise must therefore have
been those used by Pythagoras. But he borrowed them
all from the numerous sources specified by Iamblichus.
Hence the identical Mysteries which were celebrated in
Thrace, Egypt, Phœnicia, Samothrace, Eleusis, Imbros,
Delos, must also have been established among the Chal-
deans, the Magi, the Celts, and the Iberians. In fact, not
only Pythagoras, but the Greeks collectively, had nothing
but what they received from those whom they styled
barbarians. Now, what they received was the Mysteries.
Consequently the Mysteries of the barbarians must have
been the very same as the Mysteries of the Greeks; which
again were the same as those of the Egyptians, the Phry-
gians and the Phœnicians. Agreeably both to this con-
clusion, and to what has been already observed on the
subject, Porphyry views the cavern worship of the Per-
sian Mithras, as immediately related to the similar cavern
worship of the Cretan Jupiter, the Arcadian Pan and
Luna, and the Naxian Bacchus; and associates the initia-
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tion into his rock mysteries with the legends respecting

the several consecrated Grottoes of Saturn, of the Nymphs,
and of Ceres, and of Proserpine. In short, so generally
acknowledged was the identity of the Mysteries in every
part of the world, that Euripides describes the god Bac-
chus, in his tragedy of that name, as declaring that the
Orgies were equally celebrated by all foreign nations, and
that he came to introduce them among the Greeks (4).
21. I see not, says Faber, how we can account for the
violent attachment of the Britons to the Mysteries of Hu
and Ceridwen even so late as the 12th century, which is a
naked historical fact, unless we suppose that those Mys-
teries were the Mysteries immemorially celebrated by
their fathers agreeably to the positive declarations of the
Greek historians. The Britons were remarkably tenacious
of old customs, and it is utterly incredible that at the
very time when they were gradually embracing Chris-
tianity, they should suddenly strike out a novel supersti-
tion, and embrace it in conjunction with the Gospel. Yet,
unless we allow the genuineness of the bardic materials, we
shall be compelled to adopt the inconceivable theory that
the Britons at that precise period, not only invented a new
superstition, but that they stumbled upon the very theology
which still so eminently prevails in Hindostan. Many
were the attempts made to wean them from their idola-
trous propensities, and many are the indignant allusions
to the monks which are scattered through the writings of
the bards. Those writings certainly describe what the
Britons were then attached to; and I am constrained to
believe by an accumulated mass of evidence that, what
they were so vehemently attached to, was the very theo-
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20 THE BOOK OF GOD.
logy to which their forefathers from time immemorial had

been attached before them. Pagan Idolatry, iii. 136 (5).
22. The Mysteries, therefore, having one and the same
origin wheresoever found, and being also universally dif-
fused, let us investigate as well as we can the design with
which they were instituted. We have before seen that
the true objects of all primeval worship were God the
Father, and the Holy Spirit of Heaven, the Great Mother
of all being. (Part I, page 30.) These Two Divine Splen-
dours were the Divinities revealed in the Apocalypse;
and, as that work was the distinguishing element in the
Mysteries, the adoration of the First as the Father, and
the respectful homage offered to the Second as the Mother,
became the essential features of the entire ceremony.
That they were originally represented without symbols I
entertain no doubt; but they subsequently came to be
imaged by them, and hence arose much of the confusion
and corruption which certainly followed, and of which
the biblicals have made so much (6). But for this con-
fusion the primary rite was not answerable, any more than
Jesus is responsible for the crimes of those who called
themselves his vicars and ministers on earth, but who
were in all things the servants of Anti-Christ.
Difficulties in the way of Grasping the True Secret of

the Mysteries.
23. In entering on the subject of the Mysteries, this

fact must not be lost sight of, that we are now treading
upon ground which it was deemed necessary to envelope
in the darkest night; that death was the punishment of
those who should have dared to reveal to the profane
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aught of the hallowed lore which had been imparted to

the Initiated; and that when poets, travellers, historians,
or philosophers, allude at all to this forbidden subject,
they either made guesses in profound ignorance, or spoke
with a consciousness of the most dreadful responsibility.
In the first case any apparent discrepancies or even ab-
surdities in what they declare relative to the names or
things shewn in the Mysteries will be at once accounted
for; in the second, we may easily suppose that, when
making those allusions to the sacred ceremonies which
the nature of their task seemed to impose on them, they
voluntarily, and even wilfully, offered statements which
they knew to be disguises, for the purpose of lead-
ing the popular mind astray; or at all events of blinding
the public eye to those obscure secrets which were never
intended to be revealed but to the chosen few in whom a
love of truth and knowledge was the predominating affec-
tion. We shall often therefore find them giving several
names to one and the same personage; altering their
sexes; new fashioning their adventures. We shall find
the Holy Spirit called by titles apparently the most
repugnant; sometimes represented as a male deity Nep-
tunus; sometimes even as Silenus, which, as it was the
very last type under which the vulgar would recognize
the beautiful Virgin of Heaven, so it was appropriately
chosen by the hierophants to disguise her divine attri-
butes. And yet the composition of her name to us is
clear, being Selene or Selain [Part I, 98, 188, 190], the
Moon, the Fountain of God, and Shiloh and Nous, the
Mind; either as God the Father, or as the image of that
Mind in the Holy Spirit and the Incarnation; and it is
probable indeed that the mystic oneness of all three was
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22 THE BOOK OF GOD.
meant to be feigned in this symbol. [See Part I., page

31.] Nothing, I am aware, can at the first glance appear
to be more nonsensical than to suppose that this fat,
drunken deity, or semi-deity, mounted on an ass [Onos],
could ever have been intended as a symbol of the Divine
and Holy Spirit of God; yet there can be no doubt that
it was designed by the priests to be so regarded. But
when we look beneath, and read the symbol, we shall see
that to the skilled soul many features of this divinity were
inseparable from the Sacred Spirit. The fatness denoted
the fecundity of her who is synonymous with Nature;
the intoxication, the inspired heavenly ecstacy of her
who is the Wine of Truth itself; the ass in one of the
very oldest myths we have is fabled to have carried im-
mortality from heaven, and to have sold it to the Serpent;
no wonder therefore that the very Source of Immortality
herself should be represented as carried by him (7). But
this Ass, or Onos, was in reality ‫ אן‬On the Sun, the In-
dian synonime, and sometimes the vehicle of the Holy
Spirit; and therefore her proper bearer when she was sym-
bolized as Selain. And in the Egyptian an ass was called
Ao and Io, the Apocalyptic name for the Queen of
Heaven. Smidt says: Asinus enim Ægyptiis non ονος
sed Εω et Ιω vocatus. Paleo. Soc. Antiq. Lond, i. 262.
So Gaun-Issa, who is the Hindu representative of the
Holy Spirit, is elephant-headed, but pot-bellied, just like
classic Silenus. The ancients, says Bochart, by the fable
of Silenus, give us to understand that they had some
knowledge of the Messiah, since his name comes from
Siloh, which almost all the interpreters understand of the
Christ. Silenus is an inseparable companion of Bacchus,
whom we know to be the Messiah, and whom he is said to
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have brought up and instructed. (Diod. iv. 14. Orph.

Hymn. 53, 1.) He is the Son of Pan, the All. He is
the inventor of the flute, or heavenly harmony, and is
an inspired Prophet who knows all the past and the most
distant future. He is therefore greater than any other
of the Celestials except the King of Heaven.
24. It may be urged that, as Silenus was a male, and
the Holy Spirit female, an identity between them is
impossible to suppose. To this it may be answered; first,
that this was part of the system of disguise which the
ancient hierophants thought it expedient to adopt; and
secondly, that a difference of sexes was seldom or ever
recognized by the ancients when they spoke of celestial
Powers. Every high spirit and essence of heaven is in
itself of a double nature; even man is so in a degree, for
his spirit is masculine and his soul is feminine [See Part
I., page 189]: and we should not be misled therefore by
any apparent discrepancies of gender which may be seen in
ancient mythology or in a true explication of it. Συ
πατηρ, Συ δ’ ἐσσι ματηρ, Συ δ’ ἀρρην, Συ δε θηλυς. Thou art
Father, Thou art Mother, Thou art Male, Thou art
Female, says the Christian Bishop Synesius address-
ing the Supreme God. So Aristophanes calls Aphrodite
Aphroditos, being a masculine termination; and we shall
find, as we proceed, numerous examples of the same
mysterious theocrasia and disguise. Thus the Nine Mes-
sianic Messengers were concealed from the multitude
under the designation of the Nine Muses or Divine
Minstrels of Heaven; while the three Corybantes or
Cabiric Legates of the Supreme were called the Eume-
nids [Ieu-Men-Ids, Menus, Heaven-minded sons of Jid
or God] who, while they judged and punished human
Version 20170421
24 THE BOOK OF GOD.
villainy, were nevertheless the accredited agents of Him

in whose eyes all evil is most odious, as being the very
dregs of filth, hell, and corruption Yet these Eumenids
were represented as females. So also the Three were
hidden under the fiction of the Three Judges of Hell,
because their mission was judicial rather than patri-
archal; and they were also typified as the Three Cyclopes
or Sons of the Naronic Cycle, who forged the armoury of
heaven for those who were deemed worthy of the gift (8),
and wrought the thunder-bolts of God, with which he
smites the guilty to the grave. [See A , section
9, sub finem.] And I believe that the three-headed Dog
of Hades (Kerberus) also symbolized the Three Cabiric
Messiahs: a dog being of old a well-known type of the
Messenger of Truth, with whose assent alone it was
possible for the errant spirit to pass into the Elysian
meadows (9).
25. In this wise it was, by perpetually keeping riddles
before the public mind and eye, that the priests main-
tained secrecy in things which it were then dangerous
publicly to reveal: and looking at mythology under this
aspect, the most externally incongruous representations of
sacred things will be found to cohere and harmonize in a
manner that would be utterly impossible, were not the
Divine Revelation which is put forward in these pages
at the bottom of all these typical enigmas. That the
Mysteries were in later ages perverted to other than the
sublime and sacred purposes for which they were originally
devised, and that in the bands of priests and hierophants
impurities and pollutions were occasionally introduced,
cannot, I think, admit of any reasonable doubt. Hence
we hear of ravishments of virgins by the gods, when they
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were in reality crimes committed by the priests, who for

the occasion assumed the names of their gods. The an-
cient rites indeed offered the same facilities for passion as
the agapæ or love-feasts of the Paulite-Christians. But
this in no way tends to lessen their original grandeur or
majesty, or to inspire us with a distrust of the profound
teachings which in other respects they conveyed to the
aspirant; inculcating to the pure, that an union with the
Divine and Beautiful, such as was figuratively represented
in many of the symbolic figures, was the chief happiness
of the heart, and that also to which every intellectual
organization should perpetually look.
26. And here it may not be inappropriate to remind
the reader, of words used by a man eminent in his day,
and who, if no profound thinker, was nevertheless pos-
sessed of judgment and experience in things. I allude to
Dr. Johnson, and commend his opinion to those who may
cavil at what follows, through any of the motives which
he assigns as operating in such cases. There are some
men, he says, of narrow views and grovelling conceptions,
who, without the instigation of personal malice, treat
every new attempt as wild and chimerical, and look upon
every endeavour to depart from the beaten track as the
rash effort of a warm imagination, or the glittering specu-
lation of an exalted mind, that may please and dazzle for
a time, but can produce no real and lasting advantage.
These men value themselves upon a perpetual scepticism:
upon believing nothing but their own senses: upon call-
ing for demonstration which cannot possibly be obtained:
and sometimes upon holding out against it when it is laid
before them: upon inventing arguments against the suc-
cess of any new undertaking: and where arguments can-
C
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26 THE BOOK OF GOD.
not be found, upon treating it with contempt and ridi-

cule. Such have been the most formidable enemies of
the great benefactors of the world; for their notions and
discourses are so agreeable to the lazy, the envious, and
the timorous, that they seldom fail of becoming popular,
and directing the opinions of mankind.
27. I have already shewn in my former Volume that
the word Garden did not always mean what it commonly
implied, but that it had a mystical sense also, and signi-
fied an intimate and rapturous communion with the Holy
Spirit; an inspired ecstatical condition which was sup-
posed to belong exclusively to the Prophets of God.
[Part I., page 270.] This, but in a lesser degree, was
said to be the state of those who were fully Initiated;
and it is therefore appropriately related of Adam in his
noblest elevation of purity and knowledge. But the
Genesis mythos of the Garden of Odin, Adon or Adonis,
was prefixed to the sacred books in their natural con-
dition, first, as a clear intimation that Adam had been in
the Garden—that is, had been in that paradise-state
which the Ancient Prophets called ecstacy and vision,
and in which they heard the Oracles of God; secondly,
to show that even to the First Messenger himself it was
not permitted to divulge to all the holy mysteries which
he had learned. The reader may ask, What are those
holy mysteries? I answer: In the Hebrew books they
no longer exist, except in the most scattered, isolated,
and fragmentary relics: in the genuine volumes they
were no doubt perfect and beautiful; but I have already
demonstrated that the present compilations are in no
way genuine, but are a confused medley of the most sus-
picious and incongruous materials. Why the Jew fabu-
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lists of a modern age feigned that their great progenitor

Adam, as they called him, had been base enough to reveal
the Secrets of God, and so to be expelled from the Garden,
I know not: but after what I have already written of the
First Messenger, I suppose I need not add that it is not
true of him in any other sense than this, that he gave to
men a knowledge of heavenly counsels as contained in the
Apocalypse, and as he was bound to do in fulfilment of
his mission. But this was not what the rabbins meant
by expulsion from the Garden, nor do I care to penetrate
their hidden design. See Part I., page 70, for what may
be one of their reasons. Here it is sufficient for me to
say, that for some cause or causes, they declared that
Adam was expelled from the Garden of Adonis because he
had revealed mysteries which God intended to be hidden
from mankind. A mythos exactly analogous to this is still
preserved in Welsh tradition: and he who shall without
prejudice compare the Hebrew with the Cymric legend,
will be convinced that both relate exclusively to the same
matter, though the Welsh did not brand their progenitor
as a traitor in the same way as the Hebrews stigmatized
Adîm.
28. In the mountains near Brecknock, says Davies,
there is a small lake to which tradition assigns some of
the properties of the fabulous Avernus. I recollect a
Mabinogi, or mythological tale, respecting this piece of
water. In ancient times, it is said, a door in a rock near
this lake was found open upon a certain day in every
year. I think it was May-day [the day of Maïa.] Those
who had the curiosity and resolution, to enter were con-
ducted by a secret passage which terminated in a small
island in the centre of the lake. Here the visitors were
C2
Version 20170421
28 THE BOOK OF GOD.
surprized with the prospect of a most enchanting Garden,

stored with the choicest fruits and flowers, and inhabited
by the Tylwith Têg, or Fair Family, a kind of fairies,
whose beauty could be equalled only by the courtesy and
affability which they exhibited to those who pleased them.
They gathered fruit and flowers for each of their guests,
entertained them with the most exquisite music, disclosed
to them many events of futurity, and invited them to stay
as long as they should find their situation agreeable. But
the island was sacred, and nothing of its produce must be
carried away. The whole of this scene was invisible to
those who stood without the margin of the lake. Only
an indistinct mass was seen in the middle; and it was
observed that no bird would fly over the water, and that
a soft strain of music at times breathed with rapturous
sweetness in the breeze of the mountain. It happened
upon one of those annual visits, that a sacrilegious wretch,
when he was about to leave the Garden, put a flower with
which he had been presented into his pocket; but the theft
boded him no good. As soon as he had touched unhal-
lowed ground the flower vanished, and he lost his senses.
Of this injury the Fair Family took no notice at the time.
They dismissed their guests with the accustomed courtesy,
and the door was closed as usual. But their resentment
ran high. For though, as the tale goes, the Tylwyth Têg
and their Garden undoubtedly occupy the spot until this
day—though the birds still keep at a respectful distance
from the lake, and some broken strains of music are still
heard at times, yet the door which led to the island has
disappeared, and from the date of this sacrilegious act the
Cymry have been unfortunate. It is added that, some
time after this, an adventurous person attempted to draw
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off the water, in order to discover its contents, when a

terrific Form [a cherub] arose from the midst of the lake,
commanding him to desist, or otherwise he would drown
the country. (Mythol. of Brit. Druids, 155.)
29. Something of the same mythology lies at the bottom
of the following tradition: it is a dim picture of antique
Indian initiation. Porphyry tells us, on the authority of
Bardesanes, who received the account from the Brahmins
of India, that in the side of a very lofty mountain situ-
ated in the centre of the earth there was a natural Cave
of large dimensions. In it was placed an upright statue
[AO], ten or twelve cubits in height, the arms of which
were extended in the form of a cross . One side of its
face was that of a Man [God], the other that of a Woman
[the Holy Spirit]; and the same difference of sex from
head to foot was preserved in the conformation of the
whole body. On its right breast was carved the Sun,
and on its left the Moon: on its arms were represented a
number of figures, which Porphyry calls Messengers; and
along with them the sky, the ocean, mountains, rivers,
plants, and animals. The Brahmins asserted that their
chief Deity gave this statue to his Son when about to
create the World, in order that he might have a pattern
to work from: and they declared to the inquisitive travel-
er that no one knew of what materials it was composed,
though its substance bore the strongest resemblance to a
sort of incorruptible wood, while yet it was not wood.
They added that a king once attempted to pluck a hair from
it, and that blood immediately flowed in consequence of the
impiety. [This is analogous to what is related just before
of the Garden of the Tylwith Têg.] Upon its head was
the figure of a god seated upon a throne. Behind it the
Version 20170421
30 THE BOOK OF GOD.
Cave extended to a considerable distance, and was pro-

foundly dark. If any persons chose to enter into it, they
lighted torches, and advanced until they came to a door.
Through the door flowed a stream of water, which, at the
extremity of the cavern, formed a lake, and through this
door likewise those who wished to expurgate themselves
were required to pass. Such as were pure from the pol-
lutions of the world met with no impediment, for the
door opened wide to admit them [Knock, and it shall be
opened unto you], and they forthwith arrived at a very
large Fountain of the most beautifully pellucid water;
but those who had been guilty of some crime found them-
selves violently opposed, the door forcibly closing itself
against them, and denying their admission. Whenever
this was the case, they confessed their sins, besought the
intercession of the Brahmins, and submitted to long and
painful fasts by way of expiation. Porphyry adds that
Apollonius Tyaneus was apparently acquainted with the
water and cavern described to him by Bardesanes, for in
the letters which he addressed to the Brahmins he was
wont to use a formula of abjuration: No, by the Tantalian
water, by which you initiated me into your Mysteries. The
epithet Tantalian he is supposed to have applied to it,
from the tantalizing state of suspense in which it held
the impatient aspirants. Porphyr. de Stygio. p. 283—285.
That all this enigmatically alluded to Initiation into some
Asiatic Temple of the Mysteries—probably Mahwee itself,
probably some sacred crypt like the Cherk Almâs men-
tioned in Part I., p. 307—may, I think, be taken as clear.
The divine Dualism of the One, the AO; the union of
the Sun and Moon; the emission of the Messengers; and
the features of Universal Nature; the Cave, the torches,
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the Fountain, the opened door, to which Jesus compared

himself, and the expurgation or new birth, the Tau, or
cruciform symbol mentioned in the Apocalypse [Section
22] are each and all so intimately connected with the
True Faith and its first accredited Volume, that I think
no doubt can exist in the mind of any as to what they
relate to.
30. And it was into places of this nature, that the an-
cients intimated their heroes gained admission, when they
spake of the Elysian Fields, the Isles of the Blessed, the
Gardens of Enna, Alki-Nous, or Adonis [Aden, Odin, or
Eden], the Bowers of the Hesperids, the Golden Seats, or
the fair Panchaian temple. To all these they could attain
only by a long series of heroic acts directed solely to the
public welfare, and under the inspiriting idea that they were
doing all things in the service of the gods: but from each
and all of these they were relentlessly excluded, and devoted
to the infernals if they betrayed the holy hidden Secret
of the Lord. And it was with the view no doubt of de-
terring any vain or rash pretender to the Messianic cha-
racter from bringing his dangerous falsehoods before men
that the priests invented the mythos of Salmoneus. This
man was, or pretended to be, the son of Aiolos, or the
Various, a title for God, and the Holy Spirit [A-IO-OLOS]
AO the All; he settled in El-Is, that is, he was Initiated
into the Mysteries of God, El, and Issa; and built a city,
that is, founded a church, or was the leader of a colony.
Having so far succeeded, and having also learned the
secret of the Cycle, he asserted that he was celestial, like
Augustus [See Part I., page 314], and claimed divine
honours. He mimicked the noise of thunder, and with
blazing torches hurled against the sky, he imitated the
Version 20170421
32 THE BOOK OF GOD.
lightnings of the spheres. But God, incensed by his im-

piety, struck him with electric flame, and consumed his
city and all its inhabitants. I have no doubt that this or
an analogous Phäethontic mythos, was represented in the
Mysteries, when Sections 40, 41, 42, and 56 were recited
or read, and that it helped to confirm the Initiated in
their sacred secrecy.
31. I cite here an ancient Cymric poem called Aval-
lenau, or Apple trees, which Sharon Turner thinks he has
proved to be the genuine production of Merddin [Merlin],
but in my judgment it is of far greater antiquity. It
proves the Greater Mysteries to have been known in Bri-
tain. The ostensible purport of this poem is a tribute of
gratitude for an Orchard containing 147 delicious apple
trees which had been privately exhibited to the Bard by
his lord Gwendolen (the Sun), and which he still carries
with him in all his wanderings. [This shows it to have
been a Book—the A . See Part I., page 247.]
The number is mystical, and was sacred of old. It is the
square of seven, multiplied by the mystical 3, and it
alludes to the Apocalypse, and to the Heavenly Trees in
that Sacred Vision. To no one has been exhibited, says
the Bard, at one hour of dawn, what was shown to
Merddin before he became a god, namely, seven score
and seven delicious apple trees, of equal age, height,
length, and size, which sprang from the bosom of Mercy.
[This uniformity is like that of the Heavenly City. A -
, Sections 65, 66.] One bending veil [the Rainbow-
Arch, or as a Mazon might say if he knew it, the Royal
Arch, or Archè] covers them over: they are guarded by
one Maid with crisped locks [the Holy Spirit]; her name
is Ollwed with the luminous teeth. The delicious Apple
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Tree, with blossoms of pure white and wide-spreading

branches, produces sweet apples, for those who can digest
them. And they have always grown in the wood which
grows apart. The Nymph [Maya], who appears and dis-
appears [in her successive Messengers] gives prophecies,
words which will surely come to pass. . . . [See A -
, Section 1.] The Sweet Apple Tree has pure white
sprigs, which grow as a portion for food. I had rather
encounter the wrath of a sovereign than permit rustics in
raven hue to ascend its branches. The Lady of command-
ing aspect is splendidly endowed. . . . The fair Apple
Tree grows upon the border of the vale: its yellow apples
and its leaves are desirable objects: and even I have been
beloved by my Gwnem and my Wolf: but now my com-
plexion is faded by long weeping.
32. To us who know many secrets, this Poem is now
made manifest, though otherwise it would have appeared
enveloped in darkness. The exhibition of the Trees [or
Apocalyptic secrets] was at the dawn, the hour when
the nocturnal celebration of the Mysteries was completed.
The view of these Trees, therefore, implies the complete
initiation of the aspirant. They remained under their
veil in the custody of the Divine Maid Ollwed, or Olwen
—the All-wise. The white blossoms imply purity, and
the robe of the Druids, and the Druidical body itself; the
spreading branches the wide extension and authority of
the mysterious order and their rites and sacred volume;
the fruit, their doctrine and hope; and the sequestered
wood, the holy grove appropriated to religious worship.
The men in black seem to have been the profane, who
were prohibited from initiation; and the word Gwnem
seems to be a corruption of ‫כינים‬, Cunim, or of Gwenyn,
C3
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34 THE BOOK OF GOD.
bees; priestesses, Melissai, a common symbol of the Holy

Spirit in the olden time. The Bard now passes from the
contemplation of all the Trees to meditation upon One
only—the Tree Ydrasil, the Tree of Life, the Sacred
Spirit of the Universe: while he laments the various
efforts made towards its ruin; that is, to the destruction
of the True Faith. The allusions in the latter part to the
Moon, the Sun, and the Avatar, are manifest. From the
verses that follow, it would seem, however, as if the Bard,
like the Talmudical Adam, had been expelled from the
Apple Garden and the sacred brotherhood, either for
having betrayed some of the solemn secrets, or for some
other act of impiety. It is impossible to linger over those
mystic lines, without a feeling of sympathy for sorrows
evidently so deep, reminding one of the passage cited from
Job, ante, page 10; while a full consideration of their
meaning will make manifest more and more, that they
embody in a visionary shape many of the profound secrets
of the true religious system of the Past, as read by the
unveiling light and splendour of the Apocalypse. And
while we thus muse, we shall enter more and more into
the spirit which, as I have before said, arrests the pen of
Herodotus and others when they seem to be on the brink
of revealing something of the wonders which had been
communicated to them. See Part I., pp. 70—81.
33. Thou sweet and beneficent Tree, exclaims the re-
pentant Druid, not scanty is the fruit with which thou
art loaded; but upon thy account I am terrified and
anxious lest the woodmen should come, those profaners of
the wood, to dig up thy root and corrupt thy seed, that
not an apple may ever grow upon thee more. I am be-
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come a wild distracted object, no longer greeted by the

brethren of my order, nor covered with my habit. Upon
me Gwendolen freely bestowed those precious gifts: but
he is this day as if he had never been. The proper place
of this delicate Tree is within a shelter of great renown,
highly beneficent and beautiful [the soul and spirit made
pure]: but princes devise false pretences, with lying glut-
tonous and vicious priests and pert youngsters rash in
their designs; these are the aspiring men who will triumph
in the course. Now, alas! the tree which avoids rumour
grows upon the confluence of streams, without the raised
circle. [A , Section 67.] This sweet Apple
Tree abounds with small shoots: but the multitude cannot
taste of its golden fruit. I have been associated with select
men to cultivate and cherish its trunk; and when Dyv-
nant shall be named the City of the Stones [A ,
Sections 65, 66.] the Bard shall receive his perquisite.
Incorruptible is the Tree which grows in the spot set
apart (the sanctuary) under its wide envelope. For four
hundred years may it remain in peace. [This must have
been in the 3rd century; in four hundred years more
the Cycle would recommence.] But its root is oftener
surrounded by the violating wolf [the Roman, the seed of
the Wolf] than by the youth who can enjoy its fruit. . . .
The fair Tree grows in the glade of the wood—its hiding-
place has no skilful protector from the Chiefs of Rhyd-
derch, who trample on its roots, while the multitude com-
pass it round. The energetic figures are viewed with grief
and envy. The Lady of the Day loves me not, nor will she
greet me. Death, who removes all—why will he not visit
me? After the loss of Gwendolen, the Lady of the bright
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36 THE BOOK OF GOD.
bow,* by no nymph am I respected. No soother amuses my

grief: by no mistress am I visited. Yet in the conflict of
Arderydd [Ar d’Ur Id, Lion of the Fire of God] I wore the
gold collar. Oh! that I were precious this day with those
who have the hue of the swan [the Apollonic white-robed
Druids]. The Tree with delicate blossoms grows in con-
cealment amid the forests: a report is heard at the dawn
that the minister has expressed his indignation against
the authority of the small sprigs, twice, thrice, nay, four
times in one day! The fair Tree grows on the bank of a
river: splendid was the fruit which I enjoyed from its
trunk while my reason was entire, in company with Bûn
[the mystic name of the Sacred Cake, see post note 16,
Book II.], the Maid most elegantly pleasing, delicate, and
most beautiful. But now for fifty years have my splendid
treasures been outlawed, while I have been wandering
among ghosts and spectres, after having enjoyed abundant
affluence, and the pleasant society of the tuneful tribe.
The sweet Apple Tree with delicate blossoms grows upon
the sod amongst the trees, and the half-appearing Maid
[the Sibyl, Cybele, or the Holy Spirit, the crescent Moon
of Heaven] predicts words which will come to pass. Men-
tal design shall cover, as with a vessel the green assemblies,
from the princes in the beginning of the tempestuous
hour. The Darter of Rays [the Sun] shall vanquish the
profane: before the Child of the Sun, bold in his courses
[the Messenger] Saxons shall be eradicated. The sweet
Apple Tree is like the Bardic mount of assembly: sweet
* The reader will bear in mind that Gwendolen had just before
been described as masculine. Duplicis sexus Numina esse dicun-
tur; The Deities are said to be two-sexed, says Servius, Æneis iv.
638. The lady of the bright bow is the Holy Spirit—the Rain-
bow of God. See Part I., pp. 28, 170, 264, 464, 511.
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are its branches, budding, luxuriant, shooting forth re-

nowned scions: the dogs of the wood will protect the
circle of its roots. British Druids.
34. To this symbolic Tree there are various allusions
in the Oriental writers. It is the Musa Paradisi, or
plantain tree, otherwise called the pomum Adami: it is
said to be palm-shaped; differing from the palms, how-
ever, in this respect, that the ramification of its head is
not composed of a process intermediate between leaves
and branches, but of immense ensiform leaves, eight feet
in length by two or three in breadth. And its name in
Assyria and Upper Syria is Al-Mauz, and in the plural
Mauzim. Note also that the Tree of Knowledge which
Adam ate of, was by tradition an Apple-Tree. The wail-
ing of this unhappy Bard can have no other reference
than to his expulsion from the confraternity for having
disclosed a secret. We are told by one who deeply
studied the subject, that the Secret of the Mysteries was
never revealed but by some persons who thereby became
instantly devoted to death and the public execration
(Meurs in Eleus, cap. xx); for the loss of life and the con-
fiscation of property did not satisfy the law: a column,
exposed to every eye, perpetuated the memory of their
crime and punishment. Opinion more strong than law
repressed the guilty. Horace, who was parcus deorum
cultor et infrequens, says,
Vetabo qui Cereris sacrum
Vulgarit arcanæ, sub isdem
Sit trabibus, fragilemve mecum
Solvat phaselum.—Lib. iii. 2, 26.
Æschylus, accused of having revealed some part of the
Mysteries, only escaped from popular resentment by
proving that he had not been Initiated.—Clem. Strom. ii.
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38 THE BOOK OF GOD.
416. A reward was offered for the head of Diagoras.

We find in Plutarch an account of all that befel Alcibia-
des in consequence of having imitated the ceremonies of
the Mysteries. Aristotle was accused of impiety by the
Hierophant, under pretence that he had profaned the
Mysteries of Ceres in sacrificing after the rites of Eleusis
to Pythias. In consequence of this accusation, Aristotle
retired to Chalcis, in Eubœa, where he died. Diog. Laert.
in Aristot. They say too, says Pausanias, that a certain
person once, among the number of those who are forbid-
den to enter the Adytum (Tabernacle) and who indeed
was a profane man, when the pile was enkindled, through
curiosity and boldness, entered the Adytum; that all
parts of it appeared to him to be full of spectres (ante p. 36);
and that on his returning to Titheræa, as soon as he had
related all that he had seen, he died. I have heard
things similar to these of a certain Phœnician. They say
that the Egyptians celebrate the festival of Isis in that
part of the year in which she bewails Osiris, and that
then the Nile begins to ascend; and that the vulgar of
the natives say that the tears of Isis cause the Nile to
increase, and irrigate the fields. At that time, therefore,
a certain Roman, who was the prefect of Egypt, persuaded
a man, for a sum of money, to enter into the Adytum of Isis
in Coptos. This man returned indeed, but died as soon as
he had told what he had seen. Phocics, xxxii. No wonder,
therefore, that the Cymric bard should have confessed his
unhappiness for having in some hasty moment revealed
what should have been unspoken.
35. The difficulty of discovering in ancient writ any-
thing really authentic as to the true nature of the
primeval Mysteries I have already shown to be consider-
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able. What they originally were it is not possible by

any existing documents to prove—we can only get
glimpses here and there; by examining these some light
however will be thrown upon the past. In later times,
when we receive most information, the Mysteries had
greatly degenerated: they were as unlike their original
as the present system of Freemasonry is unlike its
parent. Writers who were not initiated pretended that
they were; and they help greatly to mislead. Pausanias
is one of these. It was my intention indeed, he says,
to have related every particular about the Temple at
Athens, which is called Eleusinian, but I was restrained
from the execution of this design by a vision in a dream.
I shall therefore return to such particulars as it is law-
ful to disclose. (i. 14.) In the course of his journeyings,
however, he meets with circumstances and persons which
lead him away, unconsciously as it were, from the rule
which he had laid down. Thus, in his description of
the Temple of Polias, [Boli, the Gods: As, or Asa, the
Holy Spirit] the following singular narrative occurs,
which is evidently connected with the sacred Theba, and
the symbols which it contained, and with the Eleusi-
nian Mysteries. There are two Virgins, he says, that
dwell not far from the Temple of Polias, and who are
called by the Athenians, Canephoræ [reed-bearers, see
A , section 50]. These Virgins for a certain
time dwell with the goddess; and when the festive day
arrives, they carry on their heads in the night, certain
things which the priestess orders them to take: the
priestess at the same time neither knowing what she gives
them, nor the Virgins what they carry. But there is a
certain enclosure in the city, not far from that which is
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40 THE BOOK OF GOD.
called the Enclosure of Venus in the Gardens, and in this

there is a natural subterranean descent. Into this cave
the Virgins descend, leave behind them the things which
they carried, and take up some other concealed thing in
its stead. These Virgins are from that time dismissed,
and other Virgins are led to the town in their stead. i. 27.
I entertain, however, grave doubts whether Pausanias
himself was ever Initiated into the Higher Mysteries,
though he frequently insinuates that he was. He may
have been a novice in the Lesser, and have picked up a
small smattering of the mystic science. The following
passage again mentions the stale device of being forbidden
by a dream to state something which he seems not to
understand. In this place too, he says, a threshing floor
is shewn which is called by the name of Triptolemus, and
an altar which is sacred to him. But I am forbid by a
dream from relating the particulars contained within the
sacred wall; and indeed, though I were not prohibited in
this manner, yet it is well known, even to the uninitiated
that it is unlawful to hear what it is not proper to behold,
1. xxxviii. This threshing-floor alludes to the wine-press
in the Apocalypse, section 51; and the sacred wall
through which it was prohibited to enter, symbolized
those secret inner circles which are alluded to, as being
entered only by the Divine Messenger, in section 23 of
that celestial Volume; and again mystically in section
49, where the Ark of the Covenant is spoken of as being
concealed behind it. So we read that Ceres has her
throne in Virgo, and Hermes his house and his exalta-
tion. In the left foot of Virgo is the bright star Vinde-
miatrix, the grape-gatherer (see A , sections 33
and 51); and just below her feet the star Janus, or the
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Messenger. In another part of the travels we read thus:

In this road there is a temple of no great magnitude,
which is called the Temple of Cyanitas. But I
cannot affirm with certainty whether this person first
of all sowed beans, or whether the Temple was deno-
minated out of reverence to some hero, because it is not
lawful to ascribe the invention of beans to Ceres. But
he that has been Initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries, or
has read the poems called Orphic will know what I mean.
(Attics xxxvii). The ignorance which this writer betrays
of many of the symbols and mythological types in the
course of his work, may possibly have been design on his
part, to hide from the vulgar, secrets which he was bound
to keep; though I confess, after two or three careful
perusals of him, this is not my opinion; but I really
think he was himself unacquainted with the more abstruse
mysteries. There is one passage which, as he passes it
by without comment, is to me almost conclusive that he
knew little or nothing on the subject. It is in the Mes-
senics; where he speaks of one Lycus (a Wolf) who in-
stituted for the Thebans the Mysteries of the Cabiri; and
near an enclosure belonging to the Lycomedæ [Lycos-
Omid. See Part I., pp. 37, 93, 260, 261] dedicated an
image, with an inscription. This inscription ran thus.
I have purified the abodes and paths of Hermes, the Father,
and of the first-born Virgin,—a clear allusion to the
Triad; or God, the Holy Spirit, and the Messenger; and
which, connected as it directly is with the symbolic-
named introducer of the Mysteries into Messene, shews
that the great doctrine contained in the Apocalypse was,
in fact, the leading truth in the sacred rites which he so
well understood. Had Pausanias really known what it
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42 THE BOOK OF GOD.
meant, he would probably have not transcribed it into

his work.
36. There are, however, amid the darkness, clear and
brilliant flashes of light, which occasionally illume our
path; and certain prominent facts stand forth like stars
to guide us in the way that lies before. First of these in
point of time, and not last in importance, is this one,
that even in the corrupt days none but persons of high
and pure character were admitted to a knowledge of the
Greater Mysteries. It was not, of course, always possible
to exclude conquerors like Alexander and Augustus (10);
but where such influences did not prevail, it is certain
that the Mysteries were revealed only to the virtuous and
wise of the earth. From the whole concurrent testimony
of ancient history, says a writer in Chambers’s Journal,
for Oct., 1832, we must believe that the Eleusinian Mys-
teries were used for good purposes; for there is not an
instance on record that the honour of Initiation was ever
obtained by a very bad man. The hierophants, the higher
priests of the order, were always exemplary in their
morals, and became sanctified in the eyes of the people.
The high priesthood of this order in Greece was continued
in one family, the Eumolpidæ, for ages. In this they
resembled both the Egyptians and the Jews. The Eleu-
sinian mysteries in Rome took another form, and were
called the rites of Bona Dea. All the distinguished
Roman authors speak of these rites, and in terms of pro-
found respect. Horace denounces the wretch who should
attempt to reveal the secrets of these rites; and Cicero
alludes to them with reverence. Both the Greeks and
Romans punished any insult offered to these. Mysteries
with the most persevering vindictiveness. Alcibiades
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was charged with insulting these religious rites; and

although the proof of his offence was quite doubtful, yet
he suffered for it for years in exile and misery: and it
must be allowed that he was the most popular man of his
age. And this universal opinion of their sanctity neces-
sarily excluded from the honour of Initiation all whose
lives were not in accordance with the institution to which
they sought admittance, and proves as well the purity of
the Rites themselves. And as there were no less than
four stages of probation, or purification, it would have
been impossible for any wicked men to get to final Initia-
tion. These four stages are described by Taliesin. I was
exercised, he says, by Math, before I became immortal;
I was exercised by Gwidion, the great purifier of the
Brython, of Eurowys, of Euron and Medron, of the mul-
titude of scientific teachers, children of Math. When
the removal took place, I was exercised by the sovereign,
when he was half consumed. By the Sage of sages was
I exercised in the primitive world, at which time I had a
being. Davies’ Druids, p. 541. And being thus difficult
of access, and open only to the pure, we naturally infer
that they were august and holy in design.
37. The Mysteries, says a learned writer in Valpy’s
Classical Journal, were intended, amongst the gentile
nations, to supply the place of the sacred history amongst
the Jews; but their intent was soon lost. They were
intended to record the history of the infant world, of the
means by which mortality was introduced on earth, and
the promise of a future salvation from the consequences
which followed. This history was represented equally in
the recesses of Eleusis, in the Italic groves, and in the
Egyptian temple, in the dark Mithratic cavern, and in
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44 THE BOOK OF GOD.
the caves of India. From it originated, after its first

import had been forgotten, the various deities of gentile
worship, although their source has been so manifestly
obscured in their passage from one people to another.
Greece was proverbially the mother of fable; in her theo-
logy every appellation, which various tribes of people had
given to the same deity, has found a place as a separate
divinity. Vol. 40, pp. 286. And this mongrel theology,
it may be added, is the source of many evils; it was so
well understood of old as to give Greece its name of
Græcia mendax; but here in Europe we take it all for
true. See Part I., page 101.
38. The ancients had the most exalted curiosity after
divine knowledge; and the most august notions of
the Divine Vision of Truth. To these they hoped to
be admitted by the purificatory course enjoined on all
who were fully Initiated. They believed that the Spirit,
though prisoned in the flesh, and to some extent dark-
ened by the Lethean draught, nevertheless retained all
its pristine ante-natal powers; and that they only needed
opportunity and development. For as the Sun, says
Plutarch, does not shine, only when it passes from
among the clouds, but has always been radiant, and has
only appeared dim and obscured by vapours, so the soul
does not receive the power of looking into futurity, only
when it passes from the body as from a cloud, but has
possessed it always, though dimmed by connection with the
earthly. Hence their ardent following after Truth; hence
their grand sublime theology; hence that asceticism, so
ridiculed by the present age of sensuals. Whoever, says
Plato, has elevated himself to Truth, that is, above that
which is without change, without creation, and without
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decay, lives truly and according to the Divine Nature.

And again, he says: “We may read God through our
soul; we may approach and regard Him; and this contem-
plation fills us with the highest and truest pleasure and
makes us happy. The theorems of religion, says
Iamblichus, are to be enjoyed as much as possible, as if
they were ambrosia and nectar; for the pleasure arising
from them is genuine, incorruptible, and divine. They
are also capable of producing magnanimity; and though
they cannot make us everlasting beings, yet they enable
us to obtain a scientific knowledge of everlasting natures.
The mind, say Porphyry, must be purified, if it is to
become participant of the Vision of God and his Messen-
gers. There are good and bad spirits; the good conduct
everything to healing, insure our health, and assist us in
our business and exertions. Man may unite his soul to
God. To this end, adds the Sage, there requires no sacri-
fice except a perfectly pure mind. Through the highest
purity and chastity we shall approach nearer to God, and
receive, in the contemplation of Him, the true knowledge
and insight. Divinity always illuminates us, says Xeno-
crates, but the blessed light is not always perfectly
received, on account of matter, and the perturbations
arising from human affairs, through which we suffer per-
petual molestation. For by how much purer our soul is
when we pray to God, by so much greater is our apti-
tude to receive from Him, the good, beautiful, and just
things which are the objects of our wish.
39. Plutarch, who had studied the Mysteries with care,
though he had never been able to penetrate within the
veiled Sanctuary, in his tract on Isis and Osiris, does
not fail to confess how ennobling were the ordinances
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46 THE BOOK OF GOD.
which our modem priests have so defamed. To desire,

therefore and covet after truth, he says to Clea, and more
especially those truths which respect the Divine Nature,
is to aspire to be partakers of that Nature itself, and to
profess that all our studies and enquiries are devoted to
the acquisition of holiness; an employment surely more
truly religious than any external purifications or mere
service of the temple can be. But more particularly must
such a disposition of mind be highly acceptable to that
Goddess to whose service you are dedicated, whose espe-
cial characteristics are wisdom and meditation, and whose
name itself seems to express the peculiar relation which
she bears to science. For Isis, according to the Greek
interpretation of the word, means Knowledge. . . . that
holy doctrine, which the Goddess collects, compiles, and
deliveres to those who aspire after the most perfect par-
ticipation of the Divine Nature: a doctrine which by
commanding a steady perseverance in one uniform and
temperate course of life, and an abstinence from particu-
lar kinds of food, as well as from all indulgence of the
carnal appetite, restrains the intemperate and voluptuous
part within due bounds, and at the same time habituates
her votaries to undergo those austere and rigid ceremo-
nies which their religion obliges them to observe. The end
of all which is that by these means they may be the better
prepared for the attainment of the knowledge of the First
and Supreme Mind, whom the Goddess exhorts them to
search after, as dwelling near and constantly residing with
her. For this reason is her temple, in the same language
called Iseion, alluding to that knowledge of the Eternal
and Self-Existent Being, which may be there obtained if
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it be properly approached with due purity and sanctity of

manners. See Part I., pp. 21, 25, 26.
40. The natural weakness of the soul in its state of
lapse to ascend to a full contemplation of Divinity, and
the necessity therefore that it should resort to the purifi-
catory means which were so essential a part of the Mys-
teries, that by their aid it might be strengthened in its
energies, is thus alluded to by Theophrastus. To a certain
extent, he says, we are able to survey The Principles
(τας Αρχας), through Cause, deriving assistance for this
purpose from our senses. But when we pass on to the
Summits and the Firsts (τα ακρα καì πρωτα) we are no
longer able to do this [i.e., to survey them through cause]:
either because they have no cause, or because of our weak-
ness, which hinders us from gazing on essences the most
splendid. And in allusion to the same imbecility of fallen
man, Aristotle says: Ωσπερ γαρ καì τα των νυκτεριδων
ομματα προς το φεγγος εχει το μεθ’ ἡμεραν, ὁυτω καì της
ἡμετερας ψυχης ὁ νους προς τα τη φυσει φανερωτατα παντων.
For as the eyes of bats are to the light of day, so is the under-
standing of our soul to such things as are in their nature
the most splendid-shining of all. The same elevated
conceptions, notwithstanding the assertions of moderns as
to the atheism of Aristotle, form his leading tenets. To
those who entered into the school of Aristotle, says the Em-
peror Julian, this was proclaimed prior to every thing else,
that they should be pious to the Gods, should have been
instructed in all the Mysteries, and initiated in the most
holy teletæ (Orat. vii. p. 400). And it was by the perpetual
contemplation of these magnificent truths, and a constant
usage of their souls to this heroical exercise in the palæs-
tra of philosophy that ancient wisdom reached a glorious
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48 THE BOOK OF GOD.
elevation, and from the sun-crowned summits, diffused over

the earth the burning light of knowledge (11).
A further Elucidation of the High Purport of the

Mysteries.
41. The Mysteries, says Faber, displayed the lapse of

the soul from original purity into a state of darkness,
confusion, and ignorance. They affected to teach the
Initiated how they might emerge from this state;
how they might recover what had been lost; how they
might exchange darkness for illumination; how they
might pass from the gloom of error into the splendid bright-
ness of a regained Paradise. They claimed to confer
upon the epoptæ the glorious privilege of seeing things
clearly, whereas before, they were floundering in a turbid
chaos of error and misapprehension. Sometimes the hero-
god entered into the womb of his Great Mother, and was
regenerated or born again into a new state of existence
when he quitted it: on this occasion he was depicted as
an infant, or shadowed out as an old man acquiring the
vigour of a second youth. Sometimes he died out of one
world and was received into another: his entrance into
it was a descent into the infernal regions, and his rites
assumed a funereal aspect, until he was joyfully hailed as
one restored from death to life. Sometimes he was lost
or invisible, but at length was found again; it was the
business of the aspirants to seek for him with mimic
anxiety, nor to rest satisfied until his discovery was an-
nounced. Sometimes he was exposed to great danger,
and underwent the most appalling labours, but in due
time was happily liberated from his peril and his bondage;
then the Mystæ, after his calamities had been sufficiently
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bewailed, were exhorted to rejoice and be of good cheer,

because their god was saved. At the commencement of
a new age he awoke from his slumber; all was confusion
and disorder while he slept; all was joy and harmony
when he roused himself. The hero-god [the Messiah] was
born again out of the Moon: hence every epoptes, or
initiated member, was said to be a Child of the Moon,
because the Messiah was in truth his spiritual father; and
they were shewn also that all human souls had thus been
born from certain doors or gates in the Sun and Moon—
a remarkable symbol of the heavenly origin of every
living being from God the Father and the Sacred Spirit.
The Mysteries, in short, treated throughout of a grand
and total regeneration—a regeneration which alike
respected the whole world, and every individual part
or member of the world.
42. Part of the shews, says Taylor, consisted in a
representation of the Infernal, and he cites a fragment of
Pindar preserved by Clemens Alexandrinus: ἀλλα καì
Πινδαρος περι των εν Ελευσινι μυστηριων λεγων επιφερει.
Ολβιος ὁστις ιδων εκεινα κοινα εις ὑποχθονια, ὀιδεν μεν
βιου τελευταν, οιδεν δε Διος δοτον αρχαν. i.e.; But Pindar
speaking of the Eleusinian Mysteries, says: blessed is he,
who seeing those common concerns under the earth, knows
both the end of life and the given empire of Zeus.
Stromata lib. iii. These passages allude to the appalling
spectacles presented by the Apocalypse, sections 34, 35,
36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 54, 56, 60, where sights
and sounds that may well be called Infernal were de-
veloped before the eyes of the Epopts.
43. The shews of the Lesser Mysteries, adds our
Platonist were designed by the ancient theologists, their
D
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50 THE BOOK OF GOD.
founders, to signify occultly the condition of the impure

soul invested with a terrene body and merged in a mate-
rial nature; or, in other words, to signify that such a soul
in the present life might be said to die, as far as it is possible
for soul to die, and that on the dissolution of the present
body, while in a state of impurity, it would experience a
death still more durable and profound. That the soul
indeed, till purified by philosophy, suffers death through
its union with the body, was obvious to the philologist
Macrobius, who, not penetrating the secret depth of the
ancients, concluded from hence that they signified nothing
more than the present body by their descriptions of the
infernal abodes. But this is manifestly absurd, since it
is universally agreed that all the antient theological poets
and philosophers inculcated the doctrine of a future state
of rewards and punishments in the most full and decisive
terms; at the same time occultly intimating that the
death of the soul was nothing more than a profound
union with the ruinous bonds of the body. Indeed, if
these wise men believed in a future state of retribution,
and at the same time considered a connection with body
as the death of the soul, it necessarily follows that
the soul’s punishment and subsistence hereafter is nothing
more than a continuation of its state at present, and a
transmigration, as it were, from sleep to sleep, and from
dream to dream. But let us attend to the assertions of
those divine men concerning the soul’s conjunction with
a material nature. And, to begin with Heraclitus, speak-
ing of souls unembodied: we live, says he, their death,
and we die their life. Plato, too, it is well known, con-
sidered the body as the sepulchre of the soul; and, in the
Cratylus, consents with the doctrine of Orpheus, that the
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soul is punished through its union with the body. This

was likewise the opinion of the celebrated Pythagorean
Philolaus, as is evident from the following remarkable
passage in the Doric dialect preserved by Clemens Alex-
andrinus in Stromat. iii. 413. The ancient theologists
and priests, he says, also testify that the Soul is united
with the Body for the sake of suffering punishment and
that it is buried in body as in a sepulchre. And lastly,
Pythagoras himself confirms the above sentiments when
he beautifully observes, according to Clemens in the
same book, that, whatever we see when awake is death,
and when asleep, a dream. But that the Mysteries
occultly signified this sublime truth, that the soul by
being merged in matter, resides among the dead both
here and hereafter, though it follows by a necessary
consequence from the preceding observations, yet it is
indisputably confirmed by the testimony of Plotinus in
Ennead. 1, lib. viii. p. 80. When the soul, says he, has
descended into generation, she participates of evil, and
profoundly rushes into the region of dissimilitude, to be
entirely merged in which is nothing more than to fall in
dark mire. And again, soon after, he adds: The soul,
therefore, dies through vice, as much as it is possible for
the soul to die; and the death of the soul is while
merged or baptized as it were in the present body to de-
scend into matter, and be filled with its impurity, and after
departing from this body, to lie absorbed in its filth, till it
returns to a superior condition, and elevates its eye from
the overwhelming mire. For to be plunged in matter is
to descend into Hades and there fall asleep. This pas-
sage, doubtless alludes to the beautiful story of Cupid
and Psyche, in which Psyche is said to fall asleep in
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52 THE BOOK OF GOD.
Hades, and this through rashly attempting to behold

corporeal beauty; and the observations of Plotinus will
enable the profound and contemplative reader to unfold
the greater part of the mysteries contained in this ele-
gant fable. But prior to Plotinus, Plato, in the seventh
book of his Republic, asserts that such as are unable in
the present life to perceive the idea of the good, will
descend to Hades after death, and fall asleep in its dark
abodes. He who is not able by the exercises of his reason
to define the idea of the Good, separating it from all
other objects, and piercing, as in a battle, through
every kind of argument; endeavouring to confute, not
according to opinion, but according to essence, and pro-
ceeding through all these dialectical energies with an un-
shaken reason—he who cannot accomplish this, would you
not say that he neither knew the good itself, nor anything
which is properly denominated good? And would you
not assert that such a one, when he apprehends any cer-
tain image of reality, apprehends it rather through the
medium of opinion than of science; that, in the present
life, he is sunk in sleep and conversant with the delusions
of dreams, and that before he is roused to a vigilant state
he will descend to Hades, and be overwhelmed with a
sleep perfectly profound?
44. In the above passage of Plotinus, continues Taylor,
the reader may observe that the obscure doctrine of the
Mysteries mentioned by Plato in the Phædo, that the
unpurified soul in a future state lies merged in mire, is
beautifully explained; at the same that an assertion con-
cerning their secret meaning is no less solidly confirmed.
In a similar manner the same philosopher in his book on
the Beautiful, Ennead 1, lib. 6, explains the fable of
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Narcissus as an emblem of one who rushes to the contem-

plation of sensible forms as if they were perfect realities,
when at the same time they are nothing more than like
beautiful images appearing in water, fallacious and vain.
Hence, says he, as Narcissus, by catching at the shadow,
merged himself in the stream and disappeared, so he who
is captivated by beautiful bodies, and does not depart from
their embrace, is precipitated, not with his body, but with
his soul, into a darkness profound and horrid to intellect;
through which becoming blind, both here and in Hades,
he converses with nothing but shadows. So that from
all that has been said, we may fairly conclude with
Ficinus, whose words are as express to our purpose as
possible: Lastly, says he, I may comprehend the opinion
of the antient theologists on the state of the soul after
death in a few words: they considered things divine as
the only realities, and that all others were only the images
and shadows of truth. Hence they asserted that prudent
men, who earnestly employed themselves in divine con-
cerns, were above all others in a vigilant state. But that
imprudent men who pursued objects of a different nature,
being laid asleep as it were, were only engaged in the
delusions of dreams: and that, if they happened to die
in this sleep, before they were roused, they would be
afflicted with similar and still sharper visions in a future
state. And that as he, who in this life pursued realities,
would, after death, enjoy the highest truths, so he who
was conversant with fallacies, would hereafter be tor-
mented with fallacies and delusions in the extreme: and
as the one would be delighted with true objects of enjoy-
ment, so the other would be tormented with delusive
semblances of reality. The whole of this doctrine is
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54 THE BOOK OF GOD.
derived, as may be seen, from the Apocalypse, which

speaks of the lapse of spirits, as the first death. Several
ancient writers use very remarkable language concerning
this point. According to Hierocles there is a meadow
of destruction, and a meadow of truth. The desire of
fleeing from the one impels the soul towards the other;
but stripped of her plumage, she is precipitated from it,
and enters into an earthly body deprived of her former
happy state. This deplumation of the soul he after-
wards styles in plain terms, a flight or apostacy from
God: and he says that it is the same as the Platonic de-
scent or lapse of the soul, through some great calamity
which she has experienced. Most men, he observes, are
bad, and are by the violence of their passions bowed down
to the earth. But this evil they have brought upon them-
selves by their voluntary apostacy from God, and by their
withdrawing themselves from that communion with Him
which they once in pure light enjoyed. The reality of such
a mental alienation from the Supreme Being, is proved by
our strong tendency towards the earth; and our sole deli-
verance from this state of spiritual degradation is our
return unto Him. Plato in a similar manner speaks of
the bondage of the soul, and laments as its worst misfor-
tune that it not only disregarded its captivity, but lent its
own assistance to rivet the chain. And he tells us that he
had been informed by the wise that we are now dead, and
that the body is no more than the soul’s sepulchre. There
can be no question whatever that the whole essence and
substance of this is derived from the Apocalypse.
45. The exclusion of the bad from the honours of
Initiation, we now see, was necessary for two reasons:
firstly, to maintain the character of the society; secondly,
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to preserve the secrecy on matters of theology most pro-

found in essence, which was requisite. In the purity of life
which had previously distinguished the aspirants to the
distinction of novitiate, a pledge was given that the con-
fidence which might be reposed would not be recklessly
violated; while to guard still further against the risk of
danger, oaths of the most solemn and impressive nature
were imposed upon the candidate; so that he who broke
them was ever after regarded as the most infamous of
wretches, worthy of an ignominious death, and an outlaw
from all honourable society. Hence the silent awe with
which Herodotus who really had been Initiated, is always
struck, when he approaches the confines of sacred things:
hence the holy reverence which ever seems to interfere in
the philosophic musings of the Past, between the keen
desire which actuates the writer to propound some vene-
rated truth, and the reserve with which he is conscious
his pen should be guarded lest, in revealing aught, he
might even accidentally disclose what was ever forbidden
to be made known.
A Glance at the Internal Nature of the Mysteries.
46. The first and most important secret of the Myste-

ries was, of course, that which is the grand truth in the
Universe—the absolute unity of God, and His Eternal
Nature, apart from all other existences [see A ,
sections 32, 40, 46, 47, 70]. The second was the existence
of the Holy Spirit, the Rainbow Virgin of Heaven [Part
I., pp. 28, 170, 264, 464, 511] and the blessed medium
by which all creation was made manifest. The third was
the ordinance of the Naronic cycle, the Secret of God, and
its Messenger. There were others of a minor nature,
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56 THE BOOK OF GOD.
which will be alluded to as we proceed, and which were

in part communicated to those who were admitted to the
Lesser Mysteries. But the three great and fundamental
truths, of which I have above spoken, were revealed only
to those initiated in the Greater. The Lesser Mysteries
were not instituted in their popular sense by Adam, or
his cotemporaries, nor were they known till long after;
though there was a certain probationary interval before
either the First Messenger or his successors initiated
into that species of knowledge which was called teles-
tic, or the perfect, men whom they deemed worthy to par-
ticipate in the full Revelation of the Most High. The
great founder of the Lesser Mysteries was Enoch, whose
name, Henoch, ‫חניך‬, in its primary meaning conveys the
idea of Initiation. See Clas. Journ. xv. 4. This is con-
firmed by a tradition preserved by Epiphanius, who says
that Inachus (Enoch) was the founder of the Mysteries,
(Adv. Hæres, i. 9) though of which order, the Greater or
the Lesser, he does not say.
47. And as it was anciently known that the First
Messenger beheld the splendid glories of the Apocalypse,
not in the day-time, but in the night, when all the sap-
phire heaven was radiant with fiery splendours; hence it
happened that the more sublime and solemn ceremonies
of the Mysteries were performed at night. A dim tra-
dition of this still prevails in the Orient, where, indeed,
alone all traditionary truth is to be sought for. The
Chinese, says Vallancey, begin their day at midnight,
because they say the Chaos was unfolded at that hour.
But Chaos, as we shall see, was a mystical name for AO,
or God and the Holy Spirit: and as the Apocalypse may
be considered as the unfolding or unveiling of these
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Mighty Essences, hence the tradition of its having

happened in the night. The night Leilith-al-Kadr, says
D’Ohsson, is considered as being particularly consecrated
to Ineffable Mysteries. There is a prevailing opinion that
a thousand secret and invisible prodigies are performed on
this night; and that all inanimate beings then pay their
adoration to God. It has not, however, pleased Him to
reveal it to the faithful; but it is universally agreed that
sometimes on this night the firmament opens for a moment
or two, and the Glory of God appears visible to the eyes of
those who are so happy as to behold it: at which juncture
whatever is asked of God by the fortunate beholders of
the mysteries of that critical moment, is infallibly granted.
This night is thus alluded to in the Korân. I translate
the passage which has been misinterpreted by Sale, who
blindly follows Marraccius.
Verily we descended upon him in the night Al-Kadr.
And wouldst thou know what the night Al-Kadr is?
The night Al-Kadr is better than a thousand months.
Therein do the Messengers descend, and the Spirit by the
permission of the Lord of all things;
It is peace until the rising of the dawn.
Here it will be seen are allusions which accord with this

Book: the Mahommedan commentators have confused
and even perverted the passage by their glosses into an
exclusive reference to the Korân. But it has a wider
comprehension, and conveys the almost universal tradi-
tion that it was at night the First Messenger beheld the
Visions of God: and that it is on a night equally favoured
that the successive Messengers of Truth appear from
heaven.
48. The Lesser Mysteries, says Banier, served as a
preparation for the greater ones, which were celebrated at
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58 THE BOOK OF GOD.
Eleusis; and by their means persons were initiated into

the secret ceremonies of Ceres. After having passed
through a good many trials, the person was Mystes, that
is, qualified for being very soon initiated into the Greater
Mysteries, and to become Epoptes, or the witness of the
most secret Mysteries; which was not procured till after
five years’ probation, during which he might enter into
the Vestibule of the Temple, but not into the Sanctuary.
And even when he was Epoptes, and enjoyed that privi-
lege, there were still many things the knowledge whereof
was reserved to the priests alone. When one was Initia-
ted, he was introduced by night into the Temple, after
having his hands washed at the entry, and a crown of myrtle
put upon him. Then was opened a little box, wherein
were the Laws of Ceres and the ceremonies of her Myste-
ries; and after having given him these to read, he was
made to transcribe them. A slight repast succeeded this
ceremony; after which the Mystes entered into the Sanc-
tuary, the priest drew the veil, and then all was darkness
in the twinkling of an eye. A bright light succeeded, and
exhibited to view the statue of Ceres magnificently adorned;
and while they were attentive in considering it, the light
again disappeared, and all was once more wrapped in pro-
found darkness. The peals of thunder that were heard,
the lightnings that flashed from all hands (12), and a
thousand monstrous figures that appeared on all sides,
filled the Initiated with horror and consternation; but
the next moment a calm succeeded, and there appeared
in broad daylight a charming meadow, where all came to
dance and make merry together. It is probable that this
meadow was in a place inclosed with walls behind the
sanctuary of the Temple, which they opened all of a
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sudden, when the daylight was let in; and this scene ap-
peared the more agreeable that it succeeded a night when
nothing but doleful and hideous objects were to be seen.
There it was that all the secrets of the Mysteries were
revealed; there, according to some authors, the most
unbounded licentiousness reigned; the Myllos was there
exhibited, which the Sicilians bore about in the Feasts of
Ceres; and Tertullian adds, the Phallus of the Egyptians.
But after all, adds the Abbe, as if half ashamed of his
priestly predecessors in falsehood, we know not well what
passed there, these Mysteries having long been kept an
impenetrable secret; and had it not been for some liber-
tines who got themselves initiated in order to divulge
them, they had never been brought to light. This much
is true, that the greatest modesty, and even a pretty
severe chastity was exacted from the Mystæ and women
who presided over the feasts of this Goddess. The purifi-
cations and oblations that were there practised, would
make one imagine they were not so dissolute as some
authors have alleged; unless we will say that the abuses
which the fathers of the church speak of were not in
the primitive institution, but had only crept into them
afterwards. The night being spent in these ceremonies,
the priest dismissed the assembly with some barbarous
words—Conx, Aum, Pax, [See post, note 4], which shews
that they had been instituted by a people who spoke
another language.
49. It may be said, says Theo of Smyrna, that philoso-
phy is the initiation into and the tradition of real and
true Mysteries. But of initiation there are five parts.
That which has the precedency indeed, and is the first, is
purification. For the Mysteries are not to be imparted
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60 THE BOOK OF GOD.
to all that are willing to be initiated, but some persons

are excluded by the voice of the Cryer (A , sec-
tion 64) such as those whose hands are not pure, and
whose speech is inarticulate. It is also necessary that
those who are not excluded from initiation, should first
undergo a certain purification. But the second thing
after purification is the tradition of the Mystery. The
third thing is denominated inspection. And the fourth,
which is the end of inspection, is binding the head and
placing on it crowns; so that he who is Initiated is now
able to deliver to others the Mysteries which he has
received, whether it be the mystery of a torch-bearer, or
of the interpretation of the sacred ceremonies, or of some
other priesthood. But the fifth thing which results from
these, is the felicity which arises from being dear to
Divinity and the associate of the Gods. Conformably to
these things likewise is the tradition of political doctrines.
And in the first place a certain purification is requisite,
such as that of the exercise from youth in appropriate
disciplines. For Empedocles says, It is necessary to be
purified from defilement by drawing from five fountains
in a vessel of unmingled brass. How wonderfully all
this accords with what is taught in the Apocalypse,
sections 44, 46, and 64, the most careless reader may
perceive.
50. It is probable, says Vallancey, describing one of
the Mithratic Caves in Ireland, that the votary was first
placed in the furthermost cave, where he had just room
to lie down, and was removed by degrees to the outward
cave. Here, I suppose, like the Persians, he was obliged
to undergo a fiery trial by passing seven times through
the Sacred Fire, and each time to plunge himself into
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cold water (13). Having undergone all these torturing

trials with becoming patience and fortitude, he was
declared a proper subject for initiation. He then went
through two baptisms, which washed from his soul the
stains he had contracted during the course of his life prior
to initiation; and having offered bread and water, with a
certain form of prayer, a crown was presented to him on
the point of a sword, on which he was taught to answer,
Mithra is my crown. He was then obliged to bind him-
self by the most solemn oath, with terrible imprecations,
never to divulge one single article of all that had been
communicated to him in the course of his initiation. He
was then brought out of the cave into the semi-circular
porch, and the pyrrhic dance began. Collect. vi. 465.
In the Persian initiations here glanced at, the Arch-
magus informed the candidate at the moment of illumi-
nation, that the Divine Lights (AO and the Apocalypse)
were displayed before him; and he afterwards explained
the resplendent Light of Yezdan, as contrasted with the
gloomy Darkness of Ahriman, as we learn from H de
Relig. vet. Pers. p. 399. Jesus alludes to this, which he
doubtless saw in his own Initiation, when he says that
men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds
were evil. J iii. 19 (14). The peals of thunder, which
are so often mentioned as appertaining to the Mysteries,
allude to the Seven Thunders, and to the great physical
changes and revolutions which were exhibited.
51. The epoptæ (in the Mysteries) were supposed in-
variably, says Faber, to have experienced a certain rege-
neration (or new birth) by which they entered upon a
new state of existence, and were deemed to have acquired
a great increase of light and knowledge. Hitherto they
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62 THE BOOK OF GOD.
were exoteric and profane—now they became esoteric and

holy. . . . The rite itself consisted sometimes in the aspi-
rant’s being born, as it were, out of a small covered boat,
in which he had been previously committed to the mercy
of the ocean; sometimes in his being produced from the
image of a Cow, within which he had been first enclosed;
and sometimes in his coming forth through the door of a
dark rocky cavern or artificial stone cell, in which he had
been shut up during the time appointed by the Hiero-
phant. Pag. Idol, i. 28. The first progress of the postu-
lant appears to have been into a darkness broken only,
as we learn from Pletho, by the playing of a lurid flame,
and by occasional flashes of artificial lightning, which
served to render the gloom more horrible. Through such
darkness flitted at intervals many portentous phantoms.
Psellus tells us that in celebrating the Mysteries it was
usual to present before the initiated certain daimons of a
canine figure [Dog-headed Incarnations] and with them
many other appearances; and Chrysostom, speaking of
the ancient Orgies, remarks, that when the aspirant was
conducted within the Mystic Dome, he saw many strange
sights and heard many appalling voices; was alternately
affected by darkness and light, and beheld innumerable
things most fearful and most uncommon. The noises
which accompanied these phantoms, as well as the phan-
toms themselves, are at once alluded to and very fully
described by the poets Virgil and Claudian in their
account of an initiatory descent into Hades. Beneath
the feet the rocking earth seemed loudly to bellow;
above the head rolled the most astounding thunders. The
temple of the Cecropian goddess roared from its inmost
recesses [see A , section 49], the holy torches of
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Eleusis were waved on high. The Elysian fields into

which the Epoptæ were conducted after their fearful
march through the realms of death and darkness, were
distinguished also by the appellation of the Isles of the
Blessed, or the Sacred Fortunate Islands, and they were
variously said to be situated on the summit of a lofty
Mountain [Zion] in the orb of the Moon, and in the midst
of the all-pervading Ocean. What we are to understand
by these Elysian fields is told us very unreservedly in
the magic oracles of Chaldæa. The soul, after its various
migratory purgations, is there indifferently exhorted to
hasten to the luminous abode of the Great Father, from
whom it emanated, and to seek for Paradise; and accord-
ingly in the precise phraseology of the Mysteries, this
Paradise is explained by Pletho, as meaning the Holy
Spirit, who is the Ark of the Covenant, the universally
illuminated residence of the Soul, when regenerated. In
Plutarch’s vision of Timarchus every initiated soul which
is born into the world, is described as being born out of
a Moon; and in Porphyry’s Treatise on the Cave of the
Nymphs, the souls of men are similarly said to be born
out of a door in the side of the Moon, which on that
account was deemed the female president of generation.
All therefore who were regenerated, were born again from
the womb of the Great Mother,—the Sacred Spirit of
God: and to all such were revealed the magnificent visions
of the Apocalypse. See Part I, page 467.
62. In the Archæology of Wales, where the Eleusinian
Mysteries passed under the name of Ceridwen [the Holy
Spirit], we find traces of the oath which was imposed on
the aspirant. Arthur (the introducing priest, sometimes
called Lycos or a Wolf), and Cai, the suppliant for
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64 THE BOOK OF GOD.
admission, are represented as approaching the Gate of

the Sanctuary, which was guarded by the Hierophant;
and the following dialogue, in very obscure language and
uncouth orthography, is handed down as taking place
between them :—
A . What man is he that guards the gate?
H . The severe Hoary One with the wide
dominion. Who is the man that demands it?
A . Arthur and the blessed Cai.
H . What good attends thee, thou blessed
one, thou best man in the world? Into my house thou
canst not enter, unless thou will preserve.
C . I will preserve it, and that thou shalt behold:
though the Birds of Wrath should go forth, and the three
attendant Ministers should fall asleep, namely, the Child
of the Creator, Mabon the Child of Mydron, attendant
upon the wonderful Supreme Ruler, and Gwyn the Sove-
reign of those who descend from above.
H . Severe have my servants been in preserv-
ing their institutes. Manawydan, the son of Llyr, was
grave in his counsel. Manawyd truly brought a perfo-
rated shield from Trevryd; and Mabon, the child of
lightning stained the straw with clotted gore: and Anwas
the Winged, and the Ruler of the Lake were firm
guardians of the encircled Mount. These had preserved
them, and I rendered them perfect.
C . I solemnly announce, though all three should be
slain, when the privilege of the grove is violated, danger
shall be faced.
These passages must be understood as involving a very
solemn oath (15). The Aspirant introduced by the Mes-
siah, Ar-Thor (Part I, page 283), engages in the presence of
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the Hierophant, who personates God, to preserve the laws

of the Sanctuary, however he may be assaulted by enemies,
or deserted by his friends: whilst the Chief Priest de-
nounces in awful obscurity the inevitable ruin which will
attend the violation of the sacred engagement. And
after this oath had been tendered to the Mystæ, says an
ancient writer, we see commemorated the sad necessity by
which the Kosmos was reduced to its chaotic state. We
then celebrated Cronus [God], through whom the world,
after a term of darkness, enjoyed again αιθερα, Ether;
and through whom also was produced Eros, that two-fold
conspicuous and beautiful Being. This Eros was two-fold
AO, and also the Egyptian Man-Eros; it had many
mystic meanings, some of which will by and bye be
shewn.
53. We have seen in the foregoing that during the
performance of the Mystical Rites, the Hierophant, who
represented God, was attended by Three Ministers, the
Child of the Creator, Mabon, and Gwynn: after whom
he mentions Manawydan, the Son of Llyr (Waters),
whom I conceive to be Adam; Anwas the Winged, who
is Enoch; Manawyd, who is Fo-Hi; and the Ruler of
the Lake, who is Brigoo. The Child of the Creator I
believe to be the Holy Spirit; Mabon, the child of light-
ning, is a symbolic name for the Messenger, and Gwyn
(the Beautiful) means Nature and the Universe. And
as by the Hebrews the Biune God was called ‫ שרי‬Shadai,
the Almighty Ones (Job xxvii. 10); so the name was
commemorated in the Druidic mythology, where Saïdi is
the husband of Ceridwen. There is a certain conformity
in all this with the usages of the Greeks; for we know
that in the celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries four
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66 THE BOOK OF GOD.
priests officiated. The Hierophant represented the Great

Creator. This chief personage was called by the Greeks
Anactotelestes, or King of the Perfect Science. After
him came the Torch-bearer, who personated the Sun:
the Herald, who was regarded as a type of Mercury:
and the Minister of the Altar, who was venerated as
the symbol of the Moon. And in this way the conjunct-
ion of the Sun and Moon in the Naros was symbolized.
This Hierophant was also called Pater Sacrorum, and the
King; and in the Mithraic mysteries the Holy Spirit was
represented by a Virgin, who was called Mater Sacrorum;
the attendants were called Epimeletai, to whom were
added ten Hieropoii, who were sometimes called Korakes
or Ravens. All these sacred ministers wore crowns of
yew (Ieue, God, ‫ )יהיה‬and myrtle; were arrayed in pur-
ple robes, and each one carried a key suspended from his
shoulders. This was the Apocalyptic key (section 43),
and as it was used in the Vision for the purpose of opening
the Abyss, it thence became a symbol among the Greeks
of the infernal deities. (Pausanias Eliac, i. 20). This is
one of those wonderful coincidences which so frequently
occur, and which so conclusively help to prove the truth
of these disquisitions. The ceremony lasted for nine
days (being the period during which the Holy Spirit
Ceres was said to have sought her daughter), on each one
of which a secret was communicated. During these days
a triple purgation of the soul by air, by water, and by
fire, took place: and the winnowing instrument, or van of
Bacchus, seen in ancient Egyptian sculpture and painting,
typifies the purgation by air. These three forms of
purification are expressly mentioned in Matt. iii. I indeed
baptize you with water unto repentance; but he that
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cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am

not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and
he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat
into the garner: but he will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire—words that can leave no doubt that
this John, like Jesus, was an initiated Mystic.
64. A great many of these symbolic rites and cere-
monies took place, as I have said, in solemn darkness, or
in a sacred twilight, which is thus alluded to by Taliesin.
In the quadrangular enclosure, he says, in the Island with
the strong door [the Island of Anglesea and of the
Tylwith Têg], the twilight and the pitchy darkness were
mixed together, while bright wine was the beverage placed
before the narrow circle. This bright wine meant initia-
tion into full knowledge. Darkness, as we know, was
always honoured with peculiar marks of veneration for the
cause already mentioned, and also by reason of its supposed
priority of existence in God. This principle was some-
times identified even with the Great Mother herself, the
first born Light, who was supposed, until the fiat of God,
to have remained enveloped in the thickest shade of
darkness indescribable. At the same time, says Gebelin,
they used laurel, salt, barley, sea-water, and crowns of
flowers (Monde Primitif. iv. 318). They passed through
Fire, as the symbol of God, and through Water as the
symbol of the Holy Spirit; whence the hierophant, who was
charged with this office, had the name of Hydranos, or
the Baptist, the name given to John in the Paulite
gospel.
65. It was on entering the Lesser Mysteries that the
novices received a sacred mark, a X or a T ; the first
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68 THE BOOK OF GOD.
indicating that they were thenceforth servants of the

Messenger; the second being the monogram of the
Naronic Cycle of 600, in which each Messenger appears
(15). The cross, in symbolical language, because the
figure of a exhibits at the same time three primitive
letters, of which the word , or Light, is compounded,
a
became thus from the earliest ages a sign connected with

religion. Lux, it should be added, is a primitive radical
for Light and Truth; so the Egyptian Lux-Aur or
Luxor, the light of Fire. The initiated were marked
with this sign also when they were admitted into the
perfect Mysteries of Eleusis. We constantly see the Tau
and the Resh united thus aThese two letters in the old
Samaritan, as found on coins, stand, the first for 400, the
second for 200 = 600. This is the Staff of Osiris, where-
fore the Messengers were sometimes called the Staves of
God (See post). It is also the monogram of Osiris, and
has been adopted by the Christians, and is to be seen
in the churches in Italy in thousands of places. See
Basnage (Lib. iii. cap. xxiii), where several other instances
of this kind may be found. In Addison’s Travels in Italy,
there is an account of a medal, at Rome, of Constantius,
with this inscription: In hoc signo Victor eris : he
who is initiated into the Naronic Secret, or the 600, shall
be victor.
56. In the monkish tale of Oin, as given by Colgan,
we find analogous features to those which were main cha-
racteristics of the Mysteries. I cite it from General Val-
lancey, whose rare learning was not more honourable to
him than his devotion to the antiquities of a country
which has not even raised a monument above his remains.
The story symbolizes the descent into hell which the Mes-
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senger makes, and also the analogous descent in Initiation.

There was a certain cavalier, he says, called Oin [Oannes,]
an Irishman, who had for many years served in King
Stephen’s army, the fourth King of England after the
conquest. This man, having obtained license from the
king, came to the north of Ireland, his native country,
to visit his parents. And when he had reflected on the
wickedness of his life, he went to a certain bishop, and
confessed his sins. Oin then resolved to go into St.
Patrick’s purgatory. The bishop related to him how
many had perished in that place, but Oin, who never had
feared danger, would not be dissuaded: the bishop advised
him to take the habit of a canon regular, but Oin refused
till he should have gone into the Purgatory and returned.
He then marched boldly through the Cave though alone,
where he soon found himself involved in darkness. Soon
after a glimmering light appeared which led him to a hall,
in which there was no more light than we experience in
winter after sunset. This hall had no walls, but was
supported by pillars and arches: he then saw an en-
closure, into which having entered and sat down, fifteen
men in white garments (clad and shorn like monks) com-
ing in, saluted him, and instructed him how to proceed
when he should hereafter be tormented by demons in this
cave. Oin being left alone soon heard such a horrid noise,
that if all the men and all the living creatures on earth,
in sea, in air, had bellowed together, they could not have
equalled it, and immediately an innumerable multitude of
demons in various frightful shapes saluted him and wel-
comed him to their habitation; they then dragged him
through a vast region, dark and obscure, where blew a
burning wind that pierced the body: from thence he was
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70 THE BOOK OF GOD.
dragged towards the bounds of the earth, where the sun

rises at midday, and being come to the end of the world
they extended towards that part of the earth where the
sun rises at midnight: here Oin saw the first torments
of hell: men and women with fiery serpents round their
necks, others had vultures on their shoulders, driving
their bills into their hearts, and pulling out their hearts.
From thence he was conveyed to the penal field, where
he saw both sexes fastened to the ground with red-hot
iron spikes; from thence he was conveyed to another penal
field where he saw still more torture; from thence he was
carried to an iron wheel, the spokes and felloes of which
were armed with iron crooks set on fire, and on them
hung men fixed; from thence they dragged him towards
a certain house of an extraordinary breadth, and the
extremities of which were out of sight: this was the
house of sulphureous baths, which were so numerous and
close that no man could walk between them: here also
he saw both men and women bathing in great agony;
when on a sudden they conveyed him to an exceeding high
mountain where he saw several with their toes bent, look-
ing towards the north; and, while he was wondering what
they waited for, a whirlwind from the north rushed upon
and blew Oin, devils and all to the opposite side of the
mountain, into a river of most intolerable cold water;
from thence he was dragged towards the south, where he
saw a dreadful flame of sulphurous matter rising out of
a deep pit, vomiting up men and sparks of fire: the
demons informed him this was the entrance of hell, but
a new legion of demons appeared; and told him that was
not hell, but they would shew him the way over a lofty
bridge, the surface of which was so slippery no man could
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fix his foot on it. The courageous Oin boldly stepped on

the bridge, and found it neither slippery nor rough; but,
as the demons dared not venture on it with him, they
departed; and, when he had got clear over, he espied the
Elysian Fields. Here he discovers a beautiful palace,
from whence issued a more fragrant smell than if all the
earth had been turned to spice: the gate excelled the
brightness of the sun, from whence issued an orderly
procession composed of archbishops, bishops, abbots,
monks, priests, &c., &c., &c., clothed in the very sacred
apparel they were wont to wear on earth: they embraced
Oin and conducted him to the gate, when a concert of most
melodious music struck up. They then conducted him over
all the pleasant places of this new world, where night doth
never overshade the land: some wore crowns like kings:
others carried golden palms in their hands. When he had
satisfied his eyes and ears, the bishops comforted him, and
assuring him that their company encreased and decreased
daily, by some coming to them from the penal places while
others were carried away to the heavenly paradise, they
took him to the top of a high mountain, and requested to
know of him what colour the sky over his head appeared to
him to be of? Oin answered that it appeared to be of the
colour of gold in a fiery furnace; that, said the venerable
prelates, is the Gate of Paradise; by that gate we are
daily fed from heaven, and you shall taste of the food.
At this instant certain rays like flames of fire covered the
whole region, and splitting into smaller rays, sat upon
the heads of every one in the land, and at last on the
brave Chevalier Oin. They then told him he must quit
this delightful food, and immediately return the way he
came: the prelates conducted him to the Gates of Para-
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72 THE BOOK OF GOD.
dise, and shut him out; from whence he returned through

all the meanders he had travelled before, the demons not
daring to behold him, or speak to him till he came to the
last hall. Here he was advised to hasten to the mouth of
the Cave, and was informed that the sun now began to rise
on his country, and if he was not soon at the gate of the
cave by which he entered, the prior who kept the key
would look for him; and if he did not see him, would
despair of his salvation, lock the door and return to the
convent. However, Oin came in time, and was received
with joy into the prior’s arms. Collectanea iv. lxxxiii.
This name, Oin or Owen, was used by the Welsh
Druids also to signify a Messenger; wherefore we read:
In the form of a vibrating shield before the rising tumult,
borne aloft on the shoulder of the leader; in the form of
a lion before the chief with the mighty wings; in the
form of a terrible spear with a glittering blade; in the
form of a bright sword spreading fame in the conflict
and overwhelming the levelled ranks; in the form of
a Dragon before the sovereign of Britain, and in the
form of a daring wolf has Owen appeared. This ancient
fragment has been impudently assigned to the praise
of a Prince of Powis, when it unquestionably refers
to a Cabiric Messenger, and to his numerous appear-
ances in the spheres through which he descends to earth.
But these and a variety of similar incidents and coin-
cidences will be more fully made manifest when I publish
the Oracles of Enoch, the Second Messenger of God.
57. Near akin to this is a most curious legend from
the Isle of Man: it may be pronounced the very counter-
part of the story which Plutarch had from Demetrius,
respecting the sleep of the gigantic Cronus in an insular
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cavern on the coast of Britain; and I need scarcely repeat

that the sleeping Cronus is the same as the oriental
Buddha. Rushin Castle has certainly been erected on the
site of an ancient Druidical Sanctuary; for some remains
of this sanctuary appear to be still in existence. When
you have passed a little court of entrance (to adopt the
narrative of Waldron) you enter into a long winding
passage between two high walls, not much unlike what is
described as Rosamond’s labyrinth at Woodstock. The
extremity of it brings you to a room. A little farther is
an apartment, which has never been opened in the
memory of man. The persons belonging to the Castle
are very cautious in giving any reason for it; but the
natives, who are excessively superstitious, assign this:
that there is something of enchantment in it. They tell
you that the Castle was at first inhabited by fairies, and
afterwards by giants, who continued in possession of it
till the days of Merlin. He, by the force of magic,
dislodged the greater part of them, and bound the rest in
spells, which they believe will be indissoluble to the end of
the world. For a proof of this they tell you a very odd
story. They say there are a great number of fine apart-
ments under ground, exceeding in magnificence any of
the upper rooms. This is precisely the description which
Herodotus gives of the Egyptian labyrinth. Hist. lib. ii.
148. Several men, of more than ordinary courage, have,
in former times, ventured down to explore the secrets of
this subterraneous dwelling-place; but none of them ever
returned to give an account of what they saw. It was
therefore judged convenient that all the passages to it
should be kept continually shut, that no more might
suffer by their temerity. But about some fifty or fifty-five
E
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74 THE BOOK OF GOD.
years since, a person who had an uncommon boldness and

resolution never left soliciting permission to visit those
dark abodes. In fine he obtained his request, went down,
and returned by the help of a clue of pack-thread. He
brought this amazing discovery: After having passed
through a great number of vaults, he came into a long,
narrow place, which, the farther he penetrated, he
perceived he went more and more on a descent; till,
having travelled, as near as he could guess, for the space
of a mile, he began to see a little gleam of light, which,
though it seemed to come from a vast distance, yet was
the most delightful sight he had ever beheld in his life.
Having at length come to the end of that lane of
darkness, he perceived a very large and magnificent house
illuminated with a great many candles, whence proceeded
the light just now mentioned. Having well fortified
himself with brandy, he had courage enough to knock at
the door, which a servant, at the third knock, having
opened, asked him what he wanted. I would go as far
as I can, replied our adventurer; be so kind, therefore, as
to direct me how to accomplish my design, for I see no
passage but the dark cavern through which I came. The
servant told him he must go through that house; and
accordingly led him through a long entry and out of the
back door. He then walked a considerable way, and at
last beheld another house, more magnificent than
the first, the windows of which being all open, he
discovered innumerable lamps burning in every room.
Here he designed also to knock; but had the curiosity to
step on a little bank which commanded a low parlour,
and, looking in, he beheld a vast table in the middle of
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the room, of black marble, and on it extended at full

length a man, or rather a monster; for by his account he
could not be less than fourteen feet long, and ten or
eleven round the body. This prodigious fabric lay as if
sleeping, with his head on a book, and a sword by him of
a size answerable to the hand which it is supposed made
use of it. This sight was more terrifying to our traveller
than all the dark and dreary mansions he had passed
through on his arrival to it. He resolved therefore not
to attempt entrance into a place inhabited by persons of
that unequal stature, and made the best of his way back
to the other house: where the same servant reconducted
and informed him, that if he had knocked at the second
door, he would have seen company enough, but never
could have returned. On which he desired to know
what place it was, and by whom possessed; but the other
replied that these things were not to be revealed. He
then took his leave, and by the same dark passage got
into the vaults, and soon after once more ascended to the
light of the sun. Ridiculous as this narrative appears,
whoever seems to disbelieve it, is looked upon as a person
of weak faith. Grose’s. Antiq., vi. 208. The preceding
legend, handed down from the days of the Druids, relates,
without doubt, to the nocturnal rites of initiation, in the
course of which the aspirant emerged through a narrow
door, from terrific darkness into a splendidly illuminated
sacellum. The marble tomb is an analogue of the alabas-
ter coffin, which is in the Great Pyramid; and the recum-
bent figure was the dead Adonis, or the sleeping Cronus,
like the reposing Buddha, of Nepaul. The book and the
sword would properly accompany the Cabiric Messenger,
E2
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76 THE BOOK OF GOD.
and the mythos shows, as it were under a veil, some of

the Apocalyptic secrets; it is the torso of a mighty
Image.
The Esotericism of the Mysteries still further

Examined.
58. In the early ages, when monotheism prevailed [See

A , sections 32, 70], and the Mysteries were
first instituted, the secrets revealed and the ritual that
was used, were, as I have said, few and simple. The
first were confined to God, the Spirit, the Messengers, and
the Cycle: the last consisted of some simple hymns, and
portions of the Apocalypse itself, which were read and
expounded. But in later ages, when idolatry was strong,
and the Messenger of Heaven had begun to be adored
under the name of many Gods, as the Holy Spirit was
worshipped under the appellation of many Goddesses, a
more complex form of faith was introduced; and truths
which had been originally made known under their real
appearances began now to be developed in symbols. These
types no doubt were originally suggested by the figura-
tive language of the Apocalypse itself, and they were at
first few and obvious; but in process of time they became
multitudinous and involved,—hence the cause why so
much of ancient theology has hitherto rested in that
thick darkness of which the priests of error have not
scrupled to avail themselves, for the purpose of deceiving
and defrauding their unhappy followers. (16)
59. The first addition to the four-fold Secret was the
lapse of the Spirit-soul from its primal place in heaven;
the creed of transmigration, including the metempsychosis
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and metasomatosis; the necessity of a personal purification

from sin, and a regeneration or new birth; the martyr-
dom of the Messenger, as typified, first by his voluntary
exile from heaven, and, secondly, by his life and fortunes
on earth; the doctrine of the alternate destruction and
reproduction of worlds; the final entrance of the spirit
made pure into a blessed region of light and happiness,
and its absorption either into the Holy Spirit or
Tabernacle of God, or into the radiant Circle of God
himself, whence it should never again fall into the error
and darkness from which it had emerged: secrets so sublime
and wonderful that they never could have occurred except
to minds illuminated by celestial inspiration. Thus we
find that the Secrets of the Mysteries were:—
1. The Unity of God. (17)
2. The Holy Spirit. (18)
3. The Messengers. (19)
4. The Naronic Cycle, or the Secret of God.
5. The lapse of Spirits.
6. Transmigration.
7. The Palingenesis, or new birth.
8. The Martyrdom of the Messenger.
9. Alternate destruction and reproduction of worlds.
10. The final absorption into Bliss.
Each of these stages of knowledge was called a Gate;
so that there were altogether Nine Gates to be passed
through before the blessed portals of Heaven were reached.
But in many places the Martyrdom of the Messenger was
not regarded as a secret, and thus there were only Eight
Gates: and numbers 3 and 4 were sometimes treated as
one, which made the number only seven gates.
60. All these doctrines, it will be seen, have their
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78 THE BOOK OF GOD.
origin in the Apocalypse, and are therefore true. In

the primal ages they were probably only imperfectly
perceived; but as that great Revelation began to be more
carefully studied, and the splendour of more illuminated
intellects fell upon it, from time to time, those mighty
truths stood out from its page in greater breadth, force
and beauty. They were besides more and more enlarged
upon by the Messengers of God, each appearing in due
progression; and thus it came to pass that the scope of
the original Mysteries became amplified and varied; and
with this increase and variety a portion of human error,
no doubt, was mingled, until both Greater and Lesser
Mysteries were altered from their original; and as no
reformer came, they gradually perished, as all things per-
ish out of the natural decay which time produces, and
man does not arrest. So that we thus lose nearly all
authentic traces of those wondrous secrets; nor is it pro-
bable that they can ever be fully recovered.
61. And here I wish it to be distinctly borne in mind,
that when offering an explanation of the various mythic
pictures, either of the Apocalypse or of the Mysteries, I do
not mean to assert that that explanation alone which I
give is the only one of which it is susceptible; but what
I do mean to declare is, that any explanation whatever
that is not consistent with the Apocalypse and its hidden
science, is absolutely erroneous and inadmissible. The
great beauty indeed of these sacred symbols by which the
Apocalypse is distinguished, is that, like the works of
Nature herself, they are as it were myriad-faced: so that
turn them in what manner we may think fit, we may
extract from them the most fair analogies and resem-
blances; all different, but all consistent and in perfect
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harmony with the One great Truth, which is their centre.

If the reader will but reflect into how many beautiful
and varying pictures the parable of the Prodigal Son may
be changed, without at all departing from its real essence,
he will see what I mean, and will recognise it for an axiom,
about which there can be no discussion.
62. They who from the outer and profane world sought
the glorious privilege of Initiation, were soon despoiled of
many superstitions. If there were any of the wise found
who really believed in the common gods, or even one of
them, he was soon taught that these were but the symbo-
lic names of the Holy Messenger; and that the legends
which had been encrusted round the various divinities
were all but modifications, or perhaps perversions, of some
of the heroic deeds prefigured and predicted in the Divine
Apocalypse. The Mystagogue taught them, says War-
burton, that Jupiter, Mercury, Venus, Mars, were indeed
only dead mortals, subject, in life, to the same passions
with themselves . . . . The fabulous gods being thus
routed, the Supreme Cause of all things, of course, took
their place. Him they were taught to consider as the
Creator of the Universe, who pervaded all things by his
virtue, and governed all by his providence. From this
time the Initiated had the title of Epoptes, by which was
meant one that sees things as they are without disguise:
whereas before he was called Mystes, which has a contrary
signification. Cicero fully reveals the whole Mystery,
and confirms everything we have said concerning it.
But what? he says; is not almost Heaven (not to carry
on this detail any farther) filled with the human race?
But if I should attempt to examine antiquity, and from
those things which the Grecian writers have delivered,
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80 THE BOOK OF GOD.
search to the bottom of this affair, it would be found

that even those very gods themselves, who are esteemed
the Dii majorum gentium, had their original here
below; and took their flight from hence into heaven.
Inquire whose sepulchres those are which are so com-
monly shown in Greece. Remember, for you are ini-
tiated, what you have been taught in the Mysteries;
then you will, at length, understand how far this matter
may be carried. That is, remember that in the Myste-
ries you were shown the various Messengers of Heaven,
who were indeed but mortals here, although the populace
ignorantly treat them as gods; for their deeds on earth
they have been honoured with deification; but we know
that they were only Messengers in human form, sent to
earth from heaven, and as completely men while upon
the earth as any others of the frail race of mortals. For,
as I have before said, every Messiah is fallible in secular
things; in their moral teachings only are they without
human error. Amosis, when he slew the Egyptian, was
but a mere man; nor was Jesus exempt from frailty
when guilty of sedition and disorder in the Temple.
Matt. xx. 12; John ii. 13. [See Part I. pp. 99, 200.]
63. Augustine or Austin, as he is called by the priests,
corroborates the account which I have above copied from
Cicero. Of the same nature, too, he says, are those things
which Alexander of Macedon wrote to his mother, as
revealed unto him by one Leo, chief hierophant of the
Egyptian Mysteries, whereby it appeared that, not only
such as Picus, and Faunus, and Eneas, and Romulus, nay
Hercules, and Esculapius, and Bacchus, the son of Semele,
and Castor, and Pollux, and all others of the same rank,
had been advanced, from the condition of mortality, into
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gods, but that even those deities of the higher order,

the Dii majorum gentium, those whom Cicero, without
naming, seems to carp at in his Tusculans, such as Jupiter,
Juno, Saturn, Neptune, Vulcan, Vesta, and many others,
whom Varro endeavours to allegorize into the elements or
parts of the world, were, in truth, only mortal men. But
the priest being under great fears and apprehensions,
while he was telling this, as conscious he was betraying
the Secret of the Mysteries, begged of Alexander, when
he found that he intended to communicate it to his
mother, that he would enjoin her to burn the letter as
soon as she had read it. To understand the concluding
part, we are to know that Cyprian, who has also pre-
served this curious anecdote, tells us it was the dread
of Alexander’s power which extorted the secret from the
hierophant.
64. But while thus enlightened as to the true nature
of the popular divinities, the Initiated learned also, if
they did not know it before, the One Sovereign and
Supreme God. This all-productive and all-absorptive
Unity, says Faber, is the Unity declared by the Orphic
hierophant to the initiated Musèus, as the fundamental
secret of the Mysteries. But such an Unity, one and
many as it was described to be, was equally the basis
of that natural philosophy which was inseparably blended
with ancient mythology, and which, therefore, the Mys-
teries sedulously inculcated. Hence the Orgies treated
of the destruction and reproduction of the World; for
those two ideas were in the minds of the gentile
philosophers indivisibly associated with each other (Pag.
Idol. iii. 140). This Unity, or Active Reason, AO or
TAO, according to Fohi, was God, the Almighty and
E3
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82 THE BOOK OF GOD.
Eternal, of whom it is the vulgar belief that the gen-

tiles knew nothing—the Jews being the only ancient
people who worshipped Him at all. But this, like most
other of our vaunted creeds, is absolutely false. We must
know, says the Chinese Van Chin, in his Commen-
tary, that, in the beginning, when as yet the Great Term
was not in being, there existed an Active and Inexhaus-
tible Reason, which no image can represent, which no
name can designate, which is Infinite in every respect,
and to which nothing can be added. And this was un-
questionably the fundamental truth which passed like
the electric flame from one end of the earth to the other.
65. Next after this Divine Eternal Father, was the
Holy Spirit, of whom I have already spoken at large in the
First Part, and whom the Japanese call Tensio Dai Dsin,
the Great Spirit, streaming out celestial Rays. K ,
Japan, i. 98. [See A , section 59.] This Splendid
Being is perpetually associated with the Supreme; and
moderns, when they speak of Her, call her unconsciously
Providence, Nature, and sometimes Law. He was the
Great Male: she is the Great Female. Their sacred
essence was so indivisible that they were regarded almost
as One; and this Oneness I have already illustrated
in Part I., page 31, and in Note 8 post. The union of
the Great Father and the Great Mother, says Faber,
was sometimes thought to be of so intimate a nature,
that it was even inseparable: they ceased to be two
distinct persons: the one became a component part of the
other, and by a mysterious conjunction or combination
perfect as the union of the petal and the calix in one
Lotos, a single Divine Being was seen whose compound
person partook of both sexes—at once the Great Father
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and the Great Mother—at once the primeval Male, and

the Nymph, who by successive renovations could boast
the attribute of immortality (20). This God was the
Sire of the Universe. . . but the Great Mother was
esteemed to be a Virgin, and to be the most divine, pure,
and splendid of all those Spirits who perpetually illumi-
nate the flashing Presence of the Most High. Those
ancient writers who have treated on the subject of pagan
mythology assure us that, by what was called a mystic
theocrasia, all the gods of the gentiles ultimately resolved
themselves into the single character of the Great Father,
and in a similar manner all their goddesses into the single
character of the Great Mother (Pag. Idol. 3). But this
latter passage is only true in part, as the reader will soon
learn.
66. Lanci, who has been called one of the greatest
Orientalists of the present day, says Mackey, declares
that the Ieue (‫ יהיה‬IHVH) or the ineffable name of
God, should be read from left; to right, and pronounced
HO-HI, that is He-She: ho being in Hebrew the mas-
culine pronoun, and he the feminine. Ho-He (hi pro-
nounced he), therefore, denotes the Male and Female
Principle, the Vis Genetrix, the point within the circle, the
notion of which, in some form or another of this double
gender, pervades all the ancient systems as the represen-
tative of the Creative Power. Plutarch, in his Isis and
Osiris, says “God is a Male and Female Intelligence.”
Lexicon of Freemasonry. Art. J . This is a very
singular passage. The work of Lanci has not been pub-
lished; but Mackey cites his idea of the word from one of
his pupils. There is no doubt that Lanci is correct; and that
one reason why the Jews abstained from pronouncing the
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84 THE BOOK OF GOD.
name was lest the vulgar should learn the mystic secret. AO,
the name used in the Apocalypse, conveys the same idea.
A in the primitive languages meant Strong and Mighty,
as Plutarch tells us in Isis and Osiris, 37: in this word,
therefore, it signified the primeval Male: the O, or Circle,
has always been a distinctive symbol of the Female. It
may be said that Ω (Omega) is not a Circle. If the reader
will look at it carefully, and then reverse it thus , he
Ω
will see that it is more significant of the female principle
than even the Circle itself. HO-HI, therefore, as well
as AO, means God and the Holy Spirit.
67. With the ancient philosophers, says Taylor, in his
Hymns of Orpheus, The Deity is an immense and per-
petually exuberant Fountain, whose streams originally
filled and copiously replenish the world with life. Hence
the Universe contains in its ample bosom all general
natures: divinities visible and invisible: the illustrious
race of daimons [archangels]: the noble army of exalted
souls, and men rendered happy by wisdom and virtue.
According to this theology, the power of Universal Soul
does not alone diffuse itself to the sea, and become
bounded by its circumfluent waters, while the wide
expanse of air and æther is destitute of life and soul; but
the Celestial Spaces are filled with Souls supplying life to
the stars, and directing their revolutions in everlasting
order. So that the Celestial Orbs, in imitation of intel-
lect which seeks after nothing external, are wisely agi-
tated in perpetual circuit round the Central Sun. While
some things participate of being alone, others of life, and
others are endued with sentient powers, others possess the
still higher faculty of reason; and lastly, others are all
life and intelligence. In the manuscript translation, says
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Maurice, of a very curious purana on the Indian cosmo-

geny, obligingly submitted to my inspection by Mr.
Halhed, the order by which the Deity proceeded in the
production of all created objects is somewhat varied. In
this authentic Shanscreet treatise the Independent Spirit,
whose essence is Eternal, Sole, and Self-existent, is repre-
sented, in the first p1ace, as giving birth to a certain
pure ethereal Light (as in Genesis)—a Light not percep-
tible to the elementary sense, but extracted from the all-
comprehensive essence of His own perfections. The Deity
then assuming a form apparently but not really masculine—
for the Deity is properly of no sex—caused to emane from
himself an immeasurable Torrent of Water [The Holy
Spirit]; see Part I, page 135; and He preserved it sus-
pended by his Almighty Power. By the same prolific
energy, Eggs (Worlds) without number, bearing the shape
of the primordial matter, were generated and floated
upon that mighty Abyss. From these eggs, denominated
in Shanscreet Brahmandel, all the train of celestial beings
sprang first into existence. The Nine Spheres, the resi-
dence of created beings, are then successively formed by
Brahma [the Holy Spirit], invested with the Almighty
power, and Creation is complete. History of Hindostan.
All this, it will be seen, embodying as it does the very
essence of the most recondite philosophy of Hindustan
and Greece, is preserved in Genesis i. 2; and it was no
doubt founded on the Apocalyptic Sea of Hyaline, bright
and clear as pure crystal [section 6], out of which the
Rainbow rose; and the Ambrosial Water, the Water of
Life [section 69], which must be passed through, before
the Celestial Paradise was attained.
68. In the beginning, according to the doctrine of
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86 THE BOOK OF GOD.
Orpheus, says Cedrenus, from the Christian chronographer

Timotheus, was created Ether [The Holy Spirit]. Chaos
and dark Night [immemorial antiquity] enveloped it on
all sides, and occasioned an universal obscurity. Never-
theless, there was a B [God] Incomprehensible,
Supreme, and Pre-existent, the Creator of all things, as
well of Ether itself, as of whatsoever is under Ether.
The kosmos was hitherto invisible on account of the
darkness, until Light, bursting from Ether [that is, the
Holy Spirit herself, who is Light, Gen. i. 3], illuminated
the whole creation. That Light was the Being before
mentioned; even the One who is above all things, [Here
Cedrenus or Timotheus is wrong, for God never was
called Light, but Ancient Darkness, from whom Light
emaned]. His name is Wisdom, Light, and Life [all
three designations belong properly to the Holy Spirit
(21) and to no other]: but these Three Powers, or rather
qualities, are One Power; the root of which is God, the
Invisible, the Incomprehensible. From this Power all
things are produced: incorporeal particles, the sun, the
moon, their influences; the stars, the land, and the sea,
together with all things in them, whether they be visible
or invisible. And the same mythologic birth is conveyed
by Damascius in an inquiry respecting the First Mun-
dane Principle. The Egyptians, he says, celebrated the
Primal Cause as Ineffable: they style it Darkness Un-
known: they mention it with threefold acclamation; and
they hold this Principle to be an Inconceivable Darkness
—Night—and Darkness past all imagination. He fur-
ther informs from Heraïscus and Asclepiades that to this
Unknown Darkness, the Principle of all things, they
added Water (the Holy Spirit) and Sand, that is, Mat-
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ter; and that, from the combination of these, they

supposed a Triad to have been produced of which they
made Carnaphis the head. Upon the grandeur and
sublimity of this I need not say one word; yet our priests
tell us that the ancient believers in this creed were idola-
trous barbarians, and are all damned (22).
69. And as the Emperor Julian calls the Three-One,
the Archaic hypostasis; their indivisibility is alluded to
also in the Hebrew books. Thus we read, Jos. xxiv.
19, You cannot serve the Lord, for He is the Holy Gods.
Eccles. xii. 1. Remember thy Creators in the days of thy
youth. Isaiah. xliv. 24. Thus saith the Lord thy Re-
deemers. Job xxxv. 10. But none saith where is God my
Makers. Isaiah liv. 5. Thy Makers are thy husbands,
the Lord of Hosts is his name. So absolutely and en-
tirely was the Holy Spirit supposed to be identified with
the Supreme Being, that the very word which, with the
Hebrews, signified the Ruling Power of the Universe was
plural, Aleim ‫ ;אלהים‬the three yods, or ‫—ייי‬the Powers.
I, Ieue, says the writer of Exodus, am thy Gods who
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house
of bondage: be not unto thee other Gods beside me, xx.
2, 3. The Chaldee paraphrasts, the Septuagint, Jose-
phus, Philo, the authors of the books Zohar, Midrash,
Tehillim, Barasit Rabba, and others, all contain the most
conclusive evidences of this belief; though the rabbis of
a later age have so altered and corrupted their Scriptures,
and in such numerous particulars, that it is hard to grasp
the real body of their creed. Yet so deeply grafted was
it with the nature of Judaism itself, that we find one of
their seers, Jeremiah, complaining that they devoted to
the Holy Spirit alone the worship that was due to the
First. The children, he says, gather the wood, the fathers
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88 THE BOOK OF GOD.
kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make
cakes for the Queen of Heaven, vii. 18.
70. The first name, under which the Supreme Being is
mentioned in Genesis, is plural. This name is ‫ אלהים‬Aleim,
and it is the regular plural of ‫ אליה‬Aloah, which is also
frequently applied in the singular to God; and this not
merely in the later books of the Old Testament, but up-
wards of forty times in that of Job, and in Deuteronomy,
the Psalms, Proverbs, and Isaiah. The plural form, how-
ever, is the most usual appellation throughout the Old
Testament, occurring upwards of 2,500 times; though,
with very few exceptions, it is construed (when thus applied)
with singular verbs, participles, and adjectives. The words,
Gen. i 1, are ‫ ברא אלהים‬Bârâ Aleim; phraseology
altogether peculiar, and which it is impossible to imitate
in any other language. If we say “The Gods” or “The
Aleim created,” we at once express what is unscriptural
and polytheistic. We feel that there is a perfect incon-
gruity in supposing that there can be more than one
Aloah, yet nothing is more familiar to the reader of the
Hebrew Scriptures than the application of its plural
Aleim, to Jehovah, without any idea inconsistent with His
unity being suggested by its use. Nor is Aleim the only
plural appellative given to the Deity; ‫ אדני‬Adonâi (the
Sovereign Judges) and ‫ שדי‬Shaddai (the Omnipotents)
are both obsolete plurals, and of frequent occurrence.
The following are all in the plural form ‫ קרשים‬Kedo-
sheim, (the Holy Ones) Josh. xxiv. 19; Prov. ix. 10, xxx.
3; Hos. xii. 1: ‫ עשי‬Asi (my Makers): ‫ עשיך‬Aséch
(thy Makers) Is. liv. 5: and ‫ עשין‬Asain (his Makers),
Ps. cxlix. 2: ‫ בוריך‬Boréch (thy Creators), Eccls. xii 1,
and ‫ עלונין‬Elonin (Most High), Dan. vii. 22, 25. In
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all these plural forms, the words mean God and the Holy
Spirit, the inseparably united AO; and they have no re-
ference whatever to the Trinity, or a Three-One, which
is a mere fable. An attempt has been made by the
Rabbins to account for this singular construction, by a rule
according to which “nouns of dignity or dominion are
put in the plural, though denoting only a singular
object,” and from them many of our most celebrated
Hebräists have adopted their “pluralis excellentiæ.” But
it seems unaccountable why, on this principle, no such
peculiarity occurs in the use of, ‫ מלך‬Melech (a king),
‫ שר‬Sar (a Prince), and other names of dignity in the
Old Testament. It cannot be said that it is particularly
used in reference to the Divine Being, to express His
infinite dignity and excellence, for how frequently is not
Melech applied to Jehovah, yet invariably in the singular?
Considering the fact that the Jews, being surrounded
by idolators, and exposed to the adoption of polytheistic
ideas, required to be particularly guarded against any
thing that might give the least occasion to produce or
foster such ideas; it does seem unaccountable that a
plural form should be so prominently and commonly used
to designate the Deity, and that too from choice, not of
necessity, if there was not some particular instruction
designed to be conveyed by it. That plurality, in some
sense, was the idea conveyed by it, is admitted by some
of the earlier Jewish writers themselves. Many learned
Trinitarians, among whom is Calvin, have given it as their
opinion that the doctrine of the Trinity does not derive
any support from such plural phraseology. But most of
their reasons have been directed against the hypothesis,
that it furnishes a direct and independent argument. The
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90 THE BOOK OF GOD.
total amount of evidence which it exhibits is a strong pre-

sumption, that in the one Godhead, there is a certain plu-
rality; though what that plurality is, it does not evince.
71. The same plurality is further proved from the
peculiar expressions employed by Jehovah when speaking
of Himself. Thus, Gen. i. 26, “And Aleim said, Let
US make man, in OUR image, after OUR likeness.”
Ch. iii. 22. “And the Lord God (Jehovah Aleim) said,
Behold, the man has become as ONE of US, &c.” Ch.
xi. 7. “And Jehovah said, Let US go down, and there
let US confound their language, &c.” Is. vi. 8. “Also I
heard the voice of the Lords (Adonâi) saying, Whom
shall I send, and who will go for US ?” Such language,
to say the least, seems very strange, if no plurality exists
in the divine essence. That a plurality is indicated by
its use, was the belief of the ancient Christians; as one of
the early fathers, in remarking on the first of these pas-
sages has expressly affirmed: “This is the language of
God to His WORD and only Begotten, as all the faithful
believe.” Epiphan. Hæres. xxiii. n. 2. This must be
the Holy Spirit: for if it were Jesus, as the Paulites
pretend, then God would have begotten two—that is,
Jesus as well as the Holy Spirit, whereas we are told
there was but One. And that the language of these pas-
sages was felt by the Jews, unavoidably to suggest the
idea of plurality in the Godhead, is evident from the ridi-
culous and puerile methods to which they have had re-
course, in order to nullify the evidence of a trinity which
Christians as ridiculously drew from it. To evade the
force of Gen. i. 26, they maintain that God is here ad-
dressing the Angels; but as there is not the slightest
shadow of a proof for such an assertion, we may place it
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on a footing with another made by Rabbi Moses Gerun-

densis, viz., that “the Creator is addressing the Earth,
and calling upon her to furnish her portion (the body, or
earthy part of man), and He would furnish His portion,
the soul, or spiritual part!” Another method of inter-
pretation to which recourse has been had, to get rid of the
force of this plural form was proposed by Aben Ezra.
It is the grammatical hypothesis of a plural of majesty.
But, besides the fact that we meet with no instance of
kings or great men employing such forms in early times,
no king could make use of such language as that occur-
ring in Gen. iii. 22, One of US, except he meant to imply
an actual plurality of kings like himself; he might say
WE and US, as modern princes do, but the phrase in
question is utterly destitute of meaning, if not more than
one person be supposed. There is not one example, indeed,
of this style in the Hebrew records. It occurs first in
the Chaldee, and then only in Ezra iv. 18, vii. 24, and
Dan. ii. 36. Consult Gen. xli. 41, 44; Ezra vi. 8; 2
Chron. xxxvi. 23; Is. xxxvi. 16, 17; Dan. iii. 29, iv. 1,
2, &c. (23).
72. Any student who, with an honest mind and a de-
sire to seek out Truth, goes into the Past, cannot fail to
find out these facts for himself, or to discover in them
that they were at one period the Universal Religion. In
every record of antiquity which we have, he will find the
Male and Female Principle [or the Firsts] either actually
worshipped, represented, or symbolized by signs, which
can leave no mistake about their meaning, and which
are still diffused all over the earth. There is not a
sacred coin, or medal, or graving of the Past which does
not show it. As I write this, my eye falls, as it were,
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92 THE BOOK OF GOD.
accidentally on M. R ’ Religions de la Grèce, ou

receheres sur l’origine, les attributs et le culte des
principales divinités Helléniques, wherein he refers all the
religions of antiquity to two systems: that which admits
one God, from whom subordinate deities proceed, as
emanations; and the system of the Egyptian Triad,
which supposes the union of the active and passive prin-
ciple, and the product, kosmos, or the world. The union
of the two Principles, he says, was represented amongst
the Greeks by the marriage of Jupiter and Juno. “This
self-existent principle of universal action, giving existence
to all beings, was personified and adored by all nations as
the Supreme God, the first Being, the One necessary Prin-
ciple. This universal Principle was worshipped by the
Greeks under the name of Zeus; by the Romans under that
of Jupiter or Jove [Jehovah, ‘I am’]; and as chief produc-
er, he became the expression of the mode of the same
Principle employed for producing beings, and of the laws
established for their preservation, and by which he main-
tains order amongst them, uniting, therefore, power and
beneficence to the productive agency. The mode of pro-
duction employed by him is shown by what we behold
before us: the whole universe proclaims Two Causes, one
of which acts upon the other: the senses tell us this fact
at first, and reason discloses it to us in observing the
common operations of nature. The ancients never adored
the First or productive Principle unless united to the passive
principle of nature, the common Mother of all beings.”
73. This Bi-Une Power, or AO, is shown on a beautiful
Greek gem published by Gronovius, which is absurdly
called Cecrops. It is two-faced—the one of a Hero
helmetted, the other of a beautiful Woman. The winged
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Serpent of Eternity surmounts either head. i. 1. In the

same work there is another gem illustrating this: the
body of a Hero ending in a Fish’s tail: he bears a trident
in his right hand, while the fingers of the left are curved
into the peculiar masonic form in which the old arch-
bishops of the Papacy are represented. i. G. g. g. This
symbolizes not only the Bi-Une, but also the male and
female soul and spirit conjoined.
74. It was from a full consideration of these facts,
doubtless, that the learned Cudworth, in his inimitable
fourth chapter, felt himself constrained to prove that all
the enlightened and learned of the Gentiles believed in
only One God, the Founder, Parent, and Protector of the
Universe, and all that it contains, from whom the Holy
Spirit, or the Second, proceeded, and to whom she even-
tually returns. There is a curious line of Valerius Sora-
nus, a Latin poet who lived in the time of Julius Cæsar:
Progenitor genetrixque Deûm, Deus unus & omnis, which
propounds this great truth; and even Faber himself, the
most orthodox of clergymen, is obliged to admit that all
the divinities of paganism do indeed resolve themselves,
first, into a God and Goddess, and at length into One
God compounded of those two, and distinguished by a
participation of both sexes. Pag. Idol, i. 55. And in
another place he says: The sum and substance, in short,
both of the Hindu, the Chinese, the Pythagorean, the
Orphic, and the Platonic theology, so far as it respects
the Being who was considered as the animating Soul and
Demiurgic Principle of the Universe, is comprised in the
words of the Oracle, which Patritius cites from Damas-
cius: Through the whole Universe shines a Triad, over
which presides a Monad. Pag. Idol, i. 268. And this
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94 THE BOOK OF GOD.
Triad is, I. God; II. The Holy Spirit; III. All Spirit,
all Matter.
75. Arnaldus, a learned priest of the 12th century,
thus writes: This H S , the S of all living
things, thus by its own bounteousness abundantly infuses
itself into all things, rational and irrational, according to
their own instincts, so that all things have it in harmony
with their law of existence, and in unison with the fitness of
their own peculiar constitution: not that it exists in each
individual as the substantial Soul, but permanent in itself
singly, it divides and distributes itself out of its own ple-
rôma or plenitude, the magnificent Dispenser of its own
peculiar properties. This is very much veiled, but the
writer evidently held the individual existence of the Holy
Spirit as the Shekinah, Matrix and Mother of all that we
behold in the spheres. Even the miserable Mosheim is
obliged to confess that this opinion of Arnaldus was co-
temporaneous with the first ages of Christianity. Almost
all those, he says (in his notes to Cudworth, ii. 345), whose
monuments have come down to us from the earliest ages
of Christianity, suppose the Supreme Deity to have asso-
ciated with the matter of which the world is composed a
certain Spirit by whose power and influence all things are
generated, governed, and sustained. On the nature of
this Spirit they are of various opinions: some maintain
the Soul or Spirit of the World to be of a nature created
by God. And he cites Theophilus of Antioch, who says:
“But that which brooded over the waters he calls Spirit,
which God gave for the production of creatures, as he
gave a soul to man commingling the subtile with the
subtile.” And in another place he avers that the whole
Creation is embraced by the Spirit or God, but the em-
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bracing Spirit itself is contained within the hand (power)

of God. Gregory of Nazianzen, whose theological science
most of the ancients consider to have been unsurpassed,
does not hesitate to affirm that the Holy Spirit is the
Soul of the Universe. St. Cyril also says, that the
arguers of the Greeks, in place of the Holy Spirit, intro-
duce, as I have said, a third Soul, by which every life is en-
souled, and from which, indeed, its living principle comes;
and to this power they attribute all the properties and
energies of the Holy Spirit. This is sufficiently plain,
confesses Mosheim, and places it beyond all doubt that
St. Cyril held the Holy Spirit and the Soul of the World,
which fills all things with life and spirit, to be the same.
He further cites a fragment from Æneas Gazæus, “an
acute and eminent Christian philosopher:” O Holy Spirit
by which God inspires, contains and preserves all things,
and leads them to perfection. The author of the Clemen-
tines says: Water produces all things; but water receives
its principle of motion from Spirit: and Spirit has its be-
ginning from the God of the Universe. The Soul of the
World, says Robert Fludd (de Medicina Catholica, ii. 1),
is a Pure Spirit of universal nature, formed and vivified
by rays of Divine Light, emanating directly from the
Eternal Monad, and reduced with these by the union or
cement of Holy Love into a living and spiritual nature.
I cite these authorities, not that I at all require their tes-
timony to support the truths which I reveal; but as I
know that many are led rather by authority and opinion
than any grander consideration, it may be advantageous
to prove to them that there are high thinkers who have
held and communicated what I here disclose.
76. And as in the Mysteries, the Holy Spirit, Archa,
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96 THE BOOK OF GOD.
or Archè, as the Mother of the Messengers, and even

Nature herself; the All-Fruitful, played the most distin-
guished part next after God, so in the public processions
connected with these divine rites it became customary to
symbolize her attributes and faculties. She was, there-
fore, commonly figured as a chest, a cup, an Argha (24),
or a boat, the ship Ani, ‫אני‬, or glass boat of the Druids,
whence also comes Yoni, as well as Anna Per-Enna, the
Etruscan name for the boat or Argha of God: and this
Ani is an analogue of Ain, a Fountain, and Aun, the
Sun. In the old Egyptian, Ani means beauty. Some-
times, also, she was imaged in the shape of a lunette;
sometimes as an egg-like sphere. Apuleius mentions the
ark of Isis, and describes it as containing secret symbols
which were used in the Mysteries: he also exhibits Psyche
as deprecating Ceres by the silent orgies of the Ark. Plu-
tarch, in treating of the rites of Osiris, speaks of the sacred
chest, which his long-robed priests were wont to carry,
and which contained within it a small golden boat. This
gold or silver box, or boat, is the same as that which
Pococke saw among the Druses. Part I., page 269. The
boat was the Yoni, and hence the necessity of its actual
presence in the mysterious rite. The reader need not be
reminded of the perpetual allusions to a boat or little
ship in the New Testament. Many of the sermons were
delivered out of a boat. This was not mere accident.
Pausanias notices an ancient argha which was said to have
been brought by Eurypilus from Troy, and within which the
sacred image or symbol of Bacchus Esymnetes, a blooming
thyrse, or a rod encircled by vine grapes, was enclosed:
he likewise mentions certain arks as being ordinarily
dedicated to Ceres, who was worshipped in conjunction
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with Bacchus, just as Isis was adored in conjunction with

Osiris. Eusebius informs us that, in celebrating the Mys-
teries of the Cabiri, the Phœnicians used a consecrated
argha. Clemens says that a similar ark was employed in
the Orgies of the same Corybantic Cabiri, who were ven-
erated in Mount Olympus: that it contained a symbol of
Bacchus [the Messenger]; and that it was conveyed by
the Cabiric brethren themselves into Etruria, where the
mystic use of it was likewise adopted. This author speaks
also of the ark of the Eleusinian Ceres, and is very par-
ticular in noticing its contents. Theocritus, in describing
the Mysteries of Bacchus (Id. xxvi. 6) as celebrated by
the three Lenæ, Ino and Autonoe and Agave, fails not
to specify the sacred ark out of which they take the
hidden symbols that were used in the Orgies, a word
itself of which the root is probably Argha. Suidas men-
tions the chests or coffers which among the Greeks were
dedicated to Bacchus and the goddesses. Ovid familiarly
alludes to similar boxes as being used by the Romans in
the celebration of the Mysteries. Art Amat ii. 609,
Catullus and Tibullus (de Pel. nupt. 259, Tib. i. 8) like-
wise mention them, and that, too, in the very same
connection with the Orgies which the profane fruitlessly
endeavoured to pry into. Cœlius Rhodiginus, on the
authority of ancient writers, informs us that in the Babylo-
nian temple of Apollo or Belus there was a golden argha of
wonderful antiquity, which was placed in the magnificent
temple of Juno at Elis, and within which Cypselus is said
to have been enclosed by his mother, when the Bacchidæ
sought his life. Every writer who treats of Indian my-
thology notices the Argha or sacred ark of the god Sivà
or Isa. Taliesin mentions the ark of the British god Ilu,
F
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98 THE BOOK OF GOD.
or Aeddon; and the whole tenor of the Druidical religion

demonstrates that it was of no less importance in the
Celtic Mysteries than in those of Greece, Egypt, Italy,
Phœnicia, Babylonia, and Hindostan (Davies’s Mythol.
118, 554). The Spanish authors who discuss the ancient
history and mythology of the Mexicans teach us that their
great god Mexitli, or Vitzliputzli, was carried in a sacred
chest on the shoulders of his priests during their progress
in quest of a settlement, and that afterwards, when they
finally established themselves, the same coffer containing
the image of the deity was solemnly placed in his temple.
Adair affirms, as an eye-witness, that a precisely similar
chest was venerated by the North American savages of
the back settlements; that it was used as the vehicle of
certain holy vessels, and that it was borne from place to
place by ministers appointed for the special purpose.
Tacitus mentions that the Germanic or Gothic Suevi
[Sivaites, or worshippers of India Siva] employed in
their religious worship a boat, which he identifies with
that of the Egyptian Isis (De Mor. Germ. 9). The Jews
also had it in the ‫( תבח‬Tebah), in which Moses, the In-
carnation, was said to have been found; and in the ‫ארון‬
(Arun), or ark of the covenant which they invariably car-
ried with them, and which, as emblematic in the extreme,
is said to have contained the blossoming rod of Aaron, a
symbol, whose meaning, like that of the Bacchic thyrse
or phallus, will be at once apparent. Wilkinson, in his
Ancient Egyptians, 271, 275, alludes to this type under
another name, when he describes the sacred coffers of these
people. Some of the arks or boats contained the emblems
of life and stability, which, when the veil was drawn aside,
were partially seen: and others presented the sacred
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Beetle to the Sun, overshadowed by the wings of two

figures of the goddess Thenei, or Truth, which call to
mind the Cherubim of the Jews. Thus it appears that,
in the due celebration of their kindred Mysteries, a
certain holy chest or receptacle, or Shekinah of a
masculine emblem, has been equally used by the Greeks,
the Italians, the Celts, the Goths, the Phœnicians, the
Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Hindus, the Mexicans, the
Northern Americans, and the Jews. Such an uniformity
clearly proves the common origin of their theological
systems; and we may reasonably infer from it that, as
they all venerated a sacred Theba, or Tabernacle, they all
viewed it in the same light, and employed it for the same
purposes. This Theba [Sanctuary] was the Holy Spirit
of God, the Divine Woman clothed and pregnant by the
Sun, who brought forth the Messiah, or man-child, as re-
vealed in the Apocalypse. It was the Shekinah in which
God reposed his Light or Fire of Splendours. When
closed, the world was as dead; when opened, and from
the immaculate womb proceeded the Heavenly Messenger
so long sought for, so anxiously expected, whose aphanism
was deplored with tears and lamentations, there were loud
shouts of joy raised in the Mysteries, and all cried out, We
have found him; let us rejoice together (Athenag. Legat.
xix. 88) as the angels are said to have sung to the
shepherds on the appearance of the Ninth Messiah, Jesus.
This epiphany was the resurrection typified under the
images of the hero god or Incarnation, or the lapsed soul,
who was deposited on a couch as if dead, and bewailed
with bitter weepings; after a sufficient time had been
passed, lights were introduced; a blaze of glory fell
around, and the hierophant comforted the mourners by
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100 THE BOOK OF GOD.
saying: Be of good cheer, ye Mystæ, since our god has

now arisen: to us, therefore, shall be salvation from our
afflictions. This also, it will be seen, is represented in
the Christian mythos of the sepulchre. For an angel of
our Lord descended from heaven, and coming, rolled back
the stone, and sat upon it: and his countenance was as
lightning, and his garment as snow. And the angel said
to the women, Fear not you, for I know that you seek
Jesus that was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen.
M . xxviii. And it formed an equally striking part of
the Hebrew creed, as we read in Isaiah ix.: For unto us
a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the govern-
ment shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be
called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The ever-
lasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of
his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the
throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and
to establish it with judgment and with justice from hence-
forth even for ever.
77. The cista or chest, says Taylor, contained the most
arcane symbols of the Mysteries, into which it was unlaw-
ful for the profane to look: and, whatever were its con-
tents, we learn from the hymn of Callimachus to Ceres
that they were formed from gold, which, from its incor-
ruptibility, is an evident symbol of an immaterial nature.
Clemens enumerates among its contents a Serpent and a
Pomegranate—the first a symbol of God, the second of
the Holy Spirit. This was the mystica vannus Iacchi;
and it was probably connected with the chest which Pallas
gave to the three Atlantidæ, ordering them not to open it.
But, disobeying orders, they removed the lid, and were
affrighted by the dragon-form which lay hidden within.
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The fright we may dismiss as a pious invention. What

the virgins saw was doubtless the same emblematic figure
of the Divine Marriage, which occupies the holiest centre
of all the palace-temples of Hindostan. And as the
symbols hidden in the Theba were concealed from the
general eye, so also the language used in the celebration
of the Mysteries was not that of the common people, but
an unknown dialect: the dialect of a sacred nation, says
Iamblichus; and he censures the folly of those who imagined
that foreign words possessed no inherent signification;
adding that the language of the Mysteries was the
language of the Gods, the first and most ancient language
which was spoken upon earth. Hence we may learn the
meaning of that constant and curious distinction made by
Homer between the dialect of the gods and the dialect of
men. Now, the language of the Mysteries was this
Apocalypse in its original tongue, and it was explained
to the Initiated orally and scenically; for the Apocalypse
in its original shape was undoubtedly written in the first
perfect language known to mankind. The writing of the
Ancients may be divided into three denominations: Alpha-
betic, Sacred, and Hieroglyphic. The first was employed
in the ordinary affairs of life, as epistolary correspondence,
mercantile transactions, and legal contracts. The second
was made use of by the scribes and secretaries of the
priesthood and the inferior ranks of the sacerdotal order,
who had not been initiated into the most sacred mysteries
of religion. The third was only known to the most learned
among the hierophants. Alphabetic writing, being simple,
and elementary, indicated the obvious and natural signifi-
cation of language. Sacred writing being composed of
symbols, expressed ideas or things by allegorical associa-
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tion. Thus, for example, a, radiant circle denoted the

Sun; a crescent, the Moon; a hand, power; an eye,
vision; a wing, swiftness and wind; undulating lines,
water. But the hieroglyphic character was far more
complicated. In the sacred writing, for instance, an
asterisk stood for a star; but not so in the hieroglyphic.
In this latter the symbol was a Serpent, the tortuous
movement of whose body seemed to correspond with the
oblique march of the fixed stars on the horizon and of
the planets in the zodiac. Neither was the disc of the
Sun represented by a circle, but by a Scarabœus or Beetle.
This insect pushes up the earth with his feet, deposits
his seed in it, then rounds the mass into the form of a
globe, and afterwards thrusts itself against the globe in
an opposite direction to the motion of its own body, thus
imitating the Sun when, by its annual motion, he moves
contrary to the order of the signs. It resulted from this
minute attention to the character and disposition of diffe-
rent animals, to the properties of minerals, and the forms
of plants, that the learned Egyptians were enabled to
compile their hieroglyphic dictionary, and to write the
history of nature on their temples, their obelisks, and
their pyramids. The key to that vast dictionary is lost
to the moderns, but though it be impossible to decypher all
the characters, or solve all the enigmas, still some attempt
may be made to ascertain the leading principles on which
it was compiled.
78. When all things, says Faber, and his words are
but the glimmer of a grand truth, were supposed to be
produced from the Great Father and the Great Mother; it
was an easy step to adopt the opinion that the various
parts of creation were but so many members of the
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Universal compound Deity. All nature was produced from

Him and returned to Him: all nature was His body, and
his pervading Spirit was the Soul of the World . . .
God was esteemed One and yet all things. From the
productive Womb was born the Universe: at the end of
each successive world every thing was swallowed up or
absorbed by Him, and at the commencement of each
new world everything was born again from Him; for to
destroy was still only preparative to creating afresh:
agreeably to those notions every part of the visible creation
was esteemed a member or form of the great Parent:
all things were comprehended within himself, and his
stupendous body was composed of all things. Such was
the idea which produced the definition of the chief deity of
the Egyptians that occurs in the writings of Hermes
Trismegistus: God is a circle, whose centre is everywhere,
but whose circumference can nowhere be found. An idea,
the same in substance, was perfectly familiar to the Hindu
philosophers. At the earnest request of Arjoon, the
primeval Brahm, who triplicated his substance, disclosed
to him his celestial form, beaming with glory a thousand
times more vivid than the light of the meridian sun. The
son of Pandu then beheld within the body of the Deity,
standing together, the whole Universe divided forth into
its vast variety. He was overwhelmed with wonder, and
every hair was raised on end. He bowed down his head
before the God. Here the universe is placed within the
Womb (or Shekhinàh), from which at the beginning of
every world it was produced, and to which, at the end of
every world, it returned. Just the same notion prevailed
among the Greeks. All things, we are told, were framed
within the body of Jupiter: the bright expanse of the
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ethereal heavens, the solid earth, the vast ocean, the

central realms of Tartarus, every flowing stream, every
god and goddess, everything that is, and everything that
shall be: each of these equally proceeded from Him, for
all were produced together within his capacious womb.
Jupiter was alike the beginning and the ending; the
head and the middle: Jupiter was at once a male and an
immortal nymph: Earth, Heaven, Air, Fire, the sea, the
sun, and the moon, were each equally and severally Jupiter.
The whole Universe constituted one body: the body
of that Being from whom originated all things, and within
that body every elemental principle alike revolved; for
all things were contained within the God. Heaven was
his head: the bright beams of the stars were his radiant
locks: the east and the west, those sacred roads of the
immortals were his tauriform horns; the sun and the
moon were his eyes: the grosser atmosphere was his back,
his breast, and his shoulders, expanding into wings with
which He flies over the face of universal nature: the all-pro-
ductive earth was His sacred womb: the circling ocean
was his belt; the roots of the earth and the nether regions
of Tartarus were his feet: His body, the universe, was
radiant, immoveable, eternal, and the pure ether was his
intellectual soul, the mighty Nous by which he pervades,
animates, preserves, and governs all things. This universal
Deity is declared to be the same as Pan; accordingly
we find the god Pan described in a manner almost
exactly similar. The ancient poet who has left upon
record the preceding mythological character of Jupiter,
celebrates Pan as being the whole of the world, and as
uniting in his own person all the elements of nature.
Heaven, Earth, Sea and Fire, are all but members of
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the God. He is the universal father, the lord of the

world, the productive source of every thing. Through his
Wisdom imperishable nature undergoes a perpetual change,
and by his energy the generations of men throughout the
boundless world follow each other in endless succession.
Exactly similar is the character of the Egyptian Serapis
as exhibited in an oracle, said to have been delivered by
himself to the Cyprian prince Nicocreon. The celestial
world is my head: the sea is my womb: the earth supplies
to me the place of feet: the pure ether furnishes me with
ears: and the bright lustre of the sun is my eye. Such
also in effect is Isis, for that goddess, viewed in her two
sexed character (a Male-Virgin) identifies herself with the
Great two-fold Father. She is invocated as being One
and all Things, and she is described as saying: I am
Nature, the Mother of all things, the Mistress of the
elements, the Begining of ages, the Sovereign of the
gods, the Queen of departed spirits. Thus, when the
Great Father and the Great Mother were blended
together into one character (25), the compound Deity
thus produced was, in the material system, the
Universe animated by what was called the Soul of the
World: when they were viewed as two distinct charac-
ters, the former became the fructifying principle, the
latter the matrix of nature, which was rendered fruitful,
and this idea was variously expressed. Sometimes it was
mind acting upon matter: sometimes it was the sun
impregnating the general face of Nature: and sometimes
it was the mighty paternal Ether descending to embrace
his consort the Earth. Pag. Idol. And yet to this
majestic development, not only of primeval, but of absolute
truth and fact, the whole modern races of mankind seem
F3
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wilfully blind, while they wander in the wildest darkness,

and content themselves with notions of the Supreme
Father, and the Divine Immaculate Mother, as far from
Truth and Beauty, as the wild north is from the genial
and sun-bright south.
79. In Kohl’s Travels in Ireland there is a curious
account of one of these boat-symbols used in the Myste-
ries; the explanation which he gives of it is not accurate:
as the stone symbol itself, so far from being an invention of
later priests, belongs to a very remote æra, long anterior
to Paulism; it is the earliest existing remnant, in all
probability, of the corruption which the priests began to
introduce into the pure ceremonies of the Mysteries. I
visited, he says, this old church, near the Moat of Dowth,
not on account of the old monuments, but for something
else—namely, Sheelah na gigh (26)—that is, in English,
Cicely of the Branch; whose name relates to an extremely
remarkable old Irish custom, which again reminds me of
the East—this time, the old East of Herodotus. The
Irish are no less superstitious than the Romans of old;
and, like them, ill luck and good luck is the principal
object of their thoughts and cares. A hundred thousand
things and events are signs of ill-luck; meetings, looks,
words, sounds, natural phenomena, feelings of various
kinds, become signs of ill-luck under certain circum-
stances. The look of a sorceress is especially dreaded
“She overlooked my child, and it now fades in its bloom,”
is the expression used on such occasions. As in nature
every poison has its antidote, so likewise in the world
of Irish superstition, there are as many things that
bring good luck as there are that bring bad luck. For
good luck they spit upon the penny they receive, lest
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it may be enchanted and infected with ill-luck. For

good luck they dip their children in holy wells, or have
recourse to various charms when the ill-luck of a look
or a mere word is upon them. Even adults, even men,
have sometimes a dark and melancholy feeling that a
spell of ill-luck has been thrown around them by some
person or other, and among the various remedies they
adopt to counteract it for “good luck,” is this:—
persuadent nempe mulierem ut exhibeat iis quod mulieres
secretissimum habent. There once were, and whatever
was once in Ireland, one may be almost certain that it
is still there, women, who made a profession of this,
and who, whenever a young or old man was tormented by
the idea of ill-luck, permitted him to try this means for
good luck. These women were, and still are, called
Sheelah na gigh; the origin of this name I have not
been able to learn. It may be, however, that the belief
gained ground that the mere image would be sufficient:
and the priests, so thought an Irishman whom I questioned
on this subject, did all in their power to increase
this belief, in order to diminish the use of the original
remedy itself. Female images were, therefore, made to
answer the purpose of living women, and were also
called Sheelah na gigh. They were built into the side
walls of the chapels, probably in order that they might
be more potent. My companion, who was intimately
acquainted with Irish customs and antiquities, assured
me that he knew ten or eleven old chapels with these
figures, and that one of them was still to be seen in
the southern wall of the above-mentioned chapel of the
Nettervilles. To convince myself of this, I went there,
and after some search, I found a little female figure in
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the place described. It was chiselled out of one of the

walls in low relief: nuda erat, necnon exhibuit quod
Juvenes spectare optarent.* My companion remarked,
“They call it also a female exhibition.”
80. Pausanias speaks of a Grecian sanctuary which
appears to have contained a symbol exactly like that in this
old Irish church. In this road, he says, there is a temple
and oracle of Ino (I O.), and prophecies are delivered
here in sleep; for the goddess answers such as consult her
by dreams. But there are brazen statues in that part of
the temple which stands in the open air, one of Paphia
and another of the Sun. That which is contained, how-
ever, in the inward part of the temple cannot be clearly
seen on account of the crowns which conceal it, but it is
reported to be made of brass. But waters flows here
from a Sacred Fountain, which it is pleasant to drink,
and which they call the Water of the Moon. Laconics
xxvi. The lunette symbol built into the wall of the Irish
church, and the brazen argha (27) mentioned by Pau-
sanias may both probably have been used in the Myste-
ries: and the first may have been placed in its present
frame by some papal priest who knew more of what was
originally intended by the Virgin Mary than is usually
taught by his brethren. These mystical representations,
though they appear to be gross, were in reality founded
on the Apocalypse, section 49. And the Temple of God
was opened in the heaven; and there was seen the A
* The old monastic and episcopal seals of an oval, or double

cone shape, with God in the centre, in episcopal robes, to indicate
the Great Overseer (επισκόπος), express the same idea. Moor’s
Oriental Fragments, 79. Higgins gives an account of worship
paid before a small pillar of stone—a lingam—in the Cathedral
of Chartres. Anacalypsis ii. 260.
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C in the Temple, and there were light-

nings and voices and peals of thunder, and an earthquake
and great hail. Originally the Archè was represented
by a young and lovely Virgin clothed in a veil that glit-
tered with rainbow splendours: subsequently a golden
symbol of Fontal Nature was introduced in her stead:
finally the glass, or stone, or brazen emblem, such as we
read of above. The great error was in departing from
the primal living representative: but I can easily
understand why it was found necessary to do so when the
priests began to change the festivals of religion into
orgies of licentiousness.
81. This symbolism, however, gave rise of course to
the usual misrepresentation which bigots, fanatics, or
interested knaves, always use when their church or riches
are endangered. Hence, in one of the fathers, we read as
follows: Such are your voluptuous symbols, says Clement
of Alexandria (who had either betrayed his oath in
revealing something which should have been ineffable,
or who had learned from some other traitor, a slight
knowledge of the truth), such your insulting theologies, the
institutions of your libidinous gods, your satyrs, naked
nymphs, &c., &c. We must not, however, take the word
of a traitor. The naked nymphs were the Virgins and
Sibyls of Heaven who were represented in the Mysteries;
the satyrs were the earth-born worshippers and followers
of the Beast; the libidinous gods were but the celebrants
of the Heavenly Marriage, and the angels who accompa-
nied the Bride in her splendid procession [see A -
, section 65] and all are thus libellously misrepre-
sented by Clement or his informant. I entertain no doubt
that the Harlot, sitting on the waters, was represented
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in the Mysteries with every appropriate device and

accompaniment, and that this and similar delineations gave
rise to misconception; just as the crime of Lot, which is
historically recorded in Genesis, has been used by the
wicked to justify incest, because Lot also was a patriarch
and a friend of God, like his uncle Abraham. In truth,
there is scarcely anything which the wicked cannot
vilify; and these symbols are a never-failing theme with
the canting and hypocritical. Their modesty is like that
of the American lady who was shocked at the words “naked
eye,” and who fainted when she saw the Venus de Medici.
It is impossible, however, not to admire the dashing
boldness, with which extreme pudency is always assumed
by our European and transatlantic moralists; the guides
and teachers of a people, with whom adultery and seduction
prevail to an extent, that would excite horror in those
Oriental climes which are the unceasing object of their
slanders.
82. Davies, in his British Druids, has transcribed a very
ancient poem, which he supposes to allude to some prince
of the twelfth century, but which in reality is infinitely
older. Its numerous allusions prove that the writer,
having been initiated into the Lesser Mysteries, longed
ardently to participate in the Greater. The covered coracle
and the steed signify the symbolic secret with which
the reader must now be well acquainted. I love, in the
summer season, he says, the prancing steed of the placid
smiling chief, in the presence of the gallant lord who rules
the foam-covered, nimbly-moving wave. But another has
worn the token of the apple spray*: my shield remains
* That is, another has been the successful candidate—he carries
the emblem of victory, whilst my shield retains a blank surface
not blazoned with the desired achievement.
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white upon my shoulder: the wished-for achievement

have I not obtained, though great was my desire.
Ceridwen, lofty and fair—slow and delicate in her
descending course—her complexion is formed of the mild
light in the evening hour, the splendid, graceful, bright, and
gentle Lady of the Mystic Song*—even in bending
a rush would she totter—so small, so delicate, so feebly
descending. But though small she is older than the
youth of ten years [cycles]. She is the modeller
of our tender age, full of meekness; her juvenile
discipline has she freely bestowed. Yet as a heroine
she would rather impede her own prosperity than
utter one sentence of unseemly import. “Attend then my
worship in the Mystical Cave, and whilst I adore thee
maintain thine own jurisdiction.” Upon a subsequent
application our princely bard seems to have been more
successful: for thus he sings of Llywy, who was the daughter
of Ceridwen, and was now become the mystical sister
of Hywell. “I love the Caer of the illustrious Lady,
near the pleasant shore, and to the place where the
modest fair one loves to behold the sea-mew: to the place
where I am greatly beloved I would gladly go. I will
vow a visit to the serenely fair—that I may behold my
sister gently smiling—that I may avow the love which
Fate has allotted to me, in the name of her who
tranquillizes my heart with her mild influence; in the
home of Llywy whose hue is like Dylan’s wave. From
her dominion an overflowing deluge has extended to us:
fair is she as the snow which the cold has polished upon the
lofty peak. For the severe discipline which I experienced in
* This is the Crescent Moon, the Holy Spirit—the Mystic Song
is the A .
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the Hall of the Mysterious God I have obtained her promise

—a treasure of high privilege. She has stolen my soul—I
am become weak—my spirit is like that of Garwy Hîr
—I am detained for the fair one in the Hall of the
Mysterious God. I shall long for the proud-wrought
Caer of the Gyvilchi till my exulting person has gained
admittance. Renowned and enterprising is the man who
enters here. It is the chosen place of Llywy with her
splendid endowments. Bright gleaming she ascends from
the margin of the sea, and the Lady shines this present
year in the desert of Arvon, in Eryri.* A pavilion will
not be regarded, nor costly robes admired by her whose
merit I fondly wish to delineate: but if she would
bestow the privilege for any strain of Bardism, I would
enjoy this night in her society.” Page 283.
* This Arvon is the Hermon or Armon of the Apocalypse.
Eryri is Space, the Air.
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NOTES TO BOOK I.
Note 1 (p. 9).—The Mahwee, or Temple of the Mysteries, in

Samarcand (See Part I. p. 266), though not the original scene of
the Adamic Eleusinia, stands, no doubt, on the very site of the
first sacred fane in which they were revealed to the Initiated. In
the great Elephanta Cavern the Mysteries were also represented.
They were originally called Al (God), Issean (Issa), which subse-
quently became Elysian and Eleusinian secrets.
Note 2 (page 10).—In tracing the early connection of spectacles
with the ceremonies of religion, Voltaire says: The truly grand
tragedies, the imposing and terrible representations, were the
Sacred Mysteries, which were celebrated in the greatest temples
in the world, in presence of the Initiated only; it was there that
the habits, the decorations, the machinery, were proper to the sub-
ject, and the subject was the present and future life. It cannot
be doubted that the Apocalypse was the grandest Oratorio ever
heard, the sublimest Panorama ever exhibited; nor was it unfit-
ting that for so majestic a theme, there should be a medium of
communication equally grand, equally imposing. Hence the
Greek proverb, when any one was transported with extraordinary
sensations of pleasure, εποπτευειν μοι δοκω—I feel as though
I had been Initiated.
Note 3 (page 15).—Syon, in the Shanscreet, is repose; Mount
Sion, therefore, is the Mountain of Ecstasy, or Paradisiac absorp-
tion. In Devonshire, Calli, or the Black, the name for the Hindu
Holy Spirit, has the same signification, and is identical with An-
cient Darkness, one of the primeval names of God. Why the same
combination of letters should convey the same ideas to people so
far removed from each other, we leave the curious to account for.
Holwell’s Historical Events, ii. 125—131. Calli is a primitive
word.
Note 4 (page 19).—All these dreams of Faber about the Samo-
thracian and Cabiric deities being identical with the Triad, are
delusive. The reader must not suppose that because I quote or
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114 NOTES TO BOOK I.
adapt an extract from a learned writer, I therefore adopt it wholly.

