THE PHENOMENAL ORIGIN OF JEHOVAH-ELOHIM

The first words of the Hebrew Book of Genesis, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,'[1] have simply no meaning; no initial point in time, or place in space; no element of commencement whatever, nor means of laying hold to begin with. Whereas the beginnings in mythology were phenomenal, palpable, and verifiable; they were the primary facts observed and registered by the earliest thinkers. The Egyptians did not begin with nowhere in particular, to arrive at nothing definite in the end.

The Hebrew beginning does not enable us to begin, it is a fragment from a primitive system of thought and expression which cannot be understood directly or according to the modern mode. When the ancient matter has been divested of all that constituted its character as real myth, it only becomes false myth, and is of no value whatever until restored to its proper place in the mythical system This can only be done by recovering the phenomenal origin and mould that shaped tile matter of mythology. The primitive genesis was no carving of chaos into the shape of worlds, according to the absurd modern notion of a creation. The mapping out of the heavens and measuring of time and period were the registered result of human observation, utterly remote from the ordinary notion of divine revelation; it was a work of necessity accomplished for the most immediate use. The creation belongs to the mythological astronomy, and has no relation at all to the supposed manufacture of matter—about which the early thinkers knew nothing and did not pretend to know—the formation of worlds, or the origin of man, but simply meant the first formulation of time and period observed in the heavens, the recurring courses of the stars and moon and sun, and the recording of their motions by aid of the fixed stars. It was the earliest means of telling time on the face of the celestial horologe which had been already figured for the use of the primitive observers of its 'hands.'

In a description of this creation or beginning of time and formation, found on one of the monuments restored in the time of Shabaka, it [p.126] is said of the Maker, 'A blessing was pronounced upon all things, in the day when he bid them exist, and before he had yet caused gods to be made for Ptah.'[2] So in the Hebrew version, when the two heavens were finished and the starry circle of night and day was limned, the Elohim saw that everything was created good. But we require to know who was the maker and what were the Elohim here postulated as the creators. The three first words of the Hebrew Genesis and professed account of creation by means of the Elohim are b'rashith elohim bara, translated, 'In the beginning God created.'[3] Those who have rendered this ancient language and sent forth their versions in hundreds of other tongues were altogether ignorant of the one original which could have explained and corrected the derivative Hebrew, held to be the primeval speech; God's own personal utterance. With their one book in hand and that uninterpreted according to the gnosis, unillustrated by the comparative method, they have assumed the preposterous proportions and pretensions of teachers of the world, and yet the very first words of revelation reveal nothing of phenomenal origin. For that we must seek elsewhere.

The name of the most famous of the Kabbalist writings, the Sephr Yetzirah, or Book of the Creation[4], which some Jews have ascribed to Abraham, rendered by Egyptian, will show the astronomical nature of the creation therein recorded. It (Eg.) signifies to figure forth with the hand of the artist. It is likewise a name of the heaven. At (Eg.) means to build, form, shape, image, type, figure forth, make the circle. Ser (Eg.) is to extend, arrange, distribute, conduct, carve. The serau were the conductors, the watchers, disposers, regulators, carvers of the heaven. Itser or atser (including the earlier katser) thus denotes the framing and figuring forth of the heavens by means of the stars, which made the earliest cycles of time.

Itzer in Hebrew is to form, to fashion as a potter. The potter is an itzer. In Egyptian attusa is applied to potters. One framer of the heavens, the typical male creator of Egyptian mythology, is depicted as the potter at his wheel in the persons of Ptah and Num; the shapers of the vase or water-jug as an emblem of that which was to enclose and contain the waters. Still earlier was the feminine Creator, Menkat, the potteress. Ptah is also represented as forming an egg on the potter's wheel. The egg is another symbol of the circle, hence it is the egg of the sun and moon, that is the circle of their revolutions[5]. Another apt illustration of this astronomical origin of ideas supposed to have been revealed in some supernatural way, whereas mythology is founded in the natural, occurs in the Nishmath Adam[6], where the general inhabitants of paradise are represented as stationary, and are called standers. These are the standers before [p.127] and around the throne of our theology; but a select few are permitted to perambulate and visit others. 'In paradise every one has his particular abode, and is not allowed to go out or ascend to the dwellings of his higher neighbour; if he should do so he is at once consumed by his neighbour's great fire. Thus they are called standers, because they stand and keep to their posts and allotted places. There are indeed some holy ones (the holy watchers) who are suffered to ascend and descend, to go into the upper and lower parts, walk in all the quarters of paradise, and pass through all gates and abodes of the angels.' The former are just the fixed stars, the latter the movers through the heavens, the planets. These in the Ritual are termed 'Gods of the Orbit,' and as the orbits are named the Ale, these are in their way a kind of םיהולא. The imagery was astronomical before it became eschatological and was adopted to convey a later doctrine.

