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§§ PAGE.
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I. -- SYMBOLISM AND IDEOGRAPHS ... 303
II. -- MYSTERY LANGUAGE ... 310
III. -- PRIMORDIAL SUBSTANCE AND DIVINE THOUGHT ... 325
IV. -- CHAOS, THEOS, KOSMOS ... 342
V. -- THE HIDDEN DEITY AND ITS GLYPHS ... 349
VI. -- THE MUNDANE EGG ... 359
VII. -- THE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF BRAHMA ... 368
VIII. -- THE LOTUS AS A UNIVERSAL SYMBOL ... 379
IX. -- DEUS LUNUS ... 386
X. -- TREE AND SERPENT AND CROCODILE WORSHIP ... 403
XI. -- DEMON EST DEUS INVERSUS ... 411
XII. -- THEOGONY OF THE CREATIVE GODS ... 424
XIII. -- THE SEVEN CREATIONS ... 445
XIV. -- THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF THE ANCIENTS ... 460
XV. -- ON KWAN-SHI YIN AND KWAN-YIN ... 470
"A symbol is ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer
or clearer revelation of the God-like. Through all there glimmers
something of a divine idea; nay, the highest ensign that men ever
met and embraced under the cross itself, had no meaning, save
an accidental extrinsic one." CARLYLE.
THE study of the hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever nation, large or small -- pre-eminently the traditions of the East -- has occupied the greater portion of the present writer's life. She is one of those who feel convinced that no mythological story, no traditional event in the folk-lore of a people has ever been, at any time, pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an actual, historical lining to it. In this the writer disagrees with those symbologists, however great their reputation, who find in every myth nothing save additional proofs of the superstitious bent of mind of the ancients, and believe that all mythologies sprung from and are built upon solar myths. Such superficial thinkers were admirably disposed of by Mr. Gerald Massey, the poet and Egyptologist, in a lecture on "Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern." His pointed criticism is worthy of reproduction in this part of this work, as it echoes so well our own feelings, expressed openly so far back as 1875, when "Isis Unveiled" was written.
"For thirty years past Professor Max Muller has been teaching
in his books and lectures, in the Times and various magazines,
from the platform of the Royal Institution, the pulpit of Westminster
Abbey, and his chair at Oxford, that mythology is a disease of
language, and that the ancient symbolism was a result of something
like a primitive aberration.
"'We know,' says Renouf, echoing Max Muller, in his Hibbert
lectures, 'we know that mythology is the disease which
springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture.' Such is the
shallow explanation of the non-evolutionists, and such explanations
are still accepted by the British public, that gets its think-
ing done by proxy. Professor Max Muller, Cox, Gubernatis, and
other propounders of the Solar Mythos, have portrayed the primitive
myth-maker for us as a sort of Germanised-Hindu metaphysician,
projecting his own shadow on a mental mist, and talking ingeniously
concerning smoke, or, at least, cloud; the sky overhead
becoming like the dome of dreamland, scribbled over with the imagery
of aboriginal nightmares! They conceive the early man in their
own likeness, and look upon him as perversely prone to self-mystification,
or, as Fontenelle has it, 'subject to beholding things that are
not there.' They have misrepresented primitive or archaic man
as having been idiotically misled from the first by an active
but untutored imagination into believing all sorts of fallacies,
which were directly and constantly contradicted by his own daily
experience; a fool of fancy in the midst of those grim realities
that were grinding his experience into him, like the grinding
icebergs making their imprints upon the rocks submerged beneath
the sea. It remains to be said, and will one day be acknowledged,
that these accepted teachers have been no nearer to the beginnings
of mythology and language than Burns' poet Willie had been near
to Pegasus. My reply is, 'Tis but a dream of the metaphysical
theorist that mythology was a disease of language, or of anything
else except his own brain. The origin and meaning of mythology
have been missed altogether by these solarites and weather-mongers!
Mythology was a primitive mode of thinking the early thought.
It was founded on natural facts, and is still verifiable in phenomena.