I accept it only as far as it is true, and as it coincides with the
truth, and as it is calculated to illustrate the matter in hand.
Even among the poor Africans, we find the tradition of regenera-
tion. In order to have a familiar intercourse with spirits, and be
admitted into their refined society, the candidates must die and
be born again. The Mysteries of such assemblies are concealed and
hidden from the eyes of women and children, nor are any stran-
gers admitted. If the person thus qualified should indiscreetly
reveal any of those divine doctrines to a friend whom he loved
ever so much, or thought he could confide in, the Spirits, they
believe, would resent the discovery, and would inevitably destroy
the one for his indiscretion, and the other for his curious and
impertinent enquiry.—Hurd’s View of all Religions, 382.
Note 5 (page 20).—The disciples of the Druids were called
“most noble.” They were educated with incredible vigilance
and care, for the most sacred offices. It was the immediate and
selected province of those who were admitted into the order to
record and perpetuate the customs, traditions, and general history
of the nation, from the time of their first progenitors, to admi-
nister justice, to superintend the due execution of the laws, to
encourage virtue and punish vice, to inculcate religious and moral
precepts; to direct the ceremonies of piety and enforce its duties.
Their studies embraced those elevated objects, which had engaged
the attention of the world in its primitive age—The nature of the
Deity, of the human soul, of the future state of the heavenly bodies, of
the terrestrial globe, and of its various productions. Their conceptions
were great and sublime, their speculations comprehensive in their
sphere, pervading most of the arts and sciences which had interested
the earliest periods. Perhaps there was no order of men among the
ancients, who preserved the history and the opinions of mankind,
in its early state, with more simplicity, and with more integrity.
Davies Celt. Res. p. 119. Should we be ashamed of reverting to
this high condition of our ancestors? should we not rather blush
when we compare it with our present creeds and systems? Mont-
faucon, like Davies, does justice to the past, albeit his own sacer-
dotal prejudices stood in the way. The priests, he says, who are
a kind of reconcilers between God and men, ought to be patterns
of virtue, and influence others by their example to pay their duty
to the Supreme Being, the Fountain of all the good, man can
aspire to. Natural right reason seems to have dictated this to
the Greeks and Romans, who imitated them. For notwithstand-
ing that crowd of deities whom superstition had introduced, and
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NOTES TO BOOK I. 115
the detestable vices which they ascribed to their gods, they would
have their priests be pure, holy, and chaste, and obliged some to a
perpetual virginity. Note, that the Druidic Menwyd, which is
the same as the Greek Eu-Men-Id, is the Understanding of Id or
Jid, who is God. By the Druids it was applied to the Messen-
ger or Menu generally; but in the Eleusinia it meant the Cabir
only. Bryant has a passage as to the existence of the Myste-
ries in this island. The like Mysteries, he says, according to
Artemidorus, prevailed in one of the British Islands, in which
the worship of Damater [Goddess-Mother] was carried on with
the same rites as in Samothracia. I make no doubt but that this
history was true, and that these rites prevailed in many parts of
Britain; especially in the Isle of Man, where, in after times, was
the chief seat of the Saronides, or Druids. [Part I, p. 16.] Monai
signifies Insula Selenitis. It was sometimes expressed Menai, as is
evident from the frith between the island and the mainland being
styled Aber Menai at this day. Aber Men Ai signifies fretum
insulæ Dei Luni; which island undoubtedly had this name from
its rites. The same worship was probably farther introduced into
some of the Scottish Isles, the Hebrides of the ancients, and par-
ticularly into that called Columbkill, or Columba [the Dove].
This island is said to have been in old time a seminary, and was
reputed of the highest sanctity; so that there is a tradition of
above fifty Irish and Scottish kings being there buried. Columb-
kil is plainly a contraction of Columba-kil, which was not origi-
nally the name of the island, but of the temple there constructed.
The island was called simply Columba. When there was a change
made in religion, people converted the heathenish temples to sanc-
aries of another nature, and out of the ancient names of places
they formed saints and holy men. Hence we meet with St. Ag-
nes, St. Allan, St. Earth, St. Enador, St. Herm, St. Levan, St.
Ith, St. Sancrete, in Cornwall; and from the Caledonian Columba
there has been made a St. Columbus. This last was certainly a
name given to the island from its worship, and what is truly
remarkable, it was also called Iöna [Yoni] a name exactly syno-
nymous, which it retains to this day. But out of Columbus they
have made a saint, and of Iöna a bishop. In their orgies they
called the Holy Spirit Mather and Mither, similar to the Mihr and
Mithra of the Persians, by which they signified that she was
Mother of Gods and men. One fact may be mentioned which
connects our ancient British creed with the Pontifical religion
that was once universal over the earth. The Druids called Stone-
henge Caer-Sidee, which denotes the circle or enclosure of Sidee.
But Sidde is the Hebrew Shaddai [Part I. p. 633] and the Sicilian
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goddess Sito, the Phœnician Sida, the Babylonian Sidda, the Ca-
naanitish Sittah, and the Indian Sita; and Sita is a title of Ila,
or Parvati, who is the Holy Spirit of the Hindu theology. I will
address a prayer to God, says Taliesin, a Boodhist or Brahminical
Druid of ancient Wales, that he would deliver our community.
O thou proprietor of Heaven and Earth, to whom great wisdom
is attributed, a holy sanctuary there is on the surface of the ocean;
[Anglesea]: may its chief be joyful in the splendid festival, and at
the time when the sea rises with expanding energy. Frequently
does the surge assail the Bards over their vessels of mead; and in
the day when the billows are excited, may this inclosure skim
away, though the billows come beyond the green spot from the
region of the Picts. And, O God, may I be, for the sake of my
prayer, in covenant with Thee.—Brit. Druids. This invocation
was, no doubt, made at the time when it was sought, by Papal
persecution, to sweep away the Mysterious Rites of old from their
consecrated fanes and caverns. Let us add to it our own prayer,
that the True Ancient Creed of which the Mysteries were formerly
the emblems, and which our forefathers held, may yet again
flourish in this ocean sanctuary, from which it has almost died
out.
Note 6 (page 20).—Livy, in his 39th book, chapters 8—20, gives
a terrible narrative of the secret and wicked purposes to which the
Bacchanalia had been converted. Yet though the Mysteries in
time were changed, and became a source as it were of many evils,
this was hardly their own fault; for lest it should be mistaken,
that Initiation alone, or any other means than a virtuous life, en-
titled men to future happiness, the Mysteries openly proclaimed it
as their chief business to restore the soul to its original purity.
It was the end and design of Initiation, says Plato, to restore
the soul to that state from whence it fell, as from its native seat
of perfection. They contrived that everything should tend to
shew the necessity of virtue, as appears from Epictetus. Thus
the Mysteries, he says, become useful; thus we seize the true
spirit of them when we begin to apprehend that every thing there-
in was instituted by the Ancients for instruction and amendment
of life. Porphyry gives us some of those moral precepts which
were enforced in the Mysteries, as, to honour their parents, to
offer up fruits to the gods, and to forbear cruelty to animals. In
pursuance of this scheme, it was required in the aspirant to the
Mysteries, that he should be of a clear and unblemished character,
and free even from the suspicion of any crime.—Libanius Decl.
xix. He was severely interrogated by the priest, or hierophant,
impressing him with the sense of his obligation to conceal nothing.
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Hence it was that when Nero, after the murder of his mother,
took a journey into Greece, and had a mind to be present at the
celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the consciousness of his
parricide deterred him from attempting it.— Sueton. Vita Neron, cap.
34. On the same account the Emperor M. Antoninus, when he
would purge himself to the world of the death of Avidius Cassius,
chose to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, it being noto-
rious that none were admitted into them who laboured under the
just suspicion of any immorality. This was originally a funda-
mental condition of Initiation, observed in common by all the
Mysteries. During the celebration of the Mysteries they were
enjoined also the greatest purity, and highest elevation of mind.
When you sacrifice or pray, says Epictetus in Arrian, go with a
prepared purity of mind, and with dispositions so previously
disposed as are required of you when you approach the Ancient
Rites and Mysteries. And Proclus tells us that the Mysteries
and the Initiations drew the souls of men from a material, sen-
sual, and merely human life, and joined them in communion with
the gods. Nor was there a less degree of purity required of the
Initiated for their future conduct. They were obliged by solemn
engagements to commence a new life of strictest piety and virtue;
into which they were entered by a severe course of penance, proper
to purge the mind of its natural defilements. Gregory Nazianzen
tells us that no one could be initiated into the Mysteries of Mith-
ras till he had undergone all sorts of mortifying trials, and had
approved himself holy and impassible. The consideration of all
this made Tertullian say, that, in the Mysteries, truth herself
took on every shape, to oppose and combat truth. (Omnia ad-
versus veritatem, de ipsa veritate constructa esse.—Apol. cap. 47.)
And Austin, that the devil hurried away deluded souls to their
destruction, when he promised to purify them by those ceremo-
nies called initiations. Hence it happened that the Initiated,
under this discipline, and with these promises, were esteemed the
only happy men. Aristophanes makes them exult and triumph
after this manner:—On us only does the sun dispense his
blessings; we only receive pleasure from his beams; we, who are
Initiated, and perform towards strangers and citizens all acts of
piety and justice. And Sophocles, to the same purpose; Life
only is to be had there; all other places are full of misery and
evil. Happy, says Euripides, is the man who hath been Initiated
into the Greater Mysteries, and leads a life of piety and religion.
And the longer any one had been Initiated the more honourable
they deemed him.
Note 7 (page 22).—An ass, says Faber, Pag. Idol. iii., was a
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symbol of Typhon, or the Ocean, consequently a fit bearer of Her

who is so commonly symbolized by the Waters. Hence also in
the Frogs of Aristophanes (v. 357), when Hercules tells Bacchus
that the inhabitants of Elysium were the initiated, Xanthius says,
And I am the Ass carrying Mysteries, alluding to the circumstance
of the Typhonian ass being employed to carry the Sacred Ark with
its contents. The ass head discovered in the Jewish Temple was
perhaps originally connected with this symbolism. See Part I.
page 355. The Ass was the constant attendant on Baal-Peor, the
Peor-Apis, or Priapus of the ancients, which was the Creating Lord
and Father. This animal in its wild state is remarkably beautiful,
and an emblem of liberty (Job xxxix. 5). It was made an object
of veneration in the desert from its peculiar sagacity, by snuffing
up the air, and thence inhaling moisture, in discovering springs of
water. Hence the Jews were supposed to have given it divine
honours. The female ass had the further recommendation of
supplying nutriment which in those districts could not be derived
from the cow, which was venerated in the more fertile plains.
Bacchus was fabled to have placed his Ass in the heavens, and
the ass became a sort of divine Oracle to Balaam. His name also
was sacred, being derived from ‫אין‬, Ain, a Fountain, which we
know comes from Aun, the Sun, and On, God. The Ship, Ani,
‫אני‬, read backwards is Ina—the chief part of the mystic Shek-
Ina. The solar divinity of the Britons appears in a poem of
Taliesin, with the title Teyrn On, the Sovereign On. But the
ancient Britons did not adore the Ass,—that religion was reserved
for their descendants.
Note 8 (page 24).—Upon the masculine form used in the
A , it must be observed, that the ancients represented
God and the Holy Spirit as AO, which is male and female, to denote
mystic energies. Tobit complains that the tribes of Israel
sacrificed to the cow-goddess Baal. Job. i. 5. Baal, or the Sun,
the God-Goddess AO, was androgynous: hence throughout the
Greek translations of the Seventy, the word occurs as frequently
with the feminine as with the masculine article. This constitutes
another point of the internal evidence of this form of the A
which is irresistible: it would never have occurred to a writer like
John. In the same way Soma, or the Moon, is sometimes
masculine, and the Hindus gave him for a mistress the beautiful
nymph Rohini. We find the same custom existing in Irân. Among
the people of that empire Mihr was the Holy Spirit: but Mithr,
her Son, the Messenger, was a young man. Both are represented
as frequently in ancient sculpture in the feminine as in the
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masculine form; and the reason why they were so represented is

because of the unity of all things. Montfaucon (plate 96) gives
no less than three in which She is so represented: and he speaks
of others. The Persians, says Herodotus (i. 131), adored Celestial
Venus who, in their language, was called Mitra [Mihr]. But
Celestial Venus, or Heavenly Love, is the Holy Spirit who is with
God. Mithras also, as Son of Mihr, was tauriform. In Peru,
Cieza says, the image of a Sacred Bull was worshipped. This
Sacred Bull symbolized God, and his Son the Messenger, who
were adored under the same solar type. Montfaucon in his
Supplement, part 1, plate 30, gives an engraving of an ancient
piece of sculpture which corroborates the view that Mihr was the
Holy Spirit. It is the head of a beautiful Woman on a stone:
a Serpent is near with uplifted head, and the inscription is D
invicto Mithir, Secundinus dat, proving it to have been a votive
offering of Secundinus. The female head, and the masculine
denomination, curiously support a view which the reader will find
often alluded to in this volume. See Part 1, page 191. Before I
leave this subject I had better add a word or two. Among other
trivial objections to the A , I have been told that it has
been urged that the Sitter on the Throne mentioned in section 6
[Part 1, page 510], and in other places, is described in the Greek
by words denoting the masculine gender. This is perfectly true,
and I have already explained why it is so. Had the Prophet used
words denoting the feminine gender, it would have been liable to
misconstruction, have favoured Dualism (or the sovereignty of
Two) in religion, and given occasion probably to worship of the
Holy Spirit to the exclusion of the worship of God. This indeed
we know did actually take place, and that she was adored all
over the earth as the Queen of Heaven. But this, at all events,
had no sanction from this Book, for the Prophet expressly uses
the masculine gender, to denote that all she did was only as the
Medium of God; and that He was there actually on the Throne,
though for a time represented by her. There is great beauty in
this. In ancient times, as I have shewn, God and the Holy Spirit
were symbolized as a Male-Virgin, Venus Barbata, which was a
mystical allusion to this passage; I have already commented on
this, but I add a few more illustrations. Παρθενος, says Parkhurst,
means a person in a virgin state—the word plainly includes both
sexes. 1 Cor. vii. 24. Elsner observes, on the authority of Suidas,
that this word is applied to men as well as women. Euripides
calls Bacchus, θηλυμορφος, having a feminine form (Bacch. 358),
and the chorus of Bacchanals in the same tragedy address him
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by masculine and feminine epithets (v. 504). Ovid also says of

him,
Tibi cum sine cornibus adstas
Virgineum caput est. Metam. iv. 18.
alluding in the first line to his Taurine, and in the second to his
androgynous figure. When the Great Father, says Faber, was
blended with the Great Mother, the Being thus compounded was
esteemed two-sexed, the mixed Universal Parent of the World.
Hence in the sphere He was both Hellius and Lunus, Helia and
Luna. This being the case, the Sun and the Moon had each its
gate or door, from which souls (emanations) were supposed to be
born; and each was alike esteemed the president of generation.
Pag. Idol. iii. 182. In the Greek the Holy Spirit was made
neuter Αγιον Πνευμα: a fact, we may be assured, not without
design. So ‘Αγηθης or Truth (which is God), is feminine as well
as masculine. As all the gods of the Gentiles, says Faber, finally
resolve themselves into One God, who is yet said to be mysteriously
triplicated: and as all the goddesses of the Gentiles finally resolve
themselves into One Goddess, who is similarly described as
appearing in three forms, so this God and this Goddess, the Great
Father and the Great Mother, ultimately unite together, and thus
constitute a single Deity who partakes of the nature of both.
Pag. Idol. iii. 60.
Note 9 (page 24).—The Golden Apples of the Hesperids were
like the golden apples of Eden which gave knowledge to the
eater. These apples were the A . They grew in the
midst of a beautiful Garden, and were watched by a snake—as
Eden was tended by Seraphim or Serpents of Fire. Taylor says
that the Hesperian Golden Apples which were plucked by Hercules,
signify his reaping undefiled advantages, through arcane and
telestic labours: for gold from its incorruptible nature is a symbol
of purity. Yet mythologists can see in this mythos, nothing but
a voyage made by Hercules to Spain to get some oranges! so
vulgarizing on the mind has been the effect of that bastard
Judaism which is called Christianity.
Note 10 (page 42).—Augustus was made acquainted with the
Mysteries in Athens. Once upon hearing a cause between two
priests of Ceres, in which some secrets were necessarily to be
mentioned, he dismissed a numerous attendance of Roman
senators, and all the audience, that he might hear the matter in
private, and without discovering any secrets relating to these
Mysteries to the common people. The Gorgon-head of Medusa,
which changed all who looked on it into stone, was intended to
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signify the A made known to the Initiated, and their

fate if they should divulge its mystery. The Medusa-heads of gold,
of which there were many in the old temples, each contained a
copy of the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse was sometimes
denominated the Alphabet of the Messengers, or as the Jews
travestied it, of Angels, which, they say, that the Celestials
gave to Patriarchs. It was also called the Abyss [See section 43]
of which the Messenger held the Key. See Part I, pp. 248, 255,
256, 273, 276, 297, 307, 312, for some of its various mystic titles,
but these do not exhaust the list. Note that the Freemasons have
an Oath, but these people really have no secret at all. In
Greenleaf’s Brief Inquiry we read as follows:—At the very
threshold of our mysteries, an oath of secrecy, extremely minute
in all its details, and tremendous in its sanctions, has from time
immemorial been exacted of every candidate. It is not to be supposed
that such an oath had no foundation at first. It would argue a
profligacy incredible, to invent one so sacred and inviolable merely
for the sake of swearing it. Nor does such a solemnity comport
with the design or practices of any association of architects
whatever. For what is there, or what could there ever have been,
in the art of building, or in the whole circle of science merely,
that could require or even warrant so appalling an obligation?
Neither does it agree with the present state of the institution;
for masonry harbors no treasons nor blasphemies. Its designs at
the present day are not only innocent, but laudable. It requires
us to fear God and promote the happiness of man. The inventors
of this oath, then, must have most unpardonably trifled with the
awful solemnity of such an engagement, if, at the time of its
institution, there did not exist a cause, proportionate, at least in
some degree, to the precautions used against its violation. (Vid.
—The Way to Words by Things, or an attempt at the retrieval of
the ancient Celtic, in a volume of tracts in the library of Harvard
College). What this cause was, we can determine only by probable
conjecture. But we may presume that it must have originated in
some great personal danger, if not death, apprehended to members
of the institution from the populace, if their secrets were laid
open to the world. Every mason, by reflecting on these hints,
will satisfy his own mind, that at the first constitution of our
fraternity, its great object was not solely the advancement of the
arts, still less of architecture. Some of the Lodges adored the
Holy Spirit alone, under the symbol of the Moon. In disposing
the lodge for the degree of Orion, for instance, the Commander is
placed opposite to the rising Moon; and the next four officers are
before him that they may be ready to attend to his orders. They
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have no fixed place, because a Knight of this order is supposed to

have renounced all pride, and to glory and plume himself on the
practice of humility. The room is lighted by a large window
constructed to receive the light of the Moon: for by the statutes
of the Order it is expressly forbidden that the Lodge should be
enlightened by the rays of the Sun, or of any artificial light.
The Jews, according to Maccabees, hid secret books, which were
either the A , or the rituals of their masonic riddles.
Jeremiah, seeing the Captivity approaching took the altar and the
ark, and the things that it contained, and hid them in a cave in
Mount Nebo, closing it so artfully that it could not afterwards
be found. The Talmudists affirm that Josiah, having been
admonished by the same priests that all the precious vessels of
the sanctuary would be carried away to Babylon, deposited the
holy fire, the ark, the pot of manna, Aaron’s rod, and the breast
plate of urim, and the altar of incense, in a subterranean place
which Solomon from the same forecast had caused to be built
with such extreme care and privacy, that at the return from the
Captivity they could never be found, nor ever will be, if we
believe the Jews, till the coming of Messiah. The exoteric and
esoteric doctrines of these Jew Masons [Aum-azons, Sons of God]
were symbolized in their temple. We read in Josephus Antiq. viii.
3. He placed a partition for the exclusion of the multitude from
coming into the temple, and shewing that it was a place that was
free and open only for the priests. He also built beyond this court
a temple: into this temple all the people entered that were
distinguished from the rest by being pure and observant of the
laws. Dr. Hales, says Faber, singularly deduces the Mysteries
from the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. Like Bp. Warburton he
gives only an imperfect account of them. It is difficult to conceive
how the Hindus, the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Celts, and the
Egyptians, should all agree to borrow from a Jewish ordinance.
Pag. Idol. iii. 107. For an exposition of the radical errors of this
system, he adds, see below book vi. c. 6, § II. The Paulites still
however will have it that all the world copied Judæa. But the
Jews were not content with calling themselves, or being called,
by their flatterers, Sons of God—they went farther and even
called themselves gods; and every dirty broker, usurer, and
tinker, ranked himself with the highest and purest of Olympus.
One of their psalm writers or poets, while he did not dare to
withhold from them their much-loved title, ventured to hint that
though gods they were mortal. I have said, Ye are gods, says
this Jew-harpist; and all of you are Sons of the Most High: but
ye shall die like men !! Ps. lxxxii. 6. There is a curious allusion
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in Pausanias, which connects the name Helen, with the Mysteries,

the Holy Spirit, and the Jews. I know many sepulchres, he says,
worthy of admiration, but in this place I shall only mention two,
one of which is in Halicarnassus, and the other in the land of the
Hebreids. The former of these was raised for Mausolus, who
reigned in Halicarnassus, and its magnitude is so prodigious, and
its ornaments so magnificent, that the Romans in consequence of
the great admiration which it produced in them, call all their
illustrious sepulchres Mausolea. But the latter, belonging to the
Jews, was raised in honour of Helene, a woman that dwelt in
Solymæ, which was destroyed even to its foundations by one of
the Roman emperors. There is a door in this tomb, which is
made of marble, as well as the other parts of the tomb. This,
on a stated day and hour every year, is opened by some secret
artifice, and soon after shut again. But if you attempt to open it
at any other time, you cannot succeed without violence and
breaking the door. Arcadics, xvi. In this passage there is evidently
something mystic and ineffable. We know that in the Mysteries,
vessels called ‘Ελεναι, made of bullrushes, with ears of willow,
in which certain mystic things were carried in their religious
ceremonies, were used at Athens. But Helene, Selene (the Moon,)
Helenai and Seilenos were all cognates. See ante pp. 21—23.
How came the Hebrews to have this word? It was a secret
surname of the Holy Spirit. Josephus pretends that it was the
name of a Queen, but no one can believe him. Greece was
anciently divided between the Hellenes and the Ionians; Helen
has the same meaning as Ioni; and both mean the female
generative power. Respecting the word Helen, Proclus says:
That all the beauty subsisting about generation from the fabrication
of things is signified by Helen: about which there is a perpetual
battle of souls, till the more intellectual having vanquished the
more irrational forms of life, they return to the place from whence
they originally came. Taylor, the Platonist, says that the word
Helen signifies Intelligible Beauty, being a certain vessel (ἑλενη τις
ουσα) attracting to itself intellect. Hence the symbolic use of
the word in the Mysteries: hence its identity as a radical or
synonyme for the Holy Spirit.
Note 11 (page 48).—Christians, Paulites, the most ignorant of
all creatures, affect to look with deep compassion upon these
men: to deplore their want of knowledge of the swine-transforming
creed [Mark v.], and of the soul-destroying atonement; and they
raise a shout of triumph over their own enlightenment above the
Sages of antiquity. Alas! Alas! how fearful is their frenzy.
While Paulites see their God only in the most false, degraded, and
G2
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felonious colours, and reduce him to the level of an African

Fetich, the thinkers of the Past beheld him in the most sublime
and splendid aspect. They did not look for him swaddled in a
box among the Jews, but in the lofty Universe of Glory. Do we
want to contemplate the power of God? says a well known writer
whom all our Paulites vilify to death; We see it in the immensity
of the creation. Do we want to contemplate His wisdom? We
see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible
Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate His munificence?
We see it in the abundance with which He fills the earth. Do we
want to contemplate His mercy? We see it in His not withholding
that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want
to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture
which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the
Creation. This is what the ancients did: they lived with nature,
and bowed before her majesty: they would no more have
worshipped the cruel, false, malignant Jewish Lar than they
would have bowed before a rat or a hyæna.
Note 12 (page 58).—Thunderbolts and flames, says Pletho, were
shewn to the Initiated. His nerves were also tested in other ways.
Among the Freemasons the same sort of ordeal is sometimes
endured. At the admission of a candidate to the degree of a
Prussian knight, the Commander addressing the knights present,
says: Chevaliers, I announce to you a Master Mason, who wishes
to be received a Chevalier Prussian: do you consent? The brethren,
without saying a word, draw their swords, and present their points
to the body of the candidate. Through the Master of Ceremonies
he replies: I continue my request, if it shall be according to the
pleasure of the Chevalier Lieutenant Commander, and the Chevaliers
of this Lodge. C .: These brave knights with me consent to your
request, provided you renounce all pride for the remainder of your
life. Commence, then, by performing an act of humiliation. The
Master of Ceremonies and deputy commander conduct the
candidate to the feet of the Commander by three genuflexions of
the left knee; having arrived there he prostrates himself before
the Commander, who orders him to kiss the hilt of his sword, &c.
Again, by the later Greeks, the acacia (the Mimosa Nilotica of
Linnæus) was used in the Mysteries, because it was an evergreen,
and, like the sun-flower, opens its leaves in the morning and shuts
them at night, and its name, α-κακια, implied innocence, or freedom
from sin. It conveyed the same idea as the palm of the Egyptian,
and the myrtle of the older Mysteries. The Freemasons use it;
but as usual they have only a dim knowledge of what they profess;
and they scarcely know why it belongs to their rites. The
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obligation of the Initiated to secrecy was the reason why the

Egyptian hieroglyphic for them was a grasshopper, which was
supposed to have no mouth. And we read in an ancient author:
Death shall be his penalty who divulges the Mysteries. (Sopat. in
diris quœst.) But such accounts of divine matters as I have heard,
says Herodotus, except the mere names of the gods, I am unwilling
to disclose, and shall therefore refrain from touching on the subject,
unless when my narrative renders it indispensable: and in conse-
quence he mentions in more than one place of his history that
religious scruples prevented his fully explaining the circumstances
to which he adverts. And in another place he says: The super-
stition of the Egyptians is conspicuous in various instances . . .
if I were to explain the reasons of this prejudice, I should be led
to the discussion of those sacred subjects which I particularly
wish to avoid, and which, but from necessity, I should not have
discussed so fully as I have.—Herodotus ii. 3, ii. 65. Initiation,
says Davies, represented death and a renovation from the dead.
In the British Mysteries the noviciate passed the river of death in
the boat of Garanhir, the Charon of Antiquity [the boat typified
the corporal body]: and before he could be admitted to this
privilege, it was requisite that he should have been mystically
buried, as well as mystically dead. And this much seems to be
implied in the ancient Greek formulary, ‘Υπο τον παστον
υπεδυον—I was covered in the bed; the body being a sort of
grave or bed of the spirit.—Mythology of Druids, 392. This is
mystically alluded to in Arthur’s second imprisonment [second
death] with Wen Bendragon, or the Lady of the supreme Leader,
out of which Geoffrey of Monmouth has worked up a curious tale;
it refers to the Mysteries of Ceres; for the Lady here introduced
was Eigyr, the source of generation, and therefore the Magna Mater
Ceridwen, or Ceres, ibid, 408. This bed was physically represented
by an alabaster chest or coffin, such as still exists in the Great
Pyramid; and by the Kist-vaens in Cornwall and Wales; and the
aspirant having been shut up therein, was called forth, or awakened,
to a splendid vision. So we read that Cometes, or the long-haired,
was a Prophet. He was said to have been shut up alive in an Ark,
where the Muses fed him with honey, and the scene of that
transaction is described by the scholiast on Theocritus, Idyll vii.
78, to have been the Cave of the Nymphs under the Mount of the
Bridal, a name curiously connected with the Bride in the A -
. About two miles from Congleton, in Cheshire, on a high
hill, which was at one period covered by a vast forest, are great
Druidical stones which bear still the name of Bride-Stones. They
originally formed an Ark of Initiation, or Bride-bed, in which the
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aspirant, like the Greek Cometes, was enclosed previous to his full
enrolment among the holy brotherhood—this was called his Marriage
with the Bride; in other words, his being made acquainted with the
mystery of the Holy Spirit [See A , sections 64, 65].
Note that this name, Cometes, was given to Pythagoras, and to
the long-haired Nazarene, Jesus. It was a title for the Messiah.
Note 13 (page 61).—The ancient Mithraic mysteries, which
were a branch of the Great Mysteries, were celebrated on the 25th
December, which was called The Day of the Nativity of the
Invincible. In this month the Messiah was supposed to be born
out of the mystic Theba: hence the Jews called December Thebet.
In Greece also the feast of the Eleusinian Mysteries began
Boedromion 15th (September), and lasted to the 23rd, inclusive:
the Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles began on the same day of the
month Tisri 15—22 (September). So the propitiatory sacrifices
instituted by Epimenides, in the days of Solon, were the same as
those on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus xvi. It is almost
inconceivable, says Banier, to think what pains, tortures and
hardships one was obliged to undergo in order to be initiated into
the Mysteries of this god. He who aspired to this honour was
tried by such severe impositions that he often sank under them,
and died in the execution. Nonnus says he was to pass through
four and twenty sorts of trials. That they might not scare those
who presented themselves to be initiated, says that author, they
began with such pieces of probation as had the least difficulty.
First of all they made them bathe themselves. Then they were
obliged to throw themselves into the fire; next they were confined
to a desert place, where they were subjected to a rigid fast, which
according to Nicetas, lasted 40 days. After this, continues
Nicetas, they were whipped for two whole days, and for twenty
more they were put into snow; and having undergone all these
trials, at length they were admitted into the Mysteries of Mithras.
It is not possible, of course, to accept literally these probations as
facts—they simply mean that none but persons of tried fortitude
and virtue were deemed worthy of admission. Yet the Yogis of
Hindostan at the present moment practice, as they have done for
thousands of years, austerities infinitely more terrible than those
mentioned by Nonnus; suggesting to the mind that they do but
follow up the course of probation which their ancestors went
through before they were fully Initiated. In the New Testament,
the probation of Jesus is mythically represented by the Temptation
in the Wilderness, after a fast of forty days. Matt. iv.; Luke iv.;
Mark i. Note that the latter mentions “wild beasts,” which are
alluded to as shewn in the Mysteries. Note also as eminently
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significant of a hidden meaning in this parable, that after the

Temptation, we are told, then the devil leaveth him, and behold
Angels came and ministered unto him. This means that after he
had passed his probation, joy succeeded to terror, and the
Messengers and the Bride were shewn. The same notion is
conveyed by Colgan in his Legend of Owen, given ante, page 71.
Hence it was, also, that Jesus, having become fully initiated, was
said to be a Serpent; and under this symbol the Christian Ophites
worshipped him as a god. Forty, it should be added, was one of
the mystical numbers of the Egyptians. Each successor of Apis
(the Messiah, the Bull or Solar Messenger) remained forty days in
an Island of the Nile, before he was brought in pomp to Memphis.
This confirms the view of Jesus having learned much in Egypt.
See Part I. p. 431. The Mexican name for the Messenger was
Quecalcoatle. Of him also is related a temptation, a fast of forty
days ordained, too, in the Mexican ritual, a cup which he was
presented to drink (A , section 3), the reed which was
his sign (A , sections 50, 65, 66); the Morning Star,
which he was designated (A , section 64); a teepatl, or
stone, which was laid on his altar (A , section 29), and
which was called teoteepatl, or divine stone. Lord Kingsborough
has collected all these features of the Apocalypse and the Mysteries
in his magnificent volumes, vi. p. 100. Is it possible to find them
there, and after examining their origin and connection, to doubt
that they are based on the Apocalyptic vision of Adam? There
is a passage in an eminent German writer which illustrates how a
Roman Emperor commemorated the knowledge which he had
derived from full initiation. The villa of Hadrian, at Tivoli, near
Rome, he says, was adorned with all the Grecian and Egyptian
sculpture brought by that emperor to Italy. When I saw it, in the
year 1794, it appeared more like the ruins of a city than of a villa.
The remains of it cover an extent of ten Italian miles. (Winkleman
ii. 456.) Here Hadrian erected temples to the Deities of all nations,
and celebrated the rites of all known religions. The priests of each
were dressed in the manner peculiar to their country, and all the
attendants wore their appropriate habits. These deities of all
nations were the Nine Messengers who had appeared up to the
æra of the Emperor. Servius on Georgics i. says, The Mystery of
Iacchus is in this wise, that the sacred things of Father Liber
appertain to the cleansing of the Soul; and men are so purged by
his mysteries as ears of corn are purged in the vans; wherefore he
is called Liber because he makes free from soil. Did Servius copy
this singular allusion from Matthew? (Matt. iii. 12. Luke iii. 17.)
or do not both come from one source; a proverbial phrase known
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only to the adepts in the Mysteries? That there may be no cavil

or misrepresentation about this, I cite the original. Mystica Iacchi
ideo ait, quod Liberi patris sacra ad purgationem animæ pertinebant,
et sic homines ejus mysteriis purgabantur, sicut vannis frumenta pur-
gantur . . . unde Liber ab eo quod liberet dictus. In the early ages
of Christianity it was indeed never doubted by the wise that Jesus
was an illuminated mystic, or rather epopt. Hence the Emperor
Hadrian, who had been fully initiated, and who knew Jesus there-
fore as the Ninth Messenger predicted in the A , had the
cave at Bethlehem (called a stable) in which the holy man had been
born, set apart, and devoted to the celebration of the Mysteries of
Thammuz or Adonis, that is, of Jesus himself; these names being
only symbolical titles for the Celestial Messiah. The learned
Calmet does not doubt this fact [See Bethlehem in his Dictionary]
but he failed to draw from it the only fair and rational conclusion
that can be drawn; and that is the one indicated here. The very
coat which Jesus wore on the day of his crucifixion was a coat
without seam, such as the Hindu epopts were accustomed to wear.
See post Book III. section 25.
Note 14 (page 61).—The ancient Persians, says Hyde (De Rel.
Vet. Pers. cap. xxxiv) baptised their infants, carrying the holy
water in the bark of the holm tree: this tree is the Haum of the
Magi. And after this baptism the child is named. The tree here
spoken of by Hyde is the Phoinix or Palm tree, called by Burckhardt
the Dom-Tree or Tree of the Sacred Om. In the paintings of the
Mendoza Collection, says Humboldt, Researches i. 185, we trace
the ceremonies practised on the birth of a child. The midwife
invoking the god Om-Eteuctli, and the goddess Om-Ecihualt, who
reside in the Abodes of the Blest, sprinkled water on the forehead
and the breast of the new-born infant: and after pronouncing
different prayers, in which water was considered as the symbol of
the purification of the soul, the midwife bade the children draw
near who had been invited to give the child a name. In some
provinces a fire was lighted at the same time, and the infant was
seemingly made to pass through the flame, and undergo the double
purification of fire and water. This ceremony reminds us of usages,
the origin of which in Asia appears to be lost in the darkness of the
remotest ages. Note that Om-Eteuctli is really Aum or Om-Id-Uch
with tli added: and that it means the God-Id-Sun-Waters. [See
Part I. page 107. AG] Jesus makes several allusions to the double
purification of fire and water. This water was called aqua lustralis,
and was a species of holy water, since it was that in which a torch
from the altar, during the offering of a sacrifice, had been extin-
guished. Thus sanctified, it was put into a vase at the entrance
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of the temples, and into it every one dipped his fingers at ingress
or egress, as they do in the Romish churches: and to make the
analogy complete, I may observe that light brooms being dipped
in it by the officiating priest, it was scattered in the form of dew
over those who were present. Idem ter socias purâ circumtulit
undû Spergens rore levi. But what did this immersion of the Torch
of Flame in Water of Purity signify? The reader can judge
whether it did not symbolise God and the Holy Spirit, and the
equally wondrous marriage of the masculine spirit with the femi-
nine soul. By a symbolic baptism in this Holy Fountain the new-
birth was supposed to be expedited; and this is commemorated
by Christians in the immersion of Jesus by John in the consecrated
stream Jordan. The initiated in the Mysteries of Mithra were
baptized, says Tertullian. Those whom my waters of purification
sprinkle, writes Euripides: and Paul (Ephesians) talks of purifying
with the washing of the water, v. 26. The Greeks, Romans, Hebrew
priests, Egyptians, Indians, Persians, &c., all used water for puri-
fication, as a religious usage. This holy water was a symbol of
new life (Stiefelhagen). The Mysteries among the Greeks, writes Clem-
ent of Alexandria, begin with purifications just like the im-
mersions of the barbarians. After these are the Lesser Mysteries.
In the Eleusinian Mysteries, says Potter, the candidates for initia-
tion purified themselves by washing their hands in holy water,
and were admonished to present themselves with minds pure and
undefiled. To the sea, ye neophites. In the Dionysia the first of
the sacred vessels carried was filled with water: a vessel of wine
was also carried. The water at the marriage of Cana, which was
changed into wine, is a confused recollection of a parable, in which
the Ninth Messenger alluded to a rite in the Mysteries.
Note 15 (page 64).—In a subsequent stage, the fully Initiated
were made to undergo circumcision. I think I have stated enough,
says Higgins, himself a mason of high degree, to raise or justify what
the Jesuits would call a probable opinion that the masonic ceremo-
nies or secrets are descendants of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Every-
body knows the now ridiculous traditionary fancy that a man is
in some way marked or branded or mutilated before he can be
admitted into the order. I believe this, like most other traditions,
had not its origin from nothing. I believe the higher classes of
Masons were originally persons who were admitted into the
Mysteries of Eleusis and Egypt, and that they were Chaldæans
and Mathematici: and I believe that what the above tradition of
the branding alluded to was Circumcision, and that they were
circumcised. Origen and Clemens Alexandrinus both affirm that
the secret learning of the Egyptians was only taught to such
G3
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persons as had undergone the operation of circumcision, for which

reason it was submitted to by Pythagoras. The same word in
Hebrew means both initiated and circumcised. As infants are
admitted into Christianity by baptism, so they were admitted
among the initiated by circumcision. If my memory do not
deceive me, the priests only of the Egyptians were circumcised,
and the Tamil Chaldee or Pushito speaking priests of Cristna
in South India are circumcised. Abraham, the Chaldæan, is
called an astronomer and a mathematician by Philo. In the 12th
volume of the Asiatic Researches, p. 461, may be seen an account,
given by a Mr. Moorcroft, of a society in Tibet which can be no
other than Freemasons. The word Raz, in India, signified
masonry, or mystery, or secret learning, or wisdom, or a ray
emanating from the sun. It also had the signification of King:
whence came the Raj-ah and the Rajah-pout-ans, who, when they
came from the East and the West to Syria and Egypt, were, for
this reason, Royal-palli or Shepherds. From this came the Ras
of Abyssinia; and more to the West, the Rex, à Rege of Rome,
and the Roi of France, and the person in the Roman and the
Eleusinian mysteries called a King, or Rex; but who in the most
early times was a Ras, or person in whom was incarnate a certain
portion of Divine Wisdom. Melchizedek was a Ras and an Archè,
or priest, as I have little doubt that all kings were originally.
They were supposed to be incarnations of Wisdom or Sons of God.
This was the case with Alexander the Great. It is certainly worthy
of observation that in the Hindostannee, the language of the country
in which I believe masonry had its rise, a mason is called a raz, and
has the meaning of mystery. This word has the same meaning as
the ‫ ראש‬Ras of Genesis, the Αρχη of the A . The
persons called Royal Arch Masons were the Archi-tect-onici, before
the invention of key-stoned or radiated Arches, the Cyclopean
builders of the only stone edifices at that time in the world,
which were temples. So Sopheism, we are told, is divided into
four stages. In the first a man is required to observe the rites
and ceremonies of religion for the sake of the vulgar who are
incapable of looking to higher matters. In the second stage a
man is said to obtain power or force, and may leave his teacher
to study by himself; he is said to enter the pale of Sopheism:
and he may quit forms and ceremonies which he exchanges for
spiritual worship. This stage cannot be obtained without great
piety, virtue, and fortitude; for the mind cannot be trusted in
the neglect of usages and rites necessary to restrain it when weak,
till it hath acquired strength from habits of mental devotion
grounded on a proper knowledge of its own dignity, and of the
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Divine nature. The third stage is that of knowledge, i.e. Wisdom;

and the disciple who arrives at it is deemed to have attained super-
natural knowledge; in other words, to be inspired; and when he
arrives at this stage he is supposed to be equal to the angels. The
fourth and last stage denotes his arrival at truth, which implies
his complete union with the Divinity. Anacalypsis, 725—728.
Note 16 (page 76).—It is astonishing to see, says Bruce, how
little knowledge of the Oriental languages Lowth and the other
translators of particular books have shewn in their different works.
The island (Great Britain) is disgraced by a number of dull Hebrew
grammars and dictionaries, written by such scholiasts as Park-
hurst, Bate, &c., who pretend to settle the meaning of words, and
at the same time have neither good sense and judgment to inves-
tigate, nor learning to discover the objects of their research.
Travels, vii. 434. It can scarcely be a matter of surprise, there-
fore, that so many honest and good men (I speak of the country
clergy) should be made dupes, and should involuntarily assist in
supporting the frauds and delusions of the Church. How many
of them depend implicitly on Parkhurst: how many of them swear
by Lowth. How many of them have never learned that the
present Septuagint version of the Old Testament is a clumsy and
ungrammatical forgery. Yet there are times when it is even
trustworthy. The quotation from Hosea xi. i., ‫קראתי לבזי‬
‫ וממערים‬Mizraim kratilibni, the Septuagiut truly translates: ’Εξ
’Αιγύπτου μετεκάλεσα τὰ τέκνα αυτου; Out of Egypt I have
called his sons. This is more honest than our fraudulent English
version, than which, perhaps, there never was a Volume that, as
a whole, more entirely misrepresented the spirit of its original.
But the Septuagint, if truly examined, would appear, even to the
superficial student, to be destitute of the authority which it claims
and even receives. His lordship (the Bishop of St. David’s), says
Mr. Bellamy, takes it for granted that the Greek bible which
goes under the name of the Septuagint, to which he alludes, is the
original Septuagint which was translated in the time of Ptolemy
Philadelphus: this is an error. It is a compilation from the
translations of Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus, put together
in the early ages of the first Christian Church, in which no one
can distinguish the translation made in the time of Ptolemy, in
consequence of the confusion introduced into it after the time of
Origen, where we find readings altogether inconsistent with the
Hebrew. Clas. Journ. vol. xiii. 230. See on this subject Part I.,
pp. 109, 415, 450. Many instances of pious frauds, in the same
spirit, are contained in our English version. The translators were
thoroughly dishonest. Thus; Thou shalt not leave my soul in
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Hades, neither shalt thou suffer thine holy ones to see corruption
Psalm xvi. 10. This is translated in the singular, for the purpose
of deceiving people into the belief that it is a prophecy of the
resurrection of Jesus, and biblicals quote it with that design; but
the Hebrew word is plural, ‫הסידיך‬, hasideca, and means thy
saints, thine holy ones. The singular would be ‫הסידך‬. So again
we read: In the beginning Aleim had produced the heavens and
the earth. There is here no statement of any precise time when
the heavens and the earth were produced into existence: it is said
to have been in the beginning ‫אשיתּ‬-‫ בר‬be-rasit (more properly
In Wisdom), but of the date there is no mention. By the Word
of the Lord, says the Hebrew, were the heavens made; and all the
host of them by the Spirit of his Mouth. Ps. xxxiii. 6. This, if
read in reference to the first verse in Genesis, which is translated
In the beginning, is a proof that it ought to have been rendered By
Wisdom. The mistranslation above shewn was made simply to fit
in with the ignorant vulgar notion that the race of man, and earth
itself were but six thousand years old. There is not in the Hebrew
language any distinction between the perfect tense and the pluper-
fect tense; and where such distinction occurs in the translation, it
is entirely arbitrary, being regulated solely by the supposed or
obvious sense of the context. Thus the past tense, ‫עשה‬, oshe,
he made, is in Gen. i. 31, ii. 2, iii. 1, translated he had made. So
‫ויאמר יהוה‬, yoamer Ieue, which so continually occurs in the
Pentateuch, and which is usually rendered, and the Lord said,
is in Gen. xii. 1 translated, The Lord had said. A good deal of
the uncertainty of Hebrew results from political causes. During
the Babylonian Captivity, says Franck, the Hebrews had forgotten
their mother tongue, and the Writing had to be explained to them
in Aramean. Yet the Scripture still maintained itself among the
little prophets who appeared at the time; but it sunk in the
schools which, after these, were founded by the Tanaim, the
authors of the Mishna. Gradually the Aramean also was spoiled
by admixture with the Hebrew, and out of this mingling (to which
were added elements, although few, of the language of the Romans,
who were the masters of the Greeks, who were their neighbours
in Palestine) proceeded the so-called Jerusalem dialect, the lan-
guage of the Talmud and Sohar. After the completion of the
Talmud, towards the 6th century, this dialect also disappeared;
and Jewish writers used sometimes Arabic, sometimes a Hebrew
which was more or less pure. It is pretended, however, that it
would be impossible for impostor priests, like the Jewish hierarchy,
to have imposed upon the Jews sacred books and a history of
their forefathers. Why would it have been impossible? There
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were no records whatever of their past—they had disappeared in

course of time, or had been extirpated by the Conquerors. The
Jews of a later age knew nothing of those who had preceded them.
They were exactly in the condition of the Arabs whom Niebuhr
saw, and who, he says, were utterly ignorant of the ancient history
of their own country. What difficulty would their priests have
in imposing on them any annals of their ancestors which purported
to be history disentombed from manuscripts? Yet the Arabs are
a most learned people, while the Jews were always illiterate. In
the same way as the Old Testament was received by the illiterate
Jews, the New Testament is received by enlightened Christians as
genuine, without anything like enquiry or investigation. Yet
there is a passage in a writer, who could have no motive whatever
to misrepresent, which disposes of their authenticity in a moment.
Suidas under the words Ματθα̑ιoς, Μαρκος, Λουκ̑ας, says: Mat-
thew has 355 chapters, Mark 36 chapters, Luke 348 chapters. He
also speaks of the first having 68 titles (τιτλους), the second 48,
and the last 83; but what he means by titles I do not know. It
may be asked what has become of the missing chapters? They
were extant in the days of Suidas: how has the Church disposed
of them? What hundreds of priceless volumes has it not destroyed!
Leo Allatius, that most celebrated scholar, says Kircher, has told
me that the Sanchoniathon of Philo Biblius was not long since
discovered in a certain library of a monastery near Rome, which,
when the recommendation of certain learned men, and their most
ardent curiosity, had made it appear of more value than its igno-
rant possessors had supposed, was secretly abstracted, and vanished
altogether out of the said library, so that to this very day it has
baffled all the most anxious search and inquiry after it. Obelisc.
Pamphil., p. 111. And having thus made away with the genuine
records of ancient theology, they at once proceed to misrepresent
them. I have already pointed out (Part I. page 110) the false-
hood of Saint Jerome. Here is another of a second holy man,
on whose authority the Christian Church bases many an article
of faith. Saint Clement, as he is called, writes as follows in his
Recog. lib. v. fo. 23: Ægyptii cepas et cloacas, crepitus ventris
pro numinibus habendos esse docuerunt, et alia innumerabilia quæ
pudet etiam nominare. Cæsarius writes, Dialog. i. fo. 1445: Nisi
forte de ethnicis loquamur, apud quos et fontes et cepas, et flatus
ventris non sine furore quodam inter Deos referuntur. The Rev.
Dr. Prideaux, speaking of the Sad-der, acknowledges that the
rules and exhortations to moral living are written very pressingly
and with sufficient exactness, excepting only in one particular,
which is that of incest; for this, he says, is wholly taken away
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by Zaratusht, who teaches that nothing of this nature is unlawful;

but that a man may not only marry his sister, or his daughter, but
his mother. The Doctor justly observes that this is such an
abomination, that though all things else were right in that book,
this alone were sufficient to pollute it. But in support of this
charge he does not quote the book itself, or its compendium, or
any other treatise written by an avowed Persee, but the authori-
ties of Diogenes Laertius, Strabo, Philo-Judæus, Tertullian, and
Clemens Alexandrinus. Ancient Universal History, iv. 296. The
statement of Prideaux, like so many of those reverend deans, is
wholly false: the Fifth Messenger having never propounded any
such impiety. In the same spirit Eutychius writes: Nimrod be-
held a fire rising out of the earth, and he worshipped it, and from
that time forth the Magi worshipped fire. And he appointed a
man by name Andeshan to be the priest and servant of the Fire.
The Devil shortly after spoke to Andeshan out of the midst of
the fire, saying, No man can serve the Fire, or learn my religion,
unless first he shall commit incest with his mother, sister, and
daughter. He did as he was commanded, and from that time the
priests of the Magians practised incest, but Andeshan was the
first inventor of that doctrine. Annal. p. 64.
Note 17 (p. 77).—Upon this subject, the Unity of God, I quote

here from the writings of one of the most remarkable men of the
day, Joseph Barker, whose language upon this subject cannot be
too widely read: but who, I am sorry to hear, has recently
adopted the XXXIX Articles and become a Priest. With respect
to the Trinity, he says, I can scarcely say what were my earliest
views. I was taught to use the word Trinity, and the phrase
“One God in persons three,” and many similar phrases, and for
anything I know I believed in the doctrine of the Trinity as much
as others believed in it. I knew no other than that I believed in
it. I used to sing the Trinitarian hymns such as:
Him Three in One, One in Three
Extol to all eternity.
But perhaps it would be almost considered profane by some if I
were to state what were my thoughts on the subject. Still, as I
commenced this history with the intention of uttering all that I
could recollect with respect to my religious experience and religious
opinions, I shall state with perfect plainness and simplicity the
exercises of my mind with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity.
The great point with me was to reconcile Three Persons with the
idea of One God; or, in other words, to make Three Persons into
One Person, and One Person into Three Persons: and to have the
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Three to be One: and the One to be Three at the same time.

The word Person, as a matter of course, at once suggested the
idea of a Man—an individual human being: and Three Persons,
of course, suggested the idea of Three Men: Three individual
human beings. To imagine Three Men—Three venerable individuals
—was no difficulty at all; but to imagine them Three and yet to
imagine them One at the same time was a difficulty—was an
impossibility. To imagine a single individual human Being was
no great difficulty; but to imagine One single individual Being to
be One and Three at the same time was a great difficulty; was an
utter impossibility. Yet this was the task which theology
appeared to set me, and I laboured to accomplish the task. When
thinking of the Trinity I used to imagine Three aged venerable-
looking men up in a chamber, gravely clad, and with broad
brimmed hats on their heads, quite silent, and looking solemnly
downwards towards the floor. These Three I used to endeavour
to squeeze or compress close together, and if possible make them
into One; it was hard work to be sure to make them One, yet
still I partly persuaded myself at times that I had succeeded, and
that I had only One Man left. The next operation was to separate
and divide this One Man again, and make him into Three, and
place the Three in their old position again. This I could do more
easily than the former work of making Three into One. But the
moment I had got the Three I had lost the One; and the moment
I had got the One, I lost the Three; so that to keep them Three,
and yet to have them only One, or to keep them One and yet to
have them Three was a continual impossibility to me. Still I
considered myself bound to believe that I had accomplished this
impossibility, or else to entertain fears that I was not a true
believer: that I had not the full and proper Christian faith, and
that I was not in a safe or hopeful condition. There were other
difficulties connected with the Trinity. I was to believe that the
Three Persons in the Godhead were all equal both in power and in
eternity; yet I was taught that the First of them was the Father of
the Second, and that the Third was the product of the former Two.
I was to believe that the First Person begot the Second Person,
and that from the First and Second proceeded the Third Person;
yet I was to believe that the Father was no older than the Son
whom He had begotten, and that the Spirit was no younger than
the Father and Son from whom he proceeded. It was impossible to
believe that God the Father had begotten God the Son, without
believing that God the Son had once come into existence, and that
before he came into existence, he of course was not. It was
impossible to believe that the Spirit had proceeded from the Father
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and the Son, without believing that he too had had a beginning:
that with respect to him there was a period when he had no
existence; yet I was to believe that the Son had always existed,
and that the Spirit also had always existed: that the Son and the
Spirit were both of them eternal, equally eternal as the Father;
that the Father who begot the Son did not exist before the Son
whom he begot: that the Father and the Son from whom the Spirit
proceeded did not exist before the Spirit that proceeded from them.
The orthodox theology taught us these things, and required us to
believe them on pain of eternal damnation. I therefore tried to
believe them, or what perhaps amounted to the same thing, tried
to believe that I believed them. We were also taught to believe
that Christ was the eternal Son of God; that he was eternally
begotten, and that the Holy Spirit had eternally proceeded from
the Father and from the Son: hence we were led to use such
expressions as eternal generation, eternal filiation, and eternal
procession. Again, those Three persons in the Godhead I was taught
to regard as entirely distinct and separate agents. One could
send, another could be sent, and the third could stand by, and
neither send, nor be sent. One could remain in heaven, governing
the world as an Almighty king; the second could come to earth,
be incarnated, dwell in a body of flesh, could suffer and die, while
the third could stand apart, occupying a position different from
either of the former; applying the merit of Christ’s death to the
consciences of men, and yet all Three, according to our belief, or
our professed belief, be One God. One could sit upon a throne,
as Sovereign of all; another could sit at his right hand, and a
third be engaged with the souls of men upon earth, yet all be One
Being. One could pray to the other; the other give answers
to his prayers; the third convey those answers to the souls
of men, and yet all form One Substance, One God. One
could demand satisfaction to his injured justice; another could
suffer and die to give satisfaction; the third could neither demand
nor give satisfaction, but simply carry on the plan of salvation in
a comparatively private capacity, yet all be One Jehovah. One
had great jealousy for the honour of his Law: another a great
love for man, who had fallen under the condemnation of the Law:
the third could stand apart without feeling much interest either
in the Law or in unhappy man: yet all be One and the same
Eternal Spirit. Those, I say, were some of the things that we
were taught to regard as the great, the fundamental doctrines of the
gospel. Those were the doctrines which we were taught to believe
every one must hold if he would be accepted of God and obtain
everlasting life. Those doctrines I tried to believe—these
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imaginations often occupied my mind, and I considered myself as

a true believer in these things. The Christian, by Joseph Barker,
vol. iii. page 315.
Note 18 (page 77).—It was a knowledge of the existence of this
Great, Heavenly, and Splendid Spirit of God, which was diffused
among the early peoples, that gave to woman that high place
which she originally occupied, but from which she was in time
dethroned. Lord Kaimes, in his Sketches of the History of Man.
i. 6, observes that, in the more polished age of Greece—that is, in
the later and corrupt—women were treated with but little
consideration by their husbands; and female influence was confined,
as in the present day, to the artful accomplishments of courtesans.
But it was very different at an earlier æra of society. Women in the
Homeric age, remarks Mitford, enjoyed more freedom and communi-
cated more in business and amusement among men than in after ages
has been usual in those eastern countries; far more than at Athens
in the flourishing times of the commonwealth. Equally, indeed,
Homer’s elegant eulogies, and Hesiod’s severe sarcasm, prove
women to have been in their days important members of society.
But as polytheism spread, and the goddesses who usurped the
sacred Name began by poets and wicked men to be represented as
mere women with all their faults and foibles, then the high
female ideal lost its influence, and woman took a lower place in
the estimation of men. Yet even still in the Orient woman is
regarded as sacred, secluded like the Spirit of God herself from
vulgar gaze; safe from the abominations and impurities to which
European and American women are from their youth exposed;
and hence preserving that exquisite chastity of thought and
child-like innocence which are things almost unknown in Paulite
countries. In our land a woman from her infancy is presented, as
if designedly, to the worst contamination. She finds upon her father’s
table weekly and monthly serials of the most degrading tendency:
the vulgar and demoralizing slang and chaff of Dickens, Punch, and
such filthy fellows: the deadly dissolute poisons of Bulwer and
Braddon: the enervating and soul-depressing pap of the religious
publishers, as they are called. She goes into society, and is
brought in contact with ruffianism: she knows that every man
she sees is a whoremonger and adulterer, but if he be rich her
parents recommend him to her notice and her hand; she is gazed at
by the young men with satyr looks, and pawed by the middle-aged
and old in satyr waltzes and gallopades. She walks the streets and
is pursued by the licentious; she rides in public carriages and finds
herself insulted by hand or foot; she goes to the theatre and sees
the nakedness of her sex exposed to a thousand male and gloating
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glances. The most indecent figurante receives the greatest

triumph: the most complete exposer of her person is covered with
the greatest number of bouquets. She cannot ride in the parks
except amid a mob of kept women or kept men. Who can wonder
that immodesty is the rule, and that the sacred vestal purity
which is the glory of a woman, as the moon and stars are the
splendour of the heavens, has disappeared from the West, and is
to be found only in the East? Yet this is so, and must ever
remain so while we indulge in frivolous literature, and delight in
dissolute amusements: while we make the most rotten wretches
the idols of our admiration, and follow guides who seem but
whorishness incarnate. In a newspaper (the Standard) I have
just read the following, which the copyist properly heads with the
title Horrible Statistics:—The report of the Society for the Rescue
of Young Women and Children, just published, mentions that out
of the 538 cases of girls received, there were 335 who had gone
wrong when only 16 years or under, and no fewer than 106 were
12 years of age or under, whilst only 33 were over the age of 20.
The statistics of cases under 16 years of age seem hardly credible,
although from personal investigation we are able to confirm them.
One girl, who is now about 15, commenced her course at five
years of age; she has grown to be one of the most deceptive, one
of the most hardened and hopeless creatures imaginable; she has
led a career of vice so bad that no language descriptive of it can
with propriety be used. There is another who commenced the
same miserable life at seven years of age, and there are five who
went the same road at eight years. Following the list still further,
among the girls admitted last year we find seven who were ruined
at nine years, 12 at 10, 7 at 11, 73 at 12, 29 at 13, 60 at 14, and
50 at 15 years of age. These statistics of only one year’s
experience tell their own story—and it is a very piteous one—of
the proflicacy existing amongst those for whom, on account of
their extreme youth, no provision has hitherto been made. The
history of some of these youthful victims of vice reveals characters
absolutely hardened by wrong courses before even the time of
childhood has passed. One girl, only 14 years of age, when
confronted with her mother, said, “You set me the example.”
One little girl of 14 died shortly after she was admitted into the
house. She appears to have been, when 10 years of age, deserted
by her parents, and was received into the workhouse, whence she
was sent to one of the large parochial schools. At the end of a
year the father returned, removed her from the school, and sent
her to a relative, who placed her for a short period in a convent,
and she then returned to her parents, only to fall a victim to her
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own father! After a vain attempt to get her living as a

servant, she was found at Aldershot with a soldier, and rescued
from further ruin by being placed under the charge of the society,
and in their house her poor miserable life came to a tranquil close.
A few days after the death of this child another girl of 12 years
of age was brought to the home by a Bible woman. She had been
criminally assaulted by a next door neighbour of her father, but
being 12 years of age there was no legal remedy, in the absence
of proof that the girl was not a consenting party. Another
applicant brought an interesting-looking child of 10 with a
recommendation from the surgeon of the Lock Hospital. This is
the fruit of English Paulism: seduction and infanticide to the
most fearful extent. We find no such horrors in the East, to
which we are so anxious to convey our civilization! How long
have we not been in the habit of accusing Orientals of child
murder; the missionaries say it is because they have not the
blessings of Christianity! But the Christian Paulites are now
outdoing the unenlighted heathens. The Rev. Orby Shipley has
just published a work entitled The Church and the World: in
which there is an Essay on Infanticide, by the Rev. H. Humble,
of Perth, and the grave importance of the whole question is
proved by the one fact that there are, according to Dr. Lankester,
upwards of 12,000 women in London alone to whom the crime of
child-murder may be attributed; or, in other words, one woman in
every thirty is a murderess: recent revelations of similar infamous
crimes in the neighbourhood of Exeter and Torquay put it beyond
all doubt that the nefarious practice of infanticide is carried on to
a fearful extent in many an unsuspected haunt of vice far from the
great city itself. In discussing the question of Foundling Hospitals,
where mothers, without fear of recognition, might have their
offspring religiously brought up and cared for, Mr. Humble fairly
estimates the advantages and disadvantages of such a remedy
against crime; but he points out the fearful and singular fact that
the number of infant lives lost even thus is still large. Out of
700 so exposed at Genoa, in one year, 333 were taken out dead
from the Box, or died in a short time from exhaustion. Ford, in
his “Gatherings in Spain,” speaks of the Cuna in Seville as little
better than a charnel-house; while at Rome, out of 3,000 infants
annually deserted, 72 per cent. perish from bad management or
from the ill treatment of their unnatural mothers. Therefore, as
the Hebrew saith, hath Hell enlarged her soul, and opened her
mouth without any bounds, and the strong ones and the people, and
their high and glorious ones shall go down in it. Is. v. 14. I hope
the Bonzes and the Brahmins will not cite these facts against our
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Paulites—though it would be fair enough to retort upon them.

What we have not courage to do by open murder is done in other
ways. I read in a paper as follows:—Some disgraceful disclosures
have been made in Oxford of the practice of sending new-born
children to dry nurses, where they die of inanition and debility
from being deprived of the natural support of their mothers. A
nurse named Chard having applied for certificates and registers of
deaths more frequently than usual, the case was brought under
the notice of Mr. W. Brunner, the coroner, and an inquiry was
instituted into the death of a female child, committed by its
mother to her care. The inquest was opened on Tuesday, and
adjourned for further evidence. The adjourned inquiry was held
on Friday, when the registrar of births and deaths stated that his
attention had for some time been directed to the mystery
surrounding the birth of children in the care of Mrs. Chard, as
also to their frequent death and disappearance. It appeared that
the deceased was the illegitimate daughter of a respectable person,
the father was unknown, and the baby was registered in an
assumed name in order to conceal its parentage. The coroner’s
officer described the condition of the house to be filthy in the
extreme, and the children there were so emaciated and dirty as to
be scarcely recognisable as human beings. The jury returned a
verdict to the effect that deceased was found in a house totally
unfit for habitation; that it died from debility; that the practice
of medical men recommending children to be sent to such a place
was censurable in the highest degree.—Standard, Oct. 1866.
During a residence of several months in Canton, says Moor,
I never witnessed or even heard of a case of infanticide.
Many thousands of the poorest classes live entirely on the
water; among those it is that the instances are supposed to be
most frequent. Their situation offers the greatest facilities,
and their poverty the strongest inducements, and such instances
would be oftenest seen by strangers. Yet I never saw one; and
I have been much on the water about Canton, among the most
thronged portions of the floating population; nor do I know of
any other person having seen one, nor did I to the best of my
recollection ever hear of any well authenticated case, although,
like me, everybody has heard of the supposed frequency of the fact.
I should not deem the evidence of a drowned child an exception,
out of so many thousands crawling about such embarkations as
float for miles above and below Canton: many children must
doubtless be drowned accidentally, and I have heard a case
related as a proof of exposure or infanticide, that conveyed to my
mind a contrary impression. Hindu Pantheon. 268. I transcribe from
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the Birmingham Daily Gazette of April 27, 1866, a well written

article on this fearful subject. The writer seems to extenuate the
crime of infanticide as much as he can, or as he dare. But what
is to be thought of the public morality generated by Paulism
among us, when such an apology for crime could be seriously put
forth in a paper of large circulation and undoubted respectability?
and are not the reasons which the writer offers for the escape of
murderesses the most fearful condemnation of our morals? That
the crime of infanticide is on the increase, he says, appears to be
the impression of those best capable of forming an opinion. That
it is fearfully common; that an immense number of cases are
hushed up; that juries shrink from conviction and judges from
passing heavy sentences, are facts which no one who has paid any
attention at all to the subject can dispute. Since 1849 no woman
has been executed for infanticide, and even that case was wholly
of another stamp to the ordinary offence, the convict being
a married woman who deliberately poisoned her child, under
circumstances which led to the belief that she had previously
made away with several others in a similar manner. From that
time to this there has been no execution for the crime, and out of
the innumerable cases that have been tried from the beginning of
1830 to the end of 1864, there have been only 39 convictions for
wilful murder of children, 34 out of the number of the children
murdered being illegitimate. Many cases, again, are included
among these which do not strictly belong to the class of offences
usually implied in the term infanticide, one of the victims being
six years old, and no less than nineteen more than two months.
In fact, as Sir George Grey points out in his evidence before the
Capital Punishment Commission, except in cases where the
evidence is most cogently decisive, juries always bring in a verdict
of concealment of birth in preference to one of wilful murder, and
even where a verdict of wilful murder is returned, the crime of
infanticide is no longer punished by death. That this difference
between the theory and practice of the law tends to impair its
certainty and diminish its authority appears to be generally
admitted, and all of our judges are disposed to favour any alteration
that will bring the theory and practice more into accordance with
each other. A mother who kills her infant at its birth for the
purpose of concealment undoubtedly commits a grave crime, but
it is not one which can justly be classed with murder or punished
as such. In the first place, the crime is not one that occasions at
all the same kind of terror to society. One reason why the law
visits ordinary murder with its extremest penalty is because it is
necessary to protect every member of society against the murderer,
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and to prevent him from ever again repeating his crime. In the
case of a mother destroying her child at its birth, whatever may
be her guilt, the crime cannot possibly alarm any member of
society for his own safety, nor is it society at large that the law
defends by punishing her. It is, in fact, so far as society is
concerned, rather as if no new member had been admitted, than
as if a member already admitted had been murdered. It is not a
positive, but a negative loss that is sustained. Again, although
it would be most dangerous to recognise as a principle of the law
that the life of the infant is not of the same value as the life of an
adult, it cannot be denied that in fact it is of less value to society
generally speaking, and that this consideration—whether rightly
or wrongly—carries a certain weight with the community, who
after all do decide, and ought to decide, on the general administra-
tion of the criminal law. The principal argument, however,
against considering infanticide as murder, is deducible from the
state of mind of the perpetrator of the crime at the time. In
nearly every case there exists a passionate desire of concealment,
arising out of a variety of motives—shame, the dread of losing
character or situation, the difficulty of obtaining a living, a sense
of despair often rendered intolerable by the cruelty and desertion
of the child’s father. They who best know the feelings and habits
of thought of that class which supplies the larger number of
infanticides, know also how frequently a perverted religious
sentiment mingles with other motives to the commission of crime.
Scarcely a clergyman in the country who has mixed much with a
poverty-stricken flock, has not repeatedly heard a mother earnestly
wish that “the Lord would take” her little one; that it might
“never live to be a burden;” that it might “be called from a
world of sorrow.” This feeling that she is conferring an actual
benefit on her child of shame by sending it out of the world at
once is undoubtedly one that exercises considerable influence on
the mother in many cases, and invests her other motives for
concealment with a perilous potency. It is quite true that no
desire of concealment from any cause, nor any perversion of religi-
ous sentiment can be admitted as any justification of the crime in
the abstract; but the fact that, however terrible the offence, the
motives that led to its commission are not intrinsically wicked,
nay, are often to a certain extent actually commendable, does and
must affect the judgment of the community in estimating the
enormity of the crime. There is, however, yet another considera-
tion which justly arrests any excessive severity in dealing with
these cases. The woman, very frequently, is not at the time
responsible for her actions. The operation of the criminal law
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presupposes that the mind of the criminal is capable of distinguish-

ing between right and wrong, but the whole physical constitution of
a woman is so upset at the time a child is born that she can hardly
be considered of sound mind, even when there are no symptoms of
temporary mania which so frequently accompanies childbirth.
It must be remembered, also, that the usual and necessary
appliances are very frequently not at hand, that the mother often
brings her offspring into the world alone, without any professional
assistance, with no friend near in whom she can confide, with a
mind already overburdened with shame and terror. Under such
circumstances, whatever may be the moral guilt attaching to the
criminal, no English jury would find her guilty of murder, nor
would public opinion sanction any such violation of justice and
humanity. We must beware, however, of attaching any romantic
character to the ordinary aspect of this crime. The great majority
of those who commit it are not by any means the interesting
victims of heartless seduction on whom sentiment delights to
bestow a literary sympathy. They are far more frequently
deliberate sharers of the shame with the fathers of their children,
and probably but few even look forward to marriage with their
partners in guilt. As the time for their confinement approaches,
they leave the shop, factory, or domestic service in which they
are engaged, and return for a time to their cottage home, to learn
how to prevent the child being born alive, or, after it is born, how
most quickly to dispose of it. The great object in a number of
cases seems to be not to save the mother’s character, even if she
still has one to lose, but to avoid the burden of supporting the
child. It would seem, moreover, that although the number of
children destroyed by actual violence is frightfully large, the
number of those allowed to die by wilful neglect is even larger.
The practical question which suggests itself after reading the
evidence submitted on this subject to the Capital Punishment
Committee is, how is the law to deal with the crime of infanticide?
Here is a frightful crime apparently on the increase through-
out the country, of which the nominal punishment is death. It
is one, at the same time, which but little pains are taken to
detect, in comparison with other, in many cases far more venial
offences, and when the criminals are brought to justice, the jury
is always unwilling to convict, and even when they do, the
sentence of the law is invariably remitted. Part of this un-
willingness to carry out the law is no doubt due to that con-
science which doth make cowards of us all. Judges, juries, and
people feel that it would be often unjust to visit on the woman
only a crime which originated in the guilt of another as well as
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herself, and eighteen hundred years have not destroyed the

remembrance of that guilty woman saved from legal execution
by the words “Let him that is without sin among you cast the
first stone.” Allowing this motive some weight, however, there can
be no doubt that the real obstacle to carrying out the law is that the
law is not in accordance with the sentiments and convictions of the
community. It is felt that the legal punishment is too heavy for
the crime. Terrible as the crime is, it is generally broadly
distinguishable from murder, as that word is usually understood,
and our practice has long acknowledged that death is too severe a
sentence for it. The remedy proposed by the Commissioners
appears to us calculated to produce an evil greater than that which
it is intended to remove. In the Bill founded on their report it
is proposed to punish with penal servitude or imprisonment the
offence of infanticide, which is defined as “unlawfully and
maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm or serious injury upon
a child during its birth, or within seven days afterwards, in case
such child has subsequently died.” If the child is killed after it
is seven days old, the old law is still to be applicable, so that the
present proposal offers a premium on killing a child within the
first week of its existence in order to escape the capital charge of
murder. Surely an arrangement of this kind can never be
permitted to become law. Is it so supremely difficult to frame a
statute providing that any woman killing her new-born child for
the purpose of concealing the birth should be liable to any
punishment short of death, without thus holding out an induce-
ment to the perpetrator to commit the crime as early as possible?
Would it not be better in such a case to trust a little less to rigid
distinctions of the law, and a little more to the common sense and
right feeling of the jury? As matters now stand, they always,
whenever it is any way possible, take refuge in the quibble about
the child being completely born alive. To allow them the privilege
of expressing their own opinion without a quibble would be
granting no new power. It would simply make rational and
intelligible what is now irrational and unintelligible. The line
which divides infanticide from murder is exceedingly narrow, and
no law can define it in such a manner as to meet all cases. On
the other hand, under the guidance of a Judge, there would be
no English jury incapable of appreciating the difference correctly,
and it is with them that we should leave it to be decided in every
case according to its peculiar circumstances.
Note 19 (page 77).—The acute mind of Warburton saw and
confessed the necessity of successive Messengers, though he has
adroitly turned it to support his own particular system. The
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patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian religions, he says, all

professed coming from the only One God, the Creator of all things.
Now, as the whole race of mankind must needs be the object of the
common care of its Creator, all His revelations, even to any one
part, must be supposed to be ultimately directed to the interest of the
whole: consequently every later Revelation must suppose the
truth of the preceding. Again, when several successive Revelations
are given by him, some less, some more extensive, we must needs
suppose them to be the parts of one entire dispensation, which
for reasons best known to Infinite Wisdom, are gradually enlarged
and opened; consequently every later must not only suppose the
truth of every preceding Revelation, but likewise their mutual
relation and dependency. Hence we see there may be weighty reasons
why God from the beginning should have been constantly giving a
succession of dispensations and Revelations. If, therefore, what
we call true Revelation came from God, these religions must needs
be, and profess to be, dependent upon one another. Div. Leg.
v. 2.
Note 20 (page 83).—Peter Martyr says: Being demanded to
what God they (the Mexicans) poured forth their prayers, the
Spaniards who were present report they answered, that they
prayed to Him who created the Heavens, the Sun, and the Moon,
and all Invisible things, from whom all good things proceed; and
they say that Da-Ba-Ibe, the general Divinity of those countries,
was the Mother. Kingsborough’s Mexican Antiquities, vi. 67. The
Cymric name of God was Hu, which in the Chinese means a
Wolf—another reason probably why it was chosen as a solar
symbol. Ceridwen was the Welsh name for the Holy Spirit. In
one of Taliesin’s hymns we read: I implore my sovereign to
consider the inspiring muse. What did Necessity (God) produce
more early than Ceridwen? The primary order in the world was
that of her priests. This agrees with the Hebrew verses on
Wisdom, cited Part 1, page 27. The Lord possessed me in the
beginning of his way, before his works of old, &c. So Caer Sidi,
or the Chair of the All-Powerful, the mystic title for Stonehenge,
is an allusion to Shadai ‫אדי‬, God and the Holy Spirit, the Bi-Une
Ioh (AO) Pater (Jupiter); The Father in union with Io. This
word is a primitive radical, and in Irish means Fruit, as Pater is
P’Athair, or Chief Father. See Part I, page 633. The Druids
also styled Stonehenge the Ship of the World.
Note 21 (page 86).—Therefore, says Kircher, the Egyptians
signifying the immense obscurity of the Divine Nature, said, that
Darkness, which is placed beyond all knowledge, was the First
Principle of all things. Thence that they might honour it in
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proper places, they performed their sacred rites and ceremonies in

subterraneous cells, which they called sacred cisterns, and thrice
invoked Unknown Darkness, which Damascius a Platonist
amongst others particularly takes notice of. They reckon Darkness,
he says, the first Principle, which was placed beyond all knowledge
—they thrice invoke Incomprehensible Darkness. Hence the
Hebrews always put Darkness before the Morning. G . i. 6, 8,
&c. Hermes, says Iamblichus, places the god Emeph as the Ruler
of the Celestial Gods, whom he describes as an Everlasting Mind
absorbed in its own contemplations. But anterior to this Divine
Essence, he places One that is Indivisible, whom he considers as the
First Occult Power, and whom he names Eicton; and, as He is the
First Intellectual Principle of intellect, He is worshipped only in
silence. This Emeph, it will be seen, is the Holy Spirit, subservient
to and after the First, the Supreme, who is adored, as mentioned
in the text, in sacred silence. These coincidences would be truly
wonderful did they not belong to a system which is wholly
beautiful and uniform in all its parts, as true Oriental theosophy
when traced to its source is always found to be.
Note 22 (page 87).—God and the Holy Spirit were originally
called the Great Gods, the Powerful Gods, to distinguish them
from all others. Θεοι δυνατοι was their Greek title. See Varro,
de Ling. Lat. iv. 10. These Mighty Splendours are symbolized
in old sculptures by a Man borne on the Waters: he sometimes
holds an Urn, from which he pours the fertilizing stream. This
may account for the mistakes which mythologists have made with
regard to Neptune: who is, in fact, the Egyptian Nepthys; and
this, as Plutarch tells us, was a name for Aphrodite, the Holy
Spirit. Montfaucon, book III., pl. 39, xix. has a figure curiously
emblematic of the Triune All. It is a female (the Holy Spirit)
crowned with a Cock (the Sun and God) with a winged helmet (or
caduceus), and the breast of a Man, the Incarnation; in her hand
she bears a phallos, or a Yoni, which Montfaucon calls a purse.
He names the statue Hermathena, or a compound of Hermes and
Athena; whereas it really represents God, the Sacred Spirit and
the Incarnation in one. Yet he quotes a remark of Cicero in a
letter to Atticus about this, or a similar statue: Your Hermathena
pleases me very much, and is placed so well that your Gymnasium
seems to be consecrated to the Sun. It is difficult to explain, he
adds, what relation this Hermathena hath to a place consecrated
to the Sun. But did not the Abbè know what the Cock typified?
Payne Knight mentions another figure of Isis who was represented
by a small basaltine figure of Egyptian sculpture formerly at
Strawberry Hill, and which was covered over with symbols of
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various kinds from top to bottom. That of the Bull was placed
lowest to shew that the strength or power of the Creator is the
foundation and support of every other attribute. On her head
were towers to denote the earth, and round her neck a crab fish,
which from its power of spontaneously detaching from its body,
and naturally reproducing, any limbs that are hurt or mutilated,
became the symbol of the productive Power of the Waters. The
nutritive power was signified by her many breasts, and the
destructive by the lions which she bore on her arms. And the
whole figure represented T’Ao, or the Three-One. The lions, she
carries in her arms, were not what this learned writer supposed;
they were symbols of the Messengers—the lions of the tribe of
Jid. See A , section 7, Part I, page 515. We are
informed in the Indian Sastra, says Maurice, that Affection, by
which is doubtless meant the Ερως of the Greek philosophers,
dwelt with God from all eternity. The Affection of God produced
Power, and Power at a proper conjunction of Time and Fate
embraced Goodness, and generated Matter. It is worthy of remark
that the Shanskrit word used for matter is Mohat: and the
Phœnician term used by Sanchoniathon, in his account of the
Cosmogeny of Taut or Thoth, we see is Môt. Now the learned
Bochart, commenting upon this passage of the Phœnician author,
derives Môt from an Arabic root signifying the first matter of
things. Hist. of Hindostan, i. 63. This is Muth ‫מוח‬, which is
death, as all matter is.
Note 23 (page 91).—In the Targums, which are Hebrew
paraphrases of the books of the Old Testament, numerous passages
occur, in which things are ascribed to the Word—that is, to the
Spirit of God, as to a distinct person. Thus, in the Targum of
Jerusalem, creation is attributed to the Word of God. Gen. i. 27.
And the Word of the Lord created man. Again, in Gen. iii. 27,
we find ascribed to the Word the following speech. And the Word
of Adonai (the Lords) said, Behold Adam, whom I have made, is
the only-begotten in the world, as I am the only-begotten in the high
heavens. Gen. iv. 26, says, Then began men to call upon the name
of the Lord—which is paraphrased thus in the Jerusalem Targum:
That was the age, in the days of which they began to err, and
made themselves idols, and called their idols by the name of the
Word of the Lord (Schindl)—that is, adored the image of the
Queen of Heaven. Judaism and Paganism, says Faber, (Pag.
Idol. i. 105), sprang from a common source [Asia]: hence their
close resemblance in many particulars is nothing more than might
have been reasonably anticipated. Thus: Through faith, says the
learned Jew, who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, we understand
H2
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that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. Heb. xi. 3. Yea,
says Esdras, 2, xvi. 59, and the Spirit of Almighty God, which
made all things, and searcheth out all hidden things in the secrets
of the earth. Hesiod, in his Theogony (v. 45), says Εξ Αρχης,
out of the Ark, or Argha (the primeval name, as we have seen, for
the Holy Spirit), or the Beginning, was produced the adorable birth
of gods: which differs not much from the remarkable verse in the
common edition of Revelations, iii. 14. These things saith the
Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the B of the creation
of God, which Locke referred to as the Principium of Genesis, and
which is the same Power as that which Solomon has celebrated.
The Kist-vaens, in which the aspirants after full initiation were
shut up, symbolized this Ark. Other quotations to the same
purport might be adduced from the Targums of Onkelos and
Jonathan. And see Walton’s Prolegomena, xii., in which things
are attributed to the Word of God as to a distinct person and
essence. And as the mystical union of God with the Spirit of
God, and of the Spirit of God herself with all Souls, was symbolized
by the Greeks in their loves of Venus and Adonis, or Adonai,
‫( אדיה‬that is, 1, the Lord of Lords; 2, the beams of the Sun,
that is all Spirits) which their poets afterwards perverted into an
impure fable, so was the same profound idea alluded to, and
made the subject of the mysterious Song of Songs: which typifies
God’s love for the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit’s ineffable and
maternal love for all her children. Bochart explains why there
are so few traces of the secret knowledge of the Rabbis in their
Scriptures. The sages of the Jews, he says, had certain words
which they withheld from their scriptures out of regard to the
common people. Judæorum philosophi habuere vocabula quibus
sacris scriptoribus consulto abstinuerunt, quia sic scribebant in plebis
gratiam.
Note 24 (page 96).—All nations traced up their origin to Argha:
so the most ancient, or the aboriginal, inhabitants of Magna
Græcia said they came from Arcadia, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus
reports. Antiq. Rom. i. cap. 10. The female symbol, or Arghaic boat,
presented in the Mysteries, was altered by the Roman Church
into a Dove, and the image, or picture, of a beautiful woman—
each a less objectionable type than the original, but really
indicating the same idea. But the Lingaic symbol is still universally
preserved in the Cross. In one of the sayings of Jesus, which
has been excluded from our corrupted Gospels, there is a passage
deeply mystical, which alludes to one of the lingaic secrets of the
Greater Mysteries, as well as to this blending of the Sexes. And
when the disciples asked him again and yet again, when it should
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come, Jesus answered; When two shall be one, and that which is
without shall be as that which is within, and the Male shall be
with the Female, and there shall be neither Male nor Female, then
is the Kingdom of God come. In the Khol Parsi dialect there are
some curious words, which, as connected with important radicals,
deserve consideration here. Thus the name for God is Biri Dharam,
the first word being a cognate of the Hebrew bara. A Cow is
called Gai; a Bullock Addo; a Dog Alla; a Serpent Ner; a Tree
Man; Wine Arkhi; which last I consider one of the most curious
of all. It connects the Holy Spirit, Argha, with the vintage of
truth which she dispenses. I suppose there is some connection
with this, of the Hebrew mythos of Nuh planting the Vine after
he came out of the Ark. The Argive, Argolic, and Arcadian,
forms of religion all were based on this: and the word entered
into the composition of the Greek Archon, which is the same as
Patri-Archa. It signifies the Sovereign On. The Αρχειον in the
ancient places of worship was called summum templum, being the
most sacred repository in it: this was in allusion to the Ark of
the A . And the A itself was disguised among
other names under that of Arca, and Arcas, the offspring of
Callisto—the most Beautiful. In Mantinèa, as Pausanias relates,
near the temple and altar of Juno, was the tomb of Arcas, whose
bones (the A ) had been brought thither by order of the
Delphic oracle. This place they call the Altar of the Sun. Near
it was an orbicular figure of Vesta, and a statue of Venus
Summachia, or the Associate in war. All these things harmonizing
so wonderfully, and in close proximity together, shew, I think,
that there was a secret meaning in their collocation; and I can
see no other than that which I give. I have already shewn that
the A was called the Tripod of Pelops: I believe also
that it was called the bones of Pelops. And in the temple of Apollo,
there was a large stone vase, which was said to contain the bones
of the Cumæan Sibyl—that is a copy of the A .
Pausanias Phocics. xii. The Jews, who borrowed their religion
from Egypt, laid up in the ark these emblems of the Male and
Female: hence their unwillingness that the vulgar should see
them. Hence the slaughter commemorated in 1 S . vi., of those
who approached and inspected the contents of the ark. And he
smote the men of Beth-shemesh, because they had looked into the
ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people fifty thousand and
threescore and ten men: and the people lamented, because the Lord
had smitten many of the people with a great slaughter. And the
men of Beth-shemesh said, Who is able to stand before this holy
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Lord God? and to whom shall he go up from us? Josephus

says that only seventy persons were thus stricken by the Lord,
for having incautiously approached the ark. Upon this Whiston
adds: Those seventy men being not so much as Levites, touched the
ark in a rash or profane manner, and were slain by the hand of God
for such their rashness and profaness, according to the divine
threatenings. Num. iv. 15, 20. But how our other copies come
to add such an incredible number in this one town, or small city,
I know not. See Dr. Wall’s Critical Notes on 1 Sam. vi. 19.
Whoever entered without being initiated, although ignorant of
the prohibition, was put to death. L . xxxi. 14. The shield of
Minerva, which changed into stone all who looked upon it, conveys
the same idea as this of the Ark. Abbas, son of Meganira, having
derided the Mysteries and ridiculed the Goddess herself, was
punished for his impiety by being transformed into a newt; and
Eresicthon, for felling her consecrated grove, was visited with
insatiable hunger. Pausanias speaks of one Ægyptus who had
the boldness to enter into the temple of Neptune in the Mantinea,
into which both then, and even now, it is unlawful for any man to
enter: and for this daring action he was first struck blind, and not
long after died. The same author relates that Eripylus had for his
lot among the spoils of Troy, a coffin wherein was a statue of
Bacchus, which Jupiter had given to Dardanus; but Eripylus,
having opened the coffin, and cast his eyes upon this statue,
became delirious. From all these arks (which were purely symbolic
of the female principle), Faber deduces the absurd theory that the
Noachian ark and deluge, of which no one in those primeval days
had ever heard, was the sole subject of the Mysteries! That some of
the monuments called Cromlechs, says Davies, were actually resorted
to in the rites of Ceres, and that the stone arks or chests which they
covered, constituted the womb or hall of the Goddess, in which
the aspirants were enclosed will appear, &c., &c. Mythology of
Druids, 393. They were Bride-beds, or Bride-stones.
Note 25 (page 105).—The union of Zeus with the Holy Spirit,
their unity and identity, are hinted at by Diodorus Siculus, who says
that Jupiter and Πνευμα, Pneuma, or the Spirit, are the same.
Pneuma is a neuter. Bryant, in his Mythology, i. 346, has a
significant note. Young women were, by the later Greeks and by
the Romans, styled Nymphæ, but improperly. Nympha vox, Græ-
corum. Νυμφα, non fuit ab origine, Virgini sive Puellæ propria: sed
solummodo partem corporis denotabat. Ægyptiis, sicut omnia
animalia, lapides, frutices, atque herbas, ita omne membrum
atque omnia corporis humani loca aliquo dei titulo mos fuit
denotare. Hinc cor nuncupabant Ath, uterum Mathyr, vel
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Mether: et fontem fœmineum, sicut et alios fontes, nomine Ain

Omphe, Græce νυμφη, insignibant: quod ab Ægyptiis ad Græcos
derivatum est. Suidas. The sacred cakes of the Assyrians and
Hebrews, which they offered to the Queen of Heaven, were called
‫כינים‬, Cunim: the Christians use hot cross buns on Good
Frigga’s day: both have the same signification as the nympha of
Suidas. So also have the holy wells of ancient Paganism and
modern Christianity, which are usually surmounted by a cross,
or accompanied by a pillar. The circular colonnade of St. Peter’s
at Rome, viewed from above, is an immense patera or yoni,
shaped exactly like those in Hindostan, with the lingaic obelisk
in the centre. There were certain temples in Africa called Ain-el-
Ginim, which the scholiasts foolishly translate Fountain of Idols,
though it really conveys the same idea as Cunim, ‫כינים‬. Here
were certain Agapæ held, and the children were brought up and
educated as priests and priestesses of the Temple. Colonel Welsh,
in his Reminiscences, describes a colossal statue at Nungydeo, a
finely-formed image about seventy feet high, carved out of one
solid stone, representing a young Man with lotus leaves winding
from his ancles to his shoulders: every leaf of which is so exqui-
sitely laboured as to bear the closest examination. Two vultures
were perched upon its head. The upper part was seven times the
height of a man, who stood upon the upper part of a building
adjacent; the legs and thighs of the statue being beneath him.
That it was cut out of the solid rock, cannot, says the Colonel,
be doubted; for no power on earth could have moved so massive
a column to place it there, on the top of a steep and slippery
mountain—so steep that we could not even see the statue till we
had ascended close to it. The legs and thighs are in proportion,
and attached to a large mass of the rock. I never in my life
beheld so great a curiosity, every feature being most admirably
finished. The nose is inclining to aquiline, the under lip very
prominent and pouting, shewing the profile to great advantage.
Every part, from top to toe, is smooth and highly polished; I
could hardly conceive how the hand of man could accomplish such
a labour. No person on the spot seemed to know or care when,
or how, or by whom it was made. The Brahmans called it
Gomet Rauz, or Gomet Rez. At a distance it appeared like a
stone pillar. I suppose I need not point out to my readers that
the heroic Man here represented is God, and that the lotus leaves
symbolize the Holy Spirit. Gomet is probably a corruption of
Amid, or the First, which would mean God, and Rez is the Ras
or Wisdom alluded to by Higgins, ante page 130. There is a singular
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identity between this colossal statue and the bi-une Image men-
tioned by the Indian Bardesanes, ante page 29.
Note 26 (page 106).—Sheelah na gigh really is the Chinese
Shiloh, ‫שילה‬, which in that language means the Sun [See Part
I, page 102] and Gig, ‫גג‬, in the Hebrew, and perhaps the Chi-
nese, also means the Mansion. Sheelah na gigh therefore means
the House of the Sun. But this was a name given to the Holy
Spirit, as being the Receptacle of God, whose symbol was the Sun,
and of the Messenger, her child, who was born in the Naros of the
Sun. It conveys the same meaning as El-Isa-Beth, the House of
God and Issa. Gig in the Irish means Branch, a Messianic title;
and we know that the Messenger was figuratively denominated
the Branch. See A , sections 7, 28. He was a stem
from the Great Ash or Fire-Tree Ydrasil. See Part I. page 323.
There is in Plutarch, a strange passage descriptive of a Festival
which the Egyptians solemnize on the 22nd day of the month
Ph-ao-phi Φ-ΑΩ-Φ, to which they give the name of the Nativity
of the Staves [or Branches] of the Sun (βακτηριας ἡλιου).
Were not these Staves symbols of the Messengers? See Part I.
pp. 274, 276, for mystical allusion to Staff, as connected with the
Messengers and the Apocalypse. See also, ante page 68.
Note 27 (page 108).—The Jews also, says Colcott, Disquis. on
Masonry, p. 72, had at the east end of every school or synagogue
a chest called Aaron, or ark, in which was locked up the Penta-
teuch in manuscript, written on vellum in square characters,
which, by express command, was to be delivered to such only as
were found to be wise among them. But was Colcott sure that
it was the Pentateuch? Is it not rather more likely to have been
a genuine copy of the A ? To this argha, coracle, or ark Taci-
tus alludes; he called it a chariot. In an island in the Ocean,
he says, is a Sacred Grove, and in it a chariot covered with a
garment which the priest alone can lawfully touch. At particular
seasons the Goddess is supposed to be present in this sanctuary;
she is then drawn in her car by heifers with much reverence, and
followed by the priest. During this period unbounded festivity
prevails, and all wars are at an end, till the priest restores the
Deity to the temple satiated with the conversation of mortals.
Immediately the chariot, the garments, and even the goddess
herself are plunged beneath the waters of a secret lake. De Mor.
Germ., cap. 40. The same custom prevailed among the Philistines.
Now, therefore, make a new cart, and take two milch kine, and tie the
kine to the cart, and bring their calves home from them: and
take the ark of the Lord, and lay it upon the cart, and put the
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jewels of gold, which ye return him for a trespass offering in a

coffer by the side thereof; and send it away that it may go. 1 S .
vi. 7. In General Vallancey’s Collectanea is a most singular
drawing and account of the Ship-Temple of Dundalk. See the
Book of God, Part I., page 9. Taliesin tells us that strangers
were admitted to the ceremonies of lunar worship upon exhibiting
the Cwrwg Gwydryn, or boat of glass, a peculiar symbol already
explained. Davies’ Brit. Druids, p. 211. And it was sometimes
called Caer Wydyr, or circle of glass. It was lunette-shaped, and
was, in fact, a yoni. So the bell which summons our Paulites
to church is a yoni: the tongue that strikes is a lingua or linga,
and both united symbolize the Voice of God summoning the
Faithful to prayer. But our missionaries have nothing to say
against all this: they reserve their vituperation for Hindustan.
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The Book of God.
BOOK II.
The Various Emanations and the other Mystic Secrets.
1. As the Universe and all its countless hosts of Spirit-

existences proceeded from the Great Mother, so the Mes-
sengers or Incarnations were her own special children;
and were shewn to be so according to the Apocalyptic
doctrines as revealed in the Mysteries. And thus indeed
we find it, though not perfectly, preserved in the Hindu
theology of the past. In order to reclaim the vicious, say
the Brahmins, to punish the incorrigible, to protect the
oppressed, to destroy the oppressor, to encourage and
reward the good, and to shew all Spirits the path to their
ultimate happiness, God has been pleased to manifest
himself in a variety of ways, from age to age, in all parts
of the habitable globe. When he acts immediately, with-
out assuming a Shape, or sending forth a new Emanation,
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when a divine sound is heard from the sky, that manifesta-

tion is called Ac-Asha-Vanni, the Ethereal Fire-Voice of
the Sacred Spirit; when the Voice proceeds from a
meteor or flame, it is said to be Agnipuri, or formed of
fire-flame; but an avatara is a descent of the Deity in
the shape of a Mortal; and an avantara is a similar
incarnation of an inferior kind, intended to answer some
purpose of less moment. The Supreme Being and the
Celestial Emanations from Him are niracara, or bodyless,
in which state they must be invisible to mortals; but
when they are pratya-sha, or obvious to sight, they become
sacara, or Embodied, either in shapes different from that
of any mortal, and expressive of the divine attributes, as
Chrishna was revealed to Arjun; or in a human form
which Chrishna usually bore; and in that mode of appearing
the Deities [Messengers] are generally supposed to be
born of women, without any union with a male. I have
already shewn in Part I, pp. 61—63, the Hindu doctrine
as to the mode in which this Epiphany comes to pass. I
may add here that the Skanda mentioned in Part I, page
60, is in the Shanskreet denominated Karteek, or the
General of the Celestial Armies. [See A , section
33.] He is the son of Siva, the deity with the lunar
crescent. A dove was concerned in maturing the infant.
Too gentle a nurse for such a mighty progeny, the Dove
let it fall into the celestial Ganges of the sphere; the
Ganges cast it upon its banks, where it found shelter
among the reeds, like Amosis, and grew up a boy beautiful
as the Moon, and bright as the Sun, whose extraction and
origin were visible in his countenance. Six daughters of
a Rajah (the six centuries of the Sun) nourished him with
milk, etc. : etc., hence he was called Shesti Matria, or son
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of six mothers. His name is the same as Christ and

Chrishna, and means the Consecrated, the Anointed One.
The word also sometimes signifies Holiness.—Holwell
ii. 133.
2. The Greeks in their secret rites celebrated certain
divine persons whom they called Αποπομπαιοι Θεοι—
Emissary Gods; but these gods were in fact the Messen-
gers. They are mentioned both by Apollodorus and
Phavorinus—the common mythology books, of course,
give no account of them. I take them to be the
τεραστιοι θεοι, the wonder-working gods, of whom
Hesychius speaks, and who are of the same order as those
that the Brahmins celebrate in the passage just cited. (1.)
See part I., pp. 46, 47. These Messengers, as we read
in the Apocalypse, were Messianic and Cabiric. I need
not point out the various and numerous sections in which
this difference between them is made manifest. Suffice
it to say that in the Mysteries, the distinction was
clearly shown, and that we have full proof that it was so.
The first great Cabir was Amosis, the second Ahmed, or
Mo’Ahmed: the third was Chenghiz-Khan. There has
been a good deal of speculation as to the true etymology
of the word Hebrew, and the grammarians, as usual,
have signalised their folly by deducing it from ‫עבר‬,
Heber, “one of the other side!” Its true derivation is to
be found in ‫אבּירי‬, Abiri, the Cabir name; and the
pontifical Jews, who knew the mystic secret of those
Three Vindicatory Messengers, and who based their own
polity, civil and ecclesiastical, on the Judicial rather than
on the Messianic character of the Twelve, called them-
selves by the name of those whom they desired to emulate,
and were probably so designated by Amosis himself. The
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material heavens are sometimes called by this name.

Ps. lxxviii. 25, ‫להם אבירים‬, Abarim lehem, for what is
in this verse expressed bread of Abarim, that is, the
Strong Ones, is called in the preceeding sentence, corn of
the Heavens. See Part I., pages 95, 198, 214, 621. The
Jews, therefore, by thus giving themselves this title,
signified, first, that they were Abarim, or Children of
Heaven [Children of Israel, i.e., of Issa and God], and
secondly that to execute judgment on the evil was their
specific mission as a people. I have shewn in the First
Part, that their pretensions to either character were vain,
that no communities are permitted such a privilege, and
that it belongs alone to the Messenger. It appears,
however, to be not inappropriate in this place to point
out a few remarkable proofs that Cabirism was the real
secret doctrine of the Hebrews; and by this mysterious
essence of their creed, a great part of their conduct which
might otherwise seem sanguinary in the extreme, may be
explained. The first appearance of the Cabir is mentioned
in Joshua, v. 13. And it came to pass, when Joshua was
by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and,
behold, there stood a Man over against him with his sword
drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said
unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries? And
he said, Nay; but as Captain of the host of the Lord am
I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and
did worship, and said unto him, What saith my lord unto
his servant? And the Captain of the Lord’s host said unto
Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot: for the place
whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so. What
transpired between this Cabir and Joshua is not related;
but we may surmise its nature from what follows. And
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Joshua the son of Nun called the priests, and said unto
them, Take up the ark of the covenant, and let seven priests
bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of the
Lord. And he said unto the people, Pass on, and compass
the city, and let him that is armed pass on before the ark
of the Lord. And it came to pass, when Joshua had
spoken unto the people, that the seven priests bearing the
seven trumpets of rams’ horns passed on before the Lord,
and blew with the trumpets: and the ark of the covenant
of the Lord followed them. And the armed men went
before the priests that blew with the trumpets, and the
rereward came after the ark, the priests going on, and
blowing with the trumpets. And Joshua had commanded
the people, saying, Ye shall not shout, nor make any noise
with your voice, neither shall any word proceed out of your
mouth, until the day I bid you shout: then shall ye shout.
So the ark of the Lord compassed the city, going about it
once: and they came into the camp, and lodged in the
camp. And Joshua rose early in the morning, and the
priests took up the ark of the Lord. And seven priests
bearing seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark of
the Lord went on continually, and blew with the trumpets:
and the armed men went before them; but the rereward
came after the ark of the Lord, the priests going on, and
blowing with the trumpets. And the second day they
compassed the city once, and returned into the camp: so
they did six days. And it came to pass on the seventh
day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day, and
compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only
on that day they compassed the city seven times. And it
came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew
with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout:
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for the Lord hath given you the city. And the city shall
be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the Lord:
only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with
her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we
sent. And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the
accursed thing, lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye
take of the accursed thing, and make the camp of Israel a
curse, and trouble it. But all the silver, and gold, and
vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the Lord:
they shall come into the treasury of the Lord. So the
people shouted when the priests blew with the trumpets:
and it came to pass when the people heard the sound of
the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout,
that the wall fell down flat, so that the people went up into
the city, every man straight before him, and they took the
city. And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city,
both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep,
and ass, with the edge of the sword. But Joshua had said
unto the two men that had spied out the country, Go into
the harlot’s house, and bring out thence the woman, and all
that she hath, as ye sware unto her. And the young men
that were spies went in, and brought out Rahab, and her
father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all that she
had; and they brought out all her kindred, and left them
without the camp of Israel. And they burnt the city with
fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold,
and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the
treasury of the house of the Lord. The command here
given as to the spoils, was in accordance with the Scythian
custom, of which the Yadoos, or Jews, had hereditary
knowledge, owing to their Indian descent. We know
that these ancient tribes venerated the Cabir under the
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form of a sword, and sometimes of a scythe (so called

from Scyth, or Scythian) as the Gauls afterwards sym-
bolized him by an oak tree. In the deep woods and
lonely mountains they offered him sacrifices and sang his
praise in hymns. Regarding him solely in the fierce
light in which he is painted in the Apocalypse, and in
the Seven Thunders, and blinding themselves to his high
judicial character, they slew human victims in his honour,
choosing generally for this purpose the prisoners whom
they had taken. When they were on the point of giving
battle, they vowed to him, not only all the spoils and
horses which they should take from the enemy, but also
the captives; and nothing was more faithfully performed
than this promise; for no sooner was the conflict ended,
than they sacrificed all the horses, and gathering into a
heap the arms and spoils they consecrated them to his
use. So strictly was the last observance performed, that
if any one were convicted of applying to his own use a
part of these spoils, he suffered death without mercy.
In imitation of this we find Joshua and his Hebrews
acting. And Joshua said unto Achan, My son, give, I
pray thee, glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make
confession unto him; and tell me now what thou hast
done; hide it not from me. And Achan answered Joshua,
and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of
Israel, and thus and thus have I done: When I saw
among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two
hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty
shekels weight, then I coveted them and took them; and
behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent,
and the silver under it. So Joshua sent messengers, and
they ran unto the tent; and behold it was hid in his
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tent, and the silver under it. And they took them out of the
midst of the tent, and brought them unto Joshua, and unto
all the children of Israel, and laid them out before the Lord.
And Joshua, and all Israel with him, took Achan the son
of Zerah, and the silver, and the garment, and the wedge
of gold, and his sons, and his daughters, and his oxen, and
his asses and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had:
and they brought them unto the valley of Achor. And
Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? the Lord shall
trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned them with
stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them
with stones. And they raised over him a great heap of stones
unto this day. So the Lord turned from the fierceness of
his anger. Wherefore the name of that place was called,
The Valley of Achor, unto this day. The ninety-second
psalm contains a distinct celebration of the Cabir. I cite
it here. King Ieue reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the
multitude of isles be glad. Clouds and darkness round
about him: justice and judgment the habitation of his throne.
A fire goeth before him, and burneth up his enemies round
about. His lightnings enlighten his world: the earth sees
and trembles. The hills melt like wax at the presence of
Ieue, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. The
heavens have declared his righteousness, and all the people
have seen his glory. Confounded be all they that serve
graven images, that boast themselves of idols: worship ye
him, all gods. Zion heard and was glad; and the daugh-
ters of Yehudah rejoiced because of thy judgments, O Ieue.
For thou, Ieue, art high above all the earth: thou art
exalted far above all gods. Ye that love Ieue, hate evil:
he preserveth the souls of his saints: he delivereth them out
of the hand of the wicked. Light is sown for the righteous,
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and gladness for the upright in heart. Rejoice ye in Ieue,

ye righteous; and celebrate the memory of his holiness.
On this it may be urged that the name of Ieue cannot be
supposed to have been applied to the Cabir: I will only
answer to this, that it was usual to do so, as the Messenger
and his Father were one; and that the last sentence
conclusively proves that it was a Man not God who was
the subject of the psalm. In other passages we read to
the same purport. Thus, Ps. xxiv., The Lord strong and
mighty: the Lord mighty in battle; and in Is. xxiii., The
Lord of hosts mustereth the hosts of the battle. 2 K
xix., And it came to pass that night, that the Angel of the
Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians,
one hundred, four score and five thousand; and when
they arose early in the morning, behold they were all
dead corpses. Is. xxxvii., Ps. xxxiv., The Angel of the
Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and
delivereth them. Ps. xxxv., Let them be as chaff before
the wind, and let the Angel of the Lord chase them.
Let their way be dark and slippery, and let the Angel
of the Lord persecute them. And I think it clear
that the Jews regarded Mars, or Joshua, or Hesus, which
is the same, as their tutelary Cabir at all times; and it
was under his auspices that their marauding expeditions
were inspired. They soon abandoned the True God. Thus
we read in Exodus: Then sang Moses and the children of
Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will
sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the
horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord
is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation:
he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my
father’s God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of
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war: the Lord is his name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his

host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are
drowned in the Red sea. The depths have covered them:
they sank into the bottom as a stone. Thy right hand, O
Lord, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O Lord,
hath dashed in pieces the enemy. And in the greatness of
thine excellency thou hast overthrown them that rose up
against thee: thou sentest forth thy wrath, which consumed
them as stubble. So the Psalmist (xliv.) We have heard
with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what work
thou didst in their days, in the times of old. How thou didst
drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantest them;
how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out. For
they got not the land in possession by their own sword,
neither did their own arm save them: but thy right
hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance,
because thou hadst a favour unto them. Thou art my
King, O God: command deliverances for Jacob. Through
thee will we push down our enemies: through thy name
will we tread them under that rise up against us. Behold,
says Isaiah, xl., the Lord God will come with strong hand,
and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with
him, and his work before him. The Cabir Moses himself
is personified in the Wisdom of Solomon, xviii. 14, thus:
For while all things were in quiet silence, and that night
was in the midst of her swift course, thine Almighty Word
leapt down from heaven, out of thy royal throne, as a
fierce Man of War into the midst of a land of destruction:
and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp
sword, and standing up, filled all things with death, and it
touched the heaven, but it stood upon the earth. There are
many allusions in the Hebrew writings which shew that
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the Jews, like the Scythians, as I have said, venerated

the sword. Thus, we are told, God placed at the east of
the Garden of Eden, Cherubim, and a flaming sword
which turned every way. Gen. iii. 24. And the ass saw
the Messenger of the Lord standing in the way, and his
sword drawn in his hand. Num. xxii. 23. And David
lifted up his eyes, and saw the Messenger of the Lord
stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn
sword in his hand. 1 Chron. xxi. 16. Gird thy sword
upon thy thigh. O most Mighty; with thy glory and
thy majesty. Ps. xlv. 3. Let the high praises of God be
in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand. Ps.
cxlix. 6. Blow ye the trumpet on every side of the
camp, and say: The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.
Judges vii. 18. The Sword of the Lord is filled with blood:
for the Lord hath a sacrifice in Bozra, and a great
slaughter in the land of Idumea. Is. xxxiv. 6. For by
fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh,
and the slain of the Lord shall be many. Is. lxvi. 16. Thus
saith the Lord of hosts. I will scatter them: I will send
a sword after them till I have consumed them. Jer. ix. 16.
The Sword of the Lord shall devour from one end of the
land to the other. Jer. xii. 12. See also Jeremiah xv. 3,
9; xxxiv. 17; xlvii. 6. Ezek. v. 17; xiv. 17. Even the
Ninth Messenger did not wholly relinquish his original
Hebrew notions, though he was expressly the Apostle of
Peace. I came not, he says, to send peace but a sword.
Matt. x. 34. He that hath no sword let him buy one.
Luke xxii. 36. Paul also speaks of the Sword of the
Spirit which is the Word of God—the clearest proof that
this was the Incarnation whom they had for their tutelary
god. The Targum of Jerusalem, the Targum of Jonathan,
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and the rabbinical author of Bereschith Rabbah, all agree

in describing the Tower of Babel as being crowned with
a temple in which was placed an idol with a sword in its
hand. This was a Cabir. The writer of Daniel’s [so
called] prophecies, alludes to this form of the Messiah
under the name of Mahuzzim: But in his estate shall he
honour the god Mahuzzim (Dan. xi. 38), which our
version calls “the god of forces.” Grotius confesses that
this means Mars; and observes that the Hebrews to the
present day calls Mars Modim, which he derives from
Maozim. The allusion is to the Messiah God of the Jews
who it was hoped might yet become the god of Antiochus,
if that king be the person intended by the paragraph of
which the above is part. A due consideration of these
facts would relieve the Old Testament of many of its
difficulties. So fixed was this belief in the Jewish mind,
that their Messiah was to be a conqueror, that it has not
even yet died out among them. Hassan, a learned Jew,
is mentioned by Wolf in his Journal, as having advanced
the following argument against Jesus: I cannot, he says,
yet give you my decided opinion, for I never have read the
New Testament. I know only the Old Testament, but I
will tell you my view about the Messiah and about Jesus.
The design of the Messiah was, according to the Prophets,
to restore Israel unto their own lands, and to make them
kings and priests: to redeem them from their captivity,
and to make them a righteous people. And he, their
Messiah, must be their king, and mighty to save. But
Jesus was sacrificed, it may be for a good purpose, but
this very circumstance shews that he was not the Messiah
(p. 77). And it was from the Cabiri that the Jews called
those mountains of Moab which enclosed the Arnon,
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Abarim, and in these they offered human victims. The

whole of this secret doctrine explains a delusion of Attila,
the Hun, who no doubt was acquainted with it. One of
his herdsmen, tracking the blood of a wounded heifer,
found a sword sticking in the earth, and upon which she
had trodden, and brought it to Attila; and Jornandes
informs us of the vast inferences which he drew from this
event. Quo ille munere gratulatus ut erat magnanimus,
arbitratur se totius mundi principem constitutum, et per
Martis gladium potestatem sibi concessam esse bellorum:
with which gift he was delighted, and being a person of
vast designs, he thought that he was appointed to be King
of the whole world, and that by the sword of Mars, was
granted to him victory in his wars. Why so ordinary a
thing as an old sword should have caused this manifestation
is explained by the ancient belief that those who were
led to any place by following the steps of a Bull or a
Cow, or a Star, were supposed to be led thither by Divine
guidance.
3. Pausanias gives us the following glimpse of the
Cabirs, which shews by its mysterious allusions that they
were not the common well known divinities that the
mythologists so glibly speak of. On proceeding to the
distance of twenty-four stadia, he says, you will see a
grove of Cabirian Ceres and Proserpine, into which the
uninitiated are not permitted to enter. But who the
Cabiri are, and what the ceremonies which are performed
in honour of them and the Mother of the deities, I must
beg those that are desirous of hearing such particulars to
suffer me to pass over in silence . . Many instances have
evinced that the wrath of the Cabirs is implacable. For
when certain private persons in Naupactus had the bold-
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ness to perform the ceremonies established by the Thebans,

they were shortly after punished for their impiety. Such
too of the forces of Xerxes, as together with Mardonius,
pitched their camps in Bœotia, where they entered the
temple of the Cabirs, either allured by the hope of gaining
great riches, or, as it appears to me, through their contempt
of a divine nature, became immediately insane, and some of
them threw themselves headlong into the sea, and others
hurled themselves headlong from rocks. Thus, again, when
Alexander had vanquished the Thebans, and destroyed all
Thebes by fire, such of the Macedonians as entered the
temple of the Cabirs, because they were upon hostile
ground, were destroyed by thunder and lightning. So
holy has this temple been from the beginning. Bœotics,
xxv. Again, we know that Sanchoniathon says: The Cabiri
are the sons of Sydyk—that is, the Just; but who is the
Just but God? I quote the passage here. But Sydyk be-
got the Dioscuri or Cabiri, who are likewise denominated
Corybantes and Samothraces. Pherecydes says that the
Cabirs were the sons of Cabera, the daughter of Proteus
(the First) and of Vulcan (Fire); that is, that they were
born of the Holy Spirit and of God. One of these Cabirs
was named Kelmis; he was changed into a diamond,
Adamas. See Ovid. In this way the Messianic character
of the Cabirs was concealed from the profane, in accordance
with the unvarying secrecy and concealment of the
Messenger. He that dwelleth in the secret place of Elioun,
shall abide under the shadow of the A O . ‫שדי‬
Shadai, Ps. xci. He who would unravel the whole of the
past Mythology in this spirit, would perform a desirable
work. Note here, as connected with the above name,
that red earth is the matrix of the diamond: is this in
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any way connected with the Hebrew notion that Adam

means red earth? Adam is the root of Adamant, the
diamond. See Part I., page 265. The Homerid calls the
Dioscuri, Saviours of Men: and says that white lambs
were offered to them. We meet this name on gems of the
Cæsars: it means that they were anxious to be thought
Messiahs, Children of God: but the antiquaries who
explain everything and know nothing, say that Dioscou-
ridos is the name of the graver! ! I fully agree, says
Faber, with Mr. Cooke, the author of an Inquiry into
the Patriarchial and Druidical Religion, that the Abiri,
who seem to have been worshipped at Abury, were the
same as the Cabiri: but I cannot think that they had
even the remotest connection with the doctrine of the
Trinity. But that the worship of the Samothracian deities
was established in Britain appears from the testimony
both of Artemidorus and Dionysius. On the Cabiri, i. 5.
4. Connected with this primitive word Abir [Father of
Flame] no doubt is the Hindu tradition of Kabir, a
great religious teacher; assumed to be of modern date,
but in reality not the name of any man, but rather a
generic title. I think it not at all improbable, says H.
H. Wilson, that that no such person as Kabir ever existed;
his names are very suspicious, and Inyáni, the Sage, or
Kabir, the Greatest, are generic rather than individual
denominations. (As Res. xvi. 53). His birth is related
in the Bhakta Mala. He was the son of a virgin-widow.
Her father took her to see Ramanand: and that Teacher,
without adverting to her situation, saluted her with the
benediction, which he thought acceptable to all women,
and wished her the conception of a son. His words could
not be recalled; and the young widow, in order to conceal
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the disgrace thus inflicted on her, contrived to be privately

delivered, and exposed the child: it was found by a
weaver and his wife, and brought up as their own. There
is another legend of his birth equally in harmony with
the mythologic ideas of the birth of Amosis and of Jesus.
According to some, the child, who was no other than the
incarnate deity, was found floating on a lotos in a lake
near Benares by the wife of a weaver named Nima [Anima
the Soul: that is the Holy Spirit, the Great Soul of the
Universe: the weaver is Artifex Mundi] who with
her husband, Nuri [a Naronic allusion] was attending a
wedding procession. She took the child up and reared
and educated him as her own. His first name was
Inyani [Oannes] or the Wise. Some of his doctrines are
said to be contained in the Bijek: one of which I transcribe
here, as being pertinent to the subject-matter. God,
Light, the Word: and One Woman [Maya]. From these
have sprung Hari, Brama, Tripurari. And She relieved
from the burthen of the embryo, adorned her person with
every grace. I and you are of one blood, and one life
animates us both: from One Mother is the Universe born.
What knowledge is this that makes us separate! No one
knows the varieties of this descent. And how shall one
tongue declare them: nay, should the mouth have a million
of tongues, it would be incompetent to the task. Kabir
has said: I have cried aloud from friendship to mankind:
from not knowing the name of Rama [the Holy Spirit,
anagramatically Amor], the world has been swallowed
up in death. In another place, he says, in the person
of the Holy Spirit, Maya. What is God? What is his
colour, form, and shape? What other person has beheld
Him? The Omkara did not witness his beginning. How,
I
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then, can I explain it? Can you say from what root
He sprang? He is neither the Stars, nor the Sun, nor
the Moon. He has neither father nor mother. He is
neither Water, nor Earth, nor Fire, nor Air. What
name or description can I give of him? To him is neither
day, nor night. [See A , section 66], nor family,
nor caste. He resides on the summit of space. A spark
of his substance was once manifest, of which emanation
I was the Bride; the Bride of that Being who needs
no other. [See A , section 65.] In the fifty-sixth
Sabda we read as follows: there are some modern
interpolations which I have omitted. To Ali and Rama
[God and the Holy Spirit] we owe our being: we should
therefore shew our tenderness to all who live. Of what avail
is it to shave your head, or prostrate yourself on the
ground, or immerse your body in the stream? While
you shed blood, you call yourself pure, and boast of
virtues that you never display. Of what benefit is
cleansing your mouth, or counting your beads, or performing
ablution, or lowering yourself in temples, when even as
you mutter your prayers deceitfulness is in your heart?
Behold but One in all things. These words may be
regarded as almost primeval; they appear to have been
taken straight from the Apocalypse. The modern believers
in Kabir, whom they ignorantly suppose to have been
a teacher in an æra comparatively recent, have of course
added a great many errors to the pure original which
belongs to pre-historic times; but the following was the
original form: and it is probably coeval with the æra of
Adam himself. God, it is declared, or Parama-Purusha,
was alone for seventy-two ages. He then felt a desire to
renew the world, which desire became manifest in a Divine
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Virgin, Ade Bhavani Prakriti: hence all creation begins.

[See Part I., page 24.] Life therefore is the same in all
existences: and when free from sensual desires it assumes
any form it pleases. But while it is subject to passion, it
is doomed to transmigration through various forms. Life
is the gift of God, and must not therefore be violated by
his creatures: Humanity is consequently a cardinal virtue,
and the shedding of blood, whether of man or animals, is
a heinous crime. Truth is the great principle of the
universe: all the ills of the world and ignorance of God
are attributable to falsehood. Retirement from the world
is desirable, because the passions and desires, the hopes
and fears, which the social state engender, are all hostile
to tranquillity of spirit and purity of soul, and prevent
that undisturbed meditation on man and God which is
necessary to their comprehension. And yet it is to the
professors of these sublime, magnificent, and majestic
doctrines that our vulgar missionaries go, in order, if
possible, to debase them into their own vile and degrading
Paulism.
5. Wilford, in the Asiatic Researches gives another
Hindu legend which is connected with the Cabiri as known
to the European mystics. His interpretation, however, is
not accurate; I therefore give the true one. In the
Invisible resides the Sovereign Queen of the Serpents,
[the Seraphim of Heaven; that is, the Archangelic
Princes.] She is beautiful, and her name is Asi-Oroca.
In a cave-sanctuary she performed Tapasya, with such
rigorous austerity, that fire sprang from her essence, and
formed numerous Agni-Tiraths [Messengers, Receivers of
Fire, as in the A , section 20]. These Fires
were also called Juala-Muc’hi, which is Mouths or
I2
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Tongues of Flame [Acts ii. 3]. This is the Holy Spirit of

God: she is called also Rama-Devi, Lackshmi, and
Asiotchersha, or Asiotcrishta—the Fire Mother of Christ,
or the Anointed one; a title given to each of the Twelve
Messengers. Axio-Kersa, according to a French author,
Freret, means la digne epouse, the Worthy Bride. Acad.
des Inscrip. xxvii. 17. This is almost the very name
given in the Apocalypse to the Holy Spirit, Section 65.
Like a jewel she remains concealed in the Ocean. The
Supreme God, Dharma-Raja, or King of Justice, has two
countenances: one is mild and full of beneficence—
those alone who abound with virtue see it. He holds a
Court of Justice, where are many assistants, just and
pious kings. There is determined what is dharma and
adharma, just and unjust. His servant is called Carmal.
[‫ כרם‬Crm, vineyards; ‫אל‬, Al, God; that is, the Mes-
senger who has care of the vineyards of God: the truth-
tender, and who is himself also, as it were, a Vine. I am
the true Vine, etc. J xv. 1, 5.] Carmal, Casmilos, or
Kadmilos, brings the righteous on celestial chariots
which move of themselves [spirit-vehicles of purest light and
splendour] wherein holy men are to be brought up, ac-
cording to the directions of the King of Justice, who is the
Sovereign of the Heavens. This is called his divine or
Messianic countenance, and the righteous alone do see
it. His other countenance or form is called Yama: [God
in his Cabiric or vindicating aspect]: this the wicked
alone can see. His appearance terrifies: He is a
destroyer: everybody trembles at the sight of him. His
servant Eumenid, or Cabir, is Cashmal. ‫כש‬, Csh, the
Darkness, ‫אל‬, Al, of God; whence the Hebrews made
Chadmel the Minister of God, and the Greeks, Casmillos
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and Cadmos. Carmal and Cashmal, it will be seen, differ

only by a letter; this shows them to be one. We find in
Bochart a derivation of this word. Prophets and
ministers of the Gods, he says, are called ‫קסמים‬, kosme-
mim: as among the Romans, Casmilli, that is ‫קסמי־אל‬,
kosme-el, means Ministers of God. Hierozoic, lib. ii. c.
36. Casmillus therefore means a Minister or Messenger
of God. Phavorinus says: Kadmos is an epithet of
Hermes, and is the same as the Kadmilos of Lycophron.
And Plutarch in Numa, says, some have called the Greek
Mercury Camillus, from his being a minister. And the
Tuscans called Hermes by the same name. G ,
De Myster. D. C. 53. Asiotchersha is the same as the
Greek Axiocersa, which was also a name for Proserpine
—but this also is the Shanskreet, Prasarparni, or she
who is surrounded by Seraphim. It has a double meaning,
the Great Spirit, Anima Mundi, and all Spirits that be.
Nonnus represents her as enveloped by two immense
Serpents. We have thus in those names represented
God, the Holy Spirit, and the Messenger; but they also
had a double sense, and symbolized the Cabiri.
6. The ancient European notion of the order of Spirits
more immediately connected with the solar system, was
somewhat analogous to those of the Hindus: namely, that
they consisted of three degrees,—Archangels, Daimons,
and Heroes. The first were wholly impassive and pure; the
second were of a degree lower; the last were distinguished
by grandeur of action, intellectual elevation, magnifi-
cence, and self-denial. The Daimons and Heroes were
those from whom the Messengers usually stepped forth
to descend to earth from heaven: the Daimons being
Messiahs: the Heroes being Cabirs. The later Platonists,
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in order that by a beautiful figure they might symbolize

their purity, called the former Nymphical; and they
who shall have made themselves thoroughly acquainted
with the teachings of Brigoo, Zaratusht, Lao-Tseu, and
Jesus, will at once recognize the appropriateness of such
a name, when applied to doctrines so divine as those of
these sacred Heralds from on high.
7. Plutarch, vaguely and without knowing it, shadows
forth these ancient ideas of the Messengers, whom they
called Great Daimons, or Genii. These, he says, are an
order of Beings which some of the wisest of the Greek
philosophers, such as Plato, Pythagoras, Xenocrates, and
Chrysippus, agreeably to what they had learned from the
ancient Theologists, suppose to be much more strong and
powerful than mankind, and of a nature superior to them;
though at the same time [while on earth] inferior to the
pure and unmixed nature of the Gods, as partaking of the
sensations of the body as well as the perceptions of the
soul, and consequently liable to pain as well as pleasure,
and to all such other appetites and affections as flow from
the various combinations of these. Isis and Osiris. In
this way he accounts for that fallibility which I have
already said attaches itself even to the Messengers in all
things, except their teachings: and he adds that they are
distinguished by Hesiod with the epithets of Holy
Guardians of Mankind, Bestowers of Wealth, and Royal
Daimons; while by Plato they are styled a middle order
of Existences between the gods and men, Interpreters
of the will of the Gods to men, and ministering to their
wants; carrying the prayers and supplications of mortals
to heaven, and bringing down from thence in return
Oracles, and all the other blessings of life. It was
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moreover, he adds, the opinion of Empedocles that these

Genii are obnoxious to punishment for whatever offences
they may commit: and this truth I have already alluded
to in Part I., page 200.
8. These Angels were supposed to be peculiarly inspired
by the solar influence; whether from an innate essential
brightness of their own essences, or from their epiphany in
the splendour of the Naros, or from a combination of both,
the ancient sages have not fully declared. But their
connection with the Holy Spirit, and their mission to
mankind under her direct auspices, was further shadowed
forth by the secret name given to them in the Mysteries,
where their nature was fully revealed to the Initiated
member. This name was that of the Great Mother;
hence they were called Minerval, a title of the most
supreme dignity, and which connected each one of the
Sacred Messengers of the Apocalypse with the Woman
clothed with the sun, who brought forth the man-child of
heavenly destiny. And the title of Hero was mystically
connected with that of Eros, or Love, which was one of
the names of the Holy Spirit. See Part I., pp. 575, 638.
9. In another way, also, this former name was applied.
Minerva, as Plato observes in the Cratylus, is Deific Wis-
dom, and hence she is said to have proceeded from the head
of God: she is therefore the demiurgic intellect by which
the Kosmos was produced, and is the very summit, flow-
er, and, as it were, intelligence of the Deity himself. And
as the Messengers prevail with men by the force of intel-
lect, the power of persuasion, the energy of an
elevated knowledge, it was right that that phrase
(Minerval), which expressed the combination of all three,
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should be conferred on them in preference to any other

of the celestial orders of existence. (2)
10. There is now existing, in the Greek language, says
Higgins, a very dark and obscure poem called Cassandra;
purporting to be written by a person named Lycophron
[Mind of Light, or of the Wolf] in the time of Ptolemy
Philadelphus. It pretends to be chiefly poetical and
prophetical effusions delivered by Cassandra during the
Trojan war. For its profound learning it was in the
highest estimation with the Greek philosophers. It has
been called το σκοτεινον ποιημα, The Dark Poem. This
may excuse my inability to explain it. But if the reader
be satisfied with me that the Iliad is a sacred poem,
relating in part to the renewal of the Sacrum Saeculum
[Sacred Cycle] he will probably think that the following
lines prove that the prophecies of Cassandra relate to the
same subject:
But when athwart the empty vaulted heaven,
Six times of years have rolled, War shall repose
His lance, obedient to my kinsman’s voice,
Who, rich in spoils of monarchs, shall return
With friendly looks, and carollings of love,—
While Peace sits brooding upon seas and land.
It speaks of the Healing or Saviour-God, who thus
ordained and poured the voice divine (l. 607); of the
impious railers who taunt the God of light, scorning his
word, and scoffing at the truth. It calls the different
ages Woes [See A , section 34].
One Woe is past! another woe succeeds.
From all which Higgins concludes that the Naronic
Cycle and its Messenger were both known to the writer;
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though, of course, he could only hint his knowledge in

the covert way he did.
11. The advent of the Messiahs was the æra of peace,
and the golden age; and all who put their faith in them
were happy. One of the Jew psalmists thus alludes to
the Naronic Epiphany of the dweller in the secret place.
He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall
abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He is thy refuge
and thy fortress: thy God; in him trust. Surely he shall
deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the
noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers
and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be
thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the
terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor
for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the
destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall
at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall
not come nigh thee. There shall no evil befall thee, neither
shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall
give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy
foot against a stone. Thou shalt tread upon the lion and
adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample
under feet. Psalm xci. [See A , section 7.]
12. By another we find the Cabir thus celebrated. O
clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto Aleim with the
voice of triumph; for Ieue Elioun is terrible; his king is
mighty over the earth. He hath subdued the people under
us, and the nations beneath our feet. He hath chosen for
us our inheritance, Selah. Aleim is gone up with a shout;
Ieue with the sound of a trumpet. Sing praises to Aleim
sing praises; to our king sing praises. Sing praises to
I3
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the king of all the earth: to Aleim sing praises with under-
standing. Aleim is king of the universe: Aleim sitteth on the
throne of holiness. The princes of the peoples are gathered:
the people of Alhoa, the Supreme Father. Ps. xlvii. And
in this psalm, which I have translated anew, there is a
manifest distinction made between Aleim (God) and
Malek the King, who is his Messenger, though in the
common version it is sedulously concealed. (3) Compare
with this the Cabir-psalm, cited ante, page 161.
13. The numerous vicissitudes to which the Messenger
on earth was exposed, his epiphany in Heaven, his
voluntary descent and consequent palingenesis were all
fully manifested in this portion of the Mysteries. The
principal Demon-God, says Faber (not knowing that he
really alluded to the Messiah or Incarnation), was not
only said to have existed in a prior state* as a venerable
old man, and then to have returned to infancy and youth
by a second nativity; but he was likewise described as
having been lost and then found,† as having died and
then experienced a wonderful revival,‡ as having been
shut up in a coffin, or as having descended into the
infernal regions, and then returned in safety to the light
of day.§ Sometimes, also, he was represented as having
been wrapt in a profound sleep (4), and as floating in that
condition on the surface of the ocean || during the period
* Pre-existence.
† The interval of the Naros. Jesus also was lost in the Temple
and found. And see the parable of the Prodigal Son.
‡ The resurrection from the dead, like that mythic one of
Jesus.
§ The descent into Hell.
|| So we are told that Jesus was asleep in a boat during the
tempest, which he finally stilled.
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which elapsed between the destruction of one world and

the formation of another. At the end of the period
when the new creation at length appears above the water
in youthful beauty, the god awakes, and quitting the
vehicle on which he reposed, whether the mysterious lotos
or the sacred aquatic serpent, coiled up so as to exhibit
the form of a boat, assumes the government of the renovated
world. . . . Now, whatever the aspirants scenically
represented in the Mysteries, the god himself was believed
to have previously undergone. He was thought to have
been slain by the mighty enemy that overwhelmed the
primeval world [See A , section 28, for a wonder-
ful confirmation of this], and to have afterwards returned
to life, and thus to have been born again out of the boat
in which he had reposed on the surface of the mighty
deep. He was likewise supposed to have been shut up
in the hollow interior of a wooden cow, or Theba : he was
further celebrated as the god who was born out of a rock,
or who sprang from the door of a sacred rocky cavern,
within which he had for a season lain concealed. And
Porphyry assures us that the holy grotto was a symbol of
the world: and the whole analogy of Paganism proves
him to be right in his assertion. Pag. Idol. i. 28. These
rocks and holy grottoes were Bride Stones, like those
mentioned ante, page 125.
14. Of this sun-born Messenger Taliesin thus speaks.
Let him burst forth, he says, with rapid speed, the
moving, the vehement Fire [‫ אב‬Ab; ‫איר‬, Aur, Father
of Fire], even he whom we adore, high above the earth.
The Fire—the Fire, whispers Gwawr (the Morning; it
means Flame also). He is high above the lofty tempest!
High above every sacred spirit! Vast is the bulk of his
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courser! he will not delay at the skirmish, nor at the

wedding feast of Llyr. Thy path in the sea is perceived,
thine impulse in the mouths of rivers. Gwawr [Chr]
smiling repels the gloom. At the dawn, at his ardent
hour, at every meet season, at the period of his turnings, at
the four stages of his course will I extol him, who judges
the ambitious—the mighty lord of the din—dreadful in his
wrath. A passage more significant than this it would be
difficult to select from the whole range of ancient allusion
to the Secret of God. His Cabiric energy is denoted by
his coming, which is likened to that of Fire—a moving
a vehement Fire. [See A , section 31]. His
nature is so high as to be above that of all other
daimonical essences: he is equally ready in the battle
(A , section 33), and at the wedding feast
of Llyr, the Holy Spirit (A , section 65).
Other analogies will occur to the reader’s mind; and to
his own suggestions I think it better that he should be
left, than that I should profess to point out the nature of
all. I will only add that in Part I. I have inserted so many
details in connection with this mystic subject, and its
communication to the Initiated in the Greater Mysteries,
that I should but repeat myself if I were to do more
than invite attention to that portion of my work. I may
add, also, that the revelation of the Messengers implied
as well the communication of the Naronic Secret, so that
it is unnecessary for me here to devote a section to that.
15. I have before shewn that there was no secret
which it was so vitally important to conceal, as it were
in triple night, as the secret of the Cabiric Messengers.
This, if generally divulged as an ordinance in the Apoca-
lypse, would have given sanction to terrific conquests
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under the banner of religion. We find, therefore, only

the most faint glimpses of what was intended by the
mystic names under which these Three Mighty Ones were
hidden. I have already intimated that Axieros meant
the Almighty, and Axiokerses-Axiokersa, God and the
Holy Spirit, or AO, whence Casmilus or Cadmilus arose.
[See Part I., page 37; see also ante.] This was one, and
probably the most recondite secret of the Three; but the
Kasmilos (who, according to Dionysodorus, was the same
as Hermes) was added to the three names as a gloss, to
signify that each one of these was also a Messenger,
while the names themselves were given to the Cabirs.
The word Axi, which is the primary dissylable of each is
a radical word, denoting supreme dignity: hence the
αξιος [worthy] of the Greeks. [See Asa, Part I., page
113]. This Asa or Aza is another form of Axi. Eros
was a word of triple meaning: it denoted God, as repre-
senting the Primeval Love, which generated the Beautiful
in all things, from its essential energy of divine benevo-
lence. [See Part I., page 24]. In this sense it represented
the Almighty. It indicated also the Holy Spirit of Love
herself. But the same word with an aspirate and a slight
change in sound represented a Hero, that is, one of the
Heroic order of Spirits, from whom, as we have seen,
ante, page 173, the Archangelic Messenger, Man-Eros,
stepped forth, and offered himself on his Minerval mission
to fallen mortals. Axi-Eros, therefore, in its tertiary
signification, meant the Hero most dignified; which was
a name rightly given to the Seventh Messenger, the first
Cabir of God. In the names of the second and third
Cabir we have the title of honour, Axi, prefixed, and the
kerses and kersa added. But this kerses is but the Chr,
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Car, Kur, of which I have already fully spoken in a note

to Part I., page 115, where the reader will see that this
radical, has in numerous languages, been always applied
to cognates of the Sun, a Circle, the Prophet, etc., etc.
Hence, as applied to the Tenth and Eleventh Messengers
of God, it symbolized and denoted their solar splendour,
their universal nature, their divine characteristics: and
we know that Ahmed, the Tenth Messenger, was of the
tribe of the Kure Ish, that is, Sun-Issa. [See Part I., page
115.] In the Chaldee, Chrs, ‫חרש‬, denotes a Machina-
tor, Artifex, a Branch, and ‫חרשא‬, Chrsa, conveys the
idea of one who from the centre of nature draws every-
thing out of the first shapeless state into formation, by
what ought etymologically to be called charms, that is,
by the power of attraction. Thus Chres, or Kheres, or
Kherish, the Holy Spirit, which, as the flame of Vesta, is
formless, assumes as Persephone [the Soul] a shape in
which an indissoluble living charm is necessarily inherent.
She is an enchantress as producing corporeal existence, as
weaving [See ante, page 169], this cloth of mortality, and
as the cause of that blest illusion (Maya) of the senses,
without which the earth were but a terrific Hell,—in
fine as the first link of that Golden Chain which, reaching
from the profoundest depth to the supreme height, con-
nects the beginning with the end. She is the Maya of
the Hindus and the Etruscans; the Isis, or Issa, of the
Egyptians; the Freya of the ancient Germans,—in a
word, she is the Divine Spirit of God in Heaven. Her
son, therefore, her solar emanation being one with her,
having the same exalted tendencies, the same sublime
Minerval aspirations, is rightly designated by a name
cognate to her celestial essence. He is the Kersor and
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Χρυσωρ of Sanchoniathon, who is called Hephæstos, as

indeed every Cabir and Messenger is an Hephæstos [Fire-
flasher] which seems also a general name for them on the
Egyptian monument of Rosetta. [See Part I., page 47.]
He is Chrsaor, ‫חרשאור‬, one who forges works, that is,
confines the fire (Genes. iv. 22), the enchanter of fire,
Kersor, Chrysor. This is not to be perfectly understood
without a knowledge of the secret doctrine of Fire, known
to the Hebrews, who distinguished Aur, ‫אור‬, God, the
essence of fire, by which fire burns, from Ash, ‫אש‬, the
Holy Spirit, in whom the fire is kindled. In what
manner the Messenger is the opener, discloser, or renewer
of the fire, is explained in the ancient theorem, Κοσμος—
πυρ αειξωον, απτομενον μετρα, και αποσβεννυμενον μετρα
—the World is an everlastingly-burning Fire, which
alternately burns and is extinguished. That is to say, as
the Universe itself perishes, and is again by God mira-
culously renewed [See A , section 61], so is the
errand of the Messenger, who comes on earth to renovate
the decayed brightness of Religious Truth into a new and
splendid re-existence. And under these mystic but
magnificent semblances the fiery coming of the Cabir was
typified to the Initiated in the Mysteries. For further
information on Kadimlos, or Kasmilos, I refer my reader
back to Part I., page 263, where he will see that it is a
Messianic name: and if he should well examine and
meditate on the subject, he will be finally as well con-
vinced of the absolute truth of all that I have made
manifest, as it is possible to be of any religious truth that
the human mind is capable of comprehending. And to
that examination I earnestly invite him, as he values his
future with the Most High.
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The alternate destruction and reproduction of Worlds: of

Spirits and of Souls.
16. The continual repetition of these images, as applied

to the Messengers who were the royal teachers of the
world, gave rise again to further and deeper speculations
as to the true nature of the Immortal Essence that gives
life; and of its own varied appearances also. As Mind
was the Soul or Spirit, and as matter was the body, and
as it was observed that man consisted of two parts
intimately associated, the circumstance was by the ancients
analogically extended to the Universe at large. The
spirit of man for a season was held to animate a body,
and when that body was worn out, and its component
particles were resolved into their original substance, the
spirit occupied another tenement, and again at a stated
interval quitted it for a new one. In a similar manner
the Intellectual Great Father for a season animated his
body the World; and, when that body at each great
catastrophe was resolved into the primal crude matter out
of which it had been framed, the soul soon formed to
itself another body in a new world, which it again occupied
and again quitted at the close of the next period. Hence
we are told that physiologists were accustomed to style
the world, a great man, and man a small world; arguing
at the same time that, although the world like man was
in one respect mortal, yet in another it was immortal;
for that nothing really perished within the whole compass
of the living mundane frame; but what seemed to perish
only changed its appearance, and was resolved into its
original constituent elements. This soul they supposed
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to permeate the whole Universe, uniting all the parts of

it together, and pervading matter, to use their own
illustration, as honey does the honey-comb. Agreeably
to this theory, they held, like Jesus, that the Soul of the
World was present just as much in the least substances
as in those which are the most glorious and estimable,
because it was diffused through all things, whether small
or great, with equal intenseness. The two supposed
component parts of the Universe being thus united, the
whole World consisting of a material body animated by
a mighty Soul or Spirit was esteemed to be of a god-like
nature. The souls of men consequently were reckoned to
be emanations from the Great Soul, and were considered
as fellows and members of the Principal Deity. In a
similar manner as the World was deemed the body of
God, the Sun and the Stars were all supposed to be parts
of Him, and were considered in the light of intelligent
and animated beings; and the different parts of the
Universe were sometimes said to be members of the Chief
Deity, and sometimes, as in the theological phraseology of
the Hindus, they were styled his varied forms. See Part
I., pp. 145, 146. This is what the biblicals calls
Pantheism (5)—a word invented to frighten fools: and at
which, as may be expected, fools are affrighted, for they
are wholly ignorant of its sublime wisdom. And they
have been taught sedulously that it means annihilation
after death, than which it would be difficult to conceive a
falsehood more utterly opposed to its real and perfect
meaning. Pantheism simply means that God is Infinite,
and that He animates the All. As the Soul rules the
Body, says Cornutus, so does God the Universe. Our
soul, says Plato, is a particle of the Divine Breath,
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and therefore we are related to God; our soul’s

divine ideas are natural, and are created by the contem-
plation of divine things. Before it was associated with
the body, it existed in God; even now, though enveloped
by the body, it may participate in that divine contemplation
through the subjection of the passions, and through a
contemplative life. In the Veds, wherever the word Soul
occurs, it means both the human soul and the Supreme
Spirit; for both are asserted to be one and the same: so
Proserpine was a name for all Souls, and yet it was given
to Ceres herself, the universal Spirit-Mother. And it was
this idea which Jesus meant to convey when he said to
the Jews, I and my Father are one; though our biblicals
interpret as if he meant to claim identity with God.
And the same glorious and majestic truth may be found
in the song of Amosis, who clearly signifies in the
following passage the pre-existence of the human soul
in God, and in the Heavens, before it lapsed into
mortality and earth. Lord, he says, Thou hast been our
dwelling place in all generations; before the mountains
were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and
the world. P xc: language so clear and unmistakeable
that there is not a single tenet of popular belief which can
be more certainly established from the Old Testament.
Yet the multitude of Paulites are wholly ignorant of it;
and think that their souls as well as their bodies were
made by their fathers and mothers; but in what way a
mortal could generate an immortal they do not condescend
to explain. All these things I will reveal in another
volume. But Amosis only repeated the ideas of his
predecessor, Thoth, the Sixth Messenger. Have you not
been informed by the Genica, says Eusebius, quoting one
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of the divine Hermaic Books, that all individual souls are

emanations from the One Soul of the Universe [that is
the Holy Spirit]. See upon this, Part I, page 176. It
was from the ancient system of Emanations, says Payne
Knight, that the general hospitality which characterized
the manners of the heroic ages, and which is so beautifully
represented in the Odyssey of Homer, in a great measure
arose. The poor and the stranger who wandered in the
street, and begged at the door, were supposed to be
animated by a portion of the same Divine Spirit which
sustained the great and powerful. They are all from
Jupiter, says Homer (Od. vi. 207), and a small gift is
acceptable. This benevolent sentiment has been compared
by the English commentators to that of the Jewish
moralist, who says, that he who giveth to the poor, lendeth
to the Lord, who will repay him tenfold (Prov. xix. 17).
But is scarcely possible for any thing to be more different.
Homer promises no other reward for charity than the
benevolence of the action itself: but the Israelite holds
out that which has always been the great motive for
charity among his countrymen—the prospect of being
repaid tenfold. They are always ready, he adds, to shew
their bounty upon such incentives, if they can be persuaded
that they are founded upon good security; and in this
acceptation of benevolence to others are indeed imitated
by most Paulites.
17. The world, as we have already seen, was thought
to be subject to certain great periodical changes indepen-
dent of those smaller mutations which it yearly and
daily experiences. In the course of each diurnal revolution
it dies away into the gloom of night, and revives or is
born again into the light of day. In the course of each
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annual revolution it sinks into the dark inactivity of

death-like winter, and is regenerated or restored to life by
the return of spring. In the course of every revolution
of the seasons, the whole vegetable creation dies, is buried,
and revives under a form different indeed yet still the
same. In the course of each revolution, both of human
and bestial life, a generation perishes from off the face of
the earth and is replaced by another generation of similar
living beings. Lastly, in the course of each grand mundane
revolution, all nature is resolved into its primeval chaos
and universal death is induced; but, after a certain period
given to the sleep of destruction, everything is restored
to fresh life; a new earth is born again from the shattered
womb of its predecessor, and the whole race of mortals
who had played their parts during the existence of the
former system reappear by the transmigration of their
souls and spirits into new bodies. All this is based on
the Apocalypse, sections 57 and 61. This succession of
deaths and revivals, of dissolutions and regenerations, as
well as the birth, troubles, and resurrection of the
Messiah, and indeed of all animated souls or essences,
was equally taught and shadowed out in this portion of
the Mysteries. We learn from Cicero, who, however, is
but a poor authority on any matter of theosophy, that the
Orgies of Samothrace and Eleusis when rightly understood
related more properly to the nature of things than to the
nature of the deities. (De Nat. Deor. i. 42.) We are
told by Cæsar that, while the Druids disputed largely
concerning the strength and power of immortal gods (the
Avatars or Messengers), they likewise taught their pupils
many things of the stars, of the magnitude of the Universe,
and of the nature of things (De Bel. Gal. vi. 14). Iam-
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blichus says that the Mysteries professed to disclose certain

curious secrets which treated of the bursting asunder of
the heavens [See A , sections 54, 55, 57, 59],
the bringing to light the hidden things of Isis [See
A , sections 61, 65], the displaying the Ineffable
wonders of the Great Abyss, &c., &c. [section 69.] And
we are also informed that Pythagoras received his collective
wisdom from the various Orgies into which he had
been initiated, and that the Orgies of Pythagoras and
Orpheus were substantially the same. Hence the natural
philosophy of the Mysteries is the identical philosophy
which has come down to us under the names of those
two sages. But the Orphic philosophy exhibited those
various parts of the Universe which were thought
alternately to die and to revive, and the Pythagorean
philosophy described the Universe as subject to endless
revolutions, and as experiencing alternate destructions
and renovations. Such therefore was the peculiar philo-
sophy inculcated in the Mysteries. It was the wisdom
which the Egyptian hierophant communicated to Solon;
which the Stoic most strenuously maintained; which is
inculcated in the Edda, and which is still eminently
conspicuous in the Institutes of Brigoo, and in the other
ancient documents of the Brahmins. And as Cicero declares
that the doctrine of the Metempsychosis of all things
was universally delivered to the Initiated, so we find the
same notion alike established among the Burmans, the
Tlascalans of Mexico, and the aboriginal inhabitants of
South America, who doubtless brought it with them from
the Asiatic settlements of their forefathers. For previous
observations on this head I refer my reader to Part I,
pp. 142—183.
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18. We shall now be able to perceive, says Faber, with

what exact mythological propriety that learned poet Virgil
has worked up his curious tale of Aristæus. The person
whom he makes the hero of his story was the son of
Apollo by the nymph Kyrenè [See Kirani, Part I], and
he was educated like Iason and Achilles in the grotto of
the centaur Chiron. He is said to have attempted the
chastity of Eurydicè, and to have involuntarily been the
cause of her death: a circumstance which occasioned the
fictitious descent of Orpheus into the infernal regions.
Among the Emonians he was worshipped under the
several titles of Jupiter-Aristæus, Apollo, Agieus, and
Nomius: and he was reputed to be a native of Arkadia,
the inhabitants of which were eminently devoted to the
superstition of the ship Argha. Hence it appears that
in reality he was no other than the solar Great Father
[Aristos, the Best. Faber is wrong in assuming Aristæus
to be God alone—it means also the First Messenger]
who, from the most remote antiquity was believed to
preside over agriculture and pasturage, and accordingly,
as he was thought successively to reappear at the com-
mencement of every new world, so we are told by
Bacchylides there were four Aristæi, just as the Baby-
lonians fabled that there were four Annedoti or Dagons.
Now, the mythological story which Virgil relates of
him is this. Through disease and famine he had lost his
bees. Deeply afflicted with the calamity, and not
knowing how to repair it, he stands upon the bank of
the river Peneus, whom the Roman poet makes to be his
father, and there invokes the aid of his mother Kyrenè.
Surrounded by her sister nymphs, she hears his lamentations,
and forthwith emerges from the bed of the river to comfort
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and assist him. At her command the waters divide asunder

and yield a passage to the forlorn shepherd. Under the
guidance of the goddess he descends in safety to the
bottom of the sacred stream, and enters full of wonder
into her habitation. Here he beholds a spacious cave,
provided with a holy grove, and containing within its
deep recesses a lake of pure water. Here, too, he views
the secret source of every river, for within this mystic
grotto lie concealed the fountains of all the numerous
streams which appear upon the surface of the earth. And
now his mother, after due purification by water [baptism],
directs that a libation should be made from the cup of
Bacchus to Ocean the Universal Parent, and that the
central fire which blazed on the hearth should be sprinkled
with liquid nectar. She then enjoins him to consult the
hoary marine Seer Proteus [The First], and directs him
how he may most effectually secure the often metamor-
phosed Prophet. He carefully observes her instructions,
and in despite of every effort on the part of
Proteus, holds him fast in the rocky grotto which the
sea-god was accustomed to haunt. His successful labour
meets with due reward. The prophet, after discussing
the fate of the hapless Eurydicè, the descent of Orpheus
into hell, the boat of Charon, the nine-fold Styx, the dog
Kerberus, and the various terrific portents of Hades,
concludes his lecture by assuring Aristæus that, provided
only that he will slay four bulls and as many cows, leave
their carcases in a holy grove for nine days [the number
in the Mysteries], and at the end of that period perform
due obsequies to the ghosts of Orpheus and Eurydicè, all
his wishes shall be accomplished and his loss be fully
repaired. [That is, that out of the Sun and Moon, Bull and
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Cow, the new birth shall issue.] The shepherd obeys, when
lo! at the stated time every carcase teems with new life,
a superabundant swarm of bees is marvellously generated
from the putrifying bodies of the slaughtered animals.
It must, I think, adds Faber, naturally strike any one
who reads this singular tale with merely poetical eyes,
that, however highly it is wrought up by the exquisite
taste of Virgil, the end seems most strangely dispropor-
tioned to the means! Aristæus, it appears, had the
ill-luck to lose a fine swarm of bees. This, no doubt, was
unfortunate; yet, as every bee master knows, it required no
miracle to repair the loss. But Virgil, in apparent defiance
of the sound poetical canon, that a god must never be
introduced when the knot can be untied by a mortal, moves
heaven and earth in order that the shepherd Aristæus
may not be disappointed of his honey. A river opens:
a goddess appears: a simple swain penetrates into a
cavern never before trodden by human foot. Nor is even
this machinery sufficient to recover the dead bees. Kyrenè
can only direct her son for efficacious advice to another
deity wiser than herself. That deity works a series of
miracles to prevent his being caught. But at length by
a concluding miracle the loss is repaired: and Aristæus
is enabled once more to follow his avocation of tending
bees. Such are the complex contrivances by which a
very simple effect is finally produced; and, if the legend
be considered as a mere sport of fancy, there is a mighty
stir about nothing: a complete mountain with its mouse.
But Virgil was a mythologist as well as a poet; and
he delights to embellish his writings with matter drawn
from that old philosophical superstition in which he
was himself so conversant. This is the case in his
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Silenus and in the sixth book of his Æneid: and, unless I

mistake it is the same also in the present fiction. His com-
mentator Servius, gives a clue to the enigma by affirming
that the whole fable was borrowed from the theology
of Egypt. In this I believe him to be right; though
strictly speaking the story was no more built on the
Egyptian superstition than upon that of any other
country; for, as we have invariably seen, the same system
of religion was equally established in every part of the
heathen world.
19. Peneus was one of the many sacred rivers of
antiquity. The description of the cavern is taken from
the nymphæan grotto, and its subterraneous stream.
All rivers are represented as originating from it; just as
in the Zenda Vesta the holy river and all other subor-
dinate waters are exhibited as flowing from the Arg-Roud
[Red Cow and Boat of Flame], while it rests on the
summit of Mount Alborj. Within its recesses the
Universal Parent Ocean is venerated with libations from
the Argha; and the whole grotto, like the interior cell
which in the Mysteries represented Elysium, is illuminated
with a lambent central fire. The passage into the Cave
is only through water [A , section 69], and we
know that this was one of the trials which were exacted
from those who were initiated into the Mithraic Orgies.
Another delineation of the sacred grotto is presented to
us in the marine cave of Proteus. This ocean-prophet is
no other than the Great Father: his numerous transfor-
mations allude to the scenical metamorphoses of the
Mysteries, and his whole discourse respecting the infernal
regions is perfectly in character with him as the univer-
sally acknowledged god of the dead. But it is time
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that we attend to his directions for producing a new swarm

of bees, which is the very gist of the entire story from
beginning to end. Here let us take Porphyry for our
guide. In his treatise on the Homeric Cave of the
Nymphs, which cave is clearly the prototype of the
Aristæan grotto, he tells us that these divine females,
whom the Latin like the Greek poet describes as occupied
in weaving [See ante, page 169], are human souls about to
be born into the world. These souls the ancient mytho-
logists called bees; and, as Proserpine was the reputed
female principle of generation she was likewise denomi-
nated a bee; and from her the priestesses of the infernal
Ceres were distinguished by the same title, doubtless as the
mystic representatives of the Nymphs. But the souls
which were born out of the grotto were also said to be
born from a door in the side of the Moon [See Part I,
page 467]; and this moon was not only styled a bee but
also a heifer. Hence Porphyry observes bees were fabled
to be produced from a heifer; and souls advancing to the
birth were mystically described in the very same manner,
and under the very same appellation. For this reason, he
adds, honey was made a symbol of death, and libations
of honey were wont to be poured out to the infernal gods.
He then proceeds to notice in connection with this subject
the high antiquity and general prevalence of worship in
caverns: that is to say, such caverns as those which
concealed the Nymphs or bees or souls about to be born
into the World. And now we may plainly enough
perceive the drift of Virgil’s curious mythological story,
which perfectly accords with the received character of the
Arcadian shepherd Aristæus as drawn at the commencement
of this discussion from other sources: we may now safely
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acquit him of any violation of that poetic canon which,

at the first view, he might seem to have so lightly disre-
garded. He had a knot to untie, which indeed required
the aid of a divinity, for, under the form of an apologue,
he was delivering the most abstruse mysteries of ancient
theology: he was treating of no less important a subject
than the general destruction of the human race, and their
subsequent reproduction from that wonderful vessel which
was indifferently symbolized by a cavern, or a heifer, or a
Divine prolific Female, or a floating Moon. So deeply
indeed is the poet impressed by his theme, and so well did
he know the profound veneration in which the Bee was held
by the Initiated, that even before he enters upon his fairy
tale, and while he is professedly delivering a mere lecture
to apiarists, he cannot refrain from throwing out some
anticipating hints of what is to follow. In the genuine
spirit of the old mystical philosophy, which taught that
all human souls were excerpted from the essence of the
Great Father, and that at each mundane revolution they
were again absorbed into that essence, he remarks that
such was the peculiar nature of bees that they might well
be deemed an emanation of the Divine Mind (6). For
however short the life of an individual insect the race
itself was immortal: and as all human souls spring from
the Great Father, so all bees are generated from that
single Bee which was anciently denominated their king.
He then at once launches out into the system which
formed the very basis of pagan mythology. A supreme
intelligent Numen pervades the Universe: from Him both
flocks and herds and men are alike produced: and into
Him again every thing is finally resolved. Death has no
real existence: for by a perpetual revolution whatsoever
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is possessed of life migrates only from one state of being

into another, mounts to its proper sidereal abode, and is
at length swallowed up in the profundity of high heaven.
Throughout the whole of this curious passage, in the
precise symbolizing humour which is so fully explained by
Porphyry, the mythological poet speaks of bees under a
covert phraseology, which properly applies only to the
new-born souls of the Mysteries. Pag. Idol. iii. 217.
20. I quote from Plotinus a passage which shows that
this lapse of the soul or spirit into earthliness was one of
the revelations made in the Mysteries. The divine Plato,
he says, remains, who has said many and beautiful things
about the soul, and has spoken in many parts of his works
about its descent, so that we may hope to receive from him
something perspicuous about it. What, therefore, does
this philosopher say? It does not indeed appear that he
everywhere says the same thing on this subject, so that any
one may easily apprehend his meaning; but he everywhere
despises the whole notion of its being of a carnal nature,
and blames the association of the soul with the body.
He likewise asserts that the soul is fettered and buried in
the body; and considers what is said in the Mysteries as
a thing of great importance, viz., that the Soul is in the
present life as in a prison secured by a guard. A cave
also with him, in the same manner as with Empedocles,
appears to me to signify this universe; and he says that
a liberation from the bonds, and an ascent from the cave,
is a progression to the Intellectual. But in the Phædrus
he says, that the defluxion of the wings of the soul is the
cause of its descent hither. Certain periods likewise cause
the Soul which has ascended to tend again towards the
earth. Judgments, also, and allotments, and chances, and
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necessities, send other souls [into these lower spheres].

And in all these places he blames the descent of the soul
into body. In the Timæus, however, speaking about
this Universe, he praises the Kosmos, and says that it is
a blessed god: and that Soul was imparted to this
Universe by the Beneficent Demiurgos in order that the
Universe might be a partaker of Intellect; since it is
necessary that it should be intellectual; but it is not
possible for it to become so without Soul. The Soul of
the Universe, therefore, was for this purpose imparted to
the Kosmos, and also each of our souls, in order that the
Kosmos might be perfect. Ennead iv. lib. 8, c. 1. For
all this Plato was indebted to the East; but his defluxion
of the wings of the soul is far inferior in beauty and in
philosophic subtlety to the cause which Kabir assigns
(ante, page 171) for the transmigration of souls through
various forms. And a more true and perfect solution of
a great mystery it would not be possible to discover.
[See Part I., page 39—44.]
21. But not to the destruction and reproduction of
souls or worlds alone, or to the mysterious palingenesis of
the Eleusinia does this mythos relate; it includes also in
it that new birth of all intellectual existences which is
said to take place on the advent of the new Messenger.
The bees of a former generation have passed away; the
honey-truth on which they lived has grown corrupt; their
annihilation therefore follows. But the Epiphany of the
Messenger makes all things new [See A , section
61.]: he comes, and by the aid of The First, out of the
mystic Hive (which we shall subsequently see is the
Holy Spirit herself) a new swarm of bee-like essences
proceeds; and the religion of the world is brought back
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by the labours of the Arkadian Shepherd. The heavenly

Hive gives forth its treasure: the celestial Cow produces
offspring: the Rock of God is opened, and from its heart
proceeds the Beautiful.
22. The inseparable conjunction of these ideas, and the
wide prevalence of the regeneration of the Mysteries, is
curiously proved by the analogous customs of Athens and
Hindostan. When an Attic citizen, from long absence, was
thought to be dead, if he returned, he was not suffered to
take his place again in society until he had been figuratively
regenerated from the lap of a woman. [P , Arch.
Græc. ii. 4.] (7) In a similar manner, when a Brahmin
loses his caste by travelling, he can only recover it by
being born again, either from a Golden Woman, or a
Golden Cow, viewed as the symbols of the Great Mother.
[As. Res. vi., 537, 538.] As the idea of being born again
from the Theba, or bovine boat, produced the regeneration
from the womb of a Cow, so the idea of being born again
from the sacred cavern produced the regeneration which
was thought to be effected by squeezing the body through
a hole in a rock. Of this latter very distinct traces may
be observed both in the East and in the West. The
vast artificial grottos which occur in different parts of
Hindostan, bear so close a resemblance to the Mithratic
excavations in Persia, that we can scarcely entertain a doubt
of their having been employed for the very same purpose
of initiation into the Mysteries; and this belief is
strengthened both by the doctrine of a new birth being
so universally prevalent among the Brahmins, by the
austerities practised by them in their imaginary progress
to perfection, and by the peculiar methods which they
employ in order to obtain regeneration. One of these is,
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as we have seen, by passing through the body of a Golden

Cow, designed to represent the Great Universal Mother:
another of these is by squeezing the person through a
small hole in a rock. There is a sacred orifice of this
description in the immediate vicinity of the famous
Elephanta Cavern temple; and from the use which is
still made of it we may reasonably infer its near connection
with the rites celebrated of old in that stupendous grotto.
In the island of Bombay, about two miles from the town,
rises a considerable hill, called Malabar hill, which stretch-
ing into the ocean, by its projection forms a sort of
promontory. At the extreme point of this hill, on the
descent towards the sea-shore, there is a rock, upon the
surface of which there is a natural crevice, which commu-
nicates with a cavity opening below, and terminating
towards the sea. This place is used by the Hindus as a
purification for their sins, which they say is effected by
their going in at the opening below, and emerging out of
the cavity above. The cavity seems too narrow for persons
of any corpulence to squeeze through; the ceremony,
however, is in high repute among the neighbouring
countries. At the present day both men and women go
through the operation, which, partly from the narrowness
and partly from the ruggedness of the orifice, is attended
with considerable difficulty; although it is nearly as easy a
mode of atoning for sin as confession to a priest, or
partaking of an eucharist. But this orifice is deemed
symbolic, exactly in the same manner as the door of each
Mithratic cavern, and the door in the floating Moon,
through which all souls were born; and, agreeably to this
universally prevailing opinion, the aspirants who pass
through the rocky cleft in Bombay are believed to be
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purified from their sins, by experiencing what is termed

a regeneration, or new birth. Dr. Borlase mentions a
Druidical monument which occurs in Scilly and Cornwall,
and which still bears the name of Tolmen, or the hole of
stone. It consists of a large orbicular or oviform stone,
supported by two others, between which there is a passage.
Of this kind of monument the most astonishing specimen
occurs in the parish of Constantine. It is one vast egg-
like stone placed on the points of two natural rocks, so
that a man may creep under the great stone and between
its supporters, through a passage of about three feet square.
Respecting the use of such monuments, Dr. Borlase
conjectures that those who passed through the stone orifice
were thought to acquire a sort of holiness; and that the
orifice itself was used for the purpose of introducing
aspirants, or novices, or persons under vows into the more
sublime Mysteries of the Druidical religion. He is
willing also to believe that the huge architraves which
rest upon the uprights at Stonehenge were erected with
the same intention; and that those who worshipped in
the interior of the temple, were believed to acquire
additional purity by passing through these holy rock
portals. (Borlase’s Cornwall, page 174.) In entertaining
such an opinion, adds Faber, he is most clearly right, as
may be collected unequivocally from the whole tenor of
the Druidical religion. The vast Tolmen represented the
Mundane floating Egg; and the circular temple at
Stonehenge shadowed out what the Hindus call the
Circle of Ila, the feminine of El, God. Hence the stone
hole beneath the one, and the gigantic portals of the other,
equally typified the Sacred Door. Hence the Messiah
was sometimes called τον θυραθεν Νουν, the Mind who
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came forth from a door. Greg. Nazianz. de Spirit Sanct.