The secret wisdom of the Jewish Kabbalah relates primarily to the mythological astronomy and the doctrines of the hidden wisdom concerning the cycles of time. In its later forms, abstractions and other mystifications took the place of, obscured, and obfuscated the primordial facts. Although, even of these, the reveries of the Rabbis and the Kabbalah in its decrepitude, it may be said they are less false to the facts than are the Hebrew scriptures, which restate the myths as history. The endeavours of the Talmudists, Haggadists, Kabbalists, at the worst are the efforts of dotage to remember and relimn the fading forms of the ancient meanings. They remind us of blind men trying to read the hieroglyphics with the tips of their fingers whereas the 'inspired writers' are reproducing the mythic matter according to a system of falsification. The whole Cabiric doctrine exists by name in the various Hebrew words, such as kab, to roll round; kaphel, to double, doubling, be twofold. The deity of Israel is called a kabir. Khab (Eg.) is to give birth. Kab means to turn round, move, double, and redouble. The Ari or Aru (Eg.) are the companions, watchers, keepers, guardians, founded on the sonship, whoever may be called the parent. Ar or al (Eg.) is the child, the son, with earlier forms in har, khar, and khart. There is no other foundation for the Hebrew Al or El (לא) than this name of the child, which has these antecedents in Egyptian. Hence it will be argued the Elohim are a form of the sons known in mythology as seven in number, the companions and watchers called the Cabiri or Kab-ari, that turned round and made the circle and cycle of time. In the Ritual there are four Kabari, as the Kebi, the lords of the four cardinal points, the four representative genii that guard the four corners of the sarcophagus. These four belong to the seven Great Spirits of the Great Bear[7], in whom we identify the seven Cabiri of mythology. The four lords of the corners appear in the Kabbalah, and the seven spirits of the Great Bear or hinder thigh (Khepsh) are the Seven [p.128] Princes of the Chariot of the Kabbalah. The seven; ןיריע and ןישידק are the Watchers of Heaven, and the councillors of the Most High in the Book of Daniel[8]. The first watchers are the An (Eg.), the watchers and companions who are grouped together as the seven Cabiri, the revolving An. The planetary seven afterwards usurped their place, but never were a group of companions in the ark never could kab together, as did the seven in one constellation.

Alah (הלא) has the sense of covenanting, making a covenant, a bond, and this is originally based on time and period, as in Egyptian ark denotes the completion of a period or cycle, and an oath or covenant. הלע (galah or alah) signifies to make the circle, to move in a circle. Circle-craft was the essential wisdom of the Kabbalah. Kab in the reduplicated form of בבח means to encircle, to enclose, surround, protect all round; in the same way בבכ is to be round, circular. The Hebrew בבס (sebeb) identifies the source or origin signified by kebeb (Eg.) with the circle, to go round, to encompass, and in one instance it is applied to going about, or making a journey of seven days[9]. So the first sebeb was the circle of seven (sebu) stars.

Kabbing, applied to the stars, is clustering and revolving together. The seven Cabiri are the revolvers together, and the Kabbalah is the doctrine of the starry revolutions and repetitions.

The Kabbalah, say the Jews, was first taught by God to a select company of angels in paradise. This is understandable when we know what were the angels of the ancient thought. They were the personified repeaters of periods of time. The angels as shenan are synonymous with repeatings[10]. Shen in Egyptian is an orbit, circuit, circle, or cycle. The Hebrew shanah are years. The shennu (Eg.), over which Num was lord, are periods of time. The shenau are the repeaters of periods of time varying in length. The same sign that denotes at, a moment, signifies heh, for ever, or an aeon. It is the circle. Now in the much-derided doctrine of angels found in the rabbinical writings we learn that angels differ in size and stature. It is asserted by the Talmud that one angel is taller than another by as many miles as a man could travel in a journey of 500 years. Such statements are likely to excite the scorn and derision of those who are ignorant of the fundamental meaning of them, and yet who have constituted themselves the sole authorized expounders of the Hebrew scriptures.