There is nothing insane, nothing irrational in it, when considered
in the light of evolution, and when its mode of expression by
sign-language is thoroughly understood. The insanity lies in mistaking
it for human history or Divine Revelation.* Mythology is the repository
of man's most ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is
this -- when truly interpreted once more, it is destined to be
the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly
given birth.** In modern phraseology a statement is sometimes
said to be mythical in proportion to its being untrue; but the
ancient mythology was not a system or mode of falsifying in that
sense. Its fables were the means of conveying facts; they were
neither forgeries nor fictions. . . . For example, when the Egyptians
portrayed the moon as a Cat, they were not ignorant
enough to suppose that the moon was a cat; nor did their wandering
fancies see any likeness in the moon to a cat; nor was a cat-myth
any mere expansion of verbal metaphor; nor had they any
intention of making puzzles or riddles. . . . They had observed
the simple fact that the cat saw in the dark, and that her eyes
became full-orbed, and grew most luminous by night. The moon was
the seer by night in heaven, and the cat was its equivalent
on the earth; and so the familiar cat was adopted as a representative,
a natural sign, a living pictograph of the lunar orb. . . . And
so it followed that the sun which saw down in the under-world
at night could also be called the cat, as it was, because it
also saw in the dark. The name of the
* As far as divine revelation is concerned, we agree. Not so with regard to "human history." . . . For there is "history" in most of the allegories and "myths" of India, and events, real actual events, are concealed under them.
** When the "false theologies" disappear, then true prehistoric realities will be found, contained especially in the mythology of the Aryans -- ancient Hindoos, and even the pre-Homeric Hellenes.
cat in Egyptian is mau, which denotes the seer,
from mau, to see. One writer on mythology asserts that
the Egyptians 'imagined a great cat behind the sun, which is the
pupil of the cat's eye.' But this imagining is all modern. It
is the Mullerite stock in trade. The moon as cat was the
eye of the sun, because it reflected the solar light,
and because the eye gives back image in its mirror. In the
form of the goddess Pasht, the cat keeps watch for the sun, with
her paw holding down and bruising the head of the serpent of darkness,
called his eternal enemy. . . ."
This is a very correct exposition of the lunar-mythos from its astronomical aspect. Selenography, however, is the least esoteric of the divisions of lunar Symbology. To master thoroughly -- if one is permitted to coin a new word -- Selenognosis, one must become proficient in more than its astronomical meaning. The moon (vide § VII. Deus Lunus) is intimately related to the Earth, as shown in Stanza VI. of Book I., and is more directly concerned with all the mysteries of our globe than is even Venus-Lucifer, the occult sister and alter-ego of the Earth.
The untiring researches of Western, and especially German, symbologists, during the last and the present centuries, have brought every Occultist and most unprejudiced persons to see that without the help of symbology (with its seven departments, of which the moderns know nothing) no ancient Scripture can ever be correctly understood. Symbology must be studied from every one of its aspects, for each nation had its own peculiar methods of expression. In short, no Egyptian papyrus, no Indian tolla, no Assyrian tile, or Hebrew scroll, should be read and accepted literally.
This every scholar now knows. The able lectures of Mr. G. Massey alone are sufficient in themselves to convince any fair-minded Christian that to accept the dead-letter of the Bible is equivalent to falling into a grosser error and superstition than any hitherto evolved by the brain of the savage South Sea Islander. But the point to which even the most truth-loving and truth-searching Orientalists -- whether Aryanists or Egyptologists -- seem to remain blind, is the fact that every symbol in papyrus or olla is a many-faced diamond, each of whose facets not merely bears several interpretations, but relates likewise to several sciences. This is instanced in the just quoted interpretation of the moon symbolized by the cat -- an example of sidero-terrestrial imagery; the moon bearing many other meanings besides this with other nations.
As a learned Mason and Theosophist, the late Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, has shown in his Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, there is a great difference between emblem and symbol. The former "comprises a larger series of thoughts than a symbol, which may be said rather to illustrate some single special idea." Hence, the symbols (say lunar, or solar) of several countries, each illustrating such a special idea, or series of ideas, form collectively an esoteric emblem. The latter is "a concrete visible
picture or sign representing principles, or a series of principles, recognizable by those who have received certain instructions" (initiates). To put it still plainer, an emblem is usually a series of graphic pictures viewed and explained allegorically, and unfolding an idea in panoramic views, one after the other. Thus the Puranas are written emblems. So are the Mosaic and Christian Testaments, or the Bible, and all other exoteric Scriptures. As the same authority shows: --
"All esoteric Societies have made use of emblems and symbols,
such as the Pythagorean Society, the Eleusinian, the Hermetic
Brethren of Egypt, the Rosicrucians, and the Freemasons. Many
of these emblems it is not proper to divulge to the general eye,
and a very minute difference may make the emblem or symbol
differ widely in its meaning. The magical sigillae, being
founded on certain principles of numbers, partake of this character,
and although monstrous or ridiculous in the eyes of the uninstructed,
convey a whole body of doctrine to those who have been trained
to recognise them."