Hence also Cecrops and the other founders of empires and
religions were called διφυης, or double-natured, allusive to
their being god-men, and to being twice born. It was in
allusion to such rites that Plato, whose philosophy was
largely tinged with the doctrines of the Mysteries, was
wont to say, that Truth must be sought for at the bottom
of a Well. By truth he meant probably the speculations
revealed to the Initiated; and by the well it is now
obvious from all that has gone before what peculiar
symbol of the Queen of Heaven he intended. And as the
Mithratic cavern, the sacred well, Khoond, or fountain,
the mystical stone aperture, the argha or conch-shaped
boat, the water-lotus, were all emblems of the Sacred
Spirit, so the obelisk, fire-tower, and pyramid were of the
Great Father of the Universe. The great Babylonian
Tower was itself a gigantic Lingam of tower upon tower,
such as can be seen in the oriental mystic curiosities
in the British and the East India Museums. This
is absolutely demonstrated by the word which in
Genesis xi. 4 is translated tower, ‫מגדל‬. If you put
this into English letters, and read them regularly
from left to right, it will be Lidgam. But the Hebrews
read in the opposite direction, from right to left, and that
is the very cause of the appearance of the d in the word;
for as Magnil reading backwards would produce a caco-
phany, the n of the original was left out, and the d
substituted, making Magdil; reinstate the n and enunciate
the Hebrew word as you would the Irish or the Shan-
screet, and it will not only unmask the secret of this long
disputed edifice, but be, sound, and personate, in all the
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Version 20170421
nicety of accentuation, Lingam, and thus prevent all

further controversy about the character of the Tower of
Babel. (8)
23. I have already, says O’Brien, alluded to the  or
triangle as a symbol of the Sacred Spirit: it represented
the female symbol. Lucian in his Auction states the
following dialogue as having occurred between Pythagoras
and a purchaser :—
P . How do you reckon?
P . One, two, three, four.
P . Do you see? What you conceive four, there
are ten, and a perfect triangle, and our oath.
If we investigate the secret of this Pythagorean asseve-
ration, we shall find that the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, thrice
joined and touching each other, as it were, in three angles
Monad, God, or the Active Prin-

ciple.
Duad, the Holy Spirit, or the
Passive.
Triad, the All, emanating from both.
Tetrad, the Three, presided over by

the One.
in this manner, constitute an equilateral triangle, and

amount also in calculation to ten. The inward mystery,
therefore, couched under its figure embraced all that was
solemn in religion and in thought, being, in fact, the male
and female united, the unit in the centre standing for the
male. Look now at the form of the great Egyptian
Pyramid, and is it not precisely that of the above triangle?
Is there not also an aperture into it about the middle as
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here and when to all we add the notion of wells of water

inside, is not the demonstration complete that the God-
dess of the Lotus was the honoured object of its symbol-
ical erection? (Round Towers, 267.) This hieroglyph, as
the reader sees, is A O, the A being in the O
or Circle. As it goes back at least to the days of Pythago-
ras, more than 600 years before the vulgar date of the
Apocalypse, it shows that John the pretended author
was not the inventor of A O. But in truth the symbol
goes back to the first ages of the Adamic Apocalypse.
The same idea is symbolized in the Ogham by
which represents the Triune, and the Tree of spreading
branches, the Holy Spirit; the Hebrews reversed it, and
put it in their secret writings in the form of a bunch of
grapes, thus, a type of her who is the true Vine, and
who dispenses the wine of truth to Mortals. It is called
Sacal, ‫שּאל‬, or the bunch. The pyramidal symbol is
curiously illustrated in the Samaritan alphabet, where
the letter  Ain is a Fountain: a Coondh, as the
Brahmins would say. The Oriental Irish called God
Ti-Mor, the Great Circle—also the great T. De la Croze
speaks of having seen a Hindu painting of a Triangle
enclosed in a Circle, which he was told was an emblemati-
cal indication of the Supreme Being; but observes that
this is not a thing to worship, and that no image is ever
made of God. C ’ Sketches. I have already
mentioned that this symbol was Egyptian also. See Part
I., page 38. See Millin for a representation of the Yoni
in a triangular or pyramidal form in the centre of the
Lotus. Galerie Mythologique, Pl. II. 6. But in place
of the symbol a beautiful Virgin, lustrous with life and
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light was more frequently beheld. There was a seat on

the top of the Gorsedd, or Hill of Presidency, says the
Welsh epopt, possessed of such a quality, that whoever
sat upon it was certain either to receive a wound or see a
miracle. Pwyll, regardless of the consequences, sat upon
the mystical seat, and presently both the prince himself,
and the whole of his retinue, beheld a Lady mounted
upon a horse of a pale bright colour, great and very
high. The Lady herself wore a garment glittering like
gold, and advanced along the main road which led towards
the Gorsedd. Her horse had a slow and even pace, and
was coming in the direction of the high seat. This Lady
of the splendid robe was the Rainbow, or the Holy
Spirit, who was thus revealed to the fully Initiated, and
made manifest as the Virgin-Mother of Light and Beauty,
from whom all spirit-souls, whether newly born or
regenerated, were introduced to fill the mighty Universe.
She is the same as the Hindu Gaun-Issa, or Doorga, the
sacred object of veneration with the inhabitants of Java.
. . . Her they denominate Boke Lora Jungran, or the
Virgin Lady, tall and beautiful. See As. Res. xiii. 339.
24. Among the most ancient Chinese characters which
have been handed down we find that of the . Accord-
ing to the Dictionary of Kang-hi this character signifies
Union. Let us hear the Chinese themselves in their
analysis of it. According to the celebrated book Choue-
ouen,  means Three in One. Lieou-Choutsing hoen,
which is an exposition on a rational and learned basis of
the most ancient characters, thus expresses itself : 
signifies an intimate union, a harmonic blending; the
junction of the Three Tsai (that is, the Three Essences
which constitute TAO), for so united they govern, sustain
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and fill the Universe. See Part I., page 30, for an ancient
allusion to the triangle. The first two letters of Light,
or L V X, the First-born of God [See Part I., pp. 23, 33]
formed a diamond and this with the cross X in the
centre formed a double and quadruple Triangle; the
original of much mysterious symbolism.
25. There is reason to believe, says Faber, that the
Initiated not only bore the title of the regenerated chil-
dren of the Moon, but that, in the celebration of the
Mysteries, this birth from the sacred lunar ship was
literally though scenically exhibited. I take it that in
the large edifices or temples, which were constructed for
that purpose, an artificial lake or river of real water was
introduced, and that this river was furnished with a boat
like the lunar crescent. When the aspirants had coura-
geously passed through the terrific pageants of the Lesser
Mysteries, they arrived at the bank of the mimic river,
and entering into the boat, were ferried over to the Island
of the Blessed. Here they were born again out of the
ship, or floating moon, within which they had been
enclosed, and having landed safely on the shore of
Elysium, they were forthwith initiated into the exhili-
rating secrets of the Greater Mysteries. Pag. Idol. iii.
164. The mode of initiation, he adds, by being born
again from a boat, is most curiously exemplified in the
account which has come down to us of the Ancient
Mysteries of the Druids: and this account is the more
important, because, while it dwells in the strongest
terms upon the doctrine of the transmigratory metamor-
phosis, it closely joins together the regeneration from the
boat, the regeneration from the stone cell or rocky cavern
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[or Bride-Stone], and the regeneration from the womb of

the Great Mother. All these meant the same thing;
though one mode of being born again might be preferred
by the hierophants of one country, and another mode by
the hierophants of another country: for whether the
aspirant was regenerated from a boat, or from a floating
moon, or from a wooden cow, or from a female image, or
from a stone cell, or from a rocky cavern, or from an
artificial grotto, hewn with infinite labour in the side of
a craggy mountain, or from a gloomy chamber within a
montiform pyramid, still his figurative birth was in each
case alike intended to be represented. We are indebted
to the bard Taliesin for describing to us, in the shape of
a fairy tale, the process of his own initiation; and Faber
cites the mabinogi (for which see post, page 216). This cere-
mony, pursues Faber, wildly as it is described by Taliesin,
appears to have been literally gone through by the
Initiated. The Goddess (Ceridwen) was represented by
one of those stone cells or artificial caverns of which so
many are yet remaining in different parts of our island.
They were called Kist-Vaens, or Men-Archs, terms alike
denoting arks of stone. In these the aspirants were shut
up as prisoners, and they were figuratively said to be
swallowed by Ceridwen, and afterwards to be born again
as infants from her womb. Accordingly, Taliesin explains
Ceridwen’s absorption of him by informing us that the
Llan, or cell within which he was enclosed during the
process of his initiation was above ground. It was the
same as the stone ship of Bacchus, the rocky insular
cavern of Saturn, and the navicular stone coffin of Osiris;
and in what light we are to understand the confinement
within it, and the numerous metamorphoses undergone
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by the goddess and her novitiate, may be collected from

the words of this bardic poet, wherein he explains the
import of his being swallowed up by the Great Mother,
and of his being born again from her womb. I was first
modelled, says Taliesin, into the form of a pure man in
the Hall of Ceridwen, who subjected me to penance.
Though small within my ark, and modest in my deport-
ment, I was great. A sanctuary carried me above the
surface of the earth. Whilst I was enclosed within its
ribs, the sweet Awen rendered me complete [or initiated
me]. The Greeks used the exactly equivalent words
τελεω and τελεται, in speaking of their Mysteries. Awen
is the hermaphroditic Om, or Awm of Hindostan, which
is styled the place of births. [As. Res. v. 348]. And my
law without audible language was imparted to me by the
Old Giantess, darkly smiling in her wrath; but her
claim was not rejected when she set sail. I fled in the
form of a fair grain of pure wheat: upon the edge of a
covering cloth she caught me in her fangs. In appear-
ance she was as large as a proud Mare [the Ceres-Hippa
of the Greeks, who similarly received Bacchus into her
womb], which she also resembled: then was she swelling
out like a ship on the waters. Into a dark receptacle she
cast me. She carried me back into the sea of Dylan. It
was an auspicious omen to me when she happily suffocated
me. God the Lord freely set me at large. Davies’s
Mythology, p. 255.
The Doctrine of Metempsychosis and Metasomatosis.
26. Next in order to the palingenesis of Worlds and

Souls, was the doctine of the Transmigration of the
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individual Soul, by metempsychosis or metasomatosis,

which Apuleius beautifully shadows forth in his remark-
able work, wherein he represents himself as changed into
an Ass in consequence of his indulgence in criminal
passion, and his regeneration or new birth into his original
human form by the interposition of the Holy Spirit in
his favour. And as this creed was eminently calculated,
as Bishop Warburton says, to support the doctrine of a
Providence, by inculcating a belief in rewards and punish-
ments, the first Mystics made it to be a part of the
religion of the peoples. Neither the religion nor the
philosophy of the ancients, says the erudite and philosophic
Duncan, recognized everlasting punishment. The locus
pœnitentiæ was always open to the repentant sinner. Alt-
hough it was held that impurity could never enter Elysi-
um, yet every fallen soul, however degraded and soiled
with the contaminations of matter, was susceptible of
purification. This condition being fulfilled by the soul
disengaging itself from all terrestrial corruption, it assumed
its original purity, and ascended into the luminous empy-
rean. Plato contended that no soul could be completely
purified until it had undergone three distinct incorpora-
tions with matter: an opinion, according to Beausobre,
adopted by the Jews (tome ii. p. 495.) The Manichæans
held that five incorporations were necessary. It was
thought, continues the learned author of the History of
Manichæism, that the justice and equity of God restrained
him from punishing a sinner for the offences he might
have committed in one generation, and that He sent the
souls of men after death into new bodies, as it were, into
new schools, to be there chastised for their first trans-
gressions, and at the same time to be purified by such
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chastisement. This opinion, inculcated by the divine Plato,

and adopted by his followers, approaches in substance to
the Christian doctrine, which declares that God does not
desire the death of a sinner, but rather wishes him to
turn from his wickedness and to live. Having affirmed
that three incorporations with matter were indispensable
to purify the soul, this great philosopher was obliged to
acknowledge some transmigration of the soul after the
dissolution of the body, and thus the doctrine of the
metempsychosis was established [among his followers].
Belief in this transmigration was almost universally
recognized by the ancient world. It prevailed in the East
and West, among civilized and barbarous nations; and
so remote is the origin of it that Thomas Burnet remarked
it must have descended from heaven, as no one could trace
either its father, its mother, or its genealogy. Transmi-
gration was a species of purgatory, and is recognized as
such even to this day among the natives of India. The
Fakirs, a religious order of begging friars, in the hope of
entering the Brahminical Paradise instantly after death,
inflict every species of cruelty and mortification on the
flesh, in order to purify their souls from the contamina-
tion of matter. They scourge themselves: they fast:
they sleep on spikes: suffer purulent ulcers to cover
their lacerated limbs, and permit their persons to exhale
with putrefaction. By this discipline they expect to
drive away the attributes of the Evil Principle, believing
that the purification of the soul depends on the degrada-
tion of the body. This Indian theory accords with the
doctrine of Plato in substance; for he says formally that
“The souls of men will never see the end of their suffer-
ings until the revolution of the world shall have brought
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them back to their primitive state, and they shall become

cleansed from the stains produced by the contact of the
four elements, Fire, Water, Earth, and Air.” Transmi-
gration varied in character according to the sinfulness of
the deceased. The most favourable was into a laurel
amongst plants, and into a lion among animals; laurels
and lions being sacred to the Sun. Voluptuaries and
gluttons were sent into the bodies of asses, and other
lascivious and voracious beasts. The souls of tyrants
passed into wolves and vultures. The souls of murderers
entered bodies afflicted with the disease called celephia,
or elephantiasis, and were said to be changed into a
celepheus, which Beausobre expresses by the term in
elephantiacorum corpora. Elephantiasis was a sangui-
neous disorder and bloody flux, covering the skin with
blotches and pustules. The wicked rich entered the
bodies of poor men, and were condemned to beg their
bread all their lives. The souls of adulterers passed into
the bodies of camels, and the Cabbalists affirmed that
David would have undergone this punishment had he
not obtained pardon through repentance, citing words of
Scripture: I will praise the Lord for the good things he
has done unto me, who has delivered my soul from the
camel. There is nothing in these philosophical specula-
tions on the transmigration of souls unworthy of the Di-
vine Being. They are based on that spirit of mercy and
justice, which is among the holiest attributes of the
Creator. That intellect must be weak indeed which
condemns the heathen teachers for cherishing the prin-
ciple of undying hope in the human breast, and thus
negativing the disheartening doctrine of eternal punish-
ment. Had they absolved the sinner from all penalties
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after death, they would have merited unqualified repro-

bation, but no such charge can be substantiated against
the heathens. They insisted on the absolute necessity of
retributive justice, and the very nature of their transmi-
grations, fanciful though they be, were judiciously adapted
to the crimes committed in the flesh. But believing, on
the one hand, in the mercy and justice of God, they
deemed it impious to teach the everlasting misery of
mankind for offences perpetrated during a few years, and
therefore held that new trials would be given to all in
some new form of life until even the most vicious would
be purified from sin: a doctrine consistent with the
divine mercy, and strictly accordant with that promise of
Scripture which declares there shall ultimately be One
Shepherd [the Twelfth Messenger] and One Fold. Modern
zealots may exclaim against such a creed, but the wise
and good will acknowledge that, while philosophers have
instructed mankind from a pure love of Truth alone,
priests have ever received hard money in exchange for
their exhortations. The Religions of Profane Antiquity,
pp. 254—258.
27. Porphyry, after stating that the Metempsychosis
was an universal doctrine of the Persian Magi, remarks,
with no less ingenuity than truth, that that tenet was set
forth in the Mysteries of Mithras. For the magi,
wishing obscurely to declare the common relationship of
men and animals, were wont to distinguish the former
by the several names of the latter. Hence the men who
were Initiated into the Orgies, they denominated lions,
the women lionesses: and the ministering priest ravens.
Sometimes also they styled them eagles and hawks; and
whosoever was Initiated into the leontic Mysteries that
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person was constantly made to assume the forms of all

sorts of animals. He adds that Pallas, in his treatise on
the rites of Mithras, says, that this Metamorphosis was
usually thought to relate to the different animals of the
Zodiac: but he intimates that its true origin was to be
ascribed to the doctrine of the soul’s transmigratory
revolution through the bodies of every kind of bird and
beast and reptile. He then, after instancing the common
practice among the Latins of applying to men the names
of animals, intimates that the hierophants were equally
accustomed to designate the demiurgi themselves by
parallel appellations. Thus they called Diana a She-Wolf;
the Sun a Bull, or a Lion, or a Dragon, or a Hawk; and
Hecatè a Mare, or a Cow, or a Lioness, or a Bitch. In a
similar manner they denominated Proserpine, Pherephatta
[Parvatti in Hindu], because the phatta or wild Dove
was sacred to her; and as the priests and priestesses of
the heathen gods, ordinarily assumed the names and attri-
butes of the deities whom they venerated, and as Maia,
or the Great Mother [Part I., page 91], was a name of
Proserpine, they thence, as we learn from Herodotus,
styled the oracular priestesses of the Goddess, Pigeons.
Allusions to this are frequent among the Jews. And I
said, Oh that I had wings like a Dove, for then would
I fly away and be at rest. I would wander far off,
and remain in the wilderness. Selah. I would hasten
my escape from the wind, storm, and tempest. Ps. lv.
Again, Though ye have lien among the pots, yet
shall ye be as the wings of a Dove covered with
silver, and her feathers with yellow gold. Ps. lxviii.
—a clear allusion to the palingenesis out of filthiness
and carnality (typified by the pots) into the splendour of
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the ethereal heavens. The reader will see the likeness of

this to the Greek Psyche, or butterfly symbol of the soul
alluded to in a later page. For the same reason, as
Porphyry elsewhere teaches us, the ancients called the
priestesses of the Infernal Ceres Bees: because they
denominated their Great Goddess the floating Moon, a
Bee, while they bestowed upon Proserpine the epithet of
honied. They likewise, as he proceeds to remark, styled
the Moon a Bull; and, since new-born souls were said to
be produced out of the Moon, since the Moon was called
a Bull or Cow, which was the symbol of the Theba, or
lunar ark of Osiris, and since the fable thence originated
of the generation of bees from the body of a heifer, all
new-born souls or souls regenerated in the Mysteries were
distinguished by the appellation of bees. It was on
account of this doctrine of the transmigratory Metamor-
phosis, as he further informs us, that the Initiated were
wont to abstain from domestic birds; and that in the
Eleusinian Orgies, birds and fishes, and beans and
pomegranates, were strictly prohibited. It was on account
of this same doctrine also, no doubt, that the Buddhists
and Pythagoreans have included abstinence from
all animal food. And it was still on the same
grounds that the Syrians religiously refused to eat
Doves and Fishes, because these animals had been the
successive forms or vehicles of their transmigrating
Great Goddess (9), or of their own ancestors and friends.
The Druids, says Davies, were called Nadredd, Adders,
by the Welsh bards. This title, I suppose, they owed to
their regenerative system of transmigration. The serpent
which annually casts his skin, and seems to return to a
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second youth, may have been regarded by them, as well

as by others, as a symbol of renovation. Mythology, 210.
28. These symbolical names were in part founded on the
Apocalyptic figures. Man is placed, according to the
Druids, says Dr. Lingard, in his History of England, in
the Circle of Courses; good and evil are placed before
him for his selection. If he prefer the former, death
transmits him from the earth into the Circle of Felicity;
but if he prefer the latter, death returns him to the Circle
of Courses: he is made to do penance for a time in the
body of a beast or reptile; and then permitted to re-assume
the form of man. According to the predominance of
vice or virtue in his disposition, a repetition of his
probation may be necessary; but after a certain number
of transmigrations his offences will be expiated, his
passions subdued, and the Circle of Felicity will receive
him among its inhabitants. Before the soul of man, says
Plato, sank into sensuality, and was embodied with it
through the loss of the wings, he lived among the gods in
the airy world where everything was true and clear.
Here he saw things only as a pure spirit. But now he is
happy if he can use the forms of the imagination as copies,
and collect gradually from them that which smooths his
path and points out the way to the lost knowledge of the
Great Universal Light. To this end the Mysteries are
especially serviceable; in part to remind him of the Most
Holy; in part to open the senses of his soul; to use the
images of the Visible for this purpose, but which are
understood by few, because their original and present
connection is no longer understood. He also says in the
Phædo, that souls departing hence exist in Hades, and
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return hither again, and are produced from the dead. But
those who are found to have lived an eminently holy life,
these are they who arrive at the pure abode above, and
dwell in the upper parts. Produced from the dead of
course alludes to palingenesis. Proclus, in his Commentary
on Plato’s Politics, p. 372, speaking concerning the
sacerdotal and symbolical mythology, observes that from
this mythology Plato himself establishes many of his
peculiar dogmas; since in the Phædo he venerates with
a becoming silence the assertion delivered in the Arcane
discourses that men are placed in body as in a certain
prison, secured by a guard; and testifies according to the
mystic ceremonies, the different allotments of pure and
impure souls in Hades, their habits, and the triple
path arising from their essences: and this according to
paternal and sacred institutions: all which are full of a
symbolical theory, and of the poetical descriptions
concerning the ascent and descent of souls, of dionysiacal
signs, the punishment of the Titans, the trivia and
wanderings in Hades, and everything of a similar kind.
How beautifully does this accord with the words of Minutius
Felix that Proserpine [the Soul] was carried by Pluto
through thick woods, and over a length of sea, and
brought into a cavern, the residence of the dead. And if
the reader will compare these passages with the
Apocalypse, he will find that they have all flowed from
it, as fountains from a spring.
29. Hanes or Oannes, Taliesin says mystically: I have
been a flood on the slope. I have been a wave on the ex-
tended shore. In another place he says, I am a skilful
composer: I am a clear singer: I am a tower : I am a
Druid: I am an architect: I am a prophet: I am a
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serpent: I am love: in the social banquet will I indulge.

When he alludes to his regeneration in the Mysteries, he
says: When my formation was accomplished, not of mother
and father was I produced, but of nine elementary forms
—of the fruit of fruits; of the fruit of the primordial
god, of primroses, the blossoms of the mount; of the
flowers of trees and shrubs; of earth in its terrene state
was I modelled: of the flower of nettles and the water
of the ninth wave. . . I have been a spotted adder
on the mount: I have been a viper in the lake: I have
been stars among the supreme, &c., &c. There is a Poem
by the same writer which alludes to this doctrine in the
following terms: and which gives a far glimpse also of
some further of the secret ceremonies used in the
Mysteries. It is that to which I have alluded, ante,
page 206. In former times, it runs, there was a man of
noble descent in Penllyn. His name was Tegid Ti-Jid
(God the Circle) Voel, and his paternal estate was in the
middle of the lake of Tegid. His espoused wife was
named Ceridwen [The Holy Spirit]. By this wife he
had a son named Moevran ap Tegid (Raven of the Sea),
the son of serenity, and a daughter called Creirvyw, the
sacred token of life: she was the most beautiful damsel
in the world. [These are the pure Archangels]. But these
children had a brother named Avagddu (utter darkness)
the most hideous of beings. [This means the Spirit lapsed
to earth by reason of sin]. Ceridwen, the mother of this
deformed son, concluded in her mind that he would have
but little chance of being admitted into respectable
company unless he were endowed with some honourable
accomplishments or sciences [that is, unless he became an
Initiated Mystic]. Then she determined agreeably to
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the mystery of the Books of Pheryllt to prepare for her son

a cauldron of Awen a Gwybodeu (Water of inspiration
or Wisdom, Boodhoo), that he might be more readily
admitted into honourable society* upon account of his
knowledge and his skill in regard to futurity. The
cauldron began to boil, and it was requisite that the
boiling should be continued without interruption for the
period of a year and a day; and till three blessed drops
of the endowment of the Spirit could be obtained. She
had stationed Gwion the little, son of Gwreang the
Herald of Llanvair (the Fane of the Lady), in Caer
Einiawn (the City of the Just), in Powys (the land of
rest), to superintend the preparation of the cauldron:
and she had appointed a blind man (Μυστησ) named Morda
ruler of the sea, to kindle the fire under the cauldron,
with a strict injunction that he should not suffer the
boiling to be interrupted before the completion of the
year and the day. In the meantime Ceridwen, with due
attention to the books of astronomy, and to the hours of
the planets, employed herself daily in botanizing and in
collecting plants of every species which possessed any
rare virtues. On a certain day, about the completion of
the year, while she was thus botanizing and muttering to
herself, three drops of the efficacious water happened to
fly out of the cauldron, and alight upon the finger of
Gwion the little: the heat of the water occasioned his
putting his finger in his mouth. As soon as these precious
drops [the knowledge of the Apocalypse] had touched his
* The Hellenes had a mythos that Thetis cast her children as
they were born into a cauldron of boiling water to try if they
were mortal. Such as were unable to stand the test perished.
This symbolizes Initiation. Did the Welsh Boodhists copy from
the Greeks? or did not both derive the mystery from the East?
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lips, every event of futurity was opened to his view, and he

clearly perceived that his greatest concern was to be
aware of the stratagems of Ceridwen, whose knowledge
was very great. With extreme terror he fled towards his
native country. As for the cauldron, it divided into two
halves, for the whole of the water which it contained,
excepting the three efficacious drops, was poisonous: so
that it poisoned the horses of Gwyddno Gavanhir which
drank out of the channel into which the cauldron of
Ceridwen had emptied itself. Hence that channel was
afterwards called The poison of Gwyddno’s horses.
Ceridwen entering just at this moment, and perceiving
that her whole year’s labour was entirely lost, seized an oar
and struck the blind Morda upon his head, so that one of
his eyes dropped upon his cheek. Thou hast disfigured
me wrongfully, exclaimed Morda, seeing I am innocent:
thy loss has not been occasioned by any fault of mine.
True, replied Ceridwen, it was Gwion the little who robbed
me. Having pronounced these words she ran in pursuit
of him. Gwion perceiving her at a distance transformed
himself into a hare, and doubled his speed: but Cerid-
wen instantly becoming a greyhound bitch turned him
and chased him towards a river. Leaping into the stream
he assumed the form of a fish; but his resentful enemy,
who was now become an otter bitch, traced him through
the stream, so that he was obliged to take the form of a
bird and mount into the air. That element afforded him
no refuge: for the lady in the form of a sparrow hawk
was gaining on him—she was just in the act of pouncing
him. Shuddering with the dread of death, he perceived
a heap of clean wheat* upon a floor, dropped into the
* This pure wheat is alluded to by Jesus. Gather the wheat
into my barn. M . xiii. 30.
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midst of it, and assumed the form of a single grain.

Ceridwen took the form of a black high-crested hen,
descended into the wheat, scratched him out, distinguished,
and swallowed him. And as the history relates, she was
pregnant of him nine months, and when delivered of
him she found him so lovely a babe that she had not
resolution to put him to death. She placed him, however,
in a coracle covered with skin, and by the instigation
of her husband, cast him into the sea on the
twenty-ninth of April. In those times Gwyddno’s
weir stood out in the beach; and in that weir it was
usual to take fish to the value of a hundred pounds every
year, upon the eve of the first of May. Gwyddno had an
only son named Elphin, who had been an unfortunate
and necessitous young man. This was a great affliction
to his father, who began to think that he had been born
in an evil hour. His counsellors, however, persuaded the
father to let this son have the drawing of the weir in that
year by way of experiment, in order to prove whether
any good fortune would ever attend him, and that he
might have something to begin the world. The next day
being May eve, Elphin [God’s Voice] examined the weir
and found nothing; but, as he was going away, he
perceived the coracle covered with a skin, resting upon
the pole of the dam. Then one of the weirmen said to
him: Thou hast never been completely unfortunate
before this night, for now thou hast destroyed the virtue
of the weir in which the value of a hundred pounds was
always taken upon the eve of May day. How so, replied
Elphin? that coracle may possibly contain the value of a
hundred pounds. The skin was opened, and the opener
perceiving the forehead of an infant, said to Elphin—Behold
L2
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Taliesin, radiant front! Radiant front be his name, replied

the prince, who now lifted the infant in his arms, commise-
rating his own misfortune, and placed him behind him upon
his own horse, as if he had been in the most easy chair.
Immediately after this the babe composed for Elphin a
song of consolation and praise; and at the same time he
prophesied of his future renown. The consolation was
the first hymn which Taliesin sang, in order to comfort
Elphin, who was grieved for his disappointment in the
draught of the weir: and still more so at the thought
that the world would impute the fault and misfortune
wholly to himself. British Druids, 180. Note here that
this legend resembles the exposure and the finding of
Amosis by a king’s child.
30. The explanation which Davies gives is this, that
by Avagddu is meant the uninitiated into the Eleusinian
science, while his brother and sister, being adepts, were
gifted with wisdom and beauty. Of the priests who
officiated in the ceremonies of Ceres, one was called
Kerux, or the Herald, and another Hydranus (the
Baptist), from ὑδωρ, water; and his title, though, perhaps,
not his function, corresponded with that of Morda. The
keeping up of a continual fire was a solemn rite in the
Temple of Ceres: and the Pheryllt he regards as priests
of the Pharaon, or Higher Powers, who had a city or
temple in the mountains of Snowdon, called also Dinas
Emrys, or the Ambrosial City. The cauldron of Ceridwen
makes a conspicuous figure in the works of the mystical
Bards from the beginning of the sixth to the close of the
twelfth century; and it is used metaphorically to imply
the whole mass of doctrine and discipline which pertained
to the ancient priesthood. The preparation of this Vase,
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being a necessary preliminary to the celebration of their

most sacred mysteries, it stands as a symbol of the
Mysteries themselves, and of all the benefits supposed to
result from them. In Taliesin’s Chair, it is called Pair
Pumwydd, the cauldron of the five trees or plants; and
in other mythological tales it is said to confer immor-
tality, or restored dead persons to life, but deprived them
of utterance, alluding to the oath of secrecy which was
administered previous to initiation. Taliesin describes it
as having a ridge of pearls around its border, and says
that it will not boil the food of the coward, who is not
bound by his oath. Davies infers, therefore, that the caul-
dron was a vessel employed by the Druids in pre-paring a
decoction of potent herbs and other ingredients: that in
the Mysteries part of the decoction was used in sprin-
kling, for the purpose of purification: that another part
was applied to the consecration of the mystic bath: that a
small portion of the same decoction was infused into the
vessels which contained the liquor, exhibited in the Great
Festival for the purpose of libation, or for the use of the
priests and aspirants, which liquor is described as con-
sisting of Gwîn a Bragawd [Wine of Brigoo], that is,
wine with mead and wert fermented together: that all the
sacred vessels employed in the mysteries of Ceridwen be-
ing thus purified and consecrated by the cauldron, passed
under its name; and that the water of the cauldron was
deemed the water of inspiration, science, and immortality,
as conducing to the due celebration of mysteries which
were supposed to confer these benefits on the votaries. But
the residue of the water being supposed to have washed
away the mental impurities of the Initiated, was now
deemed poisonous and accursed. It was therefore emptied
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into a deep pit or channel in the earth, which swallowed

it up, together with the sins of the regenerate. In the
ancient Mysteries, in analogy to this, the first ceremony
was purification by water, and this rite was used both by
sprinkling and immersion. Their sacred vessel, which
contained salt, barley, and sea-water, corresponded to the
mystical cauldron of the Britons, among the contents of
which, according to the Welsh Archæology, p. 37, were
berries, the foam of the ocean, cresses of a purifying
quality, wort, and cheerful placid vervain, which had
been borne aloft and kept apart from the Moon. The
ninth and last day of the celebration of the Greater
Mysteries, when all the ablutions and purifications had
been completed, was called Plemochoe, from the name of
a large earthen vessel of considerable depth: two of these
were filled with water, and having placed one of them
towards the East, and the other towards the West, they
moved them sideways successively, reciting certain prayers;
and when these were concluded, they poured the water
into a kind of pit or channel, pronouncing this prayer,
which is contained in the Pirithous of Euripides: May
we be able auspiciously to pour the water of these vessels
into the terrestrial sink. (10)
31. The first transformation of Ceridwen into a bitch,
Davies considers is allusive to the dogs of the Mysteries.
Visæque canes ululare per umbras. Æneis vi. 257. Pletho,
in his notes on the magical oracles of Zoroaster, also speaks
of the dogs mentioned by Virgil. Bryant quotes the
authority of Diodorus, who says that, at the grand
celebration of Isis, the whole solemnity was preceded by
dogs; though he attributes this, and truly, to the igno-
rance of the Greeks, who mistook the Hebrew and
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Egyptian term cohen or kenn, ‫כהן‬, a priest, for κυων,

which, in their language, implies a Dog. As, however,
the dog Sirius was an emblem of the Messenger, the
Druids may have thus borrowed the idea. Hence the
meaning of the mystic inscription of Isis, given by
Diodorus, lib. i.: ‘Εγω ἐιμι ἡ ἐν τῳ ἀστρῳ τῳ Κυνι ἐπιτέλ-
λουσα. I am She that rises in the Dog Star. I am She
who is made manifest in my star-like Dog, the Messenger.
The various transformations imply the various degrees of
Initiation, until the novitiate at length became a grain
of pure wheat, a form sacred to Ceres, who receives him
into her bosom; after which he is born anew in a state
of perfect loveliness. D , British Druids, 189. The
remainder of the mabinogi seems to relate only to
Taliesin himself, who tells Gwyddno, Thrice have I been
born, &c., &c., though Davies endeavours to twist it
into some connection with the Helio-Arkite lunacy of
Bryant and Faber, to which he appears to have become
a violent convert. He cites a poem by Gwyddno,
as supplementary to this, which throws additional
light upon the mabinogi quoted. It is evidently,
he says, a formula in the celebration of the Mystical Rites
[and alludes to the voyage from England to Anglesea,
which every probationer was obliged to make.] The
P , seeing the sea in the distance, exclaims:
Though I love the sea-beach, I dread the open sea: a
billow may come undulating over the stone. To this the
solemn H replies: To the brave, to the mag-
nanimous, to the amiable, to the generous, who boldly
embarks, the ascending stone of the Bards will prove the
harbour of life. It has asserted the praise of Heillyn
the Mysterious Impeller of the Sky, and till the doom
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shall its symbol be continued. The P answers:

Though I love the strand, I dread the wave: great has
been its violence: dismal the overwhelming stroke. Even
to him who survives it will be the subject of lamentation.
H : It is a pleasant act to wash on the bosom
of the fair water. Though it fill the receptacle, it does
not disturb the heart. My associated train regard not
its overwhelming. As for him who repented of his
enterprise, the lofty wave has hurried the babbler far
away to his death, but the brave, the magnanimous, will
find his compensation in arriving safe at the stones. The
conduct of the water will declare thy merit.
32. The candidate, says Oliver upon this passage, was
actually set adrift in the open sea, on the evening of the
29th of April, and was obliged to depend on his own
address and presence of mind to reach the opposite shore
in safety. This dangerous nocturnal expedition was the
closing act of Initiation, and sometimes proved the closing
act of life. If he possessed a strong arm and well fortified
heart, he might succeed in gaining the safe landing place
on Gwyddno’s weir; but if either of those failed during
the enterprise, the prospect before him was little less than
certain death. Hence, on beholding, across a stormy sea,
at the approach of night, the dashing waves breaking on
the weir at an immense and almost hopeless distance, the
timid Probationer has frequently been induced to distrust
his own courage, and abandon the undertaking altogether.
A refusal which brought on a formal and contemptuous
rejection from the Hierophant, and the candidate was
pronounced unworthy of a participation in the honours
and distinctions to which he aspired, and to which from
this moment he was for ever ineligible. Thy coming
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without external purity (thus was he addressed in a

prescribed formulary) is a pledge that I will not receive
thee. Take out the gloomy one. From my teritory have
I alienated the useful steed; my revenge upon the shoal
of earthworms is their hopeless longing for the pleasant
allotment. Out of the receptacle which is thy aversion
did I obtain the Rainbow; that is, knowledge of the Holy
Spirit of God. So in the Tale of Pwyll, before alluded
to (ante, page 204), the hero, after having been initiated,
returns from the Palace of the Deep into his own
dominions, and providing a solemn sacrifice, beheld the
sign of the Rainbow, glittering in all its brilliancy of
colouring, under the character of a Virgin mounted on a
horse (the Sun) of a pale bright colour, great and very
high. So the Rainbow, called by the Druids Arianrod,
is termed the Goddess of the Silver Wheel, who throws
her gracious beams of protection round the candidate when
his Initiation is completed. Davies’ Ancient Brit. Coins.
But the Silver wheel is the Universe, and its Goddess
consequently is the Holy Spirit.
The Worship of Adonis, or Thammuz, as connected with

the Preceeding Truths.
33. All these beautiful ideas, all these mythical

pictures, were represented to the aspirants under a
succession of almost divine parables, or allegories, of
which only a few faint but glittering traces have been
preserved. I may mention one: the story of Adonis,
which symbolizes, not only the lapse of the spirit from its
ethereal palaces, but also its Phoenix-like re-ascension;
in a double sense it typified the Messenger also, and his
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epiphany among mortals: his martyrdom: his bright

return to his native spheres. Adonis was the son of a
King [God], and was a person of the most perfect loveli-
ness, as every sinless spirit is. His father, Amm-On, or
Aum-Aun, produced him in the embraces of his daughter.
He was educated by the Nymphs. Venus, or Heavenly
Beauty loved him: but giving himself up immoderately to
hunting (a carnal pursuit), he suffered death by one of the
very creatures which he chased: that is, the soul is lost
by the very sensual passion, after which it hurries. Venus
poured nectar on the blood that flowed from his wound:
in less than an hour there sprang from thence a crimson
flower like that of a pomegranate. It was called anemone,
but is short lived as the winds. This is the body, which
has its birth in the fall and calamity of the Celestial
Spirit. He descended into hell; but owing to the tears
and entreaties of Heavenly Beauty, he was restored in a
great measure to his former glorious condition, though he
could not wholly recover his pristine brightness. He was
condemned to abide six months in Hades, or the Invisible,
that is among the lapsed order of spirits; and six months
with Venus. Such was the decision of Calliope, or the
Divine Voice; ‫בת קל‬, Bth ql. To perpetuate the
memory of this event an annual festival was established
during which the celebrants first mourned for the death of
Adonis, and then rejoiced as for his being newly born and
again restored to life. (11). The first part of this solemnity
was called Αφανισμος, the Disappearance [L xxiv. 31]
during which they bewailed the youth’s death; and the
second, ‘‘Ευρεσις, the Discovery, when joy succeeded to
grief [L xxiv. 51, 52]. Tammuz, or T'Aum-az, a name
for Adonis, was one of the Jewish months; and the
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worship of Tammuz became an integral part of the Jewish

religion, from a very early period of their separate existence
as a people. Among them it meant the Messiah. So
Adonis was identified with the Sun, Shiloh, the Messiah.
Adonin quoque Solem esse non dubitabitur, says Macro-
bius, Saturnal i. 21. Tzetzes on Hesiod, p. 249, says
that Hercules was the Sun, and Macrobius adopts the
same view. Sed nec Hercules a substantiâ Solis alienus
est. Saturnal i. 20. Hercules, Adonis, and Jesus all
descended into hell. This mythos symbolized the lapse or
descent of the soul to earth, which was called a descent
into hell. The idea was Egyptian, and was adopted by the
writer of the Iliad. Hence the Pythagoreans and Pla-
tonists called this earth the dark cavern of imprisoned
souls, a phrase borrowed from the Mysteries. De Ant.
Nymph. p. 255. Hanc terram, says Servius, in quâ
vivimus inferos esse voluerunt. In Æn. vi. 127. See
Part I., page 12, H . Shiloh, which in the Chinese
language means the Sun, is probably the true root of the
Etruscan Sol. See Part I. page 102.
34. The worship of Thammuz, or Adonis was not
confined to Syria. Theocritus describes the ladies of
Syracuse embarking for Alexandria, where they were to
keep the festival in honour of Adonis. Nothing was so
noble and grand as the apparatus of this ceremony.
Arsinoe, the sister and wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus,
bore the statue of Adonis herself. She was accompanied
by the women of greatest distinction in the city, holding
in their hands baskets full of cakes, boxes of perfumes,
flowers, branches of trees, and all sorts of fruits. The
solemnity was closed by other ladies, bearing rich carpets,
whereon were two beds, embroidered with gold and silver,
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the one for Venus, the other for Adonis. Then was
exhibited the statue of that young prince, with a ghastly
paleness in his looks, which yet, did not quite deface the
charms that had rendered him so amiable. The procession
marched in this manner along the sea coasts to the sound
of trumpets, and all sorts of instruments, that accompanied
the voices of musicians. The same ceremony was diffused
throughout all Assyria, as we are informed by Macrobius,
Inspectâ religione Assyriorum, apud quos Veneris Archiditis
et Adonidis maxima olim veneratio viguit. Sat. i. xxi.
From Syria and Palestine, the worship of Adonis was
propagated to Persia, to the Island of Cyprus, and at
length to Greece, especially to Athens, where the festival
of Adonis was celebrated with a great deal of magnificence.
When the time of the festival was come, they took care,
as Plutarch remarks, to place in several quarters of the
city, representations of dead bodies, resembling a young
man who had died in the flower of his age. Then came
women dressed in mourning robes, and carried them off
to celebrate their funeral rites, weeping and singing
doleful songs expressive of their affliction. Their tears
were accompanied with shrieks and groans, as we are told
by Aristophanes and Bion; all which Ovid expresses very
happily. Met. x. 725.
. . . . . Luctus Monumenta manebunt
Semper, Adoni, mei; repetitaque Mortis Imago
Annua plangoris peraget simulamina nostri.
We find among the other ceremonies of the festival of
Adonis, that they carried corn in earthen vessels which
they had sowed there, together with flowers, springing grass,
fruits, young trees, and lattices. Suidas, Hesychius, and
Theophrastus inform us of these circumstances, and add,
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that at the end of the ceremony they went and threw

those portable gardens, either into a fountain or into the
sea, when they were near it, as is remarked by Eustathius
and the scholiast on Theocritus. This was a kind of
sacrifice which they made to Adonis, as we learn from
Hesychius. It appears to have been typical of the seed-
like soul which was to attain new life and regeneration by
being immersed in the Holy Spirit. Jesus was fond of
similar analogies, as may be seen Matt. xiii. 3, Mark iv.,
Luke viii. Note, that Thaumaz was in Egyptian the
rainbow,—thus it came to be applied to the Messenger,
the Son of the Rainbow. This Thaumaz is a cognate of
Amazon: and the mythos of Adonis is the counterpart of
that of Persephone.
35. Adonis, who was thus destroyed, was not only a
type of the lapsed spirit, but, as I have said, of the Mes-
senger also, who was usually persecuted or slain; or whose
voluntary immolation of himself for the sake of mortals
was treated as a martyrdom. Jesus makes frequent
allusion to this: he regarded it as part of his destiny.
So in truth it is of most of the Divine Teachers. It was
typified in Prometheus hundreds of years before Jesus,
by the death of a holy man crucified—a lingering sort of
death, without much actual violence; and this was
occasionally shewn in some of the Mysteries. As it was
not universally true of the Messengers, it was not incul-
cated as an essential matter of faith; but we find numerous
commemorations of it in history. The paschal lamb, or
Lama, was roasted by the Jews upon a wooden spit in the
shape of a cross; and if our eyes and ears did not tell us
that, σταυρος, a cross, or the thing which gives its name
to the letter ταυ, T, we are informed of it by Lucian.
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Ixion (which is Iynx, a Dove, the letters being transposed)

invented it, and is said to have been the victim of his own
invention. He loved the Queen of Heaven, that is, he
was a Messianic symbol. Prometheus offended Zeus by
his philanthropy, who in resentment thereof crucified him
on Caucasus. Manilius describes Andromeda [the Coun-
seller of Men] fastened to the rock with her arms
extended. Et cruce virgineâ moritura puella pependit.
Andromeda was a disguise for the Messenger. The
crucifixion of the Dove, or Iynx, was a great mystery, and
that of the owl was practised in the magic of Melampus.
Both were symbolic of the Holy Spirit, who was thus
supposed to suffer in her Son. The Romans annually
paraded a live dog [a priest] crucified upon an elder-wood
cross, between the temples of Juventus and Summanus.
Sozomen relates that when the temple of Sar-Apis, in
Egypt, was discovered, certain cruciform hieroglyphics
were found, which the learned of that country interpreted
to mean the life to come. Curious illustrations of the
crucial mysteries among the ancient Germans and Chinese
may be read in Elias Schedius, and in Gabriel Sionita. (12)
36. The very first plate in Gronovius typifies this
martyrdom. It is entitled Prometheus; which we know
was a name for the First Messenger, as Bra-Ma-Tha-Issa
was of the Holy Spirit. He is represented as contem-
plating the new-formed man, while the Holy Spirit
animates him with a soul symbolized by the butterfly.
Behind her is the Tree of Life; beside which is the
Globe and Pillar, the first of which is girded by the
zodiacal belt, or symbol of the Twelve Messengers, who
are made manifested in the heavenly Signs: a beautiful
female figure seems contemplating the skies. On the
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left of the gem, the Messenger is again seen, bound in

cruciform shape to a rock: the vulture or eagle of
devouring mortals is perched on his thigh, while above
him one of the Destinies stands, indicating that torture is
the fate of the descending Messenger of God to man.
The mythos of Tityus has probably the same meaning.
So is that of Agaue (Splendour) weeping for her son
Pentheus, or Pan-Theos (God is All), torn in pieces by
the Bacchanals. The Greek gem of Laocoon stung to
death by serpents, has the same symbolism. See Gronovius,
i. R r r r. The numerous legends invented upon this and
cognate myths were only either 1, the disguises of the
priests to conceal the fundamental truth from the multitude:
or 2, the playful fancies of poetical imagination sprouting
out of the original theosophic truth. So, the Boar-Avatar of
India was mythologized and hidden by the Greeks under
the story of Meleager. He is represented in Gronovius
standing by a Pillar crowned with a Boar’s head: near
him is the Dog-emblem of the Messenger. His slaying
of the Boar was the riddle that wrapped the truth from
the vulgar. At Christmas, when the festival of the
Incarnation was celebrated, the Boar’s head was always
the primary dish at the feast: and the apple in his
mouth the World symbolized: or, as in many cases, a
type of the Apocalyptic Book, which the Messenger
brings, and which Book was the Secret of the Apple
Garden.
37. Speaking of the cross, Faber says: That the figure
was held in high veneration long before the Christian
æra, and accordingly we find several temples with arms
branching out from the central penetrale into four
rectangular arms. Such is the shape of the great Temple
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at Benares. Its body is constructed in the form of a

vast cross: and where the arms intersect rises a lofty
dome somewhat pyramidal towards the summit. Exactly
the same likewise is the Temple at Mathura. It presents
the aspect of a high dome with four cruciform arms
extending rectangularly from it. Such again is the shape
of the subterraneous temple beneath the pyramid of New
Grange [transposed Grain-Uagh, the Cave of the Sun]
in Ireland. The avenue to it forms the long arm of the
cross: and three other short arms branch out at right
angles from the central octagon sacellum, the roof of
which rises in the form of a dome. This figure is the
famous cross of Hermes or Taut. It repeatedly occurs in
the Pamphylian and other obelisks; and it decorates the
hands of most of the sculptured images of Egypt. Pag.
Idol. iii. 287. The origin of the cross as a sacred symbol
is to be traced, as we have seen, to the Apocalypse,
section 22: and to the Apocalypse alone: the Glory of
God (the Holy Spirit) there indicated it as a saving mark.
Therefore it was thenceforth venerated all over the earth,
and when the priests invented mediatorial human sacrifice
(13), they impaled the victim on a cross as being a form
pleasing as they imagined to the Divine.
38. This mystery of regeneration, which was thus
inculcated in the Eleusinia, conveyed a profound
philosophic truth. It taught that man in his lapsed or
fallen state must despair of re-ascension into the Divine
Lights until his nature was so thoroughly altered by the
extinguishment or the purification of his passions and
wild desires that he had become in reality a new creature.
And it insisted on the absolute necessity of this change,
palingenesis or new birth, not by any such frenzy as
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“grace,” or “saving faith,” or the other cant phrases of

the saints, but by a man’s own determined resolution to
be pure and good. And to impress this the more deeply
on the mind, they used symbols and representatives in
the Mysteries. But the priests in course of time
changed all this into something wholly different, and
gave to the symbol a value and an essence of its own,
which no form could possess. As they taught that by
the scapegoat a man could purify himself from all sin,
so they gradually inculcated in the Mysteries that the
symbolic change which there took place was equivalent
to the real and actual palingenesis which awaits all
creatures after death; thus substituting semblance for
reality as the baptismal Paulites do, who hold that the
symbolic cleansing which baptism indicates, is of the
same excellence as the real spiritual purification of which
it is only a type.
39. In the Phædo, the purificatory power of full
Initiation is thus alluded to: Wherefore those who
instituted the Mysteries seem to be no contemptible
men, but in reality to have darkly admonished us of old,
that whoever passes into the infernal regions uninitiated and
unexpiated will lie wallowing in mud; but that he who arrives
thither purified and initiated will dwell with the Gods.
A kindred passage occurs in book ii. of the Republic.
Aristides, in the oration called Eleusinian, where he deplores
the burning of the Temple of Ceres, says: Nevertheless
the advantage of this assembly consists not merely in
present tranquillity of mind, or in being released and
freed from former troubles, but in our having better hopes
in regard to death, as being about to live more happily,
and not to lie in darkness and mire, a fate which awaits
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the uninitiated. All this, says Mosheim, was meant to

imply that men not purified by consecrated waters and
other ceremonies will carry with them the impurities
contracted through vice and crime into the lower world,
and will there have to endure a far more painful purgation
than they were willing to undergo in the Mysteries,
till they have been thoroughly divested of all marks and
stains. Socrates certainly had some notion of this kind
in Plato’s Phædo, where he expounds this saying of the
priests who presided over the Mysteries, philosophically
and in reference to the necessity of purifying the mind.
That is to say, according to the opinion of the ancients
a man contaminated with vice stands in need of purgation;
and therefore it is necessary for him to undergo it here, or
after he has quitted the body. The earliest philosophers
indeed asserted that the soul is not purified till after
death; but in later ages this doctrine was controverted,
and an admission into the higher Mysteries was believed
to confer this purification. When the mortal course, says
Apuleius, draws to its close, and they are now placed on
the very threshold of the grave, God is wont to select
those to whom the Great Secrets of Religion may safely
be confided, and by his providence to place them born
again in a certain manner in a new career.*
40. The modern doctrine of original sin, or the spiritual
deformity and impurity of every new-born infant, in
consequence of the sin of the fabulous Adam, is founded
upon the ancient belief that the souls of wicked persons
became foul and polluted according to the nature of the
* In the Sacred Marriage of the Mysteries, the offspring was a
serpent-formed Son: or a new birth in the Image of the Father,
the Serpent of Eternity.
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crimes which they committed. Lucian has well described

this in his Tyrannus, where he introduces three men who
are placed before Rhadamanthus for examination in the
regions of the dead—namely, Cyniscus, a philosopher,
Myciscus, a cobbler, and, lastly, a tyrant infamous for
the variety of his crimes during life. The philosopher is
first placed before the judge, perfectly naked; he is con-
sidered by Rhadamanthus to be pure, but nevertheless
he has three or four marks of healed ulcers. On seeing
these, the judge asks how he managed to efface the
imprints of crime. The philosopher replies: Having
formerly become depraved and wicked through ignorance,
and by that means marked with many spots, as soon as I
began to philosophize I gradually wiped away all stains
from the soul. The ancients believed, therefore, that the
study of philosophy and the love of virtue heals and
removes the leprosy which the bodies of souls contract
from crimes. The cobbler next appears before the judge,
but he is perfectly pure and devoid of spots, because he
had led an innocent life. But the third, Megapenthes,
the tyrant, although he endeavours by all means to clear
himself before the judge, is found to be covered over with
the foulest blotches. He is commanded to put off the
purple robe, that we may see the number of the spots.
Why, really this man is all over livid and spotted; nay,
rather black with spots. The criminal is consequently
doomed by Rhadamanthus to a new and exquisite
punishment. This passage does not require illustration,
for it clearly shews what opinion was entertained as to
the stigmata which vice imprinted on the soul. The
Emperor Julian propounded the same doctrine. Thus
Tiberius, whose life and reign had been most base and
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vicious, as soon as he appears in the company of the

gods, is immediately perceived to be covered with foul
marks. “When he turned to the chair, thousands of scars
were seen on his back; seams and scratches, and severe
gashes and wales, caused by intemperance and cruelty;
scabs and blotches, as though burnt into the skin.” The
same truth was preached by the Ninth Messenger, as is
developed in the parable of “The Wedding Garment.”
From this belief was derived the institution of the various
lustrations, baptisms, and purgations, especially those
practised in the Mysteries, as also the Taurobolia, the
Aswamedha, the Yagna and Azazel sacrifice, the human
crucifixion, which were supposed to be of avail for the
purification of men and the total expiation of crime.
Omne nefas, omnemque mali purgamina caussam,
Credebant nostri tollere posse senes. Ov. Fast. ii. 35.
I am truly grateful, says the orthodox Mosheim in his
notes to Cudworth, though he does not appear to have
considered that his language applied to the creed he
preached, to those learned men who, in erudite works,
have investigated and thrown light upon the Grecian
Mysteries, lustrations, and other ancient superstitions of
the kind, but still they seem to me to have explained the
rites themselves more than their origin or causes. It is
evident that those who held it to be possible for men to
be purified by sacred waters, blood, and the like, whether
in or out of the Mysteries, believed that the souls derived
some advantage and benefit from those ceremonies. For
the body which they supposed to be about to perish was
not the object of their solicitude. But they believed that
guilt and the punishment due to crimes were to be
expiated by the offerings of victims and sacrifices: what
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benefit, then, could souls expect to derive from lustrations?

For my own part, I feel convinced that sacred waters and
other kinds of purgations were supposed in the earliest
ages to be efficacious for cleansing the soul from the filth
and impurity contracted by the perpetration of crimes.
As the philosophers of a later period boasted that the
wounds and ulcers of souls were healed by their precepts
and dogmas, so in the Mysteries of old crafty and design-
ing priests professed the art of effacing the marks left
imprinted on the soul in consequence of crimes and
misdeeds, so that they should not be visible to the
Infernal Judges: alleging that water consecrated by due
formalities and other similar absurdities possess such great
virtue and efficacy that they penetrate the body to the
sensual soul, and thoroughly purge it of all traces of vice.
Thus far Mosheim. I do not know why this reverend
doctor condemned the priests of old for that which he saw
practised before his own eyes in his own church and by
his own hands every day: or how he could have forgotten
those remarkable dogmas in the 9th and 27th Articles
which are precisely similar to his representation of the
ancient priestcraft. Original Sin, say these modern
mystagogues, standeth not in the following of Adam (as
the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and
corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is
engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is
very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his
own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth
always contrary to the Spirit: and therefore in every
person born into this world it deserveth God’s wrath and
damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain;
yea in them that are regenerated, whereby the lusts of the
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flesh, called in Greek φρόνημα σαρκὸς, which some do

expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection,
some the desire of the flesh, is not subject to the Law of
God. And although there is no condemnation for them
that believe and are baptised, yet the Apostle doth con-
fess that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature
of sin. And again: Baptism is not only a sign of profes-
sion and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are
discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also
a sign of regeneration, or new birth, whereby, as by an
instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted
into the Church: the promises of the forgiveness of sin,
and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy
Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed: faith is confirmed,
and grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God. The
baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained
in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of
Christ (14).
41. But the entire of this folly comes from the East;
not when it was in its pure period, but when the “crafty
priests” of whom Mosheim speaks, and to whose order he
himself belonged, had spoiled the ancient beautiful system,
as Paul disfigured the creed of Jesus. As it is easier to
rule men, and to attain power by yielding to their passions,
than by advising to restrain them, the olden priests sub-
stituted a pretended purification for the real though diffi-
cult emancipation of the soul from carnal longings.
Hence the Buddhists, says Dr. Wait, have the holy water
of Anandat, or No-wa-dat; and in addition to the Caul-
dron of Ceridwen, the Druids have somewhat analogous
fables respecting the sacred Dee. I have elsewhere
adduced the apples of Iduna, wife of Braga, in Runiclore,
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the fountain of longevity of the Αὶθοπες Μακροβιοι, the

Chang-seng-yo of the Chinese, the Amrita and Piyupa of
the Indian School, and the Nectar and Ambrosia of the
classic gods, all conferring immortality; but it is worthy
of remark that, as Ambrosia is derived from α privative,
and βροτος mortal, so the Sanskrit Amrita deduces its
origin from a privative, and the root mri to die. We may
discover this universal mythos in Ovid’s relation of the
history of Glaucus. Metamor. xiii. v. 924. Adjacent to
the shore, says the poet, there lies a verdant mead,
enclosed half with waters and half with grass: where
neither horned heifers crop the rising blade, nor harmless
sheep, nor shaggy goats browse. Hence no industrious
bees bear the collected flowers, no festival garlands thence
adorn the head, the mower cuts down the tender grass.
On this grassy plot, I sure, the first of mortals sat, till
I should dry my dripping nets, and number in order my
captive prey. Here I exposed upon the bank such as
either chance had driven into my nets, or who, through a
too easy credulity, had trusted to the crooked hook. What
I relate has the air of a fiction (what does it avail me to
lie): my captives, on touching the grass, began to move
and shift from side to side, and skip along the ground as
in their native main. And while I pause, full of wonder
and amazement, the whole tribe fly towards the sea, and
leave their new master and the shore. I stood astonished
and long perplexed with doubt, considering what the
cause, whether some god, or the juice of some powerful
herb had wrought the miracle. Yet what herb, said I
within myself, can be thus potent? Then, with my hand
pulling up some grass, I chewed it with my teeth. Scarce
had my throat drunk the unknown juices, when suddenly
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convulsions shook my inward breast, and I felt my mind

borne away with a new set of passions and inclinations.
Farewell, I said, farewell land, never to be revisited more,
and straight I plunged into the deep. The gods of the sea
welcome me, and invite me to share with them the honour
of godhead, and beg of Tethys and Oceanus to purge away
whatever about me was earthy and mortal. By them I was
purified: and a charm that washes away every mortal stain
being nine times repeated over me, I am commanded to
bathe my breast beneath a hundred streams. Instantly
rivers issuing from various springs and whole seas are
turned over my head. Thus far I am able to relate the
particulars of this memorable change: thus far my memory
reaches, but here consciousness forsook me, which, return-
ing again, I perceived myself different both in body and
mind from what I had lately been. C . J , xv.
94. Note here that the fishes mystically signify the
Initiated into the Eleusinia: it is the common symbol,
as pointed out in Part I. pp. 247, 294, 327, and also in
the present volume. And the change of which Ovid
speaks is of the same nature as that which our Paulites
say is produced by Baptism. Will they so esteem it when
they know that it is of Pagan birth ?
42. In further confirmation of the likeness of the
Mysteries in almost all things to the formula of so-called
Christianity (15) I may mention that, after baptism had
been administered, the mystics lodged a serpent in the
bosom of the aspirant. Jesus alluded to this when he
ordered his followers: Be ye wise as Serpents (that is,
the new-born), but harmless as Doves (that is, Messengers).
M . x. 16. And Arnobius tells us that this Serpent
was made of gold—an incorruptible symbol. What Jesus
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further meant to convey was, Unite the wisdom of God

to the mildness of the Dove, his Holy Spirit. A species
of rite similar to that of the eucharist was also celebrated:
they threw wine and water on the aspirant, and presented
him with bread and wine, in order, as they said, that he
might be born again. Tertullian professes to be greatly
scandalised at this; and the priests, of course, say that
the Mithraic worshippers did it to win the Christians;
but it is certain that the custom existed thousands of
years before Jesus. Him we find, in the narrative of
Mark xiv., thus imitating the ceremony: And as they did
eat, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and gave
to them, and said, Take, eat: this is my body. And he took
the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them:
and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is
my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.
Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit
of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the king-
dom of God. See also M . xxvi. and L xxii. But
though the doctors of Christianity have laboured much to
explain how it was that the Mysteries of Mithras and the
celebration of the Christian nativity should happen not
only to occur on the same day, but also to have so many
features in common, they have failed to furnish anything
like a satisfactory reason, except that the Devil did it all.
And no person, I suppose, is fanatic enough to believe
that what the Mithraic sages did was in imitation of so
obscure, contemptible, and vicious a sect as the first
Christians were, if we may credit Paul to the Corinthians,
for their true character! See Part I. page 434. Justin
Martyr alludes to this, though singularly enough he makes
the mystics imitate Jesus, whereas it was Jesus who in-
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troduced into his creed a portion of the Mysteries. The

Apostles in their gospels, says he, relate that Jesus,
having taken bread (16), and given thanks, thus said: Do
this in remembrance of me, this is my body: and that,
after having taken the cup and given thanks, he said,
This is my blood, and gave it to them only. In imitation
of which the Devils did the like in the Mysteries of Mithras,
for you either know or may know that they also take bread
and, a cup of water in the sacrifices of those that are
initiated, and pronounce certain words over it. See Faber
on this. Part I. page 458. So completely did the Paulites
copy the Pagans in all things, that the Immaculate Con-
ception of Jesus is founded on the old Egyptian theory,
that the bull Apis was born of a virgin cow, mysteriously
impregnated by the influence of the Moon.
43. In the Poem which follows, and which is called
the Chair of Taliesin, there are several obscure hints of
the more secret nature of the Mysteries, which I do not
profess wholly to explain, but I cite it for the sort of wild
fantastic charm that is in it, leaving it to the reader to
meditate upon at his leisure. I am he, it says, who
animates the fire (1) to the honour of the god Dovydd (2),
in behalf of the assembly of associates, qualified to treat of
Mysteries; a Bard with the knowledge of a Sywedydd (3),
when he deliberately recites the inspired song of the
Western Cudd (4) on a serene night amid the stones. As to
loquacious glittering bards, their encomium attracts me
not when moving in the course: admiration is their chief
(1) Marwor, embers. It seems to have denoted a person who

had the charge of keeping up a fire. (2) Dovydd is the Tamer.
(3) Sywedydd, a Mystagogue, or revealer of mysteries. (4) Cudd,
the dark repository. (5) Noethas, a mighty solemnity, from Noeth,
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object. And I am a silent proficient, who address the

Bards of the land; it is mine to animate the hero, to
persuade the unadvised, to awaken the silent beholder—
the bold illuminator of Kings. I am no shallow artist,
greeting the Bards of a household like a subtle parasite—
the Ocean has a due profundity. The man of complete
discipline has obtained the meed of honour in every
nightly celebration (5), when Dien is propitiated with an
offering of wheat, and the suavity of bees (6), and incense
and myrrh, and aloes from beyond the seas, and the gold
pipes of Llen, and cheerful precious silver, and the ruddy
gem, and the berries, and the foam of the ocean, and
cresses of a purifying quality laved in the fountain, and a
joint contribution of wort, the founder of liquor, supplied
by the assembly, and a raised load secluded from the
moon of placid cheerful vervain (7). With priests of
intelligence to officiate in behalf of the Moon, and the
concourse of associated men, under the open breeze of the
sky, with the maceration and sprinkling, and the portion
after the sprinkling, and the boat of glass (8) in the hand
the night. (6) The plant Samolus, which the Druid who was to
gather it was to pluck fasting with his left hand. (7) The Druids
were excessively fond of vervain—anointing with this they thought
the readiest way to obtain all that the heart could desire. It was
to be gathered at the rise of the dog star, without being looked
upon either by the sun or moon; in order to which the earth was
to be propitiated by a libation of honey; in digging it up the left
hand was to be used; it was then to be waved aloft. (8) The
boat of glass has been already explained. In the second volume
of Montfaucon’s Antiquities there is a sculpture which illustrates
this passage. It is a bas-relief found at Autun, and represents
the Chief Druid bearing his sceptre, as head of the order, and
crowned with a garland of oak leaves, with another Druid not
thus decorated approaching him, and displaying in his right hand
M2
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of the stranger, and the stout youth with pitch (9), and
the honoured Segyrffyg (10), and medical plants from an
exorcised spot (11). And Bards with flowers and perfect
convolutions, and primroses and leaves of the Briw (12), with
the points of the trees of purposes, and solution of doubts,
and frequent mutual pledges, and with wine which flows
to the brim from Rûm to Kosedd (13), and deep standing
water (14), a flood which has the gift of Dovydd, or the
tree of pure gold (15), which becomes of a fructifying
quality when that brewer gives it a boiling, who presided
over the cauldron (16) of the five plants. Hence the
stream of Gwion, and the reign of serenity, and honey
and trefoil and horns flowing with mead—meet for a
sovereign is the lore of the Druids. D ’ Mythology
of the Druids.
a crescent, of the size of the moon when six days old. (9) For the
torches, which were carried during the celebration of the nocturnal
mysteries. (10) This word means protecting from illusion: the
populace of Wales ascribe the virtue implied by this name to a
species of trefoil. (11) The literal translation of this is a place
cleared from the illusion of the witch. (12) Briw, primroses, ranked
highly among the mystical apparatus. (13) The same rite of
libation is described as prevailing from Rûm to Rosedd. This
seems to fix the date of the composition long before the 6th
century, in an age when Rome was yet Pagan. (14) The deep
water seems to imply the bath for immersion, or baptism. (15)
Virgil’s aurum frondens, and ramus aureus, the mistletoe, which
was supposed to promote the increase of mortals: it was called
Pren Awyr—the ethereal tree. (16) This is the mystical cauldron
of Ceridwen, which produced the stream of Gwion, to which were
ascribed not only genius, and the power of inspiration, but also
the reign of serenity which immediately commenced upon the
display of the Celestial Bow. This cauldron, in short, purified
the votaries of Druidism for the celebration of their mysteries.
Version 20170421
NOTES TO BOOK II.
Note 1 (page 156).—The coming of the Messiah was thus figured

in the Mysteries: A Voice was heard crying out, The Lord of
all things is come into the world. According to others, a damsel
called Pamyles going to fetch water from the temple of Zeus at
Thebes, heard a loud Voice commanding proclamation. The great
and beneficent King is born. He was delivered to this damsel, who
was directed to nurse him, which she did with all the veneration
due to such a charge: performing the mysteries called Pamylia
in honour of the Infant. The reader will see that this accords
with the A , section 9, and with what has been written
of the nearly similar education of Karteek. So it was said that
Moses in the same manner was found among the bullrushes, and
educated by a king’s daughter, that is, the Holy Spirit, the King
of Heaven. Daughter of Pharaoh means daughter of Phre, the
Sun: and the word Pharaoh, which was the title of the great
rulers of Egypt, meant, “son of the Sun,” or “mouth of the
Sun,” in other words, an Incarnation, which was a name
blasphemously given to him by corrupt priests, who knew
indeed what an Incarnation meant, but did not hesitate to
give it to their sovereign, however corrupt or vicious he may
have been. And the same course has been pursued by priests
in almost all countries, and continues to this day. But
Pharaoh originally meant Messiah, for it was Phi-Re, or Phi-Ra,
Φ Ρ [mystic letters], meaning Son of the Sun, or mouth of the
Sun: both of them titles applicable to the Incarnation of the
Holy Spirit: neither of them to kings like those. Wilkinson is
puzzled by this title, and suggests a reason for it perfectly un-
worthy of such profound philosophers as Egypt had: Bryant
came near it when he conjectured that it was Phi-Ourah, vox Hori,
the voice of Horus, their Messiah, adding that it was no unusual
thing among the ancients (he should have said, subservient priests)
to call the words of the prince the Voice of God. Rameses, another
Egyptian title, has the same meaning: son of the Sun. As Phi,
Version 20170421
246 NOTES TO BOOK II.
or Ph, was scarcely regarded to be a letter, it happens that Re in

the old Egyptian meant the Sun: the same word in the old Irish
meant the Moon. It is a primitive radical, and was applied by the
first peoples to both luminaries, by which they indicated that they
were really one—parts of the Infinite. So Bel in many languages
meant All God, or the Sun—in the Egyptian it meant Water. In
the Peruvian mythology we have the Naronic cycle. The Sun, it
says, sensibly affected with the unhappy state of these nations,
sent to them at last two of his children, whom he had begotten of
the Moon, namely, Manco Capac, who was the first king or Ynca
of Peru, and Coya Mama Oello Huaco, whom he espoused, not-
withstanding she was his sister, and who was likewise the first
queen. The Sun, their father, laid his injunctions on them both,
to instruct the people in the principles of that religion which they
ought to profess: to prescribe such laws to them as were proper
for their obedience, and to teach them to build houses and practise
husbandry: to cultivate the plants, and rear their flocks: in a
word, how to use their reasoning faculty. See Part I., page 236.
In allusion to this mythos, we find Pindar saying: May
bountiful Bacchus [the Messiah], the bright glory of the year,
make all my trees fruitful. P , Isis and Osiris, 35.
The Hibernian Druids had a secret word which they never pro-
nounced, but which they called mor·seisior, the Great Six: this
was in allusion to the Naros. The conjunction of the Sun and
Moon, and the consequent birth in the Naros, is shewn in an
innumerable variety of antique gems and sculptures, many of
which are preserved in Montfaucon. Plate 1, xiii., Cybele, the
Moon, is borne by a Lion, the Sun, and on each hand are repre-
sented the solar orb and the crescent. Plate 7, xxviii. represents
Zeus enthroned with eagle and sceptre; around him are the twelve
zodiacal signs; over him, on one side, is the Sun, drawn in a chariot
with four horses, and the Moon in a chariot drawn by two bulls.
But on the reverse of this medal, the Sun is in the chariot drawn
by bulls, and the Moon in that which is drawn by horses—a covert
mode of indicating their union in the Naronic cycle. At the feet
of Zeus two men are seen going forth with fasces, or emblems of
law and power, in their hands. Plate 8, ix., the Messenger is
represented as Jove the Saviour, with thunderbolt and sceptre,
going forth to conquest, with six stars around him, which repre-
sent the six centuries. So the figure of a god between six pillars
of a temple denotes the Naros. Plate 10, ii., represents Zeus
Hammon with the calathus, and six solar rays proceeding from
his head. It is only, however, in gems, and in the most secret
recesses of olden fanes, that a glimpse of this glorious truth is
Version 20170421
NOTES TO BOOK II. 247
given: the ancients were, in fact, too shrewd to run any risk of
exposing this mystic secret to the chances of discovery. By the
Irish the Naros was called Bli-aghan, the Cycle of Belus? I have
sometimes thought that the fable of the sun and moon standing
still in the valley of Ajalon, while Joshua won a great victory, may
in its original form, before the Hebrew Scriptures were lost, have
had reference to the Naros: it undoubtedly bore allusion to the
A , section 33. Grotius was so ashamed of the passage
in its present ridiculous form, that he resolved it into a poetical
embellishment, or a reflection of the sun from the clouds for some
hours after his setting. The Jews, however, still hope for another
Joshua. Those who inhabit Morocco annually confine in a coffin
a virgin of their own race, in the hope that she may give birth to
this long-expected Messiah. Mexican Antiquities, vi. 351. There
is an enigmatical allusion to the Naros in Porphyry (Epist. ad
Annebon), where he says that the Sun was represented as under-
going a change of form in each of the Twelve Signs: or as trans-
muting himself into the figure of the Zodion, or Living Creature
which corresponded with each of the twelve departments of the
Zodiac. In this way Porphyry intimates a knowledge of the
Cyclic Messenger; yet while he hints he conceals it from view.
The same Divine Messenger was said by some great ones to have
appeared twice. I have no doubt that Amosis and Jesus were
one and the same Heavenly Spirit, voluntarily offering himself as
a legate to man in two revolutions of the Naros; so also Chenghiz
Khan and the Twelfth Messenger are really the same Spirit under
a twofold aspect.
Note 2 (page 176).—Knowledge is indeed the great guide to
Heaven—though our Paulite priests and prelates proclaim that
the ignorant are the most favoured. There was great beauty and
significance in the Shanscreet name Ma-Nu, for Fo-hi, the Third
Messenger: it is derived from men, to understand; the root of
Mens or mind; and it is right that it should be taught that they
only who seek and labour to understand the Mysteries of God and
Truth shall attain both in the end. God does not throw his pearls
before swine: are our ignorant believers any better? Pelloutier
has observed that, more than a hundred years before the Christian
æra, in the territory of Chartres, among the Gauls [the region
of a lingaic adoration, almost universal], honours were paid
to the Virgin (Virgini parituræ), who was about to give birth
to the God of Light. That this was really the Buddhist worship
I have no doubt. The Virgin was the beautiful Maya, the mother
of Buddha—the Budwas found in Wales, as noticed in Higgins’s
Celtic Druids. In harmony with the pure maiden and Minerval
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character of the spirit-souls of the Messengers, they were disguised

under the feminine name of Nereides, or virgin children of the
Naros, who were said to be mysteriously connected with the Ocean.
But the true symbolism breaks out in the fact that there were in
Greece various groves consecrated to these marine divinities under
the name of Poemenides [Shepherds], and this word was also part
of the term under which the Cabirs were concealed as Eu-[Ieue]-
menides, or Sons of Jid, Jiv, or Jehovah.
Note 3 (page 178).—The act of self-devotion by which the
Messenger volunteered to descend to earth, was represented,
according to Didron, in the semi cupolas of the Greek churches,
where he was imaged as a great beardless Angel, either painted
in fresco or worked in Mosaic, with his long wings unfolded to
their fullest extent; his raiment charged with gold and precious
stones, and in his hands a golden staff, as if he were prepared for
a long journey. He wears on his head a nimbus with the mystic
T, and the letters ὁ ων, the Oan, or Messenger: this is further
shewn by the title, ‘Ο ἀγγελος της μεγαλης Βουλης: the Mes-
senger of the great Counsel: which, if they had intended as the
pious Didron says, to represent Jesus, as God the Son, they never
would have applied to so great a personage. This descent was
described in a symbolical manner, as Origen informs us (contra
Cels. vi.) by a ladder which was represented as reaching from
heaven to earth, and divided into seven stages, at each of which
was figured a gate: the eighth gate was at the top of the ladder,
which belonged to the sphere of the celestial firmament. We
read in Macrobius that these Gods were properly called the Great
Gods, the Christ-Gods (Χρηστους), the Powerful Gods. Saturnal.
iii. cap. 4. Higgins has clearly proved that χρηστος alludes to
Christ, to the Sun, and other Messianic cognates. And see ante,
page 182. Didron has a remarkable passage, in which he shews the
effect which the Cabiric tenets of the Jews, exercised on the early
Christians, who did not know why the Hebrews so regulated their
polity. In the first centuries of the Christian æra, he says, there
arose, even among the converts themselves, the most violent
hatred against the Ieue or God of the Jews. They found that,
for having disobeyed one command, Adam and all his race had
been condemned to death: that the whole of man had been
remorselessly drowned in the Deluge; that, for a murmur in the
desert, thousands of Israelites had died by the envenomed bites of
fiery serpents: that twenty-four thousand men had perished on
one occasion by the order of the Lord, as a punishment for having
been seduced by the beauty of the daughters of Moab, and offer-
ing incense with them to their Gods: that the people, to atone
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for the pride of David, his chosen king, had been visited by a
plague which destroyed in a brief period no less than seventy
thousand persons who had done no wrong whatever. They rose
in revolt against a God who had commanded Samuel to cut in
pieces the King of the Amalekites, Agag, whom Saul had spared:
they were indignant against that servant of the Lord, Elisha, at
whose command bears sent by God devoured the children who
had insulted the prophet, and mocked him for his baldness. They
read with horror such passages as these: I will feed them that
oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with
their blood as with sweet wine. I xlix. 26. They were irri-
tated to exasperation by another text, in which the same prophet
announces that God would descend from heaven in his anger to
slay all mankind. They read again the verses in which it is said:
A fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell.
D . xxxii. 22. The sword without and terror within shall destroy
both the young man and the virgin, the, suckling also and the man of
gray hairs. D . xxxii. 25. And held in execration this avenging
demon whom they regarded as a fearful tyrant, thirsting for blood
and eager for the death of his creatures; or as a father jealous of
his own son, and condemning him to the disgraceful punishments
of the cross. They broke down his images, and placed in their
stead those of Jesus, and forbade that any representation of God
the Father should in future be attempted either in sculpture or in
painting. They ended by proclaiming a violent opposition and
furious hatred against Jehovah. Struck with the difference
between the Old and New Testaments, unable to reconcile the
exclusive and merciless God of the Jews with the benevolent and
universal God of the Christians, Marcion supposed the former to
be an inferior and evil demigod, the enemy of good, the enemy of
Jesus, inciting Judas to betray him, and finally causing his cruci-
fixion. The Ophites, influenced by similar feelings of aversion,
considered the God of the Jews not only as a wicked, but as an
unintelligent being. According to their account, Jaldabaoth,
the wicked demigod adored by the Jews under the name of
Jehovah, was jealous of man, and wished to prevent the progress
of knowledge; but the Serpent, the agent of Superior Wisdom,
came to teach man what course he ought to pursue, and by what
means he might regain the knowledge of good and evil: the
Ophites consequently adored the Serpent, and cursed Jehovah
as the enemy of mankind. This is in truth only a tame represen-
tation by Didron of the fearful consequences which the rabbinical
blasphemies had caused: is it not humiliating to think that the
pious of the first century should have rejected with horror the
M3
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representation of the Supreme, which the godly of our own times

clasp to their hearts as the embodiment of all that is good? The
early Christians, says Minucius Felix, were charged with initiating
their converts de cæde infantis et sanguine, p. 30. Was this charge
false or true? I believe it to have been true, but that it applied
to the Paulites, who, having most of them been converted Jews,
held with all their inherent obstinacy to the Jew tenet of a human
sacrifice, as being infinitely more efficient in atonement for their
sins, than the scapegoat which had been benevolently substituted
for it. See Part I., page 105.
Note 4 (page 178).—This, again, is mythically alluded to in
M . viii. And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples
followed him. And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea,
insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was
asleep. And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying,
Lord, save us: we perish. And he saith unto them. Why are ye
fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds
and the sea; and there was a great calm. But the men marvelled,
saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the
sea obey him? There are many incidents of this kind, which are
really only transcripts of what took place in the Mysteries,
introduced into the four gospels. The vulgar took them literally
for miracles, whereas they are only the narratives of symbolical
representations exhibited to the Aspirants. So we read: Ask,
and you shall receive, says Jesus, alluding to the requests and
aspirations of the candidate for initiation; seek, and ye shall find:
knock, and it shall be opened unto you. M . vii, 7. The real
reason why the sons of Israel hated Joseph, and sought to kill
him, was that he assumed to be the Naronic Messenger, the
Messiah born in the conjunction of the Sun and Moon. This is
shewn in Genesis. And he dreamed yet another dream, and told
it to his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more;
and behold the Sun and the Moon and the eleven Stars made
obeisance to me. xxxvii. 9. The Eleven Stars were the Eleven
Messengers; and Joseph assumed himself to be the Twelfth—
that is, one of the Twelve. This indicates a knowledge of the
Naros, and, consequently, of the Apocalypse among the high-class
Jews of that period. The Hindus have a festival called Arûn
Sustee, which falls on the sixth day of the new Moon in May.
Arûn signifies the Morning Star (or the Messiah), and Sustee
presides over generation, and is synonymous with the Holy Spirit,
whose worship commences on that day at the instant that the
Morning Star appears. This splendid name was used early in
India, and it appears in the Baghavad Geeta as Arjoon; by the
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Jews it was given to the brother of Amosis, and it again appears

in the East as the name of the great Caliph Arûn al Raschid, or
the Wise. It is a Messianic title, and it originated among the
early men from Section 64 of the A .
Note 5 (page 185).—Lamentable it is to find a priest like
Warburton, of great book-knowledge, but no real learning, deriding
this sublime doctrine of the Spirit and Soul being emaned from—
that is, actually part of God himself; as if to hold it were a crime,
whereas it is the most ennobling that possibly can be imagined.
But he (Lactantius), he says, omits another heresy, which we have
shewn in the Divine Legation, stood upon as wide a bottom—
that which holds the human soul to be of the same nature and
substance as God, espoused before his time by the Gnostics, and
afterwards, as we learn, by the following words of St. Austin by
the Manichæans and Priscillians. Priscillianistæ, quos in His-
paniâ Priscillianus instituit, maxime Gnosticorum et Manichæorum
dogmata permixta sectantur. Quamvis et ex aliis hæresibus in eas
sordes tanquam in sentinam quandam horribili confusione confluxerint.
Propter occultandas autem contaminationes et turpitudines suas
habent in suis dogmatibus, et hæc verbu, jura, perjura secretum
prodere noli. Hi animas dicunt ejusdem naturæ atque substantiæ
cujus est Deus [A . de Hæresibus]. So far this wretched creature
who was incapable of conceiving the exalted nature of the doctrine
of Emanations. What would our bishop have thought, had he
lived in the present day, and learned the theories of development
which make Man, instead of being part of God, the lineal
descendant, like Darwin, of an ape, a parrot, or a gorilla?
Note 6 (page 195).—The word μελισσα M-El-Issa, God and
Issa, is used by Sophocles to signify not only the Bee, but the
pure beverage of the bee (Œd. Col. 494): also by Pindar for the
oracular priestess at D-El-Phi. The prefix M is the well-known
monogram for 600, or the Naros. In Millin there is an Indian
representation of the Yoni, delta-formed, surmounted by a Bee.
This connects Greece at once with the East, and shews whence
came the Hellenian mythos of the text. See Pl. II., 12. In the
same plate is a beautiful symbol of the Holy Spirit, as a Virgin in
a triangle, with a nimbus. Her bosom is formed of a Lotus, in
which are three Mundane Eggs; the whole plate is highly
symbolical.
Note 7 (page 198).—Delphi is T-El-Phi, the month or oracle of
God (the Sun). El-phin has the like meaning. But Delphi also
signified δελφυς, a dolphin and a womb; both of them mystical
allusions.
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Note 8 (page 202).—As a further proof to that furnished before,

that Jesus alluded to the new birth here mentioned, may be cited
Matt. vii. 13, 14. Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the
gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many
there be who go in thereat: because strait is the gate and narrow
is the way which leadeth unto life; and few there be who find it.
The ancient Irish allude to this regeneration under the word
Nul-log [New Logos] from nua new, and log (for bullog) a belly. A
curious proof of the existence of this creed among the Hebrews
is given by Parkhurst, though it is quite clear that he did not
understand the real meaning of the distinction which he points
out. Beni-ha-Aleim, ‫בני האלהים‬, he says, means Sons of the
Aleim or God, men begotten again (passing from one state of spiritual
existence into another), and Beni-Aleim ‫בני אלהים‬, those
angels who kept their first estate, that is, those who have never
lapsed from the Celestial. A kind of poetry belonging to the
Bacchic mystics was the Di-thyr-amb, the Voice of the two doors, a
name which appears to relate to the ceremonies of the twice-born.
The Mysteries of the Eleusinian Ceres, says Faber, differed from
those which I have hitherto noticed in this particular: the person
lamented and sought for was not a male but a female. [It is
the lapsed angel who is of both natures. See Part I, page 189.]
In other points the features still remained the same: for these
orgies represented the wanderings of Ceres after the ravished
Proserpine, just as the Egyptian Mysteries exhibited the travels
of Isis in search of Osiris. Pag. Idol. iii. 129. Here Faber is not
quite accurate. The female of Eleusis, was the lapsed spirit or
soul: the Osiris in Egypt was God, of whom the Holy Spirit is
ever in pursuit. Alcestis brought back from death to Admetus,
is the Soul restored to the First Messenger by Hercules, his
follower and representative. In the Greek gem, published by
Gronovius, the Holy Spirit is represented standing by Admetus
or Adam, when the hero brings back the restored beautiful one.
(i. Ppp.)
Note 9 (page 213).—In consequence, says Faber (Pag. Idol. i. 51),
of the Great Father and the Great Mother being supposed to have
assumed the forms of all animals, they were sometimes expressly
called by the names of those animals which were now become
their symbols. Thus we find them severally denominated according
to their sexual difference, a Bull, a Cow, a Dragon, a Cock, a Hen,
a Bee, or a Dog. And, as their priests or priestesses assumed on
all occasions the titles of the deities whom they served, and
laboured to exhibit in their own persons each action or suffering
Version 20170421
which was attributed to them, we also find that the ministers

were designated by the names of these animals through which
both their gods and themselves were feigned to have passed by a
mystic transmigration. Thus they were called, similarly allowing
for sexual difference, Horses, Mares, Ravens, Doves, Lions, Dogs,
and Swine. I think it probable from some circumstances that in
the celebration of the Mysteries, they wore grotesque masques, by
means of which they actually appeared like the sculptured forms of
some of their gods, to be human beings bearing heads of the sacred
animals. (Pagan Idolatry, i. 51). It should be noted, however, that
the multiplication of these various changes, belonged to a later
and more corrupt period of the æra of the Mysteries; that in the
earliest times, they were but rare and symbolic; and that, although
they embodied a profound truth, which was at the bottom of all
creation, it may be doubted if the Messengers were ever much
identified with it, and whether it was not rather an excrescence
added to the original rite by their followers. In all the mystic
sacrifices, says Proclus, the gods exhibit many forms of themselves,
and appear in a variety of shapes: and sometimes indeed an
unfigured light of themselves is held forth to the view: sometimes
this light is figured according to a human form, and sometimes it
proceeds into a different shape. Hence the Welsh Brahmin Taliesin
says, without the ape (the Messenger priest), without the stall of
the cow (the worship of the Holy Spirit), without the mundane
rampart (the great belt which surrounds the world), the globe will
become desolate: not requiring the Cuckoos to convene the
appointed dance on the green—meaning the great festival and
sacred dance on the first of May. The priests of the Cabiri were
styled Sues—swine. Greece and Rome consecrated the Sow to
Ceres, and gave it the name of the mystical animal: the Boar was
one of the forms of the Hindu Incarnation, and Arktos, Ar-Thor
and Arcturus were Cabiric titles. There is an old ruin in Ireland, of
a monastery or nunnery, called Ardnacranna, which means the
high place of the Sow. (Vallancey Collect. i. 80.) The reader will
remember the White Sow in the mystical poem of the Æneis—it is
distinctly and prophetically pointed out to the hero, as connected
with his Sacred City of new Troy. De Gebelin says that this
selection was made, not only because the Sow is a very prolific
animal, but also because she ploughs the ground, and because the
plough has a figure similar to that of her snout, and produces the
same effect. The Cymry proceeded somewhat further, but still
upon the same road. In Britain, Ceres herself assumes the character
of Hioch a Sow: she addresses her child or devotee by the
name of Porchellan, or little pig: her congregation are Moch,
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swine: her chief priests is Turch, a boar, or Gwydd Hwch, boar of

the wood, or grove: and her Hierarch is Meichiad, a swineherd.
Many authors, says Vallancey, affirm that the doctrine of
metempsychosis first taught in Egypt, and thence introduced into
Greece by Pythagoras, was, by his disciples communicated to the
Italians, and not unknown in Gaul to the druids and pagan doctors.
In the Liber Lecanus, it is recorded, that no doubt can be raised
concerning the postdiluvian invasion in Ireland, since Tuan, son
of Cairil, who was born of the wife of Murdoch Munding, asserted
it: for he lived in Kesair’s time in the form of a man; then for
300 years in the form of a deer; after, for 200 years in the shape
of a wild boar; then 300 years in the shape of a bird; and lastly, 100
years in the shape of a salmon; which being caught by a fisherman
was made a present of to the Queen of Ireland, on account of its rare
beauty: and she, upon eating it, immediately conceived and
brought forth the famous Fuan mac Cairil, who related the truth
of Kesair’s expedition in Ireland, &c., &c. Collectanea ii. 54. The
Irish Druids from the earliest times taught the transmigration of
souls, and said that Samhan, or Baal-Samhan, called the souls to
judgment, which, according to their merits or demerits in the life
past, were assigned to re-enter the bodies of the human or brute
species, and to be happy or miserable during their next abode in
this sublunary globe: hence Samhan was named Balsab, a Lord
of Death, for Bal is the lord and Sab is death. This is the true
derivation of what we call Beelzebub, lord of flies. But the
Druids, like the present priests, did not forget their own interests;
for they taught also that the punishment of the wicked might be
atoned for by sacrifices made to Bal, and by presents given to the
Druids for their mediation.
Note 10 (page 222).—I have already intimated that among the
Hebrews, the Eleusinian Rites and Secrets were known as well as
among those who are called Pagans. The number of those
Initiated from all the nation was only Seventy-two; six from each
of the twelve tribes; a Naronic allusion (Exod. xxiv. 9. Numbers
xi. 16—25); and these were not regarded as a mere temporary
masonic lodge, but were supposed to be perpetuated in the Great
Sanhedrim with its president, in whose faith and discretion the
secrets of the Law constantly resided; these were Eleusinian
mystics or masons. It is said in the Liber Haijad: Moses gave
the mischna or deuterosis of the Law to Joshua; he to the elders;
they to the prophets; they to the great synagogue; they to
Antigonus Sochæus and his successors in the great sanhedrin, and
so down to Rabbi Hakkadosh in Adrian’s reign. They had the same
symbols as the Gentile mystics; and we find the following curious
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narrative of some of their ceremonies. A golden pitcher that

held three logs was filled with water from the Siloah [the Sun]: when
they came with it to the water-gate, they blew a blast, a long
note, and again a blast. The priest then ascended the stair of the
altar, and turned to the left; two silver basins or pateras stood
there. Each was perforated with a small hole like a nostril. The
one to the west for water, the other to the east for wine. [Luccah]
Jahn in his Bibl. Ant., alludes to this. The priests went every
morning during the eight days of the Feast of Tabernacles, and
drew three logs of water in a golden vessel from the fountain of
Siloe: they then carried the water with great and joyful solemnity
through the water-gate to the Temple, and poured it out to the
south-west of the altar. Some of the Talmudists assert that this
ceremony was a symbol of rain, others of joy; others of the
effusion of the Holy Spirit. There was a remarkable rite, says
Nevin, Bibl. Ant. 384, which consisted in the drawing of water
and solemnly pouring it upon the altar. Every morning during
the Feast, when the parts of the morning sacrifice were laid upon
the altar, one of the priests went to the Fountain of Siloam, and
filled a golden vessel which he carried in his hand with the water.
This he then brought into the court, and having first mingled it
with some wine, poured it out as a drink offering on the top of
the altar. Every night there was a most extraordinary exhibition
of joy, styled the rejoicing for the drawing of water. When the
water was offered in the morning, the solemnity of the worship
then on hand would not admit of the extravagance of this ceremony,
so it was put off till all the service of the day was over, when it
began with moderation, and occupied quite a considerable portion
of the night. He that never saw the rejoicing of the drawing of
water, says a Jewish proverb, never saw rejoicing in all his life.
How all this resembled the Gentile ceremony may be seen: but
no surprise can be occasioned by it, when it is known that the
Jews, who pretend to have the most ancient religion in the world,
and to found it on the most ancient books, are in reality but a
race of impostors of modern date, who brought out of the heart
of India all that is valuable in their creed: and whose least
ceremonies are but caricatures of the impressive rites of true
antiquity. The Egyptians, says Plutarch, mix fruitful earth and
water, and commingling aromatics and incense of the costly kind,
they form a luniform little image (a yoni); and this they robe and
adorn, signifying that they consider their gods the essence of Earth
and Water. Isis and Osiris, 39. This last observation betrays
great ignorance. The Egyptians had no such silly idea of their
gods.
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Note 11 (page 226).—First, says Lucian, in the Syrian Goddess,

they offer to the manes of Adonis, as to one dead, and the day
after the morrow they tell the story that he lives, and send him
to the æther, and shave their heads just like the Egyptians when
Apis dies. The reader will remember that Jesus is said to have
been crucified on the Friday, and the day after the morrow (that
is Sunday) to have arisen from the dead also into the æther.
Note 12 (page 230).—The sign of the cross is well known to all
Romish Christians, among whom it is yet used in every respect
as is described by Justin, who has this passage in his Apology.
And whereas Plato, in his Timæus, he says, philosophizing about
the son of God says: He expressed him upon the universe in the
figure of the letter X, he evidently took the hint from Moses; for
in the Mosaic writings it is related that after the Israelites went out
of Egypt, and were in the desert, they were set upon and destroyed
by venomous beasts, vipers, asps, and all sorts of serpents; and
that Moses thereupon by particular inspiration from God, took
brass and made the sign of the cross, and placed it by the holy
tabernacle, and declared that if the people would look upon that
cross and believe they should be saved; upon which he writes,
that the serpents died, and by this means the people were saved.
It is a certain fact that there is no such passage as that quoted by
Justin relating to the cross in the old or new Testament. This is
an example of pious fraud in the first Christian father not said to
be inspired. The evident object of this fraud was to account for
the adoration of the cross, which Justin found practised by his
followers, but the cause of which he did not understand. When
the temple of Serapis, says the historian Socrates, was sacked,
there was found in the letters which they called sacred, the figure
of a cross: hence a dispute arose; the Christians contending that
this Cross belonged to their master Jesus Christ, which they also,
who understood these rites, maintained: the Gentiles on the
contrary pretending that the Cross was common both to Jesus
Christ and to Serapis. The converted heathens, says Socrates
Scholasticus, explained the ancient pagan symbol of the Cross,
and declared that it signified Life to come. Not only the custom
of marking the forehead with the sign of the cross, but Baptism
and the consecration of the bread in the Eucharist, were imitated
in the mysterious ceremonies of Mithra. T . de Proscript.
Hæretic. In the Mysteries, the brethren standing in a circle held
each other by the hand, each one crossing his arms in the front of
his body so as to give his right hand to his left hand neighbour,
and left hand to his right hand neighbour. This was called the
Mystic Chain: the Masons of the present day use it.
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Note 13 (page 232).—Thus the Mexican scapegoat was a man

offered to Quitzalcoalt. Forty days before the feast of this god
the merchants purchased a well-shaped slave who, during that
time, represented the deity, to whom he was to be sacrificed on
the day of the festival; but they first washed him in the lake of
the gods, for so they called the water, which was to prepare him
for his apotheosis. The poor wretch thus deified spent his time
in dancing and rejoicings, the devotees all the time worshipping
him: and, lest he should forget his fatal destiny, two ancient
ministers of the idol refreshed his memory with it nine days
before his crucifixion. He was obliged to dissemble mirth: and
if he happened to discover any concern at his approaching fate,
the priests gave him an intoxicating liquor to render him insensible.
The day of the feast being come, they again adorned the miserable
victim, and several times incensed him. At midnight they
sacrificed him, offering his heart to the Moon, and then laying it
before the idol. Chrysostom makes mention of the same festival,
which he calls the festival of sackcloth. Don’t you remember,
says he, the feast of sackcloth celebrated by the Persians, in
which they take a man condemned to death, set him upon the
king’s throne, and after having made him taste all sorts of
pleasures, strip him of his royal apparel, then scourge, and then
hang him? The Incas had a cross of very fine marble, or
beautiful jasper, highly polished, of one piece. It was kept
in a sacred chamber of a palace, and held in great
veneration. The Spaniards having seized, enriched this Cross
with gold and jewels, and placed it in the cathedral of Cusco.
Vega ii. cap. 3. The Mexican temples are in the form of a cross,
and like the pyramids face the four cardinal points. The
Egyptians sacrificed a virgin annually to the Nile, so that he
might continue his increase. But when the Mohammedan power
had subjugated Egypt, their general Amru determined to put an
end to this sanctified murder. And when they complained that,
without the yearly rise of the river, they could not live, and that
it would not rise unless they obeyed their law, Amru demanded
of them what their law was? They told him that on the twelfth
day of the month Baun, they procured a virgin, having first
satisfied her parents, and adorned her with precious gems and
robes; and that in the night they cast her into the Nile, where
she was drowned. Amru made answer: The Mahommedan law
does not allow of this: it is opposed to all profane rites; and
since then the sacrifice has been abolished. It, and similar
atonements, are the source of all human crime. Mr. Ward (View
of the Hindoos, b. i., c. 2, § 11) says: A Hindoo shopkeeper
one day declared to the author that he should live in the
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practice of adultery, lying, &c., till death, and that then

repeating the name of Krisnu, he should without difficulty
ascend to heaven. Ward is not always to be believed,
and this story may be false. At the same time I have no doubt
that there are many who believe it, though they probably do not
so openly avow it as this free-spoken Gentoo. But it is precisely the
same doctrine as our Paulite one of atonement for all sin in the
mediatorial blood of Jesus. Hence the Rev. Dr. Oliver well exclaims
upon this passage from Mr. Ward: How nearly allied is this to the
creed of some Christian sects! (H . I , page 53.)
Could he possibly have meant his own? or did he shut his eyes
to his own teaching?
Note 14 (page 238).—I have sometimes been amused by the
questions which the missionaries in India put to their audience.
Take the following as an example: and suppose the same questions
put to a partaker in adult baptism, the Eucharist, a frequenter at
the chapel: and would he not be constrained by the force of truth
to give the same answers as the Hindus did? I then commenced
afresh with some questions: as 1st, If you gave your apparel to
the washerman to be cleansed, but after repeated calls, he returned
you them as they were, or rather worse, and said he had washed
them clean, should you not call that dobha a liar, and not worth
encouraging any more? “Certainly we should,” said they. Well,
you come to Jugunnath to have your souls cleansed, and your
books affirm they are cleansed by coming here. Now, let me
seriously ask you, Have you obtained new hearts? Are your
sinful dispositions gone, by all the pilgrimages you have made to
Moha Probhoo? “No,” says some person in the crowd, “we are
as we were.” What sort of a Jugunnath therefore is yours? 2nd,
When a person is sick, what does he go to a doctor for? If
in 5, 10, 15, 20, or 40 years he had spent much money, took
many remedies, or endured severe operations; but if, at the
end of the longest period mentioned, his complaint had rather
increased than diminished, what would that man say to the
doctor? He would say, “Sir, you have taken my money, but
have not cured me; I must try some body else.” Just so, you
come here to obtain holy dispositions, I suppose, and feel yourselves
troubled with the disease of sin in your hearts. Well, let me ask,
have any of you by seeing Jugunnath become freed from lying,
adultery, malice, abuse of others, &c.? Have you become new
within? They all with one consent cried out, “No.” The people
behaved very orderly, and we retired in peace. Some of the
hearers said they would come and see us to-morrow; however, I
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do not much expect it.—Calcutta Christian Observer, Jan.,

1833.
Note 15 (page 240).—It is in their mysteries, says La Harpe,
alluding to the Paulites, that we find the stumbling block which
lies in the way of unbelievers. Original sin—a world condemned
for the sin of one man. The incarnation—a God who descends to
be made man. The passion—a God who dies on the cross. The
eucharist—a God who becomes our food—in these things behold
the obstacle to the human mind, and that which revolts reason.
The notion of God becoming our food probably had its origin with
those barbarous Indians, of whom one of the Portuguese mission-
aries relates that they think God is a dish of dressed rice ready
for food, because it is the means of preserving life and health.
Traité de la Religion des Gentils orientaux ecrit par un Portugais;
traduit par M. Dellon, 12mo., a Cologne, 1709. If the original
gospels had been preserved, as they were perhaps written, it
cannot be doubted that we should find many more allusions to
the ænigmas of the Mysteries than those to which I call attention
in this work. But they either perished through ignorance or want
of due care, or they have been castrated and falsified by the Papal
Church. An eminent authority has a remark on this subject,
which is pertinent to this place; it will account for the scarcity
of allusions to the Fish in the New Testament, and probably for
the imperfect form also in which the allusions that remain have
been handed down to us. When we contrast, he says, the im-
mensely voluminous writings of the Fathers who lived after the
third century of the Christian æra, whose works have been
preserved to the present day, with the extreme paucity of those
of the apostolic age, and remember the saying of one of the
Apostles, that if all the actions which Christ performed when
on earth were written down, he supposed the world would not
contain the number of the books—how must we feel surprised at
the apathy and negligence of the primitive Christians who allowed
so many books to perish, and did not even preserve the Gospel of
St. Matthew in the original Hebrew! and how little dependence
can we place on the early history of the Christian Church. Mexican
Antiquities, vi. 400.
Note 16 (page 242).— One species of sacred bread which used to
be offered to the Gods, in this part of the ceremony, was of great
antiquity, and called Boun, English bun. The Greeks, who
changed the Nu final into a Sigma expressed it in the nominative
βους, but in the accusative, more truly boun, βουν; and
this meaning an ox, was used by them symbolically as a solar
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and regenerating type. Hesychius speaks of the Boun, and

describes it, ειδος πεμματος κερατα εχοντος; a kind of cake
with a representation of two horns: and these symbolized the
crescent. Julian Pollux mentions it after the same manner:
βουν ειδος πεμματος κερατα εχοντος, a sort of cake with horns.
Diogenes Laertius, speaking of the same offering being made by
Empedocles, describes the chief ingredients of which it was
composed: βουν εθυσε—εκ μελιτος καì αλφιτων: He offered
up one of the sacred liba called a boun, which was made of fine
flour and honey. It is said of Cecrops, πρωτος βουν εθυσε:
He first offered up this sort of sweet bread. Hence we may judge
of the antiquity of the custom from the times to which Cecrops
is referred. Jeremiah takes notice of this kind of offering when he
is speaking of the Jewish women at Pathros in Egypt, and of their
base idolatry, in all of which their husbands had encouraged them.
The women in their expostulation upon his rebuke tell him:
Since we left off to burn incense to the Queen of Heaven, and to pour
out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have
been consumed by the sword and by the famine. And when we burnt
incense to the Queen of Heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto
her, did we make her cakes to worship her and pour out drink
offerings unto her without our men? The word here for sacred
cakes is ‫כונים‬, Cunim. See ante, page 151. Mamacuna was
the name of the head matron of the Peruvian Priestesses of the
Sun, who were vestal Virgins. It implies maternity, and was
strictly applied to those of the select virgins who had grown old
in the College of the Sun. The whole regulation of that college
was consigned to their care: some of them were like abbesses of
convents, and others resembled the superiors of noviciates: they
instructed the younger or select virgins in their divine worship,
and taught them the various works of the loom and the needle.
So the Greeks offered sacrificial cakes called Σεληναι which
were crescent-shaped, and alluded to the same mystical type—they
were made in Sicily of jasmine and honey, and called μυλλοι.
They are the myllos to which Banier alludes, ante, page 59: and
the Paulite, who on good Friday eats a hot cross bun, is just as
guilty of indecency as the aspirants in the Mysteries were, for
the later symbol is in all things an exact copy of the ancient one;
only that the cross is a far more significant symbol than the
crescent. But the truth is, that it is only the indecent in heart
and soul who can find anything indecorous either in the Pagan
or Paulite symbol.
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The Book of God.
BOOK III.
The Mysteries traced through various Legendary Tales.
1. In the story of Cupid and Psyche, as already inti-

mated (ante, page 51), we have a representation of the
history of the human soul. This soul, which is of Divine
Origin, is here below subjected to error in its prison, the
body. Hence trials and purifications are set before it, that
it may become capable of a higher order of things, and of
true desire. Two loves meet it,—the earthly, a demon
who draws it down to earthly things; the heavenly, who
directs its view to the Original, fair and divine, and who,
gaining the victory over his rival, leads off the soul as his
bride. This however will probably be better understood,
if I insert here a short summary of the fable itself, too
beautiful for a Roman origin, and which breathes all
over of the sacred Orient. Indeed the very name of Eros,
or Love, comes from eastern climes. (1)
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2. Psyche [the Soul] was the youngest daughter of a

King and a Queen [God and the Spirit]. Her two elder
sisters were lovely, but her charms exceeded theirs, as
much as the splendour of the sun excels the brilliancy of
the silver moon. It was even said of her that Venus,
sprung from the foam of the sea, dwelt now in the midst
of mortals, and suffered them to behold her divine form;
or, at least, that once again made pregnant by a new
emanation from the starry heavens, not the ocean but the
earth had brought forth another Venus gifted with the
flower of virginity. At last Venus herself grew envious
of the extraordinary beauty of Psyche. She sought her
son and entreated his assistance to compass her revenge:
but Cupid, instead of executing his mother’s orders, fell
desperately in love with her himself. In the meantime
her sisters, less handsome than she, were married to
sovereigns; while Psyche, notwithstanding all her charms,
remained unwooed. No one durst aspire to her hand;
she was admired only as some statue exquisitely wrought.
Her father consulted the oracle of Apollo Milesius, and
received for answer as follows:
On some high mountain’s craggy summit place
The Virgin, decked for deadly marriage rites;
Nor hope a son-in-law of mortal birth,
But a dire mischief, viperous and fierce,
Who flies through æther, and with fire and sword,
Fatigues and weakens all things; Zeus himself
Trembles before him; Gods and Streams, and Shades
Are terrified, and all start back with fright.
The king obeyed the oracle, and Psyche was conveyed to
the mountain; but Zephyrus enfolded and bare her
away, while in a deep sleep. Awaking, she finds herself
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in a vale of groves and fountains: a royal palace shines

before her. The ceilings of cedar and ivory, are supported
by golden pillars: the walls are encrusted with carvings
in silver: the partitions of gold and gems so shine with
their own lustre, that even if the sun were to withhold
his light the palace could make for itself a day of its own.
She saw no one, but sweet Voices invited her to remain.
A banquet is provided for her by unseen hands; songs of
Nymphs and the music of the lyre enchant her as she
eats; and when she retires to rest, she finds herself in the
arms of a husband whom she sees not, but who vanishes
at the blush of dawn. Thus her destiny was fulfilled
according to the oracle; but she sighed at times for a
sight of her parents and her sisters, nor could all the
enchantments of the palace or her invisible husband’s
love content her heart. Yielding at length to her
entreaties, her husband consented that she should receive
a visit from her sisters, but on one condition only, and
that was, that she should not be tempted by their
enquiries, or by her own curiosity, to seek to know the
form of her unseen lord. Psyche promised, and Zephyrus
conveyed the sisters to the royal palace. They were filled
with envy at the splendour of her happiness, and though
loaded by her with priceless gifts, they departed thankless.
Some months elapsed, and the innocent Psyche again
besought her husband’s permission to see her kindred.
He consents, but warns her against impending calamity.
They come: they persuade her that she is pregnant of a
monster; that her husband is an enormous Serpent, who
will devour her before many days have passed; and
finally they wring from her a reluctant promise that she
will slay him in the night, after which they will convey
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her back to her parents, and wed her to some mortal like
herself. Psyche, not knowing why her husband chose to
remain invisible, consented. The night arrives: her
husband is asleep. Psyche advances stealthily with her
lamp, and is ready to destroy the monster: when lo! she
sees the beautiful God of Love himself wrapped in
slumber, at sight of whom the joyous flame of the lamp
shone with redoubled vigour. She looks upon the genial
locks of his golden head, teeming with ambrosial perfume,
the orbed curls that strayed over his milk-white
neck and roseate cheeks, and fell gracefully entan-
gled, some before, some behind, causing the very
light of the lamp itself to flicker by their radiant splendour.
On the shoulders of the volatile god were dewy wings of
brilliant whiteness; and though the pinions were at rest,
yet the tender down that fringed the feathers, wantoned
to and fro in tremulous unceasing play. The rest of his
body was smooth and beautiful, and such as Venus could
not have repented of giving birth to. At the foot of the
bed lay his bow, his quiver, and his arrows. She looks,
and while she hangs enraptured over the charming
divinity, a drop of scalding oil fell upon his naked
shoulder. The god awoke in pain, and seeing that she
had disobeyed him, he upbraided her for her want of
confidence, and fled away. Psyche followed him until he
was no longer visible, when she dashed herself into the
river; but though she sought death, it came not; for the
god of the stream bare her to the bank. Thenceforth she
wandered wildly day and night in search of the lost one.
She besought the Mother of the gods, bounteous Ceres,
by the mysterious rites of her ark, [See ante, page 98,]
and by the other secrets of Eleusis, to give succour to the
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suppliant. Ceres rejects her prayer, and Juno, to whose

splendid temple she also went, was equally merciless.
Psyche, however, is not all destitute of hope. She resolves
now to seek the Queen of Beauty herself, and see whether
her despair will not excite compassion. Venus had in
the mean time commissioned Hermes to find Psyche,
giving him a little book descriptive of her; and when she
is dragged into her presence, she is enslaved and given
over to Anxiety and Sorrow, who scourged the hapless
fair one. Venus then imposes on her tasks the most diffi-
cult and dangerous; all of which, however, Psyche accom-
plishes by the assistance of her good fortune. At length
wearied out by tormenting her, she sends her to the palace
of Pluto, to bring back some of the beauty of his consort.
Psyche, horror-stricken by this last command, prepares to
hurl herself headlong from a tower, but is dissuaded by
its friendly voice. The tower teaches her in what manner
she shall reach the Throne of Gloom; she perseveres, she
goes through the infernal avenue, she crosses over Styx,
and receives from Proserpine the box which is supposed to
contain the divine beauty for which the Queen of Loveli-
ness herself had sent. Again frail, again inquisitive,
again anxious to look upon this treasured secret, she opens
the box, and, stupified by an infernal vapour, she falls into
the sleep of death. Here she must have remained for
ever had not Cupid, who had now recovered from the
wound which the burning oil had inflicted, come that
way, revived her from torpor, and sent her to Venus
with the golden gift. He himself flies to Zeus, and sup-
plicates his aid. The mighty ruler assents. Psyche is
brought to Olympus, and drinks the ambrosial cup of
Immortality. Her marriage with Cupid is proclaimed
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in heaven. The Graces attend: Apollo sings, Venus

dances at the nuptials, and Pleasure is the fruit of the
alliance.
3. This fable which, like that of Persephone or Proser-
pine and Narcissus, represents, among other things, the
lapse of the soul from a celestial to an earthly sphere, is
alluded to by Synesius in his book on Dreams, and hinted
at by Plato and Plotinus. It is clear that Plato could
not derive his knowledge from Apuleius; and as to
Plotinus and Synesius, those who are acquainted with the
writings of the Greek philosophers, know that they never
borrowed from Latin authors, from a just conviction that
the sources of perfection were in the East. We must
therefore assign to it an Indian origin. Psyche, then, or
soul, is described as transcendently beautiful; and this is
indeed true of every human soul, before it deeply merges
itself in the defiling folds of dark matter. In the next
place, Psyche is represented as descending from the sum-
mit of a lofty mountain into a beautiful valley, which
signifies the descent of the soul from the spheres of
loveliness into a lower condition of being, but yet
without abandoning its original relation to the heavens.
Hence the Palace which Psyche beholds in the valley is
with great propriety said to be “a royal house, which was
not raised by human but by divine hands and art.” The
gems, too, on which Psyche is said to have trod in every
part of this Palace, are evidently symbolical of the stars.
Of this mundane yet celestial condition of being, the
incorporeal Voices which attended upon Psyche are
likewise symbolical; they are the celestial harmonies of
the spheres. Psyche, in this delightful situation, is
married to an invisible Being, whom she alone recognizes
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by her ears and hands. This unseen husband proves

afterwards to be Cupid, or Love; that is to say, the soul,
while established in the heavens, is united to love of the
purest kind; that is, to love intellectual, or, in other
words, love exempt from the fascination of outward form.
But in this beautiful Palace she is attacked by the
machinations of her two sisters, who endeavour to persuade
her to explore the form of her unknown husband. These
sisters signify those two powers of the irrational part of
the soul, anger and desire. The stratagems of these two
sisters at length take effect; and Psyche beholds and falls
in love with Love; that is to say, the rational part,
through the incentives of anger and desire, becomes
enamoured of and captivated with outward form; in
consequence of which Cupid, or Intellectual Love, flies
away, and Psyche, or the rational Soul is precipitated to
earth. After this commence the wanderings of Psyche in
search of Cupid, from whose embraces she is unhappily
torn away. The supplication of Ceres and Juno is appropri-
ate to her condition, for both are one and the same Spirit,
and the Fountain of Souls; and the safety of the soul arises
from converting herself to the Divine Sources of her
being. But Venus has already sent Hermes, or the
Messenger, in pursuit of the fugitive. It is likewise said
that she gave him a small volume, in which the name of
Psyche was written, and every other particular respecting
her. Now I think it cannot be doubted that Synesius
alludes to this part of the fable in the following passage
from his treatise on Dreams. When the Soul, he says,
descends spontaneously to its former life with mercenary
views, it receives servitude as the reward of its mercenary
labours. But this is the intention of descent, that the
N2
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Soul may accomplish a certain servitude to the Nature of

the Universe, prescribed by the laws of Adrastia or
Inevitable Fate. Hence when the Soul is fascinated with
material endowments, she is affected in a manner similar
to those who, though born free, are for a certain time
hired to employments, and in this condition captivated
by the beauty of some female servant, determine to act
in a menial capacity under the master of their beloved
object. Thus in a similar manner, when we are pro-
foundly delighted with external and corporeal good, we
confess that the nature of Matter is beautiful, who marks
our assent in her secret book; and if, considering ourselves
free, we at any time determine to depart, she proclaims us
deserters, and endeavours to bring us back; and openly
presenting her Mystic Volume to the view, apprehends us
fugitives from our mistress. Then indeed the Soul par-
ticularly requires fortitude and divine assistance, as it is
no trifling contest to do away with the confession and
compact which she has made. Besides in this case force
will be employed; for the material inflictors of punish-
ment will then be roused to revenge, by the decrees of
Fate against the rebels to her laws. So far Synesius.
The Venus, however, mentioned in the Fable was not
Celestial Venus; for she separates the pure soul from all
sensual inclination; but the earthly one binds the impure
soul as her legitimate slave to a corporeal life. After this
follows an account of the difficult tasks which Psyche is
obliged to execute by the commands of Venus, all of
which are images of the mighty toils and anxious cares
which the Soul must necessarily endure after her lapse,
in order to atone for her guilt, and recover her ancient
residence in the celestial worlds. In accomplishing the
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last of these labours, she is represented as forced to

descend even to the dark regions of Hades, which indicates
that the soul, through being enslaved to a corporeal life,
becomes situated in obscurity, and is deprived of the light
of day, that is, of the splendour of Truth and Reality,
agreeably to which Empedocles sings:—
I fled from Deity and heavenly Light
To serve mad Discord in the realms of Night.
But Psyche in returning from Hades is oppressed with
a profound sleep, through indiscreetly opening the box
given her by Proserpine, in which she expected to find a
portion of Divine Beauty, but met with nothing but an
infernal Stygian potion. This obscurely signifies that
the Soul, by expecting to find that which is truly beauti-
ful in a corporeal and terrene life, passes into a profoundly
dormant state. Cupid, however, or Love Intellectual
at length recovering his pristine vigour, rouses Psyche or
the rational part of her nature, from her deadly lethargy.
In consequence of this, having accomplished her destined
toils, she ascends to her native heavens, becomes lawfully
united to Cupid, lives the life of the immortals, and the
natural result of this union is pleasure or delight. And
this much, says Taylor, for an explanation of the fable
of Cupid and Psyche. I will only add to this, that the
little book which is given to Hermes the Messenger, may
secretly refer to the Apocalypse, in which these divine
truths are hinted; and in which the true nature of the
Soul and its aberrations is set down. Nor can I entertain
any doubt that this story of Cupid and Psyche was
dioramically represented in the Mysteries, like the Phae-
thontic fall, the fate of Salmoneus, the Labours of Hercules,
and many other of the beautiful sagas of Ovid, which we
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call Metamorphoses. And Apuleius, after he had been

Initiated, only put into words the exquisite picture which
he had beheld. See, ante, page 31. See also the Story
of Prince Hatt under the Earth, or the Three Singing
Leaves. T ’ Yule-tide Stories. The mythos is
very nearly the same as that of Cupid and Psyche.
4. These sublime and symbolical ideas pervade the
whole of the Indian and Platonic Philosophy, which is
essentially the same as the old Orphic and Pythagorean;
and we perpetually find in it allusions to what is called
the deplumation of the soul, its fall from some prior state
of blissful integrity; its incarceration within the body,
and its final restoration after performing numberless trans-
migratory circuits to the holiness which it had forfeited.
Such restoration was thought to be assisted by an Initia-
tion into the Mysteries, when, after the pattern of the
hero-gods, or Messiahs, the aspirant descended into Hades,
and then transmigrated, or was born again from the
womb of the Great Mother into an imitative Paradise.
The aspirant was often made, says Faber, even literally
to encounter very severe trials, ere his mystic regeneration
into light and liberty was allowed to be accomplished.
He was made to pass through fire and water (emblems of
God and the Spirit), to brave the opposing sword, and
to support the most austere fasts without shrinking or
complaining; if his courage failed him he was rejected as
unworthy and cast out as profane. He was made to grope
his darkling way through a terrific gloom as of the grave;
this task being accomplished, he suddenly emerged, and
was admitted as a regenerate soul into the overpowering
splendour of Elysium. These were the precise trials
which were undergone by such as were Initiated into the
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Mysteries of Mithras; they are the same also as those to

which the Hindu devotees still submit. In each case the
end was the same. Austerities were practised to obtain
that purification of the soul, or rather that enthusiastic
abstraction from every worldly object, and that union of
mind with the Great Father which was believed to con-
stitute the spiritual part of the regeneration of the
Mysteries. Hence among the Hindus, no less than
among the Persians, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the
Celts, those who have submitted to such austerities are
dignified with the appellation of twice-born. Hence we
also learn the true meaning of that remarkable dialogue
between Jesus and Nicodemus which is preserved in John
iii. Jesus answered and said to him, Amen, Amen, I say
unto thee, unless a man be born again he cannot see the
kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him: How can a man
be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into
his mother’s womb and be born again? Jesus answered:
Amen, Amen; I say unto thee, unless a man be born
again of water and of the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter
into the Kingdom of God. The wind bloweth where it
listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not
tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so is every
one that is born of the Spirit. This language establishes
conclusively that Jesus was a mystic, and was well
acquainted with the Eleusinian lore. (2) The last
paragraph, in which enigmatical allusion is made to the
Wind would be unintelligible, did we not know that
Ruach Aleim, ‫ריה אלהים‬, means the Wind, the Breath,
the rushing Water, or the Spirit of the Gods, that is, the
Holy Spirit herself, the Chri-Om-Ruach of Irish mytho-
logy. See Part I., page 110. Note also that the
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immersion of the body in Water, to which the Ninth

Messenger alludes, symbolizes the immersion, or baptism,
of the soul in the Holy Spirit, so as to come forth new
born and pure from her womb. It has nothing to do
with pœdo-baptism, or such vain folly. Water, from the
first ages of Revelation meant simply the Holy Spirit.
See Part I., pages 91, 196. See, also, ante, page 85.
5. There is an Indian legend in the Brahmana of the
Yagurveda, which beautifully and tenderly mythologizes
the union of the Soul and Spirit on earth, their partial
separation, and their final marriage in the heavens: it may
have been the original of the fable of Cupid and Psyche.
Urvasi a ghandarvas (the Spirit) fell in love
with Pururavas (the Soul), the son of Ida [Jid], and when
she met him, she said: Embrace me three times a day,
but never against my will, and let me never see you without
your royal garments (that is, but in the regal attire of
virtue, the wedding garment of Jesus, M . xxii.). In
this manner she lived with him a long while. Then her
former friends, the Ghandarvas said; This Urvasi has now
dwelt a long time among mortals; let us see that she
comes back. Now there was a ewe with two lambs tied
to the couch of Urvasi and Pururavas; and the Ghan-
darvas stole one of them. Urvasi said: They take away
my darling, as if I lived in a land where there is no hero
and no man. They stole the second, and she upbraided
her husband again. Then Pururavas looked and said,
How can that be a land without heroes or men where I
am? and naked he sprang up: he thought it too long to
put on his dress. Then the Ghandarvas sent a flash of
lightning, and Urvasi saw her husband naked [as Psyche
saw Cupid] as by daylight. Then she vanished. I come
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back, she said, and went. Then he bewailed his vanished

love in bitter grief, and went near Kurukshetra. There
is a lake there called Anyatahplaksha, full of lotus flowers:
and while the king walked along its border, the fairies
were playing there in the water in the shape of birds.
And Urvasi discovered him and said: That is the man
with whom I dwelt so long. Then her friend said, Let
us appear to him. She agreed, and they appeared before
him. Then the king recognised her and said: Lo! My
wife! stay, thou cruel in mind; let us now exchange
some words. Our secrets, if they are not told now, will
not bring us luck on any later day. She replied: What
shall I do with thy speech? I am gone like the first
of the dawns. Pururavas, go home again: I am hard
to be caught like the wind. He said in despair: Then
may thy former friend now fall down, never to rise again.
May he go far, far away. May he lie down on the
threshold of death, and may rabid wolves there devour
him. She replied: Pururavas, do not die! do not fall
down! may no evil wolves devour thee! Then at last
her heart melted and she said: Come to me the last
night of the year, and thou shalt be with me for one
night, and a son will be born to thee. He went the
last night of the year to the Golden Seats; and while
he was alone, he was told to go up; and then they
sent Urvasi to him. Then she said: The Ghandarvas
will to-morrow grant thee a wish: choose! He said:
Choose thou for me. She replied, Say to them, let me
be one of you. Early the next morn, the Gandharvas
gave him his choice; but when he said, Let me be one
of you, they said, That kind of sacred fire is not yet known
to man by which he could perform a sacrifice, and become
N 3
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one of ourselves. They then initiated Puraravas in the

mysteries of a certain sacrifice; and when he had per-
formed it, he became himself one of the Gandharvas.
The exalted mysticism of this legend is beyond all
commentary. I can only leave it to the reader’s own
soul: and if he will but seek to penetrate its depths,
and comprehend them, how beautiful will his soul
become.
6. This union of the mortal with the immortal is
alluded to in many legends, proceeding from lands the
most wide apart—but all evidencing a common origin.
We have it Hindostan under the name of the Peri-Wife:
we have it in Shetland, less poetically, under the designation
of the Mermaid-Bride. I cite the first here, because of
the analogy which it bears to the present subject; and
because I mean to follow it with a cognate from Scandi-
navia, which signifies not only the union of the earthly
and the ethereal, the soul and spirit; but also occultly,
as it seems to me, shadows forth a picture of Initiation,
where the aspirant after encountering innumerable perils,
is at length carried by the Phœnix, the Mystical Naronic
bird-emblem [See Part I., pp. 98, 102, 172, 193, 195,
256] to the Beautiful Palace east of the Sun, and north
of the earth. This means Final Initiation, where, as
may be supposed, he meets the Bride—the Holy Spirit;
and becomes an epopt of the All-Beautiful. I wish to
note also as a most singular fact that, whenever in ancient
mythology Three Doves are said to appear, it almost
always means the epiphany of the Holy Spirit; as God
is said to have appeared on the plains of Mamre in the
similitude of Three men. Gen. xviii.
7. The son of a merchant in a city of Hindostan
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having been driven from his father’s house on account of

his undutiful conduct, assumed the garb of a Kalenderee
or wandering Derweesh, and left his native town. On the
first day of his travels, being overcome with fatigue before
he reached any place of rest, he went off the high road,
and sat down at the foot of a tree by a piece of water;
while he sat there he saw at sunset Three Doves alight
from a tree on the edge of a pond, and resuming their
natural form (for they were Peries) take off their clothes
and amuse themselves by bathing in the water. He
immediately advanced softly, took up their garments,
without being seen, and concealed himself in the hollow
of a tree, behind which he placed himself. The Peries,
when they came out of the water and missed their
clothes, were distressed beyond measure. They ran about
on all sides, looking for them, but in vain. At length
finding the young man, and judging that he had possessed
himself of them, they implored him to restore them.
He would only on one condition, which was that one of them
should become his wife. The Peries asserted that such a
union was impossible between them whose bodies were
formed of fire, and a mortal who was composed of clay
and water; but he persisted, and selected the one which
was youngest and handsomest. They were at last obliged
to consent, and having endeavoured to console their sister,
who shed copious floods of tears at the idea of parting
with them, and spending her days with one of the sons
of Adam, and having received their garments, they took
leave of her and flew away. The young merchant then
led home his fair Bride and clad her magnificently; but
he took care to bury her Peri-raiment in a secret place,
that she might not be able to leave him. He made every
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effort to gain her affections, and at length succeeded in his

object. “She placed her foot in the path of regard, and her
head on the carpet of affection.” She bore him children,
and gradually began to take pleasure in the society of his
female relatives and neighbours. All doubts of her
affection now vanished from his mind, and he became
assured of her attachment. At the end of ten years the
merchant became embarrassed in his circumstances, and
he found it necessary to take a long voyage. He committed
the Peri to the care of an aged matron in whom he had
the greatest confidence, and to whom he revealed the
secret of her real nature, and shewed the spot where he
had concealed her raiment. He then “placed the foot of
departure in the stirrup of travel,” and set out on his
journey. The Peri was now overwhelmed with sorrow
for his absence, or for some more secret cause, and
continually uttered expressions of regret. The old
woman sought to console her, assuring her “that the
dark night of absence would soon come to an end, and
the bright dawn of interview gleam from the horizon of
divine beauty.” One day when the Peri had bathed, and
was drying her amber-scented tresses with a corner of
her veil, the old woman broke out into expressions of
admiration at her dazzling beauty. Ah nurse, replied she,
though you think my present charms great, yet had you
seen me in my native raiment, you would have witnessed
what beauty and grace the Divine Creator has bestowed
upon Peries; for know that we are among the most
finished portraits on the tablets of existence. If, then,
you desire to behold the skill of the Divine Artist, and
admire the wonders of Creation, bring the robes which
my husband has kept concealed, that I may wear them
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for an instant, and shew thee my native beauty, the like

of which no human eye, but my lord’s, hath gazed upon.
The simple woman assented, and fetched the robes, and
brought them to the Peri. She put them on and then
like a bird escaped from the cage spread her wings, and
crying, Farewell, soared to the sky, and was seen no
more. When the merchant returned from his voyage,
“and found no signs of the rose of enjoyment on the
tree of hope, but the lamp of bliss extinguished in the
chamber of felicity, he became as one Peri-stricken, a
recluse in the cell of madness. Banished from the path
of understanding, he remained lost to all the bounties of
fortune, and the useful purposes of life.”
8. There was once a man, says the Scandinavian
legend, who dwelt in a forest. Near to his habitation
there was a meadow of the finest grass. The man set a
high value on this fertile meadow, regarding it as of
greater worth than most of his other property. But
in the summer mornings at sunrise it was often observed
that the beautiful grass was trodden down, and in the
dew there appeared marks like human footsteps. At
this the man was sorely vexed, and most desirous to
find out who it was that trampled down his grass
during the night. He now considered with himself the
course he should adopt in order to get at the knowledge
which he desired to obtain, and resolved on sending his
eldest son to keep watch in the meadow; but somehow
or other he had not watched long before he felt very
drowsy; and just as midnight drew nigh, he was
wrapped in a deep sleep, from which he did not awake
until the sun was standing high in the heavens. He then
bent his steps towards home, after a fruitless errand,
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but the ground had been trampled down as before.

The following night it was resolved that the farmer’s
second son should go and keep watch in the meadow. He
was not wanting in big words, and he promised to
bring back a full discovery. But it fared with him as
with his brother: for before he had watched for any length
of time, he also felt drowsy and slept, and did not wake
before bright daylight. Thus, after a fruitless errand, he
likewise returned home; and lo, the grass had been
trampled as before. Seeing that these attempts had
proved so vain, the farmer resolved to take no further
steps in the matter; when his youngest son came to him
and begged to be allowed to go to the meadow and keep
watch. The Father answered: It is not worth the trouble
to let thee go, who art so young: for it is not very
probable that thou wilt watch better than thy brothers.
But the youth said that he would try his luck, and so his
request was granted. He then proceeded to the meadow,
although his father and brothers fancied that they could
pretty well foresee how his enterprise would terminate.
After lying long on the watch, the lad could see nothing
before the hour of matins, when the sun was just about
to rise. Then he heard on a sudden a noise in the air as
of birds flying: and Three Doves drew near and descended
on the green meadow. After a while the Doves laid aside
their plumage, and became three fair Virgins, who imme-
diately began dancing on the verdant field, and danced so
delightfully that their feet seemed hardly to touch the
grass. The youth was now at no loss to know who it was
that trampled on his father’s meadow; though he scarcely
knew what to think of the young Maidens. But among
them there was one who appeared to him to be more
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beautiful than all other females, and it entered his mind

that he would rather possess her than any other in the
world. After having for a while thus laid and amused
himself with their dancing, he rose and stole away their
plumages: then lay down again on the watch, to see how
the adventure would terminate. Early in the morning,
soon after the sun had risen, the Maidens had finished
their dance, and were preparing to depart; but they could
not find their plumages. At this they were seriously
alarmed, and ran to and fro on the meadow, until they
came to the spot where the youth was lying. They asked
whether he had taken their plumages, giving him fair
words to induce him to deliver them up. The youth
answered: Yes, I have taken them: but I will not restore
them except on two conditions. Seeing that their
entreaties availed them nothing, the Maidens asked, what
the conditions were, promising to fulfil them. The youth
then said: My first condition is, that ye tell me who ye
are, and whence ye come? One of them answered: I am
a king’s daughter, and these two are my court attendants;
we are from the Palace which lies east of the Sun and
north of the Earth, whither nothing human may come.
The youth continued: My second condition is, that the
king’s daughter plights me her honour and faith, and
fixes a day for our marriage: for her and no other in the
world will I possess. As the day was now advancing,
and the sun already shining on the tops of the trees, the
Maiden was compelled to submit to this condition. The
youth then plighted his troth to the young Princess: and
they promised to be always faithful to each other. He
then gave back the three plumages, and bade his beloved
farewell: who with her companions soared aloft in the
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air, and pursued their course homewards. When it was

full day the Youth proceeded towards home, where he had
to hear a multitude of questions respecting the wonderful
things which he might have seen or heard during the
night: but he spoke very little, saying only that he had
fallen asleep without having discovered anything. For
this he was jeered by his brothers, who made a joke of him,
for having fancied that he could succeed better than
they, who were in every respect his superiors. Some
time had now passed, and the day arrived which the
king’s daughter had fixed for the marriage. The youth
then went to his father, and requested him to make
preparations for a feast, and to invite all their friends
and relations. The father allowed his son to manage
all as he thought proper; and so a grand feast was
prepared with no lack of good cheer. When the hour
of midnight drew nigh, and the guests were beginning
to be merry, a loud noise was heard on a sudden outside
the apartment in which they were assembled, and a
magnificent chariot approached drawn by mettlesome horses.
In the chariot sat the fair Princess, clad as a Bride,
attended by her two court maidens. Now, there was a
great wondering among all the guests, as may easily be
imagined: but the young man received his bride with
joy, and related to the guests his adventure, during the
night when he was watching his father’s meadow. There
upon the healths of the Bride and Bridegroom were
drunk with pleasure and gaiety, and all who saw the
young Bride pronounced the Youth fortunate in having
made such a marriage. Early in the morning and before
dawn, the Princess said that she must depart. At this
the Bridegroom was grieved, and asked her why she could
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not grant him one short hour of delight. The Princess

answered: My father, who rules over the Beautiful
Palace that lies east of the Sun and north of the Earth,
was slain by a Troll, by whom I am held in strict
captivity; so that I cannot enjoy any liberty save for a
short time at midnight. If I am not back before sunrise,
then my life is at stake. When the Youth had heard this
he would no longer detain his Bride, but bade her farewell:
adding fervent wishes for her happiness. At her departure
the Princess gave him a Golden Ring as a remembrance:
and the court damsels gave him each a Golden Apple.
They then mounted their gilded chariot and drove away
with all speed. From that day the youth enjoyed no rest.
He was constantly thinking how he could reach the
Beautiful Palace that lay east of the Sun and north of
the Earth. In this state of mind he went one day to his
father and prayed to be allowed to travel in search of his
Bride. The old man told him he might follow his own
inclinations; though his journey could hardly be attended
with success. The youth then took leave of his relations,
and departed from home alone. He journeyed now over
mountains and through verdant vallies; over many
extensive kingdoms; but could get no tidings of the
Beautiful Palace. One day he came to a very large forest,
in which he heard a loud noise: and on drawing near to
the spot whence it proceeded, he saw two Giants who
were engaged in a violent quarrel. He said to them:
Why do you two Giants stand here quarrelling with each
other? One of them answered: Our father is dead, and
we have divided the inheritance between us: but here is
a pair of boots which we cannot agree as to which of us
shall have. The youth said: I will settle your dispute,
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If you cannot agree, give the boots to me. I am a traveller,

and have a long way to go. The Giant answered: All
that thou sayest may be true; but these are no common
boots, for whoever has them on can go a hundred miles
at every step. When the youth heard this, he was eager
to possess such valuable boots, and told the Giants it
would be much better to make him a present of them,
and then they would have nothing to quarrel about. In
short he put his words so well together, that the Giants
thought his advice was good, and gave him the boots.
The young man then drew on the boots with which he
could go a hundred miles at every step, and travelled far
away to many strange lands. After having thus journeyed
for some time, he came to another forest, in which he
heard another noise and uproar. On advancing, he again
saw two Giants engaged in a violent altercation. He
said: Why do you two Giants stand here wrangling with
each other? One of them answered: Our father is dead,
and we are dividing his property, but we cannot agree
which of us shall have this Cloak. The youth said: I
will settle your dispute; if you cannot agree, give me the
Cloak. I am a traveller, and have a long way to go. The
Giant answered: What thou sayest may be very true,
but this Cloak is not like other cloaks: for whoever puts
it on becomes invisible. On hearing this the Youth was
seized with a strong desire to possess so precious a Cloak,
and said that the Giants could not do better than give it
to him, for then they would have nothing to quarrel
about. This the Giants thought excellent advice; and
they gave him the Cloak: so the Youth got the Cloak
which rendered him invisible, and pursued his journey
far, far away into foreign lands. When he had travelled
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a considerable time, he came again to a vast forest, in

which he heard a great noise and uproar. On advancing
he again saw two Giants engaged in a violent dispute. On
enquiring why they stood there wrangling, one of them said:
Our father is dead, and we have been dividing the inher-
itance; but we cannot settle to which of us this Sword
shall belong. The Youth said: I will settle your difference:
if you cannot agree, make me a present of the Sword. I
am a traveller, and have a long way to go. The Giant
answered: What thou sayest may be quite true; but this
Sword is not like other swords. Whoever is touched
with its point dies instantly: but if he is touched by the hilt
he immediately returns to life. When the Youth heard
this he was seized with a most vehement desire to possess
so precious a Sword, and told the Giants that if they were
wise they would give it to him, and then they would have
nothing to quarrel about. This he expressed to such
purpose that the Giants thought it excellent advice, and
gave him the Sword. The Youth then hung the precious
Sword by his side: drew the hundred mile boots on his legs;
put the wonderful Cloak about his shoulders, and seemed to
be well equipped for his journey. One evening after dark
he found himself in a vast desert that seemed to have no
end. Casting his eyes on every side to discern a lodging for
the night, he descried a little light glimmering among the
trees. On approaching it he found that it proceeded from a
little cot, in which dwelt a very old, old woman, who seemed
to have seen as many ages of man as others see years. The
youth entered; greeted her courteously, and asked whether
he could have shelter for the night. When the old woman
heard him speak she said: Who art thou that comest and
greetest me so kindly? Here have I dwelt while twelve
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oak forests have grown up, and twelve oak forests have
withered: but until now no one has ever come who
greeted me so kindly. The Youth answered: I am a
poor traveller who am in search of the Beautiful Palace
east of the Sun and north of the Earth: you can probably
direct me to it, dear mother. No, said she: that I cannot:
but I rule over the beasts of the field: there may,
perchance, be among them one or other that may put thee
in the right way. The youth thanked her for her kindness,
and stayed the night over. Early in the morning, as the
sun was just shining in, the old woman summoned her
subjects to assemble. Then came running out of the
forest all kinds of beasts, bears, wolves, and foxes,
enquiring what their queen’s pleasure might be. The old
woman said that she wished to know whether there was
any among them who knew the way to the Beautiful
Palace east of the Sun and north of the Earth.
Hereupon the beasts held a great consultation; but not
one could give any information about the Beautiful
Palace. The old dame then said to the Youth: I can
give thee no further aid: but many thousand miles from
here my sister dwells who rules over the fishes of the
sea. She can perhaps give thee the desired information.
The Youth then bade the old woman farewell: thanked
her for her good counsel, and proceeded on his journey.
After travelling a very long way, he again found himself
late one evening in a vast desert. On looking about for
a shelter, he perceived a little light glimmering among
the trees. On approaching it he found that it issued from
a small and very ruinous cottage, standing on the
sea shore, in which sat a very, very old woman, who
appeared to have lived as many ages of man as others
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live changes of the moon. The Youth stepped in; greeted

the old dame from her sister, and asked whether he might
stay there that night. When the old woman had heard
him speak, she said: Who art thou that comest hither
and greetest me so courteously? I have seen four-and-
twenty oak woods grow up, and four-and-twenty wither, but
until now no one has ever come hither who greeted me so
kindly. The Youth answered, I am a poor traveller in
search of the Beautiful Palace east of the Sun and north
of the Earth, whither no human being may come. You,
dear mother, can perhaps direct me in the way. No, said
the old woman, that I cannot, but I rule over the
fishes of the sea, and among them there may probably
be one or other that can give thee the information thou
desirest. The young man thanked her for her kindness
and stayed the night over. Early in the morning, as
soon as it was light, the old dame summoned a meeting
of her subjects. Thither came all the fishes of the sea,
whales, pike, salmon, and flounders, and asked what
might be their queen’s command. The old woman said
she wished to ascertain whether any among them knew
the way to the Beautiful Palace east of the Sun and
north of the Earth, whither no one may go? The
fishes then held a long consultation, the result of which
was that not one of them could give any information
about the Beautiful Palace. Thereupon the old woman
said to the Youth, Thou seest that I can give thee no
further help; but I have another sister, who dwells
many, many thousand miles from here, and rules over
the fowls of the air. Go to her; if she cannot direct
thee, there is no one who can. The Youth then bade
the old woman farewell, and resumed his journey. When
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he had travelled a very long way further, many, many

thousand miles, he found himself late one evening in a
vast desert that seemed to be boundless. On looking
around for a lodging he perceived a little light glimmering
among the trees. On approaching it he found it pro-
ceeded from a small ruinous cottage on a mountain, in
which there dwelt a very, very old woman, who seemed
to have lived as many ages of man as others live days.
The Youth entered, greeted the old dame from her
sisters, and asked whether he could have a lodging for
the night. When the old dame heard him speak, she
said, Who art thou who comest hither with so kind a
greeting? Here have I seen eight-and-forty oak forests
grow up, and eight-and-forty wither, but until now no
one has ever come who greeted me so kindly. The
Youth then said, I am a poor traveller in search of the
Beautiful Palace east of the Sun and north of the Earth,
whither no human being may come. You, dear mother,
can perhaps direct me thither. No, said the old woman,
that I cannot; but as I rule over the birds of the air,
perhaps there is one or other of them can give thee the
desired information. The Youth thanked the old woman
for her kindness, and stayed the night over. Early in
the morning, before the cock had crowed, the old woman
summoned her subjects to an assembly. Then came
flying all the fowls of heaven, eagles, swans, and hawks,
and asked what might be their queen’s commands. The
old woman told them she had summoned them to assemble
because she wished to know whether any among them
knew the way to the Beautiful Palace east of the Sun
and north of the Earth. The birds thereupon held a long
consultation, the result of which was that not one could
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give any information about the Beautiful Palace. The

old dame seemed vexed, and said, Are ye all assembled.
I do not see the Phœnix. She received for answer, that
the Phœnix was not yet come. After waiting for some
time they saw the beautiful bird come flying through the
air, but so fatigued that it could hardly move its wings,
and sank down on the earth, Now, there was joy
throughout the assembly that the Phœnix had arrived;
but the old dame was very angry, and demanded to know
why it had kept them so long waiting. It was some time
before the poor Bird could recover itself, and then in a
humble tone, it said, Be not angry that I have tarried so
long, but I have flown a very long way. I have been in
a far distant land at the Beautiful Palace which lies east
of the Sun and north of the Earth. On hearing this
the queen was quite appeased, and said, This must be thy
punishment, that thou once again go to the Beautiful
Palace, and take this youth with thee on the journey.
The Bird thought this was rather a hard condition, but
there was no alternative. The Youth then bade the old
dame farewell, and seated himself on the Bird’s back,
which then soared aloft, flying over mountains and valleys,
over the blue sea and the green forests. When they
had journied thus a considerable time, the Bird said,
Young man, seest thou anything? Yes, answered the
Youth, I think I perceive a blue cloud far away in the
horizon. That is the country to which we are going,
said the Bird. They had now travelled a very long way,
and evening was coming on, when the Phœnix again said,
Young man, seest thou anything? Yes, answered the
Youth. I see a speck in the blue cloud, which glitters
brightly like the sun itself. The Bird said, That is the
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Palace to which we are proceeding. They still continued

journeying on, and night was drawing near, when the
Phœnix said a third time, Young man, seest thou
anything? Yes, said the Youth. I see a vast Palace,
resplendent all over with gold and silver. Now we are
arrived, said the Bird, descending near the beautiful
structure, and setting the youth down on the earth. The
youth thanked the Bird for his great trouble, which
returned through the air to the place whence he came.
At midnight, when all the Trolls lay in deep sleep, the
Youth went to the Palace gate and knocked; whereupon
the Princess sent her attendant to enquire who it was
that came so late. When the damsel came to the gate,
the Youth threw to her a Golden Apple, and prayed for
admission. The damsel instantly recognized the Apple,
and at once knew who had knocked at the gate. She
thereupon hastened to her mistress with these glad tidings.
But the Princess would not believe that her story was
true. The king’s daughter now sent her other attendant,
and when she came to the gate, the Youth threw to her
the other Golden Apple. She also immediately knew her
Apple again, and full of joy, ran to tell her mistress who
it was outside the gate. Still the Princess would not
believe what they had told her; but went to the gate
herself, and asked who it was that had knocked. The
Youth then handed to her the Golden Ring which she
had given him. Now she knew that her Bridegroom was
come, she therefore opened the gate and received him
with great love and delight, as every one may easily
imagine. The Youth then placing himself at the side of
his fair Bride, they chatted together all night. At the
approach of morning the king’s daughter appeared in deep
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affliction, and said, We must now part. For the sake of all
that is dear to thee, hasten hence before the Trolls awake,
else thy life is at stake. Bride and Bridegroom then took
leave of each other, and the Princess let fall many tears.
The Youth, however, would not flee, but put on his
cloak, drew on his hundred mile boots, girded his
precious sword by his side, and prepared for a contest
with the Trolls. Early in the morning there was great
life and bustle in all the palace. The gates were
opened, and the Trolls entered one after another. But
the Youth stood in the entrance with drawn sword, so
that when the Trolls approached, he was quite ready for
them, and struck off their heads before they were aware
of him. There was consequently a bloody game, which
was not concluded until every Troll had found his death.
When the day was advanced, the king’s daughter sent
her damsels to get tidings how the contest had ended.
They returned with the intelligence that the Youth was
alive, but that all the Trolls were slain. At this news the
fair Princess was overjoyed: for it now appeared to her
that she had overcome all her sorrows. When the first
joy was over, the Princess said, Now our happiness is so
great that it can hardly be greater; if only I could get
back my relatives. The Youth answered, Show me where
they be buried, and I will see whether I cannot help
them. They thereupon went to the spot where the father
of the Princess and her other relations were laid, when
the Youth, touching each with the hilt of his sword, they
all quickened one after another. When they had thus
come to life again, there were great rejoicings in the Palace,
and all thanked the Youth for having restored them. The
relations of the Princess then took the Youth for their
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king, and the fair Maiden was their queen. The Youth
ruled his realm prosperously, and lived to a good old
age, surrounded by friends. His queen bore him brave
sons and fair daughters, and thus they lived in peace
and happiness all their days. Here ends the tale of
the Beautiful Palace east of the Sun and north of the
Earth, in which, adds the chronicler, may be learned
the truth of the old adage that true love overcomes
everything.
9. In a curious work entitled Voyage dans le Finistere
in 1794 and 1795, there is a legend given in rather a
fragmentary form, and probably disfigured here and there
by some interpolations of the narrator; but I think it
conveys in an ænigmatical way a record of full initiation
into the Mysteries. The young son of a Prince, it says,
while wandering alone upon the sea-shore, is overtaken by
a tempest. He repairs for shelter to a Cavern, which
proves to be inhabited by the Goddess of Nature. Her head
is covered with stars. The signs of the Zodiack [the
Twelve Messengers] constitute the ornaments of her
golden girdle. Her unruly sons, the tempestuous winds,
enter the recess. The child’s limbs become rigid with a
mortal cold: he is covered by water [is purified] but
repose is not made for these demons. When they rush
forth, the Goddess takes the amiable boy upon her knees,
and covers him with her robes; the young prince is com-
mitted to the care of Zephyrus [the wind that conveys
Psyche, or the Soul]; he is divested of his earthly cover-
ing [passes through a further course of purification], his
terrestrial senses are at once refined, and he is borne aloft
in the air. In the course of his journey he makes dis-
coveries. The clouds [the spirit-sphere nearest the earth]
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are composed of the souls of men which have lately quitted

the earth. They fly over the heads of armies; their influ-
ence inspires courage, or strikes terror. These are they
who, in the obscurity of the night, and amid silent forests,
terrify mortals with long-continued howlings, with appa-
ritions and luminous phantoms. Participating as yet of
terrestrial affections, they mix themselves into the passions
of men. Their agency is perceived in dreams and panic
terrors. In vain they endeavour to soar above the atmo-
sphere; an irresistible force, a wall of sapphire, impedes
their wing towards the purer spheres, which roll in the
immensity of space. As soon as a new body is formed,
they enter it with impatience, inhabit, and give it anima-
tion. Not having attained that purity which unites them
to the Sun, the Genius of their system, they wander in the
forms of the various animals which people the air, the
earth, and the seas. The Prince is carried up into the
vortex of the Moon. Here millions of souls traverse vast
plains of ice, where they lose all perception but that of
simple existence. They forget the course of adventures
in which they have been engaged, and which they are now
to recommence. On long tubes of darkness, caused by an
eclipse, they return to the earth. They are revived by a
particle of light from the Sun, whose emanations quicken
all sublunary things. They begin anew the career of life.
Towards the disk of the Sun, the young Prince approaches,
at first with awful dread, but presently with inconceivable
rapture and delight. This glorious body consists of an
assemblage of pure souls, swimming in an ocean of bliss.
It is the abode of the Blessed, of the Sages, of the friends
of mankind. These happy Spirits, when thrice purified
in the Sun, ascend to a succession of still higher spheres,
O2
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from whence they can no more descend to traverse the

Circles of those globes and stars which float in a less pure
atmosphere.
10. Davies, in his Celtic Researches, observes on this:
I would remark, he says, as a curious phenomenon, that
in its great outlines it corresponds exactly to the
doctrines of the oldest Welsh documents and the character
of Druidism described by the ancients. Souls which are
sullied with earthly impurities are to be refined by repeated
changes and probations till the last stain of evil is worn
away, and they are ultimately ripened for bliss in an
immortal sphere. This, he adds, is neither Gothic nor
Roman—it is Druidical. At no period since the ages of
Druidism have the Welsh and the Armoricans ever studied
in one common school at which mystical doctrines like
these were taught. Must it not follow that both nations
derived them from their ancestors, the Priests of the
Groves? (Page 561.) The reader is referred also to the
curious exposition of ancient Cymric tenets, and to the
triadic theosophy, which he will find at the end of this
Book, for further confirmation of the opinion of Davies
as cited above.
11. I think also that I can detect, in the Legend of
Flath Innis, or the Noble Island, which lies surrounded
with tempests in the Western Ocean, a mystical allusion
to the nine days’ passage through the Mysteries, and to
the wondrous sights of which they were the prelude. In
former days, says the annalist, there lived in Skew (a rock
in the ocean) a Druidh or Magician of high renown. The
blast of wind waited for his commands at the gate; he
rode the tempest; and the troubled wave offered itself as
a pillow for his repose. His eye followed the sun by day:
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his thoughts travelled from star to star in the season of

night: he thirsted after things unseen: he sighed over the
narrow circle which surrounded his days: he often sat in
silence beneath the sound of his groves, and he blamed
the careless billows that rolled between him and the
Green Isle of the West. One day, as the Magician of
Skew sat thoughtful upon a rock, a storm arose on the
sea; a Cloud, under whose squally skirts the foaming
waters complained, rushed suddenly into the bay, and
from its dark womb at once issued forth a Boat, with its
white sails bent to the wind, and hung around with a
hundred moving oars. But it was destitute of mariners,
itself seeming to live and move. An unusual terror seized
the aged Magician: he heard a Voice, though he saw no
human form. Arise, it said, behold the Boat of Heroes:
arise and see the Green Isle of those who have passed away.
He felt a strange force in his limbs; he saw no person,
but he moved to the Boat; immediately the wind changed;
in the bosom of the Cloud he sailed away. Seven days
gleamed faintly round him; seven nights added their
gloom to his darkness: his ears were stunned with shrill
voices: the dull murmurs of winds passed him on either
side: he slept not, but his eyes were not heavy: he ate
not, but he was not hungry: on the eighth day the waves
swelled into mountains; the Boat was rocked violently
from side to side: the darkness thickened around him,
when a thousand voices cried aloud at once, The Isle, The
Isle. The billows opened wide before him: the calm land
of the departed rushed in light on his eyes. It was not a
light that dazzled, but a pure, distinguishing, and placid
light, which called forth every object to view in the most
perfect form. The noble Isle spread large before him,
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like a pleasing dream of the soul, where distance fades

not on the sight, where nearness fatigues not the eye. It
had its gently-sloping hills of green, nor did they wholly
want their clouds; but the clouds were bright and trans-
parent, and each involved in its bosom the source of a
stream: a beauteous stream, which, wandering down the
steep, was like the faint notes of the half-touched harp to
the distant ear. The valleys were open and free to the
ocean; trees loaded with leaves, which scarcely waved to
the light breeze, were scattered on the green declivities
and rising ground; the rude winds walked not on the
mountain; no storm took its course through the sky. All
was calm and bright; the pure sun of Autumn shone
from his blue sky on the fields; he hastened not to the
West for repose, nor was he seen to rise from the East;
he sits in his mid-day height, and looks obliquely on the
Noble Isle. In each valley is its slow moving stream;
the pure waters swell over the bank, yet abstain from
the fields; the showers disturb them not, nor are they
lessened by the heat of the sun. . . . . The softer sex
passed with their friends to the Fortunate Isles: their
beauty increased with the change; and, to use the words
of the Bard, they were ruddy lights in the Island of Joy.
So far the legend which has a double meaning: first,
initiation into the Holy Mysteries: second, a mystic
intimation of the Holy City of God, which in splendor
descended from the Heavens. See A , section 65.
12. This happy arrival in the Fortunate Islands and
the Golden City is thus alluded to by Euhemerus in a
work which has been called a romance, but which assumed
that appearance in all probability because it was impossible
to divulge anything under the appearance of reality.
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Diodorus Siculus has a fragment which declares that

Euhemerus, having had occasion to make a voyage in the
Eastern ocean, after several days’ sail, came to Three
Islands, one of which was named Panchaia (All-Shining:
the Land of Pan). The inhabitants of this happy Isle
were distinguished for their piety, and the Isle itself for
its fertility and beauty, in the description of which the
writer exerted all his powers. At the distance of several
miles from the chief town, he says, lay a Sacred Grove
composed of trees of every kind; tall cypresses, laurels,
myrtles, palms, and every species of fruit tree; amidst
which ran rivulets of the purest water. A spring within
the Sacred District poured forth streams in such abun-
dance as to form a navigable river named the Water of
the Sun, which meandered along, fructifying the whole
region, and shaded over by luxuriant groves, in which, during
the days of summer, dwelt numbers of men, while birds
of the richest plumage and most melodious throats built
their nests in the branches, and delighted the hearer with
their song. Verdant meads, adorned with various flowers,
climbing vines, and trees hanging with delicious fruits,
everywhere met the view in this Paradise. The inhabit-
ants of the Island were divided into three castes: priests,
warriors, and cultivators; all things were in common
except the house and garden of each. The duty of the
priests was to sing the praises of the gods, and to act as
judges and magistrates; a double share of everything fell
to them. The task of the military class was to defend
the Island against the incursions of pirates, to which it
was exposed. The garments of all were the finest and
whitest wool [see A , section 2], and they wore
rich ornaments of gold. The priests were distinguished
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by their raiment of pure white linen and their bonnets of

gold tissue. The priests derived their lineage from Crete,
whence they had been brought by Zeus, after he had
succeeded his predecessors Uranos and Kronos, in the
empire of the world. In the midst of the Grove already
described, at the distance of sixty stadia from the chief
town, stood an ancient and magnificent temple sacred to
Triphylian Zeus, erected by the God himself while he was
yet among men; and on a Golden Pillar in the Temple,
the deeds of Uranos, Zeus, Artemis, and Apollo had been
inscribed by Hermes in Panchaic letters, which the
voyager says were the same with the sacred characters of
the Egyptian priests. Zeus [the Messenger] had been,
according to this monument, the most potent of monarchs.
13. In this narrative we have all the ingredients of
the Eleusinian mystery: a holy happy Island, the retreat
of the good; a sacred grove for pious meditation; Water
of the Sun, which was probably regarded, from its baptismal
character, and its connection with the Virgin-Spirit, as an
elixir of life; three castes, which we know was the primeval
division of mankind by the first Ancients, and priests
clothed like those in the Mysteries, in purest white, with
golden mitres. Their origin is traced to the son of Heaven
and Time, or to Zeus, which is an Adamic name, signifying
the one who maketh to live; and his deeds are recorded in
a Golden Pillar, which, as I have already proved, was a
name for a Book, and which in this place, without doubt,
referred to the Apocalypse, written in the secret pontifical
language. See Part I., pp. 247—257.
14. In the Peruvian mythology, we have a tradition
which, I think, shadows forth a part of Initiation. One
of their princes is afflicted with a dread physical calamity,
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which can only be removed by a balsam contained in a

Vase, composed of three metals—gold, silver, and copper,
and which is to be found on the highest mountain,
Utumcuna. This mountain is almost inaccessible: from
the bottom to the middle it is inhabited by tigers and
other fierce animals, who permit no human creature to
approach with impunity; and from the middle to the top
the eye beholds nothing but ghastly rocks and precipices.
Forty-five of the King’s sons volunteer to make the
attempt; but the sight of lions and tigers of a monstrous
size, which attack and wound several of the brothers,
deters all except the youngest from further advancing on
the road. Furious wild beasts assault and would destroy
him, but he puts them to flight by a sounding trumpet;
and having refreshed himself with simple food, maize and
nuts, he continues his ascent of the mighty crags. Some-
times he was obliged to climb from one rock to another,
and leap over wide clefts that opened a dreadful abyss
before him: besides which the stones rolled under his
feet and hands, and in their fall made such an astonishing
noise that it seemed as if all the mountain was tumbling
into ruins. But the prince, no way discouraged by these
terrors, hung sometimes by his hands, whilst his eyes
were in search of another place, where he might fasten
himself with more security. At last, by a length of pains
and toils, he ascended so high that he discovered the Vase
of three metals at the foot of a very massive Tree, the
sight of which so transported him that he forgot all the
perils and labours he had sustained, and, falling on his
knees, he returned thanks to the Deities for the succours
they had afforded him, after which he made a short repast,
and fell asleep for some time. Apuquepa, when he waked,
O 3
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went to take up the Vase, but found it strongly fastened

to the foot of the Tree, that diffused its boughs over it.
He made several attempts to disengage it, but how great
was his astonishment when he beheld the Tree, in propor-
tion as he redoubled his attempts, changing gradually into
a Virgin of incomparable loveliness. He was so struck
with admiration at the sight that he had no power to
speak. . . . Apuquepa then turned to the side of the
mountain on which he had ascended, but was strangely
surprised to see the prospect entirely changed. He beheld
an easy and gentle ascent in the very place that a moment
before presented frightful rocks and precipices to the view,
&c. &c. In the Voyage to the Desert Isle there is another
allusion to this Sacred Tree, or oracular Virgin of the
Heavens, and of the Apocalyptic Celestial City. In the
centre of this island we learn that Pacha-Camac (the
Universal Life) had planted a Tree, unknown to all the
rest of the world, and the only one of the species. The
branches perpetually bloomed with leaves, and extended
themselves over all the Island. This was the Tree which
pronounced the oracles, and the Guardian Genius of the
Island imparted them to the priests, divines, and magi,
by whom they were communicated, when they thought
fit, to all other mortals. Under all the Tree darkness
was diffused, and “one might say that the Wings of Ever-
lasting Night were there expanded.” The Tree opens, and
the aspirant addressed as Himân (Dove) is informed that
on entering within he shall behold her who is destined to
make him happy. Straight he beholds a Cavern, deep,
but sufficiently illuminated to render it accessible with
ease. The prince entered, and found an outlet from the
Cavern into a Garden, to which he directed his steps;
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and after he had passed the several alleys, he at last found

his dear Cumac Riti. She was walking in that verdant
scene, and held a sceptre of silver in her hand, &c., &c.
The mystical spirit of the legend is shadowed forth in the
following. At these tidings, it adds, Cumac Riti was
transported with joy, and attempted to embrace her beloved
Himân: twice she threw herself on his neck, and twice
was convinced that she embraced an airy phantom, &c.
&c. I have added in a note the Scandinavian legend of
the Tree Ydrasil, which is akin to this of Peru (3). I
think it well also to mention here, in connection with
this Peruvian, or possibly Atlantean legend, that Faber
entertains no doubt that the Story of Prince Zeyn and
the Ninth Statue in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments
is a veiled account of Initiation into the Mysteries.
Ceremonies of Initiation in Europe and Hindostan.