In the rabbinical angelology there are seven archangels, who have under them a certain number of angels. Orphaniel has under him seventy-one angels; Thagra has seventy-four; Dandael, thirty-six; Gadalmijah, forty-six; Assimur, fifty-eight; Pascar, thirty-five; Boel, forty. This is in the region called the heavens, the first or lowest of the firmaments. The total number of angels is 360, corresponding to [p.129] the number of degrees in the ecliptic. This number identifies the lower firmament with the solar zodiac, the latest of the celestial formations called heavens[11]. This is the lowermost of the three heavens mentioned by Paul, which consisted of the solar, lunar, and Sabean circles. A second firmament, called the heaven of heavens, was divided into ten departments. The division by seven and by ten led to the mapping out of the whole into seventy degrees and nations, which preceded the seventy-two duodecans of the zodiac.

One Jewish expounder of the Pentateuch explains that when the people were divided at the building of Babel, to each nation was assigned a particular portion of the earth, and also a prince to rule over it, and the rabbis say the earth consisted of seven climates, and every climate was divided into ten parts. The seven climates together made seventy degrees. 'Thus were the seventy nations divided among the seventy princes; the blessed God taking no part in them, because he is pure. Wherefore they are not children of his image, nor bear they any resemblance of him; but Jacob is the portion of his inheritance.' In the Shepha Tal[12] the seventy princes are called the powers of uncleanness, who distribute liberally to the idolatrous nations that are subject to their influence. That is they were Typhonians who derived from the mother, not from the male god.

The children of Israel claim to derive from an origin earlier than the division by seventy; their beginning is with the seven, the seven Cabiri, the seven princes of the chariot, the seven Elohim, the seven spirits who preceded the seventy round the throne.

The earliest beginning in mythology is with the heptarchy, as in the seven caves of the sunken Atlantis, the seven provinces of Dyved and the seven divisions of Alban, which a Pictish legend, preserved by the Irish Nennius, assigned to the seven children of the Cruithne[13]. These seven are found in the celestial chart as the seven halls and seven staircases in the great house of Osiris, the Seven Great Spirits of the Bear; the Seven Chief-Powers at the arm of the balance.

Egypt had been divided and subdivided until the number of nomes was forty-two. But the beginning with seven was still shown by the heptanomis, the seven provinces of Central Egypt, which are found associated with the number ten, in the ten nomes assigned to the upper and ten to the lower country on either hand of the heptanomis. These are the seven and ten which in the planisphere were the bases of the subdivision into seventy parts. The division by seven, by ten, and by seventy, was primarily celestial. The seventy Princes which encompass the throne of glory are said to be the watchmen who go about the city in Solomon's Song, by whom the decrees of God are brought down to men. The rabbis give a list of the [p.130] seventy watchers by name[14]. Gabriel is said in the Talmud to have taught Joseph the seventy languages of the world. Here the languages stand for the number of divisions known to the great Kabir, Gabriel.

The Seventy translate Deutoronomy 32:8, 'He appointed the territories of the nations according to the number of the angels of God,' and not according to the number of the children of Israel. Origen, Basil, Chrysostom, and others of the fathers adopted this reading[15], which contains the true doctrine: 'When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the Sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the Angels,' the disposers, who as an astronomical quantity were the mythological Israelites, afterwards made ethnological. This is corroborated by the reference to the heavenly bodies in the same book[16]. We are told there are angels so ephemeral that myriads of them are created and die daily.

As minutes, sixty die every hour; as moments, sixty pass every minute. These are the midges of the angelhood, who sun themselves in one beam of all the glory, and are gone. The angel of 500 years would personify a phoenix period. At (Eg.), the name of a child, the lad, is likewise the word for a moment.

Such is the sole origin of angels; they are the repeaters of time and period, and the messengers of the eternal or continuing. The word angel, derived from Egyptian in accordance with the doctrine of repetitions, is from an, to repeat, announce, again. Kher is to know, reckon, be the voice, speech, word, or utterer. An, as God, was the Sabean Anush, Sut-Anup; in the lunar reckoning An was a form of Taht, the logos. An or Un was the goddess of periodicity. These were each of them announcers of time, and all of them an-kheru or angels.