The above enumerated societies are all comparatively modern, none dating back earlier than the middle ages. How much more proper, then, that the students of the oldest Archaic School should be careful not to divulge secrets of far more importance to humanity (in the sense of being dangerous in the hands of the latter) than any of the so-called "Masonic Secrets," which have now become, as the French say, those of "Polichinelle!" But this restriction can apply only to the psychological or rather psycho-physiological and Cosmical significance of symbol and emblem, and even to that only partially. An adept must refuse to impart the conditions and means that lead to a correlation of elements, whether psychic or physical, that may produce a hurtful result as well as a beneficent one. But he is ever ready to impart to the earnest student the secret of the ancient thought in anything that regards history concealed under mythological symbolism, and thus to furnish a few more land-marks towards a retrospective view of the past, as containing useful information with regard to the origin of man, the evolution of the races and geognosy; yet it is the crying complaint of to-day, not only among theosophists, but also among the few profane interested in the subject. "Why do not the adepts reveal that which they know?" To this, one might answer, "Why should they, since one knows beforehand that no man of science will accept, even as an hypothesis, let alone as a theory or axiom, the facts imparted. Have you so much as accepted or believed in the A B C of the Occult philosophy contained in the Theosophist, "Esoteric Buddhism," and other works and periodicals? Has not even the little which was given, been ridiculed and derided, and made to face the "animal" and "ape theory" of Huxley -- Haeckel, on one hand, and the rib of Adam and the apple on the other? Notwithstanding such an unenviable prospect, a mass of facts is given in the present work. And now the origin of man, the evolution of the globe and
the races, human and animal, are as fully treated here as the writer is able to treat them.
The proofs brought forward in corroboration of the old teachings are scattered widely throughout the old scriptures of ancient civilizations. The Puranas, the Zendavesta, and the old classics are full of them; but no one has ever gone to the trouble of collecting and collating together those facts. The reason for this is, that all such events were recorded symbolically; and that the best scholars, the most acute minds, among our Aryanists and Egyptologists, have been too often darkened by one or another preconception; still oftener, by one-sided views of the secret meaning. Yet even a parable is a spoken symbol: a fiction or a fable, as some think; an allegorical representation, we say, of life-realities, events, and facts. And, as a moral was ever drawn from a parable, that moral being an actual truth and fact in human life, so an historical, real event was deduced -- by those versed in the hieratic sciences -- from certain emblems and symbols recorded in the ancient archives of the temples. The religious and esoteric history of every nation was embedded in symbols; it was never expressed in so many words. All the thoughts and emotions, all the learning and knowledge, revealed and acquired, of the early races, found their pictorial expression in allegory and parable. Why? Because the spoken word has a potency unknown to, unsuspected and disbelieved in, by the modern "sages." Because sound and rhythm are closely related to the four Elements of the Ancients; and because such or another vibration in the air is sure to awaken corresponding powers, union with which produces good or bad results, as the case may be. No student was ever allowed to recite historical, religious, or any real events in so many unmistakable words, lest the powers connected with the event should be once more attracted. Such events were narrated only during the Initiation, and every student had to record them in corresponding symbols, drawn out of his own mind and examined later by his master, before they were finally accepted. Thus was created in time the Chinese Alphabet, as, before that, the hieratic symbols were fixed upon in old Egypt. In the Chinese language, the alphabet of which may be read in any language,* and which is only a little less ancient than the Egyptian alphabet of Thoth, every word has its corresponding symbol conveying the word needed in a pictorial form. The language possesses many thousands of such symbol letters, or logograms, each meaning a whole word; for letters proper, or an alphabet, do not exist in the Chinese language any more than they did in the Egyptian till a far later period.
* Thus, a Japanese who does not understand one word of Chinese, meeting with a Chinaman who has never heard the language of the former, will communicate in writing with him, and they will understand each other perfectly -- because the writing is symbolical.
The explanation of the chief symbols and emblems is now attempted, as Book II., which treats of Anthropogenesis, would be most difficult to understand without a preparatory acquaintance with the metaphysical symbols at least.