The Boodh-Cymric Doctrines.
15. I quote here from several ancient writers, who

have given us vague, but still apparently authentic, hints
of the interior ceremonies of the Mysteries. I approached
the confines of death, says Apuleius, and having crossed
the threshhold of Proserpine I at length returned, borne
along through all the elements. I beheld the Sun shining
in the dead of night, with luminous splendour. I saw
both the infernal and celestial gods. I approached and
adored them. (Metam. xi.) The infernal gods, as I have
before intimated, was the Messiah, or the Cabir, on his
earthly mission in this lower world, the earth; though I
do not deny that it may also have meant the evil stars and
powers personified in the Apocalypse; while the Sun
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shining in the dead of night occultly alludes to the

Night Al Kadr, mentioned ante, page 57, when the
Apocalyptic Volume of Revelation is shown to the
Messenger, and when brighter still, AO, the heavenly
Virgin who bestows it, is beheld shining with a magnifi-
cence and glory which can be paralleled only by the Sun
in the most brilliant period of his lustre. Themistius
represents an aspirant as first encountering much terror
and uncertainty, but afterwards as being conducted by
the Hierophant into a place of tranquil safety. Entering
now into the Mystic dome, he says, the aspirant is filled
with horror and amazement. He is seized with a solici-
tude and a total perplexity. He is unable to move a step
forward, or how to begin right the road that is to lead
him to the wished for place. But when the Prophet
himself unsealed the vestibule of the temple, and had
arrayed the Statue in its robes, and had adorned and
purified it in every part, then did he reveal it to the
Initiated, glowing and glittering with a divine splendour,
and the mist and the enveloping Cloud were instantly
burst asunder. [See A , section 50.] And the
Divine Mind [AO] appeared out of the profound deeps,
replete with light and serenity in place of the former
darkness. Orat in Patrem. [See A , section 58.]
I have already mentioned that this Vision was symbolized
by a young and lovely Virgin, who personated the Holy
Spirit. Proclus speaks exactly to the same purpose. In
the Most Holy Mysteries, he says, before the scene of the
Mystic Visions, there is a terror infused into the minds of
the Initiated. What the scene of these mystic visions
was, Themistius above informs us. This entrance into
light, which was the privilege of the pure and initiated,
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was thus alluded to by Jesus. J iii. For every one

that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light,
lest his deeds be reproved; but he that doeth truth cometh
to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest that they
are wrought in God. This was called the Autopsia,
or the seeing things with one’s own eyes; and
now, in token of his regeneration, or new birth from
Hades into Elysium, a golden serpent was placed in the
bosom of the Initiated, and the Self-conspicuous Image of
Nature was presented to his gaze. The former, by its
faculty of shedding its skin, described the twice-born as
emerging into a renovated world, or entering upon a fresh
course of existence: the latter was the symbol of the Great
Mother. In one glance he was taught the mystic secret of
the new birth, and now learned that all things proceeded
from Two, and that these were God and the Holy One of
Heaven,—the ever-perfect and immaculate Virgin-Mother
of the Universe.
16. One of the most curious accounts of initiation into
the Mysteries is given by an ancient writer, preserved by
Stobœus. He professes to explain the exact conformity
between death, or a real descent into the infernal regions,
and initiation, where those regions were scenically exhi-
bited; between also a restoration to life, or a resurrection
from the grave, and the mystic emerging, like Owen before
mentioned, from Hades into the light and liberty of
Elysium. The mind, says he, is affected and agitated in
death, just as it is in Initiation into the Grand Mysteries.
And word answers to word, as well as thing to thing;
for teleutan is to die, teleisthai is to be initiated. The
first stage, or the mournful part of the Mysteries, is
nothing but errors and uncertainties, laborious wanderings,
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a rude and fearful march through night and darkness.

And now when the aspirants have arrived on the
verge of death and initiation, everything wears a dread-
ful aspect; it is all horror, trembling, sweating, and
affrightment. But this scene once over, or at the com-
mencement of the joyful part of the Mysteries, a miracu-
lous and divine Light displays itself, and shining plains,
and flowery meadows, open on all hands before them. Here
they are entertained with hymns and dances, with the
sublime doctrines of sacred knowledge, and with reverend
and holy visions. And now, become perfect and initiated,
they are free and no longer under restraints; but crowned
and triumphant, they walk up and down the regions of the
blessed, converse with pure and holy men, and celebrate the
Sacred Mysteries at pleasure. Thus Sopater, when he had
passed through the Lesser Mysteries, says of himself:
Being new about to undergo the lustrations which imme-
diately precede Initiation into the Greater Mysteries,
they called me happy; and thus Euripides, elegantly
alluding to this division of the Orgies, denominates sleep
the smaller mysteries of death. It was doubtless to those
two parts, which invariably succeeded each other, the one
terrific and mournful, the other cheerful and consolatory;
the one exhibiting the descent into Hades, the other the
escape into, Elysium that Aristophanes referred, when
he styled the pantomimic orgies of Eleusis, that most
astounding and yet most ravishing representation; and
if the reader will again but figure to himself the Apoca-
lypse scenically and dramatically represented, and the
exquisite closing scene, when the Virgin Bride descended
on the Initiated in a Cloud of light and loveliness, he will
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be able to appreciate the spirit of the Greek poet’s enthu-

siasm.
17. It is necessary above all things to know, says
Olympiodorus, in his MS. Commentary on the Gorgias of
Plato, that the Fortunate Islands are said to be raised
above the sea;* and hence a condition of being, transcend-
ing this corporeal life and generation, is denominated the
Islands of the Blessed; but these are the same with the
Elysian Fields. And on this account Hercules is reported
to have accomplished his last labour in the Hesperian
regions; signifying by this that having vanquished an
obscure and terrestrial life, he afterwards lived in open
day, that is, in truth and resplendent light. So that he
who in the present state vanquishes as much as possible
a corporeal life, through the exercise of the cathartic
virtues, passes in reality into the Fortunate Islands of the
Soul, and lives surrounded with the bright splendours of
Truth and Wisdom, proceeding from the Sun of Good.
All this figures loves and knowledge: and the love com-
munion of the soul with one essentially divine and virgin,
which was the consummation of those mystic ceremonies.
And to this the Orphic oracle alludes when it says,
Invoke not the Self-conspicuous Image of Nature, for
you must not behold those things before your body has
received the purification necessary to initiation. But this
image was that of which Proclus in his Commentaries on
the Timæus of Plato occultly speaks; “that the Moon is
the cause of nature to mortals, and the Self-Conspicuous
Image of fontal nature.”
18. Next followed the investiture. This in Persia was
* So in the A , before the Holy City is attained, waters,
must be passed through. See section 69.
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exceedingly splendid and succeeded to the communication

of the Sacred Lights. The candidate received the girdle
[See A , sections 2 and 36] on which were de-
picted twelve signs [the Twelve Messengers] with a gold-
en Lion in the centre [the Lion of the tribes of Jid,
or God. A , section 7], a tiara, or lofty crown,
a white fan-formed apron, and a purple tunic. The latter
being thickly studded with stars of burnished gold [the
Morning Star. A , section 64] and flowing loosely
from his shoulders, gave a splendid appearance to the
Initiated, and conferred an unequivocal mark of the dis-
tinction which he had just attained. In Hindostan, the
aspirant, with similar ceremonies was solemnly invested
with the consecrated Sash or Girdle, which, being inserted
over his left shoulder, descended on the right side, and
hung as low as the extremity of the fingers could reach.
This girdle he was directed to wear next his skin. It
consisted of a cord composed of three times three threads
[the number of the Spheres] twisted together, and fastened
at the end with a knot. The Arch-Brahmin then presented
the Candidate with the consecrated Chaplet, and the
Kowsteke-Men, a jewel to be worn on the heart, streaming
with rays of light amidst the darkness, like the Blessed
City in the A , section 65. A charmed label was
firmly bound on his left arm, in which powerful
talismanic words were inscribed [the name of God, and
the City of God. A , section 64]. The mystic
words of dismission then followed. Colonel Wilford has
proved these words to be pure Shanscreet. At the
conclusion of the Eleusinea, the Initiated were saluted
with words, which the Greeks travestied into Κογξ, Ομ,
Παξ. Conx, Om, Pax, phrases long considered inexplicable.
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But they are used even to this day by the Brahmins at

the conclusion of religious rites. They are thus written
in the language of the gods, as the Hindus call the
language of their Sacred Books: Cansch, Om, Pacsh.
Cansch signifies the object of our most ardent wishes.
Om (pronounced Aum, and probably Auv, or AO) used
both at the beginning and the conclusion of prayer, or any
religious rite, like Amen ; Pacsh (pronounced Vacsh and
Vact in the vulgar dialect), seems to be peace, quietude,
holy silence, and to be connected with the Paschal Lamb.
The meaning of the formula therefore would appear to be:
The object of my most ardent desire is holy rest with
G , or with the Divine and Blessed Virgin Bride of
Heaven. Pasht is an Egyptian celestial name.
19. Perhaps, however, the reader will be better pre-
pared to understand the forms of Initiation as they took
place in Hindustan, if I lay before him first the descrip-
tion which Apuleius has left; and though we cannot
suppose that he has revealed all, nevertheless, by com-
paring what he has told us with what has been disclosed
by others, we may, from the whole, form a pretty accurate
idea of what the full rites were in part. Yet I feel conscious
that a great deal, and probably the most interesting por-
tion of all, must remain unknown forever, except in such
legendary pictures of it as I have collected. Apuleius
thus describes his first prayer to the Holy Spirit to free
him from the bestial shape into which he had changed.
Awaking, he says, in sudden alarm about the first watch
of the night, I beheld the full orb of the Moon, shining
with remarkable brightness, and just then emerging from
the waves of the sea. Availing myself, therefore, of the
silence and solitude of night, as I was also well aware
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that the Great Primal Goddess possessed a transcendent

majesty, and that human affairs are entirely governed by
her Providence, and that not only cattle and wild beasts,
but likewise things inanimate, are invigorated by the
divine influence of her Light; that the bodies likewise
which are on the earth, in the heavens, and in the sea,
at one time increase with her increments, and at another
lessen duly with her wanings; being well assured of this,
I determined to implore the august Image of the Goddess
then present; Fate, as I supposed, being now satiated
with my many and great calamities, and holding out to
me at last some prospect of relief. Shaking off all my
drowsiness, therefore, I rose with alacrity, and directly,
with the intention of purifying myself, began bathing in
the sea, having dipped my head seven times in the waves,
because, according to the divine Pythagoras, that number
is especially adapted to religious purposes, I joyously and
with alacrity thus supplicated with a tearful countenance
the transcendently powerful Goddess: Queen of Heaven,
whether thou art the genial Ceres, the prime Parent of
fruits, who, joyous at the discovery of thy daughter, didst
banish the savage nutriment of the ancient acorn, and,
pointing out a better food, dost now till the Eleusinian
soil; or whether thou art Celestial Venus, who, in the
first origin of things, didst associate the different sexes
through the creation of mutual love, and having propa-
gated an everlasting offspring in the human race, art now
worshipped in the seagirt shrine of Paphos; or whether
thou art the Sister of Phœbus, who, by relieving the pangs
of women in travail by soothing remedies, hast brought
into the world multitudes so innumerable, and art now
venerated in the far-famed Shrines of Ephesus; or whether
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thou art Proserpine, terrific with midnight howlings, with

triple features checking the attack of the ghosts, closing
the recesses of the earth, and who, wandering over many
a grove, art propitiated by various modes of worship, with
that feminine brightness of thine illuminating the walls
of every city, and with thy vaporous beams nurturing the
joyous seeds of plants, and for the revolutions of the sun
ministering thy fitful gleams; by whatever name, by
whatever ceremonies, and under whatever form it is
lawful to invoke Thee, do thou graciously succour me in
this my extreme distress; support my fallen fortune, and
grant me rest and peace after the endurance of so many
sad calamities. Let there be an end of my sufferings;
let there be an end of my perils. Remove from me the
dire form of a quadruped; restore me to the sight of my
kindred; restore me to Lucius my former self [that is,
my soul of light to her former brightness]. But if any
offended deity pursues me with inexorable cruelty, may
it at least be allowed me to die, if it is not allowed me to
live.
20. Having after this manner poured forth my prayers,
and added bitter lamentations, sleep again overpowered
my stricken feelings on the same bed. Scarcely had I
closed my eyes when behold a Divine Form emerged from
the middle of the sea, and disclosed features that even the
Gods themselves might venerate. After this, by degrees,
the Vision, resplendent throughout the whole body, seemed
gradually to take its stand before me, rising above the
surface of the sea. I will even make an attempt to
describe to you its wondrous appearance, if indeed the
poverty of human language will afford me the power of
appropriately setting it forth, or if the Divinity herself
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will supply me with a sufficient stretch of eloquent

diction.
21. In the first place, then, her hair, long, and hanging
in tapered ringlets, fell luxuriantly on her divine neck; a
crown of varied form encircled the summit of her head,
with a diversity of flowers; and in the middle of it, just
over her forehead, there was a flat circlet which resembled
a mirror, or rather emitted a white refulgent light, thus
indicating that she was the Moon. Serpents rising from
furrows of the earth supported this on the right hand,
and on the left white ears of corn projected on either side.
Her garment was of many colours, woven of fine flax; in
one part it was resplendent with a clear white colour; in
another it was yellow, like the blooming crocus; and in
another flaming with a rosy redness. And then, what
rivetted my gaze far more than all, was her mantle of the
deepest black that shone with a glossy lustre. It was
wrapped around her, and, passing from below her right
side over the left shoulder, was fastened in a knot that
resembled the boss of a shield ; while a part of the robe
fell down in many folds, and gracefully floated with its
little knots of fringe that edged its extremities. Glittering
stars were dispersed along the embroidered extremities of
the robe and over its whole surface, and in the middle of
them a Moon of two weeks old breathed forth its flaming
fires. Besides this, a garland, wholly consisting of flowers
and fruits of every kind, adhered naturally to the border
of this beautiful mantle, in whatever direction it was
wafted by the breeze. The objects which she carried in
her hand were of a different description; in her right
hand she bore a brazen sistrum, through the narrow rim
of which, winding just like a girdle for the body, passed
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a few little rods, producing a sharp shrill sound, while her

arm imparted motion to the triple chords. An oblong
vessel made of gold, in the shape of a boat, hung down
from her left hand, on the handle of which, in that part
in which it met the eye, was an Asp raising its head erect,
and with its throat puffed out on either side. Shoes too,
woven from the palm, the emblem of victory, covered her
ambrosial feet. Such was the appearance of the Mighty
Goddess as, breathing forth the fragrant perfumes of
Arabia the Happy, she deigned with her divine voice
thus to address me. The Holy Spirit then spake in the
words which I have transcribed in Part I. page 23, and
concludes as follows: Behold, then, commisserating your
calamities, I come to your assistance; favouring and pro-
pitious I am come. Away then with tears; leave your
lamentations; cast off all sorrow; soon, through my Pro-
vidence, shall the day of deliverance shine upon you.
Listen, therefore, attentively to these my instructions.
22. Everlasting religion has consecrated to me a day
which will be born from this night; to-morrow my priests
offer to me the first fruits of the open navigation, and
dedicate to me a new ship, for that the wintry tempests
are now appeased, and the stormy waves of the ocean
lulled, and the sea itself has become navigable. That
sacred ceremonial you must await, with a mind neither
full of anxiety, nor intent upon subjects that are profane,
for the priest at my command will carry in the procession
a crown of roses, attached to the sistrum, in his right
hand. Without delay then, pushing the crowd aside,
join my procession, and put your trust in my gracious
disposition; then, having approached close, as though to
kiss the hand of the priest, gently pluck the roses, and at
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once divest yourself of the hide of that abominable beast,

which I have long looked upon with detestation.
23. Nor hold in dread anything pertaining to my con-
cerns as difficult; for even at this very same instant of
time, in which I appear to you here present, I am giving
orders also to my Priest how to bring about the things
that are to take place hereafter. By my command the
dense crowds of people shall give way before you. Neither
amid the joyous rites and festive scenes will any one view
with abhorrence the unsightliness of the figure which you
bear, or malignantly accuse you by putting a sinister
interpretation on the sudden change in your form. Only
remember, and always keep it fast in the very depths of
your heart, that the remaining period of your life must
be dedicated to me, even to the moment of your latest
breath. . . . And now behold the prelude to the grand
procession came gradually into action. . . . Amid this
merry masquerade of the swarming people the procession
proper of the Guardian Goddess now advanced. Females,
splendidly arrayed in white garments, expressing their
joy by various gestures, and adorned with vernal chaplets,
scattered flowers on the ground from their bosoms along
the path of the Sacred Procession. Others again, with
mirrors placed upon their backs, shewed all who followed
to the Goddess with their faces towards her, as if they
were coming to meet her. Others, carrying ivory combs,
imitated the combing and bedecking of her regal hair with
the motion of their arms and the twisting of their fingers.
There were others, too, who sprinkled the streets with
drops of genial balsam and other kinds of perfume. In
addition to all this, there was a great multitude of men
and women who propitiated the Goddess, offspring of the
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celestial stars, by bearing lamps, torches, wax tapers, and

other kinds of artificial light. Next came musicians
playing sweetly on pipes and flutes. A graceful choir of
chosen youths in snow white garments followed them,
repeating a beautiful song which an excellent poet had
composed under favour of the Muses, the words of which
explained the first origin of the votive procession. Pipers
also, consecrated to the great Serapis, played an air
appropriate to the worship of the God, on pipes with
transverse mouthpieces, and tubes held obliquely towards
their right ears. There were also a number of persons
whose office it was to give notice that room should be left
for the Sacred Procession to pass. Then came a multitude
of those who had been Initiated into the Sacred Rites of
the Goddess, consisting of men and women of all classes
and all ages, resplendent with the pure whiteness of their
linen garments. The women had their anointed hair
enveloped in a transparent covering, but the men had
shaven and shining pates; earthly stars were these of
extreme sanctity, who kept up a shrill and incessant
tinkling upon brazen, silver, and even gold, sistra. But
the chief ministers of the Sacred Rites, clothed in
garments of white linen, drawn close over the breast,
and hanging down to their feet, earned the insignia of
the Mighty Gods exposed full to view. The first held
aloft a brilliant lamp, not by any means resembling those
lamps of ours which illumine banquets at night, but it
was of gold, of a boat-like form, and emitted a flame of
considerable magnitude from, an aperture in the middle.
The second was arrayed in a similar manner, but carried
in both his hands models of altars, to which the auxiliary
providence of the Supreme Goddess gave the appropriate
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name of “auxilia.” The third bore a palm tree, the leaves

of which were beautifully wrought in gold, as also the
caduceus of Mercury. The fourth displayed the symbol
of equity, a left hand fashioned with the palm expanded,
which seems to be more adapted to administering equity
than the right, from its natural inertness, and its being
endowed with no craft and no subtleness. The same
person carried also a golden vessel, which was rounded in
the shape of the female breast, and from which he poured
forth milk on the ground. The fifth bore a golden corn
fan, made with thick-set branches of gold, while another
carried an amphora. In the next place appeared the Gods
that deigned to walk with the feet of men [Messengers].
Here, dreadful to view, was the Messenger of the Gods
above, and of those of the realms beneath, standing erect,
with a face partly black and partly of golden hue [to
indicate the celestial and terrestrial] bearing in his left
hand a caduceus, and shaking in his right a green branch
of palm, close upon whose footsteps followed a Cow in an
erect position, this Cow being the prolific resemblance of
the Allparent Goddess, and seated on the shoulders of one
of the blessed devotees of this divinity, who acted gesticu-
latingly as he walked. Another carried a Chest containing
the utensils of this stupendous mystery. Another bore
in his beatified bosom a venerable effigy of a supreme
divinity [the Cherubim], bearing no resemblance to any
bird or beast, wild or tame, or even to man, but worthy
of all veneration for the exquisite art with which it was
wrought, as also for its very originality, and an ineffable
symbol of a sublime religion, the mysteries of which were
ever to be kept in deep silence. It was of burnished gold,
after the following fashion: there was a small urn hollowed
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out in a most artistic manner, with a bottom quite round,

and which outside was covered with the wonderful
hieroglyphics of the Egyptians. The spout of this urn
was very long, not much elevated; a handle was attached
to the other side, and projected from the urn with a
wide sweep. On this lay an Asp, uplifting its scaly,
wrinkled, and swollen throat, and embraced it with its
winding folds. At last the moment was at hand when I
was to experience the blessing promised me by the most
potent Goddess; and the priest, attired just as She had
described, approached with the means of my deliverance.
In his right hand he carried the sistrum of the Goddess
and a crown of roses, and by Hercules a crown it was for
me, since by the providence of the mighty Divinity, after
having endured so many hardships and escaped so many
dangers, I should now achieve a victory over my cruel
enemy fortune. Still, however, though agitated by a
sudden burst of joy, I did not rush forward at once, lest
the tranquil order of the Sacred Procession should be
disturbed by the impetuosity of a quadruped; but passed
through the crowd with a quiet and altogether human
step and a sidelong movement of my body, and as the
people gave way through the interference, no doubt, of
the Goddess, I gradually crept nearer and nearer. But
the priest, as I could plainly perceive, recollecting the
nocturnal oracles, and struck with wonder at the coinci-
dence with the duty he had to perform, instantly stood
still, and extending his right hand with his own accord,
presented the chaplet to my very mouth. Trembling, and
with a great beating of my heart, I seized the bright rosy
chaplet, and greedily, most greedily devoured it. Nor did
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the celestial promise deceive me, for immediately my un-

sightly and brutal figure left me. . . .
24. I continued to apply myself wholly to attendance
on the worship of the Goddess, perceiving that the hopes
which I had conceived of future good, were now confirmed
by present benefits. And besides my desire of receiving
Initiation in the sacred duties increased more and more.
Accordingly I now frequently went to the Chief Priest,
and most earnestly entreated him to initiate me into the
Mysteries of the Holy Night: but he, who was a man of a
grave disposition, and remarkable for his strict observance
of that abstemious religion, checked my urgent importu-
nity in a mild and gentle manner, and in the way in
which parents are in the habit of moderating the
inconsiderate requests of their children, while at the same
time he soothed me with hopes for the better. For he
said that the day on which each aspirant might be
initiated was indicated by tokens from the Goddess, and
that by her providence the priest was selected who was
to perform the Sacred Rites, and that in like manner by
her mandate the expense necessary for the ceremonial
was ordained. All these circumstances he was of opinion
ought to be awaited with obsequious patience, since we
ought, on every consideration, to avoid precipitation and
contumacy, and neither be dilatory when called, nor
precipitate when not called. Nor, indeed, was there a
single one of their number who was so lost to a sense of
propriety, or rather so bent on his own destruction, as to dare
rashly and sacrilegiously to undertake the ministry of the
Goddess, and so bring upon himself a deadly mischance,
unless She especially ordered him to do so; for the Gates
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of the Realms beneath, and the Guardianship of Life are

placed in the hands of the Goddess [See A ,
section 2], and the Initiation into her Mysteries is
celebrated as bearing a close resemblance to a voluntary
death, with a precarious chance of recovery. Wherefore
the divine will of the Goddess has been accustomed to
choose for this purpose men, who having arrived at a
great age are now standing at the very utmost limit of
life, to whom, however, the Mighty Secrets of her Religion
may be safely entrusted, and whom through her providence,
being after a manner born again, she restores to the
career of a new existence. Therefore it was requisite
that I should await the celestial mandate, although by the
clear and manifest favour of the Great Deity I had already
been marked and destined for her blessed ministry; and I
ought thenceforth to abstain from profane and forbidden food
in common with the other devotees, in order that I might
with the most scrupulous strictness proceed on my course
to the Secret Mysteries of the most pure religion. . . .
I had now determined to request more earnestly than
ever Initiation into the Sacred Rites, as being a thing
that was due to me. He, however, the instant that he
saw me, was the first to speak. O my Lucius, how happy
and blessed are you, whom the august Divinity has thus
greatly honoured by her propitious will; and why, said
he, do you now stand idle, or make any delay? The day
you so earnestly prayed for has at length arrived in which
you will be Initiated into the most Holy Mysteries by
these hands of mine, in obedience to the divine mandates
of the many-titled Goddess. And the old man, taking
me by the right hand, led me immediately to the doors of
the vast Temple; and, having performed the office of
P2
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opening them in the accustomed solemn way, and cele-

brated the morning sacrifice, he drew forth from the secret
recesses of the shrine certain Books, written in unknown
characters, partly representing in compendious form the
words expressive of their meaning by figures of animals
of every kind, and partly fortified against the inquisitive
perusal of the profane by characters wreathed like knots,
and twisting round in shape of a wheel, and with
extremities twining one with another like the tendrils of a
vine. From these books he informed me what was neces-
sary to be provided by me for the purpose of Initiation.
Immediately therefore I diligently set about purchasing
and procuring requisites, and even on a more liberal scale
than I was ordered to do; partly at my own expense,
and partly through my friends. And when now the time
as the priest said required it, he led me to the nearest bath,
accompanied by a crowd of devotees; and, after I had taken
the customary bath, he himself washed and sprinkled me
with the purest water, having first implored the pardon
of the Gods; then again he brought me back to the
Temple, and there placed me at the very feet of the
Goddess; two-thirds of the day having now elapsed, and
giving certain secret instructions which are too holy to be
uttered, he distinctly ordered before all who were present,
that I should abstain from luxurious food for the ten
succeeding days, that I should eat the flesh of no
animals, and that I should abstain from wine. These
ten days having been duly passed by me in reve-
rential abstinence, the day had now arrived for pledging
myself to the Sacred Ministry, and the sun descending
was ushering in the evening. Then behold, there was
a concourse of the people flocking from every side;
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every one honouring me with various gifts according to

the ancient custom of these Sacred Rites. After this
the priest, all the profane being removed to a distance,
taking hold of me by the hand, brought me into the inner
recesses of the Sanctuary itself, clothed in a new linen
garment. Perhaps, curious reader, you may be eager to
know what was then said and done? I would tell you
were it lawful to tell you; you should know it were it
lawful for you to hear; but both the ears that heard
these things, and the tongue that told them, would reap
the evil results of their rashness. Still, however, kept
in suspense, as you probably are with religious longing, I
will not torment you with long protracted anxiety. Hear,
therefore, but believe what is the truth. I approached
the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold
of Proserpine, I returned therefrom, being borne through
all the elements. [Fire, Air, and Water]. At midnight
I saw the Sun shining with its brilliant light, and I
approached the presence of the Gods beneath and the
Gods of heaven, and stood near and worshipped them.
Behold I have related to you things of which, though
heard of by you, you must necessarily remain ignorant.
I will therefore only relate that which may be enunciated
to the understanding of the uninitiated without a crime.
The morning came, and the solemnities being performed,
I came forth consecrated by being dressed in twelve stoles,
an habiliment no doubt of most religious character, but
of which I am not forbidden by any obligation to speak,
because it was seen by many who were present on the
occasion. For, by order of the priest, I ascended a wooden
pulpit, which was in the very middle of the sacred
dwelling, and placed before the Image of the Goddess full
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in view in a garment which was of linen, but elegantly

coloured. A precious scarf also descended from my
shoulders behind my back down to my ankles, and to
whatever part of me you directed your view, you would
have seen something to arrest your attention in the
animals which were painted round my vestments;
in various colours. Here were Indian serpents; there
Hyperborean griffins which the other hemisphere gene-
rates in the form of a bird wearing wings. The persons
devoted to the service of the Divinity, called this the
Olympic stole [a wedding garment]. Then in my right
hand I carried a burning torch, while a graceful chaplet
encircled my head, the shining leaves of the palm tree
projecting from it. Thus arrayed like the Sun, and placed
so as to resemble a statue, on a sudden, the curtains
being drawn aside, I was exposed to the gaze of the
multitude. After this I celebrated the most joyful day
of my Initiation as my natal day, and there was a
joyous banquet and mirthful conversation. The third
day also was celebrated with the like rites and ceremonies,
and was accompanied by a religious breakfast, and the
due termination of the ceremonial. After this, having
stayed for some days in that place, I enjoyed the
inexplicable pleasure of viewing the Holy Image, being
indebted to it for a benefit which can never be suffi-
ciently rewarded. At length, however, through the
admonition of the Goddess, having suppliantly given her
thanks, not such as she deserved, but still to the best of my
ability, I prepared myself, though very slowly, to return
home. With difficulty did I rend asunder the ties of
my most ardent affection. At last I prostrated myself
in the presence of the Goddess, and having for a long
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time watered her feet, with tears interrupting my words

with frequent sobs, and as it were half swallowing my
voice, I thus addressed her : Thou, O Holy and perpetual
Preserver of the human race, always munificent in
cherishing mortals, dost bestow the sweet affections of a
Mother on the misfortunes of the wretched. Nor is there
any day or night, or so much as the minutest particle of
time which passes unattended by thy bounties. Thou
dost protect men both by sea and land, and dispersing the
storms of life, dost extend thy health-giving right hand
by which thou dost unravel the inextricably entangled
threads of the fates, and assuage the tempests of fortune,
and restrain the malignant influences of the stars. The
gods of heaven adore thee; those in the shades below do
homage unto thee; thou dost roll the sphere of the
universe round the steady poles; thou dost illuminate the
sun; thou dost govern the universe, thou dost tread the
realms of Tartarus. The stars move responsive to thy
command; the gods rejoice in thy divinity; the seasons
return by thy appointment, and the elements are thy
servants. At thy word the breezes blow; the clouds are
nurtured, the seeds germinate, and the blossoms increase.
The birds as they hover through the air, the wild beasts
as they roam on the mountains, the serpents that hide in
the earth, and the monsters that swim in the sea, are
terrified at the majesty of thy presence. But I, so weak
in capacity for celebrating thy praises, and possessing such
slender means for offering sacrifices, have far from
eloquence sufficient to express all that I conceive of
thy majesty; not a thousand mouths and tongues as
many, not an eternal flow of unwearied speech, would
be equal to the task. I will therefore use my utmost
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endeavours to do what, poor as I am, still one truly

religious may do. I will figure to myself thy divine
countenance, and will ever preserve this Most Holy
Divinity locked up in the secret recesses of my heart. After
this manner having offered up my prayer to the Supreme
Goddess, I embraced the priest Mithras, who was now
my parent, and hanging on his neck, and giving him
many kisses, I begged him to forgive me, that I could not
remunerate him in a manner adequate to such mighty
benefits. And in these words, which give rather a
glimpse than a view, ends all that we are permitted to
know of the Ancient Eleusinian Mysteries as practised in
Greece.
25. There is, however, a very elaborate and learned
work, called the History of Initiation, written by a
clergyman of the Protestant church, from which a good
deal of light is thrown upon this subject. This gentleman
is the Rev. Dr. Oliver. All he says may not be strictly
correct, but I am satisfied that truth is at the basis of
what he has written on the subject; and the Hindu
Eleusinia are almost opened to our view in the following
passage:—The periods of Initiation, he says, were regulated
by the encrease and decrease of the moon, and the
Mysteries were divided into four steps or degrees called
Char Asherum, which were equally the dispensers of
perfection in greater or less degree. The candidate might
perform his first probation at the early age of eight years.
It consisted of an investiture with the Zennar, or sacred
cord of three threads, which was explained to refer to the
three elements, Earth, Fire, and Air, for Water according
to the Brahmins, is only air in a condensed form. This
investiture was attended with numerous ceremonies;
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with sacrifices to the solar fire, to the planets, &c., &c.

He was then clothed in a linen garment without seam
[such as the epopt Jesus wore], and he was placed under
the exclusive care of a Brahmin, who was thence termed
his spiritual guide, to be instructed in the necessary
qualifications of the Second Degree. He was inured to
hardships, suffered the infliction of rigid penances until
he attained the age of twenty years; was restricted from
all indulgences, whether carnal or intellectual, and passed
the whole of his time in prayer and ablution. He was
taught to preserve the purity of body, which was figura-
tively termed the city with nine gates or openings [I have
heard this phrase used in the same acceptation by some
of the lowest classes in the midland counties] in which
the soul is imprisoned, by avoiding external defilements,
&c. Much of his time was devoted to the study of the
Sacred Books: for a competent knowledge of the institutions,
ceremonies, and traditions of religion were an essential
qualification for another Degree. When he had attained
the specified age, if he were found on examination to
have made due progress in the mythological lore of the
First Degree, he was admitted to enter on the probationary
ceremonies for the Second which was called Gerishth.
Here his austerities were doubled: he was obliged to
support life by soliciting charity: his days were passed in
prayer, ablutions, and sacrifice, and his nights in the
study of astronomy, and when exhausted nature demanded
repose, he stretched his body under the first tree, snatched
a short sleep, and rose speedily to contemplate the skies.
In the hot season he sat exposed to five fires, four blazing
around him with the sun above; in the rains he stood
uncovered, without even a mantle, when the clouds poured
P 3
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down the heaviest showers; in the cold season he wore

wet clothing, and went on increasing by degrees the
austerity of his devotion. [In this we see an image of
the sublime asceticism which Jesus preached, having
himself experienced all these trying ordeals.] His
probation being at length completed, he was admitted by
initiation to participate in the privileges which the
Mysteries were believed to confer. Sanctified by the sign
of a cross T, which was marked on every part of his body,
he was subjected to the probation of pastos, which
was denominated the door of Patala or Hell. His
purification being completed, he was led at the dead of
night to the gloomy Cave of Mystery, which had been
duly prepared for his reception. The interior of this
holy cavern blazed with a light equal to that of the
meridian sun, proceeding from myriads of brilliant lamps.
There sat in rich and costly robes the three Chief
Hierophants in the East, West, and South. The attendant
Mystagogues clad in sacred vestments, having their heads
covered each with a pyramidal cap, emblematical of the
spiral flame or the solar ray, were seated respectfully
around. Thus disposed in solemn guise, the well-known
signal from the sacred Bell summoned the aspirant into
the centre of this august assembly, and the initiation
commenced with an anthem to the Great God of Nature.
The sacred business was then solemnly opened. O
mighty Being, greater than Brahma [the Holy Spirit],
we bow down before Thee as the prime Creator. Eternal
God of gods: the world’s mansion. Thou art the
incorruptible Being, distinct from all things transient:
Thou art before all goods, the Ancient, and the supreme
Supporter of the Universe. Thou art the Supreme
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Mansion. And by Thee, O Infinite Form, the Universe

was spread abroad.
26. The aspirant, already weakened by abstinence and
mortification, was overawed by the display now exhibited
before him; but, resuming his courage during the
apostrophe, he prepared himself for the active business of
Initiation, in some doubts as to what results this unex-
pected scene would lead. His reflections were interrupted
by a Voice which called on him to make a formal
declaration that he will be tractable and obedient to his
superiors; that he will keep his body pure, have a tongue
of good report, observe a passive obedience in receiving
the doctrines and traditions of the Order, and the firmest
secrecy in maintaining inviolable its hidden and abstruse
mysteries. This declaration, which reminds one of much
that is in the Sermon on the Mount, having been assented
to, he was sprinkled with water; a mantra or invocation
was pronounced over him, or more frequently whispered
in his right ear: he was divested of his shoes (4) that the
consecrated ground on which he stood might not be
polluted, and was made to circumambulate the spacious
Cavern three times. While performing this ceremony,
he was taught to exclaim on his arrival each time in the
south, I copy the example of the Sun [Messiah], and follow
his benevolent course. This being completed, he was again
placed in the centre, and solemnly enjoined to the practise
of religious austerities as the efficient means of preparing
his soul for ultimate absorption, and was told that the
merit of such works will emit a splendour which renders
man superior to the gods. After this admonition the
aspirant was placed under the care of his gooroo or
spiritual guide, and directed to observe a profound silence
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during the whole of the succeeding ceremonies, &c. The

bewailings for the loss of Sita [the lapse of the soul, the
Atis of Cybele, from Heaven] then began. The aspirant
was passed through seven ranges of dark and gloomy
caverns [to illustrate the seven stages of the Soul’s descent].
A sudden explosion was heard, which seemed to rend the
mountains, whose gloomy recesses they were now exploring,
and this was instantaneously followed by a dead silence.
Flashes of brilliant light streamed before their eyes,
which were succeeded by the blackest darkness. The
candidate now beheld shadows and phantoms of various
and compound shapes surrounded with rays of light
flitting across the gloom; some with many hands, arms,
and legs: others without any of those appendages: here
a shapeless trunk, there a human body with the head of
bird, beast, or fish; now a human trunk with bestial
extremities, succeeded by the body of an animal with the
head of a man. These were the Initiated, disguised for
the purpose, and passing in processional review before
him: [the various images symbolised the metasomatosis and
metempsychosis; also the chaotic condition of things in
that sphere wherein the Soul or Spirit wanders until it is
united with its medium]. (5) . . . . .
27. Having reached the extremity of the Seven
Mystic Caverns, a cheerful peal of bells was heard
to ring. . . . These Seven Caverns alluded to the
seven places of rewards and punishments which different
nations have received into their creed, and on which
the reverend author remarks: It may be asserted without
profanation that the Christian system gives a sanction to
the same hypothesis. If an inspired apostle speaks of a
third heaven (2 Cor. xii. 2); of the righteous differing
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from each other in glory, as one star differs from another

(1 Cor. xv. 41); if the plural number be commonly used
by Christ and his apostles when speaking of the place of
supreme bliss (M i. 10. Acts vii. 50. Eph. iv. 10.
Heb. i. 10. 2 Pet. iii. 5, &c.), and if the Saviour himself
should acknowledge that heaven contains many mansions
(J xiv. 2), then we may also conclude that as there
are many heavens, so there are also degrees of reward
proportioned to the measure of man’s faith and obedience.
And may we not also, I would ask this reverend
gentleman with equal reason, conclude that this
remarkable feature of Hindu theology was taken by the
mystic Jesus from the Mysteries in which he had been
initiated? Let me continue, however, upon the subject
of Initiation. Before the candidate was enlightened and
introduced into the presence of the Holy Altar [see
A , sections 20, 48], he was again admonished.
Suddenly the pealing Conch was blown [section 34], the
folding doors were instantly thrown open, and the candidate
was introduced into Cailasa or Paradise, which was a
spacious apartment blazing with a thousand brilliant
lights; ornamented with statues and emblematical figures,
scented with the rich fragrance of odorous flowers,
aromatic gums and costly drugs, decorated profusely with
gems and jewels: the unsubstantial figures of the airy
inhabitants of unknown worlds carved on the roof, in the
act of volitation, and the splendid sacellum thronged
with priests and hierophants, arrayed in gorgeous vest-
ments, and crowned with mitres and tiaras of burnished
gold. With eyes rivetted on the altar, he was taught to
expect the descent of the Deity in the bright pyramidal
fire that blazed upon it. The sudden sound of the shell
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or trumpet [section 49] to which the hollow caverns

reverberated in long and continued echoes; the expansion
of the folding doors, the brilliant display so unexpectedly
exhibited before him, the instantaneous prostration of the
priests and the profound silence [see A , section
57], which followed this ceremony, filled the mind of the
aspirant with admiration, and lighted up the holy fervour
in his heart, so that in the moment of enthusiasm he
could almost persuade himself that he actually beheld the
descent of the great Brahm seated on the Lotos [God and the
Spirit], bearing in his hands the emblems of eternity and
uncontrollable power, the Circle and Fire.
28. And now being fully regenerate, a new name [see
A , section 64] was given him expressive of his
recently attained purity, and he was introduced to the
Chief Brahmin in the midst of the august assembly, who
received him as a brother and associate, invested with a
white glittering robe and tiara [see A , sections
29, 52, 64]; seated him on an elevated situation [see
A , sections 46, 52, 64], and solemnly delivered
the signs, tokens, and lectures of the Order. His forehead
was marked with a cross T ; the same sign inverted as a
level was placed on his breast: he was invested with
T
the sacred sash or belt [A , sections 2, 36], the
consecrated chaplet, the Kowsteeke-Men or Kowstoobh,
and the talismanic label for the left arm. A magical
black [white] stone was delivered to him [see A ,
sections 29, 64], and being now fully invested, the candi-
date was entrusted with the sublime ineffable N
G , which was known only to the Initiated. [See
A , sections 29, 64.] This word was Om, or as
it was expressed in a triliteral form in the Mysteries
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Aum [AO], whose pronunciation was said to make

the earth tremble, and even the angels of heaven to
quake for fear. He was then directed to meditate upon it
with the following associations, which are the mysterious
names of Seven Worlds. O ! Earth, Sky, Heaven,
middle region, place of births, mansion of the blessed,
abode of truth; after which he learned the arcana of
all the surrounding symbols. History of Initiation, pp.
45—68. This wondrous word Om is termed by Dara
Shekoh, in allusion to the Apocalyptic Book of Seals,
the seal by which secrets or mysteries are revealed:
it is the same symbolic name, which occurs so remarka-
bly in the Apocalypse, section 64, as I have already
pointed out. It forms part of Om-nIs (the All, or God
and Issa), and is the radical of Om-en, and Nom-en: both
which words covertly allude to it.
29. Those ceremonies were carried out in caverns of
immense magnitude (6), and of many labyrinthine
windings, which still exist, and puzzle such adventurers
as are bold enough to explore them. They are to be
found in all parts of the earth, from Mexico to Greece;
from Hindostan to Ireland, and they have all such
remarkable features in common as to leave no room to
doubt their complete identity. In many instances they
conduct after elaborate windings to some beautiful lake, or
into some open plain radiant with serenity, which typified
to the initiated aspirant the final haven of the spirit
when its wanderings were over.
30. The places of initiation, says the Rev. Dr. Oliver,
were contrived with much art and ingenuity, and the
machinery with which they were fitted up, was calculated
to excite every passion and affection of the mind. Thus
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the hierophant could rouse the feelings of horror and

alarm; light up the fire of devotion, or excite terror
and dismay; and, when the soul had attained its highest
climax of apprehension, he was furnished with the
means of soothing it to peace by phantasmagoric visions
of flowery meads, purling streams, and all the tranquil
scenery of nature in its most engaging form, accompa-
nied with strains of heavenly music, the figurative harmony
of the spheres. These places were indifferently a pyramid,
or pagoda, or a labyrinth, furnished with vaulted rooms,
extensive wings connected by open and spacious galleries,
multitudes of secret caverns, subterraneous passages, and
vistas terminating in adyta, which were adorned with
mysterious symbols carved on the walls and pillars, in
every one of which was enfolded some philosophical or
moral truth. Sometimes the place of initiation was
constructed in a small island in the centre of a lake,
or hollow cavern natural or artificial, with sounding
domes, tortuous passages, narrow orifices, and spacious
chapels, and of such magnitude as to contain a numerous
assembly of persons. In all practicable instances they
were constructed within the recesses of a consecrated
grove, which, in the torrid regions of the east, conveyed
the united advantages of secrecy and shade. History of
Initiation, p. 31.
31. Throughout the whole of this famous Island of
Phyle on the Nile, says Maurice, where anciently the
solemn and mysterious rites of Isis were celebrated with
such distinguished pomp and splendour, there appeared
to Mr. Norden to run subterranean passages. He attempted
to descend several of the steps that led down to them,
but was prevented by the filth and rubbish with which
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they were filled from penetrating to any depth. It was

in these gloomy caverns that the grand and mystic arcana
of this Goddess were unfolded to the adoring aspirant,
while the solemn hymns of initiation resounded through
the long extent of those stony recesses. It was there that
religion at midnight waved high her naming torch before
the image of Isis borne in procession, and there that her
chosen priests in holy ecstacy chaunted their sweetest
symponies. Ind. Ant. iii. 536.
32. One of the Hebrew writers has left us a song or psalm,
which commemorates his condition while yet one of the
profane, and contains a clear though veiled allusion to
some of the magnificent visions shewn in the Mysteries
when the Lord himself, or his Messenger, the Cabir was
seen to descend in fire and splendour. In its literal form
no one could accept it. Not even a Jew, I think, would
have ventured to say that the great Almighty did all the
things detailed in the song, for the purpose of rescuing
him; but as the description of a mimic representation it
may be accepted without any scruple. The last verse
agrees with all we know of the final scene, when the
fully Initiated member, crowned and joyous, was led by
the Hierophant into the happy open place which sym-
bolized Elyseum, Paradise, or the Golden Seats. The
Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my
God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and
the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call
upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be
saved from mine enemies. The sorrows of death compassed
me, and the floods of Belial made me afraid. The sorrows
of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented
me. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto
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my God: he heard my voice out of his Temple, and my cry

came before him, even into his ears. Then the earth
shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills
moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. There
went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of
his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it. He bowed
the heavens also, and came down and darkness was
under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did
fly: yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made
darkness his secret place; his pavilion round about him
were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies. At the
brightness that was before him his thick clouds passed, hail
stones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the
heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones
and coals of fire. Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scat-
tered them; and he shot out lightnings, and discomfited
them. Then the channels of water were seen, and the
foundations of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, O
Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. He sent
from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them
which hated me: for they were too strong for me. They
prevented me in the day of my calamity: but the Lord
was my stay. He brought me forth also into a large
place; he delivered me, because he delighted in me. Ps.
xviii.
33. The great secret here developed was almost guessed
at by Faber, only that, instead of making the Apocalypse
the source of the Mysteries, as it unquestionably was, he
commits the absurd mistake of supposing that the Myste-
ries are described in the Apocalypse, thus making the
child to be the parent itself. And if we reject this theory,
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so worthy of a clergyman, we shall find that his remarks

greatly strengthen the arguments which have been
advanced in this Book. We find the pure Church, he
says, described as a Woman clothed with the Sun, and
standing upon the crescent of the Moon; while a corrupted
Church is exhibited to us both under the image of a female
floating on the surface of many waters, and under that of
a Harlot using a monstrous beast as her vehicle. The
former of those women, when about to bring forth her
first-born, is attacked by a monstrous serpent, which
spouts out against her and her offspring a deluge of
water, but the earth opens its mouth and receives the
mighty inundation into the centrical abyss. The latter
of them, under the mystic name of the False Prophet,
together with her bestial supporter, is said to be at length
plunged alive into an infernal lake burning with fire and
brimstone. It is impossible not to perceive that the Woman
standing upon the Crescent is the very figure of the Samian
Juno or of the Egyptian Isis, who were represented in a
precisely similar manner with reference to the lunar boat:
that the attack upon the Woman and her offspring by
the deluging Serpent, which is frustrated by the earth’s
absorption of the waters, is perfectly analogous to the
attack of the diluvian serpent Python, or Typhon, upon
Latona and Horus, which is similarly frustrated by the
destruction of that monster: and that the false Church
bearing the name of Mystery, floating on the mighty
waters, or riding on a terrific beast, exhibits the very same
aspect as the great mother of Paganism. John himself is
made to personate an aspirant about to be initiated, and
accordingly the images presented to his mind’s eye clearly
resemble the pageants of the Mysteries, both in nature
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and in order of succession. The Prophet first beholds a

door opened in the magnificent Temple of Heaven; and
into this he is invited to enter by the voice of one who
plays the Hierophant. Here he witnesses the unsealing
of a Sacred Book, and forthwith he is appalled by a troop
of ghastly apparitions which flit in hurried succession
before his eyes. Such hideous figures correspond with
the canine phantoms of the Orgies, which seemed to rise
out of the ground. Passing these terrific monsters in
safety, the Prophet, constantly attended by his Angel
Hierophant, who acts the part of an interpreter, is con-
ducted into the presence of a Female. . . . At length the
first or doleful part of these sacred Mysteries draws to a
close, and the last or joyful part is rapidly approaching.
After the Prophet has beheld the enemies of God plunged
into a dreadful lake or inundation of liquid fire, he is
introduced into a splendidly illuminated region expressly
adorned with the characteristics of that Paradise which
was the ultimate scope of the ancient aspirants. Pag.
Idol. iii. 640. The comparison, he adds, might have been
drawn out to a greater length, but these hints may suffice.
And certainly they cannot but suffice to show that Faber
adopted the exact converse of the actual truth. What
evidence is there that John was an initiated mystic?
What priest or divine, or ecclesiastical writer, ever pre-
tended it? Had he been so, he must have risked his life
by the publication of the secrets of the Mysteries. Would
he have identified himself so as to leave no doubt on the
minds of his enemies that it was he, by declaring his very
name to all men, and thus invite the death he merited?
Yet we hear of no attack ever having been made on him
by those whose oaths he had outraged. Granted for the
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sake of argument that he did divulge secrets which he

was bound by the most awful and solemn imprecations
never to betray, in what traitorous, horrid, and detestable
light does this represent the beloved disciple! How base
and villainous must he not have appeared even to his own
followers! How purposeless the crime which he had so
committed! And if he did so, what warranty have we
of the truth in anything detailed by so unblushing and
flagrant a perjurer? For the sake of John himself, if he
ever existed, we must reject this fearful theory: we shall
be safe in doing so, for not one of the Fathers who ever
wrote upon the subject of the Mysteries, ever dreamed
that the Apocalypse was a revelation of their mystic
secret lore. The voice of all antiquity and all probability
is against the hypothesis of Faber. But if this be so, and
that the hypothesis fails, the converse of it stands erect:
and if we examine the almost innumerable instances in
which old mythology corresponds with the Apocalypse,
we shall be driven to the conclusion that it, and it alone,
was the source and root of old mythology itself; and that
the Mysteries had their basis on the developments con-
tained in, what I believe I have proved, to be, the most
ancient and the most majestic work that ever was
conceived by the mind of man.
34. And now the aspirant, having learned the whole
volume of the hallowed secrets; the Sublime Unity; the
Heavenly Duality; the Messianic Angel to the lapsed
essences; the symbolic representations under which the
Twelve were imaged; the fall of the individual soul from
regions of blessedness where the splendour of the sun
shone upon it with an increasing brightness; its wander-
ings through thick gloom which are the necessity and the
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punishment of the fallen; how it crept through chinks and

chasms of palpable darkness and difficulty, until it finally
emerged, as it were, by a new birth into another region
of light and loveliness; and so lived amid the countless
revolutions and cycles of the whole cosmical constellation
of worlds; thus instructed, he was no more a postulant,
but, fully Initiated, he became entitled to the mitre and
enthronization which typified his entrance into the Celes-
tial Paradise.
35. The following, which is from the old Welsh, is a
summary of the Boodh-Cymric tenets, many of which
were inculcated in the Lesser and even Greater Mysteries.
Their general tendency, it will be seen, harmonizes in a
great measure with many of the most recondite mystical
doctrines of the ancient Oriental theosophy; and although
there be a tinge of error in some, still I commend them
to the careful meditation of the reader.
1. All animated beings originate in Annwn (the highest
and lowest point of life), whence, by a regular gradation,
they rise higher and higher, or sink lower and lower
in the scale of existence, till they arrive at the highest
state of happiness and perfection that is possible for finite
beings, or reduce themselves to the merest point that can
exist.
2. All the states of animation below that of humanity
are necessarily evil; and where evil unavoidably prepon-
derates, no being can, consistent with Justice, be deemed
culpable, nor are they objects of punishment—here Fate
reigns.
3. Beings, as their souls by passing from ferocious to
more gentle and harmless animals, approach the state of
humanity, become ameliorated in their dispositions, less
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influenced by Evil, and attain to some degree of negative

goodness.
4. Every being is destined to fill a place in the creation,
and is endued with those sensibilities, benign propensities,
and mental capacities that are requisite to render him
happy in that station, which he never can be in any other,
lastingly; and to this the Creator will finally bring him
if he be worthy.
5. Beings, having been led up through such a succession
of animal existences as are necessary towards unfolding
their destined character, and preparing them for their
ultimate office in the creation, arrive at the state of
humanity, where Good and Evil are so equally balanced,
that liberty takes place, the will becomes free; whence
Man becomes accountable for his actions, having a power
of attaching himself either to the Good or the Evil as he
may, or may not subject his propensities to the control
of reason and unsophisticated nature, these being the fixed
laws of the Creator.
6. Man, being possessed of liberty, has the power of
co-acting with the Deity, and of attaching himself to
Good, and, by persevering in this course till death, arises
to such a state above humanity as corresponds with his
accessions of goodness, and with that degree in which they
preponderate over Evil.
7. In all the states of existence above humanity, Good
preponderates, and therein all beings are necessarily good;
hence they can hardly ever fall, but are still advancing
higher and higher in the scale of happiness and perfection,
till they arrive at their final destination, where every
being, in his allotted place, will be completely happy to all
Eternity. And being convinced that he could not be equally
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happy in any other station, he will never have any desire

to quit that wherein he is.
8. Man, attaching himself to Evil, falls in death into
such an animal state of existence as corresponds with the
turpitude of his soul, which may be so great as to cast
him down again into the lowest point of existence, whence
he shall again return through such a succession of animal
existences as are most proper to divest him of his evil
propensities. After traversing such a course (treiglo’r
Abred), he will again rise to the state of humanity whence,
according to contingencies, he may rise or fall; yet, should
he fall, he shall again rise; and should this happen for
millions of ages, the path of happiness is still open to
him, and will so remain to all Eternity; for, sooner or
later, he will infallibly arrive at his destined station of
happiness, whence he never falls. Everlasting misery is
a thing impossible: it cannot possibly consist with the
attributes of God, who is never actuated by malevolent
resentment: that proceeds from a display of power which
originates in pride. God is Love in the most positive and
unlimited degree: he resists Evil for the sake of annihi-
lating it, and not for the mere malevolent purpose of
punishing.
9. Finite beings can never comprehend Infinity: they
cannot conceive anything of God but as something external
to themselves, individually different, and consequently
finite. The Deity for this reason, though in himself
Infinite, manifests himself occasionally to finite compre-
hensions as a finite Being.
10. The ultimate states of Happiness are everlastingly
undergoing the most delightful renovations in endless
succession, without which no finite being could ever,
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consistently with happiness, endure the tedium of an

ever-continuing state. These renovations will not, like
the deaths of the lower states of existence, occasion a
suspension of memory and consciousness of self-identity.
11. Memory, and the consciousness of having trans-
gressed the Laws of God, are suffered to remain some-
times in the lower states of existence after death, as a
temporary punishment, and for implanting in them an
aversion to Evil.
12. Man, on arriving at a state above humanity,
recovers the perfect recollection of all his former modes
of existence, and to everlasting time retains it. It is
this, and this only, that constitutes a Being’s conscious-
ness of having been, and of still being, ever since its first
creation, through all states of animated existence, identi-
cally one and the same: he could not otherwise say to
himself, I was the animal, I was the man, or any other
being that at such a period passed, lived, acted, felt, and
experienced in such a manner: without this perpetuation
of conscious memory, death would be absolute annihila-
tion, and not a change in the mode of existence: without
this a being in any superior state would be a new creature,
and not a continuation of a former.
13. No knowledge can be acquired but by experience.
To obtain all possible knowledge it is necessary to pass
through all possible modes of existence, and to experience
all that is peculiarly known to every one of these, each
of them affording such a supply of knowledge as no other
possibly can. Man in the state of happiness recovers the
memory of all that he observed and experienced in every
mode of existence through which he has passed.
14. All the knowledge that in the state of humanity
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we now have of supernal existence has been communicated

by Celestial Messengers, who, of their own benevolence,
subjected to that of the Deity, return for a while to this
world to inform man of what it is necessary for him to
know of his duty, and of what constitutes happiness in
this and in future states, and what, by perseverance in
virtue, he may hope for, and be assured of. Knowledge
of this kind has been thus communicated to man in all
parts of the world.
15. The propensities of animals to prey upon and
destroy each other is a regulation of Divine Benevolence
for expediting the progress of beings through their several
destined modes of existence to the states of happiness:
but all wilful destruction is an evil.
16. Man, subjecting himself to death or misery in the
cause of Truth, Justice, and Virtue, and for these fore-
going all the enjoyments of this world, and life itself,
does the most meritorious act of goodness that he possibly
can: and thus attaching himself to the highest degree of
virtue und holiness, passes by death to the highest and
ultimate state of Celestial Felicity.
17. Man, having been guilty of crimes that are punish-
able by death, must be so punished: and by giving himself
up a voluntary victim to death, being conscious of deserving
it, does all that lies in his power to compensate for his
crimes: attaches himself to the greatest degree of good
that he possibly can, by giving up all of life and its
enjoyments, by suffering voluntarily all that ought to be
inflicted on him for his transgressions: he by such a
death passes to a state of happiness.
18. The sacrifice of animals, which were always those
of the least ferocity of disposition, was a religious
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co-operation with Divine Benevolence, by raising such

an animal up to the state of humanity, and consequently
expediting his progress towards Felicity: it was not to
appease Divine wrath, a thing that cannot possibly exist;
the very idea is of all others the most blasphemous against
the true nature of the Deity (7).
19. Man must not, but from an absolute necessity to
save his own life, commit depredations on animated beings,
or kill them to gratify wanton propensities: he must never
inflict death or pain, but in cases of self-preservation, not
for sensual indulgence, or malevolent animosity. No
inferior being destroys another, but to preserve his own
life, which he cannot otherwise possibly do. Man must
govern himself by the same Law of Nature which is that
of God also.
20. Man cannot possibly commit any act that is not
more or less conducive to the general and ultimate good.
He, though it is forbidden him, by wantonly killing an
innocent creature, removes it to a higher state of existence,
and consequently benefits it; on a similar plan, God has
infallibly secured much more than an ample recompense
for all the wrongs that any one being may suffer from
another.
21. Fortitude is the greatest and first of all virtues:
without it no other virtue can be practised; what we do
from the excitements of pleasure and self-gratification, is
not, or is but a very inferior kind of virtue. We can
never unequivocally evince our love of Virtue, Justice,
Benevolence, or anything else, but by suffering willingly
for its sake. Without fortitude we shrink from all that
is good and laudable, if with it any, even the least degree
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of suffering is connected. The commission of all Vice

proceeds from the fear of practising its opposite Virtue.
22. Pride is the utmost degree of human depravity: it
supplies the motive for perpetrating every kind of wicked-
ness: it aims at superiority and power, which none but
God is of right entitled to. Man may confer conditionally
and for the general good, a well restrained and limited
power on superior merit; but none are entitled to usurp
it. Self-created superiority and power over others, is a
dethroning of the Almighty, as far as man can do it.
Pride is the destroyer (Cythraul) of the works of the
Creator; the subverter of all order, forcing itself obtru-
sively into a station that it was never designed to occupy.
All men are equal in the Creator’s paternality as his chil-
dren: and to superior worth and virtue he has secured infal-
libly the approbation of the truly Good and Wise, who will
ever voluntarily exalt it to its merited height, if not
frustrated by the proud, who always, and often with
temporary success, aim at usurping what is only due to
transcendent virtues and beneficent abilities. Pride casts
down into the lowest point of existence.
23. The soul is an inconceivably minute particle of the
most refined matter: it is necessarily endued with life, and
never dies: but at the dissolution of one body it passes
into another, higher or lower in the scale of existence,
where it expands itself into that form and corporiety
which its acquired propensities necessarily give it; or
of that animal (with whose body it becomes clothed)
wherein only such propensities can possibly reside naturally.
24. Liberty once obtained will never be lost: it consists
in a perfect knowledge of the causes of evil in every
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mode of existence, and of all the operative principles of

Nature. Permanently perfect liberty can never univer-
sally take place till all beings, and all modes of existence
are entirely divested of their evils.
25. The state of humanity being that of liberty, is the
only state of probation; it is for that reason that in the
actions done in that state only will Divine judgment be
passed.
26. The creation is still in its infancy. God will, by
the progressive operations of his Providence, bring all
beings to the point of liberty, which is the human state,
wherein only, even by God himself, Evil can be combatted
and subdued; wherein all power begins, exists, and
subsists.
27. Evil and all its causes once perfectly known, which
it cannot be till all beings shall have passed through all
possible modes of finite existence, will be for ever hated
and avoided; but being in itself possible, it will, with all
other possibilities, everlastingly exist in its abstract
principles: for all possibilities endure for ever.
28. All modes of existence, which are necessarily as
numerous as Divine Conception can make them, will for
ever remain in existence, with no other change than that
of being thoroughly divested of all their evils, and con-
tinue everlastingly as beautiful varieties in the creation,
which, without this innumerable diversity of externalities,
would not possess perfect beauty.
29. All the various modes of existence for ever exter-
nally the same, will, when internally divested of all evils,
be occupied successively by Celestials, or those who
inhabit the Circle of Felicity; these, among other changes,
will vary and delightfully relieve what would otherwise
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be insupportable in Eternity to finite beings. All these

modes of existence will, when purged of their evils, be
equally perfect, equally happy, equal in the general
estimation, and equally fathered by the Creator. Peace,
Love, and ineffable Benignity, will fill the Universe. All
mental and corporeal affections and propensities of benign
tendency will remain, and constitute the joys of the
Celestial Existences.
30. One infallible rule of Duty is, not to do or desire
anything but what can for ever be done and obtained in
the Celestial States, wherein no evil can exist. The good
and happiness of one being must not arise from the evil
or misery of another.
Theological Triads imparted in the Mysteries.
1. There are three primeval Unities; and more than

One of each cannot exist. One God, One Truth, and one
point of liberty; and this is where all opposites equipon-
derate.
2. Three things proceed from the three primeval
Unities; all of Life, all that is Good, all Power.
3. Good consists necessarily of three things: the
greatest of Life, the greatest of Knowledge, and the
greatest of Power; and of the greatest in each of these
there can be only One.
4. Three things it is impossible that God should not
be: whatever perfect Goodness should not be, whatever
perfect Goodness would desire to be, and whatever perfect
Goodness can perform.
5. Three things evince what God has done and will
do: Infinite Power, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Love. These
comprise All.
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6. The three regulations of God towards giving

existence to every thing. 1. To annihilate the power of
evil. 2. To assist all that is good. 3. To make manifest
a wise discrimination, that it might be known what
should be, what should not be.
7. Three things which it is impossible that God
should not perform: what is most beneficial, what all want
most, and what is most beautiful in all things.
8. The three stabilities of existence: what cannot
be otherwise, what need not be otherwise, and what can-
not be conceived better; and in these will all things end.
9. Three things will infallibly be done: all that is
possible for the Power, for the Wisdom, and for the Love
of God to perform.
10. The three grand attributes of God: infinite pleni-
tude of Life, of Knowledge, of Power.
11. Three causes produced animated beings: Divine
Love possessed of perfect knowledge, Divine Wisdom
knowing all possible means, and Divine Power possessed
by the joint will of Divine Love and Wisdom.
12. There are three Circles (or states) of existence:
the Circle of Infinity, where there is nothing but God,
of living or dead, and none but God can traverse it;
the Circle of Inchoation, where all things are by Nature
derived from Death (this circle has been traversed by
man): and the Circle of Felicity, where all things spring
from Life (this man shall traverse in Heaven).
13. Animated beings have three states of existence:
that of Inchoation in the Great Deep (or lowest point of
existence); that of Liberty in the state of humanity;
and that of Love, which is Felicity in Heaven.
14. All animated beings are subject to three Neces-
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sities: a beginning in the Great Deep (lowest point of

existence); Progression in the Circle of Inchoation; and
plenitude in Heaven, or the Circle of Felicity; outside
these things nothing can possibly exist but God.
15. Three things are necessary in the Circle of In-
choation: the least of all is animation, and thence the
beginning; the materials of all things, and thence the
increase, which cannot take place in any other state; the
formation of all things out of the dead mass; hence dis-
criminate individuality.
16. Three things cannot but exist towards all animated
beings from the nature of Divine Justice. Co-sufferance
in the Circle of Inchoation, because without that none
could attain to the perfect knowledge of anything; Co-
participation in the Divine Love; and Co-ultimity from
the nature of God’s power, and its attributes of justice
and mercy.
17. There are three necessary occasions of Inchoa-
tion (transmigration): to collect the materials and properties
of every nature; to collect the knowledge of every thing:
and to collect power towards subduing the adverse and deva-
stative, and for the divestation of Evil; without this
traversing every mode of animated existence, no state of
animation, or of anything in nature can attain to pleni-
tude.
18. The three great or primary infelicities of the
Circle of Inchoation; necessity, loss of memory, and
death.
19. There are three principal indispensabilities or
necessities before plenitude of knowledge can be obtained:
to traverse the Circle of Inchoation, to traverse the Circle
of Felicity, and the recovered memory of all things down
to the Great Deep.
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20. Three things are indispensably connected with

the state of Inchoation; no subjection to commanding
Laws, because it is impossible for any actions to be there
otherwise than they are; the escape through death from
all evil and devastation; and the accumulation of life
and good by becoming divested of Evil in the escape
through death; and all through Divine Love embracing
all things.
21. The three instrumentalities of God in the Circle
of Inchoation, towards subduing evil and devastation:
necessity, loss of memory, and death.
22. There are three connates : Man, Liberty, and Light.
23. The three necessary incidents of humanity: to
suffer, to change, to choose: and man, having the power
of choosing, it is impossible before their occurrence, to
see what his sufferings and changes will be.
24. The three equiportions of humanity: Inchoation
and Felicity, Necessity and Liberty, Evil and Good; all
equiponderate, man having the power of attaching himself
to either the one or the other.
25. From three causes will the necessity of re-inchoa-
tion fall on Man: from not endeavouring to obtain
knowledge, from non-attachment to Good, and from
attachment to Evil; occasioned by those things he will
fall down to his co-natural State in the Circle of Inchoa-
tion, whence, as at first, he returns to humanity.
26. For three reasons must man unavoidably fall into
the Circle of Inchoation, though he has in everything else
attached himself to Good: Pride, for which he falls down
to the utmost of the Great Deep, or lowest point of
existence; Falsehood, to a state corresponding with his
turpitude; and Cruelty, into a corresponding state of
Q 3
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brutal malignity, whence, as at first, he returns to the

state of humanity.
27. Three things are primitial in the state of humanity:
the accumulations of knowledge, Benevolence, and Power,
without undergoing Dissolution (Death). This cannot
be done, as of liberty and choice, in any state previous to
humanity; these are called the Three Victories.
28. The Three Victories over evil and devastation
are Knowledge, Benevolence, and Power, for these know
how, have the will, and the means in their conjunctive
capacities to effect all they can desire; these begin and
are for ever continued in the state of humanity.
29. The three privileges of the state of humanity:
equiponderance of Evil and Good, whence comparativity;
liberty of choice, whence judgment and preference; and the
origin of power proceeding from judgment and preference;
these being indispensably prior to all other exertions.
30. In three things man unavoidably differs from God.
Man is a finite, God is Infinite; Man had a begin-
ning, which God could not have; Man, not being able to
endure eternity, must have in the Circle of Felicity a
rotatory change of his mode of existence; God is under no
such necessity, being able to endure all things, and that
consistent with Felicity.
31. Three things are primitial in the Circle of Felicity:
cessation of Evil, cessation of want, and the cessation of
perishing.
32. The three restorations of the Circle of Felicity:
restoration of original genius and character: restoration
of all that was primevally beloved; and the restoration
of remembrance from the origin of all things; without
these perfect Felicity cannot subsist.
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33. Three things discriminate every animated being

from all others: original genius, peculiarity of remem-
brance, and peculiarity of perception; each of these in its
plenitude, and two plenitudes of anything cannot exist.
34. With three things has God endued every animated
being: with all the plenitude of his own nature, with
individuality differing from that of all others, and with
an original and peculiar character of genius which is that
of no other being: hence in every being a plenitude of
that Self, differing from all others.
35. By the knowledge of three things will all Evil
and death be diminished and subdued: their nature, their
cause, and their operations: this knowledge will be
obtained in the Circle of Felicity.
36. The three stabilities of knowledge are: to have
traversed every state of animated existence; to remember
every state and its incidents, and to be able to traverse
all states of animation that can be desired, for the sake of
experience and judgment: this will be obtained in the
Circle of Felicity.
37. The three peculiar distinctions of every being in
the Circle of Felicity are: Vocation, Privilege, and
Character (disposition). Nor is it possible for any two
beings to be uniformly the same in everything: for every
one will possess plenitude of what constitutes his
incommunicable distinction from all others, and there
can be no plenitude of any thing without having it in
a degree that comprehends the whole of it that can exist.
38. Three things none but God can do: to endure the
Eternities of the Circle of Infinity; to participate of
every state of existence without changing; and to reform
and renovate everything without causing the loss of it.
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39. Three things can never be annihilated from their

unavoidable possibilities. Mode of existence; Essentials
of existence, and the Utility of every mode of existence;
those will, divested of their evils, exist for ever, as varieties
of the Good and Beautiful in the Circle of Felicity.
40. The three excellencies of changing mode of exist-
ence in the Circle of Felicity. Acquisition of knowledge:
beautiful variety, and repose from not being able to endure
uniform Infinity and uninterrupted Everlastingness.
41. Three things increase continually: Fire or Light;
Understanding or Truth; Soul or Life; these will prevail
over everything else, and then the state of Inchoation will
cease.
42. Three things dwindle away continually; the Dark,
the False, and the Dead.
43. Three things accumulate strength continually,
there being a majority of desires towards them—Love,
Knowledge, and Justice.
44. Three things become more and more enfeebled
daily, there being a majority of desires in opposition to
them—Hatred, Injustice, and Ignorance.
45. The three plenitudes of Felicity. Participation of
every nature with a plenitude of one predominant con-
formity to every cast of genius and character; possessing
superior excellence in one: the love of all beings and exist-
ences, but chiefly concentred in one object, which is God:
and in the predominant one of each of these will the
Plenitude of Felicity consist.
46. The three necessary essentials of God: Infinite
in himself; Finite to finite comprehensiveness; and
Co-unity with every mode of existence in the Circle of
Felicity.
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NOTES TO BOOK III
Note 1 (page 261).—Eros was also mystically associated with the

Greek Iris [Rainbow], which the Egyptians called Eiras. The
Hellenes [Holy Spirit worshippers] made Eros the son of Venus,
or the Holy Spirit; and, finding that the bow was her symbol,
they gave him a material bow with a quiver and arrows. In the
Mithraic monument engraved in Bryant’s Analysis, the Rainbow
itself is seen crowning the god. But in this symbolism the boy-
figure means not only the Messenger, but God himself: in which
latter character he is called in the Argonautics (v. 223) the oldest
of beings. Hence the Rainbow is around his Throne. And in an
epitome of the Orphic doctrine contained in the Clementine
Recognitions, he is described as a masculo-feminine Divinity,
splendid and glorious. See, ante page 23. Bryant says: He was
likewise by the Egyptians reverenced as the principal God; no
other than the Chaldaic Aur, the same as Orus and Apis, whose
rites were peculiarly solemn. It was from hence that he had his
name, for Priapus of Greece is only a compound of Peor-Apis
among the Egyptians. He was sometimes styled Peor singly:
also Baal-Peor, the same with whose rites the Israelites are so
often upbraided (Numbers xxv. 3. Deut. iv. 3. Josh. xxii. 17). His
temples likewise are mentioned, which are styled Beth Peor. He was
looked on by others as the Soul of the World, the first principle
which brought all things into light and being; the Logos. The
author of the Orphic Hymns styles him the first-born of the world,
from whom all the immortals and mortals were descended.
Phurnutus supposes Priapus to have been the same as Pan, the
Shepherd God, by whose means all things were brought into light.
They are both Deities of high antiquity. In some respects he
signifies the same as AO. Note, that as in the Greek, Patri-Archa
signifies God and the Spirit [See Part I., page 94], so in the Latin,
which is derived immediately from the Shanscreet, Principissa
or Princess, is a compound of Princeps, the First, or God, and
Issa, the Holy Spirit. If a man were to pass his whole life in the
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350 NOTES TO BOOK III.
search after curious secrets of this kind, he would die before he

had exhausted the number that he might find: each one appears
but trivial; and yet to me it seems that slight but unexpected
evidences of this nature, are of more value in point of proof, than
whole chapters of disquisition or even argument. The following
passage contains a good deal of truth, but the learned writer is
mistaken in its true interpretation. The Eros Protogonos, of
which he speaks, and of whose transcendent powers he furnishes
so many proofs, is not One Being, but mystically alludes to Three,
namely God, who is Love; the Holy Spirit, who is the First-born,
yet who is Love also: and Spirits universally, whose energies and
qualities are covertly hinted at in the Orphic Hymn. With this
explanation the reader will see in the extract a great deal that
supports my view of the true theosophy of the ancients; whereas
if he should adhere to that which the writer gives, he will find
himself in a mythologic maze from which there is no egress.
Eternity, I need not add, which is described as the Father, means
God: Ether [Light] means the Holy Spirit, and Kronos, operating
on Chaos, means the creation of immortal Essences which fill the
Universe with life. [See Part I., page 39.] The reader need pay
no attention to the masculine form in which the writer speaks;
for with the Ancients, as I have already shewn, the Male and
Female when spoken of with reference to Gods were one and the
same. In the ancient theology of Greece, says Payne Knight,
preserved in the Orphic fragments, the Ερος πρωτογονος, or
first-begotten Love, is said to have been produced together with
Ether by Time or Eternity (κρονος), and Necessity (Αναγκη),
operating upon inert matter (Χαος). He is described as eternally
begetting (αειγενητης) [because Spirits are everlastingly assuming
new shapes]; the Father of Night, called in later times the lucid
or Splendid (φανης), because he first appeared in splendour; of a
double nature (διφυης), as preserving the general power of creation
and generation, both active and passive, both male and female.
Light is his necessary and primary attribute, co-eternal with
himself, and with him brought forth from inert Matter by
Necessity. Hence the purity and sanctity always attributed to
Light by the Greeks. He is called the Father of Night, because
by attracting the Light to himself, and becoming the Fountain
which distributed it to the world, he produced Night, which is
called everlastingly begotten, because it had everlastingly existed,
although mixed and lost in the general mass. He is said to pervade
the world with the motion of his wings, bringing pure light: and
thence to be called the splendid, the ruling Priapus, and self-
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NOTES TO BOOK III. 351
illumined (αυταυγης). It is to be observed that the word

Πριηπος, afterwards the name of a subordinate Deity, is here
used as a title relating to one of his attributes. Wings are
figuratively attributed to him, as being the emblems of swiftness
and incubation; by the first of which he pervaded matter, and
by the second fructified the egg of Chaos. The Egg was carried
in procession at the celebration of the Mysteries, because, as
Plutarch says (like the pomegranate), it was the material of generation
(ὑλη της γενεσεως) containing the seeds and germs of life and
motion without being actually possessed of either. For this reason
it was a very proper symbol of Chaos, containing the seeds and
materials of all things, which, however, were barren and useless
until the Creator fructified them by the incubation of his Vital
Spirit, and released them from the restraints of inert matter by
the efforts of his divine strength. The incubation of the Vital
Spirit is represented on the colonial medals of Tyre by a Serpent
wreathed round an Egg; for the Serpent, having the power of
casting his skin, and apparently renewing his youth, became the
symbol of life and vigour, and as such is always made an attendant
on the mythological Deities presiding over health. It is also
observed that animals of the serpent kind retain life more
pertinaciously than any other, except the Polypus, which is
sometimes represented upon the Greek medals probably in its
stead. I have myself seen the heart of an adder continue its vital
motions for many minutes after it has been taken from the body;
and even renew them after it has been cold, upon being moistened
with warm water and touched with a stimulus. The Creator
delivering the fructified seeds of things from the restraints of
inert matter by his divine strength, is represented on innumerable
Greek medals by the Urus, or Wild Bull, in the act of butting
against the Egg of Chaos and breaking it with his horns; or, in other
words, God conjoining himself to the Spirit. It was from this
horned generative symbol of the power of the Deity that horns
were placed on the portraits of kings to show that their power
was derived from heaven, and that they themselves were fathers
of the people. It is a common mode of expression in the Old
Testament to say that the horns of any one shall be exalted, in
order to signify that he shall be raised into power or pre-
eminence: and when Moses descended from the mount with the
Spirit of God still upon him, his head appeared horned. (Exod.
xxxiv. 35).
Note 2 (page 271).—An Egg, as it contained the elements of life,
was thought an appropriate symbol of the Universe. Hence in
the Dionysiaca and other Mysteries one part of the nocturnal
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ceremony consisted in the consecration of an Egg. By this, as

Porphyry says, was signified the World. The Persians said of
Oromasdes, that he formed beings and enclosed them in an Egg:
the Syrians used to speak of their ancestors the gods, as the
progeny of Eggs. In the Temple of the Dioscuri (Sons of God)
at Laconia, there was suspended an egg, which fell from the Moon,
and from which they were born. (Athen. Deipnos, lib. iii.) And
thus a frequent symbol in the Pagan mythology of the Hen and
Chickens, is explained by its allusion to the Holy Spirit and all
that she produces. This Egg was O-On. It is the Parent of
Oannes. The Supreme Being is indicated by the three Greek
letters ‘Ο ΩΝ, or all Being; the Triune-All, and the Holy Spirit
by the Triangle; the Infinity of God by the double triangle;
 an Indian symbol ; Eternity by a Circle, or a Ring; Life
by a square, and the Everlastingness of existence by a Square
within a Circle. The triangle, according to some, expressed three
of the inseparable attributes of the Deity—to be—to think—to
act. This is one of the most ancient symbols in the world. These
symbolical figures, says Tod, are frequently seen carved on the
large blocks of the walls. These were chiefly Buddhist or Jain,
as the quatre feuille, the cross, though the mystic triangle, and
triangle within a triangle  was also to be seen. Amongst
ancient coins and medals, excavated from the ruins of Oojein and
other ancient cities, I possess a perfect series with all the symbolic
emblems of the 24 Jain apostles (the 24 Ancients). The compound
equilateral triangle is among them: perhaps there were Masons
in those days among the Pali. It is hardly necessary to state that
this symbol (the double triangle) occurs on one (so called) Gothic
edifice, ex. gr. the beautiful abbey gate at Bury St. Edmund’s,
Suffolk, erected about 1337. Annals of Rajasthan, i. 727. Nor is
this the only Apocalyptic symbol which we discover. On the
ἀέτωμα, or triangular pediment of the temples, was anciently
sculptured in relief the figure of an Eagle with expanded wings.
See Pindar, Ol. xiii. 30, and Heyne’s note. This was the Flying
Eagle of the A .
Note 3 (page 299).—The Court of the Gods, says the Edda, is ordi-
narily kept under a great Ash tree called Ydrasil (the Holy Spirit),
where they distribute justice. This Ash is the greatest of all
trees: its branches cover the surface of the earth; its top reaches
to the highest heavens, and it is supported by three vast roots;
one of which extends to the ninth world or hell. An Eagle (the
Sun), whose piercing eye discovers all things, perches upon its
uppermost branches. A Squirrel (a Messiah) is continually
running up and down to bring news: while a parcel of serpents
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(the wicked under a sacred disguise, wolves in sheep clothing)

fastened to the trunk, endeavour to destroy him. The serpent
Nidhogger (the collective spirits of the universe) is always
feeding at its root: others say it is gnawing. From under
one of the roots runs a Fountain, wherein Wisdom lies concealed.
From a neighbouring spring three Virgins are continually drawing
precious water (Truth) with which they irrigate the Ash Tree:
this water keeps up the beauty of its foliage; and, after having
refreshed its leaves, falls back again to the earth, where it forms
the dew of which the bees (the new-born, the regenerated, the
pure) make their honey. This Ydrasil is the Tree of Life of the
Apocalypse, and the Homa or Sacred Tree of Zaratusht, which
we see represented on the Assyrian monuments, until the time
of the Arab invasion. Layard, Nineveh. ii. 72. See Part I., pp.
58 [Ash], 26, 193, 323, 607. The mythos admits of several
interpretations. For a corresponding reason the Oak was one of
the emblems of God; and a winged Oak, was God conjoined with
the Holy Spirit, of whom Wings, and a Cup, have ever been mystic
emblems. Hence the true meaning of that strange passage from
the lost Books of Cham, which is quoted by Isidorus, the son of
Basilides, in a fragment preserved by Clement of Alexandria. All
these, he says, who profess to teach philosophy, ought to know
what Pherecydes meant by the winged Oak, and the Cloak of
many colours that cover it; and whatever else he has taken from
the Prophecy of Cham. This passage has never been explained,
and it has hitherto eluded all attempts at explanation: but the
Cloak of many colours was that Rainbow-like Veil, of which
Plutarch speaks in his Isis and Osiris as the distinguishing mantle
of the Holy Spirit. The Oak encircled by this is the Rainbow
Circle entwining or embracing the Phallic Oak; a Rainbow round
the Throne; (A , section 6), or God himself with his
Shekinah of light, love, and splendours, as he was always
symbolised to be in the mysterious rites of old. Among the
Greeks and Romans we have sacra Jovi quercus, the oak sacred to
Jupiter, even to a proverb: and in Gaul and Britain we find the
highest religions regard paid to the same tree and its misletoe,
under the direction of the Druids, that is the oak prophets or
priests. The name misletoe is from the German mistel, because it is
mixed with another tree, and the Saxon tan (Danish tiene, Dutch
teene) a twig, sprig or shoot. Few are ignorant that the mistletoe
or missoldine, is indeed a very extraordinary plant, not to be
cultivated in earth, but always growing upon some other tree, as
the oak, apple, &c. The Druids, says Pliny (Nat. Hist. lib. xvii.
44), hold nothing more sacred than the misletoe, and the tree
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bon which it is produced, provided it be the oak. They make choice

of groves of oak on their own account, nor do they perform any
of their sacred rites without the leaves of those trees, so one may
suppose that they are for this reason called by a Greek etymology
Druids. And whatever misletoe grows on the oak, they think is
sent from heaven, and is a sign of God himself having chosen that
tree. This, however, is very rarely found, but when discovered
it is treated with great ceremony. They called it by a name (guthil
or gutheyl, a good heal) which in their language signifies the curer
of all ills, and having duly prepared their feasts and sacrifices
under the tree, they bring to it two white bulls [rather a Bull and
Cow], whose horns are then for the first time tied. The priest,
dressed in a white robe, ascends the tree, and with a golden
pruning hook cuts off the misletoe, which is received in a white
sagum or sheet. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that God
would bless his own gift to those on whom he has bestowed it. Plin.
Hist. Nat. xvii. 44. All this was in allusion or commemoration of
the Sacred Branch (the Messiah), from the ‫ אשל‬Ashi-el, or oak,
or flame tree of God, mentioned in the Apocalypse: which the
orthodox fancy was only known to the Jews, but which we here find
among the Boodhist Druids. By them it was venerated as the
Branch which came out of the Oak, God: for, as has been seen, it
is a branch only—having no trunk of its own to support it. It is
in fact an emanation.
Note 4 (page 323).—Moses, at the Bush and at the Mount, was
in like manner said to have been commanded to take off his shoes,
because the place on which he stood was holy ground. This con-
nects Judaism and its secrets with Hindostan. Herodotus and
Diodorus Siculus say that when the priests of Egypt adored any
of their deities, their feet were uncovered. According to Strabo,
such was the practice among the sacerdotal orders of the Germans,
and such was the case in the worship of Diana and Vesta. Silius
Italicus says of the priests of Hercules:
Nec discolor ulli
Ante aras cultus; velantur corpora lino,
Et Pelusiaco præfulget stamine vertex,
Distinctis mos thura dare, atque a lege parentum
Sacrificam lato vestem distinguere clavo.
Pes nudus, tonsæque comæ, castumque cubile
Inrestricta focis servant altaria flammæ. Bel. Pun. iii.
Note 5 (page 324).—The mystagogues, says Dupuis, make dark-
ness and light successively to appear before the eyes of the
Initiates. Night the most obscure, accompanied with frightful
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spectres, is replaced by a brilliant day, whose light environs the

statue of the Divinity. This sanctuary is approached with trem-
bling, where all is prepared to exhibit the spectacle of Tartarus
and Elysium. It is in this last stage that the Initiated, being
ultimately inducted, perceives the picture of beautiful prairies
enlightened by a clear sky; there he hears harmonious voices
and the charming songs of the sacred choirs. It is then that,
become absolutely free and disfranchised from all evil, he mixes
with the crowd of the Initiates, and, his head being crowned
with flowers, he celebrates the holy orgies with them. Thus the
ancients represented here below, in their initiations, that which
would, they said, one day happen to souls when they should be
disengaged from bodies, and drawn from the obscure prison in
which destiny had enchained them in uniting them to terrestrial
matter. (Orig. de tous les Cultes, p. 501.)
In later ages, the excommunicated, and they who from their
crimes found it impossible to gain admission into the True Myste-
ries, invented Orgies of their own, in which, as may be supposed,
vice took the place of virtue, and every kind of licentiousness pre-
vailed. Paulite writers most wickedly confound the false with
the true Mysteries, and blame the latter for the guilt of the former.
We learn from Psellus what was done in those assemblies. The
mysteries of those demons, he says, consisted in representing the
fabulous narrative of Jupiter mingling with Ceres and her daughter
Proserpine. But as venereal connections take place along with
the initiation, a marine Venus is represented as rising from certain
fictitious genital parts. Afterwards, the celebrated marriage of
Proserpine takes place, and those who are initiated sing; I have
eat out of the drum; I have drank out of the cymbal; I have borne
the mystic cup; I have entered into the bed. But the pregnant
throes likewise of Ceres are represented: hence the supplications
of Ceres are exhibited. After this an image, with the thighs of a
goat, makes its appearance, and which at the same time suffers
vehemently about the testicles: because Jupiter, in order to expiate
the crime of the violence which he offered to Ceres, is represented
as cutting off the testicles of a goat and placing them on the bosom
of Ceres, as likewise on his own bosom. But, after all this, the
powers of Bacchus succeed: the cista and the cakes with many
bosses like those of a shield. Likewise the mysteries of Sabazius
divinitating, and the priestesses of Bacchus; a certain sound of the
Thesprotian kettle; the Dodonæan brass; another Corybas and
another Proserpine, who are resemblances of Dæmons. After
these succeed the uncovering the thighs of Baubo and a woman’s
comb, for thus, through shame, they denominate the privities of
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a woman. And thus, in the indecent, they finish the initiation.

I have quoted this to warn my readers against the notion that
such things ever happened in the incorrupt Mysteries: they belong
exclusively to the false ones. But it is not quite certain that we
can believe all that those writers say. Sainte Croix, in his
Recherches sur les Mysteres du Paganisme, sect. v. art. iv. denies
some of this, though cited by Meursius from Theodoret. Eusebius
declares that Clement of Alexandria, who has stated many things
about the interior of the Mysteries, knew them by experience
δια πειρας. Præp. Evang. ii. p. 67. If this means that the Saint
had been initiated, and had mingled in the Saturnalia, it means
also that he broke his sacred vows of silence, and committed per-
jury: and should this be so, can we believe him, though he is a
saint? According to Julius Firmicus, on a certain night, while
the solemnity in honour of Adonis lasted, an image was laid in a
bed, or rather on a bier. After the attendants had for a long
time bewailed the death or aphanism of this person, he was at
length understood to be restored to life, to have experienced a
resurrection, signified by the re-admission of light. On this, the
priest addressed the company, saying, Comfort yourselves, all ye
who have been partakers of the Mysteries of the Deity, thus pre-
served, for we shall now enjoy some respite from our labours. To
which were added these words: I have escaped a sad calamity,
and my lot is greatly mended. The people answered by the
invocation ’Ιὼ [Αω] μαχαιρα. Λαμπαδηφορος! Hail to the
Dove, the Restorer of Light! The gloom which covered the earth
upon the aphanism or disappearance of Romulus is remarkable,
and meets our notice in several places. On the day when Hercules
died by female treachery and the poison of the hydra serpent, or
when he ascended a manifest God from Mount Oeta, the sun was
darkened. (Pomp. Fest. in Herc.) When Talos or Orion had met
his death by the magical fascinations of Medea, the Argonauts
were presently enveloped in that chaotic and præternatural dark-
ness called the Kat-Oulas. Upon the fall of Phaethon the sun is
represented as veiling his face, officiumque negat mundo, till the
supplications of the gods prevail upon him to shine again. And
lastly, when Memnon, Son of the Morning, had fallen by some
stratagem of the Pelasgians, and the Winds had blown away his
body, then also did the heavens refuse their light, and the earth
was overshadowed. A vestige of this mythos still exists among
the Japanese, in the legend of Combadaxus, who built a magnifi-
cent temple, and declared that he would retire into a cavern and
sleep ten thousand millions of years, after which he would come
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to life again. Accordingly he entered into the cavern, the mouth

of which was immediately sealed up; but the Japanese believe
that he still lives, and will again re-appear. This also is curiously
indicated in the flight into Egypt, and the losing and finding again
of Jesus in the Temple, L ii., and in the parable of the Prodigal
Son.
Note 6 (page 327).—Bin Washih gives an account of the following
of hieroglyphics in a temple in Upper Egypt. This building
was a Temple of Adonis. It represented a Coffin adorned with
curious figures and admirable ornaments. A Vine growing with
its leaves spread over it. The Divinity was standing upon the
Coffin, with a Staff in his hand, out of the end of which a Tree
shot forth, and overshadowed it. Behind the Coffin was seen a
pit full of blazing fire, and four Angels catching serpents, scor-
pions, and other noxious reptiles, throwing them into it. On his
head a Crown of Glory; on his right the Sun, and on his left the
Moon; and in his hand a Ring with the twelve Signs of the
Zodiack. Before the Coffin an Olive Tree sprouted forth, under
the branches of which different kinds of animals were collected.
On the left, and a little further back, a high Mountain was seen,
with seven Golden Towers supporting the sky. A hand stretched
forth from this sky poured out light, and pointed with his fingers
to the Olive Tree. Here was also the figure of a Man, whose head
was in the sky, and whose feet was on the earth. His hands and
feet were bound. Before the Deity stood Seven Censers, two pots,
a vase filled with perfumes, spices, and a bottle with a long neck
containing storax. The hieroglyphic representing day was under
his right foot, and the hieroglyphic representing night under his
left. Before the Divinity was laid on a desk the Book of universal
nature, whereon a representation and names of the planets, the
constellations, the stations, and everything that is found in the
highest heaven, was painted. There was also an urn, filled half
with earth and half with sand: a suspended ever-burning Lamp,
dates and olives in a vase of emerald. A table of black basalt
with seven lines, the four elements, the figure of a man carrying
away a dead body, and a Dog upon a Lion. These, O brother,
says the author, are the mysterious keys to the treasures of secrets
of ancient and modern knowledge. The wise may guess the whole
from a part. If the reader, after having carefully read this
Volume, will then examine the foregoing, he will discern every
one of these symbols, as directly emanating from the Apocalypse,
and the typology to which it gave birth. But the Cave-Temples
themselves inspired more awe than all their hieroglyphic carvings.
The Syringes in Upper Egypt, says Bryant, were a work of great
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antiquity, and consisted of many passages which branched out

and led to a variety of apartments. Some of them still remain,
and travellers who have visited them say that they are painted
throughout with the most curious hieroglyphics, stained in the
stone; and though they have been executed so many ages, yet
the colours are still as strong and vivid as if they had been but
just tinctured. Josephus mentions vast subterranes in some of
the hills in the part of Canaan called Galilee, and in Trachonitis,
and says that they extended far underground, and consisted of
wonderful apartments. They were formed in due proportion, and
not arched at the top, but vaulted with flat stones, and the
sides were lined in the same manner; and by his account they
could contain a great number of people. Such were the caverns
at Gadara, Pteleon, and the Spelunca Arbelorum. They at last
became the receptacles of outlaws and banditti, who in large
bodies used to shelter themselves within; on which account they
were demolished. Mention has been made of large caverns and
labyrinths near Nauplia, and Hermione in Greece, said to have
been the work of Cyclopians. They were probably in part natural,
both here and in the places taken notice of above; but they were
enlarged by art, and undoubtedly designed for a religious purpose.
They all related to the history of that person who was principally
commemorated under the title of Cronus. An old traveller in
Greece thus describes one of those caverns :—
The mountains in this part of the world are all full of caverns,
and the islands all abound with subterranean passages of this
kind; but they are all trifling to this. We had not walked
far along this narrow alley, which was too low to admit our
standing upright, when I saw before me a strong iron staple
driven into the rock. The guides, if I may so call people who
went behind, not before us, had told me of this, and one of them
had now the courage to come forward, and fasten a rope he brought
for that purpose to the staple. I had some difficulty to persuade
him to make the first descent into a frightful abyss, which was
now immediately before us. After a few moments he flourished
his torch from the bottom, and halloo’d for us to follow. I was
the second that descended; we slid down by means of the rope,
and I found myself on a level floor with walls of rough rock all
about me, and a vast arched roof above. There had been nothing
particular in the sound of my guide’s voice from below; but that
of W––’s, who answered me from above, was echoed to us in
thunder. When we were all landed, a gratuity which I gave the
bold fellow who descended first, encouraged him to precede us
again. He turned to the right and led us, after a few paces, to
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the brink of another precipice. This was less steep, but much
deeper than the former. Our guide placed himself on his breech,
and with his torch held up in both hands, slid down with a
frightful rapidity; we followed him, and I hoped we were now at
the bottom. Alas! what an imagination! We had leisure here
to breathe again, and there was something in the perfect stillness
of the place that appeared awful and yet pleasing. It was a
frightful consideration to think how far we were out of the reach
of day; but our torches and flambeaux burnt well, and all about
us was sufficiently enlightened. The air was not at all close or
disagreeable, as if confined, but warm and pleasant; and so per-
fectly out of the reach of all interruption, we had opportunities
of examining very favourably all about us. The rocks at the sides
of the cavern in which we now stood, were in general of a kind of
porphyry, with a great deal of purple in it; a stone very frequent
in these islands, and which would certainly be very beautiful if
cut. The rough and prominent edges, in several parts of these,
were at once terrible and beautiful. The roof was out of reach of
the eye, at least the illumination of the flambeaux did not reach
it with a strength sufficient to give us any distinct view of it.
The floor or pavement was of a stone quite different from that of
the sides, a rough and soft grey flagstone, like those of some parts
of Yorkshire, which they use in building, and in this there were
lodged a vast number of petrified shells, coruna ammonis, and
conchæ anominæ, which stood up above the level, and made it
very disagreeable to the feet. From this platform our conductor,
who seemed to have obtained a new fund of courage from the
favour I had shewn him, led us to the brink of another preci-
pice, not deep, but terribly steep; he in a moment threw himself
down this, and bidding us stay until he had prepared for our
descent, he turned a ladder which hung down on one side, and
thrusting it up within the reach of our feet, held the bottom
steady while we descended by it. I cannot remember anything
equal to the terror I conceived at letting myself down, with my
breast to the rock, and hanging by my hands above, to get my
feet down to the top round of the ladder. From hence I descended
with less pain; but it was a terrible prospect; from the left hand
to see precipices and opening caverns ready to swallow any one
up, who should have attempted the descent without the ladder,
and made but the least slip with the foot. From the plain
on which we found ourselves after this last descent, we were
conducted along narrow and low passages, and sometimes through
broader, but still all the way upon the descent to a considerable
distance. Here I was in hope we were at the end of our expedi-
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tion, but no such matter. Our guide, who had been once before
down, crept with trembling feet before us, and warned us of a
precipice more terrible than any of the former. This was no way
to be descended but by means of a ladder that was brought on
purpose by our guides, and unfortunately it was not quite so long
as it should have been. We had great difficulty to let our
adventurous guide down by a rope, and when he had fixed the
ladder we had the same difficulty as before in getting to the first
round. From the bottom of this cavern, which was not rock like
the rest, but earth, and somewhat moist, we proceeded to another
declivity too deep for our ladder, but not so steep as to have
absolute necessity for it. We were reduced to fix our cord once
again here, and one by one to slide down the rocks on our backs,
with firm hold of the rope. The ridge of rock on which we made
our way in this descent terminated on the right hand very abruptly,
and we could distinguish water in the depth below. Judge
whether I have not had reason to repent the expedition, but
indeed the end made amends for all the labour. When we had
got to the bottom of this last descent, the danger was over, but
we were not yet at the end of our expedition; we had yet a
long and an uncomfortable way; we crept sometimes on all fours,
sometimes we slid on our backs, and in other places we were obliged
to crawl flat on our bellies over very rugged rocks, where there
was not three feet height in the passages. All this was in a
continued though a gradual descent. We at length arrived at a
vast bed of rock, that threw itself in such manner before us, that
it appeared to stop all farther passage. I should have thought it
a very bad expedition to have got down thus far for the sake of
getting up again, which now appeared to be the case, as this
seemed to be the end of our journey; but our guide promised
better things. He left us in the care of one of his fellows, and
taking all the rest with him round the jutting rock, desired us to
wait his return a few minutes. He was as good as his word; he
had taken that opportunity to enlighten the grotto, at the very
entrance of which we were now. They had tied flambeaux to all
parts of the rock that stood out beyond the rest, and had fixed
several on the floor; these were all blazing when he took us by
the hand to lead us in. The most uncomfortable part of the
expedition had been that which we had last of all suffered, left
with only one guide, enlightened only by one flambeaux, in a
narrow passage and with a rock before us; but from this the
change was beyond description amazing. He led us into the
grotto, the opening of which is just behind this prominent rock.
You have heard me mention how very small a candle will enlighten
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a mine, where all is perfect darkness; you can therefore guess

what must be the effect of about eight flambeaux in full blaze in
such a place. The light was at first almost too much for the
eyes; the splendour of the whole place almost intolerable. We
found ourselves in a Cavern the most amazing, and at the same
time the most beautiful that could be conceived. The grotto is a
vast vault, the roof arched and irregular, the pavement in some
places very even, and in others rough enough; the sides, which in
most places form sweeps of circles, are, in some, of the naked rock,
but in others they are covered by an infinite variety of incrusta-
tions. The height of the roof is about four score feet, the length
of the grotto about three hundred, and its breadth nearly as much;
the greatest depth is towards the middle, but not exactly in the
centre. We were now between nine hundred and a thousand feet
from the surface of the ground where we came in. Nor is this
the depth of the descent; our guides told us that the passages
continued between seven and eight hundred feet deeper; but this
we took their word for, as we suppose they had taken that of some
others, for it is not probable that any body ever went farther than
this place. If I am dilatory in beginning to describe it to you, ’tis,
my dear . . . . , because I know not where to begin. Among such
a variety of splendour, what can deserve first notice? You have
occasionally heard me speak of drop-stones hanging like icicles
from the roofs of caverns in the mines, and in the Eolian hills,
and of incrustations of different kinds on their sides, and masses
of fine spar at the bottom; those who have not seen the Grotto of
Antiparos may think what they see of this kind elsewhere beauti-
ful: but ’tis here that they are found in a perfection that makes
everything elsewhere contemptible. The matter which forms
these incrustations in other places is often very clear and bright,
but it is nowhere so pure as in this; it is here perfect bright
crystal, and the whole surface of the cavern roof, floor, and sides,
is covered with it. You will think this alone must have been
fine, but the form into which it is thrown exceeds the materials.
And think what must be the splendour of an arch thus covered
and thus illuminated! the light of the flambeaux was reflected at
once from above, from below, and from all sides; and as it was
thrown back from angle to angle among the ornaments of the
roof and sides, gave all the colours of the rainbow. It was
long that the eye was lost in such a complicated blaze of splen-
dour, before I could direct it to any particular object. At
length I began to view the roof, hung with pendent gems as it
appeared. In these caverns there is alway an oozing of water
from the roof, or there are vapours ascending from below, which
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in the hollows are condensed into a water; either the one or

the other of these contains at all times the particles of this
crystalline matter. The quantity of water is small, and its
course slow; it hangs and trickles in drops from the top, or it
runs in the same small and slow stream along the side; in either
case it leaves behind it that crystalline matter which it had
contained, and spreads a little glazing on either wall, or forms the
rudiments of a strong icicle from the roof; every following drop
extends the icicle or enlarges the glazing, and in length of time
covers the wall, and forms a thousand inverted pyramids from the
roof. Nor is this all: what drops from the top still contains a
little of the crystalline matter, though it have left the greater
part above; and this remainder separates from it there. By this
means is formed the plain glazing of the floor, where the drops
fall faster; where they succeed one another more slowly there are
formed congeries of this pure stony matter, of various forms and
shapes, and of an infinite variety. This is the general system of
the incrustations and ornament of grottos; and this of Antiparos,
as one of the largest and deepest in the world, contains them in
the greatest perfection. We entered among a grove of crystal
trees; the floor was in general of a smooth and glossy spar, so
M— calls it: but give me leave to quit a term I do not well
understand, and call it crystal, of which it has all the appearance.
We walked on this bright pavement in a kind of serpentine mean-
der, among shrubs and taller masses of this crystal rising from the
common pavement with large and thick stones, and spreading out
into heads and tufts of branches. Some of these were eight or ten
feet high, the generality between two and five feet. They were
all of the same material of the floor, and what added greatly to
their beauty, as well as to their resemblance of trees, was that
they were not smooth on the surface, but covered all over with
little shining points; these, when examined, appeared to be
pyramids of the same matter. They are in general about a fifth
of an inch high, and of a triangular figure. Their bases, which
grew upon the mass, stood pretty close to one another, but their
tops distinct. The breaking of the light from the flambeaux
among these innumerable prominences, and all of them angular,
had a very fine effect. At some distance from the entrance we
came up to a pillar of crystal, of seven feet in height, and more
than a foot in diameter. This rises immediately from the floor,
and is of equal thickness to the top; the surface is very glossy
and of a pure and perfect lustre. About this there stand three or
four others of four feet high and a proportionate thickness. One
of these has been broken, and the piece lies by it. Our guides
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desired us to examine the stump at its top, and shewed us

that it was like that of a tree which had been cut off. They
bid us remark the heart, and the several circles of softer wood
round it; they told us this was exactly the same as in the growing
of trees, and assured us that these trees of crystal grew from the
floor in the same manner. This is a system worthy the intellect
of peasants; but we, who knew that these columns, like the
rest of the ornaments of the floor, are formed by matter left
by drops of water following one another in a long succession,
saw a better reason for the whole being composed of crusts,
one over another. All the stalactites, or stony icicles of the
top, and even the covering of the sides, is composed of a
number of crusts laid one over another in the same manner.
On other parts of the floor, we saw little hillocks of crystal made
in the same manner, and in some of the hollower parts there lay a
parcel of round stones as white as snow, and of the bigness of
musket bullets. These when broken, were found to be composed
of crusts laid over one another just in the manner of all
other concretions, and in the centre of one of them we found a
drop of water. The sides of the grotto next came into conside-
ration, and what a variety of beauties did they afford! In some
places the plain rock is covered with a vast sheet of this crystal
like a cake of ice, spread evenly over it, and of the thickness of
an inch or two; its surface perfectly smooth, and every where
following the shape of the rock. In other places, this sheet of
crystal is variegated with a strange quantity of irregular and
modulated figures all over its surface. These were in some spots
more raised, in others less; but their meanders very beautiful.
In other parts, where the walls were so prominent that drops from
the roof could reach them, there grew from their surface in the
same manner as from the floor, shrubs of crystal; but these were
in general lower and more spreading than those of the floor. We
saw a great number, of about a foot and half in height, rising
from each a single stone thick and irregular, and spreading into
a globular head of a diameter almost equal to their height. No
part of the grotto appeared more beautiful than the sides where
these were most frequent. They were some of them pure and
colourless, others white as snow, and all of them covered over the
whole surface with those little pyramids I have mentioned before.
This, however, is little to the principal beauty of the sides. In
some places the sheet of crystal, instead of clinging immediately
to the wall or rock, stood out at a distance from it, forming a kind
of curtain of pure pellucid matter. This was an appearance at
once singular and elegant beyond all things of the kind that I
R2
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have seen or read of, and I was the more pleased to see M—s’s
admiration equal to my own. These curtains of crystal were ten
or twelve feet in breadth, and in height often twenty or more;
they took their origin from some part of the sweep of the arch,
and hung to the floor. They usually were contiguous to the wall
at one edge, and at a considerable distance at the other, so that
they formed a kind of closets or apartments within, which were
very beautiful, and had an aspect unlike all things in the world.
These curtains of crystal were not plain, but folded and plaited,
and their undulations added not a little to their beauty. If in
any parts they projected out so far as to take more of the falling
drops, they were there covered with little pyramids of crystal,
such as those of the trees and shrubs on the floor, but all the rest
of the expanse was smooth and glossy. It yet remains that I
describe to you the roof of this wonderful place, but how shall I
do it? There are not terms in language to express such a variety
of objects which those who have hitherto used language have
never seen. In some parts there diverged rays of pure and glossy
crystal in the manner of a star, from a lucid centre, stretching
themselves to two or three yards diameter; in another, clusters
like vast bunches of grapes hung down, and from others there
were continued festoons, loose in the middle, but fixed at either
end, and formed of a vast variety of representations of foliage,
fruits, and flowers. There is a rudeness in all these that would,
whenever one saw them, speak them the absolute work of nature,
but art would be proud to imitate them. At every little space
between these there hung the stalactites, or stony icicles as they
are called, in a surprising number, but of a magnitude much more
surprising. Some of these have doubtless been many hundred
years in forming, and they are from ten to twenty or thirty feet
in length. One hangs nearly from the centre of the grotto, which
must be considerably more than that ; ’tis eight or nine feet longer
than all the others, and at the base seems five or six feet in
diameter. ’Tis a cone in form, and its form tolerably fine. Could
a thing of this kind be got off whole, and conveyed into Europe
without injury, what would the virtuosi say of it! A cone of
this bigness of pure crystal would be a more pompous curiosity
than all their collections. At the points of many of these, and
on some other protuberances in the grotto, we saw single drops
of a perfectly pellucid water hanging; this was what had left its
crystals on their sides, and had been adding its little portion to
their bulk. Nearly under the centre of the arch there is a large
pyramid of natural congelations of the shrubby kind of those I
have already mentioned to you. ’Tis the finest cluster on the
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whole floor, and is ornamented with a parcel of festoons and cones

from the overhanging part of the roof, which make a kind of
attic story to it. Behind it is one of the natural closets, curtained
off from the main hollow of the grotto, and full of beautiful
congelations. They call the pyramid the altar. Some of the
pieces have been cut down, and upon the basis of the pyramid we
read an inscription that puzzled us extremely. Hic ipse Christus
adfuit ejus natali die mediâ nocte celebrato. There was a date of
1673 annexed, but not being of the Romish communion we could
by no means make out the meaning of the words till our guides
had informed us that a French person of quality, ambassador to
the Porte, had caused mass to be celebrated there with great
solemnity on Christmas day at that time, and had spent two or
three days in the grotto with a very numerous company. You
will be in pain to know how we got up again from this
strange abyss; I was in pain enough when I thought
of it from the bottom, and the sed revocare gradum of Virgil
rose up in my mind in all its terrors. However, I am out
and all is well.” Letters from the East, Vol. ii., page 278.
There is a curious circumstance related by Belzoni in his explora-
tions through Upper Egypt, which abounds in specimens of the
most splendid antiquities. He was in the catacomb called Biban
el Moluk—that is, the Gates of the King, or God, where he dis-
covered an exquisitely beautiful chest of pure alabaster, nine feet
five inches long by three feet nine inches wide, and two feet and
an inch high, covered within and without with hieroglyphics and
figures in intaglio, nearly in a perfect state, sounding like a bell,
and transparent as glass, from the extraordinary magnificence of
which he conceives it must have been the depository of the remains
of Apis; but as it was perfectly empty, I have no hesitation in
saying that this could not have been the object for which so
precious a coffer had been formed. May we not suppose it rather
to have been a sacred bed, to which some aspirant of high preten-
sion was conducted after a long interval of toil and tribulation,
to arise from it, after brief repose, into that figurative new birth
which was so eminent a feature in the Mysteries? I am the more
confirmed in this view when I bear in mind the peculiarly sym-
bolic manner in which entrance was obtained into the inner or
womb-like cavern which contained the object of the aspirant’s
pilgrimage. I find one of them thus described in O’Brien’s work
on the Round Towers (p. 161), and I can have no doubt whatever
that the cavern there mentioned was one of those which was used
in the celebration of the Mysteries. Mr. Davison, he says, British
Consul to Algiers, when accompanying Mr. Wortley Montagu to
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Egypt in 1763, discovered a chamber before unnoticed, and

descended to a depth of 155 feet, the three successive reservoirs.
The principal oblique passage has since then been traced by the
very enterprising master of a merchant vessel, Captain Caviglia,
200 feet farther down than by any former explorer, and found to
communicate with the bottom of a well, which is now filled with
rubbish. A circulation of air being thus procured, he was
emboldened to proceed 28 feet farther, which brought him to a
spacious hall 66 feet by 27, unequal in altitude, and directly
under the centre of the Pyramid. In no instance yet recorded
has any appearance presented itself of human remains within
those apartments; nor, indeed, was there any possibility of
conveying such thither, unless placed there before the erection
of the pile itself, for the extremities of the gallery which leads
into the Great Chamber are so narrow and circumscribed that it
is with difficulty any one can effect an entrance into it, even by
creeping upon his belly. Madden, in his Travels in Turkey,
Egypt, &c., gives an account of one of those subterranean chambers
in the Great Temple of Edfou, which was used for the celebration
of the Mysteries. Considerably below the surface of the adjoining
building, my conductor pointed out to me a chink in an old wall,
which he told me I should creep through on my hands and feet.
The aperture was not two feet and a half high, and scarcely three
feet and a half broad. My companion had the courage to go in
first, thrusting in a lamp before him. I followed. The passage
was so narrow that my mouth and nose was almost buried in the
dust, and I was nearly suffocated. After proceeding about ten
yards in utter darkness, the heat became excessive: the breathing
was laborious, the perspiration poured down my face, and I would
have given the world to have got out; but my companion, whose
person I could not distinguish, though his voice was audible,
called out to me to crawl a few feet farther, and that I should find
plenty of room. I joined him at length, and had the inexpressible
satisfaction of standing once more upon my feet. We found our-
selves in a splendid apartment of great magnitude, adorned with an
incredible profusion of sacred paintings and hieroglyphics. That
these sacred paintings contained many of the symbolic pictures
of the Apocalypse, may easily be supposed; and among the
hieroglyphics, we may be sure, were those Images typical of
Creation in which the ancients represented God and the Spirit;
although, from a passage in Plotinus, these last may have been
contained in a still more distant chamber. Just as one, he says
(Ennead ix. lib. 9) who, having entered into the most interior
parts of the adytum of a Temple, leaves all the statues in the
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Temple behind him (which on his departure from the adytum will
first present themselves to his view after the inward spectacle),
and then associates, not with a statue or an image, but with the
thing itself.
Note 7 (page 339).—This doctrine is not unlike that inculcated
by Silenus, as we learn from Aristotle and Plutarch. Midas, King
of the Brygians in Macedonia, had, at the foot of Mount Bermion,
a garden in which grew spontaneously roses with sixty petals and
of extraordinary fragrance. To this garden Silenus was in the
habit of repairing, and Midas or his people, by pouring wine into
the fount from which he was wont to drink, intoxicated him, and
he was thus captured. Midas put various questions to him
respecting the origin of things and the events of past times. One
was, What was best for men? Silenus was long silent; at length,
when he was constrained to answer, he said: Ephemeral seed of
a toilsome fate and hard fortune, why do ye oblige me to tell
what it were better for you not to know? Life is most free from
pain when one is ignorant of future evils. It is best for all men
not to be born [that is, it were best if they had never lapsed from
heaven, and become mortals from having been immortals]: the
second is, for those who are born to die as soon as possible.
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The Book of God.
BOOK IV.
1. Having now proved that the figurative and mystical

nature of the Apocalypse, had so much influence on the
secret and typical ceremonies of the Greater Mysteries, it
appears to me advisable to devote a few pages to the
symbolism which formed so large and important a part
of all ancient religious worship. What I shall have to
say upon this must necessarily be brief; but it will suffice
to set the thoughtful reader thinking; and he will derive
increased satisfaction in perusing the Apocalypse even from
the scanty materials which he will find here. I recom-
mend to him a careful study of Payne Knight’s suggestive
Essay on this subject, in which he will find erudition and
ingenuity. I am obliged to employ myself on matters
more immediately connected with my mission; and the
splendent goal to which I wend is so far distant that
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I cannot wander even for a moment from my direct

path.
2. Symbolism, or typical worship of the Supreme,
became a leading feature of religion in very early times;
it seems indeed to be so naturally an instinctive necessity
of the Oriental mind, that its birth was probably coeval
with the establishment of the most primitive systems of
divine adoration; though the Apocalyptic teaching no
doubt gave it a larger development. From the first it has
been the most remarkable and prominent portion of the
theology of the East: and it plays as great a part in the
Sacred Volumes as in the fanes, the images, and the cere-
monies of creed. To the Asiatic intellect it appears
arrayed in ever new and shining colours; the warm fancy
of the child of the sun clothes even Religious Truth—
which, to the West, always presents itself in sober and
puritanical garments—with the resplendent lights of
poetry and enchantment; and she would have little or no
influence over his conduct, if she did not appeal to his
imagination as well as to his reason. And as religion is
a matter of the heart as well as of the brain, it is right
that this should be so. Hence the oriental ideal of
holiness has always been of a higher, purer, and more
august type, than that which satisfies the West; and the
mystic theology of India, Thibet, Irân, and Arabia, is
infinitely more beautiful than any that has ever originated
in Europe.
3. It is impossible to raise the mind to God at all, or
to anything like a comprehension of the magnitude of
His heavens, and the sublimity of His glory and power
and wisdom, without having recourse in some way to the
aid of fancy. If we take an algebraic view of Him we
R 3
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shall walk for ever on the earth; we shall be wholly

incapable of soaring into those lofty heights where we
may behold His grand Ideal. It is notorious that
astronomers, mathematicians, dealers in the exact sciences,
seldom or ever are penetrated by a true conception of
Him, whom one would suppose their daily studies would
place before them in some of his most sublime extended
phases; I fear indeed that by the great majority of them
God is hardly supposed to exist at all; though they
substitute in his place what they call organic laws and
forces—names or properties—which are certainly not the
best calculated to excite religious feeling, or high and
sacred sentiments in the mind.
4. That the power of imagination has been given by
God to man for the wisest purposes will hardly be denied:
that this power has been the source of everything great
and splendid that we see around us requires no proof;
but why it should be sedulously restrained by Europeans,
and treated as an evil rather than a blessing, is hard to
understand and would be difficult to justify. The fact is
so however; and to this in part may be traced the low and
grovelling ideas of the Future, of Heaven, and of God,
which distinguish Christians above all other people, except
perhaps the negro lunatics of the African priests. If we
do not understand the pictorial style of the ancients, says
Steinbeck, it is clear that we are become estranged to the
region in which the pictorial language was formed. Since
it constitutes the entire mode of expression of the most
ancient times, and arose simultaneously with those peoples,
so are all myths poetic-symbolic-metaphoric inspirations
of a transcendent material Power of Nature, or the
physical incarnation of an Infinite Spirit. (T P A
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S .) In truth, says Stukeley, the first learning in the

world consisted chiefly of symbols. The wisdom of the
Chaldeans, Phœnicians, Egyptians, Jews, of Zoroaster,
Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato,
of all the ancients that is come to our hand, is symbolic.
It was the mode, says Serranus on Plato’s Symposium,
of the ancient philosophers to represent Truth by certain
symbols and hidden images, and there is no other mode
perhaps equally effective.
5. A highly glorious and imaginative view of God has
ever therefore characterised the East; but as the multitude
was not always capable of ascending to the elevated
conceptions of the teachers, the latter in time began to
use symbolic emblems by which they familiarized the
minds of their followers to some of the great fundamental
truths of all religious belief: under the veil of symbolism
also they concealed doctrines and articles which they
thought it wise to keep away from the public mind. Thus
in time a typical language as applied to creeds became
universal: the higher and grander ideas of the Divine
Father which belonged to the first imaginative view gra-
dually faded away, and a lower and secondary form of
fanciful types followed, producing such superstition,
atheism, and general corruption, as we see in our own
days in the most Christian countries of Europe and the
West.
6. The primeval men, when they wished to give to the
multitude, a more vivid idea of God than any which
the mere many could form compared him to Fire. For
what other object can be said to blaze with such incredible
splendor? It flashes radiance; it shoots its beams on
every side; it fills the surrounding air to a great
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distance with a light scarcely by any eyes endurable.

It is so impatient of constraint that it bursts all bounds,
and soars aloft; in this resembling the Infinite One. It
is of the utmost purity, and is stained by no soil or
spot: no other body can exist within it, or independent
of it, but if it comes near, it is instantly overpowered
by its transcendent force. One of the most ancient
symbols, says Pluche, was the Fire which was kept
perpetually in the place where assemblies of the people
were held. Nothing was fitter to give them a lively
idea of the power, the beauty, the purity, and the eternity
of the Being whom they came hither to worship. Thus
God was in the course of time not merely likened to
Fire, but by a bold figure he was called Fire itself;
and this element palpable to every mortal, conveyed
probably a more definite image of the Almighty, than
even the Sun, which was also venerated as one of his
types; but which was in fact too far removed from human
approach, to be equally as well understood as the lesser
but more known Element.
7. Fire, says Dionysius the Areopagite, exists in every-
thing, penetrates into everything, is received by every-
thing. Although it sheds a full light, still it is at the
same time hidden. Its presence is unknown, unless some
material be given to induce the exertion of its power. It
is invisible as well as unquenchable; and it has the faculty
of transforming into itself everything that it touches. It
renovates everything by its vital heat: it illumines every-
thing by its flashing beams; it can neither be confined
nor intermingled: it divides, and yet it is immutable. It
always ascends: it is constantly in motion; it moves by
its own will and power, and sets in motion everything
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around it. It has the power of seizing, but cannot itself

be taken. It needs no aid: it increases silently, and
breaks forth in majesty upon all. It generates, it is
powerful, invisible, and omnipresent. If neglected, its
existence might be forgotten; but on friction being
applied to certain substances, it flashes out again like
the sword from its scabbard, shines resplendent by its
own natural properties, and soars into the air. Many
other powers may yet be noticed as belonging to it. For
this reason theologians have asserted that certain sub-
stances were formed of fire, and thus created as nearly as
possible in the image of God. De Cœlest. Hierarch. xv.
193. And it became an ancient yet a striking illustration
of the folly of atheism and materialism, to say, that a man
might as well deny the existence of fire within the flint-
stone, because he could not see it, as to deny the Supreme
Being because He was invisible in the Heavens, or the
soul, because it could not be viewed by the human eye.
But as the fire flashed when the flint was struck, so were
God and the spirit equally made manifest by innumerable
flashes and appearances, to which only the wilfully ignorant
could be blind.
8. But Fire, although used in the very early ages as a
symbol of the Divine One, was not, as it seems to me, the
first type which they selected. I am of opinion that stone
was that type. Pausanias, in his itinerary through Hellas,
is full of allusions to black stones which he found in the
most ancient temples, and which always represented the
Primeval God (1). But Hellas, as he saw it, was com-
paratively a modern land contrasted with our own, with
Tartary, with China, with Tibet, and with Hindostan.
The colossal temples, circles, and statues which still
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remain with ourselves and in the East, were designed to

represent not simply the First Matter of all things, but
the solidity and cohesion also of the Universe, and by
their immense size the grandeur of the Deity. The
pyramidal or triangular form which Fire also assumes in
its ascent to heaven, was in the monolithic typology used
to signify the Great Generative Power: and we have only
to look at Stonehenge, Ellora, the Babel towers of Central
America, and the gigantic ruins scattered all over Tartary
and India, to see how gloriously they symbolized the
majesty of the Supreme. No image of Jupiter, Mars,
Venus, or any other Pagan deity, says Vallancey, was
ever found in Ireland; but the rough unhewn pillar still
presents itself in every parish. Collect. i. viii. In the old
Egyptian, the name for a stone was Al or El, which became
a name for God also: and Jupiter Lapis was a name in
which He was worshipped through many nations, the La
being Al read backwards: p, the labial, has no significa-
tion; and Is, the latter part of the word occultly alluding
to Isi or Isis, the Issa of the Apocalypse. I have already
pointed out in Part I. page 10, how the ancients symbo-
lized God and the Holy Spirit, or A O, under the images
of the Pillar and Circle, or I O, which also constituted
Ten, the perfect number, or the Decad of Pythagoras.
The Bride-Stones of Congleton, like the Bride-Stones at
Stansfield in Yorkshire, singularly illustrate this. The
Bride-Bed or stone argha itself, is a parallelogram of
gigantic rocks, once solid, and seventeen feet long; they
are raised about five feet above the surface. Two of these
constitute the sides: at the top and bottom are two
enormous stones, so that the bed, or boat, or couch-shaped
receptacle formed a perfect enclosure. In this it symbolized
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the Holy Spirit, conveying the same idea as the Mystic

Circle. But at the head of the argha is a great rock-pillar,
or lingaic emblem of God, nearly ten feet above the surface,
standing apart from the Bride-bed, and yet manifestly
connected with it. The conical summit of this pillar
contains a cavity, shaped somewhat like a patera, or
moderate-sized saucer, and into this cavity wine or oil
were no doubt anciently poured by the Boodh-Druids
who reared this wonderful monument. The symbolical
meaning of this and similar structures, therefore, conveyed
the same idea as Beth-El in Hebrew, the House of God,
or El-Isa-beth, the House of God and Issa, which is com-
memorated in Genesis xxviii, and which we thus find,
living as it were in everlasting stone, in our own land at
the present moment. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep,
and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew
it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is
this place! this is none other but the House of God, and
this is the Gate of Heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the
morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows,
and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of
it. And he called the name of that place Beth-El: but the
name of that city was called Luz at the first. And Jacob
vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep
me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and
raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house
in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: And this stone,
which I have set for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of
all that thou shall give me I will surely give the tenth unto
thee. Observe here that Luz, ‫לוז‬, the original name of this
sacred spot, in Arabic signifies the Almond Tree, an Ori-
ental name and symbol for the Holy Spirit from the be-
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ginning of time. As I can find no account of this most

interesting Gate of Heaven in Ormerod’s History of
Cheshire, where it ought to be, nor indeed anywhere
but in Rowland’s Mona Antiqua, 319; see, post, Note
16, Book V., a slight notice of it, from my own
personal examination, may be useful. It will probably
disappear before long; a bonfire was kindled within it
by some rural savages, many years ago, which had the
effect of destroying its symmetry, and which broke the
mighty stones of which it was formed. Eventually, I
suppose, it will be made into pig-troughs or gate-posts.
So do we with our venerable relics of the Past.
9. And it was for the like mystical reasons that, in
primeval days, mountains, with their attendant vales or
bride-beds, still and lovely lakes embedded amid beauteous
hills, were chosen as the most fit places for joint-worship
of Him who is the Rock or Pillar of Eternity, and Her
who, like embosomed Waters, or the smiling Valley, is
the Essence of all repose, all loveliness, all peace. The
whole Celtic world once prostrated itself before these
emblematic Mountains—the Hindus, Japanese, and
Birmans—nay, the wisest of all peoples, the Chinese,
venerate these types of the Great Father to the present
day; and when the Americas were first discovered by
the Spaniards, the priests of Mexico were wont to select
for their religious incantations rocky caverns, lofty moun-
tains, and the deep gloom of everlasting forests. In short,
every towering hill was reckoned holy; and we are
assured by Melanthes that it was the universal practice
of the ancients to offer sacrifice on the highest mountains
to Him who was accounted the highest God. The same
remark may be made with regard to Islands, and for the
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same symbolical reason. Among the Hindus, the Egyp-

tians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Scythians, the Celts,
and the Americans, they were alike accounted sacred,
and they were alike used for the purposes of devotion:
insomuch that the learned Bailly, struck with this
universal agreement, notices indeed the circumstance,
but is unable to give any satisfactory reason for it.
Letters on Atlantis, page 361. Hence the innumerable
relics of antique religion attached to Sacred Islands, Holy
Wells, &c., &c., even to the present moment: hence the
reverence for Waters of which we have already read so
much: hence, too, the origin of the baptismal waters,
which symbolized immersion in the Holy Spirit.
10. As I am of no party, says Vallancey, have no
system to support, but write for information, and have
produced ancient and respectable authority for everything
here offered, supported by living evidence, the language
of the people, I think it candid to mention that the Irish
Christian writers of the early ages positively assert that
our Hibernian Druids permitted no idol worship, no
graven images: and what seems to confirm this assertion
is, that no images have ever been found in our bogs among
the various relics of Druidism which have been discovered.
They say that the unhewn stones, capped with gold and
silver to represent the Sun and Moon, surrounded with
twelve others to represent the angels [the Twelve
Messengers] presiding over the seasons or months, or by
nineteen others [the Twelve and the Seven Spirits before
the Throne] to represent the lunar cycle, or by twenty-
eight to represent the solar cycle, were the only species of
idolatry to be found: and hitherto experience and obser-
vation lead me to believe it. And this surround of stones
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was called the cill, or kill, from whence cill now implies a
place of devotion, a church; but we meet with many Cill
in Ireland where no traces of a Christian church are to
be found; consequently they receive their names from
the druidical temples which once stood in those places.
The word cill is not from the Latin cella, as some have
imagined, but from the Hebrew, ‫היל‬, chill. The circle
of stones was called cir. Cirgaur [Circle of Fire] was the
ancient name of Stonehenge. Cirgaur exists in many
places in Ireland, particularly near Lough Gaur [Lake
Fire, that is, God and the Spirit: Fire and Water blended
into AO], in the county of Limerick. Collectanea, iv.
cxxxvii. And in this observation this learned writer is
strongly corroborated by the Ogham pillars which still
subsist in Ireland, and which are large upright stones
similar to those mentioned in Genesis, on whose edges
are graven Ogham lines, not unlike those most ancient
and primitive ones which constitute the mystic Koua of
Fo-Hi, the Third Messenger. If the reader will pass into
the British Museum, he will see several of these lingas
on the left hand of the corridor that leads to the galleries
of sculpture: they are probably among the most ancient
records in the world of the primeval worship of God under
the worship of the Stone Al. And a flat circular stone,
like the circlet or oval on the beauteous brow of Isis,
mentioned ante, page 308, symbolized the Holy Spirit.
11. It has been often said, says Sir W. Drummond,
that fiction is the soul of poetry; it may be asserted with
equal truth that among the ancient Oriental nations
fiction was the organ of philosophy. In Asia as well
as in Egypt, the learned class was separated from all the
rest. The priests were accustomed to speak in the lan-
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guage of mystery, and when they communicated their

knowledge to the Initiated, it was generally by types,
enigmas, and allegories. I am aware that it must appear
extraordinary, if not incredible, to many persons in our free-
speaking England, that the discoveries of science should
thus have been shrouded from public view; that the
lessons of philosophy should have been expressed in tropes
and figures, and that important truths should have been
hidden under the semblance of fabulous narrations. But
the institutions, both political and religious, of the ancient
nations of the East, required that knowledge should be
confined to the few; and whether this system of govern-
ment was good or bad, it accounts in great measure for the
obscurity in which the learned enveloped their opinions.
Another cause, perhaps more powerful still, co-operated to
produce this effect. As the science and knowledge of the
learned increased, their opinions with respect to religion
and philosophy differed in proportion from those of the
vulgar. In many countries of Asia the people had become
the slaves of the vilest superstitions; while there were
at least some among the priests, who, in the secret recesses
of their colleges taught the purest doctrines of natural
religion, and made various discoveries in science. To
have published these doctrines, or those discoveries would
have been to turn against themselves the prejudices which
their predecessors had taught the ignorant to revere, and
would have ranged in hostile array against them those
very classes of society which it had been always the object
of their profession rather to govern than to instruct.
When, therefore national curiosity, or national vanity
called upon the priests to give some account of the early
history of their country, and when those priests found
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that if they spoke the truth, they must not only disappoint
public expectation, but confess their own ignorance, it
can scarcely be a matter of surprise that they substituted
fables for facts to amuse the people: while under the Veil
of Allegory they conveyed lessons of instruction to those
who understood their metaphorical language.—Origines,
i. 15.
12. This system eventually led the people into evils of
the most unhappy kind. The superstitions of most
nations, says Davies, must have sprung from the same
kind of gradual corruptions of the primitive religion
as produced the present Roman Catholic and Greek
Church from the pure fountain of the Christian religion.
The primitive nations delivered their sacred doctrines in
mysterious allegories; they had emblems and representa-
tions of the Divine Being, considered in his relative
characters. They grew by degrees into gross abuse, till
at last the populace began under every relative symbol to
imagine a distinct God. The phenomena of nature were
also represented by figures which in time were confounded
with the sacred symbols. Add to this that antiquity
treated the persons and the memory of superiors with
the highest veneration and respect. So far the sentiment
and practice were laudable. But they also distinguished
their ancestors and princes by epithets which were equally
applied to the Supreme Being, such as The Great Father,
The Ruler, The Supreme, The Lofty One; perhaps they
conferred upon them still higher titles, for in the Old
Testament we find such names as Gods, Sons of God, Sons
of the Most High given to human beings. The precise
ideas originally intended by these terms, when so applied,
in time became confused, and men began to regard those
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who had been honoured with them as dignified with a

sacred character, and endowed with a superior nature. (2)
Just so the respect which was once paid to the memory
of the saints and martyrs, and the preservation of their
pictures and statues, were far removed from superstition
and idolatry; but now for many ages men have ascribed
to the same saints an absolute ubiquity, which is an in-
communicable attribute of the Deity. They have invoked
them in their prayers, and have bowed down before their
altars.—Celtic Researches, 86.
13. There was an opinion, says the learned Vallancey,
among the heathen philosophers, that the world is a
parable, in which is an outward appearance of visible
things with an inward sense, which is hidden, as the soul
under the body. (S On the Gods. C . A .
Stromata, lib. 5). Sentiments and science were therefore
expressed by wise men of all professions in ancient times
under certain signs and symbols . . . . and wisdom hath
been communicated in this form by the teachers of every
science. We might wonder if it were not so, when God,
from the beginning of the world, taught men after this
form. The Egyptian wisdom delivered all things under
signs and figures, speaking to the mind rather by visible
objects than by words, and conveying instruction under a
hidden form, which only the wise could understand.
Collectanea. v. They adopted the mulberry tree (Kad-
mis) for the symbol of wisdom, of science, and of numerals
[commemorating in this a name of the First Messenger]
the vine for the symbol of literary characters. This
allegory gave rise to the Arbor Sephiroth of the cabbalis-
tical Jews, which they pictured winding its branches
round the Egyptian letter Tau, T, sacred to Thoth, and
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this was called the Intellectual Tree, the Tree of Numbers,

and of science. Norden has given us the drawing of an
Egyptian monument, where the Arbor intellectualis is
finely expressed. Pl. lviii. Here is represented a Tree
with an oval scutcheon placed in the midst of the branches.
The Greeks, mistaking Neith, the God of war, for Nath,
the God of Wisdom, united both in Minerva; the oval
then became the shield of Pallas; but it was also a yoni
type. (3) On this oval are engraved three lines, sur-
rounded by a circle or another oval, in which the Triune
are indicated as being under the Sun-Father. On the
left of the Tree is a standing figure, which I take to be
God revealing knowledge. On the right is a female
figure, which I consider the Holy Spirit, and between
them a smaller figure is seated, which is the Messenger,
who appears about to pluck some of the fruit with one
hand, while in the other he holds a door-post, or trilithon
indicating that he had already grasped the mystic
secret, which Stonehenge and all similar temples still
make manifest to the eye. As cognate to this it may be
added here that the Egyptian hieroglyphic of the Messen-
ger was a triple branch, in the form given by Kircher,
Obel Pamphil; and also by Count Caylus. At the top of
the figure may be discovered the mystic branch called
Shumrakh by the Arabians, which ornamented the cadu-
ceus of Mercury. It is the shamrock of the Irish, which
grows with three leaves united; from this ornament the
caduceus is styled by Homer the golden three-leaved
wand, Ραβδον ξρυσειην τριπετηλον. In Irish sheamar
signifies a cluster; hence clover or trefoil is so called, and
shamrock is the smaller trefoil growing in thick bunches.
The fabled Saint Patrick is said to have taught the Irish
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the secret of the Trinity under this symbol. It resembles

the  and the vine bunch reversed , with a
connecting stem. See, ante, page 203.
14. Herodotus, says Bryant, lived early, and was a man
of curiosity and experience, one who for the sake of
knowledge had travelled over a variety of countries. If
any one could have obtained an insight into the theology
of the times in which he lived, he bade fair to have
obtained it. But he shows that it was all a dreary pros-
pect: that he could find nothing satisfactory in which he
could confide. As he was solicitous to obtain some
information he betook himself to Dodona, and made
inquiry among the priests of that temple, which was
reputed the most ancient in Greece. But they ingenu-
ously owned that they did not know who the Deities
were to whom they made their offerings. They had
indeed distinguished them by names and titles: but these
were adventitious and of late date, in comparison of the
worship, which was of great antiquity. Hence the author
concludes with this melancholy confession concerning
the gods of his country, that he did not know how they
first came into the world, nor how long they had been in
it; nor could he tell what sort of beings they were. He
believed that their nature and origin had always been a
secret; and that even the Pelasgi who first introduced
them and their rites, were equally unacquainted with
their history. Analysis, iii. 434. From this it would
appear that even in the days of Herodotus [ . . 484] a
good deal of the knowledge of symbolic worship had been
lost; though I cannot believe in the ignorance which is
attributed to the chief pontiffs. But the loss of any part
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of the true knowledge is a proof of its remote origin in

remotest ages.
15. This symbolism, which has always prevailed in the
East, and which is so marked a characteristic of the
Apocalypse as to stamp it beyond question as of pure orien-
tal birth, is accounted for by Daubuz in his strange work on
the Apocalypse. The Egyptians, Chaldæans, and Phœni-
cians, he says, having at first no characters to express the
sound of their words, fell upon contriving and framing a
symbolical way of writing, to represent their conceptions
by such figures of visible objects as did, according to their
notion of them, bear some analogy and affinity to the
objects of their conceptions; adapting thus the visible
images variously modelled or compounded together,
according to the present notions and designs of the
author, who by a certain combination of several visible
images, ordered according to analogy, made a full de-
scription of his thoughts. Or at least if it may not be
granted that they wanted then the literal characters,
they made use of this abstruse and mysterious character,
and the language arising from it, to keep their knowledge
from the eyes and reach of the people: truth appearing
greater and more venerable when it has passed through the
veil of hieroglyphical symbols, as Clement of Alexandria
has well observed. (4.) However from this way of
writing arose a symbolical way of speaking too: the
symbolical which they were so conversant in furnishing
them continually with metaphors and other tropes; first
in their mysterious, or religious speeches, and from thence
easily passing on to the vulgar matters; which kind of
speech set up the priests and wiser sort of men above the
level of the vulgar; because such a figurative and florid
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kind of speech and notions seemed to add a great beauty

to their thoughts, and distinguished that of wise men
from the plain style of the rest. Hence it comes that
most of the Oriental languages, especially that of the
Poets, affect this way, and we find still in the modern
some relies thereof. Nay, this passed into their sciences
so far, that most of their rules and maxims of wisdom
were couched someway or other in such figures or symbols;
and from them was communicated to the first philoso-
phers among the Greeks, who went into Egypt or
Chaldæa for instruction.
16. Schubert does not hesitate to assign the highest
origin to symbolic language. It is very striking, he
says, that in all ages, all people have clothed the ideas of
their dreams in the same imagery. It may therefore be
asked whether that language which now occupies so low
a place in the estimation of men be not the actually waking
language of the higher regions, while we, awake as
we fancy ourselves, may not be sunk in a sleep of many
thousand years, or at least in the echo of their dreams;
and only intelligibly catch a few dim words of that lan-
guage of God, as sleepers do scattered expressions from
the loud conversation of those around them. (S
D .)
17. It is the glory of God to conceal a thing, says
the compiler of Solomon’s proverbs; and this maxim
has influenced priests and theologians from the most
early period. When Ptolemy procured a copy of
the Law of Amosis, as it is said, he observed that
the Hebrew Legislator seemed to have been too
curious in little matters, such as the prohibition of meats
and drinks. Eleazer, the chief Rabbi, explained
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that there was a hidden design in all, different from what

appeared on the surface; and that these were but outward
cautions against certain vices. Wherefore Philo-Judæus
likens the whole Law to a living creature, whose body is
the literal sense; but the life is the more inward and
hidden meaning. The old Asiatic style, says Warburton,
so highly figurative, seems likewise by what we find of
its remains in the prophetic language of the sacred writers,
to have been evidently fashioned to the mode of ancient
hieroglyphics. For, as in hieroglyphic writing, the Sun,
Moon, and Stars, were used to represent states and em-
pires, kings, queens, and nobility; their eclipse and
extinction, temporary disasters, or entire overthrow; fire
and flood, desolation by war and famine; plants or animals,
the qualities of particular persons, etc.; so in like manner,
the holy prophets call kings and empires by the names of
the heavenly luminaries; their misfortunes and overthrow
are represented by eclipses and extinctions; stars falling
from the firmament are employed to denote the destruc-
tion of the nobility; thunder and tempestuous winds,
hostile invasions; lions, bears, leopards, goats, or high
trees, leaders of armies, conquerors, and founders of
empires; royal dignity is described by purple or a crown,
iniquity by spotted garments, error and misery by an
intoxicating draught, a warrior by a sword or bow, a
powerful man by a gigantic stature, and a judge by balance,
weights, and measures. In a word, the prophetic style
seems to be a speaking hieroglyphic. Div. Leg. ii. 153.
18. The observations of Payne Knight upon the
doctrine of Emanations, as they are connected with the
subject of symbolism, seem to be not inappropriate to
this place. This general emanation, he says, of the
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pervading Spirit of God, by whom all things are gene-

rated and maintained, is beautifully described by Virgil
in the following lines :—
Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque maris, cœlumque profundum,
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas
Scilicet huc reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia; nec morti esse locum, sed viva volare
Sideris in numerum, atque alto succedere cœlo.
G . iv. 221.
For God the whole created mass inspires,
Through heaven and earth and ocean’s depth he throws
His influence round, and kindles as he goes,
Hence flocks and herds and men and beasts and fowls
With breath are quickened and attract their souls;
Hence take the forms his prescience did ordain,
And into him at length resolve again;
No room is left for death, they mount the sky
And to their own congenial planets fly.
D .
The Ethereal Spirit is here described as expanding itself
through the Universe, and giving life and motion to
the inhabitants of earth, water, and air, by a participation
of its own essence; each particle of which returned to
its native source, at the dissolution of the body which
it animated. Hence, not only men, but all animals and
vegetables, were supposed to be impregnated with some
particles of the Divine Nature infused into them, from
which their various qualities and dispositions, as well
as their powers of propagation, were supposed to be
S2
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derived. These appeared to be so many emanations of

the Divine Attributes, operating in different modes and
degrees, according to the nature of the beings to which
they belonged. Hence the characteristic properties of
animals and plants were not only regarded as represen-
tations, but as actual emanations of the Divine Power,
consubstantial with his own essence. For this reason the
symbols were treated with greater respect and veneration,
than if they had been merely signs and characters of
convention. Plutarch says that most of the Egyptian
priests held the Bull Apis, who was worshipped with
so much ceremony, to be only an image of the Spirit
of Osiris (De. Is. and Os.) This I take to have been the
real meaning of all the animal worship of the Egyptians,
about which so much has been written and so little
discovered. Those animals or plants in which any
particular attribute of the Deity seemed to predominate,
became the symbols of that attribute, and were accordingly
worshipped as the images of Divine Providence, acting
in that particular direction. Like many other customs
both of ancient and modern worship, the practice probably
continued long after the reasons upon which it was
founded, were either wholly lost or only partially preserved
in vague traditions. This was the case in Egypt: for though
many of the priests knew or conjectured the origin of the
worship of the Bull, they could give no rational account
why the Crocodile, the Ichneumon, and the Ibis, received
similar honours (5). And this, even in the present
degenerate age, is the Hindu religious doctrine also, if
we are to credit it as given by Ward. The whole system
of Hindu theology, he says, is founded upon the doctrine
that the Divine Spirit as the soul of the Universe,
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becomes in all animate beings united to matter: that

Spirit is insulated, or individuated by particular portions
of Matter, which it is continually quitting, and joining
itself to new portions of Matter: that the human soul is
in other words a portion of God himself.
19. A passage of Porphyry, quoted by Eusebius (Prœp.
Evang. iii. 7), will give a sufficient idea of the manner in
which our forefathers sometimes explained the symbols.
God being a luminous Principle, residing in the midst of fire
the most subtle, He remains for ever invisible to the eyes
of those who do not elevate themselves above material
life: on this account the sight of transparent bodies, such
as crystal, Parian marble, and even ivory recalls the idea
of Divine Light: as the sight of gold excites an idea of
its purity, for gold cannot be sullied. Some have thought
that by a black stone was signified the invisibility of the
Divine Essence. To express supreme reason the Divinity
was represented under the human form; and beautiful,
for God is the source of beauty; of different ages and in
various attitudes; of one or the other sex, as a Virgin or a
Young Man, a husband or a bride, that all the gradations
might be marked. Everything luminous was subsequently
attributed to the gods: the sphere and all that is spherical
to the Universe, to the Sun and the Moon, and sometimes
to Fortune and to Hope. The circle and all circular
figures to Eternity, to the celestial movements, to the
circles and zones of the heavens. The section of circles
to the phases of the Moon; and pyramids and obelisks to
the Fiery Principle, and through that to the gods of
heaven. A cone expresses the Sun; a cylinder the earth;
the phallos and triangle (a symbol of the matrix) designate
generation (6). Most of these symbols, as we learn from
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Clement of Alexandria, belonged to the Mysteries. Coh.