'For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head, because of the angels,' says the learned Paul, who knew that angels were repetitions, and here they represent the feminine period. Hair was an emblem of puberty; and as the type of feminine pubescence it ought to be covered and wear the male power—or its symbol—set over it; such covering was significant at one and the same time of modesty and maternity.

'Judge in yourselves, is it comely that a woman pray unto God uncovered?'[17]

Here is an appeal made to a nonexistent consciousness which has to be recreated before the language of Paul can be understood, and yet on account of this lapsed sense of ancient decency the woman is compelled to religiously wear the bonnet in all sacred assemblies, and she must not pray to God uncovered.

The Kabbalistic lore containing a knowledge of these things was a [p.131] form of the angels' food of Psalms[18] which men did eat of old. In the margin this is identified with the Cabiri, or modified Abari, and called the bread of the Mighty. The Kabbalah was first taught by God himself to a select company of angels, in fact to the seven princes of the chariot, and, after the fall from Eden, the angels communicated to man the celestial doctrine as the means whereby he could regain his lost paradise.

One of the Kabbalistic books has been attributed by the Jews to Adam himself, or to an Angel named Rasiel, from whom they say Adam received it[19]. Rasiel is the watcher in the southern heaven. From Adam it descended to Noah, and to Abraham, who carried it into Egypt, where Moses was first initiated into its mysteries. Moses correctly taught its principles in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but withheld them from Deuteronomy. Moses likewise initiated the Seventy Elders into the secret wisdom of all the great Kabbalists who formed the unbroken line of descent for the tradition. David and Solomon are recognized by the Jews as the masters of the science. No one, they say, dared to write down this matter of the mysteries till Simon ben Jocai, who lived at the time of the destruction of the second temple[20], by which time the phenomenal origin was overlaid and almost lost.

What the Essenes called the doctrine of angels, meaning the knowledge of the time-cycles and their periodic recurrence, that constituted the Jewish Kabbalah, and with this knowledge, obscured by later redaction, begins the first chapter of Genesis.

The beginning, in mythology, will be shown to consist of figuring time and space by means of the circle, and thus putting a boundary to that which was heretofore the boundless, the face of heaven being the first dial-plate, or face of the clock on which the circle was drawn. 'My soul is from the beginning, from the reckoning of years,' says the Osirian in the Ritual[21], and the reckoning of years was the beginning; the first of these being reckoned by the Great Bear and Sothis.

The beginning was Sabean, and, as it will now be shown, dependent on the revolution of the seven stars about the pole. The Kabbalist beginning with Adam-Kadmon, as a male being, is later. We shall find that all beginning is founded on the female, the Genetrix, not on the Generator. The first Atum (or Adam) is extant in the Ritual, where she is designated 'the Mother-Goddess of Time.'

'The Mother-Goddess of Time,' she who figured the first celestial circle, before Ptah formed his egg of the sun and moon, as the father of the fathers of beginnings, and who was the ancient mother of the gods[22]. This mother of all beginnings in time is figured in the Egyptian planispherei as the goddess of the seven stars of Ursa Major, a hippopotamus wearing a crocodile's tail, the most ancient type of the [p.132] water-horse and bearer of the waters. She has various names already cited, and is known on the monuments as Ap, Apt, Abt, Tep, Teb, Tef, Teft, Kef, Kefa, Kheb, Kheft, Khepsh and Taurt. Ap (Eg.) is primordial, the first. Tepi means the first. Teb is the Ark. Taurt is the typical chariot or bearer; the first, chief, oldest. She is the old Typhon, the outcast of a later theology. Khab means to give birth to, and she was the first form of the genetrix who gave birth to time in heaven. Kefa means to seize, lay hold, grip, and she was the earliest layer-hold, who tied up a knot of time, hence her symbol of the tie. Teb means ark, and she was the primal ark of the unknown vast, called the waters, hence the image of the water-cow. Kef means to look, to watch, and Kefa was the sevenfold watcher, the watcher whose seven eyes went to and fro through the whole earth. Her name as Khebti or Hepti reads number seven. In the beginning then, it is claimed, was the circle figured by Kefa* of the seven stars, the goddess of the Great Bear, and her first child as Time was Seb.