Nor would it be just to enter upon an esoteric reading of symbolism without giving due honour to one who has rendered it the greatest service in this century, by discovering the chief key to ancient Hebrew symbology, interwoven strongly with metrology, one of the keys to the once universal mystery language. Mr. Ralston Skinner, of Cincinnati, the author of "The Hebrew-Egyptian Mystery and the Source of Measures" has our thanks. A mystic and a Kabalist by nature, he has laboured for many years in this direction, and his efforts were certainly crowned with great success. In his own words: --
"The writer is quite certain that there was an ancient language
which modernly and up to this time appears to have been lost,
the vestiges of which, however, abundantly exist. . . . The author
discovered that this (integral ratio in numbers of diameter to
circumference of a circle) geometrical ratio was the very ancient,
and probably the divine origin of linear measures. . . . It appears
almost proven that the same system of geometry, numbers, ratio,
and measures were known and made use of on the continent of North
America, even prior to the knowledge of the same by the descending
Semites. . . . ."
"The peculiarity of this language was that it could be contained
in another, concealed and not to be perceived, save through the
help of special instruction; letters and syllabic signs possessing
at the same time the powers or meaning of numbers, of geometrical
shapes, pictures, or ideographs and symbols, the designed scope
of which would be determinatively helped out by parables in the
shape of narratives or parts of narratives; while also it could
be set forth separately, independently, and variously, by pictures,
in stone work, or in earth construction."
"To clear up an ambiguity as to the term language: Primarily
the word means the expression of ideas by human speech; but, secondarily,
it may mean the expression of ideas by any other instrumentality.
This old language is so composed in the Hebrew text, that by the
use of the written characters, which will be the language first
defined, a distinctly separated series of ideas may be intentionally
communicated, other than those ideas expressed by the reading
of the sound signs. This secondary language sets forth, under
a veil, series of ideas, copies in imagination of things sensible,
which may be pictured, and of things which may be classed as real
without being sensible; as, for instance, the number 9 may be
taken as a reality, though it has no sensible existence, so also
a revolution of the moon, as separate from the moon itself by
which that revolution has been made, may be taken as giving rise
to, or causing a real idea, though such a revolution has no substance.
This idea-language may consist of symbols restricted to arbitrary
terms and signs, having a very limited range of conceptions, and
quite valueless, or it may be a reading of nature in some of her
manifestations of a value almost immeasurable, as regards human
civilization. A picture of something natural may give rise to
ideas of co-ordina-
tive subject-matter, radiating out in various and even opposing
directions, like the spokes of a wheel, and producing natural
realities in departments very foreign to the apparent tendency
of the reading of the first or starting picture. Notion may give
rise to connected notion, but if it does, then, however apparently
incongruous, all resulting ideas must spring from the original
picture and be harmonically connected, or related. . . . Thus
with a pictured idea radical enough, the imagination of the Cosmos
itself even in its details of construction might result. Such
a use of ordinary language is now obsolete, but it has become
a question with the writer whether at one time, far back in the
past, it, or such, was not the language of the world and of universal
use, possessed, however, as it became more and more moulded into
its arcane forms, by a select class or caste. By this I mean that
the popular tongue or vernacular commenced even in its origin
to be made use of as the vehicle of this peculiar mode of conveying
ideas. Of this the evidences are very strong; and, indeed, it
would seem that in the history of the human race there happened,
from causes which at present, at any rate, we cannot trace, a
lapse or loss from an original perfect language and a perfect
system of science -- shall we say perfect because they were of
divine origin and importation?"
"Divine origin" does not mean here a revelation from an anthropomorphic god on a mount amidst thunder and lightning; but, as we understand it, a language and a system of science imparted to the early mankind by a more advanced mankind, so much higher as to be divine in the sight of that infant humanity. By a "mankind," in short, from other spheres; an idea which contains nothing supernatural in it, but the acceptance or rejection of which depends upon the degree of conceit and arrogance in the mind of him to whom it is stated. For, if the professors of modern knowledge would only confess that, though they know nothing of the future of the disembodied man -- or rather will accept nothing -- yet this future may be pregnant with surprises and unexpected revelations to them, once their Egos are rid of their gross bodies -- then materialistic unbelief would have fewer chances than it has. Who of them knows, or can tell, what may happen when once the life cycle of this globe is run down and our mother earth herself falls into her last sleep? Who is bold enough to say that the divine Egos of our mankind -- at least the elect out of the multitudes passing on to other spheres -- will not become in their turn the "divine" instructors of a new mankind generated by them on a new globe, called to life and activity by the disembodied "principles" of our Earth? (See Stanza VI., Book I., Part 1.) All this may have been the experience of the PAST, and these strange records lie embedded in the "Mystery language" of the prehistoric ages, the language now called SYMBOLISM.
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