ad Gentes, p. 17. That which I have named last is of
the highest antiquity; the Indians have always employed
it. Fra Paolino da San Bartolomeo has published from
the Borgian Museum, in his Systema Brahmanicum, a
Yoni under the figure of a triangle in a lotos flower. See
on the Indian symbols, a fragment of Porphyry, quoted
by Stobœus in Eclog. Phys. lib. i. c. 4, § 56, and inserted
in the Porphyry of Holstenius, page 182. See also, ante
page 251.
20. Akin to this symbol was the point within the circle,
which indicated at times God, and at others Sol Ipse, the
Sun himself. It was an emblem of great importance
amongst the British Druids. Their temples were circular:
many of them with a single stone erected in the centre;
the solemn processions were all arranged in the same
form; their weapons of war, the circular shield with a
central boss, the spear with a hollow globe at its end, &c.,
all partaking of this general principle: and without
a circle it was thought impossible to obtain the favour
of the gods. The rites of divination could not be securely
and successfully performed unless the operator was pro-
tected within the consecrated periphery of a magical
circle. The plant vervain was supposed to possess the
virtue of preventing the effects of fascination, if gathered
ritually with an iron instrument, at the rising of the
dog-star, accompanied with the essential ceremony of
describing a circle, on the turf, the circumference of which
shall be equally distant from the plant, before it be taken
up. (B . Ant. Corn., p. 91, from Pliny.) There once
existed in the sister country, a curious and not ungraceful
symbolism of the marriage of the Sun and Moon. It
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appears to have now died out, as many excellent things do:

but what it meant to symbolize was—though the vulgar
did not know it—as the union of the Sun and Moon
in the Naros is blest by the Epiphany of the Messenger,
so may your nuptials be graced with equal prosperity.
In some parts of Ireland, says Vallancey, as the counties
of Waterford and Kilkenny, the brides married since
the last May day, are compelled to furnish the young
people with a ball covered with gold lace, and another
covered with silver lace finely adorned with silver tassels:
the price of those sometimes amounts to two guineas;
these balls, the symbols of the Sun and Moon, are
suspended in a hoop [the zodiack] ornamented with
flowers, which hoop represents the circular path of
Belus, or the Sun, and in this manner they walk in
procession from house to house. Collectanea, ii, 65.
21. How passionately fond of symbolism, allegory,
metaphor, and fable, all the ancients thus in time
became, it would be waste of ink to shew: every relic
of past ages proves it to the naked eye. It was the
favourite language of most of the Messengers, and of
Jesus in particular, as we shall see when we examine
their holy writings and discourses. The mistake which
moderns commit is in literally interpreting this metapho-
rical language: as fanatics literally interpret the oriental
metaphors of the Ninth Messenger; they will not give
the ancients credit for having a deep and scientific meaning
in their modes of speech, but they absurdly suppose them
to be as foolish as their fables taken to the letter would
imply them to be. The mind grows prejudiced against
them because they are first read at school, in mythological
dictionaries and pantheons, which are the compilation of
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school masters or grammarians; a class of men utterly

incapable of penetrating their veiled splendour; too base
and cowardly to venture on unknown paths: and who
with a rage for explanation that would be ridiculous if it
were not hurtful, offer the most absurd solutions of things
that they are entirely unable to comprehend (7). Of these
remarkable instances have been furnished by Abbè
Pluche, Le Clerc, Pomey, Huet, Bochart, W. Smith, and
Abbè Banier, all of them scholiasts; not one of them a
scholar. Other names in great numbers could be added
to the list, but I forbear to do so, as the men wrote for
bread, and not for Truth, which is not always so saleable
a commodity as falsehood or even folly. For one who
will read these volumes of mine, which are the fruit of
more than twenty years’ thought, research, and labour,
and which I publish not for reward, but for the education
of the earth, and renovation of mankind, fifty will gloat
over, with an idiotic delight, the slang and folly, the
filth, drivel, and corruption, which are served up
weekly or monthly for the public amusement, and which
debase and putrify all who participate in the loathsome
banquet.
22. Plutarch, no very profound writer, it must be owned,
though always an honest one, has nevertheless shewn
the folly and injustice of this mode of judging Anti-
quity. When you hear, he says, the mythological relations
which the Egyptians give of their gods, their wanderings,
their being torn in pieces, together with many other
accidents of a similar nature which are said to have
befallen them, remember what has been just now observed,
and assure yourself that nothing of what is thus told you
is really true, or ever happened in fact. For can it be
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imagined that it is the Dog himself that is thus reverenced

by them under the name of Hermes? they are the qualities
of this animal, his constant vigilance, and his acumen in
distinguishing his friends from his foes, which have ren-
dered him, as Plato expresses it, a fit emblem of that God,
who is the more immediate patron of reason. Nor can
we suppose it to be their opinion that the Sun, like a
new-born infant, springs up every day afresh out of the
Lotus plant. ’Tis true indeed they do characterise the
rising Sun in this manner, but the reason is that they may
hereby signify to us that it is moisture [he means Water,
the Holy Spirit] to which we owe the first kindling of
this luminary.
23. The fables of the ancients, says Taylor, are in their
secret meaning, utility and construction, the most beautiful
and admirable pieces of composition which the mind of man
is capable of framing, though nothing has been so little
understood, or so shamefully abused. . . . The First
Cause, according to the Pythagorean and Platonic philos-
ophers on account of his transcendent simplicity, was
called The One; this name being adapted, the best of all
others, to a nature truly Ineffable and Unknown. But it
is impossible that such a Nature could produce this visible
world without mediums; since if this had been the case,
all things must have been like himself, natures Ineffable
and Unknown. It is necessary therefore that there should
be certain Mighty Powers between the First Cause and us;
for we are nothing more than the dregs of the universe.
These mighty Powers [the Holy Spirit—the Archangelic
Splendours] from their surpassing similitude to the First
God, were very properly called by the ancients, gods; and
were considered by them as perpetually subsisting in the
S 3
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most admirable and profound union with each other, and

the First Cause: yet so as amidst this union to preserve
their own essence distinct from that of the Highest God.
Hence, as Proclus beautifully observes, they may be com-
pared to trees rooted in the earth; for as these by their
roots are united with the earth, and become earthly in
an eminent degree without being earth itself, so the gods
by their summits are profoundly united to the First Cause,
and by this means are transcendently similar to, without
being, the First Cause. But these Mighty Powers are
called by the poets a golden chain, on account of their
connection with each other, and their incorruptible nature.
Now, the first of these Powers you may call Intellectual;
the second Vivific; the third Pæonian [curative and healing],
and so on; which the ancients, desiring to signify to us
by names, have symbolically denominated. Hence, says
Olympiodorus, in MS. comment in Gorgiam, we ought not
to be disturbed on hearing such names as a Saturnian
Power, the power Jupiter, and such like, but explore
the things to which they allude (8). Thus, for instance,
by a Saturnian power rooted in the First Cause, understand
a Pure Intellect; for κρονος or Saturn is κορος νους, that
is ὁ καθαρος or a Pure Intellect. Hence, says Olympio-
dorus, we call those that are pure and virgins, κοραι. He
adds: On this account poets say, that Saturn devoured
his children, and afterwards again sent them into the light,
because intellect is converted to itself, seeks itself, and is
itself sought; but he again refunds them, because intellect
not only seeks and procreates, but produces into light,
and benefits. Again the ancient theologists called life by the
name of Zeus, to whom they gave a two-fold appellation, Δια
and Ζηνα, signifying by these names that he gives life through
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himself. Notes to Pausanias. iii. 221. So the ancients,

he says, with great propriety dedicated a burning lamp to
Minerva, as she is the Goddess of Wisdom; for as Truth
is light itself, and has a most intimate alliance with Wisdom,
it is impossible that any corporeal substance can more
aptly symbolize with Wisdom than sensible Light. Page
242. And this symbol common to all peoples, and which
may be traced up to the primeval ages, was suggested
originally by the burning lamps, the lamps of fire, and the
lamp-bearers of the Adamic Apocalypse. Δια is a symbolical
word, which indicates Bi-Une AO. Δ is the Triangle: IA
is the Hebrew ϒΑ, and IE or God.
24. And here it would be well to note that it was to
prevent idolatry the Egyptian priests added the head of a
Bull, a Lion, a Horse, a Hawk, an Ibis, or a Dog to their
images of the gods: for this indeed shewed that it was
not a man who was worshipped, but a Divine Being.
The Greeks, not knowing this, or disregarding it, or
preferring the beauty of the human figure for their
sculpture, made all their images of God, or the Godlike,
in human form; which gradually gave rise to the notion
that they were only men and women who had been deified,
and thus generated the very idolatry against which the
primal priests had hoped to guard their followers (9). So
true it is that out of good evil comes, as out of evil good
issues. This primeval abhorrence of idolatry is shewn by
what Diogenes Laertius relates of Epimenides, that when
he was about to raise a temple to Three Nymphs, he was
commanded by a Voice from Heaven to desist; the Voice
saying, Not to the Nymphs, but to God: words which
seem as if they had been suggested by the very language
of the Apocalypse itself, in the final section of that sacred
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Revelation. See Part I. page 611. These Three Nymphs,

like the Three Doves, ante page 275, indicated the Holy
Spirit; to whom Epimenides was thus forbidden to pay
divine honours.
25. Nature, as a whole, says Duncan, and each of the
component parts of Nature, formed the objects of ancient
religion. In the earlier stages of society, the world was
supposed to be a purely material machine. As civilization
advanced, this opinion was superseded by the doctrine
which taught that Nature was vitally animated by some
unknown Ethereal Principle; and at length it was
believed that Nature and all its parts was not only
animated, but endowed with Intelligence, and the whole
Universe governed by a Divine Intellectual Soul. The
idols of antiquity, the statues and paintings of the gods,
and the animals, plants, and minerals selected for adora-
tion, formed, as it were, an immense mirror which reflected
the entire face of Nature, and the working of its different
phenomena. In this view of the subject, images occupy
but the second rank in the chain of objects of worship;
and whoever desires to seize the real spirit of the system,
must detach his thoughts from the mere idol and fix them
on the original type, and consider the material symbol as
the expression of an intellectual idea which the priesthood
endeavoured to render palpable to the senses of the vulgar
through the medium of statues and paintings. It cannot
be denied, he adds, that the vulgar in all ages have con-
founded idols with their original types; but if this common
error be chargeable against the Sabæists and the various
polytheistic sects of antiquity, the whole Christian world
prior to the Reformation was obnoxious to a similar
accusation. If Egypt adored the Dog and the Crocodile,
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the Onion and the Lotus, Christendom reverenced the

bones, the hair, and the nails of dead men; nor can that
heroic worship which deified in Osiris the Egyptian
inventor of husbandry, be consistently blamed by a church
which conferred the honours of saintship on St. Dominic,
the founder of the Inquisition. The priests of the Nile
are entitled to the same indulgence from philosophy as
those of the Tiber; and the impartial and liberal judge
will distinguish between the uses and abuses of their
respective institutions. In both there was a concealed
and sacred meaning, and though the means to the end
may be condemned, yet the end itself was piety. The
Religions of Profane Antiquity, 261.
26. The Emperor Julian, in one of his replies to the
early Christian polemics, has left on record the sentiments
of many in the heathen world on the subject of idol
worship. The statues of the gods, he says, the altars
raised to them, the sacred fire kept burning in their
honour, and, in general, all symbols of this nature, have
been consecrated by our ancestors as signs of the presence
of the gods; not that we worship them literally, but that
through their aid we may have a more sensible idea of
the existence of the Celestial Deities. The gods, being
spiritual and incorporeal, have presented to our view
substantial images of themselves in those heavenly bodies
which are everlastingly circulating in the firmament.
Now, as we cannot pay an immediate worship to the first
order of deities, who in truth do not require our homage,
we have established a third order of gods on the earth in
images and statues; and the reverence paid to those
symbols conciliates the favour and ensures the protection
of the first order of deities. For, as they who honour
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the statues of princes procure their patronage and regard,

although this homage in no respect increases the happiness
of the prince, so in like manner we pay respect to the
images of the gods, who, though not benefitted by our
adoration, nevertheless reward our pious gratitude by
their favours. It is among the proofs of a truly religious
mind to render to the deities all the homage in its power;
for, although it neither adds to their glory nor happiness,
still it is the duty of the creature to worship the Creator.
We ought not only to sing hymns in their praise, but to
honour them with the works of our hands, with images
and statues, which mode of adoration has for three
thousand years been a distinguishing feature in all the
religions of antiquity. Julian then touches upon the
particular point of idol worship. We are not so blind or
ignorant, writes the Emperor, as to regard as gods the
manufactured productions of our own hands: neither do
we consider our images and statues as mere pieces of
wood and stone, nor as actual deities. Whoever loves
his king is pleased with possessing his statue or his
picture: the father who loves his son, the son who loves
his father, are both gratified at beholding that which
recals the features of the original. For a similar reason,
he who reverences the gods contemplates with satisfaction
their statues and images, adoring with pious awe those
invisible Beings whose eyes are always fixed upon his
conduct. These images formed by our hands may be
destroyed: but those which the first order of deities have
created as visible representatives of themselves [that is,
the celestial bodies] are incorruptible and indestructible.
J . I . F . pp. 537, 540. Akin to this in spirit,
but far inferior in eloquence, nerve, or philosophy, is the
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defence of the celebrated Bossuet for the idolatry of his

church. To set up images, he says, is to make more
palpable the mysteries and the examples which sanctify
us. This institution may be misunderstood in three ways
by the ignorant. They may imagine that the Divine
Nature is really represented; or that it is contained in
images; or images may be supposed to be filled with
certain virtues, on account of which they are honoured.
These are three varieties of idolatry. But the Council
of Trent has rejected these errors in precise terms, so
that it is not permitted to attribute to one image more
virtue than to another, unless, indeed, in memory of some
miracle, or on account of some pious history calculated to
excite feelings of devotion. Luther himself and the
Lutherans will prove that the worship of images thus
purified does not fall within the prohibition of the
decalogue; and the adoration paid to them is obviously
nothing more than a sensible outward testimony of a
pious recollection which they excite. The simple and
natural effect of the silent homage attached to those holy
representations becomes doubly useful, because it falls
within the comprehension of all mankind. Hist. des
Variations, tome ii. p. 641. It is no part of my mission
either to praise or to censure the use of images: but of
this I feel quite sure, that the Idea of the Divine which the
contemplation of a beautiful Image awakens in the mind,
is far more conducive to religious faith, than the dreary
blank which exists in the comprehension of the man, who
gazes upon a naked wall or the royal arms.
27. While I assert, says Maurice, that the Unity of
God is the principle which forms the basis of the pure,
primeval, sublime theology of Brahma; while I allow
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that the Solar Fire is a noble symbol of that divine,

all-vivifying, all pervading Energy that supports and
animates creation, I may surely be permitted to assert
that of India, which is so true of all other countries, that
in every age there have not been wanting priests sufficiently
artful and base for venal purposes to veil the awful truth
from the eye of the multitude; I may surely be allowed
to insist upon what the theological history of every nation
fatally justifies, that the Deity is too frequently forgotten
in the contemplation of that very symbol which was
originally intended to impress upon the devout soul the
more immediate sense of his presence; and that the image
itself has often received the homage due to the Divinity
represented. Indian Antiquities, i. 106. Maurice did
not add, because he was a priest, that as to this order of
men such idolatry is owing, so all our wrath should be
vented on their heads; nor did he point out that, as in
all countries they have been the parents of superstition,
so in all countries they denounce the superstitions that
are not their own as being the madness of the people,
while they are in reality but the fabrications of their
mercenary teachers.
28. And this being so, is it possible to conceive any
crime greater than that committed by our own priests
and missionaries, who impudently proclaim day by day
from their pulpits and in their tracts that the ancient
sages really did worship the creatures of which the images
remain in stone and fresco? They detail the absurdities
of the poets, as if these were the absolute creed of the
wise; they speak of the amours of Zeus and the licen-
tiousness of Venus, but never add that almost every
ancient philosopher as well as Plutarch declares “that
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nothing of what is thus told is really true, or ever

happened in fact;” they wilfully keep their hearers, who
have no time or wish—alas ! alas ! that it should be so—
to inquire for themselves, in woful ignorance that the
whole of those images with which our Museums are
crowded and our books of travel are filled, are nothing
but palpable symbols of the old Divine Creed which once
was throned supreme over the earth. Thus, how common
is it to hear, as we pace the sculptured galleries of the
Past, and see in this a human shape with the head of a
Cat, a Dog, or a Lion, or in that some compound figure
in which the forms of many beings are blended—how
often, I say, do we hear exclamations of regret or horror
arise from the surrounding pulpit-taught groups as they
dilate upon the blasphemous or blind idolatry of the
Ancient World. They are ignorant that all on which
they look is typical: that no nation ever believed that
their deities were animal-headed, or goat-legged, or cistern-
shaped; and they who are the paid and public teachers
of the Church, who call themselves gentlemen, scholars,
and priests of the Most High, instead of elevating their
minds from this degraded slough of ignorance, on the
contrary, depress them farther and deeper into it, by
allowing them to believe that what their eyes see is a
true picture of primeval religion. When they point out
to them a Wolf, the priests pretend that the ancients
worshipped this creature; they conceal from them that a
Wolf was an emblem of Light and Truth, and that the
true meaning of Romulus having been suckled by a
She-Wolf simply is, that the founder of the Roman state
had been brought up under the auspices of some great
and venerable teacher of wisdom and religion. They
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look upon a Tortoise, and tell them that it was adored;

they do not tell them that the Tortoise is simply a symbol
of the immoveable stability which the great Creator has
imparted to this Universe. Some dog-faced Deity stands
before them, and the guides exclaim: Behold a god of the
Egyptians! but they know well, or, if not, they ought to
know, that a Dog was the sacred emblem of the Incarna-
tion himself, and that it thus gradually became a type of
the priestly order, but that it never was regarded in itself
as divine (10). So the Lion, the Bull, the Eagle, the Ram,
the Crocodile, the Serpent, the Sphinx, the Griffin, the
Scarabæus, the Horse, the Cock, the Elephant, are all
symbolic either of God himself, or of the Sun, as an
image of God, or of the Holy Spirit, who is his most
direct and immediate representative, or of the Divine
Messenger whom he sends to earth. A crane was sacred
to the Sun; hence Thoth is always imaged ibis-headed,
Thoth being a Child of the Sun. This Egyptian crane
received its name from the ‫אש‬, As, Fire, and ‫אב‬, Ab,
Father, because the Ibis was consecrated to the God of
Light, the Fire-Father of the Universe. Abbot and
Abbess are cognates of this word. So a Woman with
a horse’s or a lion’s head, or with any other of the animal
emblems just named, means the Holy Spirit of the
Heavens crowned with the Sun: each of those creatures
being hieroglyphs of the solar energy: and the Peacock
which always accompanies the image of Juno is but a
symbol of that Divine Spirit of the starry firmament in
which the Queen of Heaven dwells, and of the starry
Messenger of Light who descends from those heavens to
man. And the like symbolism pervades and is the hidden
poetry of all past religion.
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29. For the purposes of more full illustration, one or two

familiar instances of these misrepresentations or blunders
may be noted. Thoth, which was the name of the Sixth
Messenger of God, means, among other things in the old
Phœnician, a Dog; but this Dog was, from the most ancient
period of Egyptian history, known as a symbol of a priestly
Incarnation. Hence Thoth, for these reasons, was typified
by his countrymen as the Man-Dog Anubis; and this very
word Anubis, a cognate of Ibis, comes from hannobeach,
the Barker, the Awakener [see A , section 29],
or Warner—the one who announced heavenly tidings:
hence, also, Diana, the name for the Holy Spirit, is
always drawn accompanied by a Dog; and the constella-
tion Virgo comprises the Virgin and the Messianic Dog.
And in their legendary tales he was called Æsculapius,
the Great Physician (of souls), which is a compound of
‫איש כלב‬, Aish Caleb, the Dog of Issa or Isis; it also
means a Man-Dog; and a Dog with a lyre is a common
Egyptian hieroglyph for the Messiah. And in allusion to
this the Greek word κυνηθεος, or Dog-god, was given to
Zeus in his Messianic character: he, as well as Diana,
was also called κυνηγετης, or the dog-leader. How shock-
ing, therefore, is it to hear Christian teachers gravely
preach that this is proof that in Egypt they adored a Dog
or a man with a dog’s head—a Monster. Yet this is
what they do. And it is no more true than what the
Pagan Jester said when he averred that the Jews adored
pork because they refused to eat it. So the missionaries
pretend that the Hindus adore elephants (11) and serpents,
because Wisdom is typified among them by the Elephant,
and Eternity by the Serpent; and both are in this
emblematic way imaged in their oratories and temples.
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And as the Elephant was the choicest symbol of Wisdom

in India, so the Holy Spirit was called the White
Elephant, and God was the Lord of the White Elephant;
a title which the Kings of Siam and Pegu afterwards
blasphemously assumed, and by which they mean to
assimilate themselves to the Supreme. And as the Dog
signified the Messenger in Egypt, so in Hindostan the
same idea was symbolized by a Monkey; and in the old
sculptures of Hindostan a monkey-headed Man typifies
the heavenly Avatara or Messiah; and an army of
monkeys indicates his host of followers. And the same
order of types is almost universal throughout the East—
to the great gain of fanatics, and to the lasting loss of
their fools. Even scholars like Selden are at times
misled by the crowd; for he wrote a learned book to
prove that the Assyrians worshipped Venus as a Fish,
whereas the truth is that Venus was simply a name for
the Holy Spirit, to whom that great people paid peculiar
homage; and the Fish was an emblem of her who ariseth
fruitful out of the Waters, as it was also of the Sacred
Messenger of Truth whom she sends forth. [See Part I.
pp. 247, 294, 327.] And as the Dog (Cohen, κυων) was
an emblem of the Incarnation, so in time it came to be a
symbol of his priests. Hence the old fable attached to
the Temple of Vulcan Ætneus. This temple was said to
be guarded by Dogs whose sense of smelling was so
exquisite that they could discern whether the persons that
came thither were chaste and religious, or whether they
were wicked. They used to meet and flatter and follow
the good, esteeming them the acquaintances and friends
of their master Vulcan; but they barked and flew at the
bad, and never left off tearing them till they had driven
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them away—all typical of that almost divine instinct by

which the wise and good detect the evil, however
speciously they may contrive to mask their nature. So,
when Pliny and Solinus say that some cantons of Ethiopia
elected a Dog for their King, a pontiff is meant, though
neither of these writers probably knew it. In this
ænigmatical way did the priests perpetually hide their
mystic secrets. Again, Oreb, ‫ערב‬, is a Raven, which
was the ancient symbol for a priest, and probably a black
priest. Therefore, when waters are said to have flowed
from Oreb, it means that from a priest descended waters
of salvation, or doctrines of divine truth, to those who
wandered in a wilderness. As a curious proof of the
ambiguity of Hebrew, this word oreb also means a mer-
chant, and Elijah fed by ravens means a man fed by the
wandering Bedouins or the merchant caravans. 1 Kings,
xvii. Again, as God from the most ancient times was
typified by a Rock, so the Holy Spirit, his primary and
most splendid Emanation, was typified by the Waters of
Life that burst out of this Rock; and thus we find that
unity in purpose of the double and triple typology which
characterises all the sacred writings of the Past. Nay,
the whole of this species of parable tinges all the Oriental
theosophy even to the present day; and our Paulite
writers, priests, and missionaries found innumerable but
most gold-producing falsehoods upon it.
30. In the Asiatic Researches we find a curious relic
of this primeval symbolism. Quitting “the thousand
temples” [a name given to a group of ancient temples at
Prambanan in Java], and returning again in a southerly
direction, we meet a single unconnected temple which
the Javanese call, for I know not what reason Chandi
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Asak, or the Temple of the Dog. It is a shapeless

ruin containing nothing remarkable. Proceeding still
further in the same direction, but not in all above 300
yards from “the thousand temples,” we come to a small
group, which contains about 15 temples, including one large
central one. These are of the pyramidal form. The
entrance is by a single gate to the eastern side, guarded
by warders. The central temple has no less than 12 empty
niches of various sizes. Vol. xiii. 342. This Temple of
the Dog, which so puzzled the explorer [Mr. Crawford],
was a Temple dedicated to the Messenger under that
symbol; it contained no doubt in each of the twelve
niches images of the Twelve Messiahs in their pontifical
or judicial characters. In the centre the principal figure
was one in high relief on a large block of black stone.
I am at a loss, says Mr. Crawford, to point out what
Indian divinity is intended to be represented by it, as
the usual emblems of the Hindu gods are not discoverable
on it. I consider this a proof of its remote antiquity.
Both it and the temple were raised long before Brahmin-
ism had existence. Here Mr. Crawford leaves the subject:
but I know that the image represented the Holy Spirit
surrounded by her Twelve Sons.
31. Bryant who, notwithstanding some fanatical whims,
may be regarded as our greatest mythologist, and who wrote
when mythology was better understood than in the dark
ages of Selden, has the following passage, which seems
pertinent here. The term Cunocephalus, Κυνοκεφαλος, he
says, is an Egyptian compound: and this strange history
relates to the priests of the country, styled Cohen; also
to the novices in their temples; and to the examinations,
which they were obliged to undergo before they could be
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admitted to the priesthood. To explain this, I must take

notice that in early times they built their temples upon
eminences, for many reasons; but especially for the sake
of celestial observations. The Egyptians were much
addicted to the study of astronomy: and they used to
found their colleges in upper Egypt upon rocks and hills
called by them Caph. These, as they were sacred to the
Sun, were farther denominated Caph-El, and sometimes
Caph Aur and Caph Arez. The term Caph-El, which
often occurs in history, the Greeks uniformly changed
to Κεφαλη, Cephalè: and from Cahen-Caph-El, the sacred
rock of Orus, they formed Κυνοκεφαλη, and Κυνοκεφαλος;
which they supposed to relate to an animal with the head
of a dog. But this Cahen-Caph-El was certainly some
royal seminary in Upper Egypt, whence they drafted
novices to supply their colleges and temples. These young
persons were, before their introduction, examined by some
superior priest; and accordingly as they answered upon
their trial, they were admitted or refused. They were
denominated Caph-El, and Cahen Caph El, from the
Academy where they received their first instruction; and
this place, though sacred, seems to have been of a class
subordinate to others. It was a kind of inferior cloister
and temple, such as Capella in the Romish Church; which,
as well as Capellanus, was derived from Egypt: for the church,
in its first decline, borrowed largely from that country.
The Grecians, he continues, tell us that the Egyptians
styled Hermes a Dog: but they seem to have been aware
that they were guilty of an undue representation. Hence
Plutarch tries to soften and qualify what is mentioned by
saying that it was not so much the name of a Dog as the
qualities of that animal to which the Egyptians alluded.
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Plutarch thought by this refinement to take off the impro-

priety of conferring so base a name upon a Deity. But
the truth is, that the Egyptians neither bestowed it
nominally, nor alluded to it in any degree. The title
which they gave to Hermes was the same that they
bestowed upon Hercules; they expressed it Cahen and
Cohen ‫ ;כהן‬and it was very properly represented above
by the Greek term Χων, Chon. It is said of Socrates
that he sometimes made use of an uncommon oath, μα
του κυνα και τον χηνα, by the Dog and the Goose: which
at first does not seem consistent with the gravity of his
character. But we are informed by Porphyry that this
was not done by way of ridicule: for Socrates esteemed
it a very serious and religious mode of attestation: and
under these terms made a solemn appeal to the Son of
Zeus. The purport of the words is obvious: and whatever
hidden meaning there may have been, the oath was made
ridiculous by the absurdity of the terms. Besides, what
possible connection could there have subsisted between a
dog and a Deity; a goose and the son of Jove? There
was certainly none: yet Socrates, like the rest of his
fraternity, having an antipathy to foreign terms, chose to
represent his ideas through this false medium; by which
means the very essence of his invocation was lost. The
son of Zeus to whom he appealed, was the Egyptian
Chen ‫ כהן‬above mentioned: but this sacred title was
idly changed to κυνα και χηνα, a dog and a goose, from a
similitude in sound. That he referred to the Egyptian Deity,
is manifest from Plato, who acknowledges that he swore
μα τον κυνα τον Αιγυπτιων θεον: by the Dog the deity of
the Egyptians: by which we are to understand a Cohen
or Chen of Egypt. Porphyry expressly says that it was
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the God Hermes the son of Zeus and Maia: Κατα τον
τον Διος και Μαιας παιδα εποιειτο τον ὀρκον. It is, I
think, plain that what the Grecians so often interpreted
κυνες, was an ancient Amonian title. When, therefore, I
read of the brazen dog of Vulcan, of the dog of Erigone,
of Orion, of Geryon, of Orus, of Hercules, of Amphi-
lochus, of Hecate, I cannot but suppose, that they were
the titles of so many Deities, or else of their priests, who
were denominated from their Office. See Part I, page
112. Alla, the Arabic name of God, signifies also a Dog.
See ante, page 149.
32. As we read this, it is difficult to repress a feeling
of indignation at the conduct of our paid teachers. The
works of Bryant are in every library: his orthodoxy and
devotion to the established system of religion have never
been questioned; he lived and died an ardent biblical.
Yet though his writings are widely diffused, and his read-
ings of Ancient Mythology for the most part carry
conviction to the mind, that they are generally sound and
true, by what one of our annotators and commentators
on the Old Testament, or on Ancient Religion, has this
view been brought before the common public? By what
minister of truth have the people been taught that dog-wor-
ship or cat-idolatry, never was an article of Egyptian faith?
Who has sought to illuminate the popular mind from the
pulpit or the tract shop? The answer is, No man. All
have alike agreed to let their wretched flocks remain in
ignorance; all have allowed them to continue dupes of
old misconception and misunderstanding of the Past.
Where is the Archbishop of Canterbury who draws his
thousands from the State for teaching the people? Does
he believe in the dog-worship of Egypt? No one can
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suppose it. Yet he permits the many, with whose cure of

souls he is concerned, to remain in the most besotted
ignorance. Where is the Bishop of London with a fixed
salary of ten thousand a year for watching over the
spiritual enlightenment of the millions who populate this
huge, ignorant, poverty-stricken metropolis? Does he
know that his ministers and subordinates propagate these
false and dangerous teachings among those who have no
leisure (perhaps) to learn for themselves? He must know
it; yet he remains silent, or only interferes when some
wretched ritualist lights a candle, or intones a prayer, or puts
on a stole. Where is the Bishop of Oxford, who professes
to know more than all the rest of the episcopal body, and
who has his palaces at the public cost? Does he really
hold what his priests profess to believe? No one can credit
it. Yet he is as silent as the grave. He allows the world
to suppose that he agrees with the world in their false,
ignorant, and foolish notions: he holds himself forth as
the champion of those dread superstitions whenever they
are assailed: he would crush beneath his heel any one of
his licensed priests who would dare to open the eyes of the
congregation. When we see these things done by these
powerful and knowing men ought we not to weep with
grief, or rather with shame and indignation, that for the
wretched transitory things of this world, they can thus
ignore the great and glorious Future?
33. It is impossible to estimate the value or the amount
of olden wisdom and beauty of which the multitude are
thus wickedly deprived. In the symbolic language of the
sages are enrolled lessons of the purest brightness. There
is not one of the ancient mythological fables which does
not convey profound theological wisdom. Take for instance
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that of Paris, Hermes, the Goddesses and the Golden

Apple. Discord, who is Evil, by some means gets
admission into heaven, and flings a Golden Apple among
the Gods with the inscription: Let it be given to the most
beautiful. Hermes is despatched to Paris with the apple;
Paris is to decide between three rival divinities, repre-
senting Wisdom, Power, and Beauty. He decides in
favour of the latter, who promises him a lovely woman;
which promise, when kept, involves himself, his whole
family and even his country itself in utter and irreme-
diable ruin. The Golden Apple is the World. Paris is
a Soul that judges according to the senses, and consequently
sacrifices the world itself to that which promises him
sensual gratification, while he rejects with scorn the
superior claims of Heavenly Wisdom (12). The Messenger
of the gods himself comes to him, but leaves his will
free, and his utter destruction is the result. Can anything
be more beautiful than this mythos thus explained? Can
anything be more contemptible than the way in which
sham mythologists and pretended scholars like W.
Smith, LL.D., interpret this and similar legends of
philosophy?
34. Ulysses, says Plato, descending into Hades, saw
among others Sisyphus and Tityus and Tantalus: and
Tityus he saw lying on the earth, and a vulture devouring
his liver: the liver signifying that he lived solely according
to the sensual or desiderative part of his nature, and
through this was indeed internally prudent, the earth
signifying the terrestrial condition of his prudence. But
Sisyphus, living under the dominion of ambition and
anger, was employed in continually rolling a stone up an
eminence, because it perpetually descended again: its
T2
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descent implying the vicious government of himself: and

his rolling the stone, the hard, refractory, and as it were,
rebounding condition of his life. And lastly, he saw
Tantalus extended by the side of a lake, and that there
was a Tree (13) before him, with abundance of fruit on
its branches, which he desired to gather, but it vanished
from his view: and this indeed indicates that he lived
under the dominion of sensual imagination; but his
hanging over the lake, and in vain attempting to drink,
implies the elusive hurried and rapidly gliding condition
of such a life. One is reminded here of the parable of
Dives and Lazarus; but surely it is not finer or more pro-
found than the moral truth thus conveyed.
35. The fable of Narcissus is again beautifully explained
by Taylor. By Narcissus falling in love with his shadow
appearing in the limpid stream, we may behold, he says, a
beautiful representation of a Soul vehemently gazing on
the flowing condition of a material body, and in conse-
quence of this, becoming enamoured with a corporeal life,
which is nothing more than the delusive image of the
true man, or rational and immortal soul. Hence by an
immoderate attachment to this unsubstantial mockery and
gliding semblance of the real Soul, such a one becomes at
length wholly changed, as far as it is possible to his
nature, into a plantal condition of being, into a beautiful
but transient flower, that is, into a corporeal life. Pro-
serpine in like manner, or the Soul, at the very instant of
her descent into Matter, is with the utmost propriety rep-
resented as eagerly engaged in plucking this fatal
flower: for her energies at this period are entirely con-
versant with a life divided about the fluctuating condition
of body. The analogy of this fable, with the talmudical
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legend of Eve, the fatal apple, and her consequent fall is

obvious; both may have secret reference to the Mysteries
also.
36. How exquisite too is the allegory which places Hebe
(14), the serpent or seraph goddess of immortal youth
in heaven, where she hands round nectar and ambrosia to
be the food of its inhabitants: and where she is finally
united to Hercules (the Messiah); when, after all his
labours are completed, he ascends to the Gods. Niobe,
weeping for her children’s death, at length stiffens like
Lot’s wife into stone: that is, a Soul that fixes its desires
too ardently on earthly and sodomitical things, grows in
time to be of the grovelling earthly nature, and loses all its
vivic and ethereal force. So they painted God with his
face of a bright vermilion to signify the Fire of which
they supposed him to be formed: and this custom still
exists throughout the East to the great wonder of the
rabble of missionaries who know not what it means.
Shortly after the birth of the Muses, says an old mythos,
the nine daughters of Pierios King of Æmathia, chal-
lenged them to a contest of singing. The place of trial
was Mount Helicon. At the song of the latter, the sky
became dark, and all nature was put out of harmony;
but at the melody of the Muses, the heaven itself, the stars
the sea and rivers, stood motionless; and Helicon swelled
up with delight. This allegorical fable indicates the
difference between the creed which is propounded from
heaven by the Messengers, and that which is the mere
device of the earth-born. We have seen already that the
Nine heavenly Muses were types of the Nine Messengers
of Peace, and the name of Amosis had secret reference
to the word Mousa and Muse (15). They sing their
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songs appropriately on Helicon, for this word in

Hebrew means Priest of God. The Graces were symbols
of the immortal soul, celestial in its origin: virgin and
divinely lovely: they are three because it is of a triune
nature: and because also like the Three Doves they
occultly signify the Holy Spirit or Soul of the Universe.
Statues of satyrs were made by the ancients; these were
of a hideous and grossly-carnal aspect: but they were
hollow, and contained within them images of the Graces,
that is, of the beautiful Soul imprisoned in a body of
flesh. Every inch of mythologic ground which we tread
is filled thus with the most enchanting symbols. What
indeed can be more elegant than this? (16) So there is
a beautiful antique gem, published by Maffei, in which
a fine naked winged figure endeavours to lift up another
which has its feet chained to a globe—a noble illustration
of the divine uplifting the earth-clinging nature of man,
to a more lofty and splendid sphere. And it was in
the same graceful and almost divine spirit that the
ancients saved trees, forests, and even flowers, from pri-
meval barbarism, by feigning that in every plant there
was some nymphal life, whose existence was dependent
upon the safety of the plant itself, and who perished
when it was once cut down.
37. The Egyptian mythology, says Plutarch, is of two
descriptions; one sacred and sublime, the other sensible
and palpable. It is on that account they place Sphynxes
at the doors of their temples: they wish us by that to
understand that their theology contains the secrets of
wisdom couched in enigmatical expressions. They signified
by Wings, says Kircher, the motive power in God, or a
certain form penetrating all things, which Iamblichus
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calls the Spirit of the World—Plotinus, the Third Mind.

And by the figure of a Circle, supported with the two
Wings of a Hawk, they denoted the Spirit of the Uni-
verse. A fragment of Sanchoniathon, written in the old
Chaldee or Phœnician tongue, has, Zus hu asphira Acra-
nitha, meni Arits Chuia: Asphira hu Chi‫ע‬l d’Alha dilh
la Strura ula Shulma acrahn md‫ע‬h: vchnia hu rucha
d’Alha dmchina cul ‫ע‬lma. Jupiter is a feigned Sphere;
from it is produced a Serpent: the Sphere shews the
Divine Nature to be without beginning or end; the
Serpent, his Word, which animates the World, and makes
it prolific: his Wing, the Spirit of God, that by its motion
gives life to the whole mundane system. Horus-apollo i.
64, shews in express words that the Spirit of God pervading
all things was signified occasionally by a Serpent—they
symbolize the Ruler of all things, he says, by the perfection
of the same animal, painting again an entire Snake. So
it is with them the Spirit which pervades the Universe.
How aptly they expressed the vivifying Spirit of the
Kosmos by the wings of a Hawk or Vulture, is noted by
Hermes. The efficient Mind, he says, with the Word
containing circles, and whirling them round with great
impetus, hath given rotation to his Universe, and con-
tinued that rotation from beginning without beginning, and
to end without end, for it always begins where it ends. I
have already alluded to the symbolism of Thoth under the
image of a Dog (ante, 402-3), which Montfaucon wholly
failed to understand. This, says the Bishop of Clogher,
in his Origin of Hieroglyphics and Mythology, will enable
us to account for that symbolical representation given
us by Mountfaucon of a Dog holding between his paws
the lyre of Apollo, and the caduceus of Mercury, which
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he says, is one of these ænigmas, he will not attempt to

explain. Canis quidem ille qui lyram Apollinis, Mercuriique
caduceum custodit, inter ænigmatica schemeta censeri puto,
quorum interpretationem ne tentare quidem ausim. M .
Ant. Suppl. tom. i., c. iii., p. 100. But the device was
designed only to shew (adds the Bishop) that the author
thought Horus, Anubis, and Hermes, the same deity. For
as the lyre was the undoubted symbol of Horus or Apollo,
and the caduceus of Hermes or Mercury, so was the Dog
the known emblem of Anubis or Thoth. Whence I appre-
hend it is manifest that Neph, Anubis, Thoth, Hermes,
and Horus, were originally all one and the same person
(p. 154); and the Bishop might have added, this same
person meant no other than the incarnated Messiah of
Heaven; the Kelb or Kelv, which in many ancient
languages, says Davis, Celt. Res. 195, meant a Dog, and in
Welsh also imported a Mystery or arcane science. For the
symbol see Montfaucon, Supplem., part I., plate 13. So
the Bi-Une AO, God and the Holy Spirit, are symbolized
in that basalt image, two-headed, the Bull and Cow, which
Wortley Montague brought from Egypt, and which passed
from Mr. Towneley to the British Museum, where it is
hidden away with all the most curious ancient sculptures
in some secret crypt invisible to the public eye. In any
other land than ours it would be considered almost
criminal to conceal this, the most curious and significant
of primeval sculptures; but we in England have been so
long used to pay a blind adoration to what is done by
people in office, that we gently overlook misfeasances of
this kind, which are committed only for the charitable
purpose, that we may still remain as ignorant as we have
been of old Religion and its philosophic symbolism.
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38. Dr. Stukeley, speaking of the Temple at Abury, so

called from the Cabiri, to whom it was consecrated, says:
The plan on which Abury was built, is that sacred
hierogram of the Egyptians and other ancient nations,
the Circle and Snake. The whole figure is the Circle,
Snake, and Wings. By this they meant to picture out as
well as they could the nature of the Divinity. The Circle
meant the Supreme Fountain of all being, the Father:
the Serpent, that divine Emanation from him which was
called the Son [the Universe]; the Wings imported that
other divine Emanation from them [him], which was
called the Spirit, the Anima Mundi. . . . Silbury
stands exactly south of Abury, and exactly between the
extremities of the two avenues, the head and tail of the
Snake. The work of Abury, which is the Circle, and the
two avenues, which represent the Snake, transmitted
through it, are the great hierogrammaton, or sacred pro-
phylactic character of the Divine Mind. The Egyptians
for the very same reason frequently pictured the same
hieroglyphic upon the breast of their mummies, and very
frequently on the top and summit of Egyptian obelisks
this picture of the Serpent and Circle is seen, and is upon
an infinity of their monuments. In the very same manner
this huge Snake and Circle made of stones hangs as it
were brooding over Silbury Hill, in order to bring again
to a new life the person there buried. For our Druids
taught the expectation of a future life, both soul and body
with greatest care, and made it no less than a certainty.
So a Serpent wreathed around the trunk of a Tree, is
a common symbol of God and the Sun: as also of
God conjoined with the Holy Spirit, symbolised by a
Tree [Ydrasil], the emblem of fruitfulness; though our
T 3
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parsons say that it represents the Snake and Eve. So

is a Ram’s head supporting a Dove (17), as in Mont-
faucon, pl. 10, iv., the Ram being God, on whom the
Spirit, and all things rest as on a solid rock. The reader
must have often seen in mythological prints the Snake
encircling the Egg—that is primarily the Serpent of
Eternity, or God, embracing the Circle (18) or Holy Spirit:
secondarily, Man symbolized by the Snake encircling the
Earth symbolized by the Egg: thirdly, the Holy Spirit
who encircles the Universe. There is another curious
sculpture on the Isiac Table, in which the Holy Spirit is
represented by a Woman (Isis) cow-headed holding in her
lap the infant Horus (Messiah). On her head is the Globe
or Kosmos, or the Sun, or God-like symbol, and she has
two horns, two serpents, and two wings, which all form a
diadem, and which emblematically represent six, or the
Naros. The Jews frequently allude to one of these symbols.
Keep me as the apple of the eye, says the Hebrew; hide me
under the shadow of thy wings. Ps. xvi. 8. And again.
How excellent is thy loving kindness, O God! therefore
the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy
wings. Ps. xxxvi. 7. See Part I., pp. 20, 57, 96, 468.
39. The Serpent, from the magnificent vision of the
Seraphim (A , section 58) near the Throne of
God, was first regarded as oracular—it afterwards became
a symbol, then a talisman, and eventually a god. Its
worship pervaded the whole world, and was at length
connected with the Solar worship. We accordingly find
the ophite hierogram on coins, medals, temples, and pillars,
under various modifications, as the original worship of the
Serpent was blended with that of the Sun and Moon.
Sometimes it is a rude representation of a Serpent with a
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single coil forming a globe. Selden says that this figure

in abbreviated writing signifies daimon the deity: and
Kircher says that its use among the Brahmins was the
same. Sometimes the hierogram is a Globe with a Serpent
passing around it. Again it is a Winged Globe with a
Serpent passing through it. It is also represented as a
Globe with two Serpents emerging from it. The caduceus
of Hermes is another form of the hierogram, and is a symbol
of the Serpent worship connected with that of the Sun and
Moon; wherein we have the sun’s disk and the moon’s
crescent. The early representations of the head of
Medusa are also modifications of the ophite hierogram.
The Serpents around and beneath the face are the
undulations of the tides, and the two Serpents above
are the Crescent of the Moon by which they are pro-
duced. With the Egyptians a Serpent moving in an
undulating manner denoted Water: and Eusebius (Prœp.
Ev. lib. i.) says that they described the World by a Circle
with a Serpent passing diametrically through it. Homer, in
the Hymn to Apollo, v. 295, describes him as building a
temple where he slew Python, “of stones broad and very
long,” in part of a circular form ἀμφι δὲ ν̑ηον ἐνασσαν.
Again, the god considers what kind of priests he shall put
in his “stony Pytho,” πύθοι ἐνι πετρ̑ηεσση. Hence
Python was doubtless a temple of upright stones devoted
to the worship of the Solar Serpent like that at Abury,
or Aubury (‫ אוב אור‬aub aur, Serpents of Sun or Cabir) in
England, which covered 28 acres, and was a mile in
length. The Rev. J. B. Deane says: From a circle of up-
right stones (without imposts) erected at equal distances
proceeded two avenues, in a wavy course, in opposite
directions. These were the fore and hinder parts of the
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Serpent’s body passing from west and east. Within this

great Circle were four others, considerably smaller: two
and two described about two centres, but neither of them
coincident with the centre of the great circle. They lay
in the line drawn from the north-west to the south-east
points, passing through the centre of the great circle. The
head of the Serpent was formed of two concentric ovals,
and rested on an eminence, which is the southern pro-
montory of the Hakpen (serpent’s head) hills: Worship
of the Serpent. p. 330. In Pharœ, likewise, says Pausanias,
there is a Fountain sacred to Hermes. The name of the
Fountain is Hama, worshipped as the Sun. Very near
this, there are thirty quadrangular stones—these the
Pharenses venerate, calling each by the name of some
particular god. Indeed, it was formerly the custom with
all the Greeks to reverence rude stones in the place of
statues of the gods. viii. 22. These stones in the Serpent
temples were set like teeth. The Serpent, and the Ring
or Egg, says Faber, whether they occur in Britain, Persia,
Egypt, Phœnicia, or Hindostan, symbolize alike the Great
Father and the Great Mother. Pag. Idol. i. 193. The
reader will again find the symbolic word Hama.
40. I have already alluded to the mystical meaning of
Ioan and Oan, the Dove or Messenger of the Holy Spirit
—herself the Queen Dove of all existences. [See Part
I., page 111.] The author of the Analysis of Ancient
Mythology, one of the greatest authorities on this subject
that England has produced, writes as follows upon this
typical name. As the Dove, says Bryant, iii. 117, was
esteemed the interpreter of the will of the Deity; the
priests and soothsayers were from that circumstance styled
Iönah or Doves. And as Theba in Egypt was originally
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the Temple of the Ark;* it is natural to look for priests

of this denomination in a sanctuary of that name. We
may upon inquiry very truly infer that there were
persons in this place styled Iönah, which by the Greeks
was rendered Πελειαι και Τρ͔ηρωνες, Doves and Pigeons.
It is said that some of this order carried the rites of
Theba or the Ark to Libya: and that others brought them
to Dodona in Epirus, where was the most ancient
oracular temple of Greece. Servius takes notice of the
Doves at Theba, but as it was usual with the ancients to
form personages out of every obsolete term, he makes
Theba a Woman; and supposes her to be the daughter of the
Deity,* who gave her two prophetic Doves for a present.
One of these it is said flew away to Dodona. Sophocles
mentions these sacred Doves and the vocal grove where
they resided. The author of the Apocalypse, adds this
learned but most fanciful writer is denominated in the
like manner, whom the Greeks style Ιωαννης, the Dove.
And, when the great forerunner of Jesus was to be
named, his father industriously called him Ιωαννες for the
same reason. The circumstances with which the imposition
of this name was attended are remarkable, and the whole
process as described by the Evangelist well worth notice.
And it came to pass to pass that on the eighth day they
came to circumcise the child: and they called him Zacha-
rias, after the name of his father. And his mother
answered and said: Not so; but he shall be called John.
And they said unto her: There is none of thy kindred
that is called by this name. And they made signs to his
* Bryant means the fabled Noachian ark—to which there never

was a temple in the world. The real Ark was the Holy Spirit.
Servius was right.
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father how he would have him called. And he asked for a

writing table; and wrote, saying, His name is John. Αnd
they marvelled all. L i. 59. So the Psalmist does
not wish for the wings of the falcon or eagle, but for those
of a Dove, to waft him to a place of peace. Oh that I
had the wings of a Dove: for I would fly away and be at
rest. P lv. Doves were typically offered according
to the Levitical Law: two turtles or two young pigeons.
L vii. The number is significant. The two
Doves thus offered in sacrifice to the Holy Spirit, herself
the Dove of Heaven, constituted the mystic three spirit
doves, in which, as I have already said, her Epiphany was
made perfect. See ante page 274. Æsculapius, the great
physician, was exposed when a child and preserved by his
nurse, who was named Τρυγων, the Dove. P i. 8.
Analysis iii. 117. Lucian, in his book, De Deâ Syriâ,
mentions three statues in the most holy recess of the
temple of Hieropolis, one of which was crowned with a
Golden Dove. This undoubtedly was a statue either of
God himself whose throne the Dove crowned like the
Rainbow, or else it represented the Messenger mitred
with the Holy Spirit; his mother, guardian and inspirer.
The reader need not be reminded of the Dove which
accompanied Mohammed, the Tenth Messiah, or of that
which is mythically related to have descended on Jesus
in the Jordan. Matt. iii. 16. Mark i. 10. Luke iii. 22.
John i. 32; crowning him as it were with heavenly
effluence.
41. The principal of the priestesses at Dodona gave out
that two black pigeons took their flight from Thebes, in
Egypt, and that one of them bent its course to Libya, but
that the other betook itself to Dodona; that upon its
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arrival it settled upon a beech tree, and spoke with a

human voice, signifying how necessary it was that there
should be an oracular temple founded in that place to
Zeuth. We learn from the foregoing that the persons
who administered to the Deity were styled Peleiae
Πελειαι and Πελειαδες; which was a translation of the
Iönah and Iönim introduced from Egypt and Chaldea.
They were sometimes spoken of as the daughters of the
Deity; at other times, from the services which they per-
formed, they were represented as the nurses. Hence arose
the notion that Zeuth was fed by Doves, and that Oannes,
the Messenger of the Mystic Dove of Heaven was himself
also a Dove. Doves in the East, from time immemorial,
have been used as messengers: hence the appropriate beauty
of this religious symbol. Homer alludes to the priests
under the character of Πελειαι Τρηρωνες, or Doves: and
he says that they administered to Zeuth in that capacity,
of whom he speaks as their father: for priests and votaries
were often styled the sons and daughters of the Deity
whom they served. From hence we may solve the question
put by Alexander to Aristotle upon this subject; though
in some degree it explains itself from the manner in which
it is stated. Why does the poet make Doves the ministers
of food to the Gods? The Peleiades were priests under
the characteristic of Doves, and they were said to be
διακονοι της τροφης των θεων, servers up of the feast of
the gods; because they really did administer to the Gods,
and offered up cakes and fruits at their shrines, attended
with libations of wine, oil, and honey. The Egyptian
priests seem to have been also denominated from their
complexion Crows or Ravens; ‫ ערב‬Oreb, a Raven; also
an Arab. Strabo has a particular passage about Alex-
ander, that upon his expedition to the temple of Ammon
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he was conducted by two Crows. Curtius says that upon

his approach a good number went out to meet him. Jam
haud procul oraculi sede aberant, cum complures Corvi
agmini occurrunt modico volatu, &c. These Crows, like
the black Dove or Ravens, were certainly the priests of
the place. [See ante, page 405.] Bryant adds: The
prophet, who was sent upon an embassy to the Ninivites,
is styled Iönas; a title probably bestowed upon him as a
Messenger of the Deity: but he does not explain that all
these Doves were so called because they were in the service
of the Dove, the Holy Spirit, whom all the Paulites think
to be a Man.
42. And as the sacred Doves were supposed to be all
representative of the Queen Dove, so were the priests and
priestesses of the same rites types of the great Queen Bee.
Philostratus mentions that when the Athenians sent their
first colony to Ionia [Doveland] the Muses led the way
in the form of bees. (See ante, page 251.) And Herodo-
tus says that all the northern side of the Danube was
occupied by bees. When the shepherd Cometes was
inclosed in a bride-bed, or ark [See, ante, pp. 125-6], bees
were supposed to have fed him. Jove also, upon mount
Ida [Id and Adi, God and the Holy Spirit, ‫עדה‬, Adah,
the Beautiful] was said to have been nourished by bees.
When the temple at Delphi was a second time erected, it
was built by bees; who composed it of wax and feathers
brought by Apollo from the Hyperboreans. Such are
the Grecian accounts; but the Melissae thus interpreted
were certainly priests and priestesses of the ark, styled
Seira, Theba, Selene, and Damater. When Pindar men-
tions the Messenger, Μελισσας Δελφιδος κελαδον, the
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Voice of the Delphic Melissa [M. 600, El, God, Issa, the
Holy Spirit] the scholiast tells us that the Melissae were
the priestesses of Damater, and that, according to some
writers, the female attendants of that Goddess were so
called. And he further adds that these were the persons
who first cultivated the fruits of the earth [that is, were
Adamites, or Edomites. Part I. 236] and taught man-
kind agriculture, by which they weaned them from their
foul and unnatural repasts. Conformably to this we
learn from Porphyry, that the ancients called the attend-
ants upon Damater, Melissae; and farther, Σεληνην τε
Μελισσαν εκαλουν: they likewise called Selene [the Holy
Spirit] Melissa. See, ante, page 190, the legend of
Aristæus. From a similar typology the Seirenes* were
priestesses of the Seira [Hive] called Seiren and of the
pomegranate-shaped Argha. The Seirenes, Σειρηνες, were
celebrated for their songs, because they were of the same
order as the Melissae who were greatly famed for their
harmony. We have seen above that when the Mellissai
conducted a colony to Doveland, they were esteemed the
same as the Muses. The pomegranate was named Rhoia
Ροια: and as it abounds with seed, it was thought no
improper emblem of the Shekinah, which contained the
elements of the future world. From hence the Deity of
the Arka was named Rhoia, which signified a pomegranate,
and was the Rhœa of the Greeks. [See Part I., page 36.]
The ancient Persians used to have a pomegranate carved
* The Seirens had certainly some relation to the mystical Ark,
or boat, and Dove. Hence at Coronea they were represented upon
the same statue with Juno. Pausanias says that the Goddess held
them in her hand. L. 9, p. 778. He styles it αγαλμα αρχααιον,
—φερει δ επι τ͔η χειρι Σειρηνας.
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upon the top of their walking sticks and sceptres*,

undoubtedly on account of its being a sacred emblem.
Achilles Tatius mentions an ancient temple at Pelusium,
in which was a statue of the Deity, styled Zeus Casius,
holding this mysterious fruit in his hand. We may from
hence infer that he was upon Mount Casius worshipped
in the same attitude; and the God Rimmon mentioned by
the Hebrew writers was represented in the like man-
ner. (19.)
43. In Otaheite, there is an ancient tradition, that the
seeds of certain trees were carried by Doves to the Moon,
thus assimilating this planet to the Great Mother, Nature,
who produces all living things. Cook’s Third Voyage, iii.
c. 9. Io, says Eustathius, in the language of the Argives,
is The Moon [See, ante, page 22,] and Wilkinson declares
that the phonetic name Aah, or Ioh, signifying The
Moon, is frequently found on the Monuments of Egypt.
When, therefore God speaks in the Apocalypse, in the
name of A O, it must be understood that He spake as in
the character of the Holy Spirit, or that the Holy Spirit
herself uttered words in the character and as the repre-
sentative of God himself. But these two Beings are in
all the primeval theology so identified and unified as it
were, that it is impossible to separate the actions of one
from the other: wherefore A O really means the Two.
The Chaldeans called their God I A O and S’ABA; male
* 2 Kings, c. 5, v. 18. There were many places in Syria and
Canaan, which seem to have been denominated from this hierogly-
phyic. Mention is made in Joshua of the City Rimmon in the
tribe of Simeon: we also read of En Rimmon, Gath Rimmon,
and the mourning of Hadad Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo.
See Josh. c. 19. v. 7; Nehemiah c. 11, v. 29; Josh. c. 19, v. 45;
Zach. c. 12, v. 11. This identifies the Jewish religion with so-
called Paganism.
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and female words, which signified the Presider over the

Seven. Saba, in the Shanscreet, means the Host of
Heaven. Aion means Sun; Demiurg; Soul; Æon; Life;
Time; Age: as an adjective aionios (αιωνιος) it means
living, everlasting, immortal. The Emperor Julian
speaks of “the Temple of Aion the Sun;” and in the
Persian language Ian means Spirit. Αω, in Greek, means
“I breathe;” a word particularly applicable to the Spirit
of God, the Inspirer of Life, who inspired the Apocalypse
also; and it was in allusion to this attribute of the Holy
Spirit, that her Son, the Ninth Messenger, is said to have
once significantly acted. And when he had said this, he
breathed on them, and saith unto them; Receive ye the
Holy Spirit. J xx. 22. Hence we find an analogue
of Rhoia, in the Hebrew word for the Holy Spirit, Mind
and Waters, all of which are signified by the word ‫רוח‬,
Ruach. The vast Abyss of Space also, and the Pleroma
are so interpreted in the Aramaic. The Hindus, as we
have seen, like the most wise of the ancient philosophers,
suppose that the soul is an emanation of the Spirit of
God breathed into mortals; but their manner of expressing
this idea is more sublime; for instead of calling it a
portion of the Divine Spirit, they compare it to the heat
and light sent forth from the Sun, which neither lessens
nor divides his own essence; to the speech which commu-
nicates knowledge without lessening that of him who
instructs the ignorant; to a torch at which other torches
are lighted, without diminution of its light: thus dispos-
ing of one of the false objections which are raised against
Pantheism. The first letter of the alphabet was also
appropriated to the Holy Spirit, because Alphi means
the Voice of God; this the Greeks changed into Alpha,
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and D’ El Phi, the Mouth of God. (See, ante, page 251.)

And Heschyius says the Phœnicians call an Ox or Cow,
or the head of these animals, Alpha. And Plutarch,
speaking of Cadmus, says that he placed Alpha the first
letter because among the Phœnicians it was the name of
the sacred Steer or Heifer. In the Syriac copy of the
Apocalypse, instead of A O, it is written A Ѳ ; but this
last was a monogram of God and the Holy Spirit; read
from left to right, it was Ath, the first syllable of Athene;
and from right to left, it was Tha or Ptha, the Spirit of
God. And the wave-like line in the centre of the circle
Ѳ symbolized the Waters or the Holy Spirit, and also the
Serpent of the Universe, mentioned, ante, page 415. So
beautifully interwoven into one all, are these numerous
and ancient types. In Captain Cooke’s Voyage to the Pacific
Ocean, i. 404, we find that the Supreme God of Hapaee,
one of the Friendly Islands, is called AL-O, AL-O; and in
our own language, halo is a nimbus of splendour, a Rain-
bow. Lassen, in an Essay on Indo Scythean coins, alludes
to those which bear the name of the Persian Diana, Mao,
the Moon. Mao is the nominative of the Zend form
of mas; the word is likewise Shanscreet. The genitive is
Manao; and on some coins we have Manao Bago [Menu
Bacchus] obviously a deified being, that is a Messenger.
A large moon-like sickle therefore appears with him, behind
the shoulders; he has four arms, one leans on the hips; in
the hands of the others he bears symbols, which cannot
now be decyphered. Mr. Prinsep has explained Bago by
baga (Shanscreet) splendour; the word besides denotes
beauty, glory, omnipotence, and the Shekinah; and
Bhagavat is a name for Vishnu. It is the same as Indian
Bacchus. See Journ, As. Soc. Bengal ix. 451 (20).
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44. Waters, also, as it has been seen, were a type of

the Spirit of God: She is called the Mover on the waters;
hence the Nelumbo, or Water Lily, became her beautiful
emblem; and as connected with her, an emblem of the
Messenger. Cybele is represented in Gronovius with the
lotus flower. Thesaur. Antiq. Gr. vii. 424. Isis in the
Abraxas, is often represented as sitting on this flower.
The lotus-flower, says Chausse, denotes the Virtue of the
Sun. This plant grows in the water and puts forth a
flower, in the centre of which is formed the seed vessel,
shaped like a bell or inverted cone, and punctuated on
the top with little cavities or cells, in which the seeds
grow. The orifices of these cells being too small to let
the seeds drop out when ripe, they shoot forth into new
plants in the places where they were formed; the bulb of
the vessel serving as a matrix to nourish them, until they
acquire such a degree of magnitude as to burst it open,
and release themselves; after which, like other aquatic
weeds, they take root wherever the current deposits them.
This plant, therefore, being thus productive of itself, and
vegetating from its own matrix, without being fostered
in the earth, was naturally adopted as the symbol of the
productive Power of the Waters, upon which the active
Spirit of the Creator operated in giving life and vegeta-
tion to matter. We accordingly find it and the Sea
employed in every part of the Northern hemisphere,
where the symbolical religion, improperly called idolatry,
does or ever did prevail. Thus Orpheus calls the Ocean,
emblematically of the Holy Spirit, the greatest purifier of
the divine ones—θεων αγνισμα μεγιστον. The sacred
images of the Tartars, Japanese, and Indians are almost
all placed upon it. The Brahm of India is represented
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sitting upon his lotus-throne; and the figures upon the

Isiac table hold the stem of the plant ornamented by the
seed vessel in one hand, and the cross representing the
male and female type of generation united, in the other;
thus signifying the Universal Power, active as well as
passive, which is attributed to the Creator. Hesiod lays
it down as a precept that no person was to pass a river
till he had first washed his hands. Xerxes sacrificed
horses to the river Stymon. Tiridates offered one to the
Euphrates, and Lucullus and Vitellius performed the
taurobolic sacrifice, or offering of the Bull to the same
River. The rapid river Xanthus, in which we offer so
many bulls, says Achilles to Lycaon, will not protect you.
As the Holy Spirit was symbolized by Water, son of the
sea, son of the ocean, son of the waters, like Oannes,
means one born of, or consecrated to Her. The Welsh
called her Llyr. Porphyry declares that the Gentiles
thought that Spirits attended upon waters, or resorted
thereunto, as being divinely inspired, adding that a pro-
phet also said that the Spirit of God moved upon the
water. And the author of the Recognitions of Clement
(written in the third century) who had been an Alexan-
dian Jew, and was well skilled in the most ancient
theology, says, There inheres in Water something of the
energy of that Spirit which in the beginning was emaned
by God. By this Spirit’s operation the form and fashion of
a body begin to appear in the very seed, and are perfected
in the blade and ear. For as the moisture of the seeds
causes the grain to swell, the spiritual energy, which, as
being incorporeal, resides in water, circulates through
narrow veins and channels, makes the seeds to grow, and
perfects the conformation of the plant. Through the
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agency, therefore, of the watery element, in which this

Living Spirit is resident and innate, is brought to pass
that under all circumstances the image and form of that
which is produced resembles the seeds that were sown.
It would not be difficult to enlarge on this: to those who
understand it, it is mystic and beautiful in the extreme;
to it also we trace the origin of that most ancient of all
Pagan rites, baptism, or immersion in water. By the
Phœnicians, or Sidonians, the Almighty was worshipped
as Baal Thalassius, God or Sun of the Ocean. Hence
Thales said that all things were derived from Water.
(Thales ex aquâ dixit constare omnia, C . in Lucul.) and
the Egyptians held that Water was the first or Archa,
αρχην των παντων υδωρ. Diog. Laert. Thales. Hence also
they called the Sea and Rivers bull or sun-headed. And as
the Holy Spirit was the source of all inspiration, we
recognise the origin of the ancient custom of those who
sought a knowledge of futurity, to wrap themselves in the
skin of a Ram or Bullock (solar, that is God-like em-
blems) and to lay themselves to sleep by Waterfalls.
45. The mighty Waters of the Universe which were
thus made the symbol of the Holy Spirit, were the abode
of fishes; and we consequently find the Fish used as a
symbol of the Messenger. One of the most famous ava-
taras of the Hindu Messiah Vishnu, was in the form of a
Fish. It is a common symbol, met with on ancient
engraved stones, cameos, and intaglios. The fish was
worn as an amulet by children: it is figured on ancient
glasses and sepulchral lamps. The Marquis D’Urban
possesses a white chalcedony, in the form of a truncated
cone (a phallos), which is pierced through (a yoni), and
which was probably worn as an amulet. On the base of
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the cone is a figure, youthful, beardless, drawn in profile,

with the name XPICTO (of the Anointed One) and
the image of the fish. Christian antiquaries of course say
that it is Jesus; but the peculiar form of it proves it to
be Indian; and it probably is a thousand years older than
the days of the Ninth Messenger. The man sculptured
upon it wears a radiated crown (indicating the Naronic
Cycle) like the Eastern emperors, who claimed to be
incarnations of the Sun and Moon. M. de Belloc has
caused lithographic drawings to be made of certain ancient
relics connected with this symbolism. Amongst them
are two cornelians, two engraved stones used as seals, one
gold ring, an amethyst, and a sardonyx. Besides these
he has given a sepulchral lamp representing fishes,
dolphins, ταυ-formed anchors, and a man fishing with a
line, with the allegorical cyphers ΙΧΘΣ. ΑΩ. ΙΗ. ΧΘ.
and even the word CΩΤΗΡ. [Saviour]. All these various
monuments, says the orthodox Didron are Italian, and
belong apparently to a very remote period. They are in
all probability contemporaneous with the days of Pytha-
goras, that is 600 years before Jesus. The reader is
referred to part I. pp. 247, 294, 327, where these are
shewn to be symbolical of religious secrets, long anterior
to the Christian æra. The priests however seized upon
the Fish, as they laid hold of the rest of paganism. Nos
pisciculi, secundum ιχθυν nostrum Jesum Christum, says
Tertullian, in Aquâ nascimur : we little fishes like our
Fish, Jesus Christ, are born in Water; a double allu-
sion to the baptismal water, and to the Holy Spirit.
The same image is carried out in the apocryphal or
hidden Book of Tobit, where that hero’s son cures his
father’s (spiritual) blindness with the gall of a great Fish,
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which he found in the Tigris: meaning that knowledge

of the Truth in the Messenger delivers men from dark-
ness. In a village church near Beigetad, in Denmark,
around a baptistry are Three Fish intertwined in the form
of a Triangle—the Holy Spirit. In St. Germain-des-
Près, at the entrance of the western semicircular chapel,
in which the baptismal font is placed, a female Siren (the
Holy Spirit) and a male and bearded Triton (God) are
to be seen on the capital of a column; both of these have
fishes in their arms, while other fishes play beneath the
waters. This symbolizes them as Formers of the human
race, and Senders of the Messenger, typified by the fish in
their arms. There was a fountain at Pheræ called Hama,
(see, ante, page 420) or of the Sun: in this fountain there
were certain Fishes sacred to Mercury: no one touched
them. These fishes, so dedicated to the Hermetic Mes-
senger, were types of the Messiah in the Holy Spirit,
who is the Fountain of the Sun or God. So, says Bryant,
Ain-Ades, the fountain of Ades, or the Sun, was trans-
posed into Naïades! these were priests or priestesses, who
officiated at the shrines there erected. And Apollo was
called Δελφινιον, the Dolphin, which is El (God), Phi
(a Voice), Ion (the Yoni), and On (the Sun). There is
an Irish bishoprick called Elphin, and the ancient papal
name for its holder is the Dove of Elphin; but Apollo, as
we have seen, was the Greek title of the Messiah. See
Part I., pp. 294, 327. Let the Dove and the Fish, says
Clement of Alexandria, who knew many mystic secrets
that his episcopal brethren did not know, the vessel flying
before the breath of the Wind, the harmonious Lyre used
by Polycrates (the Many-Ruler, i.e., God) and the marine
Anchor [the Triune] sculptured by Seleucus be signs
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unto you. In Pædagog. iii. 2. See Part I., page 112, All
this would be ænigmatical and impenetrable, did we not
have the key. The name of piscina, given to the Mith-
raic or old Persian font of baptism is derived from the
Fish; and Issa, Ischa, Pischva, and Piscis are all primi-
tive Oriental words connected with this symbolism. The
name of Jesus, Ischa, in Irish-Celtic, meant a fish, the
same word which in Arabic meant Saviour. See Part I.,
page 294.
46. The antient Cuthites, and the Persians after them,
had a great veneration for Fountains [in the Shanscreet
Khoond] and Streams, which also prevailed among other
nations, so as to have been at one time almost universal.
Of this regard among the Persians Herodotus takes
notice : Σεβονται ποταμους των παντων μαλιστα: Of all
things in nature they reverence Rivers most: he says.
But if these Rivers were attended with any nitrous or
saline quality, or with any fiery eruption, they were
adjudged to be still more sacred; and even distinguished
with some title of the Deity. The natives of Egypt had the
like veneration. Other nations, says Athanasius, reverence
Rivers and Fountains; but, above all people in the world,
the Egyptians held them in the highest honor, and esteemed
them as divine. Julius Firmicus gives the same account of
them. Ægyptii aquæ beneficium percipientes aquam colunt,
aquis supplicant. From hence the custom passed westward to
Greece, Italy, and the extremities of Europe: and exhibits
itself in Lakes, Holy Wells, Fonts, &c., &c., all types of the
Holy Spirit. And as the Holy Spirit was believed to have
all the prescience of God, her Lord, so the ancient mystics
believed that in the patera or cup, which was one of her
symbols, they could foresee the future. Hence we read
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in Gen. xliv. Is not this the cup by which Joseph divines

—the silver cup? A similar cup is mentioned in the Iliad
xvi. 225. A cup well wrought; nor did he use to pour
libations from it to any of the gods except to Zeus the
Father. He purified it with sulphur, and then washed
it in pure streams of water: and he washed his hands,
and drew off the dark wine. And standing in the midst
of the court he prayed, and offered a drink-offering of
wine, looking up to heaven: nor did he escape the notice
of Zeus, who delights in Thunder. The patera became
therefore one of the most conspicuous symbols in ancient
theology, and wherever it is seen in primeval carvings,
bears mystical reference to the Holy Spirit [See Part I.,
pp. 96, 108]. On a double-cupped patera of pure gold
found in Ireland, there was inscribed in Ogham, the name
Uoser, which Vallancey says is Osiris. Collect. v. 91.
The Ao-sar frequently occurs in the Irish MSS.; it means
AO, the Sun, the Sovereign. In the Kunawar language,
Isar is God, and the Sun, which is feminine, is called
Yuneh. All these are wonderful memorials of an identity
that once was universal.
47. In connection with this symbolism of Waters, and
of the Fish-Avatar, Dagon was an image of the Holy
Spirit, so called from ‫ דג‬Dag, to multiply or increase
exceedingly, and ‫ און‬Aun God. [See Part I., page 111.]
Parkhurst calls it the Aleim of the Philistines, and says
this name denotes the increasing or productive power of
the material heavens, both in the earth and in the sea.
This is Parkhurst’s favourite theory, for which there is no
basis; nor is this gentleman a high authority. Dagon is
the Corn-giver, says Sanchoniathon, in Philo Byblius; that
U2
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is Ceres, whom Virgil invokes with Bacchus or the Messiah,

in the first Georgic.
Vos o clarissima Mundi

Lumina labentem cœlo qui ducitis annum,
Liber et alma Ceres; vestro si munere tellus
Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit aristâ,
Poculaque inventis Acheloïa miscuit uvis,
O ye resplendent Lights of Heaven, who lead

Throughout its varying forms the circling year,
Liber and Ceres, by whose gift the earth
For acorns teems with corn, and joyous yields
For water’s tasteless draught the generous wine.
But Ceres or Chrs we know signified the Holy Spirit.

[See ante, page 181.] She was worshipped in Phœnicia
under the name of Derceto or Atergatis under the same
symbol as that at Notre Dame, namely a beautiful
Woman [the Spirit] ending in a Fish [Her Son, the Mes-
senger]. Herodotus calls her the Celestial Aphrodite, and
the Venus Marina, or Anadyomene, or the productive
Power of the Heavens and Nature. Dag, a north country
word for dew, is derived from this, from its remarkable
power in vegetation, which is often observed in the Jewish
writers. And Homer calls it the vegetative dew. Od. xiii.
245. Parkhurst derives from this Dag our English Dog,
from its prolific nature, he says, called in Greek κυων, for
the same reason: also dug. Shadeh ‫ שדח‬and ‫ שדי‬Shadai,
so often mentioned as connected with AO, have the
several meanings of shedding (like the dew), of a cup-
bearer, of a field which infuses water into plants or trees
as the All-Bountiful; as a breast which pours forth milk
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like Isis and Diana multimamma; and as a running

stream—all of them symbolic meanings most wonderfully
elucidating and corroborating the revelations of this
work.
48. Another very remarkable though humble type of
the Divine may here be noticed. The Egyptians from the
most ancient times represented the pervading Spirit or
ruling Providence of the Deity by the Beetle, which
frequents the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and which
some have supposed to be an emblem of the Sun. It
occurs very frequently upon Phœnician, Greek, and
Etruscan, as well as Egyptian sculptures, and is sometimes
with the Owl, and sometimes with the head of Minerva
upon the small brass coins of Athens. It is of the
androgynous class (two-sexed), and lays its eggs in a ball
of dung or other fermentable matter, which it had pre-
viously collected and rolled backwards and forwards upon
the sand of the sea until it acquired the proper form and
consistency; after which it buries it in the sand, where
the joint operation of heat and moisture matures and
vivifies the germs into new insects. As a symbol there-
fore of the Deity, it was employed to signify the attribute
of Divine Wisdom or ruling Providence, which directs,
regulates, and employs, the productive powers of Nature.
The reader will see this Beetle, or Scarabæus, in the
Egyptian Hall at the British Museum (20). Horus-
apollo, describing a species of Scarabæus, which was also
symbolic, says: It resembles the sparkling lustre of the
eye of a cat in the dark: hence it was used also as a
symbol of the Sun, the great golden Beetle of heaven,
and it was called by some the Cantharides. This creature
frequents gardens, and when the light falls directly on
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the shield of its wings it has the appearance of being

lighted up with rays, and looks as though it were sur-
rounded by a Rainbow. The antiquity of this type of
the Divine, and the consequent veneration which has been
shewn towards the Scarabæus itself, has been traced to the
remotest Ethiopian even before Egypt was inhabited.
Traces of it still exist in Madagascar, where persons over
whom the Scarabæus of golden rays chances to pass, are
regarded as fortunate. In some parts of Europe De Pauw
says that it is called the Fly of the Lord, and the same
writer adds that St. Ambrose in his writings has frequently
compared the Messiah to a Scarabæus: “without leaving
us even the shadow of a conjecture on what such strange
comparison could be formed.” But Ambrose was not
the only (Papal-made) Saint who used this comparison.
Augustine compares Jesus to the Scarabæus : Bonus ille
Scarabæus meus, non eâ tantum de causâ quod unigenitus,
quod ipsemet sui auctor mortalium speciem induerit sed
quod in hâc nostrâ fæce sese volutaverit et ex hâc ipsâ
nasci voluerit. For an analogous reason it was that the
Peacock, with its splendid-shining hues was chosen as
the emblem of the sun and rainbow-born Messenger, not
only in Greece but in Asia; and Juno was always repre-
sented as accompanied by him, as the Dog accompanies
Diana, and the Squirrel the tree Ydrasil. [Part I., page
323. See also ante, page 402.] Hence Jacob, who had an
idea that his son Joseph might turn out to be a Messenger
(ante, page 250), clothed him in symbolic tire. Now
Israel loved Joseph more than all his children [because he
was the son of his old age—this is interpolated in the
original], and he made him a coat of many colours. G .
xxxvii. 3. It was after the assumption of this dress that
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Joseph had his Naronic dream. G . xxxvii. 9. Both

reasons helped to excite the hatred and envy of his
brothers. It was under the same assumption of Messianic
dignity that he used the divining cup. [See ante, page
435.] In confirmation of this view, the Abbè de
Rocher says, that St. Jerom calls Joseph, Redemptor
Mundi; that is a Messenger. That I am correct in this
interpretation may be shewn by the fact that the Seventy
translate the word used in the Hebrew ‫כתנתפסים‬,
Kethoneth phasim, by the Greek phrase which is always
appropriated to the Rainbow, namely, ποικιλος. It was
a coat made of pieces, stripes, or threads of various
colours. Rauwolf, in his Travels, says that Turks of
rank at Aleppo dress their sons, when they are a little
grown and can walk, in loose coats of a fine texture, in
which various colours are woven, and which looks very
handsome. i. p. 89. The Scotch tartan is an analogue
of this, and comes, no doubt, from the East; originally it
had the same symbolic meaning. And the vestments of
many colours which the Roman priesthood wear in the
course of their ceremonies indicates the same mystical
idea of being clothed in the Holy Spirit. The rainbow-like
splendour of the Scarabæus, therefore, under certain
aspects, when shone over by the Sun, and the same
quality in the Peacock, made both be symbolized by the
ancients as figures of the Messenger who came out of the
Rainbow that encircles the Throne of God. [See A -
, section 6.] A remnant of this superstitious reve-
rence for an insect as a symbol of the Messenger still
subsists among the Hottentots, according to Kolben.
These people, he says, adore as a benign deity a certain
insect, peculiar, it is said, to the Hottentot countries.
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This animal is of the dimension of a child’s little finger:

the back is green, and the belly speckled with white and
red. It is provided with two wings, and on its head with
two horns. To this little winged deity, whenever they
set eyes on it, they render the highest tokens of venera-
tion; and if it honours a kraal with a visit, the inhabit-
ants assemble about it with transports of devotion, as if
the Lord of the Universe was come among them. They
sing and dance round it while it stays, troop after troop
throwing to it the powder of Bachu [a Messianic name],
with which they cover at the same time the whole area
of the kraal, the tops of their cottages, and everything
without doors. They kill two fat sheep as a thank-
offering for this high honour. It is impossible to drive
out of a Hottentot’s head that the arrival of this insect
to a kraal brings favour and prosperity to the inhabitants.
49. Lastly, and most beautiful of all, the celestial or
ethereal Soul was represented in symbolical writing by
Psyche or the Butterfly, an insect which first appears
from the egg in the shape of a grub, crawling upon the
earth, and feeding upon the leaves of plants. In this
state it was aptly made an emblem of Man in his earthly
form: when the æthereal vigour and activity of the
celestial Soul, the Divinæ particula Mentis was clogged
and encumbered with the material body. In its next
state the grub becoming a chrysalis (21) appeared by its
stillness, torpor, and insensibility, a natural image of
Death, or the intermediate state between the cessation of
the vital functions of the body and the emancipation of
the Soul or Spirit; and the Butterfly, breaking from this
torpid chrysalis, and mounting in the air, afforded a no
less natural image of the Celestial Soul bursting from the
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restraints of matter, and mixing again with its native

æther. Like other animal symbols, it was by degrees
melted into the human form, the original wings only
being retained to mark its meaning. So elegant an
allegory would naturally be a favourite subject of art
among a refined and ingenious people; and it accordingly
appears to have been more diversified and repeated by
the Greek sculptors than almost any other which the
system of Emanations, so favourable to art, could afford.
The reader is desired therefore, whenever he meets in the
following pages with a symbol which he does not instantly
understand, to meditate well upon it, and he will in time
find out its hidden wisdom and loveliness: let him not
rashly conclude that it has no meaning, or that it is
foolishness, for I can assure him that symbolism is in
many respects the language of heaven itself, and that it
is truly divine in its origin.
50. How far the ancients refined in this matter
is shewn by the fact that even the letter D is a
letter of symbolic meanings: it signifies, says Davies,
Celt. Res. 446, the power of expanding, spreading,
unfolding, laying open, distribution or division. Di
was a term for the Deity, instead of which we now
have Dai, the disposer, the distributor. Di also implied
day, as it still does in the Armorican. Dia in Irish
signifies God. ‫די‬, Di, in Chaldaic, signifies the All-
powerful, as it also does in Hebrew with the relative ‫ש‬
prefixed; it was therefore an epithet of the Divine Being
in the early ages. The symbol of D was the expansive
oak. Taliesin alludes to it as synonymous with the
Deity. “The oak—the mover before Him, heaven and
earth would tremble—a severe foe—the door guard is his
U 3
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name in the table book.” In order to comprehend the

meaning of this, when he says its name was a door or a
door-guard, we must recollect that D was anciently
distinguished by a term which also signified a door. Its
Hebrew name, ‫דלח‬, Daleth, means a door, or gate. In
the Greek it is Δ, Delta, or a triangle, a symbol not only
of God, but of all, as has been already shewn in the
remarkable extract cited at page 204, and also in page 395.
According to Kaempfer, 1, 2, p. 159, says Bryant, Dai
signifies a lord or prince. Dius and Divus were applied
in the same manner by the Greeks and Romans, yet they
wore titles which properly related to the Gods; and Dai
did so likewise. This is apparent from its always being
annexed to the names of Deities.
51. And here it may be well that I should insert a few
pages on the symbolism of numbers, which prevails so
much in the Apocalypse, and a due consideration of which
is requisite for the right understanding of its spirit. These
numbers are three, four, seven, ten, and twelve, all of which
have been considered in some sort sacred from the earliest
ages. The number Ten, says Thoth, is the Mother of the
Soul, and the Life and the Light are there united; since
the number One is born from the Spirit, thus the Unity
has made the Ten and the Ten the Unity. Pythagoras,
in his discourse concerning the Gods, says: Number is
the Principle most providential of all heaven and earth,
and the nature that is betwixt them: it is the root of the
divine beings and of gods and of daimons: the principle,
formation, and root of all things which first existed in the
Divine Mind, and out of which all things were digested
into order and regularity. Iambl. Vit. Pyth. c. 38. Odd
numbers were called masculine, and appropriated to the
celestials, and these were deemed perfect. Even numbers
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were accounted imperfect and female. Pythagoras said

that Monad (God) was the Father of number, and Duad
(the Spirit) their mother. This doctrine constituted one
of his ineffable secrets, and was communicated to his
disciples at their initiation, as we learn from Iamblichus,
who says: I learned this when I was initiated at Libeth
in Thrace, Aglaophemus administering the rites to me.
Orpheus, son of Calliope, instructed by his mother in the
Sangæan mountains, said that Number is an everlasting
substance. The universe and all things, says Aristotle, in
accordance with the Pythagoreans, are limited by the
number three. In accordance with this, we find, says
Stuart, three most extensively employed in the heathen
world, as significant of whatever is divine, creative, or
productive. As in numbers it forms the first complete
composite unity which is indivisible, so in forms and
figures that are purely mathematical and ideal it bears a
most conspicuous part. The triangle is the basis of almost
all geometrical forms, and is itself unresolveable into any
other. Accordingly the Hindus make it the symbol of
the Gods who are most worshipped by them. A triangle
with the point upwards (a linga), of Shiva; with the
point downwards, of Vishnu (a yoni).* The image of
Shiva has three eyes, one being in the middle of his fore-
head, and he bears a triangle as his insigne. So the
mystical Zennar is a cord of three threads: the trident is
a common emblem in the hands of their Gods: the mode
of worship is ternary, and consisted of bowing the body
* Combined in the masonic symbol, they indicate the mystical

union of God with the Holy Spirit. The word union is derived,
indeed, from yoni. Of this, the freemasons themselves, who have
lost the secret of their craft, are profoundly ignorant. They have
changed their Isiac rites into an absurd jargon of Judaism and
bastard Christianity.
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three times: the principal deity in the Cave of Elephanta

has three heads: the summit of the massive pyramidal
pagoda of Tanjore is surmounted by three peaks, like the
holy mountain Meru. The world, which they consider
in some respects as the image of God, the Hindus divide
into upper, middle, and lower: man, whom they regard
as a kind of μικροθεος, is divided into body, soul, and
spirit, just as among the Hebrews. Wisdom xvi. 14,
Hebrews iv. 2, 1 Thess. v. 23. [See Part I. page 189.]
Himalaya, the mount of the Gods, has three summits:
the holy fire is three-fold, and there are three modes of
knowledge. Of like signification is the triangle among
the Chinese, and the principal province of the heavenly
world, Petcheli, they represent as triangular. A tripod
they call spirit from its symbolical signification. The
book Seeki says: “Formerly the emperor offered solemnly
every three years to the Spirit of threeness and oneness.”
The Babylonish ritual required prayer and kneeling three
times each day before the Supreme Divinity: the temple
of Belus contained three colossal images. Parsism assigned
a triangle to Mithras as an emblem. Among the Greeks
and Romans this number is conspicuous in respect to
things pertaining to sacred rites that have relation to the
Godhead. These three threads, says Virgil (Eclog. viii.
73), diversified by three different colours, I bind around:
three times I carry the effigy around these altars: God
delights in this uneven number. On this, Servius, the
ancient commentator, has remarked: “The triplex perfect
number the Romans assigned to the Supreme God, from
whom is the beginning, middle, and end.” He adds:
“The Power of all the gods is exhibited by a three-fold
sign. [See ante page 274]. Jove has fulmen trifidum;
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Neptune a trident; Pluto a canis triceps. Apollo is also,

Sol et Liber. All things are contained in this triple
division, the Destinies, the Eumenids, &c. Plato, in his
Laws, says: God, according to the ancient saying, con-
tains the beginning, the end, and the middle of all things.
For these reasons, three has always been regarded as a
sacred number, and is employed in designating symbolical-
ly the Godhead itself, or whatever stands in immediate
connection with it in the way of worship, ceremonies,
rites, holy seasons, &c. And this holy character was at-
tached to it in the East thousands of years before Judaism
existed: albeit, if we believe the biblicals, everything on
earth has been copied from the Jews. So the Hindus
have had, from the most distant time, a superstitious
veneration for the numbers One and Three, which are
their sacred numbers. A Hindu never gives or receives
an obligation for an even sum: if he borrows or lends a
hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand rupees, the obliga-
tion runs for a hundred and one, a thousand and one, ten
thousand and one, &c. The Mahomedans have the same
veneration for One; hence it was that the revenues
stipulated to be paid annually by Soojah Khan into the
royal treasury were one khorore, one lac, one thousand,
one hundred, and one rupees. (Holwell ii. 21.) The same
idea prevails among the Arabs also: hence we have it
preserved in the name of that most transcendent memorial
of human genius that the world possesses—The Thousand
and One Nights.
52. Three and its multiples were deeply mysterious,
and the ancients have many allusions to the Thrice-three.
The war of the Two Principles, good and bad, was to last
9000 years. The Annus Magnus of the Sabæans was
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9000 years, according to some 18000, and to others

36,000. The war of the Titans against Jupiter lasted 9
years. Jupiter visited Minos every 9th year. The
famous Grecian festival in honour of Apollo, called
Daphnephora, was at the end of every 9 years; the Mys-
teries of Eleusis lasted 9 days: but the first element of
the system was 3. It is observed by arithmeticians, says
Hume, that the products of 9 compose always 9, or some
lesser products of 9. If you add together all the charac-
ters of which any of the former products is composed,
thus, of 18, 27, 36, 45, which are products of 9, you make
9 by adding 1 to 8, 2 to 7, 3 to 6, 4 to 5, &c. Thus 369
is a product of 9, and if you add 3, 6, and 9, you make 18,
a lesser product of 9.
53. I now come to the number four. The created
universe, according to general opinion among the ancients,
resolves itself into four elements, fire, air, earth, and
water. Four are the regions of the earth, viz., east,
west, north, and south; in four different ways is the
extension of all bodies conceived of, for they have length,
breadth, height, and depth. Four are the seasons; four
are the marked variations of the lunar phases. If we go
from these to the world of abstract science, that is, the
intellectual world, there we find the square a highly
important ground-form in geometrical relations. Order,
rule, regularity, may therefore be obviously designated by
four when symbolically employed. The cube which
consists of fours throughout, is evidently a very significant
image. The mystical square of the Hindus, which is used
as an amulet, is designed to represent the world. It con-
tains three rows of squares (a union of three and four)
joined together, and marked with unit numbers, so that
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if read in any direction the sum of them is fifteen: the

form is thus:
6 7 2
1 5 9
8 3 4
This fifteen consists of 12, the number of the Messengers,

and 3, the emblem of the Supreme. The number 5 thus
occupies the middle station, and designates the soul of
the world; the other numbers designate the world; the
even ones the earthly elements, the uneven ones the
heavenly elements. Man, an image of the world, a real
microcosm, is drawn by the Hindus on this magic square,
with his hands and feet extended to the four corners.
The lotus-flower, which has four leaves, is the most favour-
ite of all the symbols taken from the productions of
nature, in Hindu theosophy. Buddha, or reason per-
sonified, in which the Godhead reveals itself, holds a
square in its hands, and wears one on its heart; so that
four is the symbol of revelation, as well as of creation.
The veda is divided into four parts, and these are called
the four words of the four mouths. Brahma is sometimes
drawn four-headed. In pictures the olla, or palm-leaf
prepared for writing, appears adorned with four stars.
The Brahmin, in sacred meditation, sits upon a square
form. Among the Egyptians the symbolic use of four
seems to be not less striking. After the three four pairs
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follow, personifications of the powers by which the world

exists and is regulated, viz., Fire and Water, Heaven and
Earth, Sun and Moon, Day and Night. The sacred sist-
rum had four bands or chords, which were struck in order
to regulate time; symbols, of course, of order and regula-
tion. The Greeks tell us that these sounds also symbol-
ized the four elements, like the four tones in the Hindu
sacred name for God, Aoum. Hermes, the Logos of the
Egyptians, the inventor of all the sciences, and of lan-
guage, and writing, was called τετραγωνος, fourfold, by
the Greeks, in imitation of the Egyptian designation of
him. This statue was a simple cubiform stone or pillar.
The sacred books of Hermes, like the Vedas, were four.
The Pythagorean school paid such regard to the number
four, that they even invented a new name for it, and
called it Tetractys, and it was deemed to be significant of
the Universe in order, beauty, and arrangement. The
statues of the Gods of Greece, in most ancient times, were
square, i. e., cubiform pillars. At Pharæ in Achaia was
a cubiform image of Hermes, and around it thirty square
stones, each inscribed with the name of a God. At Athens
there was a square statue of Venus. The ancient Ara-
bians worshipped cubiform statues, and amulets of this
form were common. Cybele, the Phrygian mother of the
Gods, was represented in this way; and the Arabian
black-stone, Hagiar al Assoud, was of the same form. The
Pythagoreans not only designated the Logos by a square,
but represented human souls in the same way, and their
highest oath was made by four. The Chinese made four
ways of origination, like the Hindus. With them a square
is the figure of the Universe. Offerings are made to the
four Seasons, on four mountains, laying in four different
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quarters. Offerings are made to the heaven on a round

hill, but to the quadriform universe in a square place.
Among the Sabæans and Chaldæans a square was the
symbol of the sun, as the light of lights, in which the
Godhead is revealed. The Zand-a-Vesta makes four
quarters of the world, and four protecting Genii. Four
stars of heaven are the names of Ormusd; men were
divided into four castes or classes, and the magi wore four
knots in their sacred tiara. Down to the present hour
the Parsis consider the cube as the perfect image of the
world. The paradise of the Hindus is placed on the
lofty mountain Meru; it is arched by four mountains,
with four gigantic trees on their tops, and there are
four rivulets of silver water at the foot. Brahma’s
palace, on Meru, has four doors, out of which stream
four rivers, that flow towards the four quarters of the
world; all of which reminds one of the four rivers assigned
to paradise in the rabbinical tract in Genesis. The para-
dise of the Thibetans is in like manner in the mountain
peak Rivou: it is square, and consists of four elements:
at the foot of the mountain are four stones, with the
forms of four animal heads, and also four rivers issue
from the mountain. The Chinese paradise is on Mount
Koontûn; it is watered by a golden river, which divides
itself into four branches, that refresh and animate all
things. The Persian paradise is Mount Alborj, the place
of Ormusd’s throne, formed in four periods. Four rivers
water this paradise, and these are the Waters of Salva-
tion.
54. If three, proceeds Stuart, is the symbol of the God-
head in its developments, and in its relations to the
creation; and four is the symbol of the creation rational
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and irrational, but specially of the former, then a union

of these two significant numbers might naturally enough
be symbolic of a union between God and his creatures—
i.e. it would naturally enough designate the connection
between God and the World. From this relation or
connection springs all that is named religion or worship:
and with this worship stands connected all that belongs
to the solid and lasting happiness of intelligent beings.
It is not strange then that seven, which, when generically
considered is symbolic of union between the Creator and
his creatures, should designate many leading particulars
which arrange themselves under such a genus. Hence,
when we find it employed as a symbol more frequently
than any other number in prescriptions regarding religious
worship, rites, and ordinances: most frequent of all in
regard to revelations or communications which God has
made to man, or in regard to the results of these—i.e.,
the peace and happiness of man—there seems to be nothing
unnatural or unaccountable in such a use. And, inasmuch
as the union of God and Man involves of course the idea
of man’s most perfect state, it is natural enough that
seven should easily go over to the designation of that
which is perfect, or be considered as the perfect number
by way of eminence. There are some natural grounds,
moreover, for such views respecting this number. There
are sevens in the world of nature which, to the mind of
the ancients, were striking and significant. The Pytha-
goreans found in the seven musical tones a striking
emblem of the harmony which constitutes the universe.
All the parts of the Kosmos, as is well-known, move in
perfect order, and preserve an entire harmony. Hence
they imagined a resemblance between them and the seven
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musical tones which, taken together, make up the circle

of harmony in music. Hence Pan, the personification
of the Universe, was represented as having a flute of
seven reeds, emitting seven different tones when breathed
upon by its owner, and his music-moving breath was
compared to the igneous æther, which the ancients regarded
as diffused through the Universe, and occasioning all the
revolutions of the planets in what might be named a
musical order. From this came the idea of the music of
the spheres. The God who created the Universe created
it so as to regale himself with the music which it was
continually sending forth, while the planets moved in
circling dance to the celestial harmony.
55. In Egypt the priests offered praise to Hermes, the
author of order, rule, and law, by playing on a lute of
seven tones; which tones were supposed to resemble the
harmony of the spheres. In the same country seven
inferior deities were supposed to follow on after the first
three; representing the seven original powers. Pan, who
connected and united all these, was reckoned an eighth.
Among the Greeks Apollo’s lyre with seven strings was a
symbol of the universal harmony. Apollo himself was
named ‘Εβδομαγενης, born on the seventh day, and the
seventh day, Sunday, was consecrated to him. On account
of these coincidences of the several planets, and the seven
tones of music, the Pythagoreans named seven the tone,
because within its limits all the gradations of tone were
included. In Hindostan, where man was considered in
the light of a microcosm and microtheos, he was regarded
as an image of the great seven-stringed lyre, and the
Hindus reckoned his members in such a way as to make
seven of them. The seven days of the week (a division
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which prevailed nearly over all the earth), shows how

extensively a seven-fold division of time existed in the
ancient world. The Hindus place around their paradise
in Meru seven peninsulas, and around these seven seas.
Albordj, the paradise mountain of the Persians, has seven
Keshwars or girdles of the earth, corresponding to the
seven climates of the Arabians. Around the paradisical
mountain range of Himavata of the Thibetans, stand
seven mountains surrounded by seven seas. The Hindus
have seven purgatories; the Persians have seven Mithra-
gates, through which the soul progresses to a state of per-
fectness: and the Pythagoreans held that a transmigration
through the seven planets was essential to the entire purity
of the soul and spirit. Among the Cabbalists the septe-
nary number denoted universality, and was termed by
the Pythagoreans ουλομελεια, the All-music. They also
gave it the name of σεβασμου αξιος, worthy of veneration.
There were seven vases in the Temple of the Sun at
Babian in Upper Egypt; seven altars which burned
continually before Mihr; seven holy fanes of the old
Arabs: seven boobuns of perfection in the Hindu code,
the seven worlds of the Indians and Chaldæans.
56. Seven seems to represent a large and complete yet
uncertain number. Hannah, in her song, says, The barren
hath borne seven, I. Sam. ii. 5, that is a great and indefinite
number of children. In its Hebrew etymology it signifies
fulness and perfection. Philo styles it τελεσφορος, the
completing number: and it is mentioned as such by
Cyprian who cites passages from the Apocalypse and other
Scriptures, to shew the consummatio perfecta et legitima
of this number. Gregory Nazianzene calls seven the
number that hath power. The Arabians and Indians had
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seven celebrated temples, and believed in seven compart-

ments of hell. And among the Hindus we still find this
maxim in common use, A man’s own mind will tell him
more than seven sages that sit on a high tower: the profound
depth and beauty of which has never been excelled.
According to Pythagoras it is a number venerable, perfect
and accommodated to things sacred. Grotius has produced
proofs from Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus, Lucian, and
Tibullus, of an observance of a seventh day or Sabbath
among the most ancient peoples: and from Herodotus, Dio
Cassius, and Philostratus of the reverence in which it was
held by Indians and Egyptians.
57. In the Hindu legend which commemorates the
assumption of the prophetic office by the First Messenger,
we have the number seven pre-eminently mentioned.
Gaudama (the Bhoodist name for Adam) (22) remained
with his family till he was twenty-nine years of age, he
had married, and had had one son; he then left his family
and kindred, and wandered in the jungles and woods for
six years: at the end of that time he met a holy man of
Thōteya, who was cutting herbs. Thōteya gave him seven
bundles of grass: with these he continued his wanderings
till he arrived at a peepul tree (23) in Boodha Gaya.
He then felt a secret influence come over him, that the
time of his becoming a Boodh [a Messenger] was at
hand: he accordingly spread out the seven bundles of
grass, and said, Let a sign appear. Immediately there arose
from the earth a Throne of Diamonds, upon which he
sat himself down: and then the mysterious influence
came over him that rendered him a Boodh. He remained
seven days on this throne, being impregnated with the
Boodhic spell: this spot was thenceforth called Rajah
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Paleng, or the Royal Seat. The ruins of a tsedya (or small

pagoda), built over it by kings, is still shewn. From thence
he arose and removed to a short distance to the eastward,
and sat down contemplating the Throne with a fascinated
love: he remained in this state without moving or even
winking his eyes for seven days: this spot was thence
called anie meethaka, from anie without, and meethaka
to wink; here also, as in all the other spots, the ruins of a
tsedya are shewn. Thence he removed to a spot a little
eastward, and kept walking backwards and forwards in
contemplation the space of another seven days: this
spot was styled Radana Chundkomar or the Jewelled
Way: a building, the length of the walk, was built
over it by after kings, the ruins of which are yet shewn.
From thence he moved a short distance to the west,
and there the Dewatas built him a habitation of resplen-
dent gems, in which he remained for seven days, and
composed the Abiedhurma, or Perfect Justice; the mode
by which mortals may obtain Nieban, or everlasting
bliss with God; this spot was called Radana Ghur, or
the House of Gems. Thence he removed a short dis-
tance to a peepul tree where the shepherds came for
shade, and remained there for seven days absorbed in
meditation: this spot was called Ajie pala Nigroda, or
the Shepherd’s peepul tree. Thence he removed to a
place called Mooja Linda, and there remained seven days,
during which a fearful storm arose, such as was never
witnessed before, and the rain descended in torrents: it
was then that the Serpent King, who was in a lake close
by, bethought himself to shelter Adama: he first intended
to have raised for him by magic a Shed of Jewels that
should excel in splendour the house made for him by the
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Dewatas; but then he thought himself of a method by

which he might shew his devotion in a still more enthu-
siastic way: so he distended himself enormously, and
turned himself seven times fold upon fold, round Adama,
so as to form a hollow cavity: his head also he distended,
and with that he shielded the head of the Prophet. In the
midst also he formed a seat resplendent with gems, on
which he placed Adama; but the latter was so absorbed
in meditation that all this passing scene around him was
unheeded. From thence Adama rose and removed to a
place where he remained in meditation another seven
days. During these 49 days Adama was undergoing that
impregnation which rendered him a finished Boodh. He
neither ate nor drank, nor washed his mouth; he then
arose, took refreshment and commenced his ministry. I
may add, that it was during the 49 days of sacred abstraction
thus described, that Adama is by some thought to have
transcribed the scenes of the Apocalypse on the leaves of
the sacred palm or peepul tree.
58. The images of the gods frequently appear with
sistra in their hands. The sistrum was, as Salmasius
observes, of the form of a racket; it was of copper; holes
were pierced through it in which were put small rods of
the same metal; the instrument, when shaken, made a
noise like that of castanets. The sistrum had often four
rods: sometimes only three. Those who are conversant
with the symbolical language of Egypt find in the four
rods or bars allusion to the four elementary principles
and their harmonious arrangement, concerning which the
author de recipiendis Manichæis, uses these beautiful
expressions, addressing himself to the deity. Thou,
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arranging the creation from the four elements, hast

crowned the circle of the year with four seasons. Tollius
thinks that when the bars are three in number, an allu-
sion is made to the elements of fire, water, air, and that
the sistrum itself signifies the earth. This instrument
also refers to the harmonious arrangement of the heavenly
bodies. The heavens, says Ficinus in his Commentary on
Plotinus (Enn. 3, lib. ii.) are, according to the Pythago-
reans, the lyre of the Deity. The ancient philosophers,
observes Plutarch from Timæus, placed in the hands of
the statues of the gods musical instruments, not as wishing
to ornament them with the lyre and flute, but as thinking
that nothing was so much the business of the gods as the
harmony and arrangement of things. This beautiful order,
this music of the spheres, is fancifully illustrated by
Pythagoras; by Timæus in his dialogue about the Soul;
by Plato in his explanation of it; and again by the com-
mentators on him. Aristides, in his third book on Music,
has unfolded the same doctrine with Plato, and alludes to
it in the animated address in the first book, part of which
I here give from the corrected text of the learned
Meibomius. Whom shall we first invoke as an assistant
on this occasion? Shall we not call on Him who has
arranged all this visible world by means invisible, and
who has framed with such perfection the whole soul
according to harmonic proportions?—whether it be lawful
to call him Demiurgus, aptly applying the name to him
from the things which are his works, or whether we
should call him Pure Species, intimating that from which
men have derived their powers: or whether we should
address him by the title of Reason, or The One, as men
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of sublime understandings and wisdom have, or by any

other name: manifesting by the former appellation that
he arranges and beautifies all; and by the latter pointing
out that he brings together, and binds into one, by indis-
soluble chains, things many and different. Him let us
invoke and pray to, that he may afford us all necessary
perception, and grant us all facility to speak in a manner
worthy the subject proposed.
59. So much for the number seven: let us now
glance at ten. Among the Hebrews the name of the
perfect number, i.e. Ten, was Iod, or Ii, their name of
God. Among the Arabs it was Eya, the ancient
Indian name of God, and among the Greeks it was
I, or EI, the same as IE, the Hebrew name of God.
By the Etruscans, whatever might be its name, it was
described by the X or T, and for the sake of an astrolo-
gical meaning I have no doubt the Greeks contrived that
the X should stand for 600. In the Chinese language
the 24th radical, the Shih, is the shape of the cross, thus,
+, and means ten. [See ante page 230]. It also means
complete, perfect, perfectly good. Thus the same system
is universally found. It forms part of the word Shiloh,
the Sun, and the Messenger. The phallos and circle IO
also make the perfect number. Ten was anciently called
the first square, being composed of the four first numbers,
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10. It comprehends within itself
the nature of even and odd, and makes all numbers com-
plete. On this subject General Vallancey observes: And
hence the Sephiroth tree, or tree of numbers of the
Cabalistical Jews; and this tree contained 10 names, viz.,
Corona, Sapientia, Prudentia, Clementia, Gravitas, Ornatus,
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Triumphus, Confessio laudis, Fundamentum, Regnum.

The number 10 seems to have been fixed on because, as
relating to numerals, ten was called perfection, as from
thence all nations began to count anew. For this reason
the Egyptians expressed the number 10 by the word mid,
that is, perfection, Metis, a name for the Holy Spirit,
and Aumid; and the Irish call it deag [the Syriac Dag
or Fish], a word of like meaning: and for this reason the
Chaldæans formed the word jod, or number ten, by an
equilateral triangle, thus, , which was the symbol of
perfection with the Egyptians. The Egyptians doubled
the triangle, thus, X, and then it became a cross of St.
Andrew, or the letter X, or ten, that is, perfection, being
the perfect number, or the number of fingers on both
hands; hence it stood for ten with the Egyptians,
Chinese, Phœnicians, Romans, &c., and is so used with us
at this day. The Mexicans also use the same figure in
their secular calendars. The Tartars call it lama, from
the Scythian lamh, or hand, synonymous to the jod of the
Chaldæans, and thus it became the name of a cross and of
the high priest of the Tartars, and of the Lamaic
Messenger of God; and with the Irish luam signifies the
head of the Church, an abbot, &c.
60. Twelve being beyond the limits of those which are
named units, must of course be regarded as a composite num-
ber. As seven is made up of four and three added together,
so twelve is made up of four multiplied by three. From the
most ancient times the division of the zodiac into twelve
constellations, which circumscribe the annual course of
the sun, appears to have been made. Hence the twelve
months. The Chinese emperor Yao placed twelve Man-
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darins over his kingdom to commemorate the Twelve

Messengers of the Apocalypse. The Arabians were
divided into twelve tribes thousands of years before the
æra of Mohammed. In old Persia, the palace of the
King was surrounded by four courts, over which twelve
officers presided. Diodorus Siculus says that the most
ancient Egyptians were divided into twelve dynasties:
twelve towns were founded by Cecrops in Attica; the
ancient areopagus consisted of twelve members. The
Etruscans arranged their magistrates by twelves. The
twelve tables of the Romans are well known. In ancient
Germania there were twelve priests of Odin. Twelve
Brabeutai among the earlier Grecians, presided as judges
in the Olympic games, and other solemn and religious
festivals. The office was most honourable. They appeared
in purple, crowned, and with wands; and it was their
province to decide the victory, and crown the conqueror.
Their awards were always so impartial that Pindar calls
the garlands which they bestowed Θεμιλεκτους, chosen by
Themis, the Goddess of Justice. The observation made
respecting the 12 Caesars only applies to a part of an uni-
versal mythos. There were 12 tribes of Israel, who all
assembled to worship at one temple. There were twelve
tribes of Ιonians [Holy Dove worshippers] who all assem-
bled in like manner at one temple. There were twelve
tribes of Etruscans, who all assembled at one temple, and
who by colonies founded twelve tribes in Campania, and
12 more in the Apennine mountains. There were 12
Caesars, and 12 Imaums of Persia, followers of Ali, all
believed to be foretold by Esdras, 2, ch. xii. 11, 15. When
Moses built a Druidical temple near to Sinai, he set up
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12 stones. At Gilgal again twelve unhewn stones, and at

Gerizim again 12 stones in circles. I need not point out
the circles of twelves so often found in the remaining
Druidical temples—all Boodhistic, Pythagorean, and
Masonic, still intelligible in many of our chapter houses;
for the builders of these were the oldest monks (probably
Carmelites) and masons. It is not contested that the
institution of a jury of twelve existed in the time of
William the Conqueror. The document which remains
of the dispute between Gundulf, the Bishop of Rochester,
and Pictot, the sheriff, ascertains this fact. The jury
appears to me, says Turner, to be an institution of pro-
gressive growth, and its principle may be traced to the
earliest Anglo-Saxon times. Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons, iv.
Some say that a trial by a jury of twelve was in use among
the ancient Britons, and others that we had it from the
Greeks. Jacob’s Law Dict. The number twelve, says
Rozen, is preserved in the north; the territorial tribu-
nals are composed of twelve members, named in the
language of the county, Telfmen, or Twelve Men. The
Irish word Coisire (pronounced cosheree) signifies an
assembly of Judges for the decision of causes; it is also
a jury of twelve men. O’Brien and Shaw’s Dictionary.
Dans chaque Parganah, says Anquetil, il y’ a une
Cacheri, ou cour de justice. Legislat. Orient, p. 97. It
certainly was in use among the old Etruscans. The twelve
Lucumones presided over twelve provinces—they took
on themselves the administration and distribution of jus-
tice, and on extraordinary occasions, such as the trial of
property, of life, or death, they were summoned to meet at
Voltumna, where the grand national tribunal was held.
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61. And thus much I have thought it necessary to say

about symbolism and numbers, for it will be impossible for
the reader ever to comprehend the divine meaning of the
Apocalypse, unless he brings to it some knowledge at least,
of that sublime and daring order of metaphor, in which
almost every incident that it reveals has been conceived.
But the reader must not content himself with this meagre
sketch.
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NOTES TO BOOK IV.
Note 1 (page 373).—The God, of which the Emperor Helio-Gabalas

styles himself the priest, is described by Herodian. He has no image
made by hands, erected as among the Greeks and Romans, bearing
the figure or resemblance of a god, but instead of this there is a
huge stone [or monolith] of a circular base, and gradually lessening
upwards till it ends in a sharp top like a cone: its colour is
black, and there is a sacred tradition that it fell from Jupiter.
Book v. We read in Roman history of a Sacred Stone, which was
called the Mother of the Gods. O Fasti. iv. 263. L xxix.
Arnobius tells us that this Stone was but small, and could easily
be carried by one man; that it was black and tawny, with pro-
minent corners. Keightley considers that it was an aërolithe. It
was no doubt a symbol though the common people did not know
it. Modern religionists can laugh at this stone, and wonder at
the credulity that consecrated it with so solemn a title; and,
having indulged their laughter to the full, they go and swallow a
wafer, which they believe to be the Supreme Lord of Heavens and
Earths. Apollonius Rhodius says that there was a sacred black
stone in a temple of Mars to which all the Amazons in times of
old addressed their prayers. This was a linga. All ancient
people venerated stones in some form or shape. In the Hebrew
tracts several instances of it occur. The sacred black conical
stone at Mecca—the cromlechs of the ancient Britains, the
coronation stone in Westminster Abbey are others. Among the
Hindus and Mexicans the worship shown to conical and circular
stones was very remarkable. In the treaty of Nerthinsk, made
between the Russians and Chinese, Pennant tells us that the
ambassadors of the latter, according to a custom of the earliest
date, raised two pillars upon the spot to determine the boundaries
of the respective empires, and on them engraved the Treaty.
View of India, iii. 183. Each Pillar indicated that the Supreme
God of each witnessed this treaty.
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NOTES TO BOOK IV. 463
Note 2 (page 381).—Ancient mythology, says Faber,

delighted to veil the simplest truth in the language of mysterious
allegory; the hierophants rightly judging, from their knowledge
of human nature, that the religion which they inculcated would
thus be rendered more venerable in the eyes of the abused multi-
tude. Pag. Idol. i. 16. Does this furnish a clue to the reason why
our Christian priests have done the same thing? and have over-
loaded the lessons of truth with speaking snakes and the hundred
other mysteries which now disfigure religion? The language of
the New Testament is not the only language in which metaphor
has given birth to legend. We know that in the case of
Christianity the oriental figures of Jesus are the sole bases on
which doctrines generally believed to be of vital consequence are
supported. Yet in speaking so, he merely spake as an Eastern
ever will continue to do. The Hebrews termed sparks, sons of
the burning coal; one who is to die, is a son of death. The Arabs
call a traveller, a son of the way; a warrior, a son of battle;
springs, daughters of the earth; mist, daughter of the sea; tears,
daughters of the eye; and dreams, daughters of night; an ass is
with them the father of hanging ears. The person born on the
bank of a lake or river, would be called its son; one coming by
sea, a son of the sea; and when the metaphor came to be
understood literally, persons thus spoken of would be looked
upon as children of the river or sea-god, and legends would be
devised accordingly.
Note 3 (page 382).—The splendid temple on the river Sala, the
present site of Upsal, which is said to be of great antiquity,
dating its existence from the time of Ninus, was decorated with a
profusion of costly ornaments, plates, and chains of burnished
gold: and contained a representation of Odin, Thor, Frea. These
were placed beside each other on a line. On the right stood Odin,
a gigantic figure bearing his Sword: in the centre stood Thor his
son, bearing a crown, sceptre and mace; while on his head twelve
stars shone to denote him as a Messenger, one of the twelve. On
the left was Frea or the Holy Spirit, depicted as AO or two-sexed,
and having the same generative emblems as we see in Hindostan.
Yet so chaste were this people, says the Rev. Mr. Oliver, that
their continence and absolute deference to the weaker sex gained
the applause of all polished nations. Even Tacitus could say,
that amongst this people the females were safe from personal
insult: and the sanctity of the matrimonial bond was so devotedly
venerated as to merit the most unqualified applause. (Germ. c.
18.) And Salvian says that these barbarians were worthy of
admiration on account of their continence, and that they were
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464 NOTES TO BOOK IV.
literally the reformers of the Roman manners. (S . de gub. dec.

lib. vii.)
Note 4 (page 384).—The symbolism here mentioned by Daubuz
resembles in some sort the doctrine of Correspondences, which is
a leading doctrine of the Swedenborgians proper, and it is explained
by the following Targum on the first verse of Genesis. By Wisdom
Aleim had made the essence of the earth, and the essence of the
two heavens—that is, the invisible and the spiritual, which the
eye hath never seen, and the heart of man cannot conceive; and
the visible consisting of the planetary spheres, the empyreum,
and the day or crystalline sphere. And it is their creed that all
that is visible corresponds in the most exact particulars with all
that is invisible.
Note 5 (page 388).—The Egyptians, says Bryant, were refined
in their superstitions above all the nations in the world. Whatever
they deemed salutary or of great value, they distinguished by the
title of sacred; and consecrated it to some God. This will appear
from words borrowed from Egypt. The Laurel, Laurus, was
denominated from Al Orus; the berry was termed bacca, from
Bacchus; Myrrh, Μυῥῤα, was from Ham Ourah; Casia from
Chus. The Crocodile was called Caimin and Campsa; the Lion
El-Eon; the Wolf El-Uc; the Cat Al-Ourah; whence the Greeks
formed λεων, λυκος, αιλουρος. The Egyptians styled Myrrh,
Baal; balsam, baal samen; Camphire, Cham-phour, καμφουρα of
Greece; Opium, Ophion. The sweet reed of Egypt was named
Canah and Conah by way of eminence [and in allusion to the
A , section 50]; also Can-Osiris. Cinnamon was deno-
minated from Chan-Amon; Cinnabar, κινναβαρις, from Chan-
Abor; the sacred beetle, Cantharus, from Chan Athur. The harp
was styled Cinnōr, and was supposed to have been found out by
Cinnaras; which terms are compounded of Chan-Or, and Chan
Arez; and relate to the Sun, or Apollo, the supposed inventor of
the lyre. Priests and magistrates were particularly honoured
with the additional title of Cahen; and many things held sacred
were liable to have it in their composition.
Note 6 (page 389).—Instead of obelisks, says Josephus, Moses
set up pillars (lingas) on which was a model of a boat or ship
Ani (Yoni), and the shadow of a man disposed upon it (God, or
the Messenger). The linga and yoni were also symbolized by the
Peruvians by a solitary pillar placed in the centre of a circle
which was described in the area of the Great Temple. This also
served, says Prescott (Peru i. 126), to determine the period of the
equinoxes. The fire Towers of Zaratusht were all lingaic-shaped.
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See H Religio Vet. Pet. See also M . Galerie Mythologique.

Pl. ii. 5, for a representation of the Lingam according with the
Iranian Fire-Temples. So the trident was a symbol of the
phallos, or instrument of generation whose products are three-
fold, body, soul, and spirit: and a shell typified the female
nature.
Note 7 (page 393).—Thus the grammarians can find no better
meaning for Zand-a-Vesta, the holy and sublime book of the Fifth
Messenger, than that it signifies a tinder box!! And the tracta-
rians, with their millions of money, can find no better way of
expending it than in diffusing over the earth their soul destroying
fables and debasing falsehoods. The Bishop of London calls for
a million to build new churches, which, when built, will remain
empty; for who can bear the weekly pulpit? Could he not devote
the money more usefully? I read in the Morning Star, of April
9, 1867, the following letter, descriptive of what takes place in the
centre of Paulite civilization—in that Great City which subscribes
millions of gold to diffuse nonsense among the blacks. Why does
it not look at home? Why does it not remember the words of
Jesus: By their fruits ye shall know them; and thus judge of
Paulism by what it produces? The letter is headed Dark Scenes
in London, and proceeds as follows: I do not suppose that in the
worst city in the world the scenes that it describes could be
outdone. Sir,—A pleasant friend of mine tells a story of a man
who came from Dover with a return ticket to see London. He
spent the forenoon (says my friend) in staring at the Charing Cross
Hotel, and the afternoon in Madame Tussaud’s chambers of
Horrors! He then returned to Dover with a profound conviction
that he had seen London. It takes a long time to explore the
metropolis, and few men have done it thoroughly. Few men,
moreover, have seen the interior life of this great city, and still
fewer have had even a glimpse of the hidden things which lie
around us. Let me lift the veil a little, and, if I reveal dark
scenes only, I shall do it, not forgetting that there are bright and
beautiful scenes too. Some parts of London, then, let me say, are
in a deplorable condition from overcrowding. There is a small
section of it—not larger than Russell-square—which contains 635
houses, in which there reside 7,496 persons! There are 1,780
children, of whom 1,350 never attend any school. Not far from
this district is a street containing 24 houses, where strong drink
is sold. Need I say that dirt, fever, violence, and profligacy
abound in the neighbourhood? Both the men and women who
reside in it are often most brutal in their features, speech, and habits,
and are totally destitute of natural delicacy and human love. As
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for religion, they care nothing for it. Beefsteaks and porter, gin
and tobacco, are more to them than heaven itself. In many nooks
of the metropolis some repulsive scenes are often witnessed. In
a large cul-de-sac, for example, may be found on almost any fine
day a crowd of men, amounting to from 100 to 200, engaged in
reckless gambling. They are all thieves, burglars, and holders of
tickets-of-leaves. When excited by a quarrel their aspect is that of
savages. They swear horribly. They affirm their readiness to fight
their opponents till they are blind. Murder is on their lips and
in their hearts. I have seen another group of them huddling and
crushing all together in a corner to witness an exciting game of
chance—the mob panting, swearing, perspiring, and so maddened
that I thought they would suffocate each other in their furious
eagerness to see the sport. All this was within a few yards of a
police-station, and a splendid thoroughfare, which is, however, only
as a “whited sepulcher” to hide the physical and moral corruption
which seethes and reeks behind it. The railway arches of a certain
part of the metropolis are nightly the dark spots in which
are gratified some of the vilest passions of homeless wretches. In
many parts of London may be observed ragged, misshapen, sham-
bling men and women, who, as the gloom of night comes on,
converge towards these arches, and there sleep en masse. Let
some amateur casual sleep with them, if he dare, and the languid
cliques who believe in nothing, will hear what may, perhaps,
rouse them from their shameful apathy as to the state of the
homeless classes. But modern Sadducees are hard to move; they
prefer lotus leaves, operatic music, and luscious wine. I fear to
write of juvenile depravity; but let me venture a few lines.
Careful observers of metropolitan life must have noticed gangs of
young girls—three, four, and five together—who saunter idly
along the streets, and every now and then give a loud laugh, or
sing a chorus of some low song, or push, fight, and swear for their
own amusement. Not far from them follow gangs of boys of a
similar character. Well, most of these boys and girls have no
home; desire no home. They thieve, rob old men, beg, pilfer
from stalls and shops; take from children the money given to
pay for their schooling; abscond with rugs, whips, and coats
from traps, carts, and other vehicles; and, in fact, subsist entirely
by predatory habits? Where do they live? In the streets.
Where do they sleep? Anywhere. And they prefer to sleep
altogether! I need not say more to indicate the horrors of their
precocious depravity. A fearless man sees strange sights. For
many years “the dark arches” under the Adelphi presented weird
adventures to those who dare explore them. Lost beings flitted
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past you like shadows. They rose beneath your feet like ghosts.
They growled when you stumbled over them as they lay in their rags,
and some of them would have choked you for a shilling. The arches
are safer and better now, but the last time I plunged into them
with a friend I found a frightful-looking woman, who started from
her lair, and with a shriek fled out of sight. It was in one of
these “dark arches” that a poor young girl died, and was dis-
covered white and cold. But it is inside—not outside—that the
worst part of metropolitan life is to be studied. Let none, however,
pass behind the scenes who has not a pure heart, an unflinching
eye, and a self-possessed manner. Let him not go to enjoy, but
in a large, enlightened, Christian spirit to study what he may see,
that he may know to cure what is evil. Let us glance at some
interiors. Here, then, is a room in a public-house filled with people.
Smoking, drinking, singing, and sweethearting of a coarse kind
is going on. Many of the company are below twenty years of
age. One lad is treating three girls. This house is kept by “a
respectable licensed victualler!” Here, next, is a small theatre
crammed with young people. The girls giggle, eat nuts, drink
porter, leer at the boys, and shout messages to “our Sal.” The
boys smoke, drink porter, eat nuts, leer at the girls, and call to
the fiddlers to “play up.” The curtain rises, and a comic song
and dance begin. The dance is simply infamous—the song is like
it. Now, why has this entertainment gone on for years? Can the
police not stop it? Is there no police power or magisterial
authority to prohibit shameful dances and immoral songs? If that
power does not exist, ought it not to be created? In some parts
of London theives densely congregate. Let no reader of this letter
here expect any romance. There is no romance in the life of a
thief. “Penny numbers” are idle tales. Thieves—as a class—
are a wretched, cowed, ignorant, self-shamed, despicable lot of
ruffians. That is a mild way of putting the case. I have known
scores of thieves, and never knew one who had a decent home, any
respect for woman, a noble aspiration, a merry heart, and a bright
future. Their houses are dingy, their meals rude, their leisure
hours wearisome, their female friends worthless, their amusements
brutal, their children a burden, their souls debased, and their
lives intensely low, cruel, and bad. Most of them feel that they
have made a bad bargain with the devil, and lost the game they
meant to win. A thieves’ house! There are hundreds of them,
where every man is a thief, every woman worse than a thief, and
every child a predestined criminal. I have visited those houses
late at night and early in the morning, and any young clerk or
errand boy, or poor man’s daughter who becomes an inmate of any
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one of them will find it a present and immediate hell. I know

one of those inmates. He has been a swell-mobsman for twelve
years, and spent nine of them in prison. Another has spent
eighteen years in prison, and is now old, poor, and miserable.
Those houses are plague-spots of the worst kind, and no man knows
a tithe of the deeds of cruelty and lust which transpire within
their accursed walls. Sporting houses have great attractions for
some persons. They forget that pugilism ruins its heroes. Fast
men see the boxers in their prime, when they can run, leap,
wrestle, and fight. But I see them after the fight—bruised,
bleeding, depressed, drunk, almost dead. I know also how
pugilists often die. One of the chief heroes of modern times—
a champion of England—died in utter destitution. But pugilism
is waning, and will soon cease to have any attractions for the
people of the nineteenth century. Such, Mr. Editor, are some
of the dark spots with which my vocation has, without any
personal choice, made me familiar. How much longer they will
exist to form blots on our metropolitan civilisation and the reproach
of our national Christianity it is not for me to predict. I do,
however, feel that more legislative interference, police regulations,
and Christian philanthropy are all increasingly required for their
removal, and that two measures, at least, are necessary, namely,
a Permissive Bill and compulsory education. Even these, if
granted to-day, would not completely abolish all the evils which I
deplore, but they would, undoubtedly, vastly diminish in time
the ignorance, vice, crime, and misery which now rear their
rampant forms in the midst of our great metropolis.
G W. M’C .
16, Ampton-place, Regent-square.
Note 8 (page 394).—The Siege of Troy was a religious war,

undertaken to recover a stolen Sacred Image or Palladium of the
Holy Spirit, the Moon, S’Elene, to which extraordinary powers
were popularly assigned. Helen is Hel, ‫הל‬, and ‫נח‬, nh, the
Anima—in a word, the Holy Spirit. The Greeks were Iones, or
worshippers of the Yoni. The A was called the Golden
Napkin of Ceres. Herodotus gives a curious myth upon this, ii.
122. Suidas seems to hint that the Golden Fleece was a mystic
Volume; for he says that it was a parchment book in which was
written the whole secret of transmuting all things into gold. But
are not the truths of the A , if they were but acted on
by men, capable of the like splendid transformation? Did Origen
allude only to judicial astrology when he wrote: The Heaven is a
Book filed with characters: the stars so many signs which denote
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the fate of men and kingdoms: to read them is above the ordinary
capacity of men: they may attain it, and sometimes do? Does
not this passage rather indicate a knowledge of the A ?
Could Origen believe in judicial astrology? Vallancey speaks of
Seona-Sabha, or “Hercules’s pictures,” with which the priests
used to predict in ancient times. Collect. v. 40. Was this an
illuminated A —the great repository of all prophecy?
There is scarcely a single passage, either in the A or in
the Mysteries, which is not susceptible of the most varied phases,
and yet all are consonant with the doctrines which I have dis-
closed. How curious are the following myths, yet how they prove
their own truth, and how they harmonise with my teachings:
Those who were initiated into the Lesser were admitted to the
morning sacrifice to see the Secret Ritual [the A ], which was
wrapped up in symbolical figures of animals, in such a manner that the
writing was concealed from vulgar eyes. This mystical
Ritual was kept in the petroma or stone chest, which, after this
exhibition, was again safely lodged in the Sanctuary. This
sanctuary was sometimes made of brass, often of marble and
alabaster, and frequently of gold and silver: the Holy Spirit was
concealed under the name of the Old Woman. Thus we read in
Pausanias of a hidden Volume of the A . But Epiteles,
he says, the son of Æschines, whom the Argives chose for their
general, and the restorer of Messene, was commanded in a dream
to dig up that part of the earth in Ithome which was situated
between a yew-tree and a myrtle, and take out of a brazen bed-
chamber which he would find there an Old Woman worn out with
her confinement and almost dead. Epiteles therefore, as soon as it
was day, went to the place which had been described to him in
the dream, and dug up a brazen water-pot; this he immediately
took to Epaminondas, who, when he had heard the dream, ordered
him to remove the cover, and see what it contained. Epiteles
therefore, as soon as he had sacrificed and prayed to the god who
had given the dream, opened the water-pot, and found in it a thin
plate rolled up like a Book, and in which the Mysteries of the
Mighty Goddesses were written. This was the secret which Aristo-
menes had buried in that place, and they report that the person
who was seen by Epiteles and Epaminondas in a dream was
Caucon, who formerly came from Athens to Andania, in order to
deposit certain arcana with Messene, the daughter of Triopas.
Messenics, xxvi. Gyges, according to Plato, found a brazen horse
in a cavern. Within the horse was hid the body of a man of
gigantic stature, having a brazen ring on his finger. This ring
Gyges took, and found that it rendered him invisible. The cavern
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meant the Eleusinian Mysteries, where the semblance of a Horse,

that is, the Holy Spirit, Hippa, was shewn, from whose bosom
came the gigantic Man, or Messenger of Truth, bearing in his
hand the ring, the circle of all human knowledge, that is, the
A ; which ring, or Knowledge, having been given to
the Initiated, he walked henceforth invisible among men—that
is, visible as brother only to those who had been enrolled into
the same sacred order. God was also frequently symbolized as a
Panther; and in the Archæologia, vol. ii., there is a plate of a
splendid silver Panther, which was dug up amid some Tartarian
ruins, and which symbolizes God seated on his Throne, and proudly
governing the four cardinal points of the Universe. Panther is
Pan-Thor, All-Thunder, and also All-Fire, and it is the Greek
Pan-t’-Eros, or All-Love. These primitive names for God are
myriad-faced, and have innumerable symbolic meanings.
Note 9 (page 395).—The Greeks, who were almost always wrong
in their notions of other people, said that the Egyptians worshipped
the Nile. They never did so: they worshipped Neilos, the Sun,
the letters of which in numerals made 365. Vallancey, Collectanea,
v. 160.
Note 10 (page 402).—Jupiter, says Herodotus, not being willing
to shew himself to Hercules, who was very desirous to see him,
but unable to refuse him absolutely, at last thought on this
expedient. He cut off the head of a Ram, pulled off its skin, and
covered himself with the hide, and shewed himself to Hercules in
this dress: and upon this account the Egyptians afterwards
represented Jupiter with a Ram’s head. There is a curious like-
ness between this legend and that of the ram of three years old,
through whose fragments God appeared to Abram in a smoking
furnace and a burning lamp. Gen. xv. 9—17. See also Exodus
xxxiii. 18—23. As the Jews borrowed this, and indeed almost
everything else, including their gold, and jewels, and articles of
silver (Exodus xi.) from the Egyptians, so we find them also
stealing their mythos of Typhon, the brother and also the
murderer of Osiris, as unceremoniously as they plundered them
of their property before the exodus. Osiris and Typhon are Abel
and Cain under new names. So Adam was, by the Greeks,
symbolized as Athamas [Thammuz], Son of Aiolos (God). The
oracle ordered him to slay his son Phryxos: as he was about to
do so, a cloud interposed and brought a gold-fleeced ram, which
was offered up to Zeus in place of Phryxos. This identifies
Athamas with the Genesis Abram, but the latter was a title
rather than an individual’s name. We are informed by Herodotus
(ii. 39) that the practice of imprecating on the head of the victim
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the punishment for his own sins, which the sacrificer wished to
avert from himself, existed as a general heathen custom. The
Egyptians, he adds, for this reason, would not taste the head of
any animal, but flung it into the river as an abomination. This
rite was also borrowed by the Hebrews. “And Aaron shall lay
his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all
the iniquities of the Children of Israel, and all their transgressions
in all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and the goat
shall bear upon him all their iniquities.” (L . xvi.)
Note 11 (page 403).—The ancient round tower within the
churchyard of Brechin in Angus-shire is a linga: it has the figure
of an Elephant (the Holy Spirit), having the feet of (that is,
supported by) a Lion (God) and a Horse (the Sun, or the Solar
Messenger). By the Hindus this is often called, by way of pre-
eminence, the horse of Kalankee, one of their names for Chenghiz
Khan, the third Kabir and eleventh Messiah of God. And as the
crest of Osiris or God was a Hawk—that is, the Sun—so the crest
of Horus, or the Messenger, was a lion, the lion of this A -
, the lion avatar of primeval Hindostan. The Chief Druid
in Britain was styled a Lion. (Gododin, Song, 22). This Lion
was God and the Messenger. Hence, under his first type as God,
has been the custom of making the Water, which proceeds from
cisterns and reservoirs, as well as spouts from the roofs of build-
ings, come through the month of a Lion. It symbolizes the
emanated birth of the Holy Spirit. See Part I. page 136. The
Sphinx, which is the head of a beautiful Woman on the body of a
Lion, conveys the same idea: God and the Holy Spirit, as Bi-une,
or A O.
Note 12 (page 411).—The mortal who saw Minerva in her naked
virgin-beauty lost the sight of his eyes, but became endowed with
the prophetic power—a beautiful allegory of the Soul that in its
contemplation of the Heavenly Loveliness loses its carnal eyes
and is at once divinely inspired. Plutarch tells us that the
Egyptians clothed the statues of the Messenger with a veil of the
colour of flame, from an idea of his connection with the Sun; and
in their sacred hymns they invoked him as the one “who is
concealed in the arms of the Sun.” Yet the wretched Mosheim,
in his notes on Cudworth, asserts that the Egyptian sages
had no meaning whatever in their allegorical and symbolic
theology.
Note 13 (page 412).—The Tree here mentioned was the beautiful
Tree of Life (A , section 67), which Tantalus was fabled
to behold from Hell, as Dives was fabled to have gazed upon the
glory of the Heavens while plunged in Gehenna. And the
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punishment of both consisted very much in their constant depri-

vation of that Paradise beauty which seemed close at hand. And
the water also which eluded Tantalus was the River of the Water
of Life, beside which this Tree Ydrasil grew. It was for this Water
also that Dives begged. Each mythos is a cognate of the other:
both were founded on this section of the A . The Jews
called it the Almond Tree.
Note 14 (page 413).—Alcæus and Sappho both assign the office
of cup-bearer to Hermes; for the Messenger does indeed hand
round bread from heaven. This is the bread that cometh down
from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the
living bread, &c., &c. J vi. 50. Hebe was Heva, or the
Jewish Eve, which means serpent. She is the wife of Al-kidi, the
lion of God, or Jid, that is, Adam. Hebe is also ‫ יהוה‬Ihvh.
Note 15 (page 413).—Hesiod, to whom, for many reasons, I
think the A was known, says that the Muses taught him
a divine song, as he fed his lambs beneath divine Heli-Con. He
adds that they gave him as a staff [or Book] a branch of very
luxuriant Olive to pluck; a branch wondrous to behold, and
breathed into him a voice divine, that he might sing of both the
future and the past. I have already intimated that as the Mes-
senger was called the Branch from the Olive tree of Heaven, so
also was the A itself so called and so disguised; and
Hesiod, under this typology, meant probably that the A -
had been communicated to him. Is there not an analogy
between the Hebrew Meshoh, or Messiah, and Mousai, the Greek
for Muses? Note that the Holy Spirit is called by Hesiod, the
violet-hued Fountain, IO-ειδες; and that Heli-Con is a fabled
mountain, which typified the Sun and the Spirit of God. Hence
the Muses, or 9 Teachers, are called Heliconian, and they are
said by Hesiod to dance with delicate feet about the velvet-hued
Fountain, and the altars of the mighty son of Cronos; they are
also said to bathe their soft skins in Perm Essus, or Hippocrene
(the Fountain of the Sun) or sacred Olmus, the Alm, Olm, or
Holy Spirit. See Part I, page 10. But Perm Essus is the article
P, prefixed to Erm or Hermes, the Messenger, and Essus is Issa,
and Jesus or Hesus, a Messianic name.
Note 16 (page 414).—The Graces, says Bryant, were said to be

related to the sun, who was in reality the same as Vulcan. The
Sun, among the people of the East, was called Hares, and with a
strong guttural, Chares; and his temple was styled Tor-Chares;
this the Greeks expressed Tri-Chares, and from thence formed a
notion of Three Graces. It is this same guttural which is prefixed
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to the primeval name of Adam, and which makes it sound to

Europeans like Gaudama, Chaudama, and Chodam. The biblicals
have within a very few years agreed most fraudulently to call
the First Messenger Gautama, so as to disguise the name a little
from honest enquirers.
Note 17 (page 418).—The first Basilicas, says M. Cyprien
Roberts, placed generally upon eminences, were called Domus
Columbæ, or Dwellings of the Dove, that is of the Holy Spirit.
They caught the first rays of dawn, and the last beams of the setting
sun. C ’H C . The same writer
says: This bird is an emblem most frequently met with upon
primitive sarcophagi. It is there represented carrying in its beak
a branch of palm or olive, or piercing grapes. . . . As we approach
our own time, the genius of modern invention sought to represent
the Holy Spirit as a beautiful young man, the immortal youth by
whom nature is captivated. But the Pope in a Bull prohibited the
use of that image, as contrary to tradition. I suspect from this
that the Pope knew very well that the Holy Spirit was not a
Male, and therefore that he prohibited her being so represented.
The fact, as related by Roberts, is most curious.
Note 18 (page 418).—A Ring (the Universe) supported by two
serpents (God and the Holy Spirit) is one of the most ancient and
sacred symbols of the Chinese. Dr. Stukeley in another place
says, that the stupendous temple at Abury, in Wiltshire, is a
picture of the Deity, most particularly what they anciently called
the Father and the Word, who created all things; this figure you
will find on the top of all the obelisks. A Snake proceeding from
a Circle is the procession of the Son [the Holy Spirit] from the
First Cause. The Egyptians frequently added wings to it. The
Egyptians called this figure Hemptha; the Greeks, in abbreviated
writing used it for Daimon, or the Good Genius; the Brachmans in
the East Indies use it; the Chinese; the ancient Persians, with
whom it still remains at Persepolis; the Americans; our Britons:
this shows it was extremely ancient; but of all nations our ances-
tors have had the greatest veneration for it that they have
expanded it in so laborious a picture three miles long.—Letter to
Mr. Gale, of Stamford, June 25, 1730. A Serpent twined around
a Tree has the same meaning as the Oak encircled by wings, or
the Isiac cloak; the Tree, like the Egg, being a symbol of Life
and Generation. Christians, when they see this emblem in ancient
carvings, absurdly suppose that it refers to the talking serpent of
Genesis. The most ancient Grecian coins were in an obelisical or
arrow-like form; hence the word obolus. This obelisk grew in
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time to be represented as a thunderbolt, the emblem of the Male

Principle, or God, enwreathed with the lotus leaf, the emblem of
the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the thunderbolt was winged, which
conveyed the same idea. There is, says Faber, another British
temple at Abury, which, in one respect, is even more remarkable
than Stonehenge. It is at present nearly destroyed, but its
original form has been very accurately determined to be that of
an immense Serpent attached to a Circle. The Serpent, like that
with which the Tyrians encompassed the Mundane Egg is devoid
of Wings, which seems to have been at pleasure either added to
the hieroglyphic or omitted. When the whole analogy of the
Druidical superstition is considered, or, I should rather say, the
superstition of the universal Gentile world, there cannot be any
doubt, as it appears to me, that the Serpent was designed to
represent the great God, Hu, the Circle, that which the
Druids were accustomed to style the Ark of the World.—Pagan
Idol., i. 193. This Ark was the Shekinah. That learned orien-
talist, Sir W. Jones, says Vallancey, who, from his knowledge of
the Shanscrit, has been admitted into the order of Brahmins, in
his late discourse to the Academy of Calcutta, adverts to the
word Ogham [pronounced Oum]; he proves it is a pure Shanscrit
word, and means the sacred or mysterious writings or language;
and that it is used in that signification in the books of the Shan-
scrit; he also observes that the Shanscrit language was older than
the Hindu, was the language of Irân, and of pure Chaldaic origin.
He applies the use of this word Ogham, and the ancient traditions
of the Irish, together with the authority of the Saxon Chronicle,
to prove that these islands were first peopled by colonies from
Irân, and that their language, their customs, and their religion
were the same, both in these islands, in Irân, and in Hindustan;
but all originated in Chaldæa. Sir W. Jones, in the discourse
above mentioned, proves from the Books of the Brahmins, the
existence of a great empire (before the Assyrian), which he calls
by the name of the Kingdom of Irân, from whence, he says, a
colony emigrated to Hindostan; the monarch of this great empire
was Maha-Bali, who encouraged the study of astronomy and the
motions of the heavenly bodies. Hence we have in Irish, Beal,
the Sun, the fire-worship; Beil-tinne, Baal’s fire; the month of
May, or the month of Baal, &c., &c.; but Beal in the old Scythian
dialect signifies Fire, and is the root of all these words. Irân in
Irish is written Eirinn, which is the ancient name of this island.
Unless there had been such a connexion between the original
inhabitants of Eirinn, or Ireland, and those of ancient Irân, it
would have been impossible that so great an affinity could exist
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between the languages of the old Irish and the Shanscrit. The
mythology of the Brahmins exhibits a full conviction of this con-
nexion. Syon is their Goddess of Sleep; her festival is kept on
the eleventh day of the new moon in June; she is fabled to sleep
for four months, to signify that the rainy season setting in for
four months, the care of Bistnoo, the Preserver, is suspended as
immaterial, the rain securing their crops of grain. All this is an
equivocation, as the two Irish words Suan and Soinion, or mor-
soinion; the first signifies sound sleep (swoon, in English); the
second, great rain and tempest; and this again reverts to the
Chaldæan ‫מרהשון‬, Marhason, a season so called because of
the great rains. Collectanea, v. 58. Diodorus and Ælian both relate
that the Egyptian pontiff, who was also their supreme judge in
civil matters, wore about his neck by a golden chain an egg-shaped
ornament of precious stones called Truth, and that a cause was
not opened till the supreme judge had put on this ornament. It
seems probable, says Parkhurst, likening this to the Hebrew
Urim and Thummim, that the Egyptians carried off this, as
well as other sacred symbols, from the dispersion at Babel, for
it is by no means credible that they should take it from the
Israelites after the giving of the Law. And the supposed priority
of it to that time will account for Moses first making mention of
it, occasionally as it were, as of a thing well known. Exod.
xxviii. 30. This chain, with its oval-formed jewel, was the collar
of truth, the collar of S.S., or the Sanctus Spiritus, which
our judges wear on the bench. Abenephius, On the Religion
of the Egyptians, thus describes this symbol. When they
desire to indicate the three divine virtues or properties, they
inscribe a Circle, out of which a Serpent protrudes; by the symbol
of the Circle signifying the incomprehensible nature of God, and
his inseparable, eternal essence, which has neither beginning nor
ending. By the symbol of the Serpent they indicate the producing
or creating power of God; and by the representation of the two
Wings, that energy of the Divine Being, which by its motion
gives life to all that lives throughout the Universe. Clemens of
Alexandria observes, that in the orgies of Bacchus Mænalus, his
votaries were crowned with serpents, and cried out Eua, Eua.
Minerva armed is sometimes drawn on ancient gems, preceded by
a serpent, that is, by God, the Serpent of Eternity, also the Mes-
senger, who is her Herald. Jesus makes a most distinct allusion
to this symbology, calling himself by the same name. And as
Moses lifted up the Serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son
of Man be lifted up. John iii. 14. I, if I be lifted up, will draw
all men to me. J xii. 32. The doctrine of symbolic regene-
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ration was illustrated by a Hottentot convert to Christianity in a

way not destitute of poetry. He illustrated, says Mr. Campbell
(Missionary Travels in S. Africa) the immortality of the soul by
alluding to the serpent, which by going between the two branches
of a bush, that grow against each other, strips himself once a year
of his skin. When we find the skin, said he, we do not call it the
serpent; no, it is only the skin; neither do we say the serpent is
dead; no, for we know he is alive and has only cast his skin.
The serpent he compared to the soul, and the skin to the body of
the man. The Serpent who guarded the golden apples of the
Hesperids, according to the mythologist Apollodorus, used all
kinds of voices; that is, the Hierophant, who initiated into the
Mysteries, was an emblem of a Power diffused over all the
earth; and the Holy Spirit, who is the Sacred Serpent of Heaven,
is known as the Spirit of Tongues. This curious mythos of Apol-
lodorus alludes therefore to this double symbolism.
Note 19 (page 426).—The country of Greece, the Peloponnesus
where the Ionians [Dovelanders] dwelt, was called Apia or the
country of bees and Archaia. The Athenians had a story that
when they sent out their pretended colony to Asia Minor, it was
preceded by the Nine Muses in the form of Melissae or Bees; and
the emblem of the generative principle in Egypt, the Bull, was
called Apis [A Bee]. That this has some meaning connected with
this subject cannot be doubted. Porphyry de Abstinentia, says it
was reported that Apis [A Bee] gave the first laws to the Greeks.
Natalis Comes cites some Orphic verses, where this the female
principle is called Seira, or the hive of Venus, which is analogous
to the mystical symbol of the Delta-shaped pyramid.
‘μνεομεν Σειρην πολυωνυμον Αφρογενειης,

Καὶ πηγην μεγαλην βασιληϊον, ἡς απο παντες
Αθανατοι πτεροεντες, ανεβλαστησαν Ερωτες.
Let us celebrate the hive of Venus, who rose from the sea; that
hive of many names; the mighty fountain from whence all things
are descended; from whence all the winged and immortal Loves
were again produced. Bryant absurdly supposes this to mean the
Ark or ship of Noe. It was indeed the Argha or Fountain
mystically and emblematically to which I have alluded; subse-
quently he is forced to admit that it is really a name for the
Holy Spirit, Damater, the supposed mother of mankind, who was
also styled Melitta and Melissa (the bee), and was looked upon as
the Venus of the Orient. It was properly, he adds, a sacred
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receptacle (or Shekinah), whence it is by Hesychius above styled

Μελιττης οικος—the House of Melitta. There is a very curious
passage quoted from the lost writings of Aristotle, by the Emperor
Julian, in which this typology is alluded to: Are you willing, it
says, after this, that I should adduce as a testimony the All-Wise
Siren, a type of the Logos (the Universe) and Hermes-Apollo,
dear to the Muses. For he thinks it fit that those who enquire,
or in short argue, as if they were dubious whether or not these
are Gods, do not deserve to be answered as men, but to be
punished as brutes. Orat. vii., p. 440, 4to. I have corrected the
Greek which, in the printed copy, is manifestly wrong. In Gruter,
i. 102, there is an engraving of a beautiful statue of Spes Divina, or
Divine Hope, with her right arm supported on a phallic column, and
in her left hand are spikes of corn, and on each side a pomegranate.
By her side is the hive, out of which arise flowers and corn,
emblems of fruitfulness, with the mystic Rhoia, or pomegranate
in the centre. The same attribute of love and fruitfulness was
on other occasions signified by the Dove or Pigeon, by the Sparrow
and by the Polypus, which often appears upon coins, and which is
two-sexed. In a word there is not a part of the world in which
we do not find similar memorials flowing forth in every minute
particular from the symbolic Fountain, the A . The
ecclesiastics of all nations appear, as it were, in a general conspi-
racy to conceal it, but its light can no longer be concealed. It
was the original religion of mankind; the adoration of the Great
Creative Power, God; and the Great Productive Power, the Holy and
Divine Ineffable Spirit of the Creator, AO. Io, says Faber, On the
Cabiri, i. 146, seems to be a contraction of Ionah the Dove: and
Isis perhaps originally Iosis, may be a corruption of the same
radical. Euripides, in Bacchæ, alludes to this name, Σέβομεν Ω.
We worship O. This title of O, or Ou, or Hou [See ante, pp. 16,
474], or Houa, was frequently given, says Sir W. Drummond, to
their Supreme God by the Orientalists. Class Journ. ix. 563. But
if so used, it was only as forming part of Aum, or Auv, or Jiv,
or IO and AO—but to this Sir William has not adverted. There
is a curious monogram in Jablonski, which indicates God, the Holy
Spirit AO, and XP or the Chrestos, the Anointed Messenger in the
midst.
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The whole makes Achro; i.e., To the High. The Mexican name
for the Cabir-Messenger was Yao-Teotle, or the God of Armies.
Kingsborough’s Antiquities, ii. 244. ΧΑΩ is a Greek radical word,
not now in use: but the word χαως or χαος (Chaos) is said to be
derived from it. Chao means to be opened: if therefore Chaos
was a name for the Shekhinah, the Sacred Matrix, the Holy Spirit,
from whom, when opened, all things were emaned, the analogy
between the word and the symbol is complete. How came the final
sigma? The explanation is curious. The original word was ΑΩ
as in the text, X was prefixed by the first Greeks, because the cross
was always an emblem of salvation, and because it signified
numerically 600, or the Naros, which is always connected with
the Holy Spirit. By these also X was used in place of Θ; thus
εξεχα, εξευχα, ιχμα, ορνιχος, for εξωθεν, εξελθω, ιθμα,
ορνιθος. But Θ was an emblem of the Serpent, or the Linga in
the Circle, or God and the Shekhinah: thus their unity and divine
communion was signified, and the letters were therefore used in
common. In the same manner Σ was an emblem of waters, or
waves, like the primitive; it was therefore added to the name
of her who was always typified by waters. In its most ancient
form it resembled the Scythian bow, ( which was a crescent, and
so again it was a type of the Virgin of Heaven. Finally Sigma
was used as a Θ, or Yoni; thus Ασανα, αγασος, παρσενος, were
used by the Dorians and Ionians for Αθανα, αγαθος and παρ-
θενος. By the Ionians Σ. was used in place of Δ (an emblem
of God, the Triune), thus οδμη, ιδμεν, for οσμη, ισμεν; which
was again an enigmatic intimation that they were one and the
same. The addition therefore of the X and Σ, to the primitive
AΩ, really meant nothing: it changed the appearance of the
word, but did not alter its meaning. When therefore we read in
Mythologies that all things came out of Chaos, it meant merely
that they came out of χΑΩς, or the Holy Spirit of God, A.O.
Jupiter the Incarnation was born of Rhœa the Holy Spirit by
the river IAON. Hesiod says: Chaos of all things was the first
produced; thus identifying it with the Holy Spirit. In the Welsh
Aw means Water, but is not this the Greek ἀω? Let me add
here that, as the A was in numerous respects an image
of the Holy Spirit and of her Divine influence in the symbolic
language of old, it was called the Statue of Minerva, which fell
from Heaven: the Athenians preserved a copy of it under this
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name, which they guarded as the very apple of the eye. And
before it, says Pausanias, burned a lamp of gold which, when filled
with oil, burns day and night for the space of a year, and this is
owing to the wick of the lamp being made of Carpasian flax,
which alone of all other things is inconsumable by fire. Above the
lamp there is a brazen palm tree, which rising to the roof of the
building dissipates the fume. Attics xxvi. See ante, p. 395. The
intimate transfusion of God into the Holy Spirit, and the Holy
Spirit into God, was curiously illustrated in the Phœnician
language, where the same word Alpha, or Ilpha, signified God, and
also a Bull and a Ship;—Ani. [see ante, page 98] anagramati-
cally Ina, part of the word Shekhina—so that by one term were
signified the Supreme One, the Father in his solar symbol, and
the Mother in her boat-like emblem. From Alphi comes the
Greek Ελεφας, an Elephant, an Indian symbol for the Holy
Spirit. Didron gives a miniature of Lyons of the l2th century,
in which the Holy Spirit [Sancta Sophia, Sacred Wisdom] is
represented as AO, a Male-Female. She is bearded like Venus
barbata, and wears a nimbus with the mystic T. She holds in
one hand a roll, and in the other a book, symbolic of the knowledge
which this Divine Minerval Virgin diffuses through the Universe
to those who seek it. On her breast she wears six circles also in a
T; these indicate the Naros. Bohn’s edition, vol. i. 179. In the
same work is given a French miniature of the fourteenth century,
in which the Holy Spirit is unmistakeably female. Mention is
also made of a nimbus round the head of Jesus with the letters
A.M.Ω. The middle letter is the monogram of 600; the three
indicate the Naronic messenger proceeding from A.O. [Part I.
page 12]. Hio in the Chinese means Wisdom [See ante, page 83]:
here we have perhaps the mystic name of Fo-Hi. So in a Greek
miniature of the 10th century, copied by Didron, we see the Holy
Spirit as Night, with the Rainbow crowning her: in her hand the
phallic torch of fire and knowledge; beside her is the Messenger
receiving inspiration from the Celestial; while below him is a
small figure of a youth, symbolizing the human nature for whose
improvement and salvation he descends to earth. [See ante, page
414]. Note also as most significant that Tien, the Chinese name
of Heaven, is the Egyptian Neit read backwards.
Note 20 (page 437).—Not many years ago, says De Pauw, the
French peasants began to render a kind of religious worship to the
chrysalis of the caterpillar found in the great nettle, because they
fancied it revealed evident traces of the Divinity. M. des Landes
assures us that the curates had even ornamented the altars with
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these maggots; as grasshoppers and canary sparrows are kept

in cages in Spain to sing during the celebration of mass.
Chrysalis, says Nimrod, appears to signify the permutation of
gold, and it has been termed by modern physicians Aurelia. In
its connexion with the word Psyche, which means a soul as well
as a butterfly, but with a different accent, we may discern that
the Ancients held the soul to be an emanation of the Solar virtue,
aura, or aither. Aura, ouranous, or aour of the Hebrews, is the
Light of Heaven, and it gives name to the metal aurum, or the
compound word θησαυρος, αυρον. Αρ γυρος (silver), is com-
pounded, adds the same learned writer (iv. 541) of αργω the ark,
a well-known symbol of the Moon, and ὑω pluo, or in its larger
sense, I water.
Note 21 (page 440).—The symbolic language was grotesquely
carried into sculpture, as may be seen at the gigantic ruins of
Mavalipuram, where amid a countless number of carvings, are
seen two apes cut out of one stone, one of them in a stooping
posture, while the other is taking the insects out of his head.
Bram in Arabic means Ape, and the sculpture indicates a vener-
able Brahmin extracting folly out of the head of a young member
of the order.
Note 22 (page 453).—In the Buddhist book of Genesis the first
man, or the race of man, is called by the name of ‫ אדם‬adm. It
is used as applied to the race both in the masculine and feminine
genders. It is usually derived or explained by the word ‫אדמח‬
adme, earth, because earth is of a red colour. This serves to show
how easily lexicographers can be satisfied when an explanation
makes for their prejudices or interests. The earth is no more red
than black or brown, nor is the man more red than black. The
explanation is absurd, and the meaning is evidently unknown to
them. In the Ethiopic a more probable meaning may be found.
In it adamah means beautiful, elegant, pleasant—beauty resulting
from order—the same meaning as the Κοσμος of the Greeks.
Upon this supposition Adam would receive his name, not from a
certain fictitious redness, but from the beauty and perfection of his
nature—being, as it were, from superiority of mind, the masterpiece
of the creation. This observation is confirmed by Mr. Townsend:
Ad-mali, he says, is the name of a city in that beautiful valley
resembling Paradise, the garden of the Lord, chosen by Lot; and
Adam was the name given to our first parents. These names have
commonly been referred to a root in Hebrew which means red,
but this epithet does not seem appropriate to a being of superior
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excellence as beautiful, which corresponds to the same root in

Ethiopic. It is worthy of remark that Κοσμος, the Greek
expression answering to Adamah, is derived from Κοσμεω,
I adorn; and in Latin, Mundus, like Munditia, means not
merely cleanliness but ornament and elegance. I beg my
reader not to forget the meaning of Κοσμεω and Mundus. It
will be wanted by and bye. I think their signification of beauty
was derived from the supposed beautiful and orderly cyclical
motions of the planets. In the Shanscrit books the two first
persons are called Adin and Iva. Stephanus περι Πολεων on
Αδανα, tell us that Κρονος or Saturn, was called Αδανος: and
that this Adanus was the son of Heaven and Earth, Εστι δε ὁ
Αδανος, γης και ουρανου παις; which is a perfect description
of Adam’s production by God out of earth. And indeed the very
name Αδανος seems to be the very same with ‫ אדם‬adm Adam.
For the Greeks having no words terminating in M., for Adam they
pronounced Αδαν. . . . Adana, an ancient city of Cilicia
built by the Syrians, was called in memory of the first man
Adam. Here we have Adam in Greece by the same name as the
Adam in India. It is a singular circumstance that the Greeks
should have no word ending with M. This is the most mysterious
of all the letters. I suspect it is sometimes left out in lan-
guages, and sometimes put before words in some languages, or
inserted in words in other languages, for the same mysterious
reason. Adam, Adim, Odin, Adanos, Ch’Audam G’Audâma,
Som-Mon-Achadâm, B’Auddha, B’Audâm, Chedem, Cadmos,
Kadmon, Kedemut, Kasmillos, Thammuz, Athamas, Chadmel,
Achad-Ham, Amida, are all but one and the same name
and person, under different terminations. See Part I., pp.
255, 261, 265. There is an Indian mythos which relates that
Buddha was crucified for robbing a Garden of a Flower. This, at
once connects Buddha with Adam, and the talmudical legend
in Genesis, and the Kymrick mythos of the Tylwith Têg. I find
myself obliged, says Parkhurst, to refer ‫ תמוז‬Tammuz, as well
as the Greek and Roman Hercules, to that class of idols which
were originally designed to represent the promised Saviour, the
Desire of all nations. His other name Adonis, is almost the very
Hebrew ‫ אדוני‬Adonai or Lord. Of this word, which is compound
of Ad and Oni, the latter word in Hebrew, says Boulanger,
signifies grief, affliction. L’Antiq. Devoiles ii., p. 188. Yet there
are many high authorities who say that it signifies joy, gladness.
The truth is it signifies mystically both—there was grief for the loss
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of Ad-oni, and joy for his finding again. The Gnostics are said
to have worshipped Achamoth. Is not this a plural for Ach-Adam,
and does not the word Achamoth mean Messengers? This is
evidently connected with the Hebrew word ‫ הקמח‬hkme Wisdom.
We may understand by it that the Messengers were called Ach-
adamites; either because 1, they were first seen by and revealed
to Adam; or 2, because as many learned Orientalists—and the
Gnostics were most learned—thought they were in reality but Adam
himself in twelve different forms or manifestations to man. The
Valentinians also venerated Ach-Amoth: and this, Beausobre says,
was the same as the Hebrew Wisdom. There is a passage in
Orpheus, which as amended refers to Adam, as the First child of
A.O.
Πρωτογονον καλεω, διφυη μεγαν αιθεροπλαγκτον.
Αωγενη. Hymn 5.
I invoke the First born, the double-birth, who wandered at large
through mighty heaven; AO-born. In the common version, the
word used is ωογενη, Egg-born; but I think my emendation pre-
ferable, though it conveys the same idea as that which I give.
[See ante, page 473]. To no man of woman born is the phrase,
“wandered at large through mighty heaven,” so applicable as
to him, who in one mighty glance beheld the things that are,
and the things that were, and the things that are to be: and who
has handed them down to all ages in the Sacred A .
There is another etymology of the name of Som-Ona-Chadam
which may be offered. The first is the Sun, the second is the
Spirit under the Junonian name Yoni, the third is the Arabic
Chadam, a minister. Adam, therefore, was the minister of God
and the Spirit. The sacredness and mysticism of his name, like
that of the other sacred births, perpetually crops up. Ced-aman, in the
Irish, says Vallancey, may be translated Sacred Fire. Collect. vi. 125
—an appropriate name it may be added for the Messenger. [See Part
I., pp. 262, 265]. Here again, says General Vallancey, is the Irish
Sam-man-cad, or the Holy man of Sam [the Sun]. Collect. iv. cxxix.
By the Greeks, the First Messenger was symbolized under the
name of Archa, S, or Salvator, the son of Calisto (the Most
Beautiful), who taught the people how to make bread from the
mild fruit which he had received from Triptolemus, and how to
weave garments, which he had learnt from Adrista. So the Greek
gem of Damas suckled by a hind, is Adamas, or Adam, nurtured
by the Holy Spirit, symbolized, like Diana, by the hind. The
reader may see it in Gronovius, i. D. Midas, read backward in
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the eastern manner, is Adim S, or the Saviour. He had the ears

of an Ass [On, the Sun], indicating his divine character. See
ante, pp. 22, 117, 208. Onn is rendered in the Irish Lexicons a
stone, but it implies a stone pillar dedicated to the Sun. We find
On, Eon, Aon in the old glossaries explained by Sam, that is, the
Sun. In the Hebrew, Ounan is a Sorcerer: in the Irish, Oinin is
a Diviner. Both words are cognates of Oan and Oannes. In
Arakan, the traditionary name of the First Messenger is Mathat
hamada, or hadama. Journal Asiat. Soc. Bengal, xiii. 27. Our
Oriental biblicals carefully hide all these curious facts.
Note 23 (page 453).—This is a sacred Tree, and it is called
Arbor Vitæ, the Tree of Life; but it has been called so only after
the true Tree of Life which is in Heaven, and which was revealed
in the A . See Part I. pages 26, 607. And as books
are equally productive, and are or were synonymous in the
primeval ages with emanations of Wisdom or the Holy Spirit, so
they also were denominated, as we have before seen, Trees (see
Part I. page 247), and in the present volume also. See ante, pp.
37, 128, 203. The antiquity of the symbol is another proof of the
antiquity of the A , by which it was originally suggested.
Among the Chinese si denotes a Tree, whence comes su and
tsu, a learned doctor, a mandarin. Hence the mystic name
L’A’O-Tseu, the Eighth Messenger. This cruciform symbolism,
no doubt, comes from the A , where the Spirit, the Tree
of Life, commands her own mark, the tree-like cross T, to be
impressed on her faithful followers. There are eighteen Vidyas,
says the learned Brahmin Goverdhan Caul, or parts of true Know-
ledge. The Vedas are considered by the Hindus as the fountain of
all Knowledge, human and divine: the Verses are said to be the
leaves of that Holy Tree, to which the Almighty himself is com-
pared. The wise have called the Incorruptible One Aswattha
(the Indian Fig tree), with its roots above and its branches below:
the leaves of which are the sacred measures. He who knows this
tree knows the Vedas. As Res. The Japanese, according to
Georgius, use the same symbol: he likens it to the Egyptian
Palm Tree, which he calls Ba-Is. Alphabetum Tibet, p. 142. The
far-spreading, speaking Tree, the Oak of Dodona, that incredible
wonder, as Æschylus calls it, and which the Pelasgi called the
Tree of Life, was, in fact, the A . Like the bird Orion,
mentioned in Part I. page 256, the god was supposed to reside in
it, and the rustling of its leaves and the voices of birds shewed
his presence. The A was also disguised under the name
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of the steed Ari-On, the offspring of Neptune and Ceres, both

being names for the Holy Spirit. This signified that the A -
had no father, but was her own composition solely.
N U P .
Phœnix is said to have been the grandson of Neptune, but

Phœnix meant the Messiah, and, as Sir W. Drummond
thinks, Enoch, the second Messenger of God, Phenoch,
with the old Egyptian definite article Pi prefixed. Now,
if Neptune really meant the Holy Spirit, her son would
be Adam, and her son in succession to him, or grandson,
would be Enoch, the above-named Phœnix. The Phœnix
resembled an eagle, and the eagle, in moulting, in casting
its old feathers, and in acquiring new ones, presents us with a
lively image of renovation. Hence the eagle was feigned to renew its
youth: tithades canneser nöuraici, ‫תתחדא כנשר נצוריכי‬.
Ps. ciii. 5. Thy youth shall be renewed like the eagle’s. Hence
during the ceremony of an apotheosis, the Romans were wont to
let fly an eagle. When the Egyptians, says Horus Apollo, wish
to describe the soul lingering for a long time here, they paint the
bird called the Phœnix. Ψυχην ἐνταυθα πολυν χρονον δια-
τριβουσαν γραψαι φοινικα το ὀρνεον ζωγραφουσι. This
typified the Messenger also who sighs to regain his native
Heaven. A vision of this bird, or of the Phœnix—that is, a
Messianic vision—is thus related by Ermold le Noir, the historian
of Louis le Débonnaire. The guardianship of the church conse-
crated to the Virgin Mary was formerly confided to Theutram.
One night he saw the temple filled with light, like that of the
sun, and resembling the beams shed forth by that luminary on
the serenest days of summer. Springing from his bed, he
endeavoured to discover the source of those dazzling streams of
splendour which seemed to fill the sacred edifice. A bird of the
size of an eagle was covering the altar with its extended wings,
but that bird was not of terrestrial birth. His beak was of gold,
his claws of some material more costly than precious stones, his
wings emulated the azure of the sky, and his eyes sparkled with
celestial light. The holy priest, seized with astonishment, dared
not encounter the glance of the bird, but he contemplated with
admiration his wings and body, and, above all, marvelled at his
sparkling eyes. The bird remained upon the altar until the
moment when the three crowings of the cock were heard summon-
ing the monks to matins. Then he took flight, and the window
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opposite to the altar opened miraculously of itself, to give him space

to pass and quit the temple. Scarcely had the bird risen in his
flight to heaven when the light disappeared, proving by its
eclipse that that bird was an inhabitant of the Kingdom of God.
Collection des Histoires de France, by M. Guizot. I have often
thought that Theutram, under this vision, sought to convey to
the Initiated his knowledge of the mystic meaning of the Phœnix
and Peacock, whose eloquent mouth was of gold, whose wings
were sapphire, and whose eyes shone with Olympian splendours;
who, while on earth, was the Light of the world, but at whose
disappearance all grew dark. [See Part I. pp. 98, 172, 193, 256.]
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The Book of God.
BOOK V.
1. The assistance which is derived from Mythology in

elucidating the sacred history of the Past, is a remarkable
proof how utterly impossible it is to disguise Truth under
the appearance of Falsehood, so as eventually to withhold
her gracious aspect from mankind. The religious antiqui-
ties of all nations elucidate themselves, one by means of
the other; the monuments of the Chinese, Japanese,
Hindus, Persians, Egyptians, Phenicians, Mexicans,
Arabians, Scythians, and Greeks, explain themselves by
a language common to all the theologies of those various
peoples, and all the arts and sciences which express their
ideas. Mythology was not wholly invented by priests
for the purpose of concealing religious philosophy from
the vulgar, although it was very well calculated to do so.
Neither was it invented to deceive or degrade the mind
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of the masses. Its origin and extension were somewhat

in this wise. The primeval people to whom a knowledge
of God and his Truths was partially revealed, adored, as I
have already intimated, only One God. To this end, and
to this alone, the teachings of the Twenty-Four Ancients
or Boodhoos had solely tended; and the idea was so
simple as immediately to accommodate itself to the under-
standings of the simple children of primeval times. Every
man looked to that One God as his Lord, his Father, and
his Protector. To Him alone he offered up the undivided
homage of his heart, and the reverential love which reason
also had inspired.
2. The first Chiliad, or thousand years of man upon
the earth, has been depicted as an Age of Gold, and many
systems of romance have been based upon the vision. To
some extent it may be so regarded as a joyous innocent
time; but it was not a period of all sunshine or undimmed
happiness. A Golden Age, in the poetical sense of it, is
one that has never shone upon the earth. The brilliant
vision in which Poets have indulged may be referred to
that first, that truly Golden Age, when man existed in the
Heavens with God, before his fall from archangelic dignity
and bliss. The early races had, in truth, a hard struggle for
existence: corn indeed grew wildly fruitful on the plains;
but they did not long remain a vegetarian race. They
subsisted by hunting and fishing; and as the woods, the
forests, and the rivers were thickly populated with animals
proper for food, they lived on these at first in great abun-
dance. But, as years rolled on, they had formidable foes
in wild beasts and in their own brotherhood. The con-
dition of the Red People on the American Continent
furnishes the nearest representation we can now have to
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life as it was exhibited in those remote ages. Tribe fought

tribe, and life was a battle for existence. Human sacri-
fices were eventually offered at the suggestion of priests,
and from this crime to cannibalism the transit was short
and quick. The earth therefore, in the second chiliad,
was in a state of warfare, and so it would possibly have
remained until the present moment if God had not sent
his Messengers of Truth. If it be asked why God did not
interfere sooner—why did He not begin by sending a Mes-
siah, and so preserve the human race from the evils I have
mentioned, I can only meet it with another question, Why
does God appear to allow any form of evil, or ignorance,
or unhappiness to exist, if he can, by a nod, transform
everything to beauty?
3. In this state of warfare or dissension, Religion
suffered. The system of monotheism grew weak: the
host of heaven began to be adored. Man ever loves to
bow before an external object: a palpable form of worship
seems, as it were, a want, a necessity in his nature. It
is only in his highest state of cultivation and philosophic
refinement that the human soul can grasp the idea or
contemplate the image of an abstract Deity. Failing in
this, he bends before the heavenly luminaries. His adora-
tion of the Sun and Moon and Stars had thus gradually
generated and developed Ouranism or worship of the
heavens, and polytheism, or the worship of many gods.
The Sun had, in the beginning, but one name, and by
this name it continued to be adored so long as there was
but one and the same language: so also the Moon, which
was thought to be his wife (1), was for centuries the
object of worship; and these two alone received the
homage of ancient peoples. But as the human race
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increased in numbers, colonies were sent forth from the

parent plains and valleys which were in Thibet, the Ark,
the Cradle, the ‫תבה‬, Theba, and in Regim, ‫תבת‬, Thebet.
Those colonies carried with them the religion of their
fathers, but, like them, they bowed in time before the
shining lights of heaven. As centuries advanced, and
they went farther and farther still from the ancestral seat,
and there were new dialects, and new languages, and new
modes of thought, error by degrees grew among the little
truth they had; their religious knowledge, such as it was,
became perverted, and a variety of mythological fables
which at first may have been parabolic, and which had of
course their groundwork in reality, sprang up, and were
in time incorporated with their creed itself. So we have
seen in our own days the mythos of Dives and Lazarus
grow to be a part of Christianity; and multitudes believe
it to be not an allegorical fable, but a real and positive
fact, as true as any other part of their creed.
4. God himself, in the Sun and Moon, has apparently
given to all mankind emblematic evidence of Two Powers,
but one so wholly dependent upon the other that it sub-
sides into insignificance before it. The Sun is indeed the
great creating, generating, and animating principle, while
the Moon, though in her own way beautiful and useful,
derives all the lustre and excellence she possesses from
the Sun alone. It is in him she is clothed: it is his
glorious light that she reflects. Of herself she can do
nothing: and if the Sun were removed from the spheres,
the Moon would be dark and all unseen, and the whole
order of existence would perish. From observing this,
the ancients no doubt symbolized God by the Sun, and
the Holy Spirit of Heaven by the Moon. The votaries
Y 3
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of each in course of time, however, extolled their own

Deity as the Great and the True. As language changed,
so was the name by which the Divine was worshipped;
as tribes increased, or shifted their ground, so the attri-
butes assigned to the Supreme varied with the climate.
In Scythia, the Deity was symbolized by the Urus; in
India, by the Bull; in Africa, by the Lion, which seemed
an embodiment of the solar fire itself; in Irân, by the
Eagle, whose soaring wing uplifted the royal bird into
the Infinite. They assigned to their god those qualities
which they most affected themselves. With the soldier,
he was fierce; with the wise, just; with the mild, he was
merciful; with the chaste, he was purity itself. Thus
God became many-named and many-qualitied; he was
male, he was female, he was double-sexed, he was of the
neuter gender, cold and impassive as a mountain of ice.
He was a Father, a Mother, a Virgin, all in one (2).
5. Thus the inhabited earth became gradually filled
with ideas the most wild and contradictory, till at length
Greece arose, and its people, the vainest, shallowest, and
most fanciful of all, eventually blended the whole incon-
gruous system into one wild and monstrous and most
disgusting structure of mythology which has descended
to our own times, and which has afforded to the priests an
opportunity of representing the primeval belief as a mass
of absurdity and nonsense, and a system of man, or beast,
or insect worship alone, compared with which their own
debasing systems shine with the most splendid brilliancy.
The Heathen mythology, says Jortin, hangs together like
a rope of sand or the dreams of a drunkard. Six Disser-
tations, page 212. Alas! for poor Jortin, who knew no
better. It certainly does as it is at present interpreted,
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or sedulously misrepresented; but I will prove it to be,

in fact, a golden chain let down from heaven, and a vision
of the Beautiful that uplifts to God.
6. I propose to shew, in the remarks that follow, that
all the mythologic gods of antiquity resolve themselves
first into symbols of the Messenger of Truth, and secondly
into God himself; and that all the goddesses in the like
manner resolve themselves into One, the Holy Spirit of
the Heavens. And as the divinities of Greece and Rome
are those with which we are best acquainted, I propose
to make them the groundwork of the facts on which I
argue, reserving to another volume a similar essay on the
gods of Hindustan.
7. The classical reader, who may at first be startled by
the ideas conveyed in this Book, will find on examination
that the Homeric gods are in general only superior men
endowed with an immortal nature; but subject to human
necessities. That they were possessed of bodies, must
be evident to every one who has perused a single book of
the Homeric poems. Repeatedly is mention made of the
faces, hands, arms, feet, &c., of the several imagined
divinities, and the connexion of these expressions forbids
us to interpret them otherwise than literally. Pallas is
celebrated for the penetration of her eye: Here, for the
beauty of her white arms: while Zeus is distinguished as
possessing a majestic dignity of countenance. True it is
that Zeus is often designated the Father of gods and men,
but this fact simply proves the want of uniformity of idea
which pervades the Homeric ballads; for he is more
frequently represented as a heroic though fallible man
than as an impassive, perfect, and sublime Divinity. And
much of the same confusion pervades the representation
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of all their gods. Sleep was thought necessary to recruit

their wearied limbs: food was indispensable to their exist-
ence. Though their bodily powers were greater than those
of the human race, yet their superiority in this respect
arose, as well as their immortality, from the ambrosia and
nectar on which they fed; if reduced to the food of mortals
their divinity was at an end, and if destitute of nourish-
ment for a long space of time death ensued. Il. v. 385,
399. As regards their intellectual faculties, they were
also a superior race of human beings. All were imperfect
in reference to the extent of their knowledge and compre-
hension. Tainted with human frailties, they almost
usually acted from the impulse of their passions. They
were implacable against those who honoured not their altars;
they were profuse in giving unto those who gave. In their
intercourse with each other they behaved with passion:
they gave way to anger and invective; they personally
contended, and were restrained from open disobedience of
Zeus only by fear. All this is intelligible, if we conceive
them to be names and symbols of Messengers; who though
divine in nature, were while on earth only mortal, and in
their lives but fallible men. In one word, they were but
one degree superior to the Lar or local god whom the
Jews carried about in a box, and worshipped under the
name of Ieue, Ho-Hi, Jah, Jiv, or however else it was
pronounced. Like him they were revengeful, tricky, fickle,
at times even foolish; like him they often gave the most
wicked counsel, and were apparently ignorant of what the
morrow would produce; but they were scarcely ever so
deliberately false, malicious, and sanguinary, as the
Hebrew Fetich is represented by his people to have been.
8. Such were the ideas of the common gods—those who
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had lived on earth and been translated to heaven. But

not such was the sublime ideal of the true Lord of the
Universe, and of those archangelic Essences which were
near Him. In their conceptions about Him they tran-
scended all modern notions. Though keenly alive to the
glories of the Universe, they saw in rapt vision a lovelier
Sphere; and after this their holy ones aspired. There is
a most splendid passage in Plotinus, which shews that,
however beautiful the Kosmos may be, and however it
may resemble in some respects the loveliness of the Divine
Artificer, G , still it is not possible for it to receive the
beauty which existed in the mind of God when He formed
it; and he leaves us to infer that that consummate and
most perfect Beauty, as it cannot be made apparent in a
physical world, must alone abide in one that is spiritual;
that is, with the Supreme in Heaven. The illustration
which he gives is so fine that I insert it here. Let us
endeavour, he says, to perceive and narrate to ourselves,
as far as it is possible to speak of such things, how the
Beauty of Intellect, and of the Kosmos that we perceive,
may be surveyed. Let us suppose that there are two
stony masses placed near each other; the one being rude
and destitute of Art; but the other being new fashioned
by Art into the statue of some god or man. And if indeed
it is the statue of a Divinity, let it be that of one of the
Graces or Muses: but if of a Man, let it be, not the statue
of any individual, but that which art has made from an
assemblage of the all-beautiful [a hero]. The stone therefore
which has been fashioned by Art into the beauty of form,
will indeed appear to be beautiful, not because it is a
stone; for if this were the case, the other stone would be
similarly beautiful: but its beauty will be derived from
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the form which was inserted into it by Art. The matter,

therefore had not this form, but it was in the conception
of the Artist before it came into the stone. It was, how-
ever, in the Artist, not so far as he had eyes and hands,
but because he participated of Art. This Beauty therefore
was in Art, much superior [to that which is in the Statue].
For the Beauty which was in Art [God] did not proceed
into the stone [the Kosmos], but that indeed remained in
the Artist, and another beauty of an inferior kind was
derived from it [and appears in the stone]. Nor did even
that remain pure in itself, or such as the Artist wished it
to be, but such as the Stone was capable of receiving.
Ennead. V., lib. 8. Let us begin from the gods, says the
same author (and this passage also shows how pure was
the ideal which the Sages of old associated with God), and
let us consider what kind of intellect it is which is in
them. For all the gods indeed are venerable and beautiful,
and their beauty is immense. For they are not indeed at
one time wise, and at another time destitute of wisdom;
but they are always wise, in an impassive, firm, and
pure intellect: and they know all things; not merely
such as are human, but their own concerns also—those
that are divine, and such as intellect like theirs can clearly
perceive. In these views it will be seen how far the ancients
soared above religionists of far higher pretensions. The
Jews, who are our guides and models in all religious truth,
for instance, believed that God had no foreknowledge:
that he was ignorant of the Future; nay, that he was so
destitute of anything like prescience, or even a true judg-
ment of human character, that he was often mistaken on
the most important occasions in his choice of men. Thus,
they tell us that He specially selected Nadab and Abihu
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to be His chosen priests. E . xxiv. 1. And after this

high choice we are told: Then went up Moses and Aaron,
Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the Elders of Israel:
and they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his
feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone; and as it were
the heaven itself in its clearness. And upon the nobles of
the children of Israel he laid not his hand: but they saw
God and did eat and drink. verse 9. A more exalted
consecration than this it is hard to conceive. God himself
interfered as it were personally to select these two men:
He excluded from His choice the nobles of the children of
Israel: He laid His own hand upon these others: He
made manifest to them His marvellous glory and splendour
in the shining magnificence of Heaven, and in every way
demonstrated that those who were thus honoured were
intended to be invested by Him with the most supreme
authority after Moses and Aaron themselves. This took
place according to the common Bible chronology, . .
1491. In the following year these two men, whose whole
nature could hardly have altered in that brief interval,
proved by their misconduct how fallible God himself was;
how ignorant of human character; how utterly devoid of
even any prescience; and how thrown away upon the
unworthy was the vision of loveliness with which He had
just before presented them. Thus we read: And Nadab
and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer
and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered
strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them
not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured
them, and they died before the Lord. L . x. 1. These
degraded ideas not only prove the whole narrative to be
false, but they shew that the books in which they are con-
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tained are fictitious also; and that the Jews were

absolutely incapable of forming any idea of the true
majesty and qualities of the Lord of all things. But
thus the Jews ever depicted God: frail, fallible, and
ignorant. In his choice of Aaron the same want of
discrimination was shown. Thus we read in E :
And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s
mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing,
or the blind? have not I the Lord? Now therefore go,
and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou
shalt say. And he said, O my Lord, send, I pray thee, by
the hand of him whom thou wilt send. And the anger of
the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, Is not
Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak
well. And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee: and when
he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart. And thou shalt
speak unto him, and put words in his mouth; and I will
be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you
what ye shall do. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the
people: and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of
a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God. And
thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt
do signs. Here was a nomination by the Lord himself;
He chose Aaron to be His very mouthpiece, and to declare
authoritatively the Divine Will of the All-Mighty. Yet
this same Aaron, thus marvellously distinguished and
miraculously endowed, was utterly unworthy of the august
mission. Though God revealed to him His own Splendour.
E . xxiv. 9, 10: and if we are to interpret the account
literally gave him meat and drink from His own table
(verse 11), and though during the few days that Aaron
was absent from his brother in the Mount, God himself
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was speaking of him, as if he were still a worthy minister,

and as if He knew not that he was abetting the Jews in
their idolatry; the history of the Jews tells us that Aaron,
regardless of all that had taken place, had abandoned the
Lord who had appointed him, and become the pliant tool
of the filthiest passions of the mob. And when the people
saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount,
the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and
said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us;
for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him, And
Aaron said unto them, Break off the golden earrings, which
are in the ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your
daughters, and bring them unto me. And all the people
brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and
brought them unto Aaron. And he received them at their
hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had
made it a molten calf: and they said These be thy
gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of
Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before
it: and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is
a feast to the Lord. And they rose up early on the morrow,
and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings;
and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to
play. E . xxxii.
9. The play, thus innocently translated into the text,
means in the original, promiscuous intercourse of naked
males and naked females; and in this harmless pastime
the ambassador of God was taking his part, when it
became known to the All-Wise, who thus addresses Moses
upon it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go, get thee down;
for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt,
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have corrupted themselves: They have turned aside quickly

out of the way which I commanded them: they have
made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have
sacrificed thereunto, and said, These be thy gods, O Israel,
which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people,
and behold, it is a stiffnecked people. Now therefore let
me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them: I will
make of thee a great nation. But Moses, though he begged
of the Lord to spare the delinquents, is said to have spared
them not himself, for we read a little farther on: And
Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee,
that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them? And
Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou
knowest the people, that they are set on mischief. For they
said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for
as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the
land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. And I
said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it
off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and
there came out this calf. And when Moses saw that the
people were naked; (for Aaron had made them naked unto
shame among their enemies:) Then Moses stood in the
gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord’s side?
let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered
themselves together unto him. And he said unto them,
Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his
sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate
throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and
every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
And the children of Levi did according to the word of
Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three
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thousand men. And the legend concludes with the sin-

gular statement, that the Lord plagued the people because
they adored the calf which Aaron had made. E . xxxii.
The whole of this it will be seen is so wholly inconsistent
with the true idea of God, and chosen messengers, and a
consecrated nation, that one wonders how people who are
not absolutely demented can believe it; and why priests
and bishops, who are not the most wicked of impostors,
can declare it from their pulpits to be true. But he who
calmly considers Paulism, biblicism, and all other schisms
from God, can in the end wonder at nothing so much as
human credulity and priestly deceit. Verily, says Ter-
tullian (adv. Praxeam, c. 16), as none of these things
would be believed about the Son of God, if they had not
been written in scripture, so perhaps they ought not to be
believed at all about the Father, although they have been
so written. Scilicit ut hœc de filio Dei non credenda
fuisse, si non scripta essent, fortasse non credenda de
Patre licet scripta. And it was upon “play” of the same
nature that the much-praised Agapæ of the early Christians
were no doubt in some respects modeled. We learn from
Paul, however, the true nature of these feasts; they were
remarkable for greed, gluttony, and drunkenness; and,
though he is discreetly silent on the subject of other
crimes, there is no doubt that in their intoxicated orgies
they indulged in the same licentious impurities in which
their Jewish forefathers indulged, as mentioned in Exodus
xxxii. 6, to which Paul himself alludes significantly in
this very epistle. 1 Cor. 10. Now these things were our
examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things,
as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were
some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to
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eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us

commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell
in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us
tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were
destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of
them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.
Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples:
and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the
ends of the world are come. . . . But if any man
seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the
churches of God. Now in this that I declare unto you I
praise you not, that ye come together not for the better,
but for the worse. For first of all, when ye come together
in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you;
and I partly believe it. For there must be also heresies
among you, that they which are approved may be made
manifest among you. When ye come together therefore into
one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. For in eating
every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is
hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not
houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church
of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say
to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For
I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered
unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which
he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given
thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body
which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.
After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had
supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood:
this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do
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shew the Lord’s death till he come. Wherefore whosoever

shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord, unwor-
thily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that
bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and
drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to
himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this cause
many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep
[together]. (In the original it was doubtless συγκοιμ̑ωνται
—i. e., sleep together, but the conjunction was artfully
dropped.) For if we would judge ourselves, we should
not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of
the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world.
Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry
one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at
home; that ye come not together unto condemnation. And
the rest will I set in order when I come. 1 Cor. xi. Yet
it is hardly to be wondered at when we bear in mind the
horrible gang of wretches with whom Paul had associated
himself under the guise of religion (Part I., pp. 434, 435),
that they should revel in all these crimes with a gusto
worthy of infernals. See 1 Corinth. vi. 9, 10, 11.
The editor of Taylor’s Calmet (Bohn’s ed., 1849, p.
31) remarks on the above passage: When we consider
that public suppers and other meals were customary among
the Greeks (to which they might assimilate these Agapæ),
and besides that the sacrifices at which those Corinthians
had been accustomed to attend were followed and sometimes
accompanied by merriment, we shall see less reason to
wonder at their falling into intemperance, &c., &c. It
was at length found absolutely necessary for the sake of
common decency to abolish them. (Council of Laodicea,
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Can. 28; Synod of Trullo, Can. 74; Council of Carthage,

Can. 42.) Mosheim is discreetly silent about these Love-
Feasts of the Christian forefathers; some of our moderns
have revived these nocturnal assemblies, and we know
the scandalous debaucheries and seductions that ensue.
Jude alludes to these Love-Feasters thus: Woe unto them:
for they have gone in the way of Cain [that is, they have
slept with their sisters], and ran greedily after the error
of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of
Core. These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they
feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they
are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose
fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by
the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own
shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness
of darkness for ever. Peter, in his second Epistle general,
is more explicit than Jude; but from the peculiar lan-
guage employed, we can see that both writers had com-
pared notes. But these, as natural brute beasts, made to
be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they
understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own
corruption; And shall receive the reward of unrighteous-
ness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time.
Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their
own deceivings while they feast with you; Having eyes full
of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling un-
stable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous
practices; cursed children: Which have forsaken the right
way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the
son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; but
who was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking
with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet. These
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are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a

tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever.
For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they
allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wanton-
ness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in
error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves
are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is
overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage. For if
after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through
the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they
are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end
is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been
better for them not to have known the way of righteous-
ness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy
commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened
unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned
to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to
her wallowing in the mire. And the whole chain of
infamies thus openly practised makes us see among the
Jerusalem Paulites but the same horrible orgies which
the Morning Star correspondent saw practised as openly
in London itself, as narrated ante page 465.
10. In another of the Lord’s chosen ones, He was
equally fallible. I allude to Miriam. For I brought thee
up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the
house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron,
and Miriam. M vi. 4. Yet, though she was thus
one of the “sent of the Lord,” that Great and Glorious
Essence knew not that her disobedience and disloyalty to
Moses and his God would entail on him the necessity of
blasting her with his curse, and reducing her to a con-
dition more deplorable than that of the lowest beast on
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earth. This fact is narrated in N . And Miriam and

Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian
woman whom he had married: for he had married an
Ethiopian woman. And they said, Hath the Lord indeed
spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us?
And the Lord heard it. (Now the man Moses was very
meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the
earth.) And the Lord spake suddenly unto Moses, and
unto Aaron, and unto Miriam, Come out ye three unto the
tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out.
And the Lord came down in the pillar of the cloud, and
stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and
Miriam: and they both came forth. And he said, Hear
now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the
Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and
will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is
not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will
I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in
dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he
behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against
my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was
kindled against them; and he departed. And the cloud
departed from off the tabernacle; and, behold, Miriam
became leprous, white as snow: and Aaron looked upon
Miriam, and, behold, she was leprous. And Aaron said
unto Moses, Alas, my lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin
upon us, wherein we have done foolishly, and wherein we
have sinned. Let her not be as one dead, of whom the
flesh is half consumed when he cometh out of his mother’s
womb. And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her
now, O Lord, I beseech thee. And the Lord said unto
Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she
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not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from the
camp seven days, and after that let her be received in
again. And Miriam was shut out from the camp seven
days: and the people journeyed not till Miriam was
brought in again, xii. Inconsistent in all things with
himself and all around him, God is made thus to speak:
And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed
the Lord, the Lord God merciful and gracious, long
suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping
mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and
sin. Here is a good description of the Father of Merci-
fulness by his own lips: but he immediately neutralises
the whole by an addition worthy only of a savage demon:
Yet will he by no means clear the impenitent: visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the
children’s children unto the third and to the fourth genera-
tion. E . xxxiv. 6. Yet it is on such a book as this
that so many millions stake their everlasting hope.
11. Nor does the miserable weakness of the Jewish
God end here. He was always represented by the Jew
writers to be false and deceitful; they imaged him
according to themselves. Take that remarkable instance
of chicanery mentioned in connection with Ahab and
Naboth’s vineyard: the lying was practised by no less a
person than Elijah, who blasphemously makes God the
author of it. And the word of the Lord came to Elijah the
Tishbite, saying, Arise, go down to meet Ahab king of
Israel, which is in Samaria: behold, he is in the vineyard
of Naboth, whither he is gone down to possess it. And
thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord,
Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou
shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the Lord, In the
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place where the dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs
lick thy blood, even thine. And Ahab said to Elijah, Hast
thou found me, O mine enemy? And he answered, I have
found thee: because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in
the sight of the Lord. Behold, I will bring evil upon thee,
and will take away thy posterity, and will cut off from
Ahab him that pisseth against the wall, and him that is
shut up and left in Israel. And will make thine house like
the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house
of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for the provocation wherewith
thou hast provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin.
And of Jezebel also spake the Lord, saying, The dogs shall
eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezebel. Him that dieth of Ahab
in the city the dogs shall eat; and him that dieth in the
field shall the fowls of the air eat. And it came to pass,
when Ahab heard those words, that he rent his clothes, and
put sackcloth upon his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sack-
cloth, and went softly. And the word of the Lord came to
Elijah the Tishbite, saying, Seest thou how Ahab humbleth
himself before me? because he humbleth himself before me,
I will not bring the evil in his days: but in his son’s days
will I bring the evil upon his house. 1 Kings xxi. One
would suppose that even the Jewish Lar would respect
a promise thus solemnly announced. But nothing would
be more erroneous than such a supposition. He broke it
as coolly as can be conceived. Accordingly, we read in
the next chapter: And a certain man drew a bow at a
venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of
the harness; wherefore he said unto the driver of his
chariot, Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the host; for
I am wounded. And the battle increased that day: and
the king was stayed up in his chariot against the Syrians,
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and died at even: and the blood ran out of the wound
into the midst of the chariot. And there went a proclamation
throughout the host about the going down of the sun, saying,
Every man to his city, and every man to his own country.
So the king died, and was brought to Samaria; and they
buried the king in Samaria. And one washed the
chariot in the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked
up his blood; and they washed his armour; according
unto the word of the Lord which he spake. Now
the rest of the acts of Ahab, and all that he did, and the
ivory house which he made, and all the cities that he built,
are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the
kings of Israel? So Ahab slept with his fathers; and
Ahaziah reigned in his stead. Yet, by the believers in
those horrors it is that we are perpetually told that the
world was in darkness, and knew not the True God, till
the Jews came, and made known to them the beautiful
deity thus painted in their scriptures. So, again, we read
of a deceitful trick practised by a holy man on a King of
Syria; he equivocated with his messenger, promising that
the King should live, while he appears in the same breath
to have whispered to himself that the King should die.
And Elisha came to Damascus, and Ben-Hadad the King
of Syria was sick: and it was told him, saying, The man
of God is come hither. And the King said unto Hazael,
Take a present in thine hand, and go, meet the man of God,
and inquire of the Lord by him, saying, Shall I recover
of this disease? So Hazael went to meet him, and took
a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus,
forty camels’ burden, and came and stood before him
and saith, Thy son Ben-Hadad King of Syria hath sent
me to thee, saying, Shall I recover of this disease? And
Z2
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Elisha said unto him, Go, say unto him, Thou mayest
certainly recover: howbeit the Lord hath shewed me that
he shall surely die. 2 K viii. It is not stated
whether it was the immense bribe, forty camels’ load of
every good thing of Damascus, which induced this prophet
of heaven to equivocate in this manner. But now comes
a most significant passage. And he settled his countenance
stedfastly, until he was ashamed: and the man of God
wept. And Hazael said, Why weepeth my lord? And
he answered, Because I know the evil that thou will do
unto the children of Israel; their strong holds wilt thou
set on fire, and their young men wilt thou slay with
the sword, and wilt dash their children, and rip up
their women with child. And Hazael said, But what,
is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?
And Elisha answered, The Lord hath shewed me that
thou shalt be king over Syria. So he departed from
Elisha, and came to his master; who said to him,
What said Elisha to thee? And he answered, He told
me that thou shouldest surely recover. And it came to
pass on the morrow, that he took a thick cloth, and
dipped it in water, and spread it on his face, so that
he died: and Hazael reigned in his stead. These words
can leave hardly any doubt whatever on the mind of the
impartial reader that, according to the Jewish creed and
custom, the assassination of Ben-Hadad was then and
there arranged between Hazael and Elisha (see Part I.
361), and that the prophecy put into the mouth of the
latter is only the forgery of a modern priest. For proof
of the hatred that existed between Elisha and the King,
see chapter vi. Yet this is one of the pretended prophets
of God. But if it be true, as we are told, that The Lord
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hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy

prophets (1 Kings xxii. 22), the idolatrous prophets in
that case were not to blame, because they were impelled
by an irresistible Power. But the fact is, they were all
bad men and schemers; and if the records of the world
could be explored, it would be found that more detestable
wretches than the Hebrews and their prophets never
existed. Where is the man, says Mackey, that can
subdue his understanding (II. E vii. 34) so far as
not to inquire how Daniel came to be at Shushan in
Persia before Persia had conquered Babylon? Daniel
was in Babylon in the palace of Belshazzar the night in
which he was slain: and as Daniel, in the two first verses
of chap. 8th, was in Susa by the river Ulai in Persia,
my unsubdued understanding wishes to be informed by
what means Daniel passed and repassed through the
besieging army of the Persians. Everybody knows that
to pass through a besieging army it is necessary to know
the password, and this could not be obtained but from
the Persians. This, then, is a glaring proof that his
business at Shushan was to obtain the information as to
how he should act on that night when the Persian army
entered the Palace of Belshazzar by surprise, and slew the
King and all his household: but as Daniel escaped, and
was promoted by the conqueror to be the third ruler of
the Kingdom, under Cyrus, this high promotion was a
grand reward for his treachery. The Age of Mental
Emancipation, p. 35. Jeremiah, he adds, acknowledges
this trick upon Babylon in his fifth chapter. There is a
snare laid for thee, and thou art also caught, O Babylon,
and thou wast not aware. This man also is vaunted as
possessing prophetic skill. In the 34th chapter of his
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tracts, we read one of his pretended prophecies. The

word which came unto Jeremiah from the Lord, when
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and all his army, and
all the kingdoms of the earth of his dominion, and all the
people, fought against Jerusalem, and against all the cities
thereof, saying, Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel;
Go and speak to Zedekiah king of Judah, and tell him,
Thus saith the Lord; Behold, I will give this city into the
hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with
fire. And thou shall not escape out of his hand, but shalt
surely be taken, and delivered into his hand; and thine
eyes shall behold the eyes of the king of Babylon, and he
shall speak with thee mouth to mouth, and thou shalt go to
Babylon. Yet hear the word of the Lord, O Zedekiah king
of Judah; Thus saith the Lord of thee, Thou shalt not
die by the sword: But thou shalt die in peace: and with
the burnings of thy fathers, the former kings which were
before thee, so shall they burn odours for thee; and they
will lament thee, saying, Ah Lord! for I have pronounced
the word, saith the Lord. Then Jeremiah the prophet spake
all these words unto Zedekiah king of Judah in Jerusalem.
Now, instead of Zedekiah beholding the eyes of the
King of Babylon, and speaking with him mouth to
mouth, and dying in peace, and with the burning of
odours, as at the funeral of his fathers (as Jeremiah had
declared that the Lord himself had pronounced), the
reverse was the case, for we read in the 52nd chapter
as follows: And it came to pass in the ninth year of his
reign, in the tenth month, in the tenth day of the month,
that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came, he and all his
army, against Jerusalem, and pitched against it, and built
forts against it round about. So the city was besieged unto
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the eleventh year of King Zedekiah. And in the fourth

month, in the ninth day of the month, the famine was sore
in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of
the land. Then the city was broken up, and all the
men of war fled, and went forth out of the city by
night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which
was by the king’s garden; (now the Chaldeans were by
the city round about :) and they went by the way of the
plain. But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the
king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and
all his army was scattered from him. Then they took the
king, and carried him up unto the king of Babylon to
Riblah in the land of Hamath; where he gave judgment
upon him. And the king of Babylon slew the sons of
Zedekiah before his eyes; he slew also all the princes of
Judah in Riblah. Then he put out the eyes of Zedekiah;
and the king of Babylon bound him in chains, and carried
him to Babylon, and put him in prison till the day of his
death. All these facts shew that, low and debasing as is
the view of the gods, which is given by Homer and the
mythologists, it is not one whit less so than the portrai-
ture of the Supreme which the Jews have given us; and
as to the vaunted prophecies to which Paulites so fre-
quently refer as proof of sacred inspiration, they will, if
examined, prove to be as vain as those cited; the event
directly falsifying the thing predicted (3).
12. I am not fond of fables, says Strabo, yet I have
detailed these at some length, because they are connected
with theology. Every discourse concerning the gods
should examine the religious opinions of antiquity, and
distinguish them from fable. The ancients were pleased
to conceal their knowledge of Nature under a Veil: it is
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now impossible to unfold the nature of their ænigmas.

But by exposing to light the numerous allegories which
they have left us, and by examining attentively their
mutual relations and differences, Genius may perhaps be
able to unfold the truths which are couched under them
(lib. x). It is perfectly clear, says Higgins, that whenever
the Greeks met with any god, or tradition, or local super-
stition, or custom which they did not understand, instead
of undertaking any rational inquiry or etymological
investigation, they cut the matter short by inventing a
history, connecting it mostly with something which was
flattering to their own national vanity, generally to their
own gods. Their conduct is pretty well described by
Strabo. Sir Walter Scott has done this in his historical
novels; and I am strongly inclined to think that many
of the Greek historians had no higher object in view
in their histories than Sir W. Scott has in his works,
acknowledged to be novels: and on this account they
did not consider themselves as more culpable in the
liberties which they took with truth than he does for
those which he has taken in his works. Celtic Druids,
84. Nor were they, like our own forgers, in any wise
ashamed of this disreputable practice. Pausanias thus
coolly alludes to the inaccuracy of his countrymen:
Nor are the Argive historians, he says, ignorant that
all their relations are not by any means true; but
they commit them to writing, because it is no easy
matter to persuade the Multitude to change their opinions.
Corinth. xxiii. Yet Schelling appears to have guessed
that there was more in their Mythology than meets
the vulgar eye. How, he says, if in the Grecian
mythology, the ruins of a superior intelligence and even
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a perfect system were to be found, which would reach

far beyond the horizon which the most ancient written
records present to us? (O D S -
.) The reader will see singular confirmations of
this guess as he proceeds.
13. And as the Greeks and Romans borrowed from
India, so we find the Paulites cribbing from the Pagan
creed of Europe. It is curious to observe, says a very
acute writer, how the theory of what is called Paulism
sprung out of the tail of the Heathen mythology. A
direct incorporation took place in the first place by making
the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The
trinity of gods that then followed, was no other than a
reduction of the former plurality, which was about twenty
or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the
statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes
changed into the plurality of saints. The mythologists
had gods for everything; the Christian mythologists had
saints for everything. The church became as crowded
with the one as the pantheon had been with the other,
and Rome was the place of both. The Paulite theory is
little less than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists,
accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue;
and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish
the amphibious fraud. As may be surmised they began
with the Gigantomachia, or war of giants against God.
But this in their ignorance they pushed to a wilder extent
than any of the pagan legendaries. They made the devil
the final conqueror of God; they subjected Olympus to
the Infernal. Having thus made an insurrection in
heaven, in which none of the combatants could be either
killed or wounded, put Satan into the pit, let him out
Z 3
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again, given him a triumph over the whole creation,

damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these
Christian mythologists bring the two ends of their fable
together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man
Jesus Christ to be at once both God and man, and also
the Son of God, celestially begotten on purpose to be
sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had
eaten an apple! Putting aside everything that might
excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by its
profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an exami-
nation of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story
more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his
wisdom, more contradictory to his power than this story is.
In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the
inventors were under the necessity of giving to the being
whom they call Satan a power equally as great, if not
greater, than they attribute to the Almighty. They have
not only given him the power of liberating himself from
the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made
that power to increase afterwards to infinity. Before his
fall they represent him only as an angel of limited exist-
ence, as they represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes
by their account omnipresent. He exists everywhere and
at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of
space. Not content with this deification of Satan, they
represent him as defeating by stratagem, in the shape of
an animal of the creation, all the power and wisdom of
the Almighty. They represent him as having compelled
the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering
the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty
of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by
coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a
cross in the shape of a man. Had the inventors of this
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story told it the contrary way, that is, had they represented
the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on a
cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new
transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less
contradictory. But instead of this they make the trans-
gressor triumph, and the Almighty fall . . . . When we
contemplate the immensity of that B , who directs
and governs the incomprehensible whole, of which the
utmost ken of human sight can discern but a part, we
ought to feel shame at calling such paltry stories the word
of God. The ancient mythologists, adds the same well
known controversialist, tell that the race of giants made
war against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hun-
dred rocks against him at one throw; that Jupiter defeated
him with thunder, and confined him afterwards under
Mount Etna, and that every time the giant turns himself
Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see that the
circumstance of the mountain being a volcano suggested
the idea of the fable, and that the fable is made to fit and
wind itself up with that circumstance. The Christian
mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the
Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards
not under a mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to
see that the first fable suggested the idea of the second;
for the fable of Jupiter and the Giants was told many
hundred years before that of Satan. Thus far the ancient
and the Christian mythologists differ very little from each
other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter
much farther. They have contrived to connect the
fabulous part of the story of Jesus Christ with the fable
originating from Mount Etna; and in order to make all
the parts of the story tie together they have taken to their
aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mytho-
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logy is make up partly from the ancient mythology, and

partly from the Jewish traditions. The Christian mytho-
logists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged
to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable.
He is then introduced into the Garden of Eden, in the
shape of a Snake or a Serpent [or, as Dr. Adam Clarke
says, an Ourang Outang] and in that shape he enters into
familiar conversation with Eve, who is no ways surprised
to hear a Snake talk; and the issue of this tête-a-tête is
that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the eating of that
apple damns all mankind! (4)
14. The fancies indeed in which the rabbins and some
of the fathers indulge, are not less wild or fantastical
than the mythology of the Greeks, of Ovid, and the poets.
It appears to have been the opinion of Milton, who in this
but aped those who went before him, that the eating of
the forbidden fruit introduced into the world carnal
desire.
But that false fruit
Far other operation first displayed,
Carnal desire inflaming: he on Eve
Began to cast lascivious eyes; she him
As wantonly repaid; in lust they burn.
Par. Lost, b. ix.
But the rabbinical writers, who have preserved to us the
popular notions and traditions of the Jews, went still
further; they imagined that all generation was introduced
by the fall. I will instance a few. Aben Ezra, says one
account, said that Adam was full of wisdom, for God had
hidden nothing from him; of one thing, however, he was
ignorant, that was sexual intercourse. And Aben Ezra
himself tells us that the Tree of Knowledge produced
venereal desire; and thence it was that Adam and his
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wife covered themselves with leaves. And Abarbanetis

has a similar idea. Another rabbin asserted that the
serpent intended no other than that Adam should first
eat of the fruit and die, and that he should take Eve to
wife. And a more modern writer imagines that God had
destined Eve to be the mother of the human race, to con-
ceive her own offspring, not by commerce with her
husband, and in the manner of brutes, nor at the will of
the man, but from God or the obumbration of the Holy
Spirit alone; that is, the virginity of the mother remain-
ing pure, and the womb closed, she should produce
without pain, and that she was created superior to man.
The notions of the rabbinical writers on the subject are
indeed innumerable; and show how entirely ignorant
they were of the mythos which their forefathers invented
—a mythos which has probably a dozen mystic meanings,
not any of which it is now possible perhaps clearly to
comprehend. Some even believed that God had created
Adam originally androgynus, or an hermaphrodite.
Others thought that he was made double, consisting of a
man and woman joined together; and that when God is
said to have taken the rib from Adam’s side, it is signi-
fied that he divided the female from him. According to
others he was a man before and a woman behind. Some
writers have supposed that Adam and Eve were created
without any generative members at all; but that these
burst forth like excresences when they tasted of the fatal
fruit. But almost all are agreed that generation was a
consequence of the fall; and indeed, says an orthodox
writer in Valpy’s Classical Journal, where these facts are
mentioned, this may easily be conjectured from the very
words of Moses; for Adam appears not to have known
Eve till after that event. See the authorities for these
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views cited in Bartollocius Biblioth. Rabbin, in verb ‫אדם‬,

Adm. Here it may be asked, does any rational man in
the world, who really exercises his reason on religious
matters, believe one word either of these nonsensical
legends, or of the relation itself as given in Genesis?
The peopling of the earth by Deucalion and Pyrrha is not
more absurd than the rabbinical mythos. Can anything
be more pitiable than that men should swallow such
fooleries? Is there any trash more monstrous preached
for religion in the South Sea Islands, or in the great
Pacific? If we can do no more good for Africa or Asia
than to convert their peoples from their own monstrosities,
into a belief in ours, had we not much better let them
alone? and would it not be wiser and more charitable to
expend in the reclamation and social and physical improve-
ment of our own neighbours, the millions which we
squander in teaching folly to the blacks? (5)
15. Whether Diodorus Siculus was really ignorant, or
whether he only affected to be so, of the nature of the
Greek gods, it is not possible to prove. I believe that he
knew little or nothing on the subject; still we find him in
his history thus deliberately writing. There exists a com-
plete diversity of opinion with respect to these deities; as
the same goddess was called by some Isis, by others Ceres, by
others Thesmophoron, by others the Moon, by others Juno,
and by others all these names were ascribed to her. Osiris
also was considered by some to be Serapis, by others Di-
onusos, by others to be Pluto, by others to be Ammon, by
others to be Jupiter, and by many to be Pan; but they
say that Serapis is the same as the Pluto of the Greeks
(lib. i. 25). The fact, however, which this passage estab-
lishes, may be taken as clear, that there was a general
idea that different names alone did not prove that there
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were different gods, but that many held that certain of the
gods were one, though they bore different appellations.
And this is all that is contended for in the following
remarks. Cudworth, as it would seem, entertained no
doubt that this was so. Having now made it undeniably
manifest, he says, that the Egyptians had an acknowledg-
ment among them of One Supreme, Universal, and unmade
Deity, we shall conclude this whole discourse with the
following observations: First, that a great part of the
Egyptian polytheism was really nothing else but the wor-
shipping of One and the Supreme God under many differ-
ent names and notions; as of Hammon, Neith, Isis,
Osiris, Serapis, Kneph, to which may be added Ptha, and
those other names in Iamblichus of Eicton and Emeph.
And that the Pagans universally over the whole world
did the like was affirmed also by Apuleius in that fore-
cited passage of his. Numen unicum, multiformi specie, ritu
vario, nomine multijugo, totus veneratur orbis; which means,
The whole world worships only one Supreme God, under
a many-formed appearance, with various ceremonies, and
with a variety of names. Ovid, says Faber, gives to Venus
a similar character to that of Isis. He represents her as
moderating the whole world; as giving laws both to
heaven, earth, and ocean; as the common parent both of
gods and men; and as the productive cause both of gods
and trees. She is celebrated in the same manner by
Lucretius, who attributes to her that identical attribute
of universality which the Hindus gave their goddess Isis
or Devi. Pag. Idol., i. 170. It is superfluous, he adds, to
say anything more on this subject; because what one god-
dess is the others are. The identity of all the heathen gods
on the one hand, and of all the heathen goddesses on the
other, is repeatedly asserted by the ancient authors, and is
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indeed manifest in itself. I am not ignorant, says Vos-

sius (i. 5), that Pythagoras worshipped many gods: yet he
acknowledged only One Supreme Deity, the Father of
gods and men. The rest he held as inferior gods, the
ministers and agents of the supreme Divinity. This is
the doctrine of Onatus, a Pythagorean. The other gods,
says he, stand in the same relation to the first and chief
Deity, whom we know mentally and in speculation, as the
chorus-singers to the Coryphæus (the chief singer or pre-
centor), or as soldiers to the general. (6) I am not aware
where Vossius found that Pythagoras worshipped many
gods. I believe he did not: if he paid reverence to any,
it was to the Messengers, whom the vulgar always have
adored as gods.
16. This very affinity between the divine powers and
the uniformity of the symbols under which they were
worshipped all over the earth, gave occasion to Dupuis
to write his Historie des Cultes, in which, with a love of
paradox, only equalled by Warburton, Bryant, and Faber,
he endeavours to shew that the ancient world did not
worship God at all, but only the Sun, Moon, and
Stars, forgetting that in their veneration of these they
adored their Creator; forgetting also that the priests
were perpetually at work to pervert monotheism into
polytheism, and that they succeeded in this as per-
fectly as the Paulite priests have done, in wholly
disguising and destroying the true nature of Christianity.
The facts on which Dupuis bases his arguments are
in reality proofs against him: the adoration of God
never ceased to exist; in Him they venerated the
Ruler of all the elemental powers, and it would be quite
as unfair to argue that Christianity and monotheism do
not now exist, because the world is overrun with images
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and idols; and God is popularly forgotten or passed by,

that homage may be given to saints.
17. The reader of this Essay is, therefore, recommended
to dismiss from his mind altogether all that he has read in
the mythologists about cosmogony and theogony. Whatever
has been handed down on these subjects by ancient poets
or modern annotators is sheer nonsense. It seems as
absurd to resort to Homer, Hesiod, or writers of that
class for sacred knowledge as it would be to Spenser or
Bunyan, if we wanted to know what constituted Chris-
tianity. The Iliad was not written any more than the
Faërie Queene to declare the truths of religion, and Plato
or Cicero are no better guides into the invisible world
than Christian, Greatheart, or the other phantoms in the
Pilgrim’s Progress. Mankind have built up in mythology
a labyrinth in which they have deliberately lost themselves;
whereas common mythology ought no more to be regarded
for serious purposes than Yule-tide stories, or the adventures
of Munchausen. It may be used for the purposes of
illustrating some primal truth, as I use it in this Essay;
but as a basis on which to found a harmonious system it
utterly fails. If we start with the grand axiom that all
the gods and goddesses resolve themselves into the Great
Father and the Great Mother, we shall never go astray:
but if we accept the favourite theory of the poor old
bothered mythologists of England, France, and Germany,
that there were six gods and six goddesses, all independent
of each other, and only nominally subject to Zeus, we
shall remain for ever buried in ignorance and gloom. This
no doubt is what our priests would like, and what our
scribblers labour for; but the lover of truth must put
aside all such contemptible guides and use his own reason
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instead of theirs. He will in this way find out for himself

that Ancient Mythology is but a great system disfigured
and almost destroyed; but, having still so many marks of
unity left that he must be dull indeed who cannot clearly
behold them.
18. Here I may premise that all attempts hitherto made
to reconcile the various systems of the mythological gods
have failed, and that the remarkable features which under
this elucidation of the mythos, are all seen to be the same
in essence, and to symphonize so beautifully into one
whole, can under no other reasonable interpretation be
reconciled together. Nor would it be possible that they
should thus blend and amalgamate, if they did not in their
original conception all shadow forth one and the same
divine truth.
19. The Apocalypse itself may be called the first great
and perfect Mythology of the world; all others are but
wretched types and images and shadows. In it we have
both event and doctrine blended; symbol is the figure most
usually resorted to: the most daring epic splendours con-
tinually rise out of the stream of narrative: we are
perpetually lost in wonder and admiration, as each new
incident or personage is introduced to flash like a meteor
over the great theatre of the earth. Compared with it in
grandeur, how poor and mean do the Homeric songs
appear; its magnificent boldness, its sublime daring, its
lofty vigourous flight into the empyrean of divinest fancy;
its dramatic propriety, and the perpetually shining variety
of its events and actors all indicate an inspiration higher
than any ever owned by mere man. And it might easily
be shewn that the whole volume of mythology is in a
great measure little else than a reproduction in varying
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colours of this majestic epos—the greatest work perhaps

of human mind that the earth of mortals ever has
possesed. The Apocalypse, says Milton, is the majestic
image of a high and stately tragedy, shutting up and
intermingling her solemn voices and acts with a seven-fold
chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies: and if it
could be so described in the medley maniac shape in
which it has been hitherto put forth, what may not be
said of it when it is brought back as now to its original
presentment.
20. When we pursue our inquiries carefully into the
true meaning of Mythology, or Parable, we find that,
however encrusted over with human falsehoods, the Mythos
may at first be found, it will, when denuded of its coating,
come forth like those carved and polished pillars or ceilings
of our cathedrals on which the vandals of the reformation
lavished their odious plaster or their barbarous paint;
and the more accurately we investigate all the embellish-
ments of fable and fancy, which the priests and poets have
thrown about the great original truth which was intended
to be shewn in symbol, the more beautifully does every part
of it gleam in heavenly brilliancy out of the enveloping
cloud, and the more perfectly do all the parts unite in the
formation of one great, divine, and uniform system of
religion.
21. I have already intimated that with a few insignifi-
cant exceptions the most learned mythologists of recent
times have agreed in this, that all ancient mythology, like
all primeval religion, takes it rise from One Source, and
emanates from One Centre. When features of resemblance,
says Sir William Jones, too strong to have been accidental,
are observable in different systems of polytheism, without
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fancy or prejudice to colour them, and improve the likeness,

we can scarce help believing that some connection has im-
memorially subsisted between the several nations who have
adopted them. It is my design in this Essay, he adds, to
point out such a resemblance between the popular worship
of the old Greeks and Italians, and that of the Hindus.
Nor can there be room to doubt of a great similarity
between their strange religions, and that of Egypt, China,
Persia, Phrygia, Phœnicia, Syria, to which perhaps we
may safely add some of the southern kingdoms, and even
islands of America while the Gothic system which
prevailed in the northern regions of Europe, was not
merely similar to those of Greece and Italy, but almost
the same, in another dress, with an embroidery of images
apparently Asiatic. From all this, if it be satisfactorily
proved, we may infer a general union or affinity between
the most distinguished inhabitants of the primitive world,
at the time when they deviated, as they did too early
deviate from the rational adoration of the only true God.
On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India. It may be clearly
shewn, says Taylor, that the most ancients priests, poets,
and philosophers, have delivered one and the same theology,
though in different modes. The first of these through
fabulous names and a more vehement diction: the second
through names adapted to sacred concerns, and a mode of
interpretation grand and elevated: and the third either
through mathematical names or dialectic epithets. Hence
we shall find that the Æther, Chaos, Phanes, and Jupiter
of Orpheus: the Father, Power, Intellect and Twice beyond of
the Chaldæans: the Monad, Duad, Tetrad and Decad of
Pythagoras; and the One Being, the Whole, Infinite Mul-
titude and Sameness and Difference of Plato, respec-
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tively signify the same Divine Processions from the

Ineffable Principle of things. Collectanea, p. 108. This
it will be seen is entirely in accordance with the great
truth which I am labouring to disseminate; namely, that
in primeval ages God established one uniform and universal
Religion, and that all the creeds and sects that now
subsist over the broad earth, are but offshoots of that
Religion; disguised, disfigured, and perverted, until its
genuine loveliness, like that of Gnosticism or Christianity,
is almost wholly hidden in the squalid garb of superstition.
Nor can Peace ever abide on the earth until the whole
earth is united in one belief, as God willed that it should
be so, and Reason herself plainly indicates.
22. And as the primal mythology all flows from the
same fountain, so do all the gods and goddesses of the
past finally resolve themselves into the Sun and Moon—
and these last into God. For as the One, the Supreme,
the Father, is necessarily the Creator of every thing that
is, so every thing that is, terminates in Him. Jupiter,
therefore, will primarily mean God: Juno will primarily
mean the Holy Spirit. Jupiter will be symbolized by the
Sun: Juno by the Moon, which from the Sun alone draws
life and light. But Jupiter and Juno are the same—
for as God he made all things, and consequently the Holy
Spirit. She is part of Him, as the blossom is a portion
of the tree. Philosophically and absolutely therefore He
and She, the Sun and the Moon, are One and the
same; and the six gods and six goddesses are but
different names and representatives of the One who is
All. Thus Hermesianax of Colophon has declared,
and in so declaring, he but gave body to the belief
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of all the Sages: and of the united voice of all anti-

quity.
Πλουτων, Περσεφονη, Δημητηρ, Κυπρις, Ερωτες,

Τριτωνες, Νηρευς, Τηθυς, και Κυανοχαιτης,
‘Ερμης θ’ Ηφαιστος τε κλυτος, Παν, Ζευς τε και ‘Ηρη,
Αρτεμις, ηδ’ εκαεργος Απολλων εις Θεος εστιν.
Pluto, Proserpine, Ceres, Venus, the Cupids,

The Tritons, Nereus, Tethys, and Neptune,
Hermes, the renowned Vulcan (7), Pan, Zeus and Juno
Artemis and far-shooting Apollo is one God.
23. But these beautiful speculations do not end here.

Jupiter is the father of all the divinities; he is the father
therefore of the Holy Spirit, and of the Divine Messenger,
and even he himself makes manifest his powers occasion-
ally through these, his mighty representatives. It is not
to be wondered at therefore if we find Jupiter himself, as
popularly symbolized, presenting those very same features
of the Messiah which are afterwards exhibited in his
sons, and by the same rule we find that all the goddesses
are in reality but other names for the Holy Spirit, with
whom they are as closely identified as the male divinities
are with God the Father, and all perpetually blend
together like the varied lights of the Kaleidiscope.
Porphyry, says Bryant, acknowledges that Vesta, Rhea,
Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpina, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis,
Silenus, and the Satyrs, were all one and the same. Νobody,
he adds, has examined the theology of the ancients more
deeply than Porphyry. He was a determined Pagan, and
his evidence on this point is unexceptionable. Ancient
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Mythology, i. 395. In fact it was a custom with the old

mythologists, when they wanted effectually to diguise from
the profane any of the new deities, whom they were
perpetually putting forth, to pretend that it was a son or
daughter of some old and well known divinity, whereas it
was in truth only the same archaic divinity itself under a
new designation. Hence they said Minerva was daughter
of Nepthys, whereas Minerva and Nepthys were one and
the same. This truth, if borne in mind, will explain a
good deal of apparent inconsistency in the Past. To the
Initiated the practice was well known, and consequently
they could not be deceived; but the wild and ignorant
many were effectually kept in the dark by means of this
deep device. By the Mystics it was called Theocrasia.
24. This Theocrasia, or mingling of the Deities into
One, is mystically alluded to in an Indian Purana, which
is translated by Colonel Vans Kennedy. Shiva is the
Supreme Being, and Gauri is his energy; Shiva is the
Male and Gauri the Female principle of existence. Shiva
is the meaning, and Gauri is the voice: Shiva is the Day,
and Gauri is the Night. Shiva is the sacrificer, and
Gauri the sacrifice. Shiva is the Heaven, and Gauri the
Earth. Shiva is the sea, and Gauri the tide. Shiva is
the Tree, and Gauri the Fruit. Shiva is Brahm, and
Gauri is Savitri (the wife of Brahm). Shiva is Vishnu,
and Gauri is Lakshmi. Shiva is every male, and Gauri
every female being: Shiva is actuality, and Gauri is
potentiality. As multitudinous sparks issue from fire,
so multitudinous forms of a two-fold nature (soul and
spirit; soul and body) proceed from Shiva and Gauri,
of which the outward form is Gauri; but the spirit that
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is in them is Shiva. The senses are Gauri, and the power

of perception is Shiva: intellection is Gauri, and the
intellect is Shiva: the pedestal is Gauri, and Shiva is
the lingam, the object of unceasing worship by men and
gods. All things of a feminine nature are Gauri, and all
of a masculine Shiva: the three worlds are but the form
of Gauri, whose soul is Shiva. Thus are Shiva and Gauri
the Causes of all things, the Preservers of this Universe,
and these to whom the adoration of man ought at all times
to be devoutly addressed. This Gauri thus addressed is the
same as the Boodh-Druid Gwawr, or the Morning. [See
ante, page 179.] It is also preserved in the Irish and Chal-
dee: and the mystical seat on which the Aspirant
sat until the advent of the Holy Spirit (ante, page 204),
was called Gorsedd or Gaursedd, which means not only
the Hill of Presidency, but also the resting place of the
Morning, or the Fire; for it was there the Holy Spirit
shone upon the worshipper, beautiful as the Morning
Star itself.
25. It is impossible for us now, says a learned writer,
to know at what time the heathen mythology began: but
it is certain from the internal evidence that it carries,
that it did not begin in the same state or condition in
which it ended. All the gods of that mythology, except
Saturn, were of modern invention. The supposed reign
of Saturn was prior to that which is called the heathen
mythology, and was so far a species of theism, that it
admitted the belief of only One God. Saturn is sup-
posed to have abdicated the government in favour of his
three sons and one daughter, Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune and
Juno: after this thousands of other gods and demigods
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were imaginarily created, and the calendar of gods

encreased as fast as the calendar of saints has encreased
since.
26. All the goddesses of Paganism, says Faber,
will be found ultimately to melt together into a single
person, who is at once acknowledged to be the Great
Mother. The same reverend penman grows indignant,
however, that it should be thought the ancients had any
true notion of the Supreme Father. From some remark-
able expressions, he says, which have been used by gentile
authors in various countries, and which in their legitimate
acceptation can only be applied with propriety to the
Supreme Being, they have inferred that the true God was
the object of Pagan, no less than of Jewish and Christian
veneration, though his attributes were disguised and his
worship was debased by much vanity and superstition.
And they have been rather led to adopt such a conjecture
by finding that all the gods and goddesses of the pagans,
in whatever country they may be adored, melting insensibly
into each other, are at length resolved into one essence, who
is represented as being the Creator of the World. Hence
those remarkable expressions, and some equally remark-
able descriptions have been brought forward as highly
sublime, and as indicating the just conceptions which the
pagan Sages entertained of the nature of God. And this
has been done, not merely by the adversaries of revelation,
but by men of high respectability and attainments, who
are themselves fully convinced both of its authenticity
and importance, and who have laboured to promote its
cause. Pag. Idol, i., 21. I wish this learned priest had
given us good reasons for combatting this truth; but, as
he has not done so, I think it may be fairly argued that
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it was impossible; and that where his erudition and

orthodoxy have both failed, the truth of the position
which he attacks, may be acknowledged. And the Great
Creator, into whom all the gods and goddesses of every
people thus finally melted, was Bi-Une AO; the Mystic
Essence of the Adamic vision in Heaven.
27. That the gods were deified heroes, kings or bene-
factors of the human race, whom after death their
countrymen exalted to heaven, and that hence idolatry
originated, is a favorite theory with biblical writers like
Faber; but it is one that is entirely false. Had such a
system, says Colonel Vans Kennedy ever existed, it
becomes impossible to explain the cause which prevented
a principle so extensively applicable, and so gratifying to
the pride of man, from producing no more than the very
limited number of deities which have existed in any
country. The Greeks and Romans acknowledged no
more than thirteen principal deities, and they appear to
have been fewer amongst the other people of antiquity.
But were it admitted that the gods were originally men,
who were exalted to divine honours for their virtues and
beneficent actions by their grateful countrymen, it must
be evident that the same cause cannot be assigned for the
deification of the female possessors of Olympus; for neither
tradition nor history affords the slightest grounds for
supposing that a woman ever distinguished herself in
such a manner as to obtain the honour of apotheosis. On
the contrary, from all that is known of early times, it
appears incontestible that the situation of females entirely
precluded them from taking such a part in the active
duties of life, as might have entitled them to such a
distinction. This hypothesis consequently is not only
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inadequate to explain the origin of idolatry, but it even

fails in admitting the same cause being assigned for one
and the same effect; and it may therefore justly excite
surprise that it should have been so generally considered
as clear and incontrovertible. (Hindu Mythology, 9.)
Note, as confirming this view, that when the Cretans
pretended to shew the tomb of Jupiter, as if he
were a man, they were universally denounced as liars,
both by Epimenides and Callimachus. Κρητες αει ψευσται.
Κακαθηρια, γαστερες αργαι. or as Paul has it: One of them-
selves, even a prophet of their own said: the Cretans are
always liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. Tit. i. 12. Have
we no poet or prophet to denounce the Christian mythos
of a Holy Sepulchre, which is quite as foolish as the
Cretan one? Are we, who pride ourselves on our know-
ledge, our civilization and our reason, so far behind the
“barbarians” of Paganism, as to believe that God can
die and be entombed like any common man? Alas? it is
so; and there are millions who will think me, a blas-
phemer, for rebuking their ignorance upon this and other
cognate fables.
28. The ancient genealogy of all things, as given by
Hyginus, may be explained thus: Ancient Darkness
[God]. Chaos [the Holy Spirit] Χ-ΑΩ-Σ. From the
union of both, Light [that is, the Spirit herself, and all
Archangelic Spirits]. From Light and Day—that is,
from the Archangelic Spirits commingling themselves
with lesser natures, or having a desire after that which
was lower in degree, came: Heaven, Earth, and Waters,
or a series of spheres fitted for the habitation of those
who were sprung out of that union, and were not worthy
of their former places with God. From Light and Earth—
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that is, from a still further fall, were born Grief, Deceit,
Anger, Contention, Falsehood, Revenge, Intemperance,
Strife, Forgetfulness, Sloth, Fear, Pride, Incest—in one
word, Mortal creatures, in whom all these passions and
imperfections are found. And if it were possible for us
now to get at the very basis of Mythology, we should
find that in every particular it corresponded with the
truths in this volume, as perfectly as the above does.
Jupiter.
29. In the threefold division of the Universe which

Zeus, Poseid-Aon, and Hades made among them, we
trace a faint glimpse of the oldest, and, as I have shewn,
the most perfect form of belief. In Zeus ‘ϒπατος, or the
Supreme, so called that he might be distinguished from
Zeus the Messenger, we have God, who rules alone,
supreme in heaven, Invisible, Veiled, Incomprehensible,
(8), wielding the force of thunders, and by his laws
restraining, guiding, or impelling all created powers. He
espouses Metis, or Divine Wisdom, whom the Lord pos-
sessed from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the
world was. P . viii. 22. He is the Mind or Wisdom
[AO], which, according to the celebrated saying of
Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, is the Cause of all. Νους εστι
διακοσμων τε παντων αιτιον. Pythagoras called the same
Cause, Number, by which he intended IO, or Ten, which is
the Tien of the Chinese, and their name for the Heavenly,
the primary Cause of all things. In Poseidaon, the ruling
Deity of the Waters, we have the Holy Spirit, AO, or Power
of On,* the Male-Virgin (the Saviour according to Hero-
* Poseidon also may be the Punic, Pesitan, ‫פשימן‬, which
signifies Expansion, Pleroma, and metaphorically the Universal,
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dotus, lib. vii.), who presides over generation and fruitful-

ness, of which Water is the type, and who was concealed
from the vulgar view in exactly the same manner and for
the same reasons as Silenus and Argive Helen in Hellas and
Gaun-Issa in Hindustan (9); while in Hades, or Aïdes, a
Greek compound, meaning Invisible, we have the race of
Spirits represented, who, unseen by mortal eye, abide in
Paradise light or dwell in darkness—that is, who are not
with God in Heaven, compared with whose ethereal lights
and splendours all other places that be are indeed immersed
in gloom. Of the identity of this mythos with the Tri-
mourti and the Trivamz and the Triadic Power of all
peoples, no one, I think, can entertain any serious doubt.
30. But that these three names or significations were
really One, is proved by the Abbé Tressan in his Mytho-
logy; and he mentions one of those facts on which he
founds his proof. The division of the world, he says,
between Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto was not universally
admitted among the ancients. England possesses a valuable
monument which proves this difference of opinion, and
throws great light on this disputed point. At London,
in the collection of Mr. Towneley, which is one of the
richest and most beautiful in the world, is an antique
statue of Jupiter, which represents this god holding
thunder, the symbol of the sovereign of heaven in his
right hand; in his left a trident, symbol of the god of
or Majesty of Aun, which this Power or Spirit of God may be

called. Plato, like an absurd Greek, derives the name from
παρα το ποσιν δουναι, from his giving drink (Cratylus), which
might seem as if it were intended only in fun, but that these
vaunted Greeks perpetually befooled themselves and their
followers with the like absurdities. So Cicero derives the name
of Venus, quod ad omnia veniat. De Nat. Deor. ii.
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the sea; and by his side is a Kerberus, symbol of the god

of hell. This precious remnant of antiquity, which is in
good preservation, agrees perfectly with the theory which
I propound. An additional proof may be found in
Pausanias (Corinthiacs iii.), who mentions a Temple in
Corinth that had three statues of Jupiter in the open air.
One of these was without a name; the second was named
Terrestrial, and the third the Most High. In this the
reader will perceive the Triad, or, I. God; II. The
Ineffable, Unnamed, Holy Spirit; and, III. The Messen-
ger, who is the divine one of Earth, and who is in this
way used but as a representative figure for all Spirits. I
should add that, although this ancient and most mystical
statue is the property of the British public, the trustees
of the Museum take good care to hide it away in their
cellars, so that no profane eye may see it. Here, however,
it must be noted that ancient sculpture is not always a
true guide to the real religious creed of the Past. The
greater portion of antique carving which remains is not
older than the later days of Greece and Rome, when
ignorance of the real nature of the primeval creeds was as
general as it is now. I care nothing, therefore, for the
votive offerings of Greeks and Romans, in which popular
idolatry and folly were perpetuated in bronze or marble.
They only prove that their pious donors knew as little of
their religion as the miracle painters of Italy do of the
Christianity which they profess. But this remark does
not apply to all ancient sculpture. Amid the mass are
many, which have either descended to us from remote
ages, or have been designed by those who really did know
the mysteries of their religion, and did not fear to shadow
them forth symbolically. Such of these as we possess in
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London are hidden away, and can only be seen after much
inquiry and considerable difficulty. The priests of the
Museum—in all other respects so noble an establishment—
are afraid to let the public judge for themselves.
31. But the moment we have advanced thus far, all
resemblance between the true God and Zeus ceases; and
the latter becomes, in Grecian mythology, an emblem of
the Incarnated Messenger of Heaven—the renewer of life
and truth to man. His identity, or rather communion with
God, was shewn in the symbolic name sometimes given
to him, namely, Adon-Osiris, a word which signified that
he and his Father were one. The words of Callimachus,
in his Hymn to Jupiter, are more in harmony with his
being an Incarnation than being the Supreme God.
“Swift was your increase or growth, great Jove, for
excellent was the method of your education. Swift you
grew up to manhood, and the soft down rose early on
your chin; though during the short season you continued
a child, your soul was in its full perfection, and your
thoughts great, ripe, and worthy of God. For which rea-
son your brothers (the angels) envied you not, as being
far their superior in worth, the empire of the heavens.”
And it is said analogously of the Ninth Messenger; Jesus
increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God
and man. L ii. 52. As Messiah, Jupiter is the young-
est born child of Time and Cybele or Rhœa; and Rhœa
[the Pomegranate, the Fountain] was a name for the Holy
Spirit: he is brought forth in Arkadia (the Archa), or, as
others say, in Thebes [Thibet, or Theba, the Boat or Cres-
cent] or in Ida, which is ‫עדה‬, Ada, the Beautiful, the Holy
Spirit, or in a Cavern near Lyctos (light), or Gnossos
(gnosticism, Knowledge): hence he was called Charmon,
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which is a corruption of Hermon, the place of his birth

[A , section 8]. The Nymphs, the daughters of
M’El-Issa, receive him in their arms, and he is rocked in
a golden cradle, bride stone, or ark; while young men
soothe him with celestial melodies, as angels sing a choral
song in the Apocalypse, section 7. He is fed on ambrosia
brought by Doves* from the streams of Ocean, and on
nectar, which an Eagle [God] drew each day with his
beak from a rock. But a rock, we know, was an ancient
symbolic name for God. In another version of the mythos
he is fed by bees on butter and honey. This was the
food of all sacred or Messianic births. Butter and honey
shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil and to
choose the good. Isaiah vii. 15. Hama, ‫המאה‬, butter,
is derived from ‫חמה‬, Ham, the Sun, or solar heat;
mystically, therefore, it means nourished by the Sun.
The Orientals always use butter in their sacrificial offer-
ings. See ante page 420. He is attended also by the goat
Aum-Al-Thea [Alma-Thea], the goat being the symbol of
Pan, or the Universal, and the three syllables of its name,
signifying the Divine. See Proverbs xxvii. 27. He
appears on earth in various forms. Now as a beautiful
Swan, a symbol of purity, and heavenly music; now as a
Shower of Gold, emblematic of the priceless truth which
he reveals; now as a Bull, the sunlike hieroglyph of the
Messiah; now as a Flame of Fire (Exod. iii. 2; Is. x. 17;
Heb. i. 7), when as a conqueror he comes on earth, or as
an Eagle when he soars in light into the highest heaven of
inspiration. As Saturnus, into whom he sometimes melts,
he was united with the Female Power Lua Mater and
* In the Phœnician, Himan or Heman signifies equally priest
and dove.
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Ops, who is Demeter and Bona Dea. The mortal women

whom he influences under all these forms mean the Souls,
usually considered feminine, on whom he impresses his
image, in whom he generates offspring: that is, in whom
he implants the seeds of his religion; and the hero-children
born of those alliances are the great and learned and
powerful Churches, which in every age have borne in
their features the unmistakeable seal of their inspired
Genitor. He was named Maius, the husband of Maïa;
and Faunus, whose spouse is Fauna. Of her it was said
that out of modesty she never left her bower, or let herself
be seen of men. See the Commentary on section 8 of the
Apocalypse. He engages in war against the giants, or
earth-born, who bound his parents in chains, and utterly
subdues them, burying their bodies beneath the moun-
tains. He appoints kings and magistrates, and consti-
tutes judges and tribunals so as to preserve peace amongst
men; hence kings are called the Sons of Zeus. Veneration
and Justice always stand by his side: Metis or Prudence,
and Themis or Law, are his wives and handmaidens. He
lives in the Silver Age, because when his Father (God)
reigned, it was the Golden Age in the supreme heavens,
and all error was unknown. His scepter is made of
cypress, intimating that his rule is everlasting; he wears
golden shoes to symbolize the beauty of his ways and foot-
steps. [See Part I., page 108]. Before his birth Saturn
resolves to devour him; but he is saved by his Mother to
be a ruler of nations: this is alluded to in section 8 of the
Apocalypse; where also it is said that the earth gave
assistance to the Woman, in reference to the black stone
which his Mother gave to Saturn to swallow, for this was
furnished by the earth. This black stone was from the
AA3
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earliest period the object of divine honours: it was wor-

shipped at Delphi, and it is commemorated in the Kaaba
or black stone at Mecca. It gave occasion also to his sur-
name of Jupiter Lapis, which is L and Apis, the first
being the mystical Anchor, which I have shewn in Part I.,
page 112; the second being the Egyptian Apis, which is
also a Bee. This again appears to be the Bee in the
Triangle, which Millin has preserved, and which, as I have
before noted, is deeply mystical. See page 251, note 6. So
Sar-Apis is Rock-Bee, Sun-Bee, and God-Bee. The symbol-
ical L was the original Greek ϒ, as it is our own V, and
it was the Pythagorean symbol for AO, or the Two in
One. See Part I., page 463. These analogies and proofs
seem really inexhaustible. Zeus betrothes himself to
Vesta [the Light of Heaven], whom he first endows with
perpetual virginity, and certain beautiful maidens called
Prayers are the fruit of the alliance. When it was fabled
that he delivered his father Saturn from imprisonment,
and afterwards dethroned him, it signified that the Incar-
nation renews or sets free from the bondage of the priests,
the sacred knowledge or revelation of his predecessor
(called his father), and that he subsequently takes his
place, or, in other words, ascends the holy throne, which
the renewed Avatar necessarily does. The Shower of Gold
which falls from Heaven, and impregnates Danae, a
mortal woman, with a divine birth, is a symbol also of
the celestial origin of the Incarnation, though Ovid and
the priests of course have converted it into an impure
fable. Jupiter or the Incarnation was also called Σωτηρ,
or the Saviour, a name still extant, and Expiator, because
he atoned for and absolved the crimes of men. He was
surnamed Charisius, or the Giver of Grace, and Eleu-
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therius, or the Deliverer. Thus we read, The Lord is my

Rock and my Deliverer. 2 Sam. xx. 2; Psalm xviii. 2.
Thou art my help, and my Deliverer. Psalm xl. 17,
lxx. 5. My fortress, my high tower, and my Deliverer.
cxliv. 2. There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer.
Rom. xi. 26. Note that Charisius is a compound word,
being Chr, mentioned ante page 191, and Issa. It differs
little from Chrissius, and this is a form of Χριστος, or the
Anointed. He exorcises the evil spirit of cruelty from
Lycaon, until it takes the form for which it is best fitted,
that of a devouring wolf, delighting in blood; as the Ninth
Messenger is declared to have done the same to certain
Jews, and to have transferred their filthy passion into the
odious shape of swine (10). He denounces ruin on an
unholy city, as Jesus over Jerusalem (M . xxiii.); and
finding therein only two inhabitants, Baucis and Philemon,
who were virtuous, he changes their cottage into a glorious
temple; and when their days on earth are done, they
appear before him as beautiful trees, symbols of the ever-
lastingly fair and verdant. As it is said: He shall be like
a Tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth
his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and
whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Ps. i. He transforms
the people of Arimi into monkeys, because of their perfidy.
He is most usually represented as Zeus Meilichios, the
Mild, the Benevolent; but when, as the Cabir, he shakes
his ægis, thunders leap from its heart; darkness reigns
for a moment, and avenging lightnings flash, until mortal
men are stricken with terror, and are constrained to own
him for their sovereign master. If all these symbolize not
the Messiah of this Apocalypse, I confess I know not
what does.
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32. The name of Zeus, helps us considerably when we

wish to know what the Hellenes really intended to signify
him to be. Zeus is not, and does not, mean the Supreme
God: it simply signifies one who lives and is divine.
I am he who lives and dies. [A , section 2.] Its
Æolic form is Δευς, which is almost the same as the deus
of the Latin, the affinity of which language to the Æolic
Greek is well known. Zeus therefore means a god, the
same as θεος, deus, the Persian deev or dew, and the
Shanscreet deva and devata—none of which was ever
applied as a title to designate the God who made all
things, the Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but only to His
subordinate ministers. As Zeus it comes from Ζάω, I live,
which will remind the reader of the words of the Ninth
Messenger, I am the way, the truth, and the life: and
ΣΑΩ and AO, or the Holy Spirit, of which he, as Messiah,
is the offshoot. He was Custos or the Guardian;
Catharsios, the Purifier; Corniger, the Horn-bearer,
and Homogynus, or the Male-Virgin in memory of his
divine birth: he was the Martial and the Wielder of
Victory; the Servator or Saviour (11), as Strabo and
Arrian tell us (Strabo, lib. 9. Arrian 8, de Alex.) the
Avenger and the Hospitable. Under the type of Pan,
he was called the Redeemer. At Argos there was a famous
temple and statue of Zeus Tar-Issa; a compound of Tar
thunder, and Issa the Holy Spirit.
33. This transition from God the Father, into the form
of the Messenger, may to some appear abrupt and forced;
but philosophically considered it is not so. He, indeed,
and his Father are one. J x. 30. The oneness
which pervades all existences, and which I have already
shewn so beautifully shadowed forth by the Ninth Mes-
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senger (Part I., page 31.) must have been apparent to the
enlightened sages by whom this mythos was first imagined;
and I do not think there could be a more striking instance
of its influence on their minds than that which is deve-
loped in the whole of this symbolic picture. Of the
abominations imputed to Zeus I can of course take no
notice. It is clear that they could not have been assigned to
him by good men, or by any who sought to do him honour:
they are the work solely of the impious and atheistic,
who desired to bring discredit upon all religion, faith,
and excellence. They are an excrescence upon the
original mythos, which could not have been otherwise than
pure. If it should be urged that the Hellenes did not
acknowledge this identity of which I have spoken, I
answer that I never supposed the vulgar did; but there
must have been numbers among the priests who had
learned this sacred truth, and who would shape the mythos
in accordance with it. And if this should not satisfy
the skeptics I have only to add what must silence them,
viz., that the various horrors related of this divine being
apply to some other, but not to him. Three Jupiters,
says Cicero in his Nature of the Gods, are recounted by
those who are called theologians. The first and second were
born in Arcadia. The father of the one was Æther, from
whom Proserpine and Liber are said to have been born:
the father of the other was Cœlum. He is said to have
begot Minerva. The third was a Cretan, the son of
Saturn, whose tomb is yet extant in the isle of Crete.
But Varro reckons up three hundred Jupiters; and others,
like Eusebius, count almost an innumerable company of
them; for, as the name eventually became the appellative of
a king, there was hardly any nation which did not worship
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a Jupiter of its own, and suppose him to have been born

amongst themselves. So there is hardly a department in
a Papal country that has not produced, and that does not
worship, its canonised saint.
34. A slight, curious, but additional proof of the
identity of Zeus with the Messiah, is presented in the
mythos of the Sacred Marriage with Herè or Juno, of
which all Hellenian history is full; a marriage which the
reader will find mentioned in the text of the Apocalypse
itself, so that no doubt can remain of the close relation-
ship between them. The following is the Grecian
mythos, which at first view seems stupid enough. Zeus,
who had long loved his sister, watched one day when
she was out walking near Mount Thronax—a fabulous
name—and raising a great storm of wind and rain fled
shivering and trembling, under the form of a cuckoo, to
seek shelter on the knees of the unsuspecting maiden.
She covered the poor bird, as she thought him, with her
mantle, and Zeus, then resuming his proper form accom-
plished his wishes. This means the Messenger, who in
an illusive shape—namely, that of man, which is not his
true one, seeks the love of the Holy Spirit (in reality his
sister, for God is the All-Father), and finally gains it,
having fled to her arms away from the darkness, turmoil,
and tempest of the earth in which he has mingled during
the accomplishment of his mission.
35. Jupiter, as the Messenger, was styled Atabaris,
which is said to mean good pasture, in allusion to his
pastoral character; the Jews symbolized the same idea in
the name given to Mount Tabor, which was one of their
holy high places. It is one of the finest hills I ever
beheld, says Pococke: being a rich soil that produces
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excellent herbage, and is most beautifully adorned with

groves and clumps of trees. Mount Ida (Iid) in Crete
was a famous place for the worship of God and the Mes-
senger. The priests were ten in number, and called Idæi
Dactyli, Idæan fingers; [Dagt-uli, holy fishes]. Orpheus
is said to have been of them. They first discovered the
use of fire and metallurgy. Clemens of Alexandria calls
them strangers—that is, they were not native but foreign
missionaries who established a branch of the pontifical
religion in this island. They came in the days of Minos—
that is Manu or Fo-hi, and introduced the arts of ploughing
and sowing. This Minos, being the name of a Messenger,
he was worshipped afterwards as Zeus. A pagan god,
said to be Zeus, but without either image or temple was
adored on the Jewish Carmel, and Vespasian offered
sacrifices to him there. Tacit. Hist. ii. 78. It was called
’’Ορος ἱερον Διὸς—the Sacred Mountain of Zeus. Iam-
blichus tells us that Pythagoras prayed alone in this
temple. The Jews say that Elijah dwelled there in a cave
which is still shewn; and that it was here that he called
for a miraculous fire from heaven. 1 Kings xviii.
But Elijah was merely a Jewish name for the Eighth
Messenger Lao-Tseu, or Lao-Kiûn; and the fire was
suggested by the Apocalyptic prophecy of that great
Messenger, section 28. And if any man willeth to do
them hurt, behold fire cometh out of their mouths.
30. We now see therefore that Zeus primarily means
God, the One, the Father, the AO, the All: secondarily
it means Messiah, or the Divine Messenger, the Son of
God, who is intimately connected with him, and who,
when he comes to earth to proclaim, to preach, or to
re-establish his Holy Ordinances, is indeed his sacred
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representative. But the actions of both having in the

lapse of ages been confused and blended together, the
vulgar who always reject reason, and are led by report, so
utterly confounded them that they knew not which was
which (as in the present day they confound God with
Jesus and make them one); and were so besotted as to
point out the tomb of Him, who is the everliving Lord of
Life and light. Hence all the blunders and horrors of
mythologists, and all the abominations of the popular
superstition. Yet when we find the Messiah mentioned
by Ovid under one of his names, Æsculapius, the pro-
phecy of his nurse Ochirroe, portending, like Anna (L
ii. 31), his future growth, is in such a strain, as all the
way presented to his translator, Addison, the image of
the true physician of mankind.
Once, as the Sacred Infant, she surveyed,

The God was kindled in the raving maid;
And thus she uttered her prophetic tale:
Hail, great Physician of the World, all hail!
Hail, mighty Infant, who in years to come,
Shall heal the nations, and defraud the tomb:
Swift be thy growth, thy triumphs unconfined,
Make kingdoms thicker, and encrease mankind.
Thy daring art shall animate the dead,
Then shalt thou die—but from the dark abode
Rise up victorious and be twice a God (12).
Juno.
37. Having thus proved Zeus to be a representative name

for the Messiah, I shall as I proceed shew all the other
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gods to be so likewise; but before I do I shall demon-

strate that the goddesses were but typical names for the
Second Great Power in the Universe—the Holy Spirit
(13). And first let me begin with J . The name of
Hera has been derived from ἔρα earth, and ἐραω to love;
but it is probably the Shanscreet Heri, which is a primi-
tive radical. Hera therefore would be the feminine of Heri,
and ‘Ηερως, anciently ‘Ηρος, and they answered to each other
as the Latin Herus (Master) and Hera (Mistress), and
the German Herr, Herrin. The ̋ Ερός (Love) of Hesiod,
becomes ̋ Ερως in subsequent writers: and this Erōs
primarily signified Beatific Celestial Love of the most
virgin purity. Hence Juno is the sign Virgo, who in the
Indian Zodiack, is drawn standing on a boat in water,
holding in one hand a lamp and in the other an ear of rice
corn; circumstances which recall to our remembrance the
Egyptian Isis and Eleusinian Ceres. Herè Arg Ie, as
Homer calls her, or Juno, as I have said, was an emblem
of the Holy Spirit. She was borne through Heaven in a
golden chariot by starry-winged birds: her crown was
wreathed with roses and lilies: she bore a sceptre in
her hand. She is perpetually attended by Iris; and in
paintings sits enthroned under a Rainbow canopy. She
is the mother of Vulcan, or the Fire Messenger [See
Part I., page 46]: she produces Mars also, who is the
Messiah in his character of Cabir or Conqueror: and
Hebe, or Perpetual Youth—the meaning of which allegory
is clear: and this Hebean or Hevean (serpent-like)
Spirit of immortal bloom is the cup-bearer of God. The
same name was given to the male-virgin, Ganymede,
which reduced to its roots, is the Oriental ‫ גן‬Gn, a
Garden, and ‫ חמד‬Hmd., the object of earnest desire; a
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word, says Parkhurst, applied to all sorts of sacred things.

It is pronounced Aum or Om-Id: both of them names
for God: as Gn or Gaun, the Garden, is for the Spirit of
God. Hebe and Ganymede therefore symbolize the Mes-
senger of God, who is from the Garden. Part I. pp.
261, 270. Note, that Ganymede is the Son of Laomedon
King of Troia: this is Lao and AO, from whence the
Eighth Messenger’s name is partly formed: and Medon,
which is Md, and On or Aun, all sacred radicals, as I
have before proved; while Troia is Tr (three), and Iah
a name for God. Some have suggested that the trans-
lation of Enoch, Ganymede, and Elijah to Heaven, are the
same mythos. Juno’s statue at Argos, so called from
Argha, the Ark of the Covenant, is of gold and ivory,
and it bears a pomegranate (14) in one hand: she is called
Sospita or the Saviour, as we learn from Ovid, Fasti. ii.
57: Cinxula from the girdle which she binds upon her
chosen priest, as will be seen in the Apocalypse; Natalis
as presiding over the birth of all things; and Egeria,
under which name Numa, that is a priest of Ma-nu and
Am-ûn, said he received inspiration from her. As Juga,
Lucina, Opigena, and Pronuba, she presides over Mar-
riage; so in the Apocalypse she is called the Bride.
Notwithstanding her maternity she was called emphati-
cally The Virgin, as Pindar and Eustathius tell us; she
bathed in heavenly fountains, and was renewed and perfect.
Her priestesses at Argos adorned her altar and statue
with garlands of the herb Asterion, or starry-violet, a
mystical allusion: a ewe lamb was offered to her in sacrifice.
She conceived a son, who became a Messiah, by touching
the flower Nerio. In the Chinese mythology the Mes-
sianic birth is symbolized with equal purity. Three
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Nymphs (a common form among mythologists to denote

the presence of the Holy Spirit) came down from Heaven
to wash themselves in a river: they were scarcely got to
the stream when the Water Lotos appeared with its
scarlet blossom and fruit on the robe of one of them;
nor could either of them imagine whence it proceeded.
The Nymph, to whom the robe belonged, was unable to
resist the temptation of tasting so charming a fruit. She
did so, and became pregnant, and was delivered of a Boy,
who became a legislator, conqueror, and sage, to all
mankind; after which his Celestial Mother rejoined the
spheres. So in the mythos of Genesis, it is after tasting
the apple that Eve conceives a son; in its original form
before it was disfigured and destroyed as it now is, this
legend in all probability contained the story of the birth of
the First Messenger. Her favourite bird was the Peacock
(see ante, page 402), whose name in Greek was Ταως:
which is a pure Chinese word. This had reference in its
Messianic symbolism to AO, and TAO, the Holy Spirit
and God of the Chinese, from whom the Messenger pro-
ceeds: with the sacred T (Tau) or mark of heaven which
the Messenger bears upon his thigh, and which he imprints
upon his followers [See A , section 22] on the
right; and the Σ, the monogram of the Saviour, and the
symbol of salvation, which is the end and object of his
mission, on the left. Argos, who was fabled to have been
changed into the Peacock, means Son of the Holy Spirit,
and was so called from Argha, her mystic name. And
the bird itself, like the glittering scarabæus, by its varied
colours and burnished splendour, was a symbol of the
mystic Phœnix and Phanes, which, as I have shewn
[Part I., pp. 98, 102, 172, 193, 256], was a covert name
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for the Messenger, and was connected also with Enoch.

[See ante page 484]. So the fiery rainbow-like splendour
of the salmon made it an apt symbol in the Mysteries, of a
soul regenerated by truth into beautifulness.
38. The Sabines called Juno Chrs, and Kur-Is, the first
syllable of which is the radical Kur, the Sun, and the
second is Isis or Issa, the Holy Spirit. Hence Kur-Ie
Eleison, O Ie the Sun, have mercy. Kuris, in the Sabine
language, is a spear—an allusion to Juno, as Mother of
the Cabir. For the same reason also, she was called Bel-
lona—a compound of Bel (the Sun, or God) and Yoni,
the Shanscreet symbol of the Holy Spirit. This Bellona,
or Mother of the Cabir, conveys the same idea as Venus
Armata, and Venus Summachia the ally in battle. She
was born by the Imbrasos, or the Ambrosial stream; the
Fountain of all the Waters in the Universe, and was
nursed by the virgin daughters of the Star-God, or Starry-
Sun, Asteri-On: others say that she was tended by the
Oceanids or Ocean Nymphs. She is Queen of Heaven,
and is enthroned; and her celestial quality was referred
to in the offering which the Emperor Hadrian made at
her temple, of a sapphire-coloured or purple mantle, em-
broidered with stars of silver. Other mythologists declared
that she was brought up in Samos, as if they meant to
say in the Sun; for Sâm is the Sun. Numa ordered that
if any unchaste woman approached her temple, she should
offer a Lamb as an atonement to expiate the offence. She
conceived Typhon, or Hæphestus, or Pythonian Apollo,
a conquering Cabir or Messiah, by the vapours which
arose from earth, and were received by her into her womb;
that is, the sins of mortals, rising up to heaven, occasion
the advent of the Messenger in his judicial character.
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Her milk made Hercules (a Messianic symbol) immortal.

Her statue at Hieropolis, or the Sacred City, was sup-
ported by lions (Incarnations); and was so wonderfully
constructed, that according to the point from which you
viewed it, it was Juno, Minerva, Venus, Luna, Rhæa,
Diana, Nemesis, and the Destinies—intimating that she
was in reality but the representative of All, and that they
all were but one. Hesiod tells us that Zeus had seven
wives in succession, viz., Metis, Themis, Eurynome, Ceres,
Mnemosyne, Latona, and Juno, all of whom resolve them-
selves into the same Essence. In the War of the Giants,
she changed herself into a snow white Cow. In the
temple of Juno, at Mycenæ, there was a peacock of gold
and precious stones, which the emperor Hadrian had
dedicated to her. Pausanias says he saw it. It alludes
to the Rainbow and to her Messianic Son. She was
surnamed A-Isa, one of the primitive titles of Moira, or
Celestial Fate. In the most ancient mythology, there is
no trace of the unseemly temper and indecent jealousy,
which the wandering vagrants who interpolated their
ballads among the Homeric songs, impiously attributed to
her; and wherever indeed we find human frailty or vice
assigned to one of the Olympians, we may be quite sure
that it was the figment of a later, a priest-ridden and a
degraded age. As Felicity, she was represented as a
beautiful Virgin, clothed in a purple vestment variegated
with silver, sitting on an imperial throne; and holding
in one hand a Caduceus, or emblem of the Messiah, and
a horn of plenty in the other. As Fides, or Faith, during
the performance of her rites, her priests were habited in
white vestments, and their heads and hands covered with
fine linen, typical of purity. Her symbol was a White
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Dog, that is, a pure priest, a Messenger. Sometimes she

was represented crowned with medicinal herbs, sitting on
a throne, and holding a globe; near her was an Altar
encompassed by a Snake, with its head wreathing about
it. Sometimes she bore a Serpent twining round her
left arm, to which she held, as if offering, a patera or cup.
There was a statue of her under the name of Hygeia or
Health, at Sicyon, and it was almost wholly covered up
in a veil of many and splendid colours. So they repre-
sented her as Concordia, a beautiful female, holding a cup
or patera in her right hand, and in her left sometimes a
sceptre, at others a cornucopia. As Flora, the Goddess of
Flowers, Juno was imaged almost naked, with a loose
nosegay of flowers, which she seemed to have just gathered
and to hold up, as pleased with them: she was sometimes
crowned with flowers, and at others held a crown or chap-
let of them. Her robe was of changeable silk, and of as
many colours as the flowers with which she was adorned.
Montfaucon publishes a beautiful image of Flora, crowned
with leaves and flowers, and in a long robe. There is a
Sphinx lying at her feet, he says, which with the hiero-
glyphics at the base, would make one take her for Isis.
Thus every step we take amid the ancient mythologic sculp-
ture, proves that all their Goddesses were in reality but
the One, whose infinite attributes and variety were repre-
sented by almost innumerable symbols. As Fortune, she
was always accompanied by a winged Cupid, or Incarna-
tion, or Spirit. The name of Juno is pure Shanscreet.
The Dove (Iüne or Yoni) is the admitted emblem of the
female procreative power all over the world. It always
accompanies Venus. Hence in Shanscreet the female
organ of generation is called Yoni. The Hebrew name
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is ‫יונה‬, iune, evidently the same; and this Hebrew or

Shanscreet word is always feminine. The wife of Jove,
the Creator very naturally bears the name of the female
procreative power. See Part I., page 468. Like Vesta,
Juno is usually represented with a patera, which symbol-
izes the yoni.
39. In Coptic the word for L is ОϒШΝІΝІ,
ouonini, which differs little from Yuno, Juno, Junonius,
and Yoni, all cognates. Juno also is the same as Cybele, the
Magna Mater, or Great Mother, whom men worshipped
on the mountains, Id-aia, Dindymene, and Berecynthia
[Bara-Kûntia, the generating Fountain], and who was
identified also with Ops and Tellus. She was usually
represented as being crowned with towers. The male and
female were blended in her mien and aspect, and she
carried keys of knowledge in her hands: these are the keys
which she delivers to the Apocalyptic Messengers; with
which they open all secrets. She was worshipped at
Rome in an orbicular temple called Opertum, into which
men were never admitted; the meaning of which signi-
ficant allusion must be now clear to all; and on every
25th of March her statue was borne in great pomp to the
Tiber, TI [a Circle], BR [Creation] IS [Issa], and bathed
within its purifying waters. This, it will be seen is the
papal feast of the Annunciation. As Jupiter was called
Pluvius, or the Rain-sending, so was she called the Air
and the Earth, in token of her fertilizing power. Juno,
says Olearius, is the passive Principle of natural appear-
ances, as Jupiter is the active; by whose impregnation
Juno conceives the seeds of things in her divine womb.
Of which, since their multitude and variety, are, without
number, that fruitfulness of Juno, which produces so
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many seeds is symbolically likened to the pomegranate,

which contains a greater number of seeds than any other
of the apple species. Of all the pagan divinities, says
Abbè Tressan, there was none whose worship was more
solemn, or more universal. The prodigies she had opera-
ted, and her vengeance when neglected, or when any one
had the temerity to put themselves in competition with
her, inspired so much fear and awe [M . xii. 31, 32.
M . iii. 29. L xii. 10.] that nothing was omitted
to honour her, and render her propitious: so that her
worship was more general even than that of Jupiter.
Divine honours were paid to her in Europe, Asia, and
Africa, where she was adored under the names of Isis and
Astarte.* We see her worshiped in the North under
the name Phrigga, which comes from ‫( פרעה‬Phroh) a
derivative of the Egyptian word Phre or Phra, which
means the Sun, and which they indicated by the Hawk,
the Globe, or the Sun itself on the royal banners. See
ante, p.p. 12, 245.
40. This goddess, says Mallett, was Frigga, the wife of
Odin. It was the opinion of many ancient nations, as
well as of the first inhabitants of Greece, that the Su-
preme Being or Celestial God, had united with Hertha
[Herah-Pthah] to produce the inferior divinities, man
and all other creatures. Upon this was founded
* Selene was particularly reverenced under the title of Har-

mon, or Harmonia. Har and Hara were common titles, and par-
ticularly bestowed upon Juno, as queen of heaven. And analogous to
this, Harmon and Harmonia signify Domina vel regina Luna.—
Bryant, A.M. iii. 324. It was rendered Hera by the Ionians. It is
the Hermon of the A , section 8. It is the Shanscreet
Heri, the Queen of Heaven. Selene, Sol-Ain (Sun Fountain) Helen
and Silenus are all the same.
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that veneration they had for the Earth, which they con-
sidered as a goddess, and the honours which were paid
her. They called her Mother Earth, and Mother of the
Gods. The Phœnicians adored both these two principles
under the name of Tautes and Astarte. They were
called by some Jupiter and Apia [Apis, a bee, the Egyp-
tian Apis, and Sar-Apis] by the Thracians Cotis and
Bendis; by the inhabitants of Greece and Italy Saturn
and Ops. All antiquity is full of traces of this worship,
which was formerly universal. We know that the Scy-
thians adored the Earth as a goddess wife of the Supreme
God; the Turks celebrated her in their hymns: the
Persians offered sacrifices to her. Tacitus attributes the
same worship to the Germans, particularly to the inhabi-
tants of the North of Germany. He says they adore the
goddess Herthus, and gives a circumstantial description
of the ceremonies which were observed in honour of her in
an Island which he does not name, but which could not
have been far from Denmark. We cannot doubt but
this same goddess was the Frigga of the Scandinavians.
Another celebrated goddess [here Mallett is wrong—she
was the same] was Freyja, the Goddess of Love. It was
she who was addressed in order to obtain happy mar-
riages and easy childbirths. She dispensed pleasures,
enjoyments, and delights of all kinds. The Edda styles
her the most favourable of the goddesses; but she went
to war as well as Odin, and divided with him the souls of
the slain. It appears to have been the general opinion
that she was the same with the Venus of the Greeks and
Romans, since the sixth day of the week, which was con-
secrated to her under the name of Freytag, Friday or
Freyjas day, was rendered into Latin Dies Veneris, or
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Venus’s day. Northern Antiquities. The first of the

Orphic Hymns, says Parkhurst in his Hebrew Lexicon
(Tit. ‫פלך‬, Phlt.) is addressed to the goddess Προθυραια,
or the Door-keeper, and as it is the most ancient monu-
ment extant of the adoration paid to the Deity, who was
supposed to preside over child-births, and whom the
Romans afterwards called Juno Lucina, or Diana Lucina;
the reader may not be displeased with seeing a literal
translation of it in this place. Hear me, O venerable
Goddess, Daimon with many names; and in travail, sweet
hope of child-bed women, saviour of females, kind friend to
infants, speedy deliverer, propitious to youthful nymphs;
Prothyræia, key-bearer, gracious nourisher; gentle to all,
who dwellest in the houses of all, and delightest in ban-
quets: Zone-looser: secret, but in thy works to all apparent!
Thou sympathizest with throes, but rejoicest in easy labours,
Eileithyia,* in dire extremities putting an end to pangs;
thee alone parturient women invoke, rest of their souls; for
in thy power are those throes that end their anguish. Ar-
temis, Eileithyia and holy Prothyræa. Hear me blessed Lady,
and grant us offspring by thy aid, and save, as thou hast
always been saviour of all. So in the Carmen Sæculare
of Horace we find the Chorus of Virgins singing to Diana
(a name for the Holy Spirit), O Ilithyia, who art of lenient
power to produce the timely birth, protect the matrons in
labour; whether you choose the title of Lucina or Genitalis.
O Goddess, multiply our offspring, and prosper the decrees
of the senate in relation to the joining of women in wedlock;
and the matrimonial law about to teem with a new race.
Eusebius says that the image of Eileithyia, or Lucina,
* This word, in its Hebrew root, ‫ילך‬, means to be born again;
as it were, says Parkhurst, by a total or great change.
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had the form of a female Vulture with its wings spread,

and composed of precious stones. Præp. Evangel. iii. c. 12.
This Vulture was a sacred Egyptian symbol for the
Spirit of God. So Virgil, speaking of the anticipated
Golden Age, or Naronic Cycle, says, Casta fave Lucina,
tuus jam regnat Apollo. Ecl. iv. 10. So her prototype, the
Indian Lakshmi, is addressed: Praise be to Thee, O Mother
of all things, says the Vishnu Purana, source of prosperity,
dweller in the bosom of God. Thou art the efficient cause of
existence: the fiery power which purifies this world: the
Manifester of twilight, night and day. Thou art Under-
standing, Truth, and Wisdom: the Fount of knowledge:
the Bestower of beatitude: and by Thee, O Goddess, is
this Universe filled with various forms, beautiful and
unbeautiful. Deserted by Thee, the three worlds sink
into annihilation: and supported by Thee, they enjoy
prosperity. Blessed by thy presence, men are rendered
happy by wives, children, friends, houses, and riches: by
health, power, victory over enemies, and contentedness.
Thou, O beloved of God, art the Mother of all creation:
and thy fostering care pervadeth all things, moveable and
immoveable: but without thy presence, nor wives, nor
children, nor friends, nor riches, would gladden men: nor
animals, nor verdure, nor fertility adorn the earth. But
what tongue, even of the most learned, can adequately
eulogise thy wondrous and mysterious qualities? In the
early Roman Theology, the successor of the Etruscan,
Jupiter and Juno were called Vau-Nus, Faunus and
Fauna; who was also called Fatua, from her skill in pro-
phecy. She was so pure that she had never seen a man:
and the Roman matrons sacrificed to her in the night
with so much secrecy, that it was even death for any
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male to look into her temple—so rigidly was she supposed

to veil herself in chaste and holy seclusion, from all
except her Lord. Faunus too was said to have kept him-
self always inviolably concealed, for which reason he was
named Pan: but his voice was heard at night in woods
and solitudes. Ovid describes him as crowned with the
pine—the cone-shaped fruit. Juno was also named Fer-
Onia, which contains an allusion to On and Yoni. A sacred
fountain flowed near her temple: and slaves received the
cap of liberty at her shrine. Hence Jesus said: Ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. J
viii. 32: one of the almost innumerable mystical allu-
sions of the Ninth Messenger to the most recondite
secrets of theology. As Providence, the Holy Spirit is
represented as resting on her sceptre with one hand, and
pointing with the other to a globe at her feet: thus sig-
nifies that she governs all things here below. Bryant
(A. M. iii. 245) gives a plate of Syrian coins, in which
the Holy Spirit is represented. In all she is seated on a
Rock the emblem of God, i.e. ‫צר‬, Tsar, a Rock, and ‫שר‬
Sar, God; hence Sar-Apis. Hence, too, the allusions by
the Ninth Messenger to the man who built his house upon
a Rock. M , vii. 24. And when the flood arose, the
stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not
shake it, for it was founded upon a Rock. L vi. 48.
And upon this Rock I will build my church. M . xvi.
18. This metaphor of a Rock, was applied as frequently
to the Holy Spirit as to God; for She and her Father
were One. It had relation to the Bride-Stone Rock, out
of which the Initiated was born—and appeared to emerge
pure, as it were, from the bosom of AO. In other
eastern coins Juno as the Holy Spirit is crowned with
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Towers; and in one is surrounded by stars; in another

by a wreath of corn. A lingaic altar (the altar of the
A ) is before her, with blazing incense: in one
a Ram, or the Sun, is over her head: in another a Cen-
taur (or man-horse, that is a sun-born mortal) with a bow
in his hand [A , section 12]; in a third a Dove
with a chaplet, or the Yoni. In one of the coins she
bears in her hand the emblem of the combined phallus
and Yoni: in six of them ears of corn, in the seventh a
cornucopia. At her feet a man’s figure is seen, as if
about to go forth on a mission: this is the Messenger,
her son. Bryant says it is a person who seems to be in
danger and ready to sink; a guess, than which nothing
can be more wild. Julius Firmicus alludes to this Uni-
versal Spirit: Tuque Luna, humanorum corporum mater ;
and Alexander Polyhistor, speaking of the Temple of
Belus, at Babylon, says that the principal Image had two
heads, one of a Male, and the other of a Female (apud
Syncell, p. 29) indicating that God and his Holy Spirit
were one, and that they were there adored. The same
idea was mystically signified in the Sacred Grove at
Arcadia, where Pausanias says he saw “Olives and Oaks,
which grew from one root: and this is not the result of
agricultural skill.” In the same spirit, it was the doc-
trine of Mani, who has been most infamously misrepre-
sented by Christians; A Male-Virgin gave birth to light
and life. The olive symbolizes the Holy Spirit: the oak
is typical of God.
41. Juno and Diana had both these names Chesias
[Jesus, Hesus] and Imbrasia, the Ambrosial, in common;
and both were worshipped at Samos. Spanheim publishes
two coins with the Inscription Σαμιων, Sam-Ion, or Sun-
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Dove, one of which represents Juno, the other Deity;

and he deems them from this to be both the same Deity;
though worshipped under different appellations, and in a
different character. Servius’s remark on the fifth line
of the first Georgic of Virgil, throws light on this inter-
pretation. Stoici dicunt non esse nisi unum Deum et unam
eandemque esse Potestatem, quæ pro ratione officiorum
nostrorum variis nominibus appellatur. Unde eundem
Solem, eundem Liberum, eundem Apollinem vocant. Item
Lunam, eandem Dianam, eandem Cererem, eandem Juno-
nem, eandem Proserpinam vocant. This also is the
opinion of Macrobius. Isis, Io, Ino, says Bryant,
iii. 193, were the same as Juno: and Venus also
was the same Deity under a different title. Hence
in Laconia, there was an ancient statue of the god-
dess styled Venus Junonia. Juno was also called Cupris,
and Cupra, and under that title was worshipped by the
Hetrurians. Herodotus repeatedly observes that Isis corres-
ponded with the Demeter of the Greeks; and Diodorus
confirms this assertion. She was Φυσις παναιολος, or
all various Nature: clothed like the Rainbow, and her
Son, in a coat of many colours. See, in the index,
AIOLOS. The Roman ensign S.P.Q.R, with the
device of an Eagle in the centre of a Circle with
expanded Wings, conveys the idea of the Rainbow
round the Throne, or the Holy Spirit encircling God.
This elucidates what Havercamp means when, in his
notes on Tertullian (Apol. xvi. 162) he says: Almost the
entire religion of the Roman camp consisted in worship-
ping the ensigns, swearing by the ensigns, and in prefer-
ring the ensigns before all the other gods. In the ensign
they saw an Image of the Supreme King and Queen of
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Heaven. Juno, says Bochart, in the Phœnician is As-

tarte; in the Etruscan she is called Cypra: that is, she
is Diana and Venus, the Cyprian goddess. Plutarch, in
describing the goddess worshipped at Hierapolis, who was
the deity variously named Isis, Cybele, and Astarte, re-
marks that some call her Juno and some Venus. Pausanias
speaking of the Lacedemonians, says that they called an
old wooden image, the image of Venus-Juno. Cypra by
some has been thought to be derived from ‫חפר‬, chaphar
to expiate. Hence Waters of Expiation or Liberation
[A , section 69] because Venus rose from the
waters: hence also Poseidon or the Holy Spirit may be
‫פּוש ארון‬, Pos-Adon, the Sovereign Power of Waters,
which is implied, says Sir W. Drummond, in Pos: or it
may mean the Might of Adon—the Lord and the Mes-
senger. In a beautiful figure in brass, belonging to Mr.
Payne Knight, a bird appears in the posture of incuba-
tion on the head of a Grecian Deity (a Messenger), which
by the style of work must be much anterior to the adoption
of anything Egyptian into the religion of Greece. It was
found in Epirus with other articles, where the Συνναος, or
Female Personification of the Supreme God (that is, the
Holy Spirit) was Dione, who appears to have been the
Juno-Venus. In this figure she seems to have been re-
presented with the diadem and sceptre of the former, the
dove of the latter, and the golden disk of Ceres,—which
three last symbols were also those of the Egyptian Isis.
42. I do not object to take from the Abbè Pluche, his
account of the mode in which she was worshipped and the
origin of one of her names. It was formerly a general
custom, he says, to make sacrifices and public prayers
upon eminent places, and more especially in groves to
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shelter the people from the heat of the sun. . . . The

images were worshipped with solemnity and placed in the
finest woods. Crowds of people flocked to the religious
feasts of the Lovely Queen, who loaded them with bles-
sings. The coolness and beauty of the place where she
was worshipped, had no less an influence on the assist-
ants than the attire of the Goddess; and instead of
calling her the Queen of Heaven, they often styled her
the Queen of the Groves. The Latins made of this lucus
(a grove), their word Lucina, which signifies exactly
president of the groves. But a small equivocation, I mean
the affinity of the word Lucina with that of lux, caused
her to be invoked when women were in labour, as if she
took care to bring children to light. Juno lucina fer opem.
—Terent. This is in part true; but the Abbè did not
know that Lucina was a name for the Holy Spirit. Juno
is called Lucina and Lucelia, which signify the Light of
the World and the Light of God. To whom can this
be truly applied but to the Holy Spirit? This Luc-Ina,
is in reality Light, and Hina, the Polynesian synonyme
of Shekhina. See Part I., pp. 98, 116. So in Ireland,
Friday (the day of Venus) is called Hina (15).
Diana.
43. D ,A , (Αρι-Θεμις, pre-eminent Divine
Law, or Providence), L , from the Arabic L , was
a name for the Holy Spirit of God. She was a spotless
Virgin, ever abiding on the mountains (elevated sublime
places, that is, Heaven); yet she is called Mother in an
inscription preserved by Gruter. Thesaur xli. 5. She
has a golden bow and arrows, the emblems of language,
and is called arrow-rejoicing, as the Spirit of Tongues.
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She pursues wild beasts, either to destroy them (that is

the Messiah in his conquering capacity), or to reclaim
them from ferocity (the Messiah as a legislator and
preacher). She dances in heaven with the Muses and
Graces, while the Hymn of Letoe (or the Hidden) is
sweetly chaunted in the heavenly spheres. [See A -
, section 7.] Although the sister of Apollo, she
was born before him. Her shafts were made by the
Cyclops, or Sons of the Cycle; and sixty ocean-nymphs
are her companions; a plain allusion to the Cycle of sixty.
Like Juno, she aids women in their child-birth pains,
that is she assists the feminine soul in bringing forth the
Beautiful; the Holy Spirit being the divine inspirer of all
grace. Homer describes her as bathing her beautiful
body in the Ocean before she puts on her splendid gar-
ments. The Cuthites, says Bryant, gave to Artemis, or
Diana, the name of T’Aur-o and T’Aur-Ione: from laying
these histories together, it is apparent that Artemis Diana
and Venus Dione were in reality the same Deity, and had
the same departments. This sylvan Goddess was distin-
guished by a crescent, like Gaun Issa, or Issa the Garden
of God, as well as Juno Samia. Hence we find an
inscription in Gruter, wherein Diana is at the same time
called Regina Undarum and Nympha decus nemorum.
Analysis iii. She was called Δαδουχος, torch-bearer, as
well as φωσφορος, light-bearer; the first because she bare
the phallic emblem of new life, fire; [I am the Resurrec-
tion and the Life. J xi. 25] and the second because
she emaned the Messiah, the light of the world. Pausa-
nias mentions a variety of brazen statues of her, scattered
throughout Greece, on which she was designated Diana
the Saviour. In Ireland she was called Be-Baiste, the
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Goddess of Waters, which is the Egyptian Bubastis.

She was also called Lycœan, which is an epithet of
Apollo. By Sanchoniathon and Porphyry she is called
Baltis, that is the Mistress Bal-Issa; anagrammatically
Issa-Bel; and was the Venus of Ascalon, and the
Al-Il-At of the Arabians. She was named Divi-
Anna and Egeria: and her images were crowned
with oak branches, which were the same symbols as
the horns and the sun. So Ichor, the Homeric name
for the blood of the gods, is said by Parkhurst to be
derived from ichre ‫יקר‬, the lunar light. But this was the
Moon, Diana, the Holy Spirit, whose blood was bright or
shining splendour. Ichor is the Hebrew Ach-Aur, which
means Ocean-Fire; and this gutteral ach-aur is the Druidic
Gwawr, or the Morning, and Flame, which we have
already seen (page 179) and also the mystic name given
to Stonehenge, ante, page 378. Under this lunar symbol
Euripides exclaims in the Phœnissæ: O Selenaia, splen-
dour of the gold-cycle, daughter of Aelios with the
glittering zone. This Aelios is but another form of
Aiolos, which was a divine name. And as the Sun was
called Phoibos, so was the Moon named Phoibe, for She
and He were One. Yet in exact harmony with the
system of disguise mentioned ante, page 527, we find
Herodotus relating that Apollo and Diana were the
children of Dionysos and Isis; when we now know that
Apollo and Dionysos were one and the same, and that
Isis and Diana were but the Holy Spirit under different
appellations. [Euterpe.] And as light was the blood of
this Divine Spirit, so we read that when Venus pricked
her foot with a thorn, roses sprang up, as lilies did from
the milk of Herè. But those roses and lilies are but
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symbolic names for Souls and Spirits; and we know that

in the Teuton mythology they are always likened to those
flowers. Pan (the All) in her pursuit after the lapsed
Soul, supplies Diana with dogs (priests). White hinds,
or four bulls with golden hoofs and horns draw her
chariot, which also is of pure gold: when she approaches
the throne of Zeus, all the gods come forth to meet her.
Hermes takes her bow and arrows: the Aum-n-Issian or
Asi-an, or Nyssian nymphs, whom God gave her with the
Oceanides to be her companions, unyoke her bulls, and
supply them from the meadows of the Queen of Heaven,
with the trefoil [see ante, page 382] on which the steeds
of God feed, and fill their golden troughs with pure
waters. The goddess herself enters the House of Zeus,
and sits beside Apollo [her son]. By the Cretans she
was called Britomartis, with whom Minos was in love;
and Aphœa, a word which is the root of Phœnix. Her
worship was always connected with waters; there were
fountains in her temples, as we see the fonts at present
in all the Roman chapels. She was called Arghe, or the
Boat, (16) and Up-Is, and Op-Is, because her vigilant eye
was on all creation. There was a legend that Zeus car-
ried her away as Argha or Arghe [Brightness] and that
she became the mother of Dio-Nusos the Incarnation. Yet
in the Orphic Hymn she is called a Male-Virgin, Θηλυς
τε και αρσην; in the same song she is called Bull-horned
Diana of Taurus. Virgil relates that she fell in love
with Pan, Georg. iii., nor did she turn away from Him
when he called her into the groves. Pausanias speaks of an
image of Diana at Elis; it represented her as holding a
Panther [God] with the right hand, and a Lion, or Incar-
nation, with the left. Note that the Panther symbolized
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the Supreme, from its beautiful speckled skin, which

resembled the starry firmament of which He is Lord: and
that it was for these reasons that Bacchus, his Son, was
always represented with a Panther’s skin, and that the
Ninth Messenger was called Jesus Ben Panther, or Son
of the Panther. Thr, ‫תר‬, in the Aramaic, is symbolic,
and means a Circle of Gems [Tiara] a Dove, a Beeve:
hence Parkhurst admits the origin of the Scandinavian
name for Messiah, Thor. She was adored as the Moon.
In the Attic drama Diana was called pre-eminently ἁ
Καλα, the Fair One. This is the Indian Kal or Kali.
As Hecate she is the daughter of Perses, or Divine Splen-
dour: she was said to have been brought forth under an
Olive tree. She was called Lucifera, the female of
Lucifer, or God, the Bearer of Light. She was some-
times represented with three heads, that of a horse (the
Sun), a Virgin (the Holy Spirit), and a Dog, or Priest of
truth; at others, as a Bull or Cow, a Dog, and a Lion, or
Lioness. She presided over fishermen, fishers of men:
and all who used nets; and hence was called Dictynna.
She once begged for a garment that would fit her: but it
was answered that such a gift was impossible, since her
shape was continually changing. This alludes to her as Maya
or Illusion and Universal Nature. She was clothed there-
fore in a coat of many colours. Gates and thresholds were
sacred to her, and in these justice was administered: there
was a private reason for this, which I will here explain. It
was through a gate or door that the First Messenger
entered the Heavenly, and beheld the Apocalypse. This
was held to be a mystical allusion also to the Holy Spirit:
hence certain Christian fanatics cited Ezekiel xliv. 1.
This gate shall be shut; it shall not be opened; and no
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man shall enter in by it, because the Lord the God of

Israel hath entered in by it; therefore it shall be shut—
to prove that Mary, whom they confounded with the
Holy Spirit, had no other child than Jesus. The plainest
texts of the New Testament, however, negative the notion.
Matt. i. 25; Mark iii. 32; Luke viii. 19, 28; John vii. 5.
The allusion is eminently Oriental, and is preserved still
in the words Sublime Porte. The Sadder, or Sacred Book
of the Parsees, is called the Hundred Gates, and consists
of the same number of chapters, each chapter being a Gate
to Heaven. This was so named in allusion to her who
is the true House of God (Elisa-Beth) or Gate of Heaven.
See Gen. xxviii. 17; also ante, page 374, where I ought
to have made reference to Gen. xxxi. 45. Now therefore
come thou, let us make a covenant, I and thou; and let it
be for a witness between me and thee. And Jacob took a
Stone, and set it up for a Pillar. And Jacob said unto his
brethren, Gather stones; and they took stones, and made an
heap; and they did eat there upon the heap. And Laban
called it Jegar-Sahadutha: but Jacob called it Galeed.
And Laban said, This heap is a witness between me and thee
this day. Therefore was the name of it called Galeed; and
Mizpah; for he said, The Lord watch between me and thee.
Chardin saw large circles of stones in Persia, such as that
at Stonehenge; and it has been conceded that the Stone
thus erected by Jacob was in the centre, while the other
stones surrounded it. The proper name, Jegar-Sahadutha,
is guessed to be either Chaldee or ancient Syriac, and to
mean a heap or tumulus of witnesses; Mizpah is a Watch-
Tower: and Galeed means Circle of Id or Jid, the original,
probably, of our English word God. Gal, or Gil, ‫גל‬, says
Parkhurst, is a roundish heap of stones rolled together,
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which perfectly describes most of our Druidical monu-

ments; and in the feminine, he says, it conveys the
meaning of round or hemi-spherical tops, such as all our
cone-topped lingas shew. This Hebrew radical is the
Irish chil, mentioned ante page 378; when doubled, gil-
gil, ‫גלגל‬, it denotes a rolling in a ring or circle, as of
stones, the motion of a wheel (the Silver Wheel of the
Druids), the circulation of the blood in the heart (which
is pretended to be a modern discovery), anything spheri-
cal, as a bowl, or the human head, &c. Thus, wherever
we go, we find one religion and one order of symbols: all
emanating from the First Messenger. In the mystical
name of Hecate, Artemis is defined by mythologists to be
the Order and Force of Destiny, who obtains from the
Divine Ruler that influence which it possesses over
things: whose operation indeed is hidden, but descends
by the means and interposition of the stars; wherefore it
is necessary that all inferior things submit to the cares,
calamities, and death which Fate brings upon them,
without any possibility of resisting the Divine Ordinance.
Hesiod relates of her that Zeus had heaped gifts and
honours upon her far above all other deities [see Part I.,
page 27]; that she was Empress of lands and waters, and
all things which are comprehended in the compass of the
heavens: that she was a goddess easy to be entreated,
kind, and always ready to do good; bountiful of gold and
riches, which are always in her power: that whatever
springs from seed, whether in heaven or on earth, is
subject to her, and that she governs the fates of all things.
Her amour with Endymion is symbolical in the extreme,
and full of mystical loveliness. Endymion, the Spirit or
Soul, is the grandson of Zeus, who raised him into
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Heaven: here he fell in love with Juno—that is, aspired

too high, for which he was cast into a profound sleep—
that is, was exiled from the archangelic, and sent into
body, or earth. Here, as he lay on a mountain, Di-Ana,
or divine Ana, stricken with his beauteous form, descended
from heaven, and removed him into a flowery cavern,
where she visited and had children by him, after which
he was restored again into his celestial condition. The
allegory contained in this is so clear as not to need
elucidation. Nor is this the only explanation of which
this mythos is susceptible. Her visit to the sleeping
Endymion symbolizes also the Epiphany of the Holy
Spirit to the Messenger who is concealed in night.
Herodotus says that the Egyptians offered sacrifice to the
Sun, the Moon, and to Dio-nysos at the same moment—thus
classing them all together as being inseparably united. By
having recourse to the Egyptian Key, says Bell’s Panthe-
on, we shall find this three-fold goddess the same symbol
with Juno and Cybele. The Greek sculptors had too good
taste to endure the head of the bull or goat on the deities
which they borrowed from that country: they therefore
altered these hieroglyphical figures to their own mode, by
disposing them in a more elegant manner. The lunar
symbol among the Egyptians was called Hecate, or Achte,
the only or the excellent, and by the Syrians Achot, the
sister: the latter also styled her Deio, or Deione. The
crescent and full moon over her head at the neomenia
made her mistaken for that planet; and the time of the
interlunia, during which she remained invisible, got her
the name of Hecate, or Queen of the invisible regions. Thus
the tripartite goddess arose; and the meaning of the ancient
symbols being confounded and forgotten, a senseless jargon
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of fable and superstition was introduced in its place.

Montfaucon, in his Palæography, has given a print of her
taken from a MS. in the Kings Library, at Paris, where
she appears clothed in black, with a veil bespangled with
stars fluttering rainbow-like, about her head, and holding
a torch which is turned down, that is, towards the Earth.
This typifies the Holy Spirit from her hidden place,
where she is, nevertheless, veiled with the beauty of
heaven, directing towards the sphere of mortals, the torch-
like Messenger who proceeds from her. Spon is the
first who has given a print of a monument where Diana
is named Clatra. This goddess is there represented with
Apollo, both of them charged with symbols, after the
manner of the Panthean figures. Apollo, with his lyre,
holds in his hand Jupiter’s thunder, and has his head
encircled with rays; and above, the Sun. In a circle
Diana has upon her head, the crescent, a turret, and a
pine-apple, like Cybele; a serpent wreathed about her
arm, as Hygeia, the goddess of health, the sistrum of
Isis, a prow of a ship, like Isis, surnamed Pelagia. ’Tis
plain, says Banier, that this is Diana, in so far as she
represents the moon, that is to say, an Isis, after the
manner of the Greeks. Montfaucon, lib. iii., pl. 45, vi.
and ix., has two plates of Diana; the first has a great veil
spread over her, in the form of a canopy spangled with
stars: she holds a phallic sceptre in each hand, and she
is crowned with the crescent moon. Her robe falls in
graceful folds at her feet: she seems the perfection of
matronly beauty. In the second, she is seen flying in
air; her veil is round her like a rainbow, and she is in
the centre of six stars, the crescent moon is on her head,
and in her left hand she holds a flaming torch. This is
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a plain allusion to the Naronic Cycle. Her Etruscan

name Nemorensis, was simply Diana Hermonensis (of
Hermon) transposed. Her priest was always armed with
a sword, to signify the war that raged round the Holy
Spirit ere she was borne away into Hermon: he was a
personification of Michael. [See A , section 8.]
He typified her also, thus, in her Cabirian Messenger. The
identity of the Sibyl and the Moon with the Holy Spirit
was mystically hinted at by Serapion, when he said that
the Soul of the Most Ancient Sibyl migrated, after death,
into the Moon; and that the human countenance, which
imagination has ascribed to the orb of that planet, is
really the face of the deified prophetess. Serapion, apud
Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. i. 304. The Ephesian Diana
was pictured as covered with breasts. Diana, Ephesiis
multis mammis et uberibus extructa. M . F . c. xxi.
and Egyptian Isis was represented in a similar manner.
Hence, Diana was exactly synonymous with Isis, in her
double character of Ceres and Proserpine; for Ceres
was also represented as mammiferous. Plutarch (De Isid
& Osir) tells us, that the Egyptians called the Moon
the Mother of the Universe, and assigned to her φυσιν
αρσενοθηλυν, a nature both male and female; and Boyse,
in his Pantheon, says of Diana and Luna, that the Egyp-
tians worshipped her both as male and female; the men
sacrificing to her as Luna, the women as Lunus; and each
sex, on these occasions, assuming the dress of the other.
So, in the Egyptian, Arabic, and German languages, the
Moon is male: and at this day, in India, the Moon is a
male deity, and the Sun female. She was, in fact, the
same as the bearded Venus. The ancients, says Bryant,
represented the same Deity, both as masculine and femi-
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nine. They had both Cacus and Caca, Lunus and Luna;
also Janus and Jana. Diana is a compound of De Iäna,
and signifies the Goddess Iäna. That her name is a
feminine from Janus, we may learn from Macrobius, who
quotes Nigidius for his authority. Pronunciavit Nigidius
Apollinem Janum esse Dianamque Janam. From this
Iäna, with the prefix, was formed Diana, which, I
imagine, was the same as Dione. Ancient Mythology, iii.
109. Macrobius observes, that some persons corrupt that
line in Virgil (Æn. ii. 632)
Descendo, ac ducente Deo flammam inter et hostes,
Expedior.
by reading Dea instead of Deo, meaning Venus, and adds
from Acterianus, that in Calvus we should read pollen-
temque Deum Venerem, not deam. This, also, was part
of the secret religion of the Jews: but it became neces-
sary to forbid this mode of worship, which in time degen-
erated into irregularities. In D , xxii. 5, we
read: The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth
unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s
garments, for all that so do are an abomination unto the
Lord thy God. Jesus thus alludes to the Male-Virgin
mysticism, which he had learned in Egypt, in the Eleu-
sinia. In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are
given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.
M . xxii. 30. Compare also with this, Mark xii. 25,
and Luke xx, 35. Pausanias relates a curious fact; But,
in the same temple, he says, that of Diana the Saviour,
there are statues of the Twelve gods, as they are called;
thus implying that he knew better, and that the
twelve were, in truth, only the Twelve divine Messen-
gers. Attics. 40. Note that the statues of Diana of
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Ephesus, or the Diana multimamma, of which Mont-

faucon, book iii., pl. 46, 47, and 48, gives so many
engravings, are identical in character with the obeliscal
statues of the goddess, found in Yucatan, and the ruined
temples of Central America; they are both covered with
grotesque emblems, symbolical of the supposed attributes
of the goddess, and their similarity is so striking as to
leave no doubt that the same theory of religion and fine
art belonged to the various races by whom they were con-
structed. Had Stephens, who first explored these mighty
wondrous ruins, been an antiquary, or scholar, or anything
but a loquacious coxcomb, he might have enriched his
volumes with many truths: the plates, however, are well
worthy of study. See Travels in Central America, and
Travels in Yucatan, passim.
Venus.
44. D , Venus, and Aphrodite, were names of the
Holy Spirit—at Dodona she was worshipped as the Queen
of Zeus; but she was also his daughter. Cicero declares
that she was the child of Heaven and Light. By the
Hindus, she is typified as the Lotos, and the Lotos-
throne. This lotos is the same as Latona, and Lât, or
the Concealed. She was called the Bride, says Pausanias;
Cabira, from having given birth to the Cabiri; and
Apostrophia, because she turns the race of men from
unlawful desire, and impious coition. P .B .
xvi. The same traveller describes an ancient wooden
statue of Venus-Juno, in Laconia. There was a temple
to Venus Mechanitis. [See Part I., page 27.] This, and
the preceding, identify her with Herè and Pallas. She
was worshipped by the Hesperians in sacred feasts, called
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Vinalia, which connect her with holy wine, or truth.

She was the Benoth of the Assyrians, and her temple was
called Succoth, or the Tabernacle. Selden thought that
Benoth, softened into Venoth, was the original of Venus:
and in this opinion he is supported by Vossius. Vau, in
Hebrew, is the Palm tree. Bayer says, Kaph has the
same meaning. In the Arabic, Fan, or Faun, is a
Branch: these words are cognates of Venus. The Welsh
Vaughan is a secret mystical name for a Priest or Hiero-
phant of the highest degree: and it is a cognate of these
and other sacred and primeval roots. She was two-sexed,
and was sometimes called Ericyna (Herè-Khina, which
connects her with Hina, the Polynesian Holy Spirit, and
Clo (600), Ag (Waters), Hina (Virgin), the Holy Virgin
of Waters.) The Syrians, says Ptolemy, adored Venus, as
Mother of the Gods, Mater deorum; Tetrabibl. ii.; and
yet, in the very ancient mythos, she was an Immaculate
Virgin. This assimilates her to the Virgin of Laos,
mentioned Part I., page 24. Montfaucon gives an image
of Seiva, the German Venus, naked, with an apple [the
Kosmos: also the Apocalypse] in her right hand, and a
bunch of grapes (truth) in the other. Antiq. Expliq.
iii., part 2, pl. 184. Her amours with earthly heroes,
indicate her love for the earth-born Messenger: that with
Anchises (Anush, or Anoch) is described by one of the
Homerids, and contains innumerable mystic allusions to
the relationship between these beings. Zeus, having
infused into her mind a desire for mortal man, points out
to her Anchises, Anch-Issa [Enoch and Issa], a beautiful
youth, of the royal house of Tro-Ia, who was, at that
time, with the herdsmen, feeding oxen among the hills and
valleys of Ida, or Jid. So we find that this Messenger
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came forth from amid shady mountains. [A ,

section 13.] The moment Aphrodite beheld him, she
was seized with love. She immediately hastened to her
temple, in Cyprus, where the Graces dressed and adorned
her, and then, in the full consciousness of beauty, she
proceeded through the air. She had put on a robe, says
the Homerid, more shining than the flame of fire, and she
had bended circlets, and glittering pendant drops, and
there were most beautiful necklaces around her neck,
beautiful, golden, all-variegated; and around her smooth
breast she shone like the moon, a marvel to behold.
When she came to Ida, she advanced towards the stalls,
and was accompanied on her way by all the wild beasts
of the mountains, whose breasts the exulting goddess filled
with love and desire. [See A , section 7.]
Anchises happened to be alone in the cotes at this time
and was amusing his leisure by playing on the Lyre:—a
Messianic symbol. When he beheld the goddess, who
had divested herself of the usual marks of divinity, he was
amazed at her beauty, and the splendour of her attire.
He could not avoid regarding her as something more than
human; he accosts her as one of the Immortals, vows an
altar to her, and beseeches her to grant him a long and
a happy life. But Aphrodite denies her heavenly origin;
saying, I am no god, indeed; and feigns that she is a mortal
maid, and daughter to Otreus, King of Phrygia [Sun-
Land, Phre-Gaya] adding, that while she was dancing in
honour of Artemis, with the nymphs and other maidens,
and a great crowd was standing around, Hermes had
snatched her away, and carried her through the air, over
hills and dales, and plains, till he had brought her to Ida,
where he informed her that she was to be the wife of
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Anchises; and then, having instructed her in what she

was to do, had departed, leaving her alone in the moun-
tains. She earnestly entreats the Trojan youth to conduct
her, unsullied, to his family, and to despatch a messenger
to her father to treat of the marriage and the dower.
But while thus speaking, the artful goddess filled the
heart of the youth with love. Believing her now to be
mortal, all his veneration vanishes, and he declares that
not even Apollo should prevent his taking advantage of
the favourable moment. He seizes the hand of the goddess,
and led her, blushing like the morn, into the rustic
shed. When evening approached, and the arrival of the
herdsmen with the sheep and oxen was at hand, the
goddess poured a profound sleep over Anchises. She
arose from the skin-strewn couch, and prepared to depart.
Resuming the marks of divinity, the brilliant eyes and
rosy neck, she stood at the door, and called to her slumber-
ing lover to awake and observe the change. Filled with
awe, he conceals his face in the clothes, and sues for mercy;
but the goddess reassures him, and informs him that she
will bear a son, whom she will commit to the mountain
nymphs to rear, and will bring to him when in his fifth
year. He is then to feign that the child is the offspring
of one of the nymphs; but the secret of the goddess is to
remain inviolate, under pain of his being struck with
lightning by Zeus. So saying unto breezy Heaven she
sped. Equally illustrative is her love of Adonis ‫אדוז‬
(Adôn.) Lord; the son of Phœnix (the Naros) and a Myrrh
-Tree ‫( מור‬Môr.), Myrrh, or, as others say of
Alphasibœa—which, in the Aramaic, means the Mouth of
the Cow—when after ten months, the Tree opened, and
produced the infant. Aphrodite, delighted with his
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beauty, put him into a coffer, unknown to all the gods,

and gave him to Persephone to keep. But as soon as
she beheld him, the goddess of the under-world refused to
part with him; and the matter being referred to Zeus,
he decreed that Adonis should have one third of the year
to himself (earth), be another third with Aphrodite, and
the remaining third with Persephone—that is, abide in
the invisible for eight moons, for Aphrodite and Perse-
phone, in this mythos, are the same. After he was
destroyed, she changed him into a rose. There was a
temple in Greece sacred to Venus, Verticordia : the turner
of hearts, an allusion which has been copied into both the
Old Testament and the New. And he shall go before him
in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the
fathers to the children, L i., 17. This goddess had
an embroidered girdle (a milky way or star cincture),
the cestus, which had the gift of inspiring love for the
person who wore it. This seems to me an allusion, also,
to the Rainbow, and to the splendid girdle of sapphire
which the Messenger wears. [A , section 22.]
She is the Astarte of the Phœnicians, and is called
Urania, or the Heavenly, in whose worship no impurities
were admitted: she was called Aversativa, also, because
she banished criminal desire. Her statue represented her
in armour: at other times she was painted naked;
symbols of the armed Cabir, and of the persuasive Priest
who is her son. She is drawn in a conch by Tritons; or
is rising from the ocean in a shell of pearl; or is riding
on some marine animal. She gave life to marble at the
prayer of Pygmalion, Luke xx. 21, 22; Mark xi. 23: at
a temple in Paphos, nothing was offered on the altar
except pure fire, which no rain could extinguish, although
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the fane was open to the sky. She is the mother of

Suadela, or Persuasion: surrounded by Cupids, she is the
Holy Spirit encompassed by the Incarnations, and her
Divine Children, before their lapse from light. The sym-
bolical Isis of Egypt, says Bell’s Pantheon, after pro-
ducing the different deities of Cybele, Rhea, Vesta, Juno,
Diana, Luna, Hecate, and Proserpine, formed also the
different characters of the Celestial and Terrestrial Venus:
and by some mythologists as Venus Urania, she was
called the Most Ancient of the Destinies: as Juno in her
character of Lucina Prepomene, was designated the Eldest
of the Fates. Theseus raised an altar at Delos to Venus
Archa-ica. Venus, like German Seiva, is often represented
in old medals, holding an Apple or ball in her hand. I
have already explained this. She sometimes appears to
have just plucked it from a Tree, which we know was a
well known symbol of God. This Apple Tree is the
Druidical Avallenau. See ante, page 32. The biblicals
say that this means Eve in the Garden. Eve, in Hebrew,
means Serpent: also Life. Natalis Comes calls Bacchus,
the armour-bearer of Venus. This can only allude to him
as a Cabir. The Apocalyptic mythos of the escape of the
Holy Spirit and her Son (section 8), is thus commemorated
by Ovid in the Fasti. Once on a time, he says, Dione,
flying from the frightful Typhon, at that time when
Jupiter bore arms in defence of heaven, accompanied by
the infant Cupid, came to the Euphrates, and sat on the
margin of the river of Palestine. The poplar and the
reeds clothed the top of the banks, and the willows
afforded a hope that by them they might be concealed.
While she is in her place of concealment, the grove roars
with the blast; she turns pale with terror, and fancies
that the forces of the enemy are at hand. And as she
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clasps her son to her bosom, she says: Assist ye nymphs,

and give aid to us two Divinities. Immediately she
plunged into the stream. Two fishes bore them up: for
which they now have constellations as a merited reward,
ii. 461. As the Fasti was written nearly a hundred
years before the pretended date of John’s Apocalypse, it
cannot well be said that Ovid copied the mythos from it:
yet no one can read either, without seeing that they are
both one and the same, though in a different dress. The
same writer describes the attributes of Venus, in words
that shew how different she was from the common goddess
of the mythologists. She, indeed, he says, most worthily
holds sway over the whole orb: she owns a sovereignty
inferior to that of no Deity. She rules the heaven, the
earth, and the waves that gave her birth; and, by the power
of her embraces, she holds sway over every kind. She it
was who created all the Gods; ’twere tedious to enumerate
them; she furnished the primary causes for plants and
trees. She, it was, who brought together the untaught
minds of men, and instructed them to unite, each one with
his mate . . . It was she who first divested man of his
savage habits of life; from her were derived the arts of
dress, and the careful attention to the person. . . . By
means of her were a thousand arts first touched upon.
Fasti, iv. 90. Her amour with Mars, is a later invention
of priests, or else it occultly signifies her love for the
Cabir.
45. Venus in the ancient theology was two-fold: the
Celestial or the Divine Power, which collects together the
different orders of things according to one supreme desire
of that which is Beautiful: hence she acts as Queen of
Heaven gathering and guiding her children as it were
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like a Shepherdess in the heavenly plains, according to

the divine aspiration which each one has after that which
is truly beautiful and good. But the second Venus, or
rather the second aspect of Venus, for there was really but
one, Jupiter produces from his own generative powers:
and this goddess proceeds from foam. But these various
aspects of this Heavenly Being differ from each other, ac-
cording to the causes of their production, their orders
and their powers. For in the first aspect she is Super-
Mundane, and leads intellectual natures upwards to the
most supreme heights of that Beauty which is apparent to
the intellect: she is the supplier also of that species of ce-
lestial life, which is pure, lovely, and all-hallowed, and is
apart from all concupiscence or generation. But Venus
in her second aspect, governs all the orders of being that
descend from the supramundane to the telluric, and binds
them to each other, making them as perfect as is conso-
nant with their condition, in their various ranks and
orders. And by her birth from the Ocean, we are to
understand, says Proclus, both an expanded and a bounded
existence; by its profundity the universally extended in-
fluence of such an existence; and by the foam, the greatest
purity of nature, that which is full of prolific light and
power, that which swims upon all life, and is as it were
its highest flower. This Venus means therefore, the Holy
Spirit in her celestial as well as in her terrestrial aspect.
46. Venus, says Faber, is immediately connected with
the symbolical Mundane Egg: and is identified with Derketo
and Isis, being declared to be that general receptacle out
of which all the hero gods [Messiahs] are produced. At
Atarbeck in Egypt, Venus-Atar was worshipped; Herod.
ii. 41. This was changed into ater, and she became the
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Black Venus, or Calli of the Hindus. Beck is the same as

the Hebrew Beth, and signifies a city as well as a temple
in the ancient Coptic: Thus, Baal bec was Beli-civitas,
the Sun’s Mansion: Sun-land. She is also called Apa-
turia, or the Illusive, in allusion to the Holy Spirit of the
Hindus: Venus Hortensis who presides over fruitfulness,
and makes all beautiful as a garden: alluding also to
Gaun-Issa, or Issa the Garden: Venus Melanis, or the
Black, as the Church of Rome still worships the Black
Virgin Mary. Venus was also surnamed Byblia: this
connects her with the heavenly Book of Seven Seals seen
in the Apocalypse. The Saracens before the days of the
Emperor Heraclius, adored Venus and Lucifer, the Holy
Spirit and God: also the Messenger of Light; and those
they called Chabar, or the Mighty; hence the Ca-
biri. Strabo says, that the animal sacred to Venus, was
a White Cow, and that her worship was celebrated in
many places in Egypt. This White Cow is mentioned
expressly as the animal form of Juno. Latuit niveâ Sa-
turnia vaccâ. Ovid. The conclusion to be drawn is,
that Juno, and the Celestial Venus are the same. Isis
also was symbolized by a White Cow. Venus was
called by the Egyptians, Athyr; and Hesychius in-
terprets Athor, a Cow; Athyri, says Plutarch is inter-
preted “the mundane habitation of Horus:” that is the
womb from which the Messenger proceeds. On the Egyp-
tian sphere of the Barberini family, that portion of it
which the Divine Bull Apis (Zeus or the Messenger) occu-
pies, is denominated statio Veneris, the mansion of Venus.
But is not this the same as Theba, and Thebes, and Thibet
called Diospolis, or the House of God, which the Shekinah
was said to be? Venus as the Holy Spirit was symbo-
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lized by the Yoni-image. Bha-Vani, in Shanscreet, is the

Great Mother. This Vhani is analogus to Venus, Van,
Phen, Phœnix, Phanes, Euhanes, Oannes, Fauna, Vaughan,
Vau-nus, etc. etc. Fauna was castissima, et disciplinis
ominibus erudita, as Servius says: and she was worshipped
by the Roman matrons as Bona Dea, or the Holy Spirit.
What are we to think of religious knowledge among the
most learned Romans, when we find even Tacitus ignorant
of the polleiar figure? Describing it he says: Erat con-
tinuus orbis latiore initio, tenuem in ambitum, metæ modo
exurgens, et ratio in obscuro. Lib. 3; it was from the
top to the bottom an orbicular figure, a little broad be-
neath, the circumference but small, and arching as it went
up like a sugar loaf, The reason unknown. But was
he really ignorant? I can hardly think so.
47. Venus it should be remarked, is manifestly of a
masculine termination in Latin, and Cupido of a feminine,
yet the former was adored under the softness of a woman,
the latter under the sweetness of an infant boy. Venus
is called a god by Homer, Euripides, Virgil, and other
Greek and Latin poets. Aristophanes gives her a mascu-
line name Αφροδιτον. Nor is this to be deemed a mere
poetic license, for the same confusion of sexes may be seen
in their Historians and Orators. Demosthenes begins his
celebrated oration On the Crown, with these words.
Πρωτον μεν ὢ ἀνδρες Αθηναιοι, το̑ις θεο̑ις εὐχομαι πασι καὶ
πασαις. First of all, O Athenians, I beseech all the Gods
both male and female; where he makes no mention of
goddesses, but calls them indiscriminately gods. And to
pretend from such passages, that θεος in Greek, or Deus in
Latin is of the common gender (as they call it) is a ridi-
culous figment of half learned Grammaticasters. As little
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regard is had to sex in the Hebrew names of God in the

Old Testament. Moses in his pathetic expostulation with
God (Numb. xi. 15.) addresses Him in the feminine
gender, though our language will not admit the
distinction in the English translation. And the
Israelites (Deut. v. 27) when they desired Moses to
take the part of a Mediator between God and them,
spake to Moses in the original Hebrew as to a fe-
male—in fact as to the Sanctus Spiritus. Concerning which
places nothing can be more ridiculous than the comments
of Rabbi Solomon and other Jewish expositors: who will
have it that Moses in the first text, and the people in the
latter, were so frightened that they spake false grammar.
The ancients says Madam D’Acier (note on Il. ix. 457.)
gave the name of Jupiter, not only to the God of Heaven,
but also to the God of the Sea, as we see in Æschylus.
Their design in this was to signify that it was only one
and the same Divinity, that governed the world; and it
was undoubtedly to teach this truth that the ancient
statuaries made statues of Jupiter with three eyes.
48. Venus was sculptured male and female, or AO, at
Cyprus under the name of Aphroditus, Αφροδιτος: πω-
γωνιαν ανδρος την θεον εσχηματισθαὶ εν Κυπρῳ. The same
is mentioned by Servius. Est etiam in Cypro simula-
crum barbatæ Veneris, corpore et veste muliebri, cum sceptro
et naturâ virili quod Αφροδιτον vocant. She was also
looked upon as prior to Zeus, and to most other of the
Gods. Αφροδιτη ου μονον Αθηνας καὶ ‘Ηρας, αλλ’ καὶ
ΔΙΟΣ εστι πρεσβυτερα; but this must necessarily allude
to the latter as a Messianic name or symbol. Soranus
writes thus:
Jupiter omnipotens rerum, regûmque, deûmque
Progenitor, genetrixque deûm, Deus unus et omnes.
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And the male-female character is given to the ancient Deity

Μητις. Αρσην μεν καὶ θηλυς εφυς, πολυωνυμε Μητι—O
many-named Metis, who art both Male and Female. In
one of the fragments of the Orphic poetry there is every-
thing which I have been saying comprehended within a
very short compass; and there are few finer descriptions
of the Pantheistic nature of the All-Father, as developed
in Himself, the Holy Spirit, and the Universe with all
that it contains.
God is the first and last, high thundering King,
Middle and head; from God all beings spring:
In God the male and female forms combine;
For God’s a man, and yet a maid divine.
God the strong basis of the earth contains.
And the deep splendour of the starry plains.
God is the breath of all; God’s wondrous frame
Lives in the rage of ever restless flame.
God is the sea’s strong root, the solar light,
And God’s the moon, fair regent of the night.
God is a King by no restraint confined,
And all things flow from God’s prolific mind.
One is the Power Divine in all things known,
And One the Ruler absolute alone:
For in God’s royal body all things lie;
Fire, night and day, earth, water, and the sky.
The first begetters pleasing Love and Mind:
These in his mighty body God confined.
See, how his beauteous head and aspect bright,
Illumine heaven, and scatter boundless light,
Round which his pendent golden tresses shine,
Formed from the starry beams with light divine.
On either side two radiant horns behold,
Shaped like a bull’s, and bright with glittering gold;
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And east and west in opposition lie,

The lucid paths of all the gods on high.
His eyes the sun and moon with borrowed ray,
His mind is truth, unconscious of decay,
Royal, ethereal: and his ear refined
Hears every voice, and sounds of every kind.
Thus are his head and mind immortal bright:
His body boundless, stable, full of light:
Strong are his members with a force endued,
Powerful to tame, but ne’er to be subdued.
The extended region of surrounding air,
Forms his broad shoulders, back, and bosom fair;
And through the world the ruler of the skies,
Upborne on natal rapid pinions flies,
His sacred belly, earth with fertile plains,
And mountains swelling to the clouds, contains
His middle zone’s, the spreading sea profound,
Whose rolling waves the solid globe surround:
The distant realms of Tartarus obscure
Within earth’s roots his holy feet secure,
For these earth’s utmost bounds to God belong,
And form his basis permanent and strong ;
Thus all things God within his breast concealed
And into beauteous light from thence revealed.
Minerva.
49. P -A was born from the head of Zeus,

hence she is called Wisdom or the goddess of Wisdom.
Al, Alla, and As are constituents of her name. At her
birth the spheres rained gold, the world resounded, the
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sea was moved, the Sun checked his steeds in their celes-
tial flight, until the radiant Tritogeneia laid aside her
splendid armour. Hence she was sometimes called Bel-
On-a, in the Greek, Enyo, which is the anagram of Yoni.
She was skilled in fabricating arts, and wore heavenly
garments: it was by her that Pandora was attired. Her
helmet was four-coned: she invented the pipe, whose
music was named many-headed. The ægis, or goat-skin-
covered shield which she bore, is supposed to have origi-
nated the sacrifice of the atoning goat, azazel; she bare
it because the Goat was the great symbol of generation
and fruitfulness. Her favourite plant was the Olive;
hence Winkleman says that it was a common rite in
antiquity, when making prayer to the gods, to hold in
the hand a branch of olive. Monum inedit. p. 139.
She is symbolized by an Owl; the Serpent also was
sacred to her. She wears a long flowing tunic and mantle;
but she sometimes appears as a young man in female
garb. She is called pre-eminently Kora, or The Virgin,
one of the distinguishing names of Demeter. Orpheus
in his Argonautics, calls her αρεινη, or masculine Athene,
v. 31. She was called Pandrosos, or all-dew, which
originated the Hebrew phrase, dews of Hermon. There-
fore God give thee of the dew of heaven. G . xxvii. 28.
My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil
as the dew; as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as
the showers upon the grass. D . xxxii. 2. The foun-
tain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also
the heavens shall drop down dew. D . xxxiii. 13. I
will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the lily.
H . xiv. 5. The dew of Hermon which fell upon the
hill of Zi-On. Ps. cxxxiii. 3. See the remarks on Dagon,
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ante, page 436. So in the Scandinavian mythology, the

Norn-nymphs that dwell by the Well of Urd, take water
every day from the spring, which with the mud that lies
about it, they pour over the Ash Ydrasil, that its branches
may not perish. This water is so sacred that everything
that enters it becomes as white as the film of an egg-shell
as it is said in the Voluspa:
An ash I know
Yygdrasil named,
A branchy tree bedewed
With brightest water.
Thence come the dews
Into the dales that fall:
Ever stands it flourishing
Over Urda’s fountain.
The dew that falls from its branches on the earth, is by
men called honey dew, and is the food of bees. Two birds
are fed in the well of Urd, called Swans [Messianic sym-
bols] and from them descend the birds of that species.
See ante, page 353. Note that this word Urd, or Urda,
is significant and symbolic: for it is a compound of the
radical aur, ‫איר‬, which from the beginning has been
applied to the Deity; and which conveys the idea of
Water, Fire, and Light: Streams of Lightning and the
Starry Spheres; all of them types and representatives of
the Great Father and the Great Mother, and of Di, ‫די‬,
which Parkhurst admits to be the root of De, Di, Te, or
Dia, the only appellation by which God is known to those
who speak the Gaelic of Britain and Ireland. It is the
root also of Deus, and the Greek Διος; and is part of the
Chinese word, Ti-En, or the Heavenly One. The Well
of Urda, therefore, means primarily the Holy Spirit of
CC3
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God: and secondarily the Vast Universe, from which, as

from a Well of Fire, proceeds all existence; all creation.
I have already shewn the symbolic use of the letter D.
ante, page 441. Aristotle calls Athene the Moon: and
on the coins of Attica, anterior to the days of Pericles,
there was a Moon along with the owl and olive branch:
at the festival of Skirophoria the priest of the Sun and
the priestess of Athena, the Moon, went together in pro-
cession; there was a Sacred Marriage between her and
Hephæstos: she gave fire to the Athenians, and in her
temples a perpetual vestal flame was kept. The Cory-
bantes, who were the same as the Cabiri, were the child-
ren of Minerva by the Sun. S x.: that is they
were born in the conjunction of the Sun and Moon. She
is frequently represented in ancient gems, hurling the
thunder-bolts of her Father—this symbolizes her as
Venus Summachia, and also as the Conquering Messiah:
in others she extends the olive branch: an allusion to
her as the Mother of the Two Olive Trees in the Apoca-
lypse. At Amphissa, in Phocia, there was a most ancient
statue of Minerva: near which were images of the Anac-
tes, or Kings, of whom Pausanias gives various legends;
they were the Cabir Messengers—and probably at times
represented the whole Twelve. In Ireland she was
called Neith, the Deity of War; Nath, the Goddess of
Wisdom. This is a Siamese word. See Part I., pp. 151,
189. Neith, in Coptic, means The Ancient (S
C , Recherches sur les Mysteres). 513. She was
represented as double-sexed, and was called Minerva
Pylotis, because her image was set up in the Gates; and
for the mystical reason also, which is alluded to before.
These Gates were the Gates of Heaven, or God’s house,
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like those mentioned ante, page 375. She was also called
Cadmea, as the Virgin Mother of the Messenger Cadmus;
Panea, the female of Pan: and Surias, the feminine of
Sur, the Sun: and Al-Ia, which seems also a cognate of
Ala and Iah, or Ya, which was a name for the Supreme
Father, as we read that he calls himself, in Exodus iii. 14.
Ahih Ashr Ahih, ‫ ;אהיה אשר אהיה‬though he im-
mediately afterwards changes it into Ihvh, ‫[ יהוה‬a Ser-
pent], verse 15, which we call Ieuve or Jehovah; nor is
any explanation offered why God should thus appear
double-named to his Messenger Amosis, and to his chosen
people, the Jews. This name Ahih is curiously analo-
gous to the male-female Ho-Hi (ante, page 83) while the
introduction of the word Ashr, which implies the idea of
Divinity of the Groves (a Junonian title) renders the
peculiarity still more remarkable. But this word Ashr,
in the feminine, also denotes, as Parkhurst says, the idea of
Goddess and Child; Venus and Cupid, as he puts it; and
thus implies occultly the Holy Spirit and her Son, the
Messenger, who are thus made components in the very
name and title of God; or, as it is absurdly rendered in
our version, I am that I am; words that are mere non-
sense, and only betray the ignorance of the translators.
Herodotus says that she was the daughter of Neptune, or
the Waters; this was an enigmatical way of saying that
she and Nepthys were one. The Pythagoreans conse-
crated the number Seven to her in commemoration of the
Seven Spirits before the Throne. (A , section 6.)
Cicero speaks of many goddesses of this name: the first
who was the mother of Apollo: the second as produced
in the Nile, and called by the Egyptians Sais, the Saviour
Issa: the third, as the child of Zeus; the fourth, as the
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daughter of Zeus, and Koriphe, an ocean-nymph; and the

fifth as born of Pallas: all these, however, resolve them-
selves into one and the same. All mythologists speak of
the prominent part which she took in the Giant’s Wars
against the Gods, and that she saved the life of Zeus, the
Messenger. This was taken from the Apocalypse, section
8. She was educated by Daidala, a woman skilled in all
art, as Posidonius relates in his book of Gods and
Heroes, but this was only a form of Aiolos, a name of
God; and she was the first, as Lucian declares, who
taught men the art of building. (Gen. i. 1.) She
invented the distaff and needle: and planted the olive.
She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands
hold the distaff. P . xxxi. 19. This is a secret
allusion to her as Goddess of the Silver Wheel (the Uni-
verse), which, as we have already seen, was the occult
way in which the Druids concealed, yet shewed their
knowledge of, this Mighty Essence, or Energy of God.
Hence, as the Rainbow Virgin, she was supposed to span
the sphere within her brilliant embrace. This rainbow
arch also gave the first idea of the Mystic Bridge between
Heaven and Earth: and God, the Bridge-maker, who did
set his Bow in the Cloud, Gen. ix. 13, was the Pontifex
Maximus—a title afterwards assumed by men. A wheel
over the door of a house among the Teutons and Scandi-
navians, was hence held to be ominous of good fortune.
But this wheel was also a Circle, a Lotus, a Zone, a Ring,
a Sphere; and, indeed, a variety of analogues. Thus,
then, we find Athena, as the Deity of the Silver Wheel,
bears upon her image the same secret characteristic
type which her Son, the Messenger, bears in the
Apocalypse. For we read in Pausanias, Arcadics, the
following passage, which every commentator has hitherto
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failed to explain. He there speaks of a statue of Minerva,

wherein, as he supposes, she was represented with a
wound in the thigh: he says, I have seen that statue,
one of the thighs has still a ligature of a purple colour.
It is plain he did not look beneath, or he would have seen
written that incommunicable name, which is alluded to in
the Mithraic Bull, and in the Vision of Chengiz-Khan.
And he had on his thigh a name written, &c. [A ,
section 33], (17) the name of the Naros, and of the
Secret of God, which never was revealed till now.
For the same reason the statue of Neptune, at An-
ticyra [the Egyptian Holy Spirit, Nepthus], held its
hand upon the thigh, (Pausanias Phocics, xxxvi.), as
if for concealment of some hidden type. Images un-
wrought with human skill, and which descended from
heaven were called Palladia, Palli-dia, Ancient God-
dess—these were the Sacred Revelations. So long as
these images were kept safe and inviolate, the people
who had them remained free from all danger,—an ob-
vious and beautiful allegory. Pausanias says that she had
a daughter by Æsculapius (a name for the Messiah)
named Hygeia, or Health: this was used as a disguise,
for we know that by this name indeed she was herself
designated. That thy way may be known upon earth,
thy saving health among all nations. Ps. lxvii. 2.
But unto you that fear my name, shall the (Shem-osh) Sun
of Righteousness arise, with healing in his wings. M -
iv. 2.* Lycophron calls her Budia, which is Boodhas
* In the most ancient temples and sculptures God and the

Holy Spirit are symbolically represented by the Globe, the Ser-
pent, and the Wings. This globe sometimes represents the Sun,
or God; the Wings, the ethereal dove-like Spirit; the serpent is
the Incarnation; and also the ever-immortal soul which is the
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(the feminine of Boodh, or Wisdom). She was also named

Is-menia: Issa of the Moon, Meni being a name of AO.
Part I., page 427; and Zosteria, or the Girdled, who
also is the Bestower of the sapphire girdle, which her
Son, the Messenger in the Apocalypse receives and wears.
[Section 22.] Thus she is identified with cestus-wearing
Aphrodite. She was born without a mother, being the
second of all Existences—next after the Supreme. So
the Spirit of God sprang from a flower. Part I., page
24. Orpheus in his hymns calls her a Male-female.
Pausanias in his Attics speaks of a statue of Minerva
with a Sphinx (the Messiah) in the middle of her helmet
and griffins (Cherubim) on either side. In a medal of
the Queen of Sweden, the same helmet is surmounted
with a chariot and four horses, alluding to the four races
of mankind, who all proceed from her. [A ,
section 11.] The cock, which is sacred to the Sun, and
so is a symbol of the Incarnation, sits on her helmet,
indicating that God and the Messenger crown her as if
with a diadem of starry light. Bell’s Pantheon, alluding
to the birth of this goddess from the brain of Zeus, says:
The fiction of Minerva’s birth has always appeared mys-
terious; and various conjectures have been offered to
explain it. Some of the learned moderns have been of
opinion that it veiled the sublimest truths in philosophy,
and even the mystery of the Logos, by which all things
were made: that is to say, the eternal ideas in the Divine
Mind, which had been the model of whatever Omnipotent
emanation of the Great Father and the Great Mother. This is

what is alluded to in the Jewish writer above cited. The entire
of the Old Testament, indeed, is full of recognitions of that which
is popularly called Pagan idolatry. See ante, pp. 418, 419.
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Wisdom brought into being. There is a fine parable in

the story of her rejection of the pipe. When she played,
she saw her cheeks reflected swollen on the water, on
which she flung the instrument away, observing that
music was too dear, if purchased at the expense of beauty.
50. As God was the Artifex Mundi, so Minerva was
called Ergane, or the Artist; as Venus was called Me-
chanitis [ante, page 571], and there was an Athenian
festival in which she was so celebrated. There were
altars in common between her and Vulcan and Hermes.
Her breast-plate was of pure gold, her shield of glittering
brightness, and she and it are represented as being sur-
rounded with serpents: which (the Messianic) are some-
times figured as still and gentle: sometimes (the Cabiric)
as actuated by the highest rage; sometimes with the
whole length folded up, circle within circle (Jihv, the
Serpent Jehovah), as if in sleep or repose, to indicate
the interval between the end of one Kalpa and the
beginning of another. She is admitted to be the same as
the Egyptian Isis, and the Sabine Pales, from whom indeed
Palestine (Pales-stan) was named, and the old Hindu lan-
guage called Pali, the dialect of the heavenly. In her
Saïtic symbol she was a female fully armed. In her
hand was a buckler [a sphere, or yoni] with a full moon
surrounded by serpents (Messiahs) the emblems of wis-
dom and immortality: types also of the Saraphim and all
the other serpent-like Spirits in the Universe. Minerva,
says Spence, represents Wisdom, that is, skilful know-
ledge joined with discreet practice, and comprehends the
understanding of the noblest arts, the best accomplish-
ments of the mind, together with all the virtues, but
more especially that of chastity. She is said to be born
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of Jupiter’s brain, because the ingenuity of man did not

invent the useful arts and sciences, which, on the con-
trary were derived from the Fountain of all Wisdom.
She was born armed, because the human soul, fortified
with wisdom and virtue, is invincible, in danger intrepid,
under crosses unbroken, in calamities impregnable. She
is a Virgin, and accordingly the sight of the deity is
promised only to the pure. [See A , section
58.] She has a severe look and a stern countenance,
because wisdom and modesty find their reward in virtue
and honour, not in the external show of beauty and plea-
sure. In purple robes or tattered garments, on a throne
or on a dunghill, the majesty of Minerva remains the
same: the same also in the decrepitude of old age, as in
the vigour and comeliness of youth. She invented and
exercised the art of spinning; hence the fair sex may
learn that industry is the only barrier against vice; the
spindle and distaff are the arms of every virtuous woman.
Anciently those instruments were carried before the
Bride, when she was brought to her husband’s house.
[See A , section 65,] and somewhere it is a cus-
tom at the funeral of women, to throw the spindle
and distaff into their grave. As soon as Tiresias had
seen Minerva naked he lost his sight. Was it a punish-
ment or a reward? Surely he had never seen so acutely
before, for he became a Prophet, and knew future events
long before they took place,—an excellent precept this;
that he who has once beheld the beauty of Wisdom
clearly, loses his external sight without repining, since
he enjoys the contemplation of heavenly objects which
are not visible to the eye. [See A , section 58.]
What are we to understand, says Taylor, by Tiresias
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becoming blind through beholding Minerva? Certainly

that by a profound conversion of the eye of his soul to
Divine Wisdom, he became abstracted from corporeal
vision. The owl, a bird seeing in the dark, was sacred to
Minerva: this is symbolical of a wise man, who scatter-
ing and dispelling the clouds of error, is clear-sighted
where others are blind. Proclus calls her the Mother of
all virtues, and the One who was able to render life un-
polluted and pure. And Aristides says the prophets and
priests call her the purger and purifier, and the driver
away of evils, and the Interpretess of the most perfect
purifications. So, when she appears as Isis she is signifi-
cantly alluded to as the Shekhinah, or universal matrix,
and mother in the following words of the old Platonist.
Isis is in fact, he says, the Female Principle of Nature:
the recipient of all production: the nurse and universal
repository, according to Plato: and by many she is called
the thousand-named, on account of her mutability and
capacity to receive all forms.
51. And as the Holy Spirit was the Almond Tree, the
Pine, the Ash Ydrasil, the heavenly Olive, the ever-
beauteous blooming Tree of Life, so the Hebrew priests
bare this symbol in mind, when treating of the advent of
the Messenger, whom they called her Branch. In that
day shall the Branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious,
Is. iv. 2. Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I
will raise [to David; this is interpolated] a Righteous
Branch; and a king shall execute judgment and
justice on the earth [that is, be a Cabir]. J . xxiii. 5. In
those days, and at that time will I cause the Branch of
Righteousness to grow up [unto David: an interpolation.]
and he shall execute judgment and righteousness in the land.
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J . xxxiii. 15. Thus speaketh the Lord Sabaoth, saying,

Behold this man, whose name is the Branch, and he shall
grow up out of his place, and he shall build the Temple
of the Lord. Z . vi. 12. There is an allusion also to
this symbol in the writer, who bears the metaphorical
name of Luke, [Lukos, the Wolf] which makes one think,
that this priest also, like the old rabbis had the true
Apocalypse, or some fragmentary knowledge of it, when
he compiled his anecdotes of Jesus. For some reason or
other, (I hope an honest one), the word branch in the Greek
is altered into dayspring in our English Version. And
thou child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest;
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare
his ways, to give knowledge of salvation unto his people,
unto the wiping away of their sins, through the tender
mercy of our God, whereby the Branch from on high
hath visited us. L i. 76. That the Jews understood
and adopted this symbol of the Olive Tree, is proved by
what we read of their little thane, Solomon, who is
fabled to have made the decorations, and most sacred
and significant parts of the temple, namely the Cherubim,
and the doors and door posts of this wood. And within the
oracle he made two cherubims of olive tree, each ten cubits
high. And five cubits was the one wing of the cherub,
and five cubits the other wing of the cherub: from the
uttermost part of the one wing unto the uttermost part of
the other were ten cubits. And the other cherub was ten
cubits: both the cherubims were of one measure and one
size, The height of the one cherub was ten cubits, and so was
it of the other cherub. And he set the cherubims, within
the inner house: and they stretched forth the wings of the
cherubims, so that the wing of the one touched the one wall,
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and the wing of the other cherub touched the other wall;
and their wings touched one another in the midst of the
house. And he overlaid the cherubims with gold. And
he carved all the walls of the house round about with carved
figures of cherubims and palm trees and open flowers,
within and without. And the floor of the house he overlaid
with gold within and without. And for the entering of the
oracle he made doors of olive tree: the lintel and side posts
were a fifth part of the wall. The two doors also were of
olive tree: and he carved upon them carvings of cherubims
and palm trees and open flowers, and overlaid them with
gold, and spread gold upon the cherubims, and upon the
palm trees. So also made he for the door of the temple
posts of olive tree, a fourth part of the wall. And the two
doors were of fir tree: the two leaves of the one door were
folding, and the two leaves of the other door were folding.
And he carved thereon cherubims and palm trees and open
flowers: and covered them with gold fitted upon the carved
work. I. K , vi. 23. So one of the Jew psalmists,
compares himself either to the Holy Spirit or to the
Messenger. I am like the green Olive Tree in the House
of God. Ps. lii. 8. The Lord, says another, addressing the
Jews, called thy name a green Olive Tree, fair and of
goodly fruit. J . xi. 16. Another, in one of those fan-
tastic predictions which years have so utterly falsified,
says : I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall grow as the
lily, and cast forth his fruits as Lebanon. His branches
shall spread, and his beauty shall be as the Olive Tree.
H . xiv. 6. In their groves and gardens, they usually had
one tree, which they dedicated to the Queen of Heaven, as
the Druids did their solitary oak to God. One of
their priests thus denounces this rite. They that sanctify
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themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens, behind

one Tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abom-
ination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith
the Lord. Is. lxvi. 17. This Tree was either an Almond,
or an Olive Tree. Jeremiah when he would fain represent
himself as a Messiah (i. 5.) and even a Cabir, (i. 10.) in
his vision of God sees the Queen of Heaven under this
symbol. Moreover the Word of the Lord (the Holy
Spirit) came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou?
And I said, I see a branch of an Almond Tree (a
Messiah). Then said Adonai unto me, Thou hast well seen,
for I will hasten my Word to perform it. i. 11, 12. Note
that the word sheked ‫שקד‬, which is here used to denote
the Almond Tree means also a Watcher—a name sym-
bolically applied to the Holy Spirit. The reader will
bear in mind how often the word watch, watchman, etc.,
is used in the Old Testament.
52. Neith or Nêth, (Minerva) was the deity of Saïs,
the Moon, the Queen of Night; and her name seems to
have led to that of the Greek Goddess. In Egyptian it
was written from right to left ΘΗΝ, and the Greeks
by adding an A, the symbol of God at either end, would
make it ΑΘΗΝΑ, reading from left to right. Pausanias
says she was called Asia, which is the anagram of Saïs,
and which is Asi, Aisa, etc., or Destiny and Divine Pro-
vidence. Jablonski (Panth. Egypt. I. iii. 10.) does not
deny that Minerva was the Egyptian Neith, or goddess of
Wisdom: and was the same Deity whom Proclus in his
commentary on the Timæus, described as, The all-
fashioning Goddess, the Invisible and yet the Visible; who
hath for her lot the Heavens; but who nevertheless
irradiates, or sends her light into every species of generated
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existence; and is the all-mover. Minerva, says Payne

Knight, like the other Greek deities was male or female,
or both. Αρσην καὶ θηλυς εφυς. O . ad Min. On the
medals of the Ptolemies under whom the Indian symbols
became familiar to the Greeks, through the commerce of
Alexandria, we find her repeatedly represented like
Gaun-Isa with the elephant’s skin on her head, instead of
a helmet, and with a countenance between male and
female, such as the artist would naturally give her, when
he endeavoured to blend the Greek and Egyptian symbols,
and mould them into one. Minerva is said by the Greek
mythologists to have been born without a mother, from
the head of Jupiter, who was delivered of her by the
assistance of Vulcan. This in plain language means no
more than that she was a pure Emanation of the Divine
Mind, operating by means of the universal agent, Fire;
and not like others of the allegorical personages springing
from any of the particular operations of the Deity, upon
external matter. Hence she is said to be next in dignity
to her Father, and to be endowed with all His attributes;
for as wisdom is the most exalted quality of the mind, and
the Divine Mind is the perfection of Wisdom, all its
attributes are the attributes of wisdom, under whose
direction its power is always exerted. Strength and
wisdom therefore, when considered as attributes of the
Deity, are in fact one and the same. The Greek Minerva
is usually represented with the spear uplifted in her hand,
in the same manner as the Indian Gaun-Isa, holds the
battle axe. Both are given to denote the destroying
power equally belonging to Divine Wisdom, as the Crea-
tive or Preserving. Pausanias mentions one of her
Temples; sacred to her as Minerva the Illusive, which is
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the Hindu Maya. Eisiteria the day when the magistrates

of Athens entered on their office was like our Easter.
Another analogy equally singular may be pointed out.
As the Egyptians lighted lamps throughout Egypt on one
night, and these lamps were all sacred to Minerva, so do
the Roman Catholics light candles all over the world on
Christmas Eve, in a like commemoration of their Minerva,
the mother of the Ninth Messenger.
53. Anath, says Bryant, signified the Fountain of
Light: and was abbreviated Nath and Neith by the
Egyptians. They worshipped under this title a Divine
Emanation, the Goddess of Wisdom—the Athenians who
came from Sais in Egypt, were denominated from this
deity, whom they expressed Athana, or in the Ionian
manner, Athene. Cudworth mentions Hemmon and Neith
as titles for the one and the same Deity [the Bi-Une], and
quotes Plutarch as authority, that Isis and Neith were
also the same among the Egyptians; wherefore the temple
of Neith or Athene at Sais, was by him called the
Temple of Isis. Intellectual System, i. chap 4. The ‫אן‬
An, in this word Anath, means in Hebrew, the Solar
splendour, and also implies generation: hence it with
propriety forms part of the Divine Name. The Greek
Ανα, or on high, is founded on this: as is Di Ana, Anna
Perenna. Anna, in the Old Testament is said to be
the mother of Samuel; but Samuel affected to be a
Messenger of God: her hymn in I. Sam. ii. celebrates
the advent of her son as a Cabir: and we know that
he was elected to be a Judge, or Pontiff. So it is Anna
who predicts the glory of the Ninth Messenger, Luke
ii. 38. All these things prove that the rabbis were well
acquainted with the mythos. Ana is also said to be a
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cognate of ‫ חנח‬chanah to be gracious, or merciful. In

allusion to this name An-Ath from which the word
Night is derived, Proclus says: The Artificer of the
Universe prior to his whole fabrication, is said to have
betaken himself to the Oracle of Night; to have been
there filled with divine conceptions; to have received the
principles of fabrication, and (if it be lawful so to speak)
to have solved all his doubts. In Timæum, p. 63.
Compare this with the exclamations of Wisdom in Part
I. page 27. When he prepared the heavens I was
there, etc., and meditate on the strange coincidence.
Aratus mystically alludes to the Holy Spirit, and
calls her Αρχαιην Νυκτα, or Ancient Night—the
Archè of the Apocalypse. In Eckhel’s Choix des pierres
Gravèes, there is a Gem of Minerva (the Holy Spirit)
crowning Bacchus (the Messenger). On the reverse he
is seen seated before he has gone forth among men: and
the Holy Spirit leaning on his shoulder seems as if She
were dictating to him those sublime lessons which the
Messenger brings to man, pl. xix. The latter subject is
again represented: but the Holy Spirit who is high
enthroned above the Messenger is foolishly called Ariadne:
She ought to have been called Arianrod. In another
gem, God is graven with the lightning pouring from his
right hand, upon the head of the Messenger, who is
represented as a Child suckled by a beautiful hind (the
Holy Spirit). The Eagle on the right, and the Pillar on
the left, indicate that the Eternal is intended: but the
Abbè calls the gem Hercules and Telephus in defiance of
all mythology.
54. I have already noted, that they who saw the Divine
(such as Tiresias) were blinded by the celestial splendour:
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and in Callimachus, we read, Ουκ εθελων ειδε τα μη θεμις

ειδειν—unwilling he beheld that which it was not lawful
to see. And again :
Whoever shall behold
Any of heaven’s high habitants, unless
By grace peculiar favoured with the sight,
Dread penalties await the fatal view.
This also was a Jewish article of faith. Thou canst not
see my face, for there shall no man see me, and live.
E . xxxiii. 20. And hence the fear of Gideon in
J vi. 22. And when Gideon perceived that he was
a Messenger of Ieue, Gideon said, O Ieue Adonai, for
because I have seen a Messenger of Ieue face to face. And
Ieue said to him, Peace be unto thee; fear not, thou shalt
not die. See also E xix. 21. I. S . vi. 19. See
also the Apocalypse, sections 5 and 58, on which, without
doubt, this most ancient notion was founded.
55. Damascius, in the life of Isidore, mentioned by
Photius, tells us, ’Οτι Φοινικες καὶ Συροι τὸν Κρόνον Ηλ,
καὶ Βὴλ, καὶ Βολάθην ἐπονομάζουσι—The Phœnicians
and Syrians calls Kronos, El, Bel, and Bol-Athen—which
is God and the Holy Spirit, the Bi-Une. Proclus, on
the Timæus, says, that after the well known sentence on
the temple of Isis, were added the words ὁν εγω καρπον
ετεκον, ἡλιος εγενετο. The fruit which I brought forth is
the Sun. This at once proves that Isis was Divine
Wisdom, and that the sun was not adored as the Creator,
but only as an emblem. Athena, as before mentioned,
is only Neithe, or Neitha, written anagrammatically, or
Hebraically, a very little corrupted. Isis was called
Neith, or Wisdom; she was the Goddess of Sais, which
probably means Saviour, from ‫ ישע‬iso and Σαω: and
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also Wisdom from scio, to know, or be wise. Wisdom

was the Saviour; thus, they all dovetail into one another.
Callimachus says of Pallas, that she sits at the right hand
of Jupiter; whence Aristides, in his hymn to her, says:
“wherefore Pindar declares that she, sitting at the right
hand of the Father, receives his commands, which are to
be carried to the other gods.” And again, “For she is
greater than the Messengers, and delivers to them the
different commands which she receives from the Father.”
These general notions of Minerva’s session at the right
hand of the Father, proceed from the most ancient
traditions, concerning the Divine Mystery of the Glory
of both, if they come not indeed direct from the Apoca-
lypse. Homer speaks of the joint power of Jupiter and
Minerva, in Odyssey xvi. 263. These truly are powerful
assistants of whom you speak, sitting sublime in the clouds,
who are both the rulers of men and the immortal gods.
Sophocles addresses her as the First in power, the daughter
of Zeus, ambrosial Athana (Œd. Tyr. 163), and Horace
speaks of this as a well known article of belief. Proximos
illi tamen occupavit Pallas honores, i. 12. The expression
which Callimachus uses, πατρωια παντα φερεσθαι, to bear
all her father’s honours, is remarkably scriptural: all
things that the Father hath are mine (J xvi. 15).
And as the poet says that Jupiter gave to Minerva all
that appertained to the Father, so Jesus is represented to
have said: For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath
he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given
him authority to execute judgment also. J v. 26.
And all mine are thine, and thine are mine. J xvii.
10. Agreeable to which, Aristides says of Minerva: So
also she is venerable in the sight of the Father, and made
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partaker of all things with Him;—παντα κεκοινωκηκε.

And the same antient writer tells us that she was called
the δυναμις του Διος, the Power of God: and that the
works of God were said to be the common works of God
and Athena, κοινα του Διος εινἄι και της Αθηνας. So
Jesus: Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the
right hand of P , and coming in the Clouds of Heaven.
M . xxvi. 64. This Power is the Holy Spirit, the
Power of the Most High, L i. 35, and the Cloud is
that mentioned in the Apocalypse, sections 23, 24, 28,
50, 51. If the reader be not persuaded by all these
singular proofs, that Minerva and the Holy Spirit of God
are one and the same, he must be indeed a man most
difficult to convince.
Vesta.
56. D , Vesta, Cybele, Rhæa, Ceres, represent the
Holy Spirit, and each was indiscriminately called Magna
Dea; Magna Deorum Mater; and Magna Mater.
Persephone (death-bearer and Voice of brightness), or
Proserpine, her daughter, represents the Soul, which bears
about with it a body that is only death. Rhæa comes
either from Rhoia, or from the Shanscreet word Ri, a
root of Rimmon; and which is synonimous with
Pasithea, or Πασι Θεοίς Μητηρ (Mother of the divine
beings), and the Roman Magna Deorum Mater. Note
that, although she was called Rhæa, still she was said
by some to be daughter of Rhæa, and to have been sister
of Juno. This is in accordance with the mystic disguise,
to which I have alluded, ante, page 527. Again, though
she was the sister of Zeus, still she conceived Proserpine,
or all Spirits, by Him. She again had a daughter by
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Neptune, whom the Greeks said it would be most profane

to name, though others said it was the steed Ari-On. All
this corroborates the view which I have so often put
forth, as to the unity and identity of all these personages
and the enigmas that surrounded the truth. Demeter
is the child of Time; she is Nature, or Mother-Earth;
and is wedded to Zeus, the God of Heaven, as Herodotus
relates. Orpheus calls her the daughter of Protogonos,
the First Father. She is the protectress of growing corn,
like Isis, and of agriculture in general: hallowed groves
were consecrated in her honour. She loved Iasion, or
Jason, the son of God and Brightness; a mortal youth,
and a Messianic name. [A , section 29.] She
was adored in a cavern, as was Venus, under the name
of Melaina, the Black Virgin, such as we see in the
Italian churches; and in Attica as the Great Goddess, or
Mighty Mother; she had the majestic stature of Herè,
by which name, indeed, the Arcadians adored her; she
was called Idæa, from her connection with Jid or God;
her symbol was a bunch of poppies, or ears of corn, or a
torch on fire, a phallic emblem of knowledge, light and
holy love. She rides in a chariot drawn by lions, or
winged dragons, or panthers, all of them used by the old
mythologists as symbols of the Great Father. Ceres, says
Ovid, first divided the globe with the plough: she first
gave fruits and the mild nourishments that proceed from
the earth: she first gave Laws. All these are the
gifts of Ceres. She was named Yellow-haired, Youth
rearing, Bright-fruited, Gold-sickled, in allusion to the
Apocalyptic sickles, sections 50, 51; Splendour-gifted.
Wool-bearer, in allusion to Wisdom; and the Lawgiver,
She was also celebrated as the Chaste, the Bosomed, the
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White-horsed. Jupiter, or Cybele, with a winged figure

in the hand, represents God, or the Holy Spirit, sending
forth the Incarnation. In certain Assyrian coins the
Holy Spirit is represented with a half fish-like form,
holding a fish. This, also, is a symbol of the Messiah.
She was called μαλοφορος, or Sheep bearer, because she
was the Mother of the Messianic lamb. And we learn
from Pausanias that, in a temple in one of the Attic
pagi, she was worshipped as Κορη Πρωτογονη, the First-
born Virgin. Isis, says Herodotus, is in the Grecian
language called Demeter. In Bœotia she was worshipped
as Demeter-Achaia, which is Ach and Aia, Ocean-Earth,
that is, All Things. She is usually represented Veiled.
One of her mystic names was Berekunthia (18), which the
note explains. Her pursuit after Proserpine is suggestive,
in the highest degree, of her identity with the Holy Spirit
of Heaven; it was represented in the Mysteries. Perse-
phone [the Soul] was in the Nissian plain (the plain of
Ieue Nissa), with the Ocean-nymphs gathering flowers.
She plucked the rose, the violet, the crocus, the hyacinth,
when she beheld a narcissus [which has been explained
before, pp. 53, 412] of astonishing size and splendour: at
which immortal gods and mortal men gazed with joy, for
it bloomed with a hundred flowers growing out of one
root.
And with its fragrant smell wide heaven above,
And all earth laughed, and the seas briny flood.
Heedless of danger, the maiden stretched forth her hand
to seize the wondrous flower, when suddenly the wide
earth gaped; Aïdoneus in his golden chariot rose, and
catching the terrified virgin, bare her away, shrieking to
her Father for aid; unheard or unseen by gods or mor-
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tals, save only by Helios (the Sun) whose eye nothing

on earth escapes. (This it will be seen is a clear allusion
to the lapse of the soul from heaven, and its descent into
the dark caverns of the terrestrial and carnal, the home of
fallen spirits.) So long as the virgin beheld the earth
and starry heaven, the fishy sea and the beams of the
sun, so long she hoped to see her mother and the tribes
of the gods: and the tops of the mountains and the
depths of the sea resounded with her divine voice. At
length her mother heard; she tore the Veil above
her ambrosial locks, cast a dark robe round her, and
like a bird she hastened over moist and dry. Of
all she inquired tidings of her lost daughter; but neither
gods, nor men, nor birds, could give her any intelligence.
God however had declared that if she had not tasted any-
thing while in Hades (that is, if she had not wedded her-
self to carnality) she should reascend to Heaven. Nine
days (through the nine spheres of being) Ceres wandered
over the earth, with flaming torches (illuminated guides
or teachers) in her hands; she tasted not of nectar or
ambrosia, she begirt herself with a Serpent (the Messiah,
or God) and never once entered the bath. On the tenth
morning she proceeded to the house of the Sun-God, and
standing by his horses’ heads, she entreated him to declare
who the ravisher was. The God of the Sun informs her
that it was Aïdoneus who had carried her away by the
permission of the King of Heaven. [That is, Darkness
involves the fallen by the Law of God.] Demeter, in-
censed at this abandons Olympus, disguises herself as an
old woman, and descending to Eleusis, among the Autoc-
thones, or self-begotten, sat down by the Parthenian
[virgin] well, under an olive tree. From thence by the
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Virgin Callidicè [Beautiful Justice] she is invited to the

house of Metaneira [among men] where she undertakes
the rearing of the babe Demophoon [voice of the people]
and beneath her care he throve like a god. He ate no
food, but Demeter breathed on him as he lay in her
bosom, [J xx. 22, 23,] and nursed him with heavenly
milk, anointed him with ambrosia; and every night she
laid him like a torch within the strength of fire, unknown
to his parents, who marvelled at his growth. And truly
she would have rendered him free from old age and im-
mortal, had not his mother’s folly taken him out of her
guardian care [that is, the foolishness of mankind robs
them of that immortal nature which the Spirit of God
would give them.] Straight she abandons the home of
Metaneira, and having put off old age, beauty was breathed
around her, and a pleasant odour was scattered from her
scented robes; and far gleamed the light from the immor-
tal flesh of the Goddess; and her yellow curls flourished
on her shoulders, and the close dwelling was filled as with
the sheen of lightning. And she went out from the
Palace, to the grief as well as the astonishment of the
inmates. And now she abandons herself to sorrow: the
earth is no longer productive: universal ruin seems im-
pending. Zeus despatches gold-winged Iris to Eleusis to
invite her back to incense-fraught Olympus, but the dis-
consolate mother refuses to comply. Zeus then sends
Hermes the golden-wanded [Messenger] to Aïdoneus, by
whom she is finally released and restored to Demeter, who
with her re-ascends once more to bright Olympus, being
brought there by Pan, the All. In the procession of
Ceres was borne a sacred calathus, or basket. It was
drawn by four milk-white horses: what it contained the
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reader of this work need not now be told. Her feast,

called Thesmophoria, had its resemblance among the
Jews. We have seen that she was called Legifera, or the
Law-giver. Spanheim says: It should be mentioned that
the feast of Pentecost, or εορτη Θερισμον, seu πυραμητου,
the feast of harvest, or of wheat harvest (E . xxiii. 16,
xxxiv. 22) was also usually called by the ancient Hebrews
the feast των θεσμοφοριων, of giving the Law, in memory
of the Law given from Mount Sinai—in reality the
Primal Laws given to the Messiahs (who preceded Moses)
by this Holy Spirit. Observe, that it was on this feast of
Ceres, that the Spirit of Tongues descended on the apostles.
Observe also that, that to this wheat harvest Jesus cha-
racteristically makes many allusions. Matt. ix, 37, 38.
Luke x. 2. Matt. xiii. 30, 39. Mark iv. 29. John iv. 35,
all of them founded on the common traditions, or on the
Apocalypse, section 51. Thrust in thy sickle and reap;
for the time is come for thee to reap: the harvest of the
earth is ripe. Note, too, that although said to be the
mother of Persephone, Ceres was always called the
Holy Virgin. Pausanias relates that he saw in Arca-
dia, near Mount Elaion (Mountain of Olives) a sacred
cavern of Ceres the Black. It contained a wooden
statue made in the following manner: the figure of
a woman in every other part except the head, was
represented sitting on a rock; but she had the head and
mane of a horse. A garment with which she was clothed
reached to the extremities of her feet, and in one of her
hands she held a dolphin, and in the other a dove. Why
the statue, he adds, was made after this manner, will be
obvious to a man who is not destitute of sagacity, and who
is endued with a good memory. Mythology relates
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that Ceres brought forth a horse called Arion: this is the

analogue of the Saïtic inscription, “the fruit that I
brought forth is the Sun,”—that is the Messiah. So
when Jesus was transfigured, we are told his face did
shine as the Sun. M . xvii. 2. This Ari-On is a cog-
nate of Orion, or Bird of Fire, the name given to the
Apocalypse in India, See Part I., page 256. This
horse is Ari, the lion, and On, of God. That Arion was
an emblem of the Incarnation is demonstrated by this
fact, that all sacred births were fabled to be ten months’
children. Hercules, Meleager, Pelias, Neleus (all of them
symbols of a divine birth) were ten months’ children.
(Nimrod iii. 449.) Augustus Cæsar and Virgil’s pre-
dicted Messiah were each children of ten months; so
was Scipio, Aul.-Gal., vii. 1. Temples were erected to
Ceres, the helmet-bearer, thus identifying her with Pallas
Minerva. Note the part which the Mountain of Olives
bears as connected with the last days of the Ninth Mes-
senger.
57. Analogous to the mythos of this descent of Ceres
after the Soul, is the Greek legend. It is said that the
Mother of the gods, writes Sallust, perceiving Attis by
the river Gallos, became in love with him, and having
placed on him a starry hat, lived afterwards with him in
intimate familiarity; but Attis falling in love, deserted
the Mother of the gods, and entered into association with
the chosen Nymph. On account of this, Attis became
insane, and so continued until depriving himself of viri-
lity, he returned again to his former love for the goddess.
On the Gods and the World, cap. 4. Attis is the Soul,
which when connected with the beautiful Spirit of the
Heavens, is said to wear a starry crown, that is to be in
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the enjoyment of happiness; but which, when it is seized

with impure and sensual passion, and connects itself with
the terrestrial (symbolized by the nymph, νυμφη), becomes
insane; nor can it again ascend, until it has deprived
itself of all its lustful appetites, when it is restored to the
bosom of the Magna Mater of it, and all Existences.
58. To Ceres were offered in the old Hesperian sacri-
fices, honeycombs covered with wine and milk; all, as we
have seen Messianic types. I. Sam. xiv. 27., Ps. xix. 10,
Luke xxiv. 42. Her name has been derived from Creo,
I create, I form. The Thebans, as Pausanias relates,
(Bœot. c. 25) had a tradition that Ceres Cabiria had given
to the Cabirs a Depositum, the nature of which, he says,
he was not at liberty to divulge. This is an allusion to
the Apocalypse and the Secret of the Naros; which, with
the knowledge of their divine mission, were confided to
the Heavenly Messengers. They were sometimes called
Dioscuri, or Sons of God, but this title belonged rather
to the Eighth and Ninth Messengers than to the Cabirs.
Cubela, says Bryant, iii. 243, was another name of this
Deity, who is mentioned as the Mother of the Gods. She
had on her head a tower or city, to shew that all nations
were derived from her. Cubela was the same Deity, or
rather they were both places where those Deities
were worshipped; for places were continually substi-
tuted for Deities, as I have shewn. Κυβελα is Cu-Bela,
the temple of Bela, the feminine of Belus, a title
of the chief Chaldaic God, and Cu Baba is the temple of
Baba, the mother of the infant world, the same as Rhoia
and Damater. See Philost. Vita Apollon, 1. 4, c. 9. The
Roia (pomegranate) is a plant particularly reared in
honour of Juno. The mysterious purport of this emblem
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Pausanias knew, but thought it too sacred to be disclosed.

1. 2, pp. 148. Cybele also was the Goddess of new-born
children; she was called Fauna because she was patroness
and favourer of all beings. So the temple at Rome, now
sacred to the Madonna of the Sun, is the same as
was dedicated to Vesta. But is not the Madonna of the
Sun the Holy Spirit? In the mysterious festivals of the
Dactyli Idæi, which were in fact rites in honour of Rhæa
as Mother of the Ten Messengers or Indian Avatars, three
personages were celebrated; Achm-On (God) Damia-Me-
neus, the Menu Adam, and Chelmis (the Holy Spirit: the
gutturals Ch or X. El. M. and Issa. Cybele was called
Berecunthia; is this Bara, the Genetrix or Creatress? She
was also named Pasithea, which is nearly the same as
Pasiphae, the Mother of the Menu-Taur. Among the
Romans, the statute of Cybele was washed every year
in the river Almo, or the Virgin: a similar relation of
Juno herself is given by Pausanias, ante, page 546.
Cybele has been derived from the primitive radical ‫חבל‬,
Chebel, to bring forth, alluding to her as the Magna Mater.
In the Pelasgian Irish chobaille is pregnancy, and Kebil,
a midwife: in Arabic hhabila is pregnant; kebil, and
kebild is a midwife. Isabel, which is a cognate, is Issa
and Bel, God or the Sun.
59. Henry O’Brien, Phœnician Ireland, after treating
of some other pagan divinities, says: But our decision on
the word Sibbol, a name by which the Irish as well as almost
all other nations, designated and worshipped Cybele, must
be guided altogether by another principle. For here I
at once recognize the Syriac character as derived from
sibola, an ear of corn, under which guise the Phœnicians
used to worship the earth as the mother of all harvests, and
vegetables. All nations, therefore, by one common con-
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sent, represented Cybele holding in her right hand some

ears of corn [wheat] (p. 107). Virgil describes Cybele as
rejoicing in her celestial children [all Spirits] embracing
her hundred grandsons, all of them dwellers in the heavens,
all of them holding ethereal realms:
Læta Deûm partu, centum complexa nepotes,
Omnes Cœlicolas, omnes supra alta tenentes.
Her form, which was that of a cube, and from which she
was called ἡ Κυβη, was so named, according to the most
learned of the Cabalists, William Postel, a receptaculo
totius naturæ, that is the Yoni, or Shekinah. In Greece
the temple of Ceres, the helmet-bearer, stood beside that
of Bacchus, the Mysterious. Herodotus identifies Isis
with Ceres: and Diodorus Siculus says that Isis was
either Ceres, Juno, or the Moon. There is an inscription
to Isis, still at Capua, which shews the unity in multipli-
city, which characterises all these goddesses as types of the
Holy Spirit. To thee, who being One art all things,
Goddess Isis. Matrons and Virgins only were permitted
to perform the offices of her temple—no man was allowed
to do so. All mythologists now admit that she is the
same as Isis. The very name of Mystery, from Mistor, a
Veil, or covering, given to the Eleusinian rites, performed
in honour of Demeter, shews them to have been of Ba-
belonian origin. We shall find this word again in the
Commentary. The Isis or emblematical figure exhibited
at the feasts bore the name of Ceres. In the public
Ambervalia, or Feasts celebrated in her honour, twelve
Fratres Arvales officiated pontifically walking at the
head of the procession. These rites have given their
names to Ambersbury, Amberley, and other Druidic
places in England. In the Cerealia, she was paid di-
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vine honours with Dionysos: her figure was there

represented as holding in one hand three ears of corn, in
the other a torch, while her left foot was supported
on a Serpent [God], an allusion, the most ancient
and universal in the whole primeval world, and which
may be seen in the Indian sculptures, made thousands
of years before the Book of Genesis was written. But
she treads in play and sportiveness, not as described in
Gen. iii. by some Jew rabbi, who misunderstood or
misrepresented the symbol. This last named festival
was attended by men and women dressed in pure white,
but the latter only were allowed to officiate. Macro-
bius says that an Egg made part of the ceremony.
So superstitiously careful were the pagans in conceal-
ing the particulars of these sacred rites, that if any
person, as has been already observed, divulged them, he
was thought to have called down upon his head some
divine judgment. See ante, page 37. The New Tes-
tament supplies a curious proof that the Holy Spirit
and Ceres were the same, for it denounces judgment
upon all who blaspheme the former, implacable as it
was thought as Juno herself. See ante, page 552.
M . xii. 31, 32. Wherefore I say unto you, All man-
ner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but
the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven
unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the
Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speak-
eth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him,
neither in this world, neither in the world to come. M .
xii. 31, 32. Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be for-
given unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith
soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme
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against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in

danger of eternal damnation. M iii. 28. And who-
soever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall
be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against
the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven. L xii. 10. It
was even accounted ominous of evil to abide in the same
house, or sail in the same boat with him: and he was
convicted and put to death as a public offender. In Crete,
even if one who was not initiated happened unwittingly
to be present at the Eleusinia, he was put to death. Hence
also it was that Stesichorus, the lyric poet, was said to have
lost his sight for abusing Helen, and to have recovered it
when he recanted what he said: for Helen was the Holy
Spirit, whom it was an unheard of impiety to censure.
See ante, page 123. For a similar reason Erymanthus, the
son of Apollo was struck blind: he beheld Venus bathing.
The name Cabala, which is an analogue of Cybele, has
been derived from Kibel or Kebel, tradition; but the
opinion of others that it comes from chapha to cover up
or conceal is not unworthy of note. The secrecy em-
ployed by the Cabalists has to this day eluded penetra-
tion: the modern Rabbins know nothing of it. The
name Cybele is derived by others from σιος, God, accord-
ing to the Æloian dialect, and βοὑλη, the Counsel; thus
it means the Counsel of God. See part I., page 26. I
have read, says Lactantius, in Sacred History, that the
powerful Uranus (Heaven) had to Wife Vesta. Legi in
Sacra Historia Uranum potentem Vestam habuisse conju-
gem. She was called βουλαια, or the Counsel of God.
60. Vesta, exclaims Ovid, bestow on us thy favour;
now do we open our lips in honour of thee, if it is lawful
to do honour to thy sacrifices. I was totally wrapt in
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my prayer: I became sensible of the presence of the

Celestial Divinity, and the joyous ground reflected back
the purple light. As for me I saw thee not, O Goddess,
farewell to the fictions of the poets: by the eyes of man
Thou art not to be seen. Fasti vi. 249. Ceres, says
Bryant, was the deity of fire: hence at Cnidus she was
called Cura, a title of the Sun. The Roman name
Ceres, expressed by Hesychius, Gerys, was by the Dorians
more properly rendered Garis. It was originally the
name of a city called Charis; for many of the deities were
erroneously called by the names of the places where they
were worshipped. Charis is Charis, the City of Fire [so
Ista-Char, Vesta or Sun-Fire]. It may after this seem
extraordinary that she should ever be esteemed the God-
dess of corn: this notion arose from the Greeks not un-
derstanding their own theology. The towers of Ceres
were Pur’tain, or Prutaneia, so called from the fires
which were there perpetually preserved. The Grecians
interpreted this purou tameion, and rendered what was
a temple, a granary of corn. In consequence of this
though they did not abolish the ancient usage of the place,
they made it a repository of grain, from whence they gave
largesses to the people. In early times the corn there
deposited seems to have been for the priests or divines:
but this was only a secondary use to which these places
were adapted. They were properly sacred towers where
a perpetual fire was preserved. It was sacred to Hestia
or the Vesta of the Romans; which was only a title for
Damater or Ceres; and the sacred hearth had the same
name. There are one or two mistakes in the above which
the reader will see.
61. Near the Temple of Ceres Eleusinia, among the Phe-
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neatæ, were two great stones, aptly joined together, which

they called Petroma. When those anniversary sacred
rites take place, says Pausanias, which they call the Greater
Mysteries, they separate these stones, and take out of
them writings belonging to the Mysteries. When the
persons that are concerned in the Mysteries have heard
those writings recited, they are at night restored to the
place from whence they were taken. To this Petr-Oma,
which resembles the Tables of Stone, used by Amosis,
and to the Keys of Janus, which gave him power, accord-
ing to the old belief, to open and shut everything in the
Universe (Patulcius, the Opener, Clusius, the Shutter),
Jesus makes these remarkable allusions: Blessed art thou,
Simon Bar Yona [that is, Son of Me, the Iona or Dove
Messenger], for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto
thee, but my Father, who is in heaven. And I say also unto
thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this Rock I will build
my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it. And I will give unto thee the Keys of the kingdom of
heaven: and whatsoever thou shall bind on earth shall be
bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth,
shall be loosed in heaven. M . xvi. 17, 18, 19. As
if he had intended to say: Thou, my trusty disciple, art
as the petroma, which contains the Apocalypse in which
the True Faith of God is preached: with thee I deposit my
doctrine, satisfied that thou wilt keep it safe from all
corruption; and if thou shalt do so, whatsoever, &c., &c.
Petr-Oma means Father Om or Aum, an appropriate desig-
nation for the receptacle which contained the Apocalypse.
And see M . xviii. 18. Every initiated mystic put his
hand, on what was called Διος κωδιον (the code and skin
of God) that is, the Book of God, the Apocalypse, written
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and painted on parchment; after which he was permitted

to enter the Mystical Temple—an allusion on which I
need not dilate. But they were first compelled to cross
over a Bridge, which was called the Mystical Entrance;
and to this Bridge there is allusion made in the Pontifex,
or modern Pontiff. The sacred Fig Tree was then shewn.
This is a mystical allusion. See Gen. iii. 7. It is often
indicated in the Hebrew writings. The garments in
which they were initiated were accounted holy, and con-
secrated ever after to Demeter. A holy basket was
used, called Kala-Dion, which is easily perceived to be
Cali-Dione. In the Commentary on the Apocalypse, I
have added various other remarkable features of the
Mysteries which throw light upon its dark allusions: to
these the reader is referred.
62. We read in Plutarch, that about the time of
Agesilaus, there was dug up at Thebes, from the sepulchre
of Alcmena, the supposed mother of Hercules, a brass
plate, on which were engraved certain characters then
unknown, but that appeared to be drawn from Egyptian
types. Chon Uphis, the most learned of the Egyptian
philosophers, being consulted, after three days spent in
examining the ancient records of Egypt, for various
characters, he answered that the inscription was written
in the characters used in the time of King Proteus (Protos,
that is, the first), which Hercules had been perfectly
instructed in. (P . in libello de dæmonio Socratis.)
This priest did not make his inquirers much wiser, if he
only gave them the date of the writing: he appears, if he
had deciphered it, to have concealed the matter that was
written. Was this a fragment of the Apocalypse? was it
in the tree-formed, or Oghamic characters that Apuleius
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speaks of ? See ante, page 316. We know that Hercules

was but a name for the Messenger: and we know, also,
that the high priest would not divulge aught of the Secret
of the Lord. The place where it was dug up—the sacred
city, the Theba, the Sanctuary—shews that there was a
good deal of mystery about this brass plate: above all
things, the silence of Chon Uphis is suspicious. See
ante, page 469, as to Hercules’s Pictures.
63. Shibboleth ‫ שבלת‬in the Hebrew means a Flood
or Stream; hence it was applied to the Holy Spirit of the
Waters. Those of the Hebrews who were initiated knew
this: those who did not, were regarded as the profane.
This is alluded to in Judges xii. 6, where we read: Then
said they unto him: Say now Shibboleth, and he said
Sibboleth; for he could not frame to pronounce it right.
Then they took him and slew him at the passages of Jordan;
and there fell at the time, of the Ephraimites (that is, Jews
descended from Ephraim) forty and two thousand. These
Jews had for a period been in possession of the Ark, or
sacred petroma of the Apocalypse, and during this period,
they knew, without doubt, the arcana of Religion and the
Mysteries; but they afterwards lost it. Something,
therefore, entirely different from that which is mentioned
in the Old Testament narrative, is intended to be con-
veyed. It is hard to believe, giving the Jews credit for
all the cruelty and blood-thirstiness for which they were
notorious, that they would slay forty-two thousand of
their own brethren for the insufficient reason given in the
text—namely, a remonstrance with Jepthah, for not
taking them to war against the Ammonites. It was
evidently some religious feud, carried out with true
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theologic hatred, about some of the most hidden mysteries

of the Hebrew faith.
64. Upon this word I copy a suggestive extract from
Ouseley’s Oriental Collections. Siobal, Saobal, a cycle (God
and Ao); Siobal na Greine, the Zodiack, the Sun’s path.
ii. 223: hence a name for the Holy Spirit, the Sibyl of
God. Hence we read that the most celebrated of the
Sibyls was beloved by Apollo. Siobal is an onion: its
coats or rings when cut transversely represent the heavenly
spheres: hence the veneration of the Egyptians for that
root. The Brahmins and Chaldæans had the same.
65. One of the most ancient religious rites, the Dendro-
phoria, or Carrying of Trees, was performed at the
sacrifices of Bacchus and Cybele. Arnobius says it con-
sisted in carrying a pine through the city, and afterwards
planting it. The branches of this Tree they crowned and
covered with wool. In Roman history mention is made
of a college of Dendrophoroi, who attended the army, and
the critics have been at some pains to ascertain the nature
of their office. Some contend that they hewed and fashioned
the wood for tents, as was done in the Jewish Feast of
Tabernacles, which differed, in no material degree, from
that of the Dendrophoria. It was one of their three great
solemnities, in which all the males were obliged to appear
before the Lord. They cut down branches of the hand-
somest trees with their fruit, which they carried in cere-
mony to the synagogue, where they performed what they
called Lulab. Holding in their right hand a branch of
palm tree, three branches of myrtle, and two of willow,
tied together, and having in the left hand a citron with
its fruit, they brought them together, waving them
towards the four quarters of the world, and singing certain
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songs. These branches were also called Hosanna, because

on that occasion they cried Hosanna, an allusion to the
Anna Perenna, or Holy Spirit. See Mat. xxi. 8, 9.
The Daphnephoria, or laurel-bearing festival of Apollo,
has a likeness to the Jewish Feast. The Cotytian priests
of Cybele were called Baptæ, or Baptists. Anna, the
prophetess, plays a part in the scene of the circumcision.
Luke ii. 36. These Tree-festivals were in honour of the
Holy Spirit—the Sacred Tree Ydrasil: a word com-
pounded of Asi-El, the Fire of God, or ὑδωρ, Water, and
El, God. See Part I., page 135.
66. In the Thesmophoria, which were instituted in
honour of Damater, as the Lawgiver, women only were
the ministrants, but they were assisted by a priest called
Stephanophoros [a representative of the Messiah], whose
head was adorned with a crown while he officiated. [See
A , section 50.] The matrons and virgins were clad
in spotless white, to denote purity and innocence; on the
last day of the festival they carried books upon their heads,
wherein the Sacred Laws were written. Were not those
Books the Apocalypse? They prayed at this feast to
Calligenia, the Indian Calli, or the beautiful birth, the
being “born again,” to which Jesus alluded. That all
these goddess-names represented, in reality, but One Spirit,
and that this Spirit was the Divine Queen of Heaven,
must, I think, be now apparent to all. It is not possible,
if they were various, that so many remarkable features in
common, gathered at random, as it were, from all nations,
could have existed between them. Let us hear no more,
therefore, of Pagan goddesses; we see that each and all
but represented the Holy Spirit.
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Hades.
67. H , the Invisible, or Pluto, as he is more com-
monly called, represents, as I have said collectively, like
Persephone and Adonis, all existences, as well those who
are in the archangelic heaven, as well as those who are
not in the actual presence of the Supreme. His descent
with Proserpine, or the Soul, I have explained already;
thus united, they are one and the same mythos, or symbol.
In the same way he is fabled to have carried off the
Oceanis, Leuke (a She-Wolf—the Holy Spirit), and the
Nymph Mentha, or Men-Ptha, both of whom were changed
into beautiful plants, and now abide in the Elysian fields
—an allegory of the ascent and resurrection of the soul
into a condition of light and loveliness, which is at once
apparent. The place in which, as lapsed from God, he
dwells, is within the earth (that is, in body); and it is
called Ereb or Erebos, because it is the synonyme of dark-
ness, gloom, and unhappiness. There, the inhabitants wander
about, conversing of their former state when they lived—a
fine allusion to the aspirations of the exiled soul, after its
former blest condition in the spheres, and to those glorious
dreams of beauty which Plato calls the recollections of the
Past in Heaven. Thus Achilles declares to Odysseus
that he would rather be a day labourer to the poorest
tiller of the earth, than a king in those regions—that is,
that it were better to be an angel of the lowest degree
before the Father, than the ruler of the mightiest realm
on the globe. A river separates Tartarus from Elysium
—that is, death is the intervening line; and after death
is passed, it is seen whether the spirit ascends into beauty,
or descends deeper into darkness. By this river suicides
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wander a hundred years, that is, it is permitted to no man

to fly from the condition of life in which he is, with the
design of anticipating that for which he is not yet fitted;
and God punishes him by interposing this long space of
time as a penalty for his disobedience. When the cen-
tury elapses, he takes his seat in the boat (another body
or organization), and, according to his nature, so he lands
on the shore of light or gloom; he passes into a higher
form of existence, or descends into a lower. All these
analogies are beautiful. The River is that of Liberation
mentioned in the Apocalypse, section 69.
68. The River of Oblivion, of which all souls drink
after death, is that deep forgetfulness of their primal
glory which we know characterises mortal existences;
which shines forth, however, now and then in fitful gleams
and flashes, but which is the result of benevolent design; for
I can conceive no condition more utterly unhappy than that
of a man who retained a vivid recollection of what he had
been in his primal state; from what transcendent thrones
and splendours he had fallen; from what august and
beautiful companionship he had been exiled; from what
divine and majestic thoughts and aspirations he had lapsed
in frailty or in corruption. Wisely, therefore, did the
Supreme Father ordain that all these radiant realities
should be for a time obscured or forgotten; for had it
been otherwise, the life of mortal creatures, which is now
surrounded with miseries enough, would then indeed have
been intolerable. This forgetfulness was part of the
Boodh-Druidic doctrine, as developed, ante page 337.
Hades wears a helmet of invisibility—that is, Spirits clothe
themselves in bodies, whose obscurity causes their spiritual
brightness to be unseen.
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69. The poetic names in which he is addressed are sug-

gestive also: he is called the subterranean zeus or god,
because he dwells under an earthly garment; the people-
collecting, alluding to the innumerable multitude of exist-
ences; the untamed or invincible, referring to the obstinate
nature of the spirit in clinging to falses and corporeals.
He wears a crown to indicate his royal descent; and in
his hand is a key—the key that opens to him heaven or
earth, according to the true nature of his desires. By the
Romans he is called Februus, which means purgation;
for to purify himself from the stain that caused his
lapse from heaven is his true office. He is sometimes
confounded with Plutus, the god of wealth; and is blind
and lame, impudent and a coward; all of them, quali-
ties that symbolize the wandering, dark, timid, and
capricious course of mortal creatures: as indicated also
by Hyginus, in that suggestive genealogy, which I have
copied from him, ante, page 531. But he is often visited
by the Messengers; and when they appear all is har-
mony, even in the regions of darkness. They descend
to liberate bondaged Souls, and bear them back with
them to splendour: thus fulfilling the august mission,
which, in the lore of Scandinavia, we are told was
theirs. The Æsir, says Petersen, meaning the Messen-
gers, are the formers, sustainers, and regulators of the
world, the Spirits of Thought and Life, that prevail
and animate all dead nature, and seek to subject it to
the spiritual will. They assemble daily to hold council
on the world’s destinies. The human form and manner
of being are ascribed to them, but in a higher and nobler
manner: they hear and see more acutely; they go from
place to place with inconceivable speed. Nor. Myth.
116.
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Hermes.
70. I now proceed to shew that all the gods of

Heathenism resolve themselves into one Image, that of
the Messenger. With him they possess a variety of fea-
tures in common; and it is impossible to suppose that
they could do so, if they did not primarily represent, and,
as it were, embody the same Idea.
71. H ,M , is the son of Zeus, and Maia,
or Maya, the Hindu Holy Spirit. In the Odyssey he
assumes the place of Iris, and is the Messenger of Heaven.
Hermes is the guide also of souls to the regions of the
Invisible. Mercury, says Proclus, is the source of inven-
tion; and hence he is said to be the Son of Maia, because
search, which is implied by Maia, leads invention into
light. He bestows too Mathesis, or knowledge, on souls,
by unfolding the will of his Father, and this he accom-
plishes as the Angel or Messenger of Zeus. The Egyp-
tians painted his face partly black and partly bright, to
signify his earthly and celestial nature combined in one.
He was suckled by Juno (the Holy Spirit); the milk ran
out and formed the via lactea, or starry way. Thus, that
which the Incarnation feeds on, namely, Truth, fills the
heaven with star-bright souls. He bears the caduceus, or
symbol of peace, the origin of which was fabled by the
Greeks to be this. Finding two snakes which were contend-
ing in deadly fight, Hermes reconciled them with a touch
of his wand; and from that day forth, when negotiating
peace, he carried this symbol of reconciliation. Hence,
also, those who made alliances between hostile peoples,
were called Caduceators. This mythic symbol seems to
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me very exquisite. The harmonizing force of true reli-

gion can tame the rage even of snakes. This magical rod
Huet compares to the rod of Moses. It was really the
symbol of a Book, although by the painters and sculptors
represented as a winged wand, encircled by serpents. The
wand, or staff, as is here seen, symbolized with the olden
priests a Book; the serpents typify its everlasting wisdom;
and the wings its divine origin. Chodesh ‫חדש‬, means to
renew; a word, therefore, most appropriately used for the
caduceus, or badge of the Messenger, who renewed, in his
Book or teachings, the evangel of God, and the glad
tidings and truths of his predecessor. By means of this
Book of God, Hermes conducts souls into Elysium—a
moral so clear as not to need explanation. By the same
wand he raised the dead. Mercury was called Patrius,
and Agoaraios, or the Judicial, the Pronouncer of Judg-
ment; an attribute of the Messiah, which the Ninth Mes-
senger also put forth. And Jesus said, For judgement I
am come into this world, that they which see not might
see; and that they which see might be made blind. J ,
ix. This applied also to him as Cabiric Judge. On his
festival, at Tanagra, the most beautiful of the Tanagrian
youths bore a lamb on his shoulders round the walls, in
honour of the god: and Pausanias says that Hermes,
above all the gods, appears to guard and increase herds of
sheep. Hence the characteristic remark of the Ninth
Hermes, Jesus; Feed my lambs; feed my sheep. He is
called the Beneficent, the Kind, the Three-headed, the
Powerful, the Messenger of the Immortals, the Gold-
sceptred. His name has been by some derived from ερα,
the earth, a Junonian name, because he is a divine being
to the sons of mortals. In the Celtic, ermes means divina-
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tion. Solon recognized him as one of the Three Orders

of Existence, when he commanded the Athenians to
swear by Zeus, Poseidaon, and Hermes. Poseidaon, as I
have remarked, means the Sanctus Spiritus, or the Power
or Spirit, the Sakti or Viraj of Aun, or On, who is God.
Juno suckled him with some of her milk. Fishermen,
when grown old, dedicated to him their implements. He
is designated Argeiphontes, or White-shining, like Jesus
in the transfiguration; but this epithet the Greeks punned
into slayer of Argos, and invented a fable upon it.
Fountains were set apart to him. He was educated in a
mountain in Arkadia, and descending from it, like the
Ninth Messiah, he gave his laws to men. By the Etrus-
cans, he was called Vau-Nus, or Faunus—a mystic desig-
nation, the Cymric Vau-han before mentioned. He gave
letters to Egypt: and was by the Egyptians surnamed
Thoth. He was born on the same day with Cupid, or
Heavenly Love, a Messianic name, and symbol: he stole
her magic cestus, or sapphire girdle, from celestial Aphro-
dite: and would have borne away even the thunderbolt of
Zens himself, but that he feared its fiery lustre. His
head and feet were winged—indicating the celestial. In
painting he is represented with eyes of peculiar brilliancy,
and as drawing mortals by golden chains fixed into their
ears: the same myth is related of Hercules. He was the
inventor of the sacred concealed characters: he taught
the use of the olive, and was initiated into the Mysteries.
His mysticism peeps out in the following. In Pharæ,
likewise, says Pausanias, there is a piece of water sacred
to Hermes. The name of the fountain is Hama [this is
not Greek, but foreign], and they do not catch the fish
which are in it, because they consider them as sacred to
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the divinity. Achaics, xxii. See ante, pp. 420, 433, 536.
He stole away the herds of Apollo—that is, one Messenger
leads captive the followers of his predecessor, as is seen
throughout all history. He is the god of wealth, that
is, the true wealth, which the moth consumes not, the
treasure laid up in heaven. He invented the lyre; his
eloquence was perfect. Boccaccio relates from Theo-
dotion, that his father banished him from Olympus
when he adopted the pastoral life on earth, and kept
flocks: an analogue to the same mythos is related of
Apollo. In the Greek Anthology, ix. 72, we read that he
was propitiated with milk and honey—Messianic
emblems. See Canticles, iv. 11. He taught the astro-
nomic art, like Enoch, the order and series of the
celestial revolutions; the course of days, and months,
and years. He was the first promulgator of religious
rites among men, as Horace relates.
Qui feros cultus hominum recentum
Voce formasti catus, et decoræ
More palæstræ.
Hermes was called Criophoros, or the Ram-bearer, which
gave occasion to one of the Hebrew priests to write of
the Jewish local god or Messenger, whom they so long
worshipped instead of the true God; I am full of the
burnt offerings of rams. Is. i. 11. This Chri is an ana-
logue of Chur, Chrs and Chrestos. Dreams of a divine
kind were attributed to him. When the soul had ful-
filled its allotted time in Hades, he descended and brought
it out; while he was there all suffering ceased:—so the
Ninth Messenger is said to have descended on a like
errand, to preach to those who were in prison. I. P ,
iii. 19. Prisoners, therefore, when released, offered up
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sacrifices to him. He had numerous sons by the nymphs.

Callistratus says that the tongues of victims were chiefly
dedicated to him. He was the inventor of weights and
measures, as the third Messenger in this Apocalypse is
described to be. He was one of the Samothracian gods
in the Cabiric mysteries; this was in his character of
Cabir, or Judge. The dog, the cock, and the stork, were
sacred to him. He was beardless, and yet at times
bearded; Pausanias, Achaics, xxii.; of a fair complexion,
and with yellow hair, like the Nazarene Jesus: the
Egyptians drew him with the head of a Dog, to shew
that he was a priest: and said he was born of the
Nile; but the same mythological birth has been given
to more than half the gods and goddesses; and, in truth,
the Nile was called after the Holy Spirit, and was in
time confounded with her. He sometimes carries a
sickle-shaped sword, called Harpè, like the drepanon or
sickle in A , sections 18, 50, 51, and the sword
of the Tenth Messenger. His name has been given to
that planet, which, in our system, is nearest to the Sun.
So, the famous statue of Hermonsul, at Eresburg, which
was destroyed by Charlemagne, was Hermes-Sol. He is
called Par-Ammon, which identifies him with the Sun—
and Zeus: and Hegemonios, or the Guide. When Osiris
(the Sun) went on his expedition against India, Anubis
accompanied him, and clothed himself in a sheep’s skin.
He also bore a caduceus, like Hermes. Ovid calls him
latrator Anubis, lib. ix., fab. xii. v. 689. He presided
over transmigration; and transferred into different bodies
those souls which had remained their destined time in the
dominions of Hades, or the Invisible. Mark. v., Luke
viii. His statues were placed in the highway, to point
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out the road to weary travellers. So in M ., xx. 16,

we read—And they sent out to him their own disciples,
with the Herodians, saying: Master, we know that thou
art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest
thou for any one. And again, J xiv. 4., Thomas
saith unto him, Lord, we know not whether thou goest,
and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him,
I am the way, the truth, and the Life: no one cometh
unto the Father, but of me. The name of this species of
statue was Vialis. For an analogous reason his image,
like that of his Mother, Athena Pylotis, was painted on,
or erected before doors. Hence the allusions in the New
Testament: Verily, verily, I say unto you; he that
entereth not by the door into the sheep fold, but climbeth
up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.
John xi. 1. But he that entereth in by the door is the
Shepherd of the sheep, ib.; I am the door; by me if any
man enter in he shall be saved: and shall go in and out,
and shall find pasture. John x. 9. But long before the
Ninth Hermes, the metaphoric phrase had been orienta-
lized. There is a great road to Hell, say the Karens of
Burmah; but a very small one to Heaven. This is like
the saying of Jesus, Enter ye in at the strait gate, for wide
is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruc-
tion, and many there be which go in thereat. Because, strait
is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto
life, and few there be who find it. M . vii. 13, 14.
Apollo.
72. A , Phoibos, Helios, like Pan, was called
Nomion, Shepherd of the people, and Legislator; he
was an Egyptian divinity, and the son of Osiris and
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Isis. (Bell’s Pantheon.) He was called Horus. The

testimony of Diodorus Siculus, is express; for in
speaking of Isis, after saying that she had invented the
art of medicine, he adds, that she taught this art to her
son Horus, named Apollo, who was the last of the gods
that reigned in Egypt. The Greeks generally regarded
Horus as identical with Apollo. (Herod, lib. ii. passim.)
Sometimes they consider him as Priapus. (Suidas, voce
Πριαπος.) His attributes are not clearly distinguished
from those of Osiris; who, as the Sun, was his Father:
as the Messenger was his counterpart. The mystic Van
of Iacchus belonged to Horus as well as Osiris: hence
the Greeks considered Horus as Bacchus. The latter is
invoked in the Orphic hymn as the offspring of Zeus and
the Holy Spirit.
Διος και Περσεφονειας
’Αρρήτοις λέκτροισι τεκνωθεὶς, ἄμβοτε Δα̑ιμων.
Immortal daimon, born in the ineffable bed of Zeus and
Persephone [Voice of Brightness]. Yet for purposes of
disguise, some mythologists said he was the son of Vulcan.
His mother, among the Greeks, was called Leto, or the
hidden and the darkness-vested, in allusion to the habitual
concealment and secresy of the Holy Spirit, and to her
hiding in Hermon (A , section 8.), and her sym-
bolic grief as the Great Mother, for the lapse of all Spirits,
her children. A choir of swans from Moconian Pactolus,
fled seven times round the island of Delos, to celebrate
his birth: so the angels in the New Covenant are heard
celebrating the birth of the infant Jesus. Then did he
cry out, says the Homerid: May a lyre and bending bow
be mine, and I will declare to men the unerring counsel
of Zeus: he strikes the harp, taking grand and lofty
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steps, and a shining glory surrounds him, and glittering

of feet; and all rose up from their seats, as he comes
near, when he strains his golden bow. He is called
Pæan, the Healer, from Pao, an allusion to Ao—paaneah,
in the Aramaic, is Saviour. There is a mystic meaning
in the word Delos—it is the same as Epiphany, or Mani-
festation. This is what is alluded to, in Romans viii.
19. For the earnest expectation of the creature, waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God. He had many
surnames: Acesius, the healer; Delphinian, the dolphin;
Diradiates, the enlightener; Epibaterius, the ascender.
In the Odyssey, when Helios ends his diurnal career, he
is said to go under the earth, as Jesus descended into
Hades. He was also surnamed Arge-netes, which con-
nects him with the Argha; and Latous, or him who is
concealed; also Pastor and Phaneus; Pateræus, Sciastes,
and Zosterius, from the sapphire girdle. Having displeased
his father (God) he was exiled from heaven; and sent to
be a servant to man [a Messenger] for a hundred years.
During this exile he kept flocks, even as the Messiah is
described by Isaiah xl. He shall feed his flock like a
shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and
carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that
are with young. It was during this banishment from
heaven, that he invented the lyre, that is, made heavenly
revelations. He transforms those whom he loves into
the Beautiful, as the hyacinth, the cypress, and the laurel
[Aur-El, flame of God], as the Ninth Messenger pro-
mises thrones in heaven to his twelve apostles, and a
place in Paradise to the repentant thief. Apollo was
called Is-menius, commemorative of Issa, the Moon, and
the Menu. This is a cognate of Is-Menia, the Minerval
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title, mentioned ante, page 590. All sudden deaths of

men were ascribed to his darts: he was also by his
shafts the sender of pestilence. So we read in the Apoca-
lypse, section 28, of the Eighth and Ninth Messengers.
And if any man willeth to do them hurt, behold fire cometh
out of their mouths; and it shall devour their enemies.
And again, in section 33, And out of his mouth there went
a sharp two edged sword, that with it he should strike the
nations. These passages are Messianic; and describe
qualities peculiar to the Messengers; and they were so
understood by the disciples of Jesus, when they said to
him, Master, wilt thou that we command fire to come down
from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?
L ix. 54. The answer of Jesus showed conclusively
that at that time he considered himself a Messianic, not
a Cabiric Messenger. It must, however, have been
misunderstood by the disciples; for it is certain that the
Cabirs were, in all respects, Sons of God, equal with
Jesus himself; and they unquestionably did consume in
fire from heaven the odious wretches who were their
foes. Yet Jesus made some Cabiric allusions, as when he
said: And the Master said unto the servant, Go out into
the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that
my house may be filled. L xiv. 23. Midas, Linus,
and Marsyas aspire to an equality with him in divine
inspiration, but are punished as they deserve, and exposed
as vain impostors. He appears on a gem in the Massini
collection, ordering Marsyas to be flayed, with a face that
makes one almost tremble to look upon it. So the
general character of the Messenger is mildness, but his
wrath, when it is aroused, is fiery and overwhelming.
As a Messiah he is Love ; as a Cabir he is the agent of
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Nemesis. His priests are so remarkable for sanctity,

that while they play the Apollonic harp, they can walk
over burning coals unhurt, Æneis, ii.; as it is said by
Jesus (M , xvi. 19.), They shall take up serpents; and
if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; and
again (L x. 19.), Behold I give unto you power to tread
on serpents, and scorpions, and over all the power of the
enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Hence
we read, Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder; the
young lion and the dragon thou shall trample under
foot. Ps. xci. 13. This walking over fire was in com-
memoration of the purity of those who were seen in the
Apocalypse; And I saw as it were a sea of hyaline
mingled with fire; and those who had conquered the
Wild Beast and his image, and had abjured his mark,
and the number of his name, standing upon that fiery
sea of glass, and holding the harps of God. Section
46. The animals sacred to him, were the Wolf; it was
called λυκὸς bright. This is the primitive radical lux,
from which the Latin luceo, and the German Licht and
Light come. The Crow and the Raven were also conse-
crated to him, because they were supposed to have the
gift of divination; the Swan, because it predicts and sings
beautifully;* the Hawk and the Cock were also sacred
to Apollo. Porphyry says that a Hawk was dedicated
* “This species of swan deserves the title Musicus: for when in
small troops they fly aloft in the air, their melodious melancholy
voices sound like trumpets heard in the distance” (Faber Ges-
chichte der Vögel Islands, 1822), quoted by Finn. Magnusen,
whose own words are: Cygnorum cantus dulcissimus in Islandia,
Scotia, et pluribus regionibus sæpissime auditur; quod etiam
nosmet, propriâ experientiâ edocti, attestari possumus. Edda.
Sæmund iii. 530. Keightley, in his Mythology, says: “We have
ourselves heard the trumpet tones of a swan.”
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to the Sun, because it is the symbol of Light and Spirit;

of the one on account of the swiftness of his motion; of
the other, for his soaring on high, the higher regions
being fuller of light than the lower. This emblem per-
petually appears in the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The
grasshopper was also sacred to Apollo. And as the
Hebrews had the sacred fire always burning on the
altar (Lev. vi. 12, 13), so also Apollo had his πυρ
ασβεστον, or inextinguishable fire, which was called
‘Εστια, from ‫ אש יה‬ash Ieh, or the Fire of Jah: i. e.
Vesta. Flowers were offered to Apollo in the spring, and
even in this sacrifice there was much of the symbolism in
which the ancients delighted. Most flowers represent the
irradiation of light, and in some (all the bell flowers)
the economy is much to be observed, for in every single
flower we shall find six leaves, with an irradiation in the
midst; and in some more distinctly, that which encloses
the seed, divided into three parts in one, as may be seen par-
ticularly in the lily. On the forehead of the Hebrew high
priest, the type of the Irradiator, was placed a flower of
gold, and in the Canticles the Holy Spirit is called the
Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley, ii. 1. Hence
Homer calls Apollo φαεσιμβροτος, as he gives light to
mortals. J xii. 46. He was called King Apollo,
as Jesus also styled himself a King. J xii. 14.
15., xviii. 37. He was likewise designated Επιβατηριος,
the Ascender, in commemoration of which is the mythical
Ascension of Jesus. M . xvi. 19. Pausanias tells
us that he had an oratory at Cyana, which he calls
Χρηστηριον, or Christery,—a singular coincidence. He
was surnamed Προστατηριος, because his statue was
placed before the doors of houses: a custom founded on
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the Apocalypse, section 64. Behold I have stood at the

door, and knock. See Part I., page 601. He was sur-
named Pythius; but Pythius was Phut, and Phut was
Fo, and this Fo was one of the Divine Incarnations: the
Third Messenger. With his arrows, while a child, he
destroys the Dragon that sought to devour his mother.
See Apocalypse, section 8. Apollo was often imaged
bearing the Graces in his right hand, and a bow and
arrows in his left: thus symbolizing the Messianic and
Cabiric character which the Heavenly Messenger of God
combines.
73. The Homeric Apollo, says Keightley, is a being
of remarkable purity, and the poet seems to have had a
strong feeling of the dignity of his character, for he never
ventures to use the same familiarity with him, as with
the other gods, Zeus himself not excepted. Apollo is the
friend of man, he protects his worshippers, and he punishes
the unjust and impious. At all periods of the Grecian
literature, we find the character of the “pure (αγνος)
god,” as he was emphatically called, still the same.
There is a serene cheerfulness always ascribed to him;
he is averse from gloom, and the promoter of joy and
innocent pleasure; but, at the same time, dignified in
his sentiments and actions. The purity of his character
appears also in this, that no amours with either goddesses
or mortals are ascribed to him in the Homeric poems.
Mythology, page 118.
74. Most of the things that Apollo delighted in,
depended on the Sun, or bore a resemblance to it; the
palm, the laurel, juniper, and olive were the trees that
pleased him best. The fruit and branches of the juniper
were always used by the Hyperboreans, or Scythians,
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in their mysterious rites. In painting he is frequently

represented with a long robe flowing to his feet, such as
the symbolic type of the Messiahs wears in the Apoca-
lypse; he carries a lyre and cup; and sometimes an
ancile, a heavenly book or shield of the soul. His chariot
is drawn by four horses—the four races of mankind, who
receive the revelation of the Heavenly Messenger, and
for whom it is especially designed. The Persians repre-
sented him as a Lion crowned with a tiara. The Egyp-
tians symbolized him by a Radiated Circle, and a Sceptre,
with an Eye above it; but their more frequent emblem
was the Golden Seraph, or fiery-flying Serpent. He is
called indifferently Vates, or Lyristes, because some of the
earliest revelations were in verse, accompanied by music.
Sometimes the Zodiac (which was originally drawn as
symbolic of the Twelve Messiahs) is represented over his
head: sometimes the Serpent is placed at the feet of his
statues, as in the Indian Chreeshna, or Anointed One,
which is his name with those people. The Romans had
a custom of cutting their hair short about seventeen, and
of keeping it so ever after. Hence when their poets gave
Apollo the titles of crinitus and intonsus, it is the same
as if they had said, he was ever young. So the portrait
of Jesus represents him as a long-haired Nazarene; and it
is painted of a golden brightness. In almost innumerable
places in Italy, says Higgins, very old paintings of Christ
may be seen in various situations, labelled with the words
in the middle of the painting, Deo Soli. These words, it is
evident, have two meanings—To God alone, and To the
God Sol. In most of them there are seen the attributes
of the latter, such as the Glory, &c. The former sense
is in no way applicable to Jesus, because, as one person
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of the Trinity, he cannot be called solus. These pictures,

with their two meanings, shew an example like the first
verse of Genesis, one for the priests, and one for the
people—the esoteric, and the exoteric religion. Anaca-
lypsis, page 325.
75. Tibullus has a full description of his person, in
which several strokes seem to be taken from celebrated
pictures, particularly the beautiful blush of a new married
bride. Spence thinks that in the old pictures of Apollo
there was a certain brightness beaming from his eyes, and
diffused all over his face, just as the principal figure is all
luminous in Corregio’s famous Nativity, and in Raphael’s
Transfiguration. He conjectures this from the poets
speaking so often of the brightness of Apollo’s face, and
the beaming splendour of his eyes. Stat. Achil. ii. 164.
So we read of Jesus: And he was transfigured before them
and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was
white as the light, M . xvii. 2. And as he prayed, the
fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment
was white and glistening. L ix. 29. Like Diana, he
is a hunter, and an archer. Those among the Greeks,
who sacrificed to him, made their libation of honey; but
brought no wine to his altars. The Egyptians painted
him as Am-On, with the horns of a Ram; because this
animal has its strength in the horns, as the sun has in its
rays: hence where the image of the Sun holds a goat or
bull by the horns, it symbolizes the solar strength, and
the superiority of intellectual to mere physical force. As
Apollo, says Nigidius, was called among the Greeks,
Θυραιος, or door-keeper, so was he also named Αγγιευς, or
guardian of the way. I have before pointed out the
references of the Ninth Messenger to this. See ante,
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page 628. A similar allusion was made to Diana, under

the name of Trivia, and both were often called Janus,
and Jana, from janua, a gate. Macrobius relates that
he was called ’Ιήἴος, between which, and the sacred Jewish
title of Ieue, there is hardly any difference. He was also
called Iao. Apollo, says Hyginus, was the first who
invented the art of relieving the blind. The same mythos
is connected with the Ninth Messenger. Matt. ix. 27,
Mark viii. 8, John ix., Mark x. 46. See also Job. xxix.
15, Psal. cxlvi. 8, Is. xxix. 18, xlii. 7.
76. In the apocryphal description of Jesus, feigned to
have been sent by Lentulus to the Roman senate, we
find some traces of the Phœbus Apollo. The hair of his
head, it says, is of the colour of wine, and from the top
of the head to the ears, straight and without radiance,
but it descends from the ears to the shoulder in shining
curls. From the shoulders the hair flows down the back,
divided into two portions, after the manner of the Naza-
renes; his forehead is clear and without wrinkle, his face
free from blemish, and slightly tinged with red; his beard
is abundant, the same colour as his hair and forked; his
eyes blue, and very brilliant. In reproving or censuring
he is awe-inspiring: in exhorting and teaching, his speech
is gentle and caressing. His countenance is marvelous
in seriousness and grace. He has never once been seen
to laugh: but many have seen him weep. In singular
contrast to this, was the delineation of Jesus by the
African doctors, who made him to be the impersonation
of all human ugliness: even Saint Cyril, of Alexandria,
said of him: ἀλλα το ἐιδος ἀυτου ἄτιμον ἔκλιπον παρα
παντας τους ὑιους των ανθρωπων ; but as to his form, it is
ugly beyond that of all the sons of men. De. Nud. Noe.
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ii. And Tertullian writes: Jesus Christ was mean in

aspect, and his human form not worthy to be gazed upon:
yet vulgar, ignoble, dishonoured as he is, he is still my
Christ. Equally repulsive was the aspect of the modern
deity, Paul. We read in Cave, that this man was low
and of little stature, and somewhat stooping. Lucian, in
the person of Trypho, one of his disciples, calls him, by
way of derision, the high-nosed, bald-pated Galilean, that
was caught up through the air unto the third heaven.
That he was very low and mean-looking, himself plainly
intimates, when he tells us they were wont to say of him,
that his bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemp-
tible, 2 Cor. x. 10, in which respect he is styled by Chry-
sostom a man three cubits, or a little more than four
feet high. Life of S. Paul. section 8.
77. Allalouia in the Hebrew ‫ הללו יה‬Hallelu-Jah, is
Praise ye Iah. It is the same as the Greek acclamation
Ελ-ελ-ευ-Ιη, with which they both began and ended their
Pæans, or hymns in honour of Apollo, who is thus identi-
fied with Jiv, Jov, and Jah in his Messianic character.
In the dances sacred to the Sun, which from the earliest
ages prevailed over what is called the pagan world, they
ran round a ring or circle to represent the annual motion
of the planets in their orbits, and at the same time turned
round as it were upon their axes (which is usual in all
dancing) to represent their diurnal motion. This may
seem whimsical, but can a better account of their dances
be given? Have we not some vestiges of this old religion
still remaining among us? When the Sun approached our
northern regions, did not the country people in England
keep up the same sort of custom, dancing in the manner
above described round a may-pole (or phallos), which,
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without doubt, is of very ancient standing? But a pas-

sage of Proclus in Chrestomathia, cited by Vossius, in
his Origin of Idolatry, ii. 368, will serve to prove that the
rites performed by the ancients were not without a deep
meaning, and will at the same time confirm the remark
above made. Nothing, he says, does so clearly prove
Apollo to be the Sun, as the Apollinarian rites. Proclus
describes those of Apollo Ismenius, and Galaxius. They
crown with laurels and various flowers a block of the olive
tree, on the top of which is placed a brazen sphere, from
which they hang several smaller spheres, and about the
middle of the block they fasten purple crowns, smaller
than that on the top; and the bottom of the block they
cover with a saffron or perhaps flame-coloured garment.
Their upper sphere denotes the Sun, by which they mean
Apollo; the next under it, the Moon; the appendant
spheres, the stars and planets; and the crowns, which are
365 in number, their annual course. This is a literal
translation of the passage, which appears a very curious
one, and upon which I shall leave the reader to make his
own remarks. I have already copied the quotation from
Malachi iv. 2. So profound in all things was the venera-
tion of the Hebrew Essenes, like that of our own Druids,
for the Sun as the representative of God, the Holy Spirit,
and the Messenger, that they declared that the doing of
anything indecent in the face of the Sun, is ὑβριζειν τὰς
ἀυγας το̑υ Θεο̑υ, to put an affront upon the bright beams
of God; and elsewhere, συμμιαναι το Θειον, to defile the
Deity.—J , De Bell Jud. ii. 12, iv. 22. Apollo,
from dispensing Panacea, medicine, and health, was called,
like Zeus, Σωτηρ, the Saviour, as Pausanias relates in his
Arcad., and as may be seen on many ancient coins. It is
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somewhat remarkable that the descriptive name by which

the Saxons called Jesus, was All-hael, that is all-health,
the direct import of panacea. Spon has given the print
of a monument where Diana is named Clatra. She is
there represented with Apollo; he there bears his lyre,
with the thunderbolts of Zeus; his head is encircled with
rays; the sun shines full over him. In a circle, Diana has
upon her head the crescent, a turret, a pine-apple or pom-
egranate, a serpent wreathed about her arm, as Hygeia, the
goddess of health, the sistrum of Isis, and the prow of a
ship;—all of these are symbols which the reader by this
time fully comprehends. In the Mysteries, the form of a
Bull was sometimes ascribed to Apollo, and sometimes
that of a Serpent with the head and hair of a man; and
during the celebration of the Bacchanalia, baskets filled
with fruit, and containing Serpents, were borne in proces-
sion by virgins of noble families, amid acclamations of Eu-
Oa, or rather Ieue, Ao, the names of God and the Holy
Spirit blended. Julius Firmic de Error, p. 52; Eurip.
Bacch. 1015; Orph. Hymn. xxix. (19). Bryant derives
Apollo from Ab-El-Ion, Pater-deus-sol, and it may also
mean Father-Sun-Yoni. Pausanias speaks of an altar to
the Sun, the Redeemer.
78. The mythologists further tell us that when Apollo
laid his harp upon a stone, but for a moment, the stone
became so melodious that if another stone were struck
against it, it sounded like a harp. This was the sun-stone.
Proclus observes in his small treatise, De Magia, The sun-
stone, by its golden rays, imitates those of the sun; but
the stone called the eye of heaven, or of the sun, has a
figure similar to the pupil of an eye, and a ray shines
from the middle of the pupil. Thus, too, the lunar stone,
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which has a figure similar to the moon when horned, by a

certain change of itself follows the lunar motion. And
the stone called Helioselenus, that is of the Sun and Moon,
(a covert allusion to the Naros) imitates after a manner
the conjunction of those luminaries, which it images by its
colour. There is therefore a mystic meaning in the old
mythos; it also symbolizes the divine melody which is
given forth by him who is truly touched and inspired by the
music of heaven; and his magnetic influence upon all whom
he approaches. Apollo was not himself capable of giving
answers in his Oracle; he gave only those which he received
from Jupiter. The meaning of this is clear. The Incarna-
tion does nothing of himself—all he preaches is from God.
My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.—J vii.
16. And again: I can of mine own self do nothing; as I
hear I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not
mine own will, but the will of the Father who hath sent
me.—J v. 30. The most ancient Apollo was fabled
to be the Son of the God of Fire; and when, as the Sun,
he embraced Venus or Beauty, the heaven rained gold,
and the earth clothed itself with roses and lilies. Pindar
in Olymp. From this union, androgynes, or male-virgins,
such as are in heaven, were born. [See A ,
section 44.] His son Æsculapius (a priest of his faith),
restores health to the sick, and recalls even the dead to
life: so Jesus said to his disciples, who, in the oriental
fashion, may be called his sons, Heal the sick, raise the
dead, cast out devils, &c., &c.—M . x. 8. He was
venerated in the form of a Serpent. The following may
seem far-fetched, yet to the Initiated it will present a
train of curious analogies. We know that a fish, and
sometimes a dolphin, was used in the primitive churches
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as a symbol of Jesus. Jesus finds among fishermen his

first priests, as Apollo does among the sailors. The my-
thos is as follows: Having chosen Crissa, a quiet seques-
tered spot beneath Parnassus as the site for his temple, he
goes in search for some who should be its priests. As he
stood on the lofty area of the temple, he cast his eyes over
the sea, and beheld, far south of the Peloponnese, a Cretan
ship sailing for Pylos. He plunged into the sea, and in
the form of a porpoise, sprang on board the ship. The
crew sat in terror and amazement; a south wind carried
the vessel rapidly along: in vain they sought to land at
Tænaron; she would not obey the helm. When they
came to the Bay of Crissa, a west wind sprang up and
speedily brought the ship into port; and the God, in the
form of a blazing star, left the vessel and descended into
his temple. Then, quick as thought, he came as a hand-
some youth, with long locks waving on his shoulders, and
accosted the strangers, inquiring who they were and
whence they came. To their question in return, of what
that place was to which they were come, he replies by
informing them who he is, and what his purpose was in
bringing them thither; he invites them to land, and says
that as he had met them in the form of a dolphin, they
should worship him as Apollo Delphinios, whence the
place should also derive its name. They now disembark.
The god, playing on his lyre, precedes them and leads
them to his temple, where they become his priests and
ministers, his “fishers of men.” I need not remind the
reader of the dolphin as being a prominent feature of the
Papal Church. It was a Messianic symbol in the Mys-
teries; and the above mythos is probably the parent of
the legend in John vi. The sophist Himerius thus epito-
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mizes one of his triumphal, Osiris-like progresses over the

earth, as given by the poet Alcæus; it is to be regretted
that the original is lost. The reader may compare it with
the progress of the Messiah, as described in the Apoca-
lypse, section 7. When Apollo, it says, was born, Zeus
adorned him with a golden head-band and lyre, and gave
him moreover a team of swans to drive. He then sent
him to Delphi [God’s mouth] and the streams of Castalia
[chaste Ia] to declare prophetically right and justice to
the Hellenes [El, the Sun and God ; Helene, the Holy
Spirit]. He ascended the car, and desired the swans to
fly also to the Hyperboreans. The Delphians, when they
perceived this, arranged a Pæan and song, and setting
choirs of youths around the tripod, they called on the god
to return to them from the Hyperboreans. Having given
laws for a whole year among these men, when the time
was come which he had appointed for the Delphic tripods
also to resound, he directed his swans to fly back from the
very Hyperboreans. It was then summer, and the very
middle of it, when Alcæus leads Apollo back from the
Hyperboreans, for when summer shines, and Apollo
journeys, the lyre itself whispers in a summer tone of the
god. The nightingales sing to him as the birds should
sing in Alcæus: the swallows and cicadas also sing: not
narrating their own fate, when among men, but tuning all
their melodies to the god. Castalia, too, flows with
poetic silver streams, and Cephissos [the Rock of Issa]
swells high and bright with his waves, emulating the
Enipeus of Homer; for, like Homer, Alcæus ventures to
make the very water capable of perceiving the access of
this divine being.
79. One or two other traits of this Messenger may be
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noticed. The Colossus of Rhodes, the mighty Lamp-

bearer, the Light of the World, the brazen Statue, seventy
cubits high, was an image of Apollo (Pliny Hist. Nat.
xxxiv. 7.) This gigantic lamp shed its light to an immense
distance over the waters; as it is said: Thy word is a
lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Ps. cxix.
105. And again, I have ordained a lamp for mine
Anointed, cxxxii. 17. Rhodes, whose name came from
ῥοδον, a Rose, was so called from the Holy Spirit, the
Rose of Heaven: it was like her, and the Holy City of
the Apocalypse throned amid Waters; and the first
inhabitants called themselves Heliades, or Children of the
Sun, or of God. All this was symbolic and apocalyptic.
So the pastures of the solar steeds were on the margin of
the Western ocean, where they have ambrosia for grass;
and Statius describes the Nereides as taking off their
harness. But the Nereides, or daughters of the Naros
were 50 in number, which multiplied by 12 makes 600;
so that at the end of the Naronic Cycle, the steeds of the
Messenger are unyoked; the cycle is completed; it is
like the sun that has declined into the west; and with
the new morning dawn, arises up the new Messenger of
the new-beginning cycle, who travels in the same splendid
path of light, and for the same number of years, when
his steeds also are unharnessed, and led to banquet on
ambrosial food.
Thus having said, his gardens all bedewed
With golden fires he enters, and his vale,
Which a strong-flaming stream surrounding pours
Abundant beams upon the watered grass,
On which the Sun’s steeds pasture. There he binds
With fragrant wreaths his locks, and the bright manes
And yellow reins of his wing-footed steeds.
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80. Apollo was represented with a glory of conical

rays about his head, not very unlike the crowns in the
pictures of our old kings. The reader by this time knows
why the cone was a sacred symbol, and what it signified.
The pine was consequently appropriated to virgins.
Chloe, in the pastorals of Longus, is adorned with a pinea
corona, as an emblem of virginity. So Virgil: pronuba
nec castos accendit pinus odores; and in Achilles Tatius
the virgins are said to come forth with their heads crowned
with pine leaves. Ovid, in his Fasti, calls the pine, pura
arbor. In D . xxii. 12, it is commanded: Thou shalt
make thee fringes upon the four quarters of thy vesture,
wherewith thou coverest thyself. Parkhurst thus explains
these fringes, as consisting of “cones or conical clusters,
growing bigger and bigger from the apex or point, like the
flowers of our horse chesnuts. It is spoken of the conical
flowers which the Jews were commanded to wear on the
four quarters of their garments. In the same place he
speaks of the pomegranates in the Temple (2 Chron. iii.
16), all of which hung with their eyes or flowers, facing
the opening of the crown.” Parkhurst adds some nonsense
about these symbolizing “the circumferential density of
the universal system;” but the reader, who has gone
thus far with me, will understand clearly what was
intended to be symbolized. If we examine the leaf of the
laurel we shall find none that so resembles these conical
rays as this: and therefore no tree was so proper to be
consecrated to the Sun, or in other words, so aptly repre-
sented that light which he is continually sending forth,
enlightening and enlivening this lower world. As the
Jews had a feast of tabernacles, so evergreens are made
symbols of the divinity of Jesus also; and at Christmas
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the churches are adorned with evergreens, typical of him

whose leaf never withers. Callimachus has a verse in
his Hymn to Apollo, which bears relation to one of the
features of the Messiah, mentioned in the Hebrew writings.
How hath the laurel shoot of Apollo heaved: how the
whole of the shrine—afar, afar be ye sinners. Now verily
doth Phœbus knock at the doors with beauteous foot.
See you not? The Delian palm has nodded in a pleasant
fashion on a sudden, and the swan sings sweetly on the
air. Now of your own accord fall back, ye bolts of the
doors, and of yourselves, ye bars. For no longer is the
god afar off. Make ready ye young men, for the song
and the choir. Not to everyone doth Apollo manifest him-
self, but to only the good. Whoso shall have seen him,
great is he. Small that man who hath not seen him.
We shall behold thee, O Far-darter, and shall be no more
of small account. Compare this with Psalm xxiv. Who
shall ascend unto the Hill of the Lord? or who shall stand
in his holy place? He who hath clean hands and a pure
heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor
sworn deceitfully. Lift up your heads, O ye Gates, and be
ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, that the King of Glory
may come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord
strong and mighty; the Lord mighty in battle. There is
a passage in Malachi iii., which applies to it as well.
Behold I will send my Messenger, and he shall prepare the
way before me; and Adonai, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come to his Temple, even the Messenger of the promise,
whom ye delight in. Again: How beautiful upon the
mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings,
that publisheth peace. Isaiah lii. 7. And Nahum i. 15.
Behold upon the mountains, the feet of him that bringeth
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good tidings. All this identifies the Messenger with the

Sun, whose feet are beautiful upon the mountains,
because out of them he first appears to rise. See Part I.,
pp. 75, 108. So, in the Indian theology, the conical
Mount Meru was the symbol of the Male: hence, says
Faber, it is esteemed the great masculine power whence
the whole world was produced. (Pag. Idol, i. 33 1.) A
careful consideration of this, will explain much that may
appear obscure in the creed of Hindostan.
Vulcan.
81. H , or Vulcan, is the son of Juno; and,
according to Cicero, the Son of Heaven. He is born lame,
that is imperfect, for he is only a Man, and fallible while on
earth; he is sent forth from Olympus, cast into the Waters,
and nursed by the Oceanis Eurynome (Far extending Law),
and the Nereis, Thebis; in the Indian legend he is brought
up by Apes, that is, Priests of Brahm; he dwells in a
cavern, like Zaratusht, Mohammed, and Jesus, in the
mountain oratory, fabricating beautiful things for nine
years; at length he comes forth, perfect in his art; and all
the arms and ornaments of the Olympians, or Children of
Heaven—nay, the celestial thunderbolts of God himself,
are the work of his hands. He makes invulnerable
armour for the heroic, like Achilles: brazen bulls that
breathe fire for Helios; the helmet of invisibility for
Hades; and the Great Neptunian trident; gold and silver
dogs, which guard the house of Alki-Nous; golden
maidens (vestal virgins) to wait on himself, and who are
endowed with reason and speech. He is surnamed the
Periclyte, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, Polymetis, and
Polyphron, as we read: His name shalt be called Wonder-
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ful, Counsellor, &c. &c. Is. ix. 6. He gave to Minos, the

brazen man Talos, who each day encompassed his island
three times, to guard it from the invasion of strangers. This
brazen-man is founded on the Apocalypse, section 65, where
we see him with a building line and a measuring rod. He
made the necklace of Hermione, a name which is
explained in the Commentary on the Apocalypse. The
golden winged Cup, in which the Sun-God and his horses
and chariot are carried round the earth every night; nay,
the Palace of the Sun itself was also the work of Vulcan,
and his men the mighty Cyclopes. (20.) All this fabri-
cation of beautiful works, is a plain symbol of what the
Divine Messenger, the son of the Artifex Mundi, and
himself a carpenter or artificer, accomplishes. He is
always associated with Pallas Athene; she and he are the
two communicators to men of the arts which embellish
life, and promote civilization. In the Isiac procession he
appeared as Horus, with the implements of art in his
hand. He carries a hammer (cruciform), like the mighty
hammer of Thor, which is also a Messianic name; and is
called Mulciber, from his humanizing qualities. Hence
also he is said to have married Aglaia, or Brightness, and
to have formed Pandora, or the Soul, a beautiful virgin,
to whom the Gods gave divine gifts; Pallas bestowing
wisdom; Hermes, eloquence; Apollo, music; Aphrodite,
beauty, &c. The sealed casket, which Pandora received
from God, and with which she descended to earth, is
the carnal body, which contains all evil, and would be
the receptacle of all unhappiness, did it not contain
Hope at the bottom. Vulcan was a profound adept in
divination by fire, and invented Pyromancy: in his
temple, at Rome, the greatest matters of state policy
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were alone discussed. In honour of Vulcan, and in

allusion to the Seven Golden Lamp-bearers of the
Apocalypse, section 2, the celebrated feasts called Lampa-
dophores, or flambeau-bearers, were instituted. Those
who contended in the race at those games, ran to the
end of the course with a lighted torch in the hand;
if they happened to extinguish it, they were driven from
the amphitheatre; and he who first touched the goal with
his torch lighted, gained the prize. This allusion was
significant of a soul lighted up by truth; if the flame is
extinguished, it is excluded from all hope of the crown
of victory; but if it bears it onward, burning to the end,
then does it receive its reward in heaven. Such an insti-
tution was appropriate, therefore, in honour of the fire-
sent Messiah. As a burning lamp, says Taylor, may be
considered a very proper image of our rational part, it
appears to me, that this custom of running from the
altar to the city with burning lamps, in which he alone
was victorious, whose lamp remained unextinguished in
the race, was intended to signify that he is the true
conqueror in the race of life, whose rational part is not
extinguished, or in other words, does not become dormant
in the career. Pausanias alludes to this religious game
thus: He who would gain this victory must keep his
torch burning; if he who runs first lets his torch go out
he gives place to the second, the second to the third, and
so on; but if all the torches go out, nobody gains the
victory, and the prize is reserved for another time. By
the Ninth Messenger it is divinely symbolized, under the
Parable of the Five wise, and the five foolish, Virgins,
M . xxv. Zaratusht, the Fifth Messenger of God, is
said to have been a Fire-worshipper; but fire really means
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light and truth. Offerings were offered to Vulcan and

Promethus (Bra-ma-tha-Issa) on the same altar. As
the lion was a solar and Messianic symbol, hence it was
consecrated to Vulcan. There is a remarkable triplet in
Tzetzes, relative to this Messenger.
’Ηφαιστος τις ’Αιγυπτιος ἐν χρονοις τοις του Νωε,
‘Ος Νωε, και Διονυσος, καὶ Οσιρις καλειται,
’Εφευρε πυρ, καὶ τεχνας, καὶ της εκ πυρος ὀποσας.
I here was, in the times of Noè, a certain Egyptian Hep-
hæstus, who is called Noè, and Dionysos and Osiris; he
found out fire, and the manufactures connected with fire.
The reader already knows that Noè, Nous, Ma-Nu, &c.,
were names for the Messenger; and this passage identifies
all four as one and the same.
Mars.
82. The conquering, or Cabiric Messiah, was personi-

fied as M , the God of War, whom Fear, Terror, and
Strife perpetually follow; but whose union with Aphro-
dite, or Divine Love, produces Harmonia, so called from
Hermon (A , section 8), or heavenly Order.
(Hesiod. Theog. 937.) Diodorus says that he was called
Belus, or the sun-like, and Woden or Odin, who is con-
fessedly Boodh, and a Messiah. In the Isiac procession
at Egypt, or the triumphal progress of the Holy Spirit,
Mars was represented as Horus, or the Incarnation,
equipped with helmet and buckler; and called Haritz, or
the formidable; which the Syrians softened into Hazis
the terrible in war; the Greeks into Ares; the Gauls
into Aezus, Hesus, and Jesus; and the Romans and
Sabines into Warets, or Mars. Note also that in the
Hebrew ‫ עריצ‬Oritz, means the Terrible; and ‫ ארצ‬aretz,
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means Earth; and that when he was thus joined in pro-

cession with the Holy Mother, it means the conjunction
of the divine and human power in the Messiah. By
others his name in Greek and Latin, Ares and Mars,
have been derived from the Hebrew ‫( או‬Aur), and
‫( מאור‬Maur) to shine as fire, and the receptacle of fire.
The Scythians, a brave and warlike race, venerated this
Messiah under the emblem of a sword, as Herodotus
relates; and Diodorus gives the following account of their
Divine Incarnation, who, they say, sprang from a Virgin
born out of the earth. She had the head and body of a
beautiful Woman, but from the waist downwards she was
a Serpent. Zeus fell in love with her, and had a son by
her called Scythes (a scythe), who having risen to great
renown, communicated his name to the whole nation of
Scythians. The ancient Romans worshipped Mars under
the emblem of a spear; so, says Varro, as quoted by Cle-
ment, of Alexandria: sometimes as a Lamb armed. This
Lamb, armed with the insignia of battle, appears among
some early Roman coins, which have been recently turned
out of a gravel pit at Stalbridge. The greater portion of
them bear the head of Constantine on the one side, and on
the other various characters, such as men clad in armour,
supporting a banner; a female on a shield; a Lamb with
a spear, and a variety of others, many of them being in an
excellent state of preservation. Some were of copper and
others of bronze, the latter being by far in the most perfect
state. So the Lamb of the Templars bare a cross; but
this was in reality, as we have already seen, not only an
emblem of Light, but also being both a Phallos and a
Yoni, it typified the Two Great Ones, God and the Holy
Spirit. This Lamb, however, was a Lamb of War, a
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Cabir; Julian, the Emperor, calls Mars, the forerunner of

the Sun; that is, a Messenger. The author of Hebrews,
in allusion to the Cabir, wrote: The Word of God is
quick and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword.
iv. 12. And Hosea says, Therefore have I mowed down
your prophets; I have slain them by the Words (Mes-
sengers) of my mouth, vi. 5, where, however, that writer
was mistaken; for God is in no way party to the acts of
his Cabir; even though he be His Word on earth. Ares
is said to have been twin born with Hebe; but Hebe
was a Messianic name and symbol. His intrigue with
Venus, or earthly carnal love, is detected by the Sun-
God, and he is exposed to laughter and disgrace—a very
plain warning to the Messenger to avoid all carnal affec-
tions. The Salii, who were his priests, were specially
appointed to watch the Ancile, or celestial shield, which
descended from heaven. This ancile, or palladium, is the
Apocalypse, and the eleven other Revelations resembling it,
which are the true buckler of the soul from all danger. It
was guarded as the most sacred treasure in his temple, where
it had been deposited by Numa, at the instance of Egeria.
Mars was in love with Rhœa—that is, the Holy Spirit—
the Rhœa Sylvia of the Romans, and the vestal mother
of their great Cabiric founder. It is remarkable, says
Bryant, that the worshippers of Wishnou, or Vistnou, in
India, are now called Petacares, and are distinguished by
three red lines on their foreheads. The priests of Brama
have the same title; Petac Arez means the priests of
Arez, or the Sun. Analysis of Mythology, i. 55. The three
red lines curiously indicate a knowledge among the Hin-
dus, that of the Twelve Messengers, three were to be
Cabirs; and thus they indicated the mystic secret. Mars
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was worshipped likewise as Persis (brightness; also Fire

of Issa), and Perseus, son of God, who was supposed to
have had a renewal of life. They therefore described
Perseus as inclosed in an ark, and exposed, in a state of
childhood, upon the waters, after having been conceived
in a Shower of Gold. See Apocalypse, section 7.
Bochart thinks that the name both of Persis and Per-
seus, was from ‫פרס‬, Phars, a Horse (or solar emblem),
because the Persians were celebrated horsemen, and took
great delight in that animal. Bryant considers, however,
that the name is so very ancient as to have been prior
to the use of horses. Paras, P’arez, and Perez, however
diversified, signify the Sun, and are of the same analogy
as P’ur, P’urrhos, P’aros, which betoken Fire. Every
animal, which was in any degree appropriated to a Deity,
was called by some sacred title. Hence a horse was
called P’arez, and the same name (ari), but without the
prefix, was given to a lion by many nations in the East.
It was at first only a mark of reference, and betokened a
solar animal; specifying the particular deity to whom it
was sacred. The Hermetic character of Mars is preserved
in the Saxon name for him—Hermon-Sul, or the Sun-
messenger. Ares, or ‫הרש‬, hrs, or Chrs, of the Hebrews,
means the Solar Fire. Horus, says Pluche, assumed the
casque and buckler, when levies or recruits were intended.
He was then called Harits, that is, the mighty, the for-
midable (violentes, Job xv. 20). The Syrians softened
this word and pronounced it Hazis. We find the same
word hazis or hesus, used to signify the terrible in
war. The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty
in battle. Ps. xxiv. 8. Others pronounced it without
aspiration, and said Ares; others with a very harsh
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and rough aspiration, and pronounced it Warets. This

figure of Horus in a warlike dress, became the god of
combats. He evidently is the Asis of the inhabitants
of Edesse, the Hezus of the Gauls, the Ares of the
Greeks, the Warts or Mars of the Sabines and Latins.
There was a mystic union between Ares and Neria, or
Neriene, which is involved in deep obscurity. It
related to the Naros. Aulus Gellius has a chapter upon
it, in which it is amusing to see how he flounders in
the deepest trifling and the wildest guessing, about what
was evidently a sealed volume, wholly undecipherable
by him. See Attic Nights, lib. xiii. cap. 22. In the
Northern Mythology, this Cabir is represented under the
name of Thor—the god of Thunders: hence Ar-Thor,
Pan-Thor. He dwells in the dense gloom of clouds, and
sends forth from time to time the gleaming lightning
from his hall. His other names and attributes, as well
as those of his attendants, bear allusion to the rapid
course of the thunderstorm, terrific sounds, pernicious
lightnings, together with the furious winds and deluging
rains which accompany them. His crushing hammer
denotes his lightning energy—with that he visits moun-
tains and oceans, and nothing withstands its might. It
is the implement of Mulciber. His strength is especially
expressed, as was that of Ares, by his belt; the crash of
thunder by his chariot. We often find Loke, or Fire, in
his train, and even as his handmaiden. Thor, I may
add, is described sometimes as an old man, though usually
as a tall, slender, comely, young man, with a red beard:
on his head there is a crown of twelve stars. (Steph
Notæ in Sax. p. 139.)
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Dionysos.
83. B , the god of wine, the god of n-Issa, Jeho-
vah-Nissi, (21) is a clear personification of the Messenger;
the most learned students of mythology identify him with
the Indian Seeva. He is the son of Zeus; his mother is
a mortal woman, and is also Sema-El, the splendour
and token of God, or the Rainbow; the Nymphs received
him from his father, and reared him in a fragrant
double-entranced cavern in the Vale of n-Issa, which
was said to be in Arabia. He was born, as others said,
at Thebè, by the flowing river Nile; at his birth his
lips were honey-tinged. Hippa nursed him. His birth
from the thigh of Jupiter is a symbolic allusion to the
Holy Mountain of Meru (μηρος, a thigh), near which he
was brought up; and Pliny says that Meru was the same
mountain as Nissi; it refers also to the Naronic name on
the thigh. Silenus undertook the care of his education,
and conceived such an attachment for him that he would
never afterwards leave him, but accompanied him in all
his expeditions. The wine with which this divinity is
filled symbolizes holy wisdom and religion; and Silenus,
as already shewn, was a name of the Holy Spirit, invented
by the priests for the express purpose of concealing from
the rabble the meaning which it inculcated on the ini-
tiated. That the vine and wine (22) mean truth is clear
from J ix. 13. And the Vine said unto them,
Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man?
We cannot for a moment suppose that the writer of this
meant anything but truth, which by Pythagoras is defined
to be the soul of God. We cannot suppose that God is
cheered by wine of any other sort. The Ninth Messenger
says: I am the true Vine, and my Father is the husband-
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man. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh

away; and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it,
that it may bring forth more fruit.—J xv. 1. And
again, And he took the cup and gave thanks, and said,
Take this and divide it among yourselves. For I say unto
you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the
Kingdom of God shall come.—L xii. 17. Jesus was
perpetually making these covert allusions, not only to the
Apocalypse, but to the most recondite ænigmas of the
Mysteries. As he did not begin to preach until he was
nearly 50 years old (John viii. 57), and he does not
appear in the New Testament from his twelfth year until
then, a period of nearly thirty-eight years; he passed the
interval in Egypt, and became an initiated Mystic or
Magus. See Part I., page 431. Thus we find the Mys-
teries plainly alluded to. And the disciples said unto him,
Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered
and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know
the Mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; but to them it is
not given.—M . xiii. 10. And he said unto them, Unto
you, it is given to know the Mystery of the kingdom of God:
but unto them that are without, all these things are done in
parables.—M iv. 11. And he said, Unto you it is giv-
en to know the Mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to
others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and
hearing they might not understand.—L viii. 10. Is
not the fable of the resurrection of Lazarus a coloured
description of a ceremony in the Mysteries which Jesus
taught the disciples, and which some fanatic afterwards re-
presented as a fact? When Bacchus grew up he was a
great traveller. The nymphs who fostered him were trans-
formed into shining stars. He taught Icarios the culture
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of the vine (true religion). Icarios [ichor, the blood of

the gods], having made wine, gave it to certain shepherds
who, thinking themselves poisoned, killed him—the fate
of all innovators upon established ignorance and super-
stition; but when they came to their senses, they buried
him, that is, did him honour after death. Dio-nysos was
once changed into the form of a lamb or kid. In statuary
he appears with the delicate lineaments of a virgin, rather
than those of a young man; and Orpheus expressly says
that he was of a double nature, male and female; his long
flowing hair, like that of Apollo and Jesus, is collected
behind his head, wreathed with ivy or a fillet. Sometimes
he is figured with horns, sometimes with the head of a
bull, at others he wears the pontifical mitre. Sophocles
calls him the Many-named; Pausanias relates that he was
called Saotas, or the Saviour : Psilaneus, or the Son of
Psila, the Holy Spirit. He is Bromios or Brahmas; Di-
thyrambos, or the Double-birth, one who had passed
through a double gate; Fire-born, Sabazios, or Sabaoth,
and the Law-Giver.
84. Bacchus also was called Liber or the Liberator,
because the truth shall make free.—J viii. 32. And
again, J viii. 36, If the Son shall make you free, ye
shall be free indeed. So, R viii. 2, The Spirit of
Life made me free from death. 1 C . xvii. 22, He that
is called in the Lord is made free. The name Liber for
Ba-chus, had also a mystical allusion to the Book in the
Apocalypse. He was called ϒΗΣ, which is the same as
ΙΗΣ, the name subsequently given to the Ninth Messen-
ger. Having collected an immense army both of men and
women, and satyrs (apes, i.e. Brahmins), he set out for the
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conquest of India. Instead of spears and shields, his

troops were armed with drums and thyrses. This inva-
sion spread universal terror, but the intention of Bacchus
being only to teach the cultivation of the vine (that is, to
spread religious knowledge) to the conquered nations, he
was everywhere received as a benignant deity. He
erected two great columns [founded two great churches]
near the Ganges. His Messianic character is expressed
in his surname of Nyctilios, or Sun of the Night—a
common oriental symbol of the Celestial Messenger. This
is the Sun and the Apocalyptic Vision, which Apuleius
says he saw gleam at midnight. See ante, page 317. It
means the Night-Epiphany of the Messenger, and the
Apocalypse which was unveiled before him. He is repre-
sented in a splendid chariot with Demeter, drawn by
Centaurs and Centauresses. His priestesses were called
Mænads, which is an allusion to the Moon, and Ad, and
Ada. In his great Arabian kingdom, he first instituted
religious rites and ceremonies; he penetrated the wilds of
Africa, and civilized its rude peoples. Certain sailors,
designing to destroy him, he metamorphosed himself into
a lion. Having reposed for three nights with Proserpine
(the Soul in the Invisible World; that is, descended into
Hell), he arose and ascended into Heaven with the
Nymphs, who danced and sang divine hymns. In another
form of the mythos it is distinctly stated that he died
and arose from the dead—the only instance of resurrec-
tion, except that of Osiris, which I remember, in old
mythology. Serpents were sacred to Dionysos; he was
the god of divination also. His everlasting youthfulness
and beauty are thus described by Ovid:—
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Tibi inconsumpta juventas

Tu puer æternus, tu formosissimus alto
Conspiceris cœlo, tibi cum sine cornibus adstas
Virgineum caput est.
Still dost thou enjoy
Unwasted youth, eternally a Boy;
Thou’rt seen in heaven, whom all perfections grace,
And when unhorned, thou hast a virgin’s face.
This is another allusion to the Male-Virgin. Tibullus
says—
Solis æterna est Phœbo, Bacchoque, juventas.
Phoebus and Bacchus only have eternal youth.
Their heads, says Spence, were so like, they could
hardly be known from one another, without some other
attribute, only in the best figures, Apollo’s face is the
more majestic and Bacchus’s the more charming. He is
called Bimater, because as symbolized in the double-gated
cave, he has two mothers—the Holy Spirit who conceives
and sends forth his Spirit, and the earthly mother who
conceives his Body. He is called also Daimon bonus,
which is a translation of the Egyptian name for the
Messiah, Agathodaimon. He is called Euius because
Jupiter said ἐυ ὐιε, well done, my son. This is my
beloved son in whom I am well pleased.—M . iii. 17.
When his priestesses struck the earth with their thyrsi
they caused rivers of wine, honey, and milk to flow. So
a land flowing with milk and honey is promised to the
Israelites. Josh. v. 6. Come, buy wine and milk without
money, says I , lv. 1. The mountains shall drop down
new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk. J iii. 18.
In his name the ancient phallic mysteries were celebrated,
and in his honour, as well as that of Diana, the procession
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called Kanephoria, or the Reed-bearing, which has sever-

al secret meanings. [See A , section 66]. In
this young virgins carried the mysteries in golden chests.
He was often figured as a Child attended by a Serpent;
and when adored was hailed with cries and hallelujahs;
hu Esh, thou art the Fire; etta Esh, thou art the Life;
Io Nissi, Lord be my guide. Hence, it is plain, says
Bell’s Pantheon, that no real Bacchus ever existed, but
that he was only a mask or figure of some concealed truth.
Note here, that Dionysus, both in Arabic and Greek,
signifies the Lord or God of Nysa. For, according to
Monsieur Formont, Dio in Arabic signifies lord, and
therefore Dionysus properly signifies, according to that
interpretation, the Lord of Nysa. And in Greek the
word Δ̑ιος signifies the same as the word Divus among
the Latins, that is a divine person, and so by way of
eminence is put for Jupiter; and therefore Dionysus is
plainly, according to this interpretation, derived from a
composition of the two words Δ̑ιος and Νυ̑σης, i.e. the
God of Nysa. And some have said that it is the same as
the God of Isa, Isis, and Issa. The panther’s robe, in
which he usually appeared clothed, is well known; it was
the same as the Coat of Stars, which the Messianic Al-
Kidi wears. He was said also to ride in a chariot drawn
by panthers—divine emblems. Like Adam, he is said to
have first taught agriculture to mankind. Pomaque non
notis legit arboribus, and plucked apples from unknown
trees. Tibullus, Eleg. i. Bacchus having been the son
of a mortal, was not originally a god, but was at
length enrolled among the Celestials, in consequence of
his deeds on earth. Horace alludes to this in his Epistles,
lib. ii.
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Romulus et Liber Pater, et cum Castore Pollux,

Post ingentia facta, Deorum in templa recepti,
Dum terras hominumque colunt genus; aspera bella
Componunt, agros assignant, oppida condunt.
The reader should be reminded that the cavern in
which Bacchus was educated, in the Nissæan mountains,
was called Neros, and it was consecrated to Zeus. This
curious fact is preserved by Natalis Comes, lib. vi.
85. Dyonisos, while yet in his youth, was snatched
away by the Titans, and torn in pieces, and his members
first boiled and then roasted. Zeus hurled his thunder
at the Titans, and from their ashes, as from the blood of a
martyr, sprang the present race of mankind. But Dio-
nysos rose from the dead, and in his resurrection was
restored to all his pristine beauty. This was a counter-
part of the Egyptian mythos of Osiris surprised by
Typhon, torn to pieces and scattered over the earth. Isis
collects the remains, encloses them in an argha, and the
resurrection of Osiris takes place. The mythos of the
Christian and Adonic resurrection is connected with and
founded on these symbolic legends.
86. There are few characters, says Bryant, which at
first sight appear more distinct than those of Apollo and
Bacchus; yet the department which is generally appro-
priated to Apollo, as the Sun, I mean the conduct of the
year, is by Virgil given to Bacchus or Liber. He joins
him with Ceres, and calls them both the bright luminaries
of the world.
Vos, O clarissima Mundi
Lumina, labentem Cœlo qui ducitis annum,
Liber et Alma Ceres.
Quidam ipsum Solem ipsum Apollinem, ipsum Dionysium
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eundem esse volunt. (Scholia in Horat. ii., Od. 19). Hence

we find that Bacchus is the Sun, or Apollo; though
supposed generally to have been a very different person-
age. In reality they are all three the same; each of them
the Sun. He was the Deity of the world; he was in
Thrace esteemed and worshipped as Bacchus or Liber—
the god of Sabaoth. In Thracia Solem Liberum haberi
quem illi S nuncupantes magna religione cele-
brant: eique Deo in colle Zemisso aedes dicata est specie
rotunda. In short, all the Gods were one, as we learn
from the same Orphic poety.
Εις Ζευς, ἑις Αὶδης, ἑις ‘Ηλιος, ἑις Διονυσος
‘Εις θεος ἐν παντεσσι.
Zeus, Haides, Helios, Dionysos are one—one divine
person in all. Ancient Mythology, i. 384.
87. The history of Dionusus, he adds, is closely con-
nected with that of Bacchus, though they were supposed
to be two distinct persons. It is said of the former that
he was born at Nusa in Arabia: but the people upon the
Indus insisted that he was a native of their country, and
that the city Nusa, near Mount Meru was the true place
of his birth. There were, however, some among them,
who allowed that he came into their parts from the West,
and that his arrival was in the most ancient times. He
taught the nations whither he came to build and to plant,
and to enter into societies. To effect this he collected
the various families out of the villages in which they
dwelt and made them incorporate in towns and cities,
which he built in the most commodious situations. After
they were thus established, he gave them laws, and in-
structed them in the worship of the Gods. He also
taught them to plant the Vine and to extract the juice of
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the grape, together with much other salutary knowledge.

This he did throughout all his travels till he had conquered
every region in the East. Nor was it in these parts only
that he showed himself so beneficial a conqueror, but over
all the habitable world. The account given by the Egyp-
tians is consonant to that of the Indians, only they sup-
pose him to have been of their own country, and to have
set out by the way of Arabia and the Red Sea, till he
arrived at the extremities of the East. He travelled
also into Lybia quite to the Atlantic, of which per-
formance Thymaetes is said to have given an account in
an ancient Phrygian poem. After his Indian expedition,
which took him up three years, he passed from Asia by
the Hellespont into Thrace, where Lycurgus withstood
him, and at last put him to flight. He came into Greece,
and was there adopted by the people, and represented as
a native of their country. He visited many places upon
the Mediterranean, especially Campania and the Coast of
Italy, where he was taken prisoner by the Hetrurian
pirates. Others say that he conquered all Hetruria. He
had many attendants, among whom were the Tityri, Satyri,
Thyades, and Amazons. All this means colonizations, and
the founding of the true Church in various countries by the
priests of the Messenger-Pontiff. Bacchus was also called
Psila, or the Wings, in commemoration of his mother the
Holy Spirit. Pausanias, Laconics xiv. There were cer-
tain Sacred Writings of one Bakis, who was called a
Prophet; they were probably Targums or commentaries
on the Apocalypse by one of the Dyonisiac high priests.
Pausanias says that Bakis was inspired by a Nymph
[the Holy Spirit.] His writings were called Oracles.
Herodotus cites from them.
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88. His flight, says Bryant, styled φυγη Διονυσου, was

particularly recorded. [So we have one or two flights of
Jesus. Mat. xiv. 13. Mark. vi. 31. Luke iv. 30.] He
was the same as Osiris, and many of the later mythologists
acknowledged this truth. The Egyptians, says Diodorus,
maintain that their God Osiris is no other than the Dio-
nusus of Greece: and they farther mention that he
travelled over the face of the whole earth. In like manner
the Indi assure us that it is the same Deity who was con-
versant in their country. Dionusus, according to the
Grecian mythology, is represented as having been twice
born: and is said to have had two fathers and two mothers.
He was also exposed in an ark and wonderfully preserved.
From what has been said we may perceive that the same
history has been appropriated to different personages: and
if we look farther into the annals of the first ages, we
shall find more instances to the same purpose. It is said
of Cronus and Astarte (Time and the Moon, God and the
Spirit) that they went over the whole earth, disposing of
the countries at their pleasure, and doing good wherever
they came. Cronus, in consequence of it, is represented
as an universal benefactor, who reclaimed men from their
savage way of life, and taught them to pass their days in in-
nocence and truth. A like account is given of Ouranus, Ur-
Enosh, or Enoch, the great King of the Atlantians, who
observing mankind in an unsettled and barbarous state,
set about building cities for their reception, and rendered
them more humane and civilized by his institutions and
laws. His influence was very extensive; as he is supposed
to have had the greater part of the world under his rule.
All this, and what was above done by Cronus and Astarte
the Grecians attributed to Apollo and Themis. Strabo
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mentions from the historian Ephorus, that the Oracle at

Delphi was founded by these two deities, at the time
when Apollo was going over the world, doing good to all
mankind. He taught the nations where he came to be
more gentle and humane in their manners, and to abstain
from their wild fruits and foul banquets, affording them
instructions how to improve themselves by cultivation.
Some of these persons are mentioned as proceeding in a
pacific manner; but their peregrinations in general are
represented as a process of war; and all that was effected
was supposed to have been by conquest. Thus Osiris,
Hercules, Perseus, Dionusus, displayed their benevolence,
sword in hand, and laid every country under an obligation
to the limits of the earth. The like is said of Zeuth, the
Zeus of Greece, who was an universal conqueror and bene-
factor. Zeuth seems an analogue of Egyptian Teuth or
Thoth, the Sixth Messenger of God. Jesus, alluding to
the progress of the Messenger of Truth, uses the same
symbolic language of conquest. But when ye shall hear of
wars and commotions, be not terrified, for these things
must first come to pass. Nation shall rise against nation,
and kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes
shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences, and
fearful sights, and great signs shall there be from heaven.
—L xxi.
89. The solar origin of this Messenger is shown in the
Maronæan medal, where he is represented seated on a
celestial globe, adorned with stars, and in his hands arrows
which symbolize the sun’s rays and language; the secrecy
of his worship and the hallowed mystery in which his
emblems laid up in the ark, were hidden, are proved by a
story which Pausanias relates. The Greeks after the siege
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of Troy, having divided the spoils, Erypilus had in his

lot a coffer wherein was a statue of Bacchus, carved by
the hand of Vulcan, which Jupiter had given to Dardanus.
But Erypilus having opened the coffer, and cast his eyes
upon the statue, became delirious. Compare this with
Exodus xxv. 16. And thou shalt put into the ark the
testimony which I shall give thee; and with the punish-
ments which befel the Israelites, 1 Sam. vi. 19, and
Uzziah, 1 Chron. xiii. 9, after which no one can question
the identity of the Bacchic with the Mosaic ark. Some,
says Diodorus, think that Osiris is Serapis; others that
he is Dionusus; others still that he is Pluto: many take
him for Zeus or Jupiter, and not a few for Pan. This
was an unnecessary embarrassment, says Bryant, for they
were all titles of the same God, there being originally by
no means that diversity which is imagined, as Sir John
Marsham has very justly observed. It is said above, that
by some Osiris is thought to be Jupiter, and by others to
be Pluto; but Pluto, among the best theologists, was
esteemed the same as Jupiter, and indeed the same as
Proserpine, Ceres, Hermes, Apollo, and every other deity.
There were, to be sure, a number of strange attributes
which by some of the poets were delegated to different
personages; but there were other writers who went deeper
in their researches, and made them all centre in one.
They sometimes represented this sovereign deity as Dio-
nusus, who, according to Ausonius was worshipped in
various parts under different titles, and comprehended all
the gods under one character.
Ogygia me Bacchum vocat;
Osyrin Ægyptus putat;
Mysi Phanacem nominant;
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Dionyson Indi existimant;

Romana Sacra Liberum;
Arabica Gens Adoneum;
Lucanianus Pantheon.
Sometimes the supremacy was given to Pan, who was
esteemed lord of all the elements.
90. The founder of the Peruvian nation was called Bo-
chica; he was the son and emblem of the Sun. The form of
government, says Humboldt, given by Bochica to the inha-
bitants of Bogota is very remarkable from its analogy with
those of Japan and Tibet. The Incas of Peru united in their
person, the temporal and spiritual powers: the children of
the Sun were both priests and kings. The Pontiffs or
Lamas, the successors of Bochica, were considered as heirs
of his virtue and sanctity. Researches ii. 109. This Bo-
chica is Bacchus (a Messianic name); and the analogy of
his system to that of Tibet, simply commemorates the
one Pontifical Empire of the First and Second Messengers,
which was universally preached and established over the
whole earth before the deluge of Atlantis. And as the
colonizing priests or hierarchs assumed the name of the
parent church; hence we find in after ages, the titles of
the founders of nations given to the Messengers, who had
in fact only sent colonies thither from the parent land.
91. Bacchus was called Lampter, or the Diffuser of
Light. So Jesus said: I am the Light of the world: he
that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life. J viii. Yet a little while is the Light
with you; walk while ye have the Light, lest darkness come
upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not
whither he goeth. While ye have Light believe in the light.
I am come a Light unto the world, that whosoever believeth
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in me should not abide in darkness. J ix. Higgins

has pointed out some curious resemblances. Herodotus
says that Bacchus was an Egyptian, brought up in Arabia
Felix. The Orphic verses relate that he was preserved
from the waters in a little box or chest, and that he was
called Misem in commemoration of this event: that he
was instructed in all the Secrets of the Gods, and that
he had a rod which he changed into a serpent at his plea-
sure; that he passed through the Red Sea dry shod, as
Hercules subsequently did in his goblet through the
straits of Abila and Calpe: and that when he went into
India, he and his army enjoyed the light of the sun during
the night, as Apuleius relates, appeared in the Mysteries:
moreover it is said that he touched with his magic rod
the waters of the great rivers Orontes and Hydaspes, upon
which these waters flowed back and left him a free pas-
sage. It is even said that he arrested the course of the
sun and moon; he wrote his laws on two tables of stone;
he was anciently represented with horns or rays on his
head. Anacalypsis ii. 19.
92. Bacchus was surnamed Cressius, and Crestius, and
Lenæus, in allusion to the wine press mentioned in the
Apocalypse, section 51. He was also called Sycites, or
Syceates, the fig-gatherer; so we read of the barren fig-
tree, which because it was barren Jesus cursed. M
xi. A singular allusion is made to this tree in Luke xxi.
29. He was called, like Apollo, Pateræus, as emanating
from the Patera or Cup (the Holy Spirit,) and Sabazion,
which is in allusion to the Sabbath, to the hosts which
believe in him, and the veneration which his Messianic
character inspires. He was also called Hyes, which is
another form of Iao, I heal. But this Iao or Iaso, which
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is the same as Jesus, is said by Pliny to have been a

daughter of Æsculapius, the health-giver. It is strange
that we should so often find this name in union with
Pagan tradition: and with tradition that advances so far
into deep antiquity. Bacchus was also surnamed εμβα-
σιος and εκβασιος, which Lilius Gyraldus says was in
allusion to his embarking and disembarking from boats.
The reader will note how frequently this is related of the
Ninth Messenger.
93. Bacchus was sometimes represented naked, some-
times covered with a panther’s skin [the starry heaven],
and sometimes he was represented as sitting on the shoul-
ders of Pan, or in the arms of Silenus, like Jesus in the
arms of Mary. The panther’s skin denoted also that he
was under the peculiar protection of God, his Father, the
Great Panther of the Universe, the starry-vested One.
Diodorus and Plutarch relate that he descended into Hell,
for the purpose of bringing back Semele’s spirit; but if I
am right in deducing this name from the “brightness of
God,” it would mean spirits collectively—in other words,
the souls that are in the Invisible, and for whose amend-
ment the Messenger appears. Every soul, however fallen
or debased, is still a part of the “brightness of God.” In
the history of Dionusus we have continual references to
the hieroglyphic of the Crescent and the Bull. He was
called δικερως and βουκερως: and in the Orphic hymns
he is described as having the countenance of a Bull.
Ελθε, μακαρ Διονυσε πυρισπορε, ταυρομετωπε, Come, bles-
sed Dionusus, begot in fire, bull-faced. There is an invo-
cation of him equally remarkable in another hymn. I
call Bacchus, the loudly-sounding, the divine, the first born
double birthed, and three-fold, presiding over the country,
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ineffable, concealed, two horned, and of double form, crowned

with ivy, bull-faced. He was also represented in the shape of
a Bull by some of his votaries. He was called the off-
spring of a Bull by the people of Argos, who used to
invoke him as a resident of the sea, and entreat him to
come out of the Waters. Ovid celebrates him thus :
Thuraque dant, Bacchumque vocant, Bromiumque,

Ignigenamque, satumque iterum, solumque bimatrem,
Additur his Nyseus, indetonsusque Thyoneus,
Et cum Lenæo genialis consitor uvæ.
Nycteliusque, Eleleusque parens, et Iacchus et Evan,
Et quæ præterea per Graias plurima gentes
Nomina, Liber, habes.—Metam. iv. 1.
Incense they burn, and, Bacchus, thee adore,

Or lovest thou Nissi or Lenæus more?
O doubly got, O doubly born, they sung,
Thou, mighty Bromius, hail, from lightning sprung.
Hail, Thyon, Ele-leus, each name is thine;
Or listen, parent of the genial vine.
Iacchus, Evan, loudly they repeat,
And not one Grecian attribute forget, &c.
Bacchus was also called Attes, according to the Rhodian

oracle.
Magnum Atten placate Deum qui castus Adonis,

Evius est largitor opum, pulcher Dionysus.
What the proper import of this name was the Grecians

knew not. So Eustath, Odys. 592, says: It is not for us to
find out the origin of Atta, neither has it any interpreta-
tion. But what they knew not, the Hebrews well un-
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derstood. For (says Sandford, de descensu Christi, 1. s. 15.)

Atta, as all know, is the same with the Hebrew ‫אתה‬,
Atta, Thou: which the Scripture oft applies to God, as
Ps. xc. 1. Thou Lord. Whence also the Grecians added
to Attes, Hues. So Demosthenes, Hues attes, attes
Hues. This Hues, Sandford makes to be the same with
Jehovah; and so Attes Hues to be no other than ‫אתה יהיה‬,
Atta Ieve, Thou Lord, which often occurs in the
Psalms of David; and was thence traduced by the
Grecians and applied to their idol Bacchus. See this
name Attis mentioned ante, pp. 116, 608.
94. This Messiah was sometimes called Janus Quad-
rifrons, or the four-faced, from the four quarters of the
earth, which his Laws were to reach and to enlighten. It
is the image which was found in the Temple at Falisci,
the most ancient of the Hetrurian cities. Servius on
Æneid vii. This Janus was depicted holding a staff in
his left hand, with which he appears to strike a rock and
to cause water to flow from it. In sinistrâ habebat (Ja-
nus) baculum, quo saxum percutere, et ex illo aquam pro
-ducer videbatur. Albrici Philophi de Deor Imag. Cap.
14. So Moses is depicted with a similar rod or staff.
Bacchus was also called Iunonius, or the Son of the Holy
Spirit. Twelve altars were always represented near his
images; and there were twelve small chapels within his
sacred houses. Those who are unable to reconcile the
remarkable features of an Incarnation which this deity
uniformly presents, are obliged to say that Bacchus is but
another name for Moses; and Pomey, who seems to have
utterly yielded his reason to the talmudical madness of
Bochart on this subject, argues the matter nearly as fol-
lows. For first, he says, some feign that he was born in
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Egypt, and presently shut up in an ark, and thrown upon

the waters as Moses was. 2. The surname of Διμητωρ,
or Bimater, which belongs to Bacchus [son of Demeter, or
Ceres] may be ascribed to Moses, who besides his mother
by nature had another by adoption, King Pharoah’s
daughter. [But Pharaoh means the Sun, and the Daugh-
ter of the Sun, or God, is the Holy Spirit]. 3. They
were both handsome men, brought up in Arabia, good
soldiers, and had women in their armies. Orpheus calls
Bacchus directly Μωση and Θεσμοφορον, the legislator,
and farther attributes to him διπλαχα θεσμον, the two
tables of the Law. 5. Besides Bacchus was called Bicor-
nis, and accordingly the face of Moses appeared double-
horned, when he came down from the mountain where he
had spoken to God; the rays of glory that darted from
his brow, resembling the sprouting out of horns. 6. As
snakes were sacrificed and a dog given to Bacchus as a
companion, so Moses had his Caleb, which in Hebrew
signifies a dog. 7. And as the Bacchæ brought water
from a rock by striking it with a thysrus, and the
country wherein they came flowed with milk, wine, and
honey, so the land of Canaan, into which Moses con-
ducted the Israelites not only flowed with milk and
honey, but with wine also, as appears from that noble
bunch of grapes which two men carried upon a staff be-
twixt them. Numb. 13. 8. Bacchus dried up the rivers
Orontes and Hydaspes by striking them with his thyrsus
and passed through them as Moses passed through the
Red Sea. 9. Tis said also that a little ivy stick thrown
down by one of the Bacchæ on the ground crept like a
dragon and twisted itself about an oak; and 10. That the
Indians once were all covered with darkness, while those
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Bacchæ enjoyed a perfect day,—from whence you may

collect that the ancient inventors of fables have borrowed
many things from the Holy Scriptures. There is another
Grecian fable, says Gale, in his Court of the Gentiles, of
Bacchus being angry with the Athenians because they
dishonoured his sacred rites, neither received they them
with that solemnity, when they were first brought from
Bœotia unto Attica by Pegasus: wherefore he afflicted
them with a grievous disease in the privy parts, from
which they could find no remedy; until, being admonished
by the Oracle, they yielded themselves more obsequious
to the God, and erected a phallos for his honour. An egg
is not more like unto an egg, says Bochart, than this
comment to the history of the Philistines, who, when God
brought upon them the hæmorrhoides, for their unworthy
treatment given the Ark, upon consulting their oracle,
were answered, that they could not be otherwise cured
than by consecrating golden images of the hæmorrhoides
to God, which accordingly they did. 1 Sam. v. 9. 1
Sam. vi. 4, 5.
95. Abbe Tressan points out the same resemblances.
Many learned, he says, are of opinion that the Bacchus of
the poets is no other than Moses. They find so great a
resemblance between them, that we think it necessary to
give their reasons for imagining them the same, without
pretending, however, to offer anything positive upon the
subject. Both are represented as having been born in
Egypt, and exposed upon the Nile: the name of Moses,
and that of Musas, given to Bacchus by Orpheus, both
express that they were saved from the water. Bacchus
was brought up in Arabia, on a mountain called Nysa;
it was in the same country that Moses passed forty years.
GG
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Bacchus, when cruelly persecuted, retired to the borders

of the Red Sea; Moses to deliver the Hebrew people
from the oppression of the Egyptians, crossed the Red
Sea. The numerous army of Bacchus, composed of men
and women, passed through Arabia in their way to the
conquest of India. The army of the Jewish legislator,
composed of men, women, and children, were obliged long
to wander in the desert before they arrived in Palestine,
which, as well as India, belongs to the continent of Asia.
The fable frequently represents Bacchus with horns;
which may be supposed to allude to the two rays of light
which shone on the forehead of Moses. Bacchus was
brought up on Mount Nisa; Moses received the tables of
the Law on Mount Sina: by the transposition of a single
letter these two names become exactly alike. Bacchus,
armed with his thyrsus, defeated the giants; Moses
fought the giants, descended from Enoch, and a rod is the
instrument of his miracles. Jupiter sent Iris to order
Bacchus into India to destroy a sinful nation; God com-
manded Moses into Palestine to exterminate an idolatrous
people. The god Pan gave Bacchus a dog to accompany
him in his travels; Caleb, which in the Hebrew signifies
a dog, was the faithful companion of Moses. Bacchus, by
striking the earth with his thyrsus, produced rivers of
wine; Moses, by striking the rock with his miraculous
rod, caused fountains of water to gush from it. He then
absurdly adds: This parallel agrees too perfectly not to
induce us to believe that the fable of Bacchus is a dis-
figured tradition of the history of Moses—though, why
all antiquity should conspire to caricature Moses into
Bacchus, the Abbè does not condescend to tell us. The
truth of the matter is, that nearly all the adventures of-
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Moses are imaginary; the records of his life and his

writings having perished, the Yadoo, Oudean, or Jewish
priests, who fabricated them anew, and who were aware
that Indian Bacchus was an emblem of the Messenger of
God, borrowed from the poetic legends, which in course
of years had clustered round his career, such as seemed
most consonant with their notions and traditions of what
Moses had actually been and done; and hence the resem-
blance is naturally explained, without resorting to the
wild idea, that history, poetry, rocks, monuments, temples,
and images of the most remote antiquity, thousands of
years indeed before the days of Moses, have all been
altered to introduce into them, for no apparent purpose,
the leading features in the career of a man unknown and
unalluded to by any but the Jews themselves? It is
the same species of insanity in some, and hypocritical
knavery in others, which made so many theologians say
of the resemblances between Paganism and Paulism, that
the Devil had done it all!
96. If the reader, who has gone thus far, will only
carefully compare all the various features of the Supreme
God, the Holy Spirit, and the Incarnation, with those
that are developed in the Apocalypse, and note also how
wonderfully they all form parts as it were of one whole,
he will discover a body of evidence of the truth of all
laid down in this Essay, which cannot fail to bring his
mind irresistibly to the conclusion to which I seek to lead
it; and I would respectfully commend to him at the same
time to ponder well the following words of the eminent Ger-
man historian, Muller, who declares that True philosophy
does not consist of disbelief, or in destroying or ridiculing
the belief, and sayings of our ancestors, but rather in finding
GG2
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out stronger arguments, for believing and maintaining that

truth, which has been believed through ages by our ancestors,
and to believe it more clearly, more warmly, and more
practically. Of one thing he may also be well assured,
that Paganism, even its most evil form, past or present,
never produced more Satanic horrors among its professors,
than the hell-spawned creed of Paulism (23.) And so
I send this Book among mankind, with the most fervent
prayer for all who shall honestly receive and read it; and
for the epiphany to their souls of the HOLY LIGHT OF
HEAVEN, which it unveils.
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INVOCATION OF THE SUPREME.
O G , All-Wise, All-Perfect, and All-Beautiful, how

long, how long, shall this thine earth be given as a prey
to wickedness and atheism? I take my stand amid the
stars, and view this planet rolling splendidly amid the
purple vast; I see it lightened by thy Sun, and silvered
in the night by thy beaming Moon, and lands and rolling
seas glitter in their loveliness: yet over its vast bosom
I behold only error, and all the manifold and fearful evils
that are the poison-fruit of ignorance and sin. I look unto
the East, the cradle of thine earliest Messengers, and I
see but darkness, superstition, and debasement: thy
temples fallen; thy fanes prostrate; thine altars heaps of
ruin. The majesty which thou hast impressed upon
ocean, river, and mountain; upon mighty gorge and
boundless forest, has failed to awaken amid the masses,
any true conception of Thine Infinite, All-Mighty, and
Eternal Nature. They have been schooled and sedulously
moulded into the most poor conceptions of thine ineffable
attributes; They have been degraded from the dignity of
men into machines, and are but slaves and puppets of a
mercenary priesthood. And misery reigns where happi-
ness should dwell; and they murmur against Thee, when
they should bewail only their own sottishness.
I turn my eyes unto the vast North, far extending with

its steppes, its deserts, its rocky ranges, and its solemn
woods: scenes of sublimity that might raise even in the
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dead great conceptions of God; peopled by races of most

rare sagacity; blessed with all than can make life agree-
able, or fill the soul with august emotion. I look, and
lo! I see it barbarized and crouching. The starry spheres
that give it light from heaven, glow and blaze with a lustre
almost supernatural: yet that lustre kindles not their
understanding to a due comprehension of the Mighty
One who made those stars, and of whose radiant beauty
the brightest constellation gives but a faint glimmer.
They regard Thee as a Being with the qualities of a mere
man; they are lost in ignorance of thy true nature; they
have bound themselves hand and foot to the most paltry
corruptions. And there also wickedness prevails; and
the sunshine of the soul is unfelt.
And so unto the South I turn mine eyes, wearied

already with the desolation on which they have looked.
Everywhere I see beauty, warmth, life, youthfulness, and
luxuriance; everywhere but in the heart and soul of the
grovelling multitude. For in their minds they know
Thee not; they are the slaves of passion; the servants of
folly: obedient beasts of burden to the Church. In all
that should distinguish them from the wild dwellers in
the cave or woodland, they are utterly deficient; reason
sleeps; knowledge is despised; so the eye is pleased, or
the fancy flattered, they care not if the soul perish. And
to this pass they have been brought, because Thou, O
Holy One, art unknown among them; thy laws, thy
truths, thy teachings are a sealed volume; and priests
have fettered that they may use them as their fools. And
so they live in discontent and trouble, as all who know
Thee not, must ever live.
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And now unto the West I look, and O thou West, how
sad is thine estate. Thou, that dost hold thyself up as
a model to the whole earth, art lost, degraded, and
bondaged with the same iron as that which doth enchain
thy fellows. Thou art overrun with poverty; thou art
maddened with a thirst for gold; thou gloatest in
thy lustfulness; thou art a wild beast in thy bloody
nature. Professing to believe in a God of Peace, a
Divinity of Benign Paternal Love, thou hast
for centuries wrapped the earth in gore and ruin;
the very heavens spit upon thee for thine hypocrisies.
Who and what is the God that thou adorest? Oh!
how different from the Mighty One of Ages. Where and
whence is the Creed that thou professest? It cometh out
of Hell, and unto Hell hath it gone back. Verily, O
West, my soul weepeth over thee; and as a bird would
I gather thee underneath my wings: but thou art deaf
and dost not hear: and thou art blind and dost not see: and
proud and wilt not learn; and lo! thou shalt be engulphed;
and the want and woe, and leprosy of lust and cove-
tousness that now encompass thee, shall bear thee with
them to the pit, where thou and they shall sink for ever.
Thy priests shall save thee not; nor thy swollen pontiffs;
One only can give thee help: and to H I counsel thee
to fly ere it be yet too late: but thou must seek Him in
the Light, and not in hoary darkness. His voice pro-
claims to thee salvation: Thou shalt find it in his Books
of Truth. Come thou, then, O West! O North! O
South! O East! come thou unto Him and thou shalt
learn to know the One, the True, the All-Shining, whose
creed is not for few but for all, whose religion is not of a
province but of the universe, whose law is for creation
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itself, in all its orders, from the least to the most high.
And when ye each and all shall have learned Him, and
known his wondrous wisdom and perfectness, and sought
to walk in the way which He points out, then and only
then shall ye indeed be worthy to call yourselves His
children, and be blest both here and in the future.
Grant, O Heavenly Father, that this auspicious hour

may not be long delayed; but that all may soon return
unto the One Fold, under the One Divine Shepherd of
the Universe—even Thee, the First and the Last. Amen !
Amen !
OB O ! enkindle in the hearts and souls of

all those who worthily peruse these volumes an ardent
desire to become proselytes of thy Truth, so that, reject-
ing olden errors from their creed, they may assume the
sword and shield of thy religion, and enrol themselves
together under thy banner. May they awaken unto the
brilliant splendours of thy LIGHT: may they arise and
come forth under thy blessed auspices; and forming a
Sacred Band for the propagation of thy Word, may they
so valiantly persevere in imparting knowledge, and be so
fraternally united in thy cause, that they may brave all
dangers, and endure any martyrdom, relying on thy pro-
mise never to be broken, that they shall have Thrones and
Crowns of Light in Heaven, who shall have aided to
diffuse Thy Light on earth. Amen ! Amen !
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Appendix.
The following extracts, for which I could not well find a

space in the text, I think it well to insert here.
Plutarch, in his treatise de Iside, it will be seen, comes
very near the true explication of the mystic Three in
One. Isis, he says, is the feminine part of Nature (1), or
that property of nature which renders her a fit subject for
the production of all other beings; for which reason it is
that Plato calls her the Nurse and All-receiver, and that
she is vulgarly termed Myrionymus, or the Goddess with
ten thousand names (2); denoting hereby that capability
with which she is endued of receiving and of being con-
verted into all manner of forms and appearances which it
shall please the Supreme Reason to impress upon her.
She has moreover an inbred love towards the First and
1 He should have said Nature herself; for the Holy Spirit was
the heavenly medium, or means by which all visible nature in the
heavens and in the earth was first developed: and was the Gene-
trix also of all spirit existence, or life actual, visible and invisible.
2 Because her offspring is innumerable in orders and species:
in the spirit life beginning with Archangels, and ending with the
minutest form of actual existence: in the material, descending
from the formation of the sun, or bodies larger than the sun, to
the smallest grain of sand upon the sea-shore.
GG3
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Supreme Cause of all things, that is towards the Good

Principle (3), which she perpetually longs after and is in
pursuit of; as, on the other hand, she rejects and shuns,
as much as possible, all commerce with the evil one. (4)
For though she be the receptacle, or common matter for
both these to operate upon, yet of herself does she always
incline to the Better of them, freely offering herself as it
were to his embraces and permitting him to generate his
likeness upon her—being ever most pleased and rejoiced
when she is made pregnant by Him, and can bring forth
other beings like Him. (5) For material productions are
all of them images of the substance producing, and that
which is begotten is but the resemblance or picture, as it
were, of that which begets it. . . . Now Universal Na-
ture (6) in its utmost and most perfect extent, may be con-
sidered as made up of these three things, of Intelligence,
of Matter, and of that which is the result of both these,
in the Greek language called Kosmos, a word which
equally signifies either beauty and order, or the world
itself: the First of these is the same with what Plato is
3 The Holy Spirit is inseparably united with the Divine Father

of all. The Egyptians adored Him as the Being who dwelt con-
cealed in the embraces of the Sun [Isis].
4 This is beautifully exemplified in the A , where the
Holy Spirit is described as flying from the Dragon, Typhon.
5 As the Holy Spirit is the Parent of all things, she may in
some sort be said to be subjected to evil, but this is clearly ex-
plained in Part I, so as to divest God of any actual participation
in the origin of evil.
6 That is the Universe, visible and invisible, material and spi-
ritual, terrestrial and celestial. Intelligence signifies the Perfect
Immaterial, which is God. Matter signifies that which is next
in rank, but inferior; the Holy Spirit. Kosmos is that which
proceeds from the union of Both.
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wont to call the Idea, the Exemplar, and the Father: to

the Second of them he has given the name of the Mother (7),
the Nurse, and the Place and Receptacle of generation;
and to the latter of them, that of the offspring and the
production. So again with regard to the Egyptians, there
is good reason to conclude that they were wont to liken
this Universal Nature, to what they called the most
beautiful and perfect Triangle (8): the same as does Plato
himself in that nuptial diagram, as ’tis termed, which he
has introduced into his Commonwealth. Now in this
Triangle, which is rectangular, the perpendicular side is
imagined equal to three, the base to four, and the hypo-
thenuse, which is equal to the other two containing sides,
to five. In this scheme, therefore, we must suppose that
the perpendicular is designed by them to represent the
masculine nature, the base the feminine, and that the
hypothenuse is to be looked upon as the offspring of both:
and accordingly the first of them will aptly enough repre-
sent Osiris, or the Prime Cause, the second, Isis or the
receptive power, the last, Horus, or the common effect of
the other two. For three is the first number which is
composed of both even and odd, and four is a square
whose side is equal to the even number two; but five
being generated as it were out of both the preceding
numbers, two and three, may be said to have an equal
relation to both of them, as to its common parents. (9)
7 This citation from Plato ought to have shewn Plutarch that
the true Mother is the Holy Spirit, and the true offspring is the
visible and invisible, that is spirits, souls, bodies.
8 Three in one, namely, God, the Holy Spirit, and Emanation,
meaning by the last term all that has proceeded from the union
of the two.
9 The Holy Spirit in the Apocalypse consequently appears
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They are, moreover, wont to give Horus the name of

Kaimis, by which word they mean something which may
be seen; for this world is perceptible to the senses and
visible. (10) As to Isis she is sometimes called by them Muth,
sometimes Athyri, and at other times Methuer. Now the
first of these names signifies Mother, the second, Osiris’s
kosmical habitation (or, as Plato expresses it, the place
and receptacle of generation), and the third is com-
pounded of two other words, one of which imports full-
ness, and the other goodness; denoting hereby not only
the fulness of the material of which Kosmos consists, but
its intimate conjunction likewise with the Good, the Pure,
and fabricating Principle. How fully and how far indeed
these divine men, taking the still more divine Apocalypse
for their guide, had penetrated the nature of the Celestial,
is evidenced by another passage from the same tract in
which the writer shews their wise symbolism, even in the
robes with which they adorned the images of their gods.
Now as to the sacred robes, he says, with which the
statues of these Deities are adorned, those of Isis are
dyed with a great variety of colours, her power being
wholly conversant about matter, which becomes all things,
and admits all things, light and darkness, day and night,
fire and death, beginning and end: whereas those of
Isiris are of one uniform shining colour, without the least
Shade or variety in them. For as he is a First Principle,
prior to all other beings, and purely intelligent, he must
ever remain unmixed and undefiled; for this reason,
therefore, his vestments, after having been once taken off
crowned with Twelve stars which is the 3 + 4 + 5 = 12. This
is only one of its mystic meanings.
10 Horus means more than this: it sometimes means everything
visible and invisible, that is not God, or the Holy Spirit.
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his statues, are ever afterwards laid by and carefully pre-

served untouched, whereas those of Isis are frequently
made use of; for the material world being the immediate
object of our use and ever before our eyes, is continually
furnishing us with instances of that mutability to which
it is subservient: the self-same accidents often-times ap-
pearing and disappearing to us; on the contrary the per-
ception of that which is perfectly intelligent, unmixed, and
holy, like flashes of lightning, strikes upon the soul, just
suffering itself to be once seen, and then passing away.
Wherefore both Plato and Aristotle call this part of phi-
losophy the Epoptic or visionary, intimating that those
persons who by the due use of their reason are able to
get beyond the boundaries of the material, where fancy
governs, and where all things are full of mixture and
vanity, may afterwards expect to mount aloft to that First
Pure and Immaterial Being, whom truly to know and to
be able to approach with purity, is according to them the
highest pitch of perfection at which philosophy can arrive.
(D I , 78.) From all these things, I say, concludes
Plutarch, we learn the true nature of the Gods, that they
are not different among different people; that they are
not some of them peculiar to the Greeks, and others to
the barbarians, some of them northern and others southern
deities: but that as the Sun and the Moon, and the
Heavens, and the Earth, and the Sea, though common to
all mankind, have different names given them by different
people, so may the same be affirmed likewise of that One
Supreme Reason who framed this universe, and of that
One Providence, which governs and watches over the
whole, and of those subordinate ministering Powers that
are set over the Universe, that they are the very same
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everywhere, though the honours which are paid them, as

well as the appellations which are given them, are different
in different places, according to the laws of each country;
as are likewise those symbols under which the Mystics
endeavour to lead their votaries to the knowledge of divine
truths: and though some of these are more clear and ex-
plicit than others, yet are they not any of them without
hazard; for whilst some persons by wholly mistaking
their meaning and application, have thereby plunged
themselves into superstition, others, that they might avoid
so fatal a quagmire, have unawares dashed themselves
upon the rock of atheism. In all matters of this nature,
therefore, ’tis our duty to take reason as improved by
philosophy for our guide and conductress, that so we may
be taught to think piously of such things as may be told
to us: but as Theodorus used to say of some of his audi-
ence, when he reached forth his discourses to them with
his right hand, they took them with their left; so we, by
taking in a wrong sense what the laws have wisely or-
dained concerning the sacrifices and festivals of the gods,
by that means fall into the grossest errors. And indeed
of all things which a man enjoys, there is nothing by which
he approaches nearer D than by right reason,
especially when employed in religious matters, nor any
thing which is of greater moment to his happiness—where-
fore it is that everyone who intends to consult the Oracle
is strictly charged upon the spot that he takes care to
have pious thoughts in his heart, and seemly and decent
words in his mouth. (De Iside, 67, 68.)
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NOTES TO BOOK V.
Note 1 (page 488).—Are not the Great Father and the Great
Mother really alluded to in these lines of Virgil, which are always
mistranslated at schools?
Citharâ crinitus Iopas
Personat auratâ, docuit quæ maximus Atlas,
Hic canit errantem Lunam, Solisque labores,
Unde hominum genus et pecudes, unde imber et ignes;
Arcturum, pluviasque Hyades, geminosque Triones.
Æn. i. 744.
The remnant of this double-worship still exists even among the
islands of the Pacific, where the natives prostrate themselves
before two immense stones, one of which is flat and very broad;
(a yoni) the other is erect and about ton feet high, and seven
fathoms round. It is carved at the top with a man’s head and a
garland: the name of one stone is Dago, or the fish; of the other,
Taurico, or the Bull. The ancient Petroma is an analogue of
this. See ante, page 469. A pigeon on a ram’s head was one of
the most ancient types of God and the Holy Spirit; the two
Divine Essences, which are inseparably One in all the true An-
cient Theology. The Japanese often represent their Messiah with
four arms, having the same signification as the Panther presiding
over the four cardinal points (ante 470): his head crowned with
flowers: in one hand he holds a sceptre, in another a flower, in
the third a ring, and the fourth is closed, with the arm extended.
Like the Indian Vishnu he seems to be proceeding from, or to be
absorded into an immense Fish. Before him is a smaller figure
in the attitude of worship, one half of whose body is concealed
within a shell. They call this divine being Can-On, which is
Priest of On. So they represent Space under the symbol of a
Tree-shaped Rock, supporting the Universe or Mundane Egg.
This Bi-Une symbol alludes to AL, or God the Rock, and to the
Holy Spirit as the Tree of Life.
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688 NOTES TO BOOK V.
Note 2 (page 490).—The month of May, says Vallancey, was

indeed the most proper season of the year to acknowledge the
beneficent favours of Belus, or the Sun, as the month of Novem-
ber was to acknowledge their gratitude to the same deity: be-
cause in May that great planet begins to beautify the face of the
earth, to nourish its decayed plants and vegetables, and to put
life and warmth into its animal beings; and in November the
harvest and the vintage is gathered into the barn. Hence of all
created objects that planet deserved most to be noticed and loved
by rational sublunary beings, because its benign influence pro-
duced them health of body and an acceptable prospect of nourish-
ment. And hence it was, without doubt, that almost every pagan
nation adored this beautiful planet as the Parent of Nature, under
different names and appellations: a religion which, as Mr. Young
observes in his Revelation, p. 35, took its rise in Chaldæa, was
soon carried into Egypt, and from thence to Greece; it spread
itself also to the most distant parts of the world, and infected not
only the eastern but the western Scythians and Tartars, but the
Mexicans too, for the Spaniards found it there (See Gage’s New
Survey of the West Indies, ch. 12). Even the descendants of
Shem, whose posterity preserved the memory of the true God for
a longer time than those of Ham or Japhet, at length transferred
their homage to the Sun and Moon. (Photius ex Clesia, Q. Curt.
viii. 9. Philostr. iii. 35. (Collectanea ii. 67.)
Note 3 (page 511).—These falsehoods would hardly be complete

if we had not the tombs of Aaron and a congenial worthy still
preserved. The Jews had a tradition, says Taylor, that Abel was
murdered in the plain of Damascus; and accordingly his tomb is
still shewn on a high hill on the road to Baalbek. But the whole
of this district abounds in antediluvian tombs!! C , Art
Abel. The same compiler mentions, the sepulchre of Aaron upon
the summit of Mount Hor, (See Deut. x. 6) where it is still pre-
served and venerated by the Arabs. When the supposed tomb
was visited by Mr. Legh, it was attended by a crippled Arab her-
mit, about eighty years of age, who conducted the travellers into
a small white building crowned by a cupola. The monument it-
self is about three feet high, and is patched together out of
fragments of stone and marble! Yet soon after he says that Moses
and Eleazar, when they stripped Aaron, buried him so privately
that his sepulchre continues unknown!! Nevertheless our bibli-
cal travellers describe all these forgeries as if they were veritable,
and Exeter Hall rings with applause and wonder as these fables,
are narrated. Yet Exeter Hall ought ever to bear in mind that
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NOTES TO BOOK V. 689
wicked and barefaced forgery, which has been perpetrated before

its own eyes by certain pious preachers. Scarcely had the late
Mr. Keble (the author of the Christian Year) been dead, when the
forgers commenced their usual fabrications. In one of those
feeble compositions which have rendered his name popular among
the poor pap-fed biblicals, we used to read thus:
Oh! come to our communion feast
There, present in the heart,
Not in the hands, the eternal Priest
Will his true self impart.
Some pious friends have since altered this, and published it as if
it were genuine:
O! come to our communion feast;
Here, present in the heart,
As in the hand, the eternal Priest
Will his true self impart.
But this change has brought with it the absurdity of destroying
the whole meaning of the author, who wished to contrast the
Church of England type with the ceremony of the mass in which
God is said to be actually eaten and swallowed by the communi-
cant.
Note 4 (page 516).—In the first days after the death of Jesus,
the horrors of Paulism and its dying God were unknown. Ste-
phen may be cited as a witness. When dying, he exclaimed, I
see the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. A viii.
56. He did not think of saying that he saw Jesus as God him-
self. It is not difficult to account, says a very close arguer, for
the credit that was given to the story of Jesus being the Son of
God. He was born when the Heathen mythology had still some
fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared
the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraor-
dinary men that lived under the Heathen mythology were reputed
to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at
that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten: the
intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar
opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited
with hundreds: the story therefore had nothing in it either new,
wonderful, or obscene: it was conformable to the opinions that
then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists,
and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews never
credited the story. In allusion to the symbolic Panther, which
was used as a type of the Supreme Father, it may be well to cite
a passage from a learned and most honest writer. The name of
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Jesus also, says Higgins, was Jesus Ben Panther. Jesus was a
very common name with the Jews. Stukeley observes that the
patronymic of Jesus Christ was Panther, and that Panthers were
the nurses or bringers up of Bacchus; and adds, Tis remarkable
that Panther was the surname of Joseph’s family. Thus the Mid-
rashkoheleth, or gloss upon Ecclesiastes. It happened that a ser-
pent bit R. Eleasar ben Daman, and James, a man of the village
Secania, came to heal him in the name of Jesus ben Panther.
This is likewise in the book called Abodazara, where the comment
upon it says, This James was a disciple of Jesus the Nazarene. No
one will dispute the piety of Dr. Stukeley. The similarity of the
circumstances related of Jesus and Bacchus could not be denied,
and therefore he accounts for it by supposing that God had re-
vealed to the heathen part of what was to happen in future.
This may be satisfactory to some persons, as it was no doubt to
the Doctor. The accidental manner in which the assertion is
made that the father of Jesus was called Panther removes the
possibility of accounting for it by attributing it to the malice of
the Jews. In a former chapter it has been proved that Bacchus
was mistaken by the Romish priests for Jesus. Here the reader
sees that the pious Dr. Stukeley has proved, as might be expected,
that the mother of Bacchus is the same person as the mother of
Jesus, viz., Mary. And as the persons who brought up Jesus
were called Panthers, the name of an animal, so Bacchus was
brought up by the same kind of animal, a panther. When the
reader reflects that the whole Roman Christian doctrine is founded,
as the Roman church admits, on tradition, he will have no diffi-
culty in accounting for the similarity of the systems. The cir-
cumstance of Joseph’s family name being supposed to be Panther
is remarkably confirmed by Epiphanius, who says that Joseph
was the brother of Cleophas the son of James surnamed Panther.
Thus we have the fact both from Jewish and Christian authori-
ties. It is very clear that Bacchus’s Panther must have been
copied from that of Jesus, or ΙΗΣ, or that of Jesus from Bacchus’s.
I leave the matter with my reader. Anacalypsis, 315. Jesus
Ben Panther really means Jesus Son of God. Stukeley has no
warranty for his theory.
Note 5 (page 518).—The Rev. Dr. Oliver has the following note
upon this absurd subject. Various have been the opinions, he
says, advanced by theorists on this knotty question, by what kind
of animal was our great mother betrayed? I shall lay before you
a few of the most remarkable speculations of learned men, because
they bear upon the subject under our notice, and may engage your
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attention or curiosity. Some believe that the Serpent had then

the use of speech, and conversed familiarly with the Woman,
without her conceiving any distrust of him: and that God to
punish the malice with which he abused Eve, deprived him of the
use of speech. Others believe that the Devil transformed himself
into a Serpent! and spoke to Eve under the figure of this animal.
Others maintain that a real and common Serpent having eaten of
the forbidden fruit, Eve from thence concluded that she too might
eat of it without danger, that in effect she did eat of it, and in-
curred the displeasure of God by her disobedience. This, say
these authors, is the plain matter of fact, which Moses would
relate under the allegorical representation of the Serpent convers-
ing with Eve. Cajetan will have this whole story, as it is related
by Moses in the way of a dialogue between the Woman and the
Serpent to be figurative only, to signify the inward suggestions of
the Devil, and the Woman’s weak resistance. Others affirm that
the Serpent’s speech was nothing but hissing, and that Eve under-
standing all creatures by their voices, apprehended what this ani-
mal had to say to her by the noise it made. Lyranus reports the
opinion of some to be that the Serpent put on the face of a beau-
tiful young woman to tempt Eve. And some rabbis believe that
Samuel, prince of devils came in person to tempt Eve, mounted on
a serpent as large as a camel!! (C Dic.) Eugubirius thinks
the animal was a basilisk (B ’ Vulgar Errors) and to crown
this mass of absurdity, Dr. Adam Clarke gravely tells his readers
that the tempter was not a Serpent, but an Ape!!! (Family
Bible, Note on Gen. iii. Signs and Symbols, page 53.) It would
be a pity not to supplement this Note with Sir W. Drummond’s
remarks upon these follies. I have just read, he says, a small
volume, published by Mr. Bellamy, and intitled T O . I
take the liberty of submitting to your consideration some remarks
which I have made upon its production. Your readers, sir, are
already aware of the discussions which you have occasioned by
Doctor Adam Clarke’s explanation of the Hebrew word Nachash,
‫נחש‬, in the third chapter of Genesis. In this place Nachash
has been always been translated a Serpent, until the Doctor for
reasons which he has assigned, thought fit to understand by it a
creature of the Ape or ourang-outang kind. In the first 85 pages
of the Ophion, which form the greater portion of the book, Mr.
Bellamy endeavours to prove that the Nachash never was and
never can become a monkey of any species whatever. When we
consider the learning and talents for the possession of which Dr.
Adam Clarke has obtained a just reputation, and the critical
knowledge of Mr. Bellamy in the Hebrew language, we must be
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naturally inclined to listen with respect to the arguments of two

such disputants. This however we shall be yet further induced
to do by the importance of the subject itself. It appears from
the most authentic of all documents, that our first parents en-
joyed an uninterrupted state of happiness in the Garden of Eden,
until they were tempted by a creature called the Nachash to taste
of some fruit which had the property of imparting the knowledge
of good and evil to those who ate of it. Adam and Eve had been
strictly forbidden by Jehovah to touch this fruit; but the Nac-
hash tempted the woman, and the woman her husband; and all
three were punished in consequence, as had of course been fore-
seen by Divine Wisdom from the beginning. The degrees of
punishment were undoubtedly dictated by eternal justice. It
may, however, be permitted to us to remark that while the chil-
dren of Adam still mourn their fall through him, the descen-
dants of the Nachash, whether he were a serpent or a monkey,
have the advantage of being quite unconscious of their degradation.
They crawl upon their bellies and eat the dust without having a sus-
picion that their guilty progenitor once walked erect, talking Hebrew
to Eve, and fed upon Apples in Paradise. Doctor Clarke contends
that the Nachash mentioned in the 3rd chapter of Genesis, could
not have been a serpent. The LXX. were mistaken when they
translated this word by οφις, and as the Apostles always quote
from the Septuagint, nothing is to be gained by a reference to
citations made in the New Testament from the Old. I confess I
have been much embarrassed in endeavouring to answer the argu-
ments of the Doctor upon this point. How are we to understand
the denunciation of Jehovah in Genesis as directed against a ser-
pent? Thou art cursed above all cattle. A cow-herd in the fens of
Lincoln would not class a viper with a Lincolnshire ox. Upon
thy belly shalt thou go. The anatomical structure of a serpent is
such that it must always have gone upon its belly as it does now.
If a serpent ever walked upon its tail, it must have been a serpent
of totally different structure from the animal which we call by
that name. The animal is defined by its structure: consequently
the animal which by its structure must crawl on its belly, could
never have been the animal that might and did walk upright.
And dust shall thou eat all the days of thy life. I know not what
animal eats dust all the days of its life: serpents no longer feed
upon apples, but they certainly do not live upon dust. It is quite
clear that the Nachash could talk. Nothing is said to indicate
that he should lose that faculty. Now I have never distinctly
heard of a talking serpent! Aristotle indeed tells us that all ani-
mals fled when the sacred Thessalian serpent made the sound of
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its voice to be heard. Tibullus says, Cantus et iratæ detinet an-

guis iter, and Pliny observes that many were of opinion that when
serpents were sung to they would sing again. In spite of these
authorities, however, I am inclined to think that without the aid
of a miracle the serpent could no more speak or sing than an ass.
When Balaam’s ass spoke, it was in consequence of the interfer-
ence of Providence; but surely Providence did not interfere to
open the mouth of the serpent in order that it should tempt our
first parents to their ruin: this would be an atrocious accusation
against Providence. The Nachash, then, was naturally endowed
with the gift of speech, and as that gift is not said to have been
taken away, his descendants ought to preserve it to the present
day. Mr. Bellamy has written with much learning on the wor-
ship of the Serpent among the ancient idolaters, but in tran-
scribing the pages of Bryant, he does not seem to me to prove that
the tempter in Paradise was a serpent. It does not appear evi-
dent because Zoroaster symbolized the expanse of the heavens
by a serpent, that he was thinking of the dialogue between Eve
and the Nachash! The Good Genius of Egypt was typified by a
serpent. This surely is not a proof that the Egyptians had read the
third chapter of Genesis! According to Clemens Alexandrinus the
serpent was the hieroglyphic by which the course of the stars was
expressed. We learn from Horus Apollo and Macrobius that
sometimes the year and sometimes the sun were symbolised by a
serpent. In what manner must the inventors of hieroglyphics have
understood the history of the fall of man, if they employed the old
serpent, who is the devil, as an astronomical emblem? Far be it from
a disciple of Bryant to hold with Dupuis that the history of the
serpent in Genesis is nothing else than an allegory, a mere astro-
nomical fable; another edition of the tale of the Dragon which
guarded the golden apples in the gardens of the Hesperides.
Among the ancient oriental nations, the worship of the celestial
bodies was, with one exception, universal. Mythology was the
child of Astrology,—the mad daughter of a foolish mother. Let
us be careful of tracing the fictions of idolators to the truths
recorded in the Scriptures. It is our duty to believe that Eve was
tempted by a Nachash, whether we know or not what a Nachash is.
We are told by Mr. Bellamy that the Nachash was a crocodile!
He does not inform us how the animal, which is often thirty feet
in length, contrived to climb up the tree of knowledge to gather
the fruit. Our painters may well be tired of the old serpents. A
crocodile in an apple-tree will at least have the merit of novelty.
The author calls the crocodile the Niolic serpent. I thought the
crocodile had been of the lacerta kind, and that it had four legs.
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The Nachash did not go on its belly before the fall; but I should
conceive that it must have been always as inconvenient for a croco-
dile to walk upon its hind legs as for the serpent to stand upright
upon his tail. The Nachash had undoubtedly the gift of speech.
How then could the Nachash be a crocodile? The crocodile has
no tongue. Doctor Clarke thinks that the Nachash was of the
ape kind, of which there are eighty-three species, out of which
the Doctor leaves us to choose the Nachash that is most to your
taste. The principal reason which the Doctor assigns is rather
strange. He finds that the Hebrew word Nachash in the text is
the same with the Arabic chanas. In order to make them so, how-
ever, the letters must be transmuted; and besides this, as Dr.
Clarke knows very well, the Hebrew and Arabic letters do not
strictly correspond. He knows, too, that chanas is not the exact
orthography of a word which signifies not only a monkey but a
lion. He is likewise aware that chanas signifies a serpent, and
the letters in the word, though transmuted, strictly correspond
with the Hebrew letters in Nacash. ‫נחש‬. I must fairly confess
that I cannot find anything in the history of the Simian race
which can induce me to think that any one of their tribes acted the
part of the great Deceiver, unless indeed it be their known propen-
sity for robbing orchards! Monkeys are fond of apples, but they
neither live upon dust, nor crawl upon their bellies. How can
they be said to be cursed above all cattle? We goad our oxen,
and we bate our bulls. When we catch a monkey, we feed him
with sugar-plums. In his native wood he seems to be happy, and
to enjoy a state of liberty, which multitudes of our own species
might with reason envy. Enmity was put between the Nachash and
the woman, but Buffon, in speaking of the ourang-outangs, tells us
qu’ils sont passionnés pour les femmes. The same thing may be
said of others of the simian family. I find myself compelled, then,
by Dr. Clarke’s reasoning, to deny that the Nachash was either a
serpent or a crocodile, and by Mr. Bellamy’s that it was one of
the 83 species of the ape genus. Such is the consequence of
departing from the Scriptures, as understood by the Prophets and
the Apostles! Classical Jour, iv, 240. But the follies and odiousness
of Judaism and Paulism do not end here. The believers in the
rabbis excused to themselves the frightful enormities of which we
know they were guilty, (see Part I., pages 354, 432, 434, and
Exodus xxii. 19; Leviticus xviii. 23, xx. 15, 16; and Deuteronomy
xxvii. 21), by the example of their feigned progenitor, Adam, who
as their Rabbis taught them, had carnal knowledge of every tame
and wild beast on the earth, and was not satisfied until God
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made Eve for him. This fearful doctrine is declared by Bartolocci

in his learned Bibliotheca Rabbinica, vol. i., page 77, and he cites for
it Rabbi Eleazer and Rabbi Solomon Jarchi, two of the most noted
doctors of the Jews: adding Ad idem omnia tendunt—all things
prove it was so, in the opinion of the Hebrews. And they say that
it was in consequence of this criminality in Adam, that we read
in Genesis ii. 18. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the
Man should be alone. I will make him an help meet for him. It is
shocking to have to deal with such detestable ideas; but how
else than by exposing them can the horror of a creed or of a
sect be perfectly made manifest? To the inconsistencies men-
tioned in the text may be added the following. In Exodus xxxiii.
11, we read as follows. And the Lord spake unto Moses face to
face, as a man speaketh unto his friend. Could this have been
written by the same man, or inspired prophet, who immediately
after says, And he said, thou canst not see my face; for there shall
no man see me and live: I will take away my hand and thou
shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen, verses 20, 23.
I have already shewn the degraded ideas which the Jews must
have entertained of God in reference to this passage; see Part I.,
page 447. In Exodus xx. a reason is given for the institution of
the Sabbath. In six days the Lord made the heavens and earth,
the sea and all that is in them, and ceased the seventh day, where-
fore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.—ib. v. 11.
But an entirely different reason is given in Deuteronomy v.,
Remember that thou wast bondman in the land of Egypt, and
that the Lord thy God brought thee out of thence, through a
mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm: the
Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day, v. 15. Ap-
propriate also, and as supplementary to the passages in the text,
I cite here another extract, which proves how utterly fallacious is
one of the pretended prophecies of the advent of Jesus: a prophecy
on which I have before commented in Part I., page 429. Paine,
in his much vilified book, the Age of Reason, thus writes: The
King of Syria, he says, and the King of Israel (I have already
mentioned that the Jews were split into two nations, one of which
was called Judah, the capital of which was Jerusalem, and the
other Israel) made war jointly against Ahaz, King of Judah, and
marched their armies against Jerusalem. Ahaz and his people
became alarmed, and the account says, their hearts were moved as
the trees of the wood are moved with the wind. In this situation of
things, Isaiah addresses himself to Ahaz, and assured him in the
name of the Lord (the cant phrase of all the prophets) that these
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two Kings should not succeed against him; and to satisfy Ahaz
that this should be the case, tells him to ask a sign. This, the
account says, Ahaz declined doing, giving as a reason that he
would not tempt the Lord; upon which Isaiah, who is the speaker,
says, ver. 14, Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign:
behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son: and the 16th verse says:
and before this child shall know to refuse the evil and choose
the good, the land which thou abhorrest or dreadest (meaning Syria
and the kingdom of Israel) shall be forsaken by both her kings.
There then was the sign, and the time limited for the completion
of the assurance or promise: namely before this child shall know
to refuse the evil and to choose the good. Isaiah having commit-
ted himself thus far, it became necessary to him in order to avoid
the imputation of being a false prophet and the consequence
thereof, to take measures to make the sign appear. It certainly
was not a difficult thing in any time of the world to find a girl
with child, or to make her so; and perhaps Isaiah knew of one
beforehand, for I do not suppose that the prophets of that day
were any more trusted than the priests of this: be that however
as it may, he says in the next chapter, verse 2, And I took unto
me faithful witnesses to record; Uriah the priest, and Zechariah,
the son of Jeberechiah, and I went unto the prophetess, and she
conceived and bare a son. Here, then, is the whole story, foolish
as it is, of this child and this virgin: and it is upon the barefaced
perversion of this story that the book of Matthew, and the impu-
dent and sordid interest of priests of later times have founded a
theory which they call the gospel, and have applied this story to
signify Jesus Christ, begotten, they say, by a ghost whom they
call holy on the body of a woman engaged in marriage, and after-
wards married, whom they call a virgin seven hundred years after
this foolish story was told: a theory which, speaking for myself,
I hesitate not to disbelieve and to say that it is as fabulous and as
false as God is true. But to show the imposition and falsehood of
Isaiah, we have only to attend to the sequel of this story; which
though it is passed over in silence in the book of Isaiah, is related
in the 28th chapter of 2 Chronicles, and which is, that instead of
these two kings failing in their attempt against Ahaz, King of
Judah, as Isaiah had pretended and foretold in the name of the
Lord, they succeeded; Ahaz was defeated and destroyed: a hun-
dred and twenty thousand of his people were slaughtered; Jeru-
salem was plundered, and two hundred thousand women and sons
and daughters carried into captivity. Thus much, adds the writer,
for this lying prophet and impostor, Isaiah, and the book of false-
hoods that bears his name.
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Note 6 (page 520).—There are numerous figures in ancient

sculpture which are called Panthean, in which the symbols of
many divinities are so represented as blending into the composition
of one whole deity. Thus we find in Montfaucon, vol. I., plate
97, a female figure bearing the calathus of Isis, the horns of Zeus,
the crown of Cybele, the panther skin of Bacchus, the quiver of
Apollo, a hind’s leg as symbolic of Diana, the long flowing robe
of Juno, the cornucopia of Ceres in her left hand, with a male and
female issuing from it, representing all created beings; the right
hand terminates in a sea monster’s head [Neptune], with a circle
and short sword [Mars], while a serpent [Hermes] is entwined
around her arm. In another, on the same plate, a female is repre-
sented, holding a rudder with her right hand, and in her left
a cornucopia, the bottom of which ends in the head of a Bull, a
Ram, or Goat, on which a Dove or Raven perches. On her head
is the Isiac lotus, rising from a boat-shaped cup; she is crowned
with six rays. On her shoulder is Diana’s quiver, filled as if with
fire; she has one wing; upon her heart is Minerva’s shield; upon
the cornucopia is the Cock, the symbol of the Sun and Hermes.
In a third she has Minerva’s helmet, Mercury’s caduceus, a
pomegranate of Juno, and an ear of corn of Ceres, Jupiter’s thun-
derbolt, the sistrum of Isis, and at her feet a wheel; the radiated
or Naronic sun, and a thunderbolt are also shown. These gods,
says Montfaucon, were thus represented together, because a great
many people thought that those deities who were honoured se-
parately were in reality one and the same.
Note 7 (page 526).—Note here, that the Incarnation Vulcan is

always called κλυτος, or the Periclyte, which is the title actually
predicted of Mohammed by Jesus. It is a name commonly given
to the gods as representatives of the Messiah. In the corrupted
Greek Testament it is called παρακλητος, a word which has no
meaning in any language. The falsifications which have thus
been introduced into what are called the Gospels will be subse-
quently shown. In the Crater of Orpheus there is a passage which
corroborates all that I have before pointed out. It runs as
follows:—Hermes is the Interpreting Messenger of the All; the
Nymphs are Water, Hephæstus is Fire, Demeter is Food, Mighty
Posidaon is the Sea, he also shakes the earth; and Ares indeed is
War, and Aphrodite is Peace; Dionysos, born of the Bull, is
Wine, which gods and mortal men love, which he found out for
mortals, a soother of all their cares, he gives to all sweetest de-
light, and is present at all feasts; and Themis, who administers
justice to all equally; Helios, whom they call Apollo, renowned
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for his bow; the far-shooting Phœbus, the clear-seeing Prophet,

and Asclepius, the healer of diseases;—All these are One.
Note 8 (page 532).—So veiled, because the head or origin of the
Eternal can never be discovered. This veiled invisible God the
ancients called Destiny. They supposed Him to be enwrapped in
triple darkness; they made no image of Him, but declared that
He was an Old Man [the Ancient of Days], holding an urn be-
tween his hands, which urn contained the lot of all beings. They
placed a Book [see A , section 59], before him, in which
were recorded future events. All the gods, without exception,
were obliged to consult this Book, because they could do nothing
contrary to its decrees, and it was only by reading it that they
could obtain a knowledge of things to come. As the Generator,
he was called Genius, or the producing power; all souls proceeded
from him, and returned to him after death; wherefore the Genius
Jovialis was viewed as the great Agent in giving life to the
human embryo. This word was sometimes spelled Janus, and
the wife of Janus was Iuno, Iana, and D’Iana, Di-Ana. On their
birthdays the men made offerings to their Genius, women to their
Juno. These offerings were wine, flowers, and perfumes. It was
customary to implore persons by their Genius, analagous to the
Oriental habit of adjuring by the Soul. Such is the brief record
which we have of the Supreme Father in the scanty fragments of
the earliest European theology—the Etruscan—the mother of the
Greek and Roman religions. It will be found most accurately to
harmonize with every portion of this essay and the A ,
and in so singular a degree as to amount almost to mathematical
demonstration.
Note 9 (page 533).—That the Greeks ignorantly, or the priests
fraudulently, made Neptune a male deity, may be further shown
by the fact that the name is derived from the Egyptian Nephthys
(relating to waters), which Nephthys, as Plutarch relates, and as
Cudworth signifies, was the Goddess of the Sea. In the Orphic
hymns Poseidaon is addressed as the father of gods and men.
Κλυθι, Ποσιδαον, Ζηνος παι πρεσβυγενεθλε,
Ουρανιων μακαρων τε θεων πατερ, ηδε και ανδρων.
Zeus is generally made the brother of Poseidaon, but is here
spoken of as his father, which shows how little we can depend
upon the theology of the Greeks when they treat of genealogies.
So according to Pausanias, the Lybians fabled that Minerva was
the daughter of Neptune and Triton, and that on this account
her eyes were azure. (i. 14.) There was a covert design in all
these contradictory fables of the priests. Plato says that Nep-
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tune was represented among the Atlantides as borne in a chariot

drawn by four winged horses, whereof he held the reins, and his
statue was so large that it touched the roof of the temple. The
reader will find that the Holy Spirit was always drawn in such a
chariot, and the reason also has been explained, ante page 635.
Highly corroborative of the view in the text that Neptune or
Nepthys was the Holy Spirit, is that singular passage in Plutarch’s
Isis and Osiris, where Nepthys is called the sister of Isis (that is
the same person as Isis), see section 14. These numerous blun-
ders or misrepresentations of the Greeks may be in part accounted
for by the fact that they borrowed the greater part of their theo-
logy, first from the Etruscans, and afterwards from all other
nations, but when they did so, they disfigured it with vain fables,
riddles, and allusions, which lead modern mythologists so widely
astray. And it may be laid down once for all, as an indubitable
axiom, that Herodotus, Plato, Didorus Siculus, and Pausanias,
either knew little or nothing whatever of the theologies which they
describe, or that they wilfully misled their readers by pretending
to believe things connected with those theologies which they
knew well to be false. Plato, in Cratylus, can suggest no better
derivation for the Greek name of God (Θεος) than from θεω to
run, because the gods by their nature run!! This was in accord-
ance with usual Greek absurdity. The notions of even Plutarch,
(in all other respects so eminently sensible a writer), on these
subjects, seem to be absolute dotage; no reliance can be placed
upon them. And never did Eusebius write anything more true
than when he said, “the mythology of Greece consisted of nothing
but excerptions and misconstructions of more ancient systems, as it
was evinced not only by the opinions of the different historians whom
he had cited, but by the very nature of the theology of the Greeks,
while there was nothing whatever domestic in their accounts of the
gods, which were derived entirely from the fables of foreign nations.”
P . E . . 1. The same observation applies to another
Greek author, Strabo, who is often cited as an authority on
mythology. Strabo, like Pausanias, lived when Paganism was in
ruins: the opinions of either upon what they then actually saw
are not of weight. And though Strabo was an accurate traveller
and a man of sound judgment, he knew scarcely anything of
mythology. Pausanias resembled him in ignorance.
Note 10 (page 539).—The change of Lot’s wicked wife into a

pillar of salt, and Nebuchadnezzar into a beast, are analogous
myths. We have the testimony of an honest Jew about Lot’s
wife. Two parasangs from the sea, says Benjamin of Tudela,
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stands the salt pillar into which Lot’s wife was metamorphosed, and
although the sheep continually lick it, the pillar grows again and retains
its original shape. Travels, A. D. 1163.
Note 11 (page 540)—Alexis, the Greek comedian, tells us that
the person whom the Greeks invoked after supper by the title of
Ζευς Σωτηρ, Zeus the Saviour, was no other than Dionusus.
Bryant, A. M. iii. 270. One ought to search out the true mean-
ing of names in eternal concerns, says Hierocles on the Golden
Verses of Pythagoras, especially in those of a divine nature, the
most excellent of all. Hence it is that the name Jupiter expresses
the nature, and is the symbol and image of the Architect of all
things. Since those who first imposed names on things, through
their great wisdom, like statuaries, impressed on the names them-
selves, as representatives, the image and power of the things repre-
sented, by which means the sounds of the names raised in the
mind correspondent or similar ideas, and the ideas so raised were
true and proper ones. The Hindustani Aum-Bra, or God the
Creator, was changed by the Greeks into Ζευς Ομβριος, or
Pluvius, the Causer of Rain. The same allusion is preserved in
the Greek Pan-Om Phaios. Ara Panomphao vetus est sacrata.
Ovid. Ouvaroff, in one pregnant sentence, shews the absurdity of
supposing that the popular Jove was the Jupiter Optimus Maxi-
mus. In the father of gods and men, he says, causing the universe
to tremble at one movement of his brow, who could seriously re-
cognise an obscure king of Crete, whose tomb was visible on that
island? Mysteries, p. 84.
Note 12 (page 544).—The Incarnation is finely symbolized in

Montfaucon, vol. ii., pl. 60; a young man, supported on a Sea-
horse, and attended by a flying Eagle. The Sea-horse symbolizes
God and the Holy Spirit, and the Eagle the celestial soaring
flight of the divine Messenger. It was an Apocalyptic symbol.
(See section 34.) Æsculapius, the Healer, the Physician of Souls,
is frequently represented with a smaller figure near him, called
by the mythologists Telesphorus. But it symbolizes the race of
mortals to whom the Messenger is sent. There is a medal in Mont-
faucon, plate 85, xiii., in which Æsculapius, leaning on a wand, en-
circled by a serpent, occupies one side; on the other is the Holy
Spirit, who offers a patera [full of wine or truth] to the Incarna-
tion; between them is a child, which represents human nature, and
there is a Greek inscription underneath signifying Save me. Over
the child’s head, in mid-air, is suspended the heavenly crown
which awaits the mortal who is saved. In another gem or medal,
(plate 37, i.), Hermes is represented leaning on a phallic pillar
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with a purse or yoni in his left hand, and an olive branch in his
right; before him is a Cock, and behind a Ram, signifying that
he is defended by the Supreme God, of whom these are types;
while under the olive branch is the Dove or Holy Spirit; and in
the same plate the Cock appears in front of Hermes, and the tor-
toise, which we know was an emblem of the Holy Spirit, behind
him, while he is in the middle to signify that he proceeds from
both. That the petasus was in reality, like the patera, a cup, not
a hat, is shown in Montfaucon, Book III., plate 36, iii., where
there is a head of Hermes wearing a Chinese cap, without any
wings attached. This may be regarded as being of great anti-
quity, and Montfaucon himself was surprised by it. In the
Maffei collection was a full length figure of Hermes leaning on
the club of Hercules; and a gem still more curious, in which he is
represented as going before or heralding the Sun, symbolized as a
gigantic Cock, bearing in his bill an ear of Corn, the emblem of
the Holy Spirit, and sometimes of her Son the Messiah. This is a
remarkable proof of the triunity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
which was the grand truth at the basis of all antique religion. The
gem is graven in Montfaucon, Book III., plate 36, xii. Mont-
faucon says it is the only one he ever saw; it probably belonged to
the Mysteries. So associated in the public mind was the idea of
Jupiter with that of God and his representative Messenger, that
soon after the days of Jesus, artists made attempts to give the
features of the first to the man of Galilee, and the priests were
obliged to invent a fable how one of the painters who had done so
got a withered hand for his punishment, but which, of course,
was healed by a miracle, in which Bishop Gennadius officiated.
To commemorate allusions mentioned before, the Messenger was
called Zeus Melissæus, or of the bees; Zeus Areios, or the warlike;
and Zeus Chrysaoreus, or of the Golden Sword—the Cabir, whose
sword is baptised in heaven. See A , section 31.
Note 13 (page 545).—Ennius, by his collocation of the names,

giving the Goddesses the precedence, would seem to intimate that
they were of a superior nature to the gods: and he probably had
a faint inkling of the truth that the goddesses were but a name
for the Holy Spirit, and the gods for her messengers. We may be
quite sure that the collocation was not accidental.
Juno, Vesta, Ceres, Deiana, Menerva, Venus, Mars,
Mercurius, Jovi’, Neptunus, Volcanus, Apollo.
Note 14 (page 546).—This pomegranate which Juno bare, ‫רמון‬

Rimmon, was an ancient emblem of the Holy Spirit; and the Sy-
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rians worshipped Hadad (God, typified by the Sun) and Rimmon

(the Holy Spirit of God, typified by the Moon). The mosques and
religious temples of the orientals even now have their domes pome-
granate-shaped, to signify that God and His Spirit are worshipped
there. Fruitfulness (the Yoni), is represented under this figure, and
‫חדדמּון‬, Hadhadhrimon, or the “bursting of the pomegra-
nate,” mystically means the Divine Emanation, which produced
the Universe, and all that it contains. It is to this Pausanias
alludes when, with an absurd affectation, he writes thus: The
statue of Juno is seated on a throne of great magnitude, which
consists of ivory and gold, and which was the work of Polycletus.
The goddess has a crown on her head, in which the Graces and
Hours are represented, and in one of her hands she holds a pome-
granate, and in the other a sceptre. But the particulars respect-
ing the pomeganate, as they belong to an arcane discourse I shall
pass by in silence.
Note 15 (page 560).—Juno was the same as Iona; and she was
particularly styled Juno of Argus. The Grecians called her Hera
which was not originally a proper name, but a title, the same as
Ada [the beautiful] of the Babylonians, and expressed the Lady,
or Queen. She was the same as Luna or Semele, and at Samos
she was described as standing in a lunette, with the lunar emblem
on her head. She was sometimes worshipped under the symbol
of an Egg; so that her history had the same reference as that of
Venus. She presided equally over the seas, which she was sup-
posed to calm or trouble. Isis, Io, and Ino, were the same as
Juno; and Venus also was the same deity under a different title.
Hence in Laconia there was an ancient statue of the goddess
styled Venus Iunonia. Juno was also called Cupris, and under
that name was worshipped by the Hetrurians.—Bryant. The
word Yoni is acknowledged to be the same as Iune. It is the
same as the ‫יונה‬, iune, of the Israelites, which means Dove. It
is the name of the islands of Java and Sumatra, which thus carry
the same name as the island of Iona, and of Columba of the Heb-
rides of Scotland, both, no doubt, Sacred Isles. It is the same
word as the Iuno of the Latins. It is a word composed of the
Hebrew word ‫יה‬, ie, or the Syrian word Io, and the word ni,
which perhaps may be only a nominal termination, like en, in
Cris-en, or os, in Χρηστ-ος, or the Latin us, in Christ-us. Gene-
ral Vallancey gives views of several lingaic stones with Ogham
inscriptions which were found at Bally-na-Ioni, which he trans-
lates the town of the Sun’s Cycle, but which I render the town of
the Sun and Yoni. See Collectanea vi. 229. But the Yoni is a
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cycle also: so Vallancey may be right. It is the IE of the Apollo

of Delphi. It is the Ian nus and Ianna of the Romans. It is the
Diana or Di-ja-na or dwa ja na. It became, when the Greeks per-
fected their language, by the invention of a neuter gender, the
το ον, or the Ιον. It is the Hebrew ‫יה‬, ie, or ‫יהוה‬, ieue, I am
that I am, as it is rendered, or, more grammatically, I shall be
what I have been; or a definition of the creative power. It is
the root from which great numbers of the Shanscrit and Indian
Gods have been formed. Yavana is the u and vaha, to carry, one
of the meanings of the word ana, but which must have another
meaning; because the word Ya-vana means a sect professing the
superior influence of the Female over the Male nature; and I
believe it means to bear as well as to carry, and has precisely the
same meaning as our word to bear, used to carry a burden, to
produce a child. Hence we see why the Ya vanas became Ionians.
It is the root of Nar ayana. Nar in Shanscrit is water; the He-
brew ‫נהר‬, ner, river or water; and the word means IE, carried
in the, or on the water. It is Kany-a; that is Can Ya, or Iah in
Hebrew. It has the same meaning as the Amba of India, and
Omphe of Greece, and the Om and Ammon of Egypt; these
latter being of both genders, which I am persuaded answers to
one sense of the Bya of India, meaning Bis-Ia Double-Ja, male
and female. Finally it is the Argha. Significant also, and emi-
nently connected with all these radicals and their deeply mystic
meanings is the fact, that in many churches, as well as in many
places in the streets of Mayence on the Rhine, the Virgin is seen
bearing the Child [the Messenger] on one arm, and a branch of
lilies, the lotus, in the hand of the other arm; standing with one
foot upon the head of a Serpent, which has a sprig of an apple-
tree, with an Apple [the Apocalypse, also the Kosmos] on it, in its
mouth, and its tail twisted about a globe partly enveloped with
clouds; therefore evidently a celestial globe. Her other foot is
placed in the inside of a crescent. Her head is surrounded with a
glory of stars. Can any one doubt that this is the Regina Stella-
rum of the sphere, the Woman of the Apocalypse? The Branch
of the Apple Tree in the mouth of the Serpent, with the Virgin’s
foot upon its head shews pretty clearly who this Virgin of the
sphere was. And the Apple Tree is the mystic fruit of Avalle-
nau, ante, page 32. The circumstance of the Virgin almost always
having the lotus or lily, the sacred plant both of Egypt and India,
in her hand (or an angel has it and presents it to her) is very
striking. It is found, Sir R. Ker Porter observes, in Egypt, Pales-
tine, Persia, India, all over the East, and was of old in the taber-
nacle and temple of the Israelites. It is also represented in all
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pictures of the salutation of Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, and in

fact has been held in mysterious veneration by people of all
nations and times. Sir Wm. Jones was told by a Cashmirian that
Maya herself is the Mother of Universal Nature and of all the
inferior Gods. This exactly agrees with the import of the word
among the Greeks. Maia properly denotes a grand mother or a
great mother. Hesychius (Lex) says, Μαια πατρος καὶ μητρος
μητηρ. Sommona Codam, or the Sun and Moon born Adam, is
admitted to be one of the names of Buddha [a Messenger]. M.
La Loubere says, His mother, whose name is found in some of
their Balic books, was called as they say, Maha Maria, which
seems to signify the great Mary, for Maha signifies great. But it
is written Mania as often as Maria. [See upon this name Part I.
pp. 262—5.] And the same analogies existed in Europe. As,
according to Tacitus, Nerthus was drawn in a carriage in a festive
procession, through the several districts, so in Christian times,
particularly during the spring, we meet with customs, a leading
feature of which consists of a tour or a procession. On these
occasions a symbol was carried about, either an animal having
reference to some divinity, or else some utensil. A procession
may here be cited which took place in 1133, notwithstanding the
strenuous opposition of the clergy. In the forest near Inda (in
the territory of Julich) a ship was constructed and furnished
beneath with wheels. This was drawn by weavers, harnessed
before it, through Aix-la-Chappele, Maestricht, Tongres, Ivry, and
other localities, was everywhere received with great joy, and
attended by a multitude, singing and dancing. The celebration
lasted for 12 days. This custom maintained itself to a much later
period in Germany, as by a protocol of the Council of Ulm dated
on the eve of St. Nicholas, 1330, the procession with a plough (an
emblem of Ceres) or a ship was prohibited. A connection between
the above custom and the worship of Isis, whose symbol was a
ship, seems in a high degree probable. T , North Myth. i.
283. The same writer points out how the Petro Paulite Mary
took the place of the Goddesses of old. Flowers and plants, he
says, are named after Mary: images of Mary are borne in proces-
sion and placed in the forest trees in exact conformity with the
heathen worship. Mary is the divine mother, the spinner [like
Diana] and appears as a helpful virgin to all who invoke her.
But Mary stands not alone. In the Greek and Latin churches a
numerous host of saints sprung up around her, occupying the
place of the gods of the second and third classes, the heroes and
wise women of heathenism. Northern Mythology i. 227. The
circumstance of Maria being called Mania, in Siam, is worthy of
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observation. In the old language without vowels, Mn means

Moon. Is this one of the reasons why Mary is always represented
with a Moon in some way or other—generally standing on it? If
Maria be the same as Maia, and is the female generative power,
we see why she is always connected with the Moon. This Mary
is found in the kingdom of Sion, or Siam, in the city of India.
The mother of the Gods was called Ma in the Phrygian dialect.
In the Hebrew and Arabic languages we have the word Maria
‫םריא‬, mrai, which means a female beeve, and also a wild dove.
The word in the Hebrew is attended with much difficulty. I
suspect it is in some way mystical and not understood.
Note 16 (page 563).—Plutarch tells us that the Egyptians

looked upon Osiris as the head or beginning: upon Isis, as the
receptacle, and esteemed Orus as the completion and perfection of
the whole. Τον μεν Οσιριν ὤς αρχην, την δε Ισιν ὤς ὑποδο-
χην, τον δε Ωρον ὤς αποτελεσμα. Is. and Os. 374. This
receptacle, it will be seen, has the same meaning as Argha, and
Shekinah, and the lotus throne on which the Deity reposes. Επι
τε λωτῳ καθημενος, says Iamblichus de Myst. vii., και επι
πλοιου ναυτιλλομενος (Θεος); God sitting upon the Lotus and
sailing in a Ship. The discerption of Osiris into a thousand pieces
and the wild wandering of Isis in search of them, mentioned by
Plutarch (Isis and Osiris, sect. 18) indicates the lapse into a lower
region of the Ethereal and Archangelic Spirits, who kept not their
first estate, and who are symbolized as the limbs or emanations of
Osiris [God] being in truth a part of the Divine, and after whom
Isis, or the Holy Spirit, by herself, and Messengers, is perpetually
in quest. The whole of the mythos is an analogue of that of Ceres
in quest of Proserpine, and has exactly the same occult meaning.
I have already shewn (ante p. 250) that the Ship or Boat, mentioned
in Iamblichus, symbolized the Holy Spirit: so the Bride-Stones
were of a boat and cross shape. The Bride-Stones of Stansfield,
mentioned, ante, page 374, are alluded to in the Archæologia, ii.
358. There is an upright stone or pillar, called the Bride, whose
perpendicular height is about five yards; its diameter in the thick-
est part about three, and the pedestal about half a yard: near
this stood another larger stone, called the Groom, which is thrown
down, as the Bride has also been attempted to be. Bride, in the
Saxon signified a woman just given in marriage. The Bride-Stones
of Congleton are described by the Rev. T. Malbon, rector of Con-
gleton, thus: The Bride-Stones are in the parish of Biddulph, in
the county of Stafford, and stand on a rising ground in the break
or opening between the Cloud and Woof-Lowe, which are two of
HH3
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the chain of hills that run through Staffordshire, Cheshire, Der-

byshire, and Yorkshire, into Scotland. [The following plan as
they existed in 1766, is set out]:
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A A, &c., are six upright free-stones, from three to six feet broad,
of various heights and shapes, fixed about six feet from each
other, in a semicircular form, and two within, where the earth is
very black, mixed with ashes and oak charcoal. It is apprehended
the Circle was originally complete, and twenty-seven feet in dia-
meter, for there is the appearance of holes where stones have
been, and also of two single stones, one standing East of the cir-
cle, at about 5 or 6 yards distance, and the other at the same
distance from that. B B are rough square tapering stones, four
feet three inches broad, and two feet thick. One on the North
side is broken off, as is part of the other. C C is the pavement of
a kind of artificial cave. It is composed of broken pieces of stones
about two inches and a half thick, and laid on pounded white
stones about six inches deep. The sides of this cave were origi-
nally composed of two unhewn free-stones, about 18 feet in length,
six in height, and 14 inches thick at a medium. Each of them is
now broken into two. D is a partition standing across the place,
about five feet and a half high, and six inches thick. A circular
hole is cut through this stone [see, ante, pp. 198, 199], about 19½ inch-
es in diameter. The whole was covered with long, unhewn,
large, flat, free-stones, since taken away. The height of the Cave
from the pavement to the covering is five feet and ten inches.
The entrance was filled up with free-stones and earth, supposed to
be dust blown by the wind from year to year in dry weather.
There remains another place of the same construction, but smaller
and without any inward partition, about 55 yards distant from
this: it is two yards and a half long, two feet and a half broad,
and three feet two inches high. There is also part of another.
There was a large heap of stones that covered the whole, 120
yards long, and 12 yards broad. These stones have been taken
away from time to time by masons and other people for various
purposes. And in the year 1764 several hundred loads were
carried away for making a turnpike road about sixty yards from
this place. Rowland’s Mona Antiqua. I have no doubt that 19,
making up the full number of the Metonic Cycle, the Twelve
Messengers, the Seven Spirits, was the original number of these
stones. In 1832, their condition was as follows. There are Bride
stones in several parts of the kingdom, those at Biddulph, Co.
Stafford, consist of eight upright stones, two of which stand with-
in a semicircle formed by the other six. Archæologia xxv. 55.
The number is now further diminished. Has the enlightened
clergyman of the district, the Rev. Mr. Brierley no influence with
the owner of these precious reliques, so as to save them from fur-
ther desecration? Let him prove himself a worthy successor of
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his predecessor, Mr. Malbon, to whom we are indebted for the

above most interesting record.
Note 17 (page 589).—The passage from the A cited
in the text, affords one of the innumerable proofs of the great
antiquity and oriental origin of that divine Revelation. There is
nothing analogous to it in any part of the Jewish tracts; nor in
the Christian tradition is there the least allusion to its hidden
mysticism. It was on the thigh that the Naronic Messenger of
God was described in the A as bearing an indication
of his sacred mission. This occult type, which was of course
communicated in the Mysteries, originated the custom of putting
an indication of a similar nature upon the thighs of such of the
images or symbols as were used by the most ancient peoples to
signify either God himself, or the Holy Spirit of God, the Queen
of Heaven. In the images of Hindostan we find Maha Deva,
and Parvatti, each holding one of the thighs, so as to conceal
from public view, the Naronic cypher which was impressed upon
it; and in two exquisitely beautiful engravings of Vishnu and
Lakshmi, and Siva, and Parvatti, which appear in Plate 7, of
M ’ Hindu Pantheon, the thigh of the chief heavenly being
is so arranged as to hide the symbol. These represent religious
secrets which go back to the earliest ages, in fact to the days of
the A , when first propounded by the First Messenger.
See Hindu Pantheon, passim. What the Hindus concealed by this
peculiar attitude, the Greeks attained, as we find in the text, by
a ligature, which served the same purpose. Heliodorus, in the
romance of Theagenes and Chariclea, mentions, as it were by
accident, a tradition of this kind, as connected with Homer
(that is, more than a thousand years before the date of the com-
mon Apocalypse assigned to John) which I consider very curious,
and which I transcribe here. The gods, O Cnemon, he says,
when they appear to, or disappear from us, generally do it under
a human shape, seldom under that of any other animal; perhaps
in order that their appearance may have more the resemblance
of reality. They may not be manifest to the profane; but cannot
be concealed from the Sage. You may know them by their eyes,
they look on you with a fixed gaze, never winking with their
eyelids, still more by their motion, which is a kind of gliding; an
aerial impulse, without movement of the feet, cleaving rather
than traversing the air. [See B O G , Part I., pp. 505, 507.]
For which reason the images of the Egyptian gods have their feet
joined together, and in a manner united. Wherefore Homer being
an Egyptian, and instructed in their sacred doctrines, covertly
insinuated this manner in his verses, leaving it to be understood by
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the intelligent. . . . Different authors have ascribed to Homer diffe-

rent countries, indeed the country of a wise man is in every land;
but he was in fact an Egyptian of the city of Thebes, as you may
learn from himself; his supposed father was a priest there, his real
one Hermes. For the wife of the priest whose son he was taken
to be, while she was celebrating some sacred mysteries slept in the
temple. Hermes enjoyed her company, and impregnated her with
Homer [see Luke i.] and he bore to his dying day a mark of his
origin. From Thebes he wandered into various countries, and
particularly into Greece, singing his verses and obtaining the name
he bore. He never told his real one, nor his country, nor family,
but those who knew of this mark upon his body, took occasion
from it to give him the name of Homer [‘Ομηροσ—μηρος, in
Greek signifies a thigh]. All this, as the reader now sees, proves
that in the days of Homer, at least, this secret of the A -
was known; with what face can the common believers pre-
tend any longer to maintain that the work which embodies the
secret was first composed in an age long after the death of the
Ninth Messenger?
Note 18 (page 604).—Homer (Odys v. 125) and Hesiod (Theog.)
tell us that Ceres loved Iasion. This is a name for the
Messenger. See A , section 29. See also Eustath ad
Homer, p. 1528. Βερεκυντια, which is a name for Ceres, really
means the productive yoni; ‫ברא‬, bra, and the primitive radical,
which follows it. This word anglicized, Cynthia, Berecynthia,
is also a title for Diana.
Note 19 (page 640).—The verb ἰαω, I heal, says Nimrod, was
one as well known in the mysteries of theosophy as in common
medicine. Æsculapius, the god of resurrection from the dead, to
whom Socrates offered his last dying vow was ’Ιατρος, the physi-
cian, ii. 491. The Chaldæans call their God Iao and Saba, or, He
who is in the Seven Orbits—Lydus. Awn means Sun, Soul, Life,
Aeon, Time, Age, Emanation from the Supreme. As an adjective
aioneus, it means living, immortal, everlasting. Julian, the Em-
peror, speaks of the Temple of Aion, the Sun. Ian means spirit
in the Persian; hence Djin, a spirit. They are all akin to Oon,
Oannes, and Yuneh, and Iuno, and AO. This last divine
name was disguised by the Roman pontiffs, as the divinity
Aius Locutius; or the voice that was heard from the Grove of
Vesta. Hence, says Cicero, they raised an altar, Aio loquenti.
De Divinat, lib. i. This is evidently A O; the Spirit of Tongues.
The descent from heaven of the Apocalypse, under the type of the
ancile, or heavenly shield, is thus described by Ovid. Believe what
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I tell: I speak of things wondrous, but realities. The heavens began

to open in the midst; the multitude, with their monarch cast down
their eyes. Behold there falls a shield gently poised on the light-
some breeze; a shout from the people ascends to the stars. The
King raises the gift from the ground, having first offered a heifer.
Fasti iii. The Hebrews allude often to this symbol. I am thy
shield, says the Lord to Abram. G . xv. 1. O people saved by
the Lord, the shield of thy help. D . xxxiii. 29. But thou, O
Lord, art a shield for me. Ps. iii. 3, etc. They also called it the
Shield of Salvation. Neither Ovid nor the common Hebrews,
however, had any idea of what was intended. One can hardly
read without indignation the fables which Ovid relates.
Note 20 (page 648).—That these Cyclopes were the Cabiric
Messengers is covertly hinted at by Hesiod, who says that “They
from immortals grew up, speaking mortals;” which alludes to
their descent from heaven. They were also called Cottus, Bri-
areus, and Gyas, the great and mighty children sprung from
Earth and Heaven. They were hundred-handed, and each one
had fifty heads—symbols these of strength and wisdom. As soon
as they were born, they were hidden in a Cave. So the Messianic
Messengers were again disguised as the Nine Melia or Ash-
nymphs, Helice, Cynosura, Arethusa, Ida, Cromne, Britho,
Calæno, Adrastea, Glauce: all typical names, for these Minerval
spirits, or Sons of the Ash Ydrasil, the Holy Spirit. [See Part
I., page 323.] Again, also the Three Cabirs, were concealed as
the Three Destinies, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, who pursue
transgressions both of men and gods: nor do the goddesses ever
cease from dread wrath, says Hesiod, before that I wot they
shall have repaid sore vengeance to him whosoever shall have
sinned. I have already shewn that the Muses symbolized the
Messianic Messengers. In a gem published by Gronovius, i. C.,
Clio, the first of the Nine Muses, bears in her right hand a cross,
and in her left a sword of flame. Montfaucon gives a print (vol.
1., pl. 7, xiii.) from Beger, in which Zeus is represented throned,
with the Eagle at his feet, as if going forth on a mission. On the
reverse of the medal, the Eagle is represented as having gone
forth in majesty, bearing in his talons the thunderbolt of the
Father, and in his beak an olive crown, types of conquest, and of
peace, either of which marks the Messenger of Heaven. In
another, the Messenger is graven, on his return, standing in the
hand of God, to whom he offers a crown of victory, significant of
his successful mission to man. In another figure (pl. 7., xxi.)
Jupiter is again represented dismissing his Eagle, on which is the
winged cap and caduceus of Hermes, or the Inspired Messenger
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of the Most High. In another (pl. 8, xvi.) Jupiter holds the

Eagle in his right hand, as if about to send him forth to man.
Note 21 (page 655).—And Moses built an altar, and called the
name of it Jehovah-Nissi (the Lord, my banner), for he said,
Because the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with
Amalek from generation to generation. Exod. xvii. 15. This
translation, however, is not accurate: it really means “because of
the hand (‫ )על‬upon, above, over against the throne of Jehovah,
war against Amalek.” The commentators have in vain sought to
make sense of this, the text is clearly corrupt. Mount Nisa is an
anagram of Si-an, the same as Zion and Sion. He (Dyonusus)
was, by the mythologists, says Bryant, A. M. iii. 72, supposed to
have had a second birth, and a renewal of life in the Theba, or Ark.
Hence he was termed Θηβαιγενης; which the Greeks interpreted
a Theban-born, and made him a native of Bœotia; but he was
originally only worshipped there, and his rites and mysteries
came from Egypt. Macrobius says that he was Διος νους, or the
intelligence of God. Satur. lib. i. 18. Is this Ieue-Nissi?
Bacchus is sometimes represented like Janus, two-headed, one
with, the other without, a beard. And this, as Maffei observes,
is what Diodorus Siculus, and Orpheus call Δίονυσος δίμορφος.
In Arabia, Bacchus, the Saviour, was adored under the name of
Urotalt, and under the title of Adonai, or of Adoneus. (Auson.
Epig. 29.) Urotalt is evidently the two Latin words Urus and
Altus—the lofty Bull or Beeve. Probably the title of Urania,
given to Venus, came from the Urus. The junction of the two,
the Venus and the Urus, produced God the generator [or Mes-
senger]. D’Ancarville, Vol. I., page 47. Urus is connected with
Aur, Flame.
Note 22 (page 655).—The Mexicans alluded to Truth as emanat-
ing from the Holy Spirit, under the following mythos. They
said that Mayaguil (the Spirit of God) was a Woman, with 400
breasts, and that God, on account of her fruitfulness, changed her
into the Maguei, which is the vine of that country from which
they make wine. Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vi. 203.
Hence as being this Wine, or this Truth, Jesus always speaks of
himself. The marriage of Cana is a mystical allusion to Truth in
this symbol. The symbolic word vine enters into the composition
of the adjective divine. See index, Wine; and Part I., pp. 16,
111, 112, 322.
Note 23 (page 676).—I have spoken of Paulism as the “spawn
of hell;” a strong phrase, and one that will probably jar upon the
feelings of many; but I can in truth use no other, to describe its
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fearful results. By teaching to the multitude that no matter

what crimes they may commit, they are redeemed and saved by
the atoning blood of Jesus, they offer a premium to all evil doers
to continue in their sinfulness; secure at last of salvation from
God in the blood of the atonement. It was thought that the con-
fessional worked great evils; because one had only to repeat the
bead roll of his crimes to a priest, and he was absolved and
forgiven; with full liberty to begin the same round of criminality
anew: but even this check—confession to a stranger—is abolished
by our Paulites, and a wretch has only to say, I trust in Jesus,
and he is straight admitted into the assemblies of the Holy ! And
this is the blasphemous creed which is now taught throughout the
length and breadth of the land. This very day (Sunday, May 19,
1867) I had put into my hand, by one of three females who carried
a large bundle, which they distributed to all, the following tract.
To say how utterly I was shocked by its language, would convey
but a faint idea of my feelings:—“Come to Jesus, the Saviour
of Sinners!—This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta-
tion, that Jesus Christ came into the world to Save Sinners.
‘Him hath God exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour. This alone
brought him to our wicked world. And how does he save? By
standing in our place, and bearing the punishment we merited. We
have broken the law, but he has perfectly kept it; for he ‘was
holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.’ We deserved
death for our sins: ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’ But he
died for us. ‘He gave his life a ransom for many.’ We were
under the curse: ‘Cursed is every one that continueth not in all
things which are written in the book of the law to do them.’ But
he was ‘made a curse for us.’ ‘He was wounded for our trans-
gressions, he was bruised for our iniquities;—and with his stripes
we are healed,’ He ‘bare our sins in his own body on the tree.’
This is why he became a man, was ‘despised and rejected of men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.’ He ‘carried our
sorrows.’ This is why he suffered temptation, groaned in Geth-
semane, in his agony sweat great drops of blood, was scourged,
spit upon, crowned with thorns, and nailed upon the cross.’ He
gave his life a ransom for many.’ We were slaves,—he came to
set us free. But the price he paid was his own blood: redeemed
‘with the precious blood of Christ.’ We were prisoners at the
bar, condemned to die; but he left his Father’s throne, and came
and stood on our side, saying, ‘I will die for them, that they may
be forgiven and live for ever.’ And now that he has returned to
his glory in heaven, he lives to save us. He watches over us,
speaks to us by his word and by his Spirit, listens to our prayers,
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advocates our cause, helps us in our weakness, and ‘ever liveth

to make intercession for us.’ He thus saves us both by his death
and his life. He has paid all our debts, and is ready to supply all our
wants. He saves those who trust in him from the sting of death,
and will deliver them from condemnation at the judgment-day. We
must appear before the Judge as guilty sinners; but if we can use
this plea, ‘I trust in Jesus, who died for me,’ he will at once declare
us to be fully acquitted, pardoned, saved. He says to thee, reader,
‘Poor sinner ! thou art in danger of hell; but I have brought thee
a free pardon, purchased with my own blood. I died for thee. I
am able to save thee. Come unto me.’ See Is. liii.; Acts x. 34
—43; xiii. 16—41; Rom. v.; Gal. iii. 13; 1 Tim. i. 15; Heb.
ix. 11—28; 1 Pet. i. 18, 19; ii. 24, etc.” To this belief England,
and indeed I may say all Protestant or Paulite countries, have
now come. And now let us see what fruit it produces; and whether
I have been wrong in calling it “the spawn of hell.” I insert
here a few cuttings from the newspapers, for the benefit of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; the
Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge; and the Reli-
gious Tract Society, of 56, Paternoster Row. There are good and
true men connected with each and all. Let me beseech them, in
the love of God, to consider well what they are doing; let me
implore of them on my knees not to plunge their immortal essence
into the perdition of darkness, by teaching these horrors. I
declare before Heaven I would lay down my life to save the soul
of one of them. Lord Shaftesbury, in the House of Lords, gives the
following sketch of our agricultural population: and of the utter
heartlesness which our national irreligion is developing about us.
Two years ago, he says, I had the honour of bringing this
subject under your lordships’ notice, and, I believe, I was the
first person who drew attention to it. I then moved your
lordships to present an address to the Crown, praying for the
appointment of a Commission to inquire into the subject of the
employment of children and young persons in various trades not
protected by the Factory Acts, and that that Commission should
take into consideration the system of agricultural gangs. The
Report of that Commission was made a very short time ago, and
I wish to read a few extracts, in order to show your lordships
what the system really is. The Commissioners say:—“The sys-
tem of organized labour known by the name of ‘agricultural
gangs’ exists, as far as the Commissioners have been able to as-
certain, almost exclusively in the following counties:—Lincoln-
shire, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Nottinghamshire. There are a few instances of the employment
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of these gangs in three other neighbouring counties, namely,

in the counties of Northampton, Bedford, and Rutland. They are
not found over the whole of any of these counties, but are distri-
buted irregularly through various parts of them, in obedience to
local circumstances. All organized agricultural gangs consist of
the gang master, a number of women, young persons of both sexes.
The Commissioners, in designating ‘young persons,’ adopt the
definition of the Factory Acts, namely, those between 13 and 18.
Children of both sexes from the age of 6 to 13. The ‘organized
gang,’—the subject of the present inquiry—is called in some dis-
tricts the ‘public gang,’ in others the ‘common gang,’ in some
places it is called the ‘jobbing gang,’ elsewhere the ‘travelling
gang.’ The numbers in each public gang are from 10 or 12 to 20,
30, and 40, very rarely above 40. But the most common, because
the most manageable number is about 20, employing in the whole
about 7000 boys and girls, from six years old and upwards. In
addition to the ‘public gangs’' there are also many ‘private gangs,’
employing full 20,000. The ‘public gang’ master is an inde-
pendent man, who engages the members of his gang, and contracts
with the farmer to execute a certain kind and amount of agricul-
tural work with his gang. The ‘private gang’ is a small gang,
seldom exceeding 12 or 20, similarly composed, but in the farmer’s
own employ, and superintended and directed by one of the farmer’s
own labourers. The unanimity with which the public gang system
is condemned in consequence of its injurious influences on the
moral character of those subject to it is all but entire throughout
the whole evidence. The number of persons who are able to speak
well of the system under its moral aspects, as far as they have
witnessed it, is very small indeed. The rest, with an earnestness
of expression which testifies to the sincerity of their convictions,
are evidently deeply impressed with the desire to call attention to
the great amount of moral evil connected with the system, and to
urge the consideration of some mode of improving it. A great
part of the work consists in making or keeping the land in a fit
state for the growth of crops by cleaning it from weeds of all kinds,
and may be included under the description of weeding; ‘knocking,’
or spreading, and putting in manure are sometimes added. Thin-
ning or ‘singling’ turnips and mangold wurzel is a work of the
same nature as weeding. The work also includes the putting
crops into the ground, as by setting potatoes and dropping seed
for dibblers, treading corn on light soil, &c. The work also in-
cludes the getting in of certain crops when ripe, e.g., pulling tur-
nips and mangolds or beet, pulling flax, and sometimes peas,
instead of their being mown; picking up potatoes when dug or
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turned up; also gathering garden produce in market gardens of

fruit and vegetables. The turnips or mangolds when pulled have
also to be topped and tailed.” As an instance, take the follow-
ing, which is recorded by Mr. Savage:—“Mrs. Antony Adams,
labourer’s wife, Denton, Huntingdonshire,— ‘In June, 1862, my
daughters Harriet and Sarah, aged respectively eleven and thirteen
years, were engaged to work on Mr. Worman’s land at Stilton.
When they got there he took them to near Peterborough; there
they worked for six weeks, going and returning each day. The
distance each way is eight miles, so that they had to walk sixteen
miles each day on all the six working days of the week, besides
working in the field from 8 to 5 or 5.30 in the afternoon. They
used to start from home at 5 in the morning, and seldom got
back before 9. They had to find all their own meals, as well
as their own tools (such as hoes.) They (the girls) were good
for nothing at the end of the six weeks. The ganger persuaded
me to send my little girl Susan, who was then six years of age.
She walked all the way (eight miles) to Peterborough to her
work, and worked from 8 to half-past 5, and received 4d. She
was that tired that her sisters had to carry her the best part
of the way home—eight miles, and she was ill from it for three
weeks, and never went again.’” When a system like this exists, it
is obvious that the Legislature ought not to hesitate a moment in
applying a proper remedy for the evil. The Report goes on to
say:—“The dress of females collects wet much more than that of
boys and men, and even if they are at work does not dry nearly
so quickly. The workers are often wailing about for long intervals
with wet feet, and their cloathes soaked through up to their knees or
waist, or higher, doing nothing but waiting till the weather or the
crop is drier. Children, from being shorter, are wetted by the
crops higher up their bodies than elder workers, though not worse
off as to rain. The gang-workers, as a rule, are the poorest of
the labouring class, and many of them are badly fed, shod, and
clothed, and have very small means of making a change of clothes
when they return home. Not only rain, but even in fine weather
the dew makes the crops very wet, some much more so than
others, and the higher the crop the more are the workers exposed
to this wet, and females, owing to their dress, much the most. Hence
they are often soaked through up to the knees or waist, and
children even higher, and have to squeeze or wring out their petticoats,
and even take them or other parts of their dress off, and hang them
up to dry. A young woman, entirely crippled with rheumatism,
which she soon got after going into a gang at eleven years old,
says, ‘We have had to take off our shoes and pour the water out,
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and then the man would say, “Now, then, go in again.’ It is sug-
gested by a competent person that, if the employment were placed
under regulation, one of the several rules which it is suggested
should be endorsed on a licence to be required from the gangmaster,
should be ‘No girls to be permitted to enter high wet corn in
weeding.’” In my opinion, my lords, no female at all should be
engaged in this injurious and disgusting employment. To say
nothing of the moral considerations involved, there is not a
medical man who will not tell you that the most critical period of a
woman’s life is that between eleven and thirteen years of age. That
is the time when a change in her constitution takes place, when
maladies are most easily contracted, and when the female child
requires to be watched with the most parental and minute care.
Children at that tender age are nevertheless exposed, as we are
told, to all the inclemencies of the seasons with every malady that
besets humanity, and yet no hand is stretched out to rescue them
from their miserable condition. I shall next proceed to read to
your lordships the evidence of Dr. Morris, of Spalding, who
says:—“I have been in practice in the town of Spalding for
twenty-five years, and during the greater portion of this time I
have been medical officer to the Spalding Union Infirmary. I am
convinced that the gang system is the cause of much immorality.
The evil in the system is the mixture of the sexes, in the case of
boys and girls of twelve to seventeen years of age under no proper
control. The gangers, as you know, take the work of the farmers.
Their custom is to pay their children once a week at some beer-
house, and it is no uncommon thing for these children to be kept
waiting at the place till eleven or twelve o’clock at night. At the
infirmary many girls of fourteen years of age, and even girls of
thirteen, up to seventeen years of age, have been brought in pregnant
to be confined there. The girls have acknowledged that their ruin
has taken place, in this gang work. The offence is committed in
going or returning from their work. Girls and boys of this age
go five, six, or even seven miles to work, walking in droves along
the roads or bylanes. I have myself witnessed gross indecencies
between boys and girls of fourteen to sixteen years of age. I once
saw a young woman insulted by some five or six boys on the road
side. Other older persons were about twenty or thirty yards off,
but they took no notice. The girl was calling out, which caused
me to stop. I have also seen boys bathing in the brooks, and
girls between thirteen and nineteen looking on from the bank.”
I now come to the evidence of the Rev. Mr. Huntley, the rector
of Binbrooke, who says:—“Turning to the moral side of the pic-
ture, all is blank. The benefits of education which charity has
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provided, are thrown aside by the parent, The young being occu-
pied in manual labour from morn till night, the village school is
comparatively denuded of scholars. In room of moral and reli-
gious teaching, children are auditors of obscene and blasphemous
language, while also exposed to the most profligate and debased
examples; thus completing the first stage of ruin. Progressing
from childhood to womanhood, the girl is brought up without
experience in the management of domestic affairs, and it is no
wonder that when the duties of servitude and married life are
demanded of her she is ignorant of both. There is not one exten-
sive occupier of land, nor one sober-minded person throughout
my parish, who does not denounce the gangs as destructive to the
morals of the poor.” Then we have the evidence of Mr. Richard
Greenwood, a farmer, who tells us:—“I never employ a common
gang. The common gang is very bad indeed. There is a reason
for them when children can’t be got otherwise, but I think that
they could, if they tried, in many cases. I don’t think that work
is done much cheaper by the gang. I think the gang system is full
of evil. There are great girls of fourteen to fifteen years of age
among them, and there is always something wrong going on. It
does not matter who the ganger is; where there is a lot together,
he has no control over them all. I have counted twenty to
twenty-five in the gangs that come from Binbrooke. The only
advantage to the farmer is, that it saves him the trouble of seek-
ing the children. Half the girls from Ludford have been ruined
by going out. I think that farmers would not be at all losers by
girls not going out to work at all.” That is the testimony of a
man who farms 1,000 acres; but I now come to the evidence of
mothers whose opinions on this subject are entitled to the greatest
weight. A very intelligent woman named Rachel Gibson says:—
“I can’t speak up for any gangs; they ought all to be done away
with.” Most heartily I say “amen” to that. “My children
shan’t go to one if I can help it—i.e., as long as I and their father
are alive, I hope, if we can keep them; one is seven, one five. I
believe that I am the same as many other people about this.
There are a great many mothers who send their children into
gangs, who would not if they could help it, and they say so.
Nothing comes amiss to children after they have been in them, no
bad talk, nor anything else. I know that a child if brought up in
a gang is quite different from what it would have been if brought
up otherwise; you would soon know that it had been out, espe-
cially if you were to talk to it. Gangs might be very well for
boys, but never for girls. I did not go myself till I was seven-
teen, and could take care of myself. The coming home is the
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worst part, that’s when the mischief is done. There was never any
good got out of gangs, neither in talk nor in the other way, and
they never will be kept as they should. I don’t think it proper
that womenkind should go into the fields at all, in gangs or not,
though I have done both. There would then be more in the
houses to mind them. Harvest work is different; you are not
under a gang-master, except that sometimes the tying has been
done by a gang, and at harvest much more money can be made;
a woman may make 2s. 3d. in a day, and that comes nice to any
one. But other work is different. I should just have liked you
to have met that gang coming back this afternoon, with their great
thick boots and buskins on their legs, and petticoats pinned up;
you might see the knees of some. One girl, whom I took in to live
because she has no home to go to, came back to-day from the gang
all dripping wet from the turnips. If you don’t feel any hurt from
the wet when you are young, you do afterwards, when you are
old, and the rheumatism comes on. Girls wear a pair of buskins
to keep them from the wet. It is hard work when you have to
wring the tops of turnips and mangolds up, and often makes
blisters on the hands.” These are the views of another mother as
to the working of the system:—“What I say is, these gangs
should not be as they are. There are so many girls that they
make lads at a loose hand—i.e., leave them nothing to do.
Then there is the girls coming home at dark; that is when the
job is done. The gangs are draughted off, two (i.e., workers) here,
three there, and so on, so that the gangmaster cannot look after
them, and is not to blame. I have gone with twenty in a morn-
ing, and seen only two perhaps come home with the man at night.
Then girls will have bad language among themselves, though the
man might wish to stop it, but there are so many together,
twenty or thirty perhaps, that he can’t keep them quiet. I have
worked in gangs many years. Sometimes the poor children are
very illused by the gangmaster. One has used them horribly,
kicking them, hitting them with fork handles, hurdle sticks, &c.,
and even knocking them down. These are not things to hit a
child with. My own children have been dropped into across the
loins and dropped right down, and if they don’t know how to get
up he has kicked them. I have many a time seen my own and
other children knocked about by him in this way. It was not
from drink; he was quite sober. Sometimes, too, they cannot
work properly because their hands are cut all across and blistered
where they twist the stalk round to pull up the root. Of course,
he don’t knock the big ones; it is the little ones he takes advan-
tage of. I have heard him use to a child most awful words for a
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girl to hear. My boy, when about ten or eleven, had a white

swelling on his knee, and lay suffering nearly six years before he
had his leg and thigh taken off, all but about as long as a finger.
He came back one day and said he had a thorn, but others told
me about the man kicking him. He was a very quiet boy, and
was for peace. The doctor said it was from ill-usage, a fall or
kick; there was no thorn.” I beg, in the next place, to call the
attention of your lordships to the sixth report of the medical
officer of the Privy Council, because he points how serious is the
effect produced on the mortality of the children by work such as
that to which I am referring. The report states:—“That in
some entirely rural marsh districts the habitual mortality of
young children is almost as great as in the most infanticidal of our
manufacturing towns; that Wisbeach, for instance, is within a
fraction as bad as Manchester: and that generally in the registra-
tion districts (18 others, which include several in which the gang
system prevails) the death-rate of infants under one year of age is
from two and a quarter to nearly three times as high as in the 16
districts of England which have the lowest infantile mortality.
The result of this new inquiry, however, has been to show that the
monstrous infantine rate of the examined agricultural districts
depends only on the fact that there has been introduced into these
districts the influence which has already been recognized as enor-
mously fatal to the infants of manufacturing populations—the
influence of the employment of adult women.” It goes on to say
the effect of the gang system is to increase the employment of
females, adult as well as young. The consequences are thus
described:—“The opinions of about seventy medical practitioners,
with those of other gentlemen acquainted with the condition of
the poor, were obtained. With wonderful accord the cause of the
mortality was traced by nearly all these well-qualified witnesses to
the bringing of the land under tillage—that is, to the cause which
has banished malaria, and has substituted a fertile though
unsightly garden for the whiter marshes and summer pastures of
fifty and one hundred years ago. It was very generally thought
that the infants no longer received any injury from soil, climate,
or malarious influence, but that a more fatal enemy had been
introduced by the employment of mothers in the field.” It is
unnecessary to multiply instances of the evil consequences of this
system, but I think I must give you the results of the employ-
ment of women in this way, as stated by the Rev. H. Mackenzie,
rector of Tydd St. Mary’s, who says:—“The causes of the gang
system are the comparative cheapness of female and child labour.
The effects of the employment of women in fieldwork are:—1.
Loss of self-respect, and dirty and degraded habits. 2. Slovenly
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and slatternly households. 3. Alienation of husbands by the dis-

comforts of home. 4. Neglect of the education of children. 5.
Drinking habits among the men, and opium consumption among
the women. The effects of the employment of girls in gang field-
work are:—1. Boldness. 2. Ignorance. 3. Unchastity. 4. Want
of cleanliness in work and person. 5. Incompetance in sewing,
mending, cooking, and all that pertains to household economy.
6. Indifference to parental control. 7. Unwillingness to apply
themselves to any regular mode gaining a livelihood. Girls who
have up to a certain time made good progress at school are mate-
rially injured in morals, discipline, knowledge, and regularity,
by going for two or three weeks to work in the fields. It will be
a blessing to this neighbourhood if field work for girls under age
can be prohibited. This in a few years would abolish field work
for women altogether.” There is only one other extract with
which I shall trouble your lordships, showing how totally unne-
cessary it is to employ females in this manner, and that is merely
by indulgence in an old habit that the system is persevered in.
This, my lords, is described as the state of things at Eye, with a
population of 2,430 persons, and where the property of Sir Edward
Kerrison is situated:—“It will be seen that no females are
employed on the gang system here. This is owing to the interest
taken in it by Sir Edward Kerrison, who is owner of the greater
part of the parish of Eye. It was entirely by his desire that girls
were not employed in these gangs. The demoralizing effects were
seen to be so great that for some years past only males have con-
stituted the gang, and it certainly has worked admirably, for a
distinct moral control is at the same time exercised over these
lads by the instruction given to the master to check all obscene
language and unbecoming behaviour, not only in their work, but
if they are so ill-behaved either by language or manner when not
in their work it is checked by special observation to the proper
quarter, and the individual is admonished, so as to let him know
that he is not unobserved, and most probably he will find it much
more to his own interest to behave in such a manner as may war-
rant those who have the power and influence to help him in after
life. And all these poor people well know from practical experi-
ence that they have the kindest friends in Sir Edward and Lady
Caroline Kerrison. Year after year young lads and young girls
are looked after and helped out in their start in life, and assist-
ance given in clothing and travelling expenses, where the parents
require the help. This has an immense moral effect on the poor
of the place and neighbourhood, coupled with the fact that the
large landowner is a resident and taking personal interest in the
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welfare of the people.” That proves that the employment of

females in these gangs is wholly unnecessary; and if their labour
of this kind can be dispensed with in a district like Eye, it can
be dispensed with anywhere.—Times, April 12, 1867. The same
greed of gain which our Jewish-Paulite superstition breeds, and
which generates these crimes, has poisoned our whole commercial
system. The Pall Mall Gazette has an article on this subject
which is good and true. The Times, it says, remarked the other
day with perfect truth that lying for the purpose of cheating was
so common on the Stock Exchange that people there appeared to
think nothing of it ; and the case is undoubtedly the same in many other
departments of business. Not long ago, a gentleman, not
himself in business, but connected with others who were so
engaged, was informed by one of his friends that he, the friend,
had found out that his partner had been raising money by pledg-
ing securities which had been intrusted to the firm for safe cus-
tody. The firm was at the time in difficulties, and an attempt
was being made to wind up its affairs. The outsider thus applied
to, was horrified to hear that his friend was in any way connected
with any such transaction, and advised him at once to disclose it
to all the parties interested. The two went for this purpose to
the head of a very eminent house in the trade, and told him what
had happened. He treated the whole thing as at most a venial
irregularity, declared that it would never do to take a strict legal
view of such matters, and expressed his firm conviction that the
person who had been guilty of this slight deviation from strict
propriety was a man of the very highest honour, utterly inca-
pable of a really dishonest action. The two friends, not being
satisfied, took steps to have the matter fully investigated, and
the same evening the man of high honour confessed that he had
committed the further irregularity of forging acceptances to the
value of several thousand pounds, and on the next day decamped,
leaving his unlucky partner liable to claims of which he had
never had any notice, which involved him in absolute ruin, and
many friends who had assisted him in most serious loss. Cases
of this kind are continually occurring, and the remarkable, and,
indeed, intolerable thing, is not that in such cities as London, Man-
chester, and the like, there should be a large number of consummate
rogues, but that the honest men should take so little notice of their
roguery, and should persistently regard it with indulgence, not to
say indifference. No doubt we possess a large number of mer-
chants as honourable as any in the world. We have men whose
word is their bond, and who would as soon lie as they would pick
pockets; yet we have on the other hand such an assortment of
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cheats and swindlers, from the millionaire down to the small shop-
keeper, as were never in all human probability collected together in
one place before. The really grave charge against the honest
men is that they indulge and countenance the other class—that
from indifference, from want of corporate feeling, or from a sort
of callous indifference which even an honest man is very apt to
contract from continual intercourse with roguery, they not only
allow them to take their course, and suggest no means whatever
for clipping their fraudulent wings, but do their very utmost to
put commerce of all kinds on a footing which gives the utmost
conceivable facilities to every kind of cheating. It is by no
means pleasant to compare the number of barriers which were
formerly opposed to fraud with the facilities which are afforded to
it in the present day. The system of guilds and monoplies had
undoubtedly immense evils, and degenerated before it was finally
destroyed into a very hotbed of jobbery and corruption; but it
did at all events provide some sort of corporate feeling amongst differ-
ent trades, and some kind of machinery by which that corporate
feeling might provide more or less discipline for individual traders.
The Inns of Court and the Incorporated Law Society—and especially
the former—might no doubt be more efficient than they actually
are, and many professional malpractices no doubt exist in spite of
them; but if they were swept away there would undoubtedly be
many more. Much may be said for and against trades’ unions,
but it will hardly be denied that the corporate feeling which they
produce amongst the men who belong to them has its noble and
elevating side. Commercial life is subject to none of these influ-
ences. The merchant, the speculator, the shopkeeper, stands for
the most part altogether alone, and bends all the energies of his
mind to making his own fortune by his own exertions. The old
law of bankruptcy, again, was certainly exceedingly harsh, and
the law of imprisonment for debt on which it was founded was
harsher still. Harsh, however, and cruel as they were, they did
in a very emphatic way indeed assert the great principle that to
be in debt and not to be able to pay is disgraceful, and that wil-
fully to diminish the means available for payment is one of the
very worst forms of robbery. The notion of punishing a fraudu-
lent bankrupt with death would in these days be regarded with
horror, but if our humanity has gained something by the abolition
in such cases of capital punishment, our sense of justice has lost
a great deal by our refusal to recognise in such an act a crime as
gross and as deserving of severe punishment as the worst forms of
highway robbery. . . . . If trade is to be a universal betting, so
be it; but let us have no mercy on welchers. The criminal law
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ought to keep pace with the progress of commercial legislation,

and should be extended in direct proportion to the degree in
which we give up the notion of protection. Prevention we have
given up as being, under the circumstances of the case, impossible,
and likely, if attempted, to do more harm than good; but this is
the strongest of all reasons for trying our very utmost to increase
the efficiency of punishment. If the railings and gates of a park
are all thrown down, common prudence ought to teach us to send in
an additional force of police. How then ought this to be done?
It should be done by adding to the criminal law a completely
new head in the shape of an Act for the punishment of fraud and
lying. As matters stand at present, the law is almost a blank on
this head. Theft is a comparatively coarse and trivial offence.
Embezzlement applies to a very limited class of cases, and the
Acts which relate to offences by fraudulent trustees, or by factors,
brokers, &c., are of a very special and peculiar character, and are
so constructed as to apply to a very small part of the frauds
which are so rife amongst us. The crime of conspiracy to defraud
takes a wider sweep, but to make a conspiracy there must be a
combination of at least two persons for an unlawful object, and it
is by no means easy to fix people with any specific design of this
sort. The Act which punishes the obtaining of goods by false
pretences, and the offence of cheating at common law, have been
construed by the courts in such a narrow spirit, and so many re-
strictions have been imposed upon them, that they are in practice
confined to cases of a very petty character. Nothing can be more
characteristic of the spirit in which the judges have dealt with
this subject than the fact that they have on several occasions
refused to hold that particular circumstances amounted to obtain-
ing goods under false pretences, for fear of extending the Act to
all mercantile frauds whatever, This result, as it appears to us,
is just what is wanted. Get a broad, general definition of fraud,
and make fraud punishable like theft, putting it in law, as it is
in morals, on precisely the same level. It would be a mistake,
however, to suppose that it is only among the great merchants
and bankers, like Sir John Dean Paul, et hoc genus omne, that
systematic fraud prevails. It extends throughout the humblest
callings. The extent to which the poor are robbed in their ordi-
nary marketing will never perhaps be known. The parliamentary
returns just issued are very far from supplying full information
upon the subject, and this is the more to be regretted because the
absence of details, in so many quarters, implies an absence of
supervision. Thus, in many large towns there are no inspectors,
and, consequently, no convictions. But we are told by the blue
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book enough to prove that among certain classes of shopkeepers

swindling is a system, that the profits thus made render them
utterly careless of the penalties attached, and that the operation
of the law is little better than nominal, while it is, at the same
time, curiously irregular and capricious, being generally governed
by local institutes or customs. Thus, in the City of London,
there are salaried inspectors of weights and measures, but no
paid informers, and the result, as affecting commercial character
within the civic limits, is not unfavourable. The licensed vic-
tuallers figure the worst, there being more of them on the black
list than of any other class, costermongers not excepted, though
this latter class is very irregularly superintended. In all Fins-
bury not a single licensed victualler was convicted during the
second quarter of last year, though in Kensington the cases of
cheating on the part of this description of dealers were numerous.
Taking the whole metropolis, as thus represented, we ascertain
that the principal offenders are publicans, coffee and eating house
keepers, coal dealers, cheesemongers, and butchers. We often
hear from behind the counter of extortions practised upon humble
buyers by the peripatetic vendors of vegetables and fruit. But
in the City seventeen pilfering practitioners are found by our
modern substitutes for the old “nuisance juries,” in shops, to five
detected in the streets. In Finsbury the convictions, without a
solitary exception, are those of ordinary tradesmen and ratepayers.
In Holborn two costermongers were convicted, as against twenty-
one shopkeepers. In Kensington all the offenders kept shops, and
the dairymen in that respectable region were specially conspicuous.
And what is the punishment? In the City of London the highest
penalty inflicted was a fine of 2l., though, as a rule, the sharpers
escaped with the payment of a few shillings. In other metropolitan
districts the extreme award was a fine of 4l., and in one case, at
Salisbury, a marine-store dealer had to pay 5l. Surely, these are
not adequate sums either as corrections or as warnings. In expe-
rience we find them totally ineffectual. Nor is this all. In a
great number of instances no costs whatever are incurred, while
in many the justices, with a strange sort of mercy, remit them.
But what of the public who are plundered? We will take a
generally poor neighbourhood—the Newington division, in the
county of Surrey, reminding ourselves that the returns exhibit
the cases for three months only. Within that period, in that
one district, 225 convictions were recorded; of the persons con-
victed thirty were publicans or beer-shop keepers, twenty-five
bakers, twenty-three coal-dealers, and so forth, men for the most
part giving no credit, and some of them positively making addi-
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tional gains by adulterations. The apparatus of roguery in this

guise is made up of a motley miscellany of queer contrivances—
weighing-machines with a draught against the purchaser, loaded
or “pitched” scales, weights in metal or earthenware which must
have been manufactured expressly to order, quarts and pints
with a larcenous “kick” in their bottoms, milk-measures deficient
by a fourth, sliding balls which, running along a beam, cunningly
enable the dealer to adjust his swindle as he pleases, coal-
machines laden with loose iron knife-blades inserted in artful
crevices to make a false balance, “yard” measures three or four
inches short, other measures of no standard at all, bushels wanting
half a peck, steelyards elaborately designed for fraud, and glasses.
Concerning the last of these items, it may be presumed that some
prerogative is enjoyed by the licensed victuallers generally,
because, although some have been convicted in the provinces for
using such articles of less than a half pint capacity, it is univer-
sally notorious, in London at any rate, that a half-pint glass is
the exception, but then it is not offered as containing any par-
ticular measure. It is in the false pretence, of course, that the
criminalty consists, and we say that the penalties imposed are,
as a rule, ridiculously lenient. In fact, we do not sufficiently, in
these respects, protect the public, either by legislation or by the
action of the magistracy. There are no sufficient punishments
inflicted for deleterious and even poisonous adulterations, while
in the case of false weights and measures, the law would almost
appear to encourage them. Children are cheated in this way to an
extent which, if described, would hardly be credited. In all the
lowest neighbourhoods, where the wives of artisans have enough to
do to feed their families, and are compelled to send out their little
ones “shopping,” the amount of petty trickery is lamentable, and,
in its effects, absolutely cruel. But the whole system in other
respects seems framed for the escape of offenders, unless we
except the example set at Bath, where no trader is permitted to
use weights or measures without carrying them once a year to a
municipal office, to be examined and stamped. In other large
towns there is literally no appeal whatever to the law. We are
asked to believe, indeed, that there is not an unjust balance, or
an attenuated pint pot, in Newcastle, Nottingham, or Norwich,
that Liverpool is more innocent than Salisbury, that the Pad-
dington shopkeepers are immaculate, and that in all the Stafford-
shire districts, excepting one, small and remote, perfect honesty
prevails. The House of Commons has a right to complain of such
farragos, purporting to be statistics. Of what earthly value can
they be? Let us illustrate the point. For the Strand division
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we are told that “the salaries of the inspectors are unknown to

the justices.” In some places—entire divisions of counties,
indeed—the inspector has a remuneration of 14l. a year, without
a share of the penalty, or even a moiety of the profits from the
sale of broken weights and measures. In Croydon the salary is
reported as “not known;” in Kingston the same; in other loca-
lities a confusion exists between the treasuries of the counties
and the remuneration of the local officer: in some no emoluments
or fees whatever are allowed; elsewhere the reward for informa-
tion is so trifling that no attempt is made to obtain it. Different
regulations, moreover, prevail with regard to the false weights
and measures seized. Here they are “smashed,” and the mate-
rials sent to market; there they are, in whatever integrity they
possess, sold. But to whom, and for what? To tradesmen?
To shopkeepers? To coal-merchants and potato-dealers? Then
the simple result is to secure a second edition of the original ras-
cality practised. A traffic is actually carried on in these articles
by the informers, while, in other instances, the cheats, after being
fined, have their fraudulent apparatus restored, to the utter
defeat of justice. Thus, in Lancashire, a seedsman, having been
convicted of employing false weights, had them returned to him;
and, if worth anything, they were only valuable as enabling him
to go on cheating his customers. If, as we imagine, the member for
Southwark moved for these returns with a view to suggesting
some legislation upon them, we venture to suggest there is only
one direction in which it can be pursued, and that is, to inter-
pose a more solid protection between the customer and the shop-
keeper. It is perfectly evident that the law, as it stands, is
utterly inefficacious, and even more so in Scotland than in Eng-
land, for the Scotch justices often satisfy themselves, in gross
cases of fraud, with “admonishing the defender.” We
have said that this is a species of social injustice which
presses with peculiar hardship on the poor, stints the food on
their tables and the fire in their grates; but it bears upon other
classes also, to whom perhaps it is less an injury than an annoyance
and an imposture—which the public cannot be expected to
endure. The blue book exhibits thousands of cases, all occurring
within a period of three months in last year, and we are justified,
therefore, in directing attention to it as to a scandal which
degrades the trading community.—Standard, May 8, 1867.
Our American cousins, who possess the same happy Petro-Paulite
creed as we have, have also their accompanying blessings. The
New York correspondent of one of the daily papers writes as fol-
lows. In a late number of the New York Independent, Mr. Theo-
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dore Cuyler, a Presbyterian preacher, publishes an article giving

some interesting statistics. Mr. Cuyler says that in the city of
New York there are 10,000 common prostitutes and 20,000 kept
mistresses. The police reports shew a total of 730 known houses
of ill-fame. There are in this city, according to the police reports,
1191 women of the class known in New York slang as “pretty
waiter girls,”—of course, all prostitutes. But whatever the real
number of abandoned females may be, the discussion of the “social
evil” is certainly tending to a practical result. It is proposed to
recognize the fact officially, and legalize prostitution. The Legis-
lature will be asked to consider the subject. There is no
probability, however, that the prejudices of the members from
the rural districts can be overcome at the present time. It
is a depressing fact, not to be ignored, that prostitution has
frightfully increased not only in this city, but throughout the
whole country since 1860. The influences of the war have un-
questionably produced this increase. There is with the young
Americans a growing dislike for marriage; for this the women are
themselves responsible. Female extravagance has reached a
higher pitch in this country than anywhere else in the world.
The greenback inflation has given fictitious prosperity to the
people, and false values to every article of clothing or ornament.
But cost is nothing; the question in the mind of almost every
shopping fair one is—does it cost enough? The rate of wages has
not increased in proportion with the increase in prices. The clerk
or bookkeeper gets 1500 dollars a year now; a sum really much
less than the 1000 dollars he received before the war, The me-
chanic receives 3 dols. to 3 dols. 50c. a day—much less than 2
dols. before the war. The labourer is paid from 1 dol. 25c. to 1
dol. 75c. a day; but these sums represent far less than the 75c. or
1 dol. he obtained five years ago. In 1860 morning newspaper
compositors were paid 40 cents. per 1000 ems, now they receive
50 cents per 1000 ems. The greatest advance has not doubled
the wages of operatives, while in some cases the advance has not
been more than 10 per cent. There is not an article of food that
does not cost to-day twice the cost before the war; and clothing
now commands two to four times the price it commanded in 1860.
But we insist upon dressing ourselves in imported goods. Our
wives and sisters are not more patriotic than ourselves in this
respect. The vice of imitation, reaching to the lowest stratum of
society, produces the inevitable result. The poor shop girls find
their miserable wages inadequate even to the supplying of food.
They go upon the town. Will it be believed that in this great
metropolis of the West, this chief town of the prosperous repub-
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lic, sewing women are labouring for less than a dollar a week, and
in some cases supporting families upon this meagre pittance—less,
at present rates, than three shillings English. Yet official reports
shew that some sewing women receive less than one dollar—some
as little as 62 cents.—for six days’ labour! Wealthy manufactu-
rers of clothing pay two cents. for making a shirt! Sixty-two
cents. for a week’s hard work—and to buy bread, perhaps, for
half-a-dozen mouths! We all say it is impossible. Figures shew
that it cannot be. Yet it is true, for all that. You tell young
America of these things, and he removes from his lips, to give
you his laughing, incredulous answer, the Havannah for which he
has just paid a dollar at the Maison Doree. “Why, my dear
feller,” he says, “that can’t be, yer see; why it costs me twenty
dollars a week for my lunch at Delmonico’s! Why, Miss Young
America pays thirty dollars a week to her French fammy de cham-
ber!” Young America has unconsciously told the whole story.
Miss, his sister, has half a dozen imported servants, whose places
she would gladly fill with American women, or women of Ameri-
can birth. But the American-born working women are too
“proud” to fill the positions of menials; they prefer to be “inde-
pendent,” to imitate the extravagance of their more fortunate
sisters, to drag along in semi-starvation for a time, then to fall,
and to pass by gradual process, from their East side garrets into
the assignation houses of West-side, Twenty-seventh-street, from
Twenty-seventh-street to Mercer-street, from Mercer-street to
Water-street, and from Water-street to the Potter’s Field. The
greater proportion of the abandoned women of New York are
foreigners, or the children of foreign parents. Next after them,
in importance of number, come the daughters of New England,
drawn from the great cotton and woollen factories. The Western
States furnish the next largest number, and singularly enough
the state of Indiana more than all the other Western States com-
bined. Pennsylvania comes next, and last of all New York. The
report of the coroners of the city and county of New York, for the
year ending December 31, presents a body of suggestive facts.
There were 71 homicides and infanticides: there were 61 suicides;
12 of the deaths of suicides were by hanging, 12 by shooting, 10
by cutting the throat, 4 by drowning, 7 by taking laudanum, 5 by
taking Ravis green; one man jumped into a brew vat. Of the
suicides, 25 were Germans, 8 Irishmen, 2 Frenchmen, 13 Ameri-
cans. There were beside homicides and suicides, 950 deaths by
violence in New York during the year; 170 men, 29 women, and
38 children were drowned. 24 persons were burned to death in
burning buildings, and 42 persons were burned to death by ex-
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plosions and other causes. There were 235 fatal cases of sun-
stroke; there were 170 deaths from falls; 89 persons were run
over and killed by street cars, steam cars, and other vehicles; 11
persons were killed by overdoses of laudanum. There was but
one case of starvation. One man was strangled by a piece of
meat, and another (mirabile dictu) by a “waterfall” ball.
As supplementary to this daguerreotype of life in the New World,
I extract from the Standard, of June 28, 1867, the following pic-
ture by its own correspondent of the depravity of its chief city;
the savages whom we seek to civilize, can scarcely be so vicious
as the orthodox of this model country. New York, June 15,
1867.—Anglo-Saxondom’s idea, the American interpretation of
which, according to Mr. Biglow, is—
“Thet evry man does wut he damn pleases—“
has been lately illustrated in this state in a manner that should
have attracted the serious attention of every honest citizen. I
speak of New York—the Empire State—because it is our boast
that New York is further advanced in civilization than any other
member of the Federal Union. I can say, without fear of contra-
diction, that there is no other country in the world where the
white skin predominates, in which so great a contempt for human
life exists; and there is no other country where all laws, human
and Divine, are so persistently violated. In this city and the
neighbouring city of Brooklyn thirteen murders have been com-
mitted since Sunday morning last. Two of these principal crimes
were of the sort described in the newspapers as “terrible double
tragedies.” On Sunday last, one W. A. King shot his mistress
and then shot himself. The story of this crime is worth relating.
King was a native of Massachussets; he had been educated in
strict conformity with the Puritan principles of a genuine New
England family. His father, a wealthy man, furnished him with
11,000 dols., and sent him to New York to make his fortune.
This should have been a sufficient beginning for any young
Yankee. King established himself in business here. This done,
he turned his attention to the dissipations of the town. He
visited “concert saloons.” In one of these he saw a woman of
the class described in New York slang as “pretty waiter girl.”
He took her from the concert-room and made her his mistress,
installing her in apartments in one of those houses whose pro-
prietors advertise in the New York Herald, where “board is fur-
nished for the lady only.” He took the money that he had
invested in business and squandered it on his “girl.” In a
“fashionable” boarding-house the eleven thousand dollars did
not last long. When the money disappeared King applied to his
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friends. They refused to assist him. Then he resolved on making

a final “sensation.” He wrote a note to his cousin; in this he
explained his contemplated deed. Then he visited his “lady,”
induced her to take chloroform, shot her through the head, and
ended the affair by killing himself. He had placed in a pocket a
note in which he announced that “God would forgive” him for
the deed. “I have tried to take care of the girl I love; to have
her live a life of shame I cannot do,” he added. It is unnecessary
to comment on this case. It is only one of a thousand that have
not yet reached their ending. In the metropolis of the New
World it is cheaper to have an “arrangement” than to marry;
it is cheaper to die than to live. “Spend when you have money;
when you have no money die.” That is the motto of the great
class of which King was a member. Such deeds as that of King
are examples, and that particular example has been already
improved. On Thursday night Henry Bundy shot his wife,
and then killed himself. He had no money; he had wasted his
means in dissipation. He had persecuted and beaten his wife,
stolen her clothing and pawned it, made her life a hell. Luckily,
he did not kill her outright. He selected a public street as the
scene of his exploit, calling his wife from her room for no other
apparent purpose than to kill her on the highway. In a pre-
vious letter I gave an account of the murder of a delegate to the
State Constitutional Convention. The murderer (Cole) has been
committed for trial. It is daily becoming more apparent that
the assassination was the result of a conspiracy; that the mur-
derer was enraged, not because the murdered man had injured
the woman Cole, but because he had advised the woman not to
bequeath all her property to her husband. This deed of Cole
has already had its evil effect. A man has been arrested in
Albany, charged with an attempt to commit murder. He had
originally sought to obtain a warrant for the arrest of a person
whom he accused of “insolence” towards his wife. Failing in
that, he threatened to kill this “insolent” person. When
remonstrated with for harbouring such designs, he exclaimed:
“Isn’t that the law? Can’t a man shoot a man that insults his
wife?” This inquiry was not an absurd one. It is the law.
Public opinion justifies the assassination of—I will not say the
seducer—but the insulter of women. The mere plea of “injured
honour” is enough, in the majority of cases, to secure for the
assassin the applause of juries and the congratulatory smiles of
judges. People may ask—To what is this demoralization of
American society due? Probably, to no single cause. The war
bred disregard for human life, extravagance in expenditure, a
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contempt for the restraints of law. But the war ended two years
ago, and matters are worse now then they were then. How
much of our troubles are due to the horrible transformations
that have been worked in our churches; how much to the tri-
umph of the old feral instincts gratified in the conquest of the
south; how much to the growing love of display and bounce,
I will not venture to say. Not a little is certainly due to our
foolish system of elections. The mob create, why blame the
mob for desiring to destroy? The papers have printed accounts
of the exploits of a family residing in Oneida county, in this
state. The members of this family (Loomis the name) have for
several years set all laws at defiance. They have been guilty of
numerous murders, forgeries, and robberies. The daughters of
substantial farmers have been kidnapped by them, and made the
victims of the most brutal outrages. Arrested dozens of times
every one of them has been able to escape punishment either by
menacing and browbeating juries, or by threatening judges with
political opposition. Last winter their crimes became so nume-
rous and appalling, that the people put Judge Lynch’s system in
operation. The houses and barns of the Loomises were burned;
two of the men of the family were killed. Yet I perceive that
these desperadoes are again becoming aggressive. All these
things have happened in the country, and certainly the town is
not much worse. But the town is terribly bad. New York is
more immoral than Paris, Not a week passes that balls of the
cyprians do not take place, the performances at which are so
horribly indecent that one cannot even hint at their character.
Something milder was the “pic-nic” of courtesans, at Elm Park,
on Wednesday. More than 4000 abandoned women, raked from
the stews of New York and Brooklyn, participated in this orgy.
All classes of ceux dames were represented. The “unfortunates”
draggled in with their vile companions, the lorettes descended
from their carriages. All the roues, gamblers, pimps, and flash
thieves in New York were there. More than 300 couples of these
wretches participated in one cotillon. Fifty blazing bars were
open. “Champagne” and whiskey swashed everywhere over the
“loud” and gorgeous dresses of the Anonymas. As the day wore
into night the performances of the drunken rabble passed all
bounds. The scene cannot be described. The police were there
and prevented any general riot, though miscellaneous affrays were
constantly occurring. One man was fatally stabbed. This
“pic-nic” was conducted by a regularly-organised association
styled “Societas Cyprianorum,” the members of which are all
keepers of brothels.—Under this state of things, a condition of
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society of the most loathsome kind is growing up about us. In

the House of Commons, May 17, 1867, Mr. Watkin thus described
the condition of the working classes in some of our towns. He
would first, says the report, call attention to existing hovels in
different boroughs, from the report of Dr. Hunter, presented to
the Privy Council the year before last. In Tavistock there were
huts, in which four persons dwelt in one, three in another; and
in another, two, with four children, making one room serve for
“parlour, kitchen, and hall.” In Petersfield there were many
houses, with but one bed room, and in one bedroom slept a
married pair, with two adult girls, six younger girls, and one boy
baby; in another lived a widow woman with five children. In
Wenlock, in Staffordshire, in a house with two bed-rooms, there
slept three married couples, with four children; in another, five
adults; and in a third, three adults, with four children. In
Stafford, a town which had many wretched houses, in its environs
many common houses, the roads no better than gutters, and
stenches prevailed both in and out of doors, as every one knew—
there were in Stafford a larger proportion of houses than there
ought to be which were unfit for human habitation. In Calne, a
town distinguished for its representative, seven adults and five
children lived in one hut, with but one bed-room, but some slept
in the kitchen, and next door lived a married pair with four
children. In Knaresborough, where from the cheapness of mate-
rials, capitalists were induced to erect small and ill-arranged
houses, in many cases it was difficult to let them for l0d., 9d.,
and even 6d. per week. Surely these were not persons to whom it
would be advantageous to give a vote. He would not further
refer to the painful details contained in Dr. Hunter’s report,
other than to remind the house that out of 5375 of these small
houses or hovels in the boroughs and counties he found there were
no less than 2195 of them with single bed-rooms, and that there
lived in them 8824 human beings, averaging four persons to
each bedroom, and in many cases the four persons slept in a less
amount of space than was given to a single convict in her Majesty’s
prisons; and deducting those cases where the house was occupied
by single men and widows, a very large proportion of the 2195
houses gave no less than eight persons to each house. And on
the same occasion it was stated by the Member for Newcastle-
upon-Tyne, that there were 14,000 families in that town, who
had only a room each to live in.—Standard, May 18, 1867. Any-
thing more squalid than this, can scarcely exist in the worst
kraals among the Hottentots or Bosjiemen; and yet we, who
have these dread things among us, perpetually brag and prate of
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our superior civilisation: and while we revel in our fœtid

wealth, the produce of every species of infamy, peculation,
and villany, we give our urinous gold to Exeter Hall, and
such like swindles, and we bribe a number of hireling writers
to represent our country as prosperous in all things. But
that one electric phrase of the Ninth Messenger, By
their fruits ye shall know them, dissipates, as it were, with
the touch of a heavenly spear, the thick veil of falsehood,
and makes manifest how rotten are our creeds. And thus-
with squalid poverty, seduction, prostitution, and adul-
tery rife and rampant in every place which is enlightened by the
Bible, and polluted by the awful doctrine of atonement for all sin,
we have the necessary results, which are described in the Stan-
dard of Jan. 31, 1867, and with which I conclude these notes:
The Harveian Society of London, it says, have made a praise-
worthy effort to fix the attention of the Legislature and the public
upon the painful subject of infanticide. A deputation represent-
ing the most eminent of the medical profession, was received by
Mr. Walpole at the Home Office on Monday, in order that certain
views and proposals, adopted after anxious deliberation, might be
stated. The objects aimed at are two, though virtually they
resolve themselves into one—a better mode of dealing with, or
preventing, positive child murder, and the diminution of infant
mortality, which too often is only infanticide under another name.
The topic is a difficult one in many respects, but it forces itself
into prominence; and there is no use in an attempt to conceal its
repulsive features. The committee of the Harveian Society offer
several recommendations which, briefly stated, to the exclusion of
collateral details, will be easily understood. They suggest that
all births, of whatsoever nature, should be registered; and all
burials, no matter of what description, be preceded by proper
certificates, and that where certificates are impossible coroner’s
inquests should invariably be held; they advocate, in one respect,
an increased stringency of the law, and in another its relaxation
—that is, they would draw the penalties more tightly round the
class of offenders who now habitually escape, but remove their
crimes from the capital category. Into some parts of their pro-
ject we do not enter, since they are somewhat too minute and ex-
plicit for repetition; but one important provision suggested is, that
no woman under certain circumstances shall be refused admittance
into the infirmary of a workhouse, or upon convalescence be
turned forth from it with her infant, the requirement being that
she, if possible, should contribute towards its maintenance. For
the disposal of the children thus adopted by the parishes the old
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cottage colonisation system is adhered to, with modifications, such

as the registration of nurses: and it is desired that affiliation
orders may go to the extent of five shillings a week, instead of
being limited to half-a-crown. Finally, the committee enumerate
among the leading causes of infanticide the overcrowding of the
dwellings of the labouring classes in the rural and urban districts,
the custom prevailing in the north and west of England, and in
Scotland, of public hiring of servants, the gang system in agricul-
ture, and the promiscuous lodging of the sexes during hop-picking,
harvests, cider-making, and other agricultural anniversaries. This
is a phase of the question not easily to be discussed, and we, there-
fore, pass from it, merely observing that, so far as statistics may
be trusted, these are not the influences which chiefly operate in
the metropolis, where cases of child-murder are generally trace-
able to an entirely different origin. Nor can we, at present, de-
bate with the committee their ideas of favour due to criminal
mothers short of the mercy which would save them from the gal-
lows—a mercy, indeed, of an equivocal character; for, as juries
are reluctant to see death inflicted upon young girls for slaying
their offspring, they resort to an alternative under which only a
punishment most inadequate can be allotted. The law when
amended by the bill which the Home Secretary is now pledged to
introduce, will, in fact, deal far more sharply than at present with
these delinquents; and the committee of the Harveian Society
appear disposed to accept a new form of evidence, so as to facili-
tate conviction where only surgical technicalities stand in the
way of it. Obnoxious as the question is to public feeling, and
liable as it is to be made the basis of sentimental declamation, it
is one which cannot be overlooked, and which should be treated,
without platitude, as one of the highest social economy. Nearly
three-fourths of the illegitimate children born in the United Kingdom
die during their infancy. Here is a fearful waste of human life. How
many of these deaths are due to crime, to wilful neglect, to igno-
rance, to destitution, to the severities of the wayside, or to the
desperate resorts of shame, can never be calculated. The coro-
ners’ inquests take cognisance of a very small proportion; the
criminal courts afford still less evidence; but the bare fact that
the mortality of illegitimate as reckoned against legitimate chil-
dren is almost as two to one, tells its own tale. Few crimes are
more difficult of proof, or less liable to conviction and retribution
than this. Medical men, under cross-examination, continually
shrink from giving unqualified testimony when the life of some
young miserable, with a previous history, of Heaven only knows
what tenor, is hanging in the balance; the offence, where palpable,
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is always pleaded as having been committed in a paroxyism of

agony amounting to madness; and this plea in nine cases out of
ten prevails, because the jury, like the witnesses, recoil from the
consequences of a straightforward judgment. Mr. Walpole’s
promised measure will in all likelihood remove so much of the
obstacle as is contained in these notorious truths, but there are
other perplexities in the way. For a long time the multiplica-
tion of foundling hospitals has been insisted upon. The Home
Secretary was informed on Monday that in the chief of these institu-
tions, so far as England was concerned, the death-rate among the
infants was computed at one in fourteen, owing to the absence of
actual maternal care, for which, it was emphatically said nothing
else conceivable will compensate during the first three or four weeks
of life. The Harveian committee, therefore, recommend that the
mother should be allowed to remain with her baby in the workhouse
for at least four months—an idea full of humanity, though it may
be doubted whether such a proposal would not open up a vista of
unions overburdened by that which some might interpret as a plau-
sible encouragement of immorality. The Legislature cannot too
discriminately pick its steps when advancing towards any sugges-
ted changes in this direction. But we could wish that the com-
mittee had laid before the Home Secretary their views upon
another section of the subject, rarely touched upon, except when
some wretched tragedy occurs, usually in a country village, but
which cannot be too promptly and rigorously dealt with by Par-
liament—the practices of that large class of herbalists and others,
who, to say no more upon a topic impossible to approach in detail,
are, in reality, the great infanticides of the kingdom. We may take
it for granted, unless political convulsions should cut short the
life of the present Parliament, that the Home Secretary will intro-
duce a bill to regulate the punishment of female infanticides,
which will be satisfactory to the Legislature. We think, how-
ever, that Mr. Walpole does right to hesitate, at least until his
contemplated measure becomes law, and has been tried in its
working, before he ventures upon the more subtle and intricate
problem involved in the same subject. A large proportion of the
question is social; it springs from the anomalies of morals in cer-
tain classes; it represents a continual oscillation between one set
of evils and another; the danger of adopting a one-sided view is
perhaps nowhere so obvious. For society is charmed by invectives
against the workers of ill against the young and innocent, and is
full of pity for the victims when they taste the bitterness of guilt;
but we quit this ground, which cannot be traversed without dig-
ging up an unsuitable controversy, to remark on some facts not
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presented by the deputation of Monday at the Home Office.

What proportion do the infanticide cases of the towns bear to
those of the rural districts? What proportion are committed by
married, as relatively to unmarried, women? And what proportion
by those who are, and those who are not, members of burial clubs.
Strictly speaking, perhaps, this constitutes a separate subject, but
virtually it is the same; for infant lives, the youngest and frailest,
are registered by tens of thousands upon the books of illegal societies
in the provinces. They perish like the flowers of the summer, and
their parents gain by their deaths. We are aware, as we have said,
that these societies are illegal. The act of Parliament prohibits the
insurance in a mutual benefit association of the life of a child
under six years of age. Yet that the act is set at defiance was
only too irrefragably proved by the conviction of a man at the
York Assizes for the murder of a baby, one year old, in order to
obtain the sum of twenty-five shillings. Then, besides those who
are killed, there is the hundredfold more numerous class of those
who are “suffered to die,” and of these the illegitimate chil-
dren by far exceed the legitimate, and they fall victims to
some unnatural counterpoise, whether it be of shame, or of
avarice, or of fear, or of spite, to the development and exer-
cise of maternal affection. The Government have undertaken to
deal with an aspect of this sad question, exhibiting yearly, to the
disgrace of our civilization, so fearful a massacre of the innocents;
but it would be as well were the public to investigate and, if pos-
sible, comprehend the whole of it.
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INDEX.
A, meaning of, 84. Aion, 427, 483.

Aah, the Moon, 426. Aish-Caleb, 403.
Aaron, Arûn, 250, 495; his Aleim, notices of the word, 88,
Tomb, 688. 132.
Aaron’s rod, 98, 122. Alethes, or Truth, male-female,
Aaron’s sons, 495. 120; the Sanctus Spiritus, or
Abarim, a name for the Heavens, collar of S.S. worn in Egypt,
157; mountains, 166. 475.
Abbot, Abbess, 402. Al-I, God, 170, 336.
Aben-Ephius on Egyptian Sym- Al-Kadr (Kawder) the night, 57,
bolism, 475. 300, 317, 658, 668.
Abury, 168, 417, 419. Alla, means a Dog, 149.
Acacia, a symbol, 124. Allalouia, 638.
Ada, Adi, 424, 535. Almond Tree, a symbol of the
Adam, called also Gaudama, in- Holy Spirit, 377, 593.
stituted the Mysteries, 9, 56; Alo-Alo, 428.
his name in Wales, 65; a dia- Alpha, 427, 433, 479.
mond, 167, 252; is Athamas, Altar symbol, 311, 325.
368; Hindu legend of his Mes- Am-Az-Aun, 12.
sianic ecstacy, 453; in Greece, Ambervalia, 611.
470; known under various American Profligacy, 726.
names, 473, 480, 481; a her- Amosis, fallible, 80; figured as a
maphrodite according to the Cabir, 163; finding of, 245;
Jews, 517; rabbinical horrors same Spirit as Jesus, 247; Po-
respecting, 694. mey proves Bacchus to be,
Adders, symbolic, 213. 671.
Admetus, 252. Amru abolishes human sacri-
Ad-On’s Garden, 27, 31. fice in Egypt, 257.
Ad-On-Is, mythos, 574. AMΩ, a monogram, 479.
Adonis worship, 225; death of, A-Nath, 598.
256. Anch-Isis, is Enoch, 572.
Adon-Osiris, 535. Anchor, a symbol, 433.
Æsir, Gods and Messengers, 622. Ancile, a symbol of the Apoca-
Agapæ, 25; of the Paulites, 499. lypse, 709.
Agricultural gangs, 713. Ancient Darkness, 86, 145.
Ahab’s death predicted, 506. Ancient Religion, the great te-
Ahaz, Paine on, 695. net of, 20; sublime ideas of
Ahi-Ashr-Ahi, 587. God, 44, 124.
Ain, 151, 483, 552. Andrew, St., cross of, 485.
LL
Version 20170421
738 INDEX.
Anglesea, mysteries celebrated Aristæus, mythos of, 190.

in, 15, 67, 116, 223. Aristides on the sphere-music,
Ani, a mystic word, 96, 118, 151, 456; on Pallas, 601.
464; hence the name of the Aristotle on human ignorance,
pretended Messenger Mani, 47.
M = 600, and Ani. Ark, a boat or chest, an arcane
Anna Perenna, 619. symbol, 96, 125, 149, 150, 312,
Antiparos, cavern in, 358. 653.
Anubis the Awakener, 403, 627. Ark of the Covenant, 40, 63, 98,
AO, and IO, Egyptian names, 108, 149.
22, 29; AIOLOS, 30, 31, 56, Armon of the Apocalypse, 112,
61, 65, 81, 84, 89, 92, 118, 145, 569.
147, 152, 203, 300, 327, 395, Arnaldus on the Holy Spirit,
416, 426, 428, 457, 463, 471, 94.
472, 476, 478, 482, 530, 531, Ar-Themis, the Holy Spirit,
540, 590, 630. See TAO, 547, 560.
640, 687. Ar-Thor, 253, 564.
Ao-Sar, 435. Artifex Mundi, 169, 591, 599.
Aphrodite, a name for the Holy Ash, ‫אש‬, as distinguished from
Spirit, 146, 571. Aur, 183; Asi or Ashi, 596.
Apis (a bee) a mystic word, 127, Ashr, 587, see Aoshar.
251; a symbol, 388, 463, 476, Ash Tree, 152, 353.
538, 553. Ass, a symbol, 22, 117, 208.
Apocalypse, shewn to Adam, 9; Atabaris Zeus, 542.
seen in the night, 56; names Ath, 150, 428; Athyr, 579.
for, 121, 149, 468, 478, 615; Athamas, 368.
the source of all mythology, Athene Pallas, 583.
522. Atonement, Mexican, 257; Am-
Apocalyptic symbols are many ru on, 257: Hindu notion of,
faced, 78; hieroglyphics in 258; tract on, 712.
Egyptian temple, 358. Attila, story of, 166.
Apollo, 451; a name for the Mes- Attis [see Sita], 116, 324, 608,
senger, 628. 670.
Apollonius Tyaneus, 30. Augustine on the Pagan Gods,
Appendix on Isis, 681. 80.
Apple symbol, 32, 110, 576. Augustus, 120, 608.
Apuleius on the Mysteries, 299; Aum-Id, 546.
describes part of his Initia- Aurelia, aurum, 480, 585.
tion, 305, 668 on the Divine Avallenau mabinogi of, 32; same
Unity, 519. as Hesperid Garden, 120.
Apuquepa, legend of, 297. AXPΩ, monogram of, 477.
Aqua lustralis, 128. Axieros, 16, 181.
Arbor Sephiroth, 381, 457. Axio-Kersa, 172.
Arch, mystic meaning of, 32.
Archa, Argha, 95, 97, 130, 148, Baal-Tinne, 474.
312, 476, 535, 563, 599. Baal-Thalassius, 431.
Archeion. 149. Babel, tower of, 201.
Arch-angels, messengers of Ar- Bacchus, 119; a Messianic name,
chè, 173. 246, 655, 662.
Argos, 547. Bago, 428.
Arianrod, 225, 319, 566, 588. Bakis, 663.
Ari-On, 608. Banier on the Lesser Mysteries,
Version 20170421
INDEX. 739
57; on the trials of Initiation, 374, 556, 565, 705; plan of,
126. 706.
Baptism, pagan, 128, 236, 256. Bride of Heaven, 109, 170, 172,
Baptist on the Mysteries, 220. 571.
Barker, Joseph, on the Trinity, Brigoo, 65, 174, 222.
134. British attachment to the Mys-
Bal-Sab-Ab, 254. teries, 19.
Bartoloci Bibliotheca Rabbinica, Bruce on Hebraïsts, 131.
695. Bryant on the British Mysteries,
Bed, 125; sacred bed found in 115; on Egyptian Symbolism,
Egypt, 366. 464; on the Divine Unity,
Bee, a symbol, 34, 190, 213, 251, 526.
424, 476, 536, 585. Bubastis, 562.
Beetle, a symbol, 99, 102, 437. Buddha sleeping, 73.
Bel, 246. Bull, a symbol, 119, 147, 191,
Belzoni’s alabaster bed, 365. 212, 640, 669.
Bell, a symbol, 153, 322. Bull and Cow, image, 416.
Ben-Hadad, murder of, 508. Bulwer, et hoc genus omne, 137.
Beth, 579. Bun cross, 259.
Beth-El, God’s mansion, 322, 375. Burnet on transmigration, 209.
Beth-Lhm cave, i.e., House of Butterfly, a Symbol, 213, 440,
the Lama, 128. 479.
Birmingham Gazette, apology
for child murder, 141. Cabir, a Symbol of the, 75; ap-
Bi-Une image of AO, 29; God, pears to Joshua, 157: in Scy-
Shaddai, 65, 82, 92, 103, 120, thia, 160; psalm, 161; religion,
145, 151, 246, 301, 369, 389, 166, 167; Hindu, Mythos of,
395, 416, 463, 553, 557, 687. 168, 652; psalms, 177; in
Black Virgin, 603, 607. Wales, 180, 329; the Cabir as
Boar Avatar, 231, 253. Mars, 650.
Boat, a mystic symbol, 62, 96, Cabira Venus, 571.
153, 205, 243, 250, 311, 669. Cabiric and Messianic Messen-
Bochart on Shiloh and Silenus, gers, 3; religion of the Jews,
22; on Jewish secrecy in mat- 156, 160, 162; psalms, 161,
ters of religion, 148. 177, 329; Hindu legend, 171;
Bochica, 667. symbolized by the Hindus by
Body, Soul, and Spirit, 444. three red lines, 652; alluded to
Bona Dea, the Holy Spirit, 42. by Jesus, 665.
Boodh-Cymric doctrines, 334, Cadmos, 173.
621. Caduceus, 418, 623.
Bossuet on images, 399. Cake sacred, 36, 88, 151
Brahma, a name for the Holy Calli, 113, 579; Ch’ Alli, 564, 619.
Spirit, 85. Callimachus on Zeus, 535; on
Brahmin mystic Cave, 27; ac- Pallas, 601.
count of the Incarnation, 154. Cana, marriage at, 129.
Branch, 152, 364, 472, 593, Canephoræ, 39.
656. Canterbury, the Archbishop of,
Bread of Life, 472. 409.
Bread sacred, 36, 151, 259, 472. Casmillos, 172, 181.
Breath, a type of the Holy Spi- Cavern of Aristæus, 191.
rit, 427, 606. Caverns used for the Mysteries,
Bride-Stones, 125, 150, 179, 206, 328; in Antiparos, 358; under
LL2
Version 20170421
740 INDEX.
the Great Pyramid, 366; at Combadaxus, legend of, 356.

Edfou, 366. Cometes, 125, 126, 424.
Ceres, a name for the Holy Spirit, Concealment of the Messenger,
40, 181, 182, 436, 602. 471; of the Holy Spirit, 629.
Ceridwen, the Cymric name for Conx, Aum, Pax, 304.
the Holy Spirit, 16, 63, 145, Corn symbol, 127, 208, 218, 229,
206, 216; Cauldron of, 217, 312, 607.
221, 244, 297. Correspondences, Swedenborgian
Cham, Books of, passage ex- tenet of, 464.
plained, 353. Corybantes, 23.
Chaos and X-AΩ, 478, 531. Cosheree, an Irish-Persic word,
Chartres, cathedral of, linga in, 460.
108, 247. Cow, a mystic symbol of the
Chengiz Khan, 247, 471. Moon, or Holy Spirit, 62, 179,
Cherubic figure in the Mysteries, 198, 312, 579.
312. Crab symbol, 147.
Chesias, a name of Juno, 557. Crane, a symbol, 402.
Child murder in England, 139, Creation, according to Kabir,
733. 171.
Chinese definition of God, 82. Crescent, a symbol, 102, 260.
Chodesh, 624. Cretan lies, 531.
Chr, a mystic radical, 156, 181, Cromlechs, 150.
436, 477, 539, 548, 614, 626, Cross, a symbol, 67, 230, 231,
653. 256, 353, 457, 458, 479, 483.
Christian idolatry, 397. Cross bun, 260.
Christus, 156, 248, 432. Crucifixion of infants, 250; of
Chronology, 4. the Dove, 230, 473.
Chrysalis, 480. Cudworth on the Divine Unity,
Chrysor, 183. 419.
Cicero on the Mysteries, 12; on Cunim, 33, 151, 260.
the gods, 79; on Venus, 533. Cup of Joseph, 435.
Cill, or Kil, 115; or gil, a He- Cupid and Pysche, story of, 261;
brew word, 380, 566. explained, 266, 440; Cupid, a
Circle, a symbol, 102, 200, 202, symbol, 576.
389, 390, 415, 417, 473, 474. Cybele the Sibyl, 36; with the
[See Arianrod.] lotus, 429; a name for the
Circle of Ila, 200; of Courses, Holy Spirit, 602.
214. Cyclopes, 561.
Circumcision, 129. Cymric secrets taught in the
Cir-Gawr, 378, 585. Mysteries, 334.
Clement, of Alexandria, on the Cyril, of Alexandria, on the ap-
symbols in the Mysteries, 109; pearance of Jesus, 637.
falsehood of, 133: was perhaps
an Eleusinian, 357. D., a mystic word, 441, 585.
Clogher, Bishop of, on the Dog- Δ. Delta or Triangle symbol,
symbol, 415. 204, 251, 352, 383, 442, 458,
Coat seamless of Jesus, 128, 321. 476.
Cock symbol, 146, 590. D’Ione, the Holy Spirit, 571.
Cohen, a Priest, or Dog, 404, Dag-On, 435, 458, 584.
408, 415, 464. Daimons, 173.
Colgan, mythos of Oin, 68. Daniel the Prophet, a traitor to
Columba, 115, 473. his master, Belshazzar, 509.
Version 20170421
INDEX. 741
Darkness, associated with God’s Easter, 598.

existence, 67, 86, 145. Edfou, temple of, 366.
Darwin, origin of, 251. Eggs, symbols of Worlds, 85,
Daubuz, account of symbolism, 200; of the Holy Spirit, 96,
384. 351, 352, 418, 474, 475, 476,
Davies on saint-worship, 381. 589.
Death, no such thing as, 195. Eicton, 146.
Delphi, 251, 428. Eileithyia, 554.
Demeter, 602. Elephant, a symbol, 403, 471.
Dendrophoria, 618. El-Issa-Beth, 152, 565.
Dew, a symbol, 436, 584. Elijah, falsehood of, 505.
Dharma Rajah, 172. Elisha, wickedness of, 507.
Di-Ana, a name for the Holy Emanations, beautiful doctrine
Spirit, 403, 560, 562. of, 186, 187, 195, 251, 355,
Diodorus Siculus on the Divine 386, 597.
Unity, 518. Emeph, 146.
Dio-Nusus, a Messianic name, Endymion, mythos of, 566.
662. Enoch founded the Lesser Mys-
Dionysius the Areopagite, on teries, 56; his name in Wales,
Fire, 372. 65; in Greece, 572.
Dioscuri, meaning of the, 168, Epiphany of the Messenger,
609. 98.
Dives, legend of, 471. Epiteles, legend of, 469.
Dog, a name of God, 149, 409; Epopts, what they saw in the
for the Messiah, 223, 404, 408. Mysteries, 61.
Dog-headed Incarnations, 62, Eros, 65, 147, 181, 349.
402, 403, 404, 407, 409, 415, Esoteric secrets of the Mysteries,
550. 76.
Dolphins, symbolic, 251, 432, Eternity and the Eternal sym-
433, 641. bolized by the Serpent, 403.
Door, a mystic word, 30, 49, 62, Ether, a name for the Holy
120, 200, 554, 564, 628, 634, Spirit, 86.
642. Eucharist in the Mysteries, 241,
Dove, a symbol, 115, 155, 212, 256; among savages, 259.
230, 240, 298, 357, 420, 421, Eu-Men-Ids, Cabiric symbols, 23,
422, 433; Crucifixion of the, 115, 248.
230, 473; descending on the Eusebius on Greek Mythology,
Messengers, 442, 559. 699.
Druids, their high discipline, Eve’s temptation, 690.
114; doctrine of transmigra- Everlasting misery impossible,
tion, 214. 336.
Drummond, Sir W., on symbol-
ism, 378; on the Nachash of Faber on the Mysteries, 13; on
Genesis, 691. John as an Eleusinian, 331;
Dualism, 20, 30; in the Hebrew on old mythology, 463; on
names of God, 87. the Divine Unity, 519, 529;
Duncan on Nature-worship, 396. Falsehoods of St. Clement,
Dupuis on the Mysteries, 355; Cæsarius, and Dean Prideaux,
paradox of, 520. 133; of Eutychius, 134.
Faunus, 556, 625.
Eagle symbol, 484, 536, 558. Ficinus on things divine, 53.
Eagle of the Apocalypse, 353. Fig-tree, 483, 616.
LL3
Version 20170421
742 INDEX.
Fire, 67; a symbol of the Mes- Golden Fleece, 468.

senger, 171, 179, 183; of God, Golden Seats, 273.
371, 413, 536. Gorsedd [Gwawr-Sed, Seat of
Firmicus Julius on the Myste- Splendours], 204, 528.
ries, 356. Gospels allowed to perish, 259.
Fish symbolism, 93, 240, 431, Graces Three, symbolical, 414,
604, 687. 472.
Flath-Innis, legend of, 292. Grapes, bunch of, 203, 473,
Fludd on the Holy Spirit, 95. 572.
Fo-Hi, his name in Wales, 65; Grasshopper, a symbol, 125.
derivation of, 83, 247, 634. Greek description of the Deity,
Fortitude, praise of, 339. 104; fables, 512.
Fountain, a symbol, 30, 84, 96, Gronovius, gem representing
434. AO, 92.
Four, symbolism of, 446, 699. Gwawr, the Fire Messenger, 179,
Fraud universal in England, 536.
721. Gyges, legend of, 469.
Fraudulent weights and mea- Hades, 51; a name for Spirit
sures, 723. and Soul essences, 620.
Frea or Phre-A, the Sun and A., Hadrian’s villa, 127; Consecra-
182, 463. tion of the Stable of Bethle-
Freemasons, the, 12. hem, 128.
Frigga, 151, 182, 463, 553. Hama, Fountain, 420, 433, 536,
625.
Garden, a mystic word, 26, 40, Hawk, a symbol, 415, 471, 632.
579; of the Hesperids, 120; Hazael assassinates Ben-Hadad,
of King Midas, 367. 507.
Gate, a mystic word, 49, 77, Heaven-worship, 7; many man-
120, 179, 200, 248, 252, 564, sions in, 325.
586. Hebe, mythos of, 413, 473; is
Gaudama, 473, 481. ‫יהוה‬, Ihvh.
Gaun-Isa, 579, 597. Hebrew mythos in the Myste-
Genesis, mythos of Odin, 26. ries, 100; a confused language,
Globe winged, a symbol, 419, 132; origin of the name, 156.
589. Helen’s tomb, 123; signification
Gnostic abhorrence of Ieue, 248. of the name, 123, 468.
Goat symbol, 536, 584. Heli-Chon, meaning of, 472.
God, Unity of, taught in the Helio-Gabalas, priest of L’Apis,
Mysteries, 55, 81; called An- the Stone, the Bee, and Apis,
cient Darkness, 86; vulgar no- 462.
tions of, 124; Kabir’s ideas of Hell, vision of, 70.
God, 169; thought to be a Hen, 252; and Chickens, 353.
dish of rice, 259; sublime Hephæstus, a name for the Mes-
ideas of, 493; degraded Jewish senger, 183, 647.
notions of, 494, 505, 509; not Hercules, the Sun, 227, 616.
so powerful as Satan, accord- Hercules’s Pictures, 469, 617.
ing to the vulgar belief, 514. Heré, a name for the Holy Spirit,
Gods pagan resolve themselves 545, 552.
into names for the Messengers, Herm-Athena, 146.
79, 623. Herm-On, the Holy Spirit and
Gold, a symbol of purity, 120, her Son proceed from this
480. place, 536, 569, 576.
Version 20170421
INDEX. 743
Hermes, the cup-bearer, 472; Holy water, 128, 238, 431.

the Messenger, 623. Homeric gods, 491.
Hermes Trismegistus [Thoth] Honey, 125,194,197,609,626,659.
defines God, 103. Horace on the secrecy of the
Hermesianax on the Divine Mysteries, 37.
Unity, 526. Horns, symbolism of, 352.
Hermon, 112. Horse, a symbol, 368, 470.
Hermon-Sul, 627. Horus, 629, 653.
Herodotus failed to find out the Horus-apollo on the Spirit of
Gods of Greece, 383; on the God, 415.
Scapegoat, 470. Hosanna, 619.
Heroes, 173. Households in manufacturing
Herthus and Heri-Pthah, 553. districts, 731.
Hesiod on Archè, 148; had the Hu in Cymric, same as Arabic
Apocalypse, 472. Hou, 16, 108, 474; in Chinese,
Hesperid gardens, 120, 476. 83, 145, 477.
Hieroglyphic languages, 101, Hyginus on Creation, 531.
386, 463, 464.
Higgins on Masonry, 129; on Iacchus mysteries, 127.
Greek fables, 512. Iao, 709.
Hio, a Chinese word, 83, 479. Ia-Sion, 603.
Himan, a Dove, 298, 536. Ibis, a symbol, 402.
Hina, 560, 572. Ichor, 562.
Hindu Pictures of the Deity, Ieue, Ivh, ‫יחוה‬, 66; said to
103; theory of the Messengers, be Male-Female, 83; Gnostic
154; of Creation, 170; Boar- abhorrence of, 248, 457: is
Avatar, 231. Hebe or Heva the Serpent, in
Hio, or Wisdom, 83, 479. one aspect, 472: as described
Hippa, a Mare, 470. by the Hebrews, 505; false-
Hive, a symbol, 197; is from hood of, 506; a name for Ap-
Iva and Ivh. pollo, 637, 703, Ieue-Nissi, 711.
Ho-Hi, 83, 479, 587. Ina, anagram of Ani, 479,560,572.
Hole in a rock, 198. Incarnation concealed under va-
Holy Spirit, the various names rious names, 15, 16; dog-
of, 15; taught in the Myste- headed, 62; his descent ac-
ries, 55, 82, 86; worshipped cording to the Brahmins, 154.
by the Hebrews, 87; Arnaldus Indian legend, 272.
on, 94; in the Welsh song, 111, Infanticide in Paulite lands,
called Helen, 123; Mexican, 139; apology for, 141; among
145; in Egypt, 146; symbols the early believers, 250; article
of, 146; mentioned in Old and on, 733.
New Testament, 148; alluded Initiation, described in a Hebrew
to by Kabir, 169; Irish name psalm, 329.
of, 271; address to, by Apu- Investiture in the Mysteries,
leius, 306, 319; Vision of the, 303, 326.
308; prohibited representation Invocation of the Supreme, 677.
of, by the Pope, 473; as Io, 145, 457; same as Ao, 472,
X-A Ω-Σ, 531; the most an- 532.
cient Sibyl, 569; same as Ioan, the Dove, 420, 477.
Juno, Venus, Vesta, Pallas, Irish custom, in allusion to the
Diana, &c., &c., 529-619. Naros, 390.
Holy Sepulchre, 531. Isaiah, pretended prophecy of, 696.
Version 20170421
744 INDEX.
Issa, 472. Juno Samian, 331; a name for

Issa-Bel, 562. the Holy Spirit, 544.
Isiac table, 418. Jupiter, 145; as God and the
Isle of Man legend, 73. Messenger, 478, 532; Paine
Is-Ra-El, Issa, Wisdom of God, on, 689.
157. Justin Martyr, on the devil’s pla-
giarisms, 241.
Jacob’s pillar, 375, 565.
Janus, 671. Kabir, a great Hindu apostle,
Japanese name for the Holy 168.
Spirit, 82. Kadmis, 381.
Jason, 603. Karteek, 155, 245.
Javanese Dog-Temple, 405. Kasmilos, 172, 181.
Jeremiah, on the Hebrew wor- Keble, hymn of, 689.
ship of the Holy Spirit, 87, Kelmis, 167.
260; pretended prophecy of, Kennedy, Vans, on the Gods,
510. 530.
Jesus, alludes to the Secret of Kerberos, a Cabiric symbol, 24.
God, 10; to the Mysteries, Key, an Apocalyptic symbol, 66,
61, 250, 656; fallible, 80; 121, 551, 615.
symbolized as a Serpent, 127, Khol Parsi radicals, 149.
475; mystical speech of, on Kircher on Sanchoniathon, 133;
the Male-Female, 148; first on God, 145.
appeared as Amosis, 247; on Knight Payne, curious statues
regeneration, 250, 271; on mentioned by, 146, 559; on
Light, 301; likened to a Fish, Eros Protogonos, 350.
432; to a Scarabæus, 438; a Knowledge, the Key of Heaven,
Serpent, 475; his symbolic 247.
language, 391, 463; Cabiric Kohl’s Travels, curious symbol,
allusion, 631, 665; appearance 106.
of, 637, 656; the mythos of Koran, mistranslated by Sale, 57.
his birth, 689. Kosmos, described as a Fire,
Jew Secret books, 122. 183; Plato on the, 197.
Jews, called themselves Sons of Kyrene, 190.
God, 122; paganism of the,
152; their tutelary Lar or L’Apis, Mother of the Gods,
God detested, 248; held the 462, 538.
Cabir tenet, 157, 177, 329. La Harpe on Paulite mysteries,
Jid, 23, 565, 603. 259.
Job on the Naronic Cycle, 10. Lakshmi, hymn to, 555.
John the Baptist alludes to the Lama, 458.
Mysteries, 66. Lamb symbol, 168, 229, 548,
Johnson, Dr., on the originators 604, 624, 651.
of what is new, 25. Lamp symbol, 311, 357, 395,
Jones, Sir W., on ancient Gods, 479.
524. Lampter, Lamp-bearer, 644, 649,
Joseph, affected to be a Messiah, 667.
250, 439; his cup, 435. Lao-Tseu, 174, 483, 543, 546.
Joshua and the Cabir Vision, Lapse of the Soul, 50, 54, 196.
157; Achan, 160. Legend, Scandinavian, 277; of
Julian the Emperor, on religious Finisterre, 290; of Flath In-
worship, 397. nis, 292.
Version 20170421
INDEX. 745
Leto, 629. Masonry anciently connected

Liber, 436. with God and sun-worship,
Life, sacredness of, 171. 12; also with moon-worship,
Light, a symbol of the Holy 121; a remnant of Eleusis,
Spirit, 67, 85, 95, 169, 301, 129.
302, 395, 551. Mavalipuram, curious symbolic
Light of the World, 485, 644, carving in, 480.
667. Maurice, Rev. T., on wickedness
Lingard on transmigration, 214. of priests, 400.
Lion symbol, 72, 147, 368, 471. Maya, 704.
Livy, 116. Mayaguil, 711.
London, Bishop of, 410. May-day, 27.
London morality, 465, 721. May, month of, 688.
Lot’s wife, 699. McCree, Mr., Letter to Morning
Lotus emblem, 151, 169, 251, Star, 465.
326, 393, 429, 447, 571, 703. Medusa, a symbol, 120, 419.
Love, Protogonos, 351. Medusa heads, 121.
Luc-Hina, 560. Mel-Issa, 251; myllos, 260, 424,
Lucian’s Tyrannus, 235. 536.
Luke, 594. Men, Meni, Menai, 115, 590.
Lunette, a symbol, 98, 255. Mercury, a name for the Mes-
Lunus and Luna, 569. siah, 623.
Lux, a primitive radical, 68, 632. Messenger, the First, 9; symbol
Lycophron alludes to the Naros, of, in the Greek churches,
176. 248.
Messengers, Messianic and Cabi-
M’Aïa, Maya, 27, 33, 169, 182, ric, 3, 172, 173; called Nym-
247, 564, 598, 704. phical and Minerval, 174, 175,
Mabinogi of the Tylwith Têg, 247; how they descend to
27; of Avallenau, 32. earth, 154; bring a Golden
Madonna of the Sun, 152, 610. Age, 177; in Greece, 156, 174.
Male-Female, as applied to the Metis, 458.
Divine, 21, 23, 35, 83, 91, 93, Mexican mythos of the Messen-
105, 118, 120, 148, 151, 351, ger, 127; creed, 145; tenet of
540, 557, 563, 569, 570, 580, the Naros, 246; scapegoat,
584, 586, 597. 257; Vestals, 260; images of
Man-Eros, 181. Holy Spirit, 571.
Mani, mystic speech of, 557. Midas’s Garden, 367.
M’Ao, 428. Mihr, Mithr, Mithras, 115, 119,
Ma-Nu, meaning of, 247. 150, 574.
Marriage, sacred, 126, 150. Milk, 659.
Mars, a Jewish God, 162, 165; Milton, rabbinical notion of,
meaning of Venus’s love for, 516; on the Apocalypse, 523.
577; a name for the Cabiric Minerva, 175, 369; a name for
Messenger, 650. the Holy Spirit, 583; Pylotis,
Martyrdom of the Messenger, 586.
77, 230, 248. Minerval Messengers, 175.
Mary, 704. Miriam made leprous, 503.
Mary’s children, 565. Misletoe, 244, 353, 354.
Mason’s oath, 121; the name, Missionary questions to the Pa-
122; initiation, 124; cross, gans, 258.
256. Mistor, 611.
Version 20170421
746 INDEX.
Mithraic mysteries, 126; on in Mexico, 246; in Ireland,

Christmas day, 241. 247, 390; among the Jews,
Monkey, a sacred symbol, 404. 254; in Egypt, 418, 569; in
Monotheism grows into polythe- Greece, 546; symbolized in a
ism, 7; of the Mysteries, 81; stone, 641.
of Brahminism, 399. Nature-worship, 396.
Montfaucon on the ancient Neilos, the Sun, 470; the Holy
priests, 114. Spirit, 627.
Moon, a mystic symbol, 49, 63, Neit is Tien, 479, 532, 586, 596,
96, 108, 111, 121, 194, 205, 600.
213, 303. Neptune, female, 698.
Moon-Ash, 426. Neptunus, a name for the Holy
Morning Star, letter on London Spirit, 21, 146, 527, 587, 698.
morality, 465. Nereides, children of the Naros,
Mosheim, on the Holy Spirit, 248, 644.
94; on pagan baptism, 237. Nerthus, 704.
Môt of Sanchoniathon, 147; same New birth among the Africans,
as Muth, ‫מית‬, Death. 114, 198, 201, 207, 234, 315;
Mother of the Gods, applied to alluded to by Jesus, 252, 271,
the Stone, or Queen Bee 619.
L’Apis, 462. New Testament allusions to the
Mountain worship, 376. Naros, 10; a forgery, 133.
Multimamma, 569. Nicodemus questions Jesus, 271.
Muses, the Nine, Messianic sym- Night, God is the Father of,
bols, 23, 413, 472. 351, 479.
Myllos, probably a cognate of Nine, a mystic number, 191, 216,
M-’El-Issa, the Bee, 260. 222, 446.
Mystery, Mistor, 611. Nine Gates, city of, 321.
Mysteries, ancient, their origin, Niobe, mythos of, 413.
6; traced through many na- Numbers, symbolic, 442.
tions, 11; the Greater, confined Nurse Murderesses, 140.
to a small circle, 13; univer- Nympha, whence derived, 150.
sally diffused, 14; impenetra-
ble secrecy of, 37, 38, 120; O, worship of, 477.
open only to the pure, 42, 54, Oak, an emblem, 160, 354, 483,
116, 117; their inner nature, 557.
48; occultly alluded to in the Oannes is O-On, 353.
N. T., 178, 241; among the Obelisks, symbols of God, 378,
Jews, 254; alluded to by Je- 464, 473.
sus, 656. Odd and even, symbolic, 445.
Mystica vannus, 100. Odin, or O-Deen, O, the Faith,
Mythologists, ignorance of, 391. 463.
Mythology founded on the Apo- Ogham pillars in British Mu-
calypse, 522. seum, 378; pronounced Oum,
474; characters, 616.
Names, mystery in, 700. Oin, monkish legend of, 68; same
Narcissus, mythos of, 53, 412. as Owen, 72.
Naronic Cycle, kept secret, 9; Old Testament, secret allusions
symbolized by the Staff of to the Naros, 10; mistrans-
Osiris, 68; in the Hindu my- lations, 10, 131, 132; passage
thos, 155; in Lycophron, 176; that has disappeared from it,
among the Druids, 244, 246; 256.
Version 20170421
INDEX. 747
Olive symbol, 472, 557, 584, 586, Pater, 145.

593, 605, 625. Patera, 435, 700, 701.
Olives, mountain of, 607. Patrick’s Purgatory, 69.
Oliver, Dr., on Initiation, 320; Paul’s appearance, 638.
on Eve’s temptation, 690. Paulism, 712; fruits of, 138;
Olm and Alm, 472. compared with Paganism, 513.
Ollwed, the Nymph, 33. Paulite crucifixion of infants,
Olympiodorus on the Mysteries, 250; tract, 712.
303. Pausanias alludes to the Myste-
Om-Id, Aum-Id, 546. ries, 38, 39, 40, 41; to the
On, Onos, symbolism of, 22, 352, Cabirs, 166; to the Apoca-
483, 532. lypse, 469; on Greek fables,
Ophite worship, 249. 512.
Oreb, a Raven, a Merchant, 405. Peacock, a symbol, 402; Chinese
Oriental symbolism of speech, Taos, 547, 549.
463. Pentecost, 607.
Orion the Bird, 483. Peri-Wife, legend of, 274.
Original Sin, 237, 259. Persephone, mythos of, 604,
Orpheus on the Divine Unity, 629.
582. Peruvian legend, 296.
Osiris and Typhon are Kain and Petroma, 149, 469, 615, 687.
Habil, 470; same as Dio-Nu- Ph-AO-Phi, 152.
sos, 664; discerption of Osiris, Phœnix, 274, 484.
what it means, 705. Phre-Phroh, 12, 245, 552.
Osiris’s Staff, 68. Phrigga, 552, 553.
Ouvaroff on Jove, 700. Phrs, 653.
Ovid on Æsculapius, 544; on an Phylæ, subterrane temples in,
Apocalyptic mythos, 576. 328.
Ouranism, 7, 488. Pigeons, symbolic, 212, 687.
Owl symbol, 584, 593. Pillar of Stone, 375; a symbol
Oxford Bishop of, 410. of the Divine, 462, 473, 483.
Piscina, 434.
Plato on the Soul, 45, 55; on
Pæan, 630. the Kosmos, 197; on Poseid-
Palladia, 589. Aon, 533; derivation of God,
Palladium, what it means, 468, 699.
478, 652. Plotinus on the Soul, 51; on its
Pallas, the Holy Spirit, 583. lapse, 196; on the Kosmos,
Palm, 124, 128, 312, 318, 455, 493.
479, 483, 593. Plurality or Duality of Hebrew
Pan-Chaia, legend of, 295. names for AO, 87.
Pan, the same as God, 104; same Plutarch on the Soul, 44; on
as Pri-Apis (Father Bee), the search after Truth, 46;
349. on the Messengers, 174; on the
Pandora, what it means, 648. Egyptian faith, 392; on Egyp-
Panthean Sculpture, 697. tian mythology, 414; sublime
Pantheism, 185, 251, 388, 568. notions of, 681.
Panther, a symbol, 470, 563, 654, Pococke, 98.
660, 669; Jesus Ben, 690. Point within a Circle, 390.
Paraclete, 697. Polytheism, origin of, 7.
Paris and the Golden Apple ex- Pomegranate, a symbol, 425,
plained, 411. 701.
Version 20170421
748 INDEX.
Pomey on Moses and Bacchus, Ram, a symbol of God and the

671. Sun, 418; of Hercules and
Pontifex, whence derived, 588. Ab-Ram, 470, 687.
Pope, the, prohibits the repre- Ram-A, the Holy Spirit, 169.
sentation of the Holy Spirit Ras-Rasit, 130, 132, 151, 613.
as a Man, 473. Raven, a mystic word, 66, 216,
Porphyry on a mystic Brahmin 405, 423.
Cave, 29; on the Soul, 45; Reason, same as Wisdom, a name
on symbolic images, 389. for AO, 81.
Poseid-Aon. 532, 559, 625. Regeneration, 188, 198, 232, 252,
Power of God, Minerva called 270, 271.
the, 602. Revelations, many, 145.
Pre-existence, 178, 186. Rhæa, Rhoia, 425, 478, 535, 602,
Priapus, 349. 609.
Pride, most wicked, 340. Ring, a symbol, 469, 473.
Prideaux, Dean, falsehood of, River of Liberation, 621; of
133. Oblivion, 621.
Priests, their character, 400, Rivers, sacred, 434.
401. Rock, and Rock Mysteries, 19,
Princip-Issa, 349. 179, 198, 536, 556.
Proclus on Helen, 123; on trans- Rock symbol, 536, 556, 687.
migration, 215; on the oceanic Roll, M., on ancient worship of
birth of Aphrodite, 578; on the Two, 92.
the Holy Spirit, 596, 599; on Romulus, mythos, 401.
the Sun-stone, 640. Ruach-Aleim, 271, 427, 433.
Profligacy in Paulite London,
465. S. P. Q. R., a symbol, 588.
Prophecies pretended, 506, 510. SS., 120; collar of, 475; is Sancta
Proserpine mythos, relates to Sophia, or Holy Wisdom, 479,
the lapse of the Soul from 581.
Heaven, 15, 215, 604. Saba, 427.
Prostitution, growth of, 138. Saba Siona, 469.
Psalm, curious, 646. Sacred Marriage, 542.
Psellus on the false Mysteries, Sadder, 565.
355. Saint worship, folly of, 381.
Purification in the Mysteries, Salmon, a symbol, 254, 548.
233; necessary for Souls, 235, Salmoneus, mythos of, 31.
292. Samarcand, 9; the first site of
Pythagoras learned all from the the Mysteries, 11.
East, 17. Sanchoniathon, copy of, lost,
Python, a temple, 419. 133.
Sar, a Rock, part of Æ-Sar, AO-
Queen of Heaven, 119; adored Sar, and Sar-Apis, &c., 556.
by the Jews, 88, 147, 260, Satan, exalted by Paulites
577, 595. above God, 514.
Saturn, mythos of, 394.
Rabbinical madness, 516; and Satyrs, statues of, 414.
indecency, 694. Saviour, the, 538, 540, 561, 570,
Rainbow-Virgin of Heaven, 32, 587, 639, 700, 711.
36, 55, 85, 204, 225, 229, 479; Scandinavia legend, 277.
symbol, 350, 438, 549, 575, Scapegoat in Mexico and Egypt,
588. 257, 368, 470.
Version 20170421
INDEX. 749
Scarabæus, a symbol, 99, 102, Ship-temple, 153.

437. Shoes commanded to be taken
Schubert on symbolic language, off, 354.
385. Sibyl, the most Ancient, 569.
Schelling, guess of, 512. Sickles Apocalyptic, 428, 603,
Scythian Cabir-worship, 160. 607, 627.
Secrecy of the Rabbis, 148. Sigma, a symbolic letter, 478.
Secret of God, a name for the Silence, 146, 326.
Naronic Cycle, 6. Silenus, a name for the Holy
Seduction, 110, 138, 727. Spirit, 21, 655; mystic saying
Seirenes, 425. ascribed to, 367.
Selenai cakes, 260. Silver Wheel, 225, 319, 588.
Selene, 424, 425, 552. Sion-na-Saba, 469.
Semele, 669. Siren, the Holy Spirit, 476; wor-
Sephiroth tree, 381, 457. shipped in Syringas. 357.
Septuagint, a forgery, 131. Sistrum, a symbol, 311, 313, 448,
Serapion cited, 569. 455.
Serapis defined, 105. Sisyphus, mythos of, 411.
Serpent, a symbol, 93, 102, 119, Sita or Atis, 116, 324, 608, 670.
127, 173, 213, 234, 240, 313, Six, 155, 244, 246, 250, 254,
354, 418, 473, 589; venerated 479, 633.
by the Gnostics, 249; by the Skanda, 155.
the Hindus, 403; Egyptians, Snake symbol, 417, 473, 589,
415, 419; of the Hottentots, 612.
476, 589, 612; Eve’s tempter, Socrates’ oath, 408.
691. Solar symbol, 402.
Serpent Queen, 171. Sol-Ipse symbol, 390.
Servius on the Male-Female, 36; Solomon’s temple, 594.
curious notes of, 127, 558. Som-Ona-Chadam, 482.
Seven, symbolism of, 32, 324, Som-A, the Moon, 118.
450, 587. Sons of God, 122, 168, 252, 382.
Seven Great Churches in Asia, Soul united with the body, 50;
8. is part of God, 185, 187, 705;
Shaftesbury, Lord, on agricul- defined, 340.
tural gangs, 713. Soul and Spirit, Indian legend,
Shadai, 65, 88, 115, 145, 167, 272.
436. Sow symbol, 253.
Shamrock, an Arabic word and Spence on Minerva, 591.
symbol, 382. Spes Divina, 477.
Sheelah na Gigh, 106, 152. Sphinx, a symbol of the Holy
Sheked, the Almond Tree, 596. Spirit, 369, 471.
Shekinah, 99, 103, 150, 251, 428, Spirit of Tongues, 476.
474, 477, 478. St. Peter’s at Rome, a symbolic
Shell or Conch, a symbol, 325, building, 151.
471. Stave symbol, 68, 152.
Shepherds, 248, 630. Steinbeck on Symbolism, 371.
Shih or Si, a Chinese radical, Stobœus on the Mysteries, 301.
457, 483. Stone, a symbol of God, 326,
Shibboleth, 617, 618. 375; Mother of the Gods, 462,
Shiloh, root of Sol, 152, 227, 255, 687.
457. Stonehenge, 145, 200, 382, 565.
Ship, a symbol, 250. Stone Pillar, 375, 565.
MM
Version 20170421
750 INDEX.
Strabo on Greek fables, 511. Themistius on the Mysteries, 300.

Stukeley on symbolism, 371; on Theo of Smyrna on philosophy,
Abury, 417; on Jesus Ben 59.
Panther, 690. Theocrasia Hindu, 527, 602.
Succoth Benoth, 572. Theocritus on Adonis worship,
Sun and Moon, children, 246; 227.
emblems, 489; at midnight, Theophrastus on the Soul, 47.
299. Thetis, mythos of, 217.
Swan symbol, 585. Thigh, curious allusion to, 589,
Swedenborg doctrine of Corre- 655; sacred cypher on, 708.
spondences, 464. Thor, the Cabiric Messenger,
Sword symbol, 72, 701; reli- 463, 564, 654.
gion of the, 164. Thoth, with symbolic head, 403,
Symbolism, antiquity of, 369. 415.
Symbols of God and the Holy Thr, ‫תר‬, a symbolic word, 326,
Spirit, 146. 564.
Synesius on the Male-Female, Three, mystical, 274, 354, 396,
23; alludes to the mythos of 414, 432, 433, 443, 546.
Cupid and Psyche, 267. Thyrse, a phallic symbol, 96.
Syon, 113; or Zi-On, repose, 475. Tibris, the Sacred River, 551.
Syringes in Egypt, 357. Tien, 479, 532, 585; is the Welsh
Dien, 243.
Tacitus on the Argha, 152; on Tiresias, beautiful symbol of,
German chastity, 463; igno- 471, 592.
rance of, 580. Tityus, mythos of, 411.
Taliesin, prayer of, 116; on the Tobit, book of, 432.
Messenger, 179; mabinogi of, Tongues of Fire, 172.
215; mystic poem, 242. Torch immersed in Water, 129,
Tammuz worship, 227, 481; the 561.
Rainbow, 229. Tortoise, a symbol, 402, 701.
Tantalus, mythos of, 412. Towneley, statue of Zeus, 533.
Tao and Taos, Chinese words, Transmigration, 171, 184, 195,
547. 205, 208, 240, 252, 254, 291,
Targum, allusions to Holy Spi- 336.
rit, 147. Tree symbolic, 37, 417; the Dom
Tau symbol, 29; or Staff of Osi- Tree, 128, 203, 354; Peru-
ris, 67; a symbol, 203, 229, vian, 297, 375; of knowledge,
322, 326, 383, 479, 547, 600, or Arbor Intellectualis, 382,
probably a corruption of Tao. 516; Sephiroth Tree, 383, 457;
Taylor, the Platonist, on the of life, 471, 473, 483, 539, 574,
Mysteries, 49; on the beauty 618, 687.
of antique fable, 393. Trees Apocalyptic, 33.
Tebah, ‫תבה‬, 98, 99, 126, 179, Trefoil, 382, 563.
198, 421, 489, 535, 579. Tressan Abbè, on Bacchus and
Temptation of Jesus, 126. Moses, 673.
Ten, Symbolism of, 202, 442, Triads, Welsh, 342.
457, 532, 608, 610. Triangle, a symbol, 202, 204, 251,
Ten, secrets of the Mysteries, 353, 383, 390, 395, 443;
77. double, 352, 458.
Tertullian on Jesus, 638. Trident, a symbol, 443, 465;
Thales on the origin of things, same as the mystical Anchor,
431. 433.
Version 20170421
INDEX. 751
Trinity, remarkable passage on 129, 272, 303, 369, 378, 429,

the, 134. 471, 472, 478.
Twelve, symbolism of, 317, 458. Way, a mystic word, 540, 628.
Twice-born, 201, 234, 252, 271, Weaver, a mystic title, 169, 182,
301. 194, 591, 704.
Tylwith Têg, mabinogi of the, Wedding garment of Jesus, 236,
27, 481. 272, 318.
Tzetzes, singular fragment of, Well, a mystic word, 201, 377.
650. Welsh, Colonel, notice of a
statue, 151.
Unity divine, 519, 529, 558, 567, Welsh mysteries, entrance into
568, 576, 581; of the gods, the, 63; their sublime doc-
697. trine, 334.
Upsal, temple at, 463. Wheat, a symbol, 127; and a
Urd, mystic well of, 585. mystic word, 218, 607.
Urus, symbol of God, 352, 490. Wilford on Conx, Om, Pax,
304.
Vallancey, on the cave myster- Wind, a symbolic word, 271.
ies, 60; on stone temples in Wine symbol, 572, 655, 659.
Ireland, 377; on May, 688. Wine press of the Apocalypse, 40.
Vase mystic, or Cauldron of Wings, symbolism of, 354, 414,
Ceridwen, 244, 297. 418, 473, 589, 663.
Vau-Nus, 555, 572, 580, 625. Wisdom, 131; is Minerva,
Venus, a name for the Holy 175; symbolized by Light,
Spirit, 119, 404, 571; the 395; by the Elephant, 403;
black, 579. Daughter of God, 590.
Venus and Adonis, mythos of, Wisdom of Solomon, 163.
148, 574. Wolf, a symbol, 145, 212, 401,
Venus Summachia, 149. 620.
Vesta, the Holy Spirit, 538, 602. Woman. ancient dignity of, 137.
Vestal Virgins, 260. Word of God, 147, 163.
Vine, the, 172, 203, 383, 655, Worlds destroyed and repro-
711. duced, 184, 187.
Virgil on Emanations, 387. Wortley; Montague, image of
Visible corresponds with the In- AO, 416.
visible, 464.
Voltaire on the Mysteries, 113. Ya, 395.
Vulcan, a name for the Messen- Yama, 172.
ger, 647. Ydrasil, the Tree, 34, 152, 299,
Vulcan Ætnæus, 404. 353, 417, 472, 585, 619.
Vulgar literature, 137. Yew crowns, why so called, 66.
Vulture, a symbol, 415, 554. Yezdan, the light of, 61.
Yoni, symbol of the, 96, 115,
Warburton, Bishop, on the Pagan 123, 203, 255; the Sun, 435,
gods, 79; on various revela- 548, 550, 551, 615, 702.
tions, 145; on pantheism, Yucatan, images of the Holy
251; on symbolic language, Spirit, 571.
386.
Water of the Sun, 295, 369, Zand-a-Vesta, 465.
433. Zaratusht, his doctrines misrep-
Water-lily, a symbol, 429. resented, 133, 174; Tree of,
Waters symbolic, 85, 94, 118, 353.
Version 20170421
752 INDEX.
Zedekiah, pretended prophecy Zeyn, Prince, 299.

concerning, 510. Zion, Mount, same as Olympus,
Zeus, as imaged by the Greeks, 15.
103; meaning of, 296, 394.
LONDON:
. . , , 13, ., .,
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THE BOOK OF GOD.

)rq) sy#) skyl)

B I.—Introductory remarks on former Volume,

language, 391—410. Some of the ancient mythi explained,

I the first part of the B G I have given

it might be a receptacle for those Spirits who, by their

accusations which they always introduce into religious

ancient writing in the world; and that it is in reality a

was the true and probable period. I concluded with the

Part, together with the Notes, he will be more than a

The Origin of the Ancient Mysteries

10. When the first Messenger of Heaven, the Æon,

hundred years would become the amphitheatre of fierce

12. A variety of interests had also begun. Man had

Messenger was indispensable. His high and sacred author-

admitted, and upon their full enrolment as brethren the

Psalm lxxviii. 2. All those things spake Jesus unto the

17. In the foregoing extract from the Bishop may be

not view the Orgies of one people as something radically

the same. Thus Strabo asserts that the Curetic Orgies

gods of Samothrace were Bacchus, Ceres, and Proserpine,

Thracians and the Pelasgi were the ancestors of those

municated, however, he had himself previously learned:

tion into his rock mysteries with the legends respecting

logy to which their forefathers from time immemorial had

Difficulties in the way of Grasping the True Secret of

23. In entering on the subject of the Mysteries, this

aught of the hallowed lore which had been imparted to

meant to be feigned in this symbol. [See Part I., page

have brought up and instructed. (Diod. iv. 14. Orph.

villainy, were nevertheless the accredited agents of Him

were in reality crimes committed by the priests, who for

not be found, upon treating it with contempt and ridi-

lists of a modern age feigned that their great progenitor

surprized with the prospect of a most enchanting Garden,

off the water, in order to discover its contents, when a

Cave extended to a considerable distance, and was pro-

the Fountain, the opened door, to which Jesus compared

lightnings of the spheres. But God, incensed by his im-

Tree, with blossoms of pure white and wide-spreading

bees; priestesses, Melissai, a common symbol of the Holy

come a wild distracted object, no longer greeted by the

bow,* by no nymph am I respected. No soother amuses my

are its branches, budding, luxuriant, shooting forth re-

416. A reward was offered for the head of Diagoras.

able. What they originally were it is not possible by

called the Enclosure of Venus in the Gardens, and in this

Messenger. In another part of the travels we read thus:

meant, he would probably have not transcribed it into

was charged with insulting these religious rites; and

the caves of India. From it originated, after its first

decay, lives truly and according to the Divine Nature.

which our modem priests have so defamed. To desire,

it be properly approached with due purity and sanctity of

elevation, and from the sun-crowned summits, diffused over

A further Elucidation of the High Purport of the

41. The Mysteries, says Faber, displayed the lapse of

bewailed, were exhorted to rejoice and be of good cheer,

founders, to signify occultly the condition of the impure

soul is punished through its union with the body. This