* 'Why,' asks Dr. Birch, 'why do you make the Great Bear Kefa? The hindquarters of a lion 6 (peh) are used for Kefa, and are always carefully distinguished from the khepsh 7 sign used far the polar constellation.'[23] Answer, if here and there the name Kefa is used for Khepsh or Taurt, it is not because of any confusion of two goddesses, but only as a variant of the names Khebma, Kheb, Khep, Kep, the original Kefa of the north. The distinction was made on behalf of a solar Kefa of the western hindquarter at Thebes, but, in the fourfold type of the ancient genetrix compounded of the kaf monkey, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, her hinder part is that of the lion or lioness. All four are included in the Goddess of the North. And here, in mentioning the name of the eminent founder of Egyptological science in England, I should like to thank Dr. Birch for his help, kindly proffered and freely rendered, in answering my questions during a series of years.

Here it must be observed that Seb-Saturn is a secondary deposit of Kronus. The first Time born yearly was personified by Sebti (Sothis), the Dog-star, a representative of Time (Seb) in a dual aspect, or the repeater of Time. Seb is the earlier Keb or Kebek, that is as now interpreted the child (khe, !) of Kheb the genetrix, and Mother-Goddess of Time, who bore time as her child.

The present writer maintains that the typhonian religion and the typhonian types are the oldest extant, whether in Egypt or out of it. Taurt, the hippopotamus goddess, is earlier than the cow, and this will account for Isis being represented in a typhonian shape[24], which shows the conversion of the ancient genetrix into the more humanized form.

Champollion[25] has copied Nephthys, the divine mother, the gestator in the hippopotamus shape. Typhon, the old, first, great one, is the 'Curse of the gods' on a monument of the Sixth Dynasty, and was then divine, not devilish.

Some of this most ancient Sabean lore is extant in the Book of [p.133] Job. Although the cult had been superseded in the mind of the writer, the gnosis is still there. 'Behemoth,' he remarks, in a passage full of perplexity to commentators, is the first, or 'the beginning of the ways of God.'[26] The word used is the rashith (תישאר) of Genesis, the exact equivalent of Arke. The rashith of the ways of God is 'b'rashith' of the Mosaic creation and of Proverbs[27]. But how this can be so could not be seen without the symbolism and mythology of Behemoth.

Behemoth is the Egyptian bekhma, the hippopotamus. Bekh means to bring forth, and Ma (or Mut) is the water and the mother. The bekhma or bekhmut was the bringer-forth of (or from) the waters. As such she was personified as the Great Mother of mythology, and placed in heaven as the type of the constellation better known as the Great Bear. Now it has to be understood that with the motion and the circle made by the Bear or Behemoth was the beginning in the heavens, the 'rashith' of the Genesis, and that by its periodic revolution the Elohim created the heavens and the earth, or discreted and distinguished upper and lower, and made an attempt to register the recurrence of time and season. Chalmers, on the astronomy of the Chinese, observes, that a very ancient and characteristic method of determining the seasons and months of the year, to which the Chinese are fond of alluding, was by the revolution of Ursa Major[28]. One of its names, of which it has several, is 'The Northern Bushel.' Under this name it is often confounded with the north pole, and also with one of the twenty-eight mansions in Sagittarius, which has the same name. Its tail is called the 'handle.' There is a clear statement of this method of determining the seasons in the writings of Hoh-kwantsze: 'When the tail of the Bear points to the east (at nightfall), it is spring to all the world. When the tail of the Bear points to the south, it is summer to all the world. When the tail of the Bear points to the west, it is autumn to all the world. When the tail of the Bear points to the north, it is winter to all the world.'[29] It is well to keep in mind that the body of the Great Bear was, in ancient times, considerably nearer to the north pole than it is now, and the tail appeared to move round the pole somewhat like the hand of a clock or watch. The historical records say that the seven stars of the 'Northern Bushel' are spoken of (in the Shoo[30]), when it is said, 'the pivot and the gem-transverse adjust the Seven Directors.'[31]

The bushel is a type of measure, and this was the first measurer of time in heaven. Kabu (Eg.) is the name of a measure, and the word means to measure. Kabt is measured out. Also hept (Eg.) is measure and the measure, and the name of no. 7. This initial point of all beginning then was known, and is announced by [p.134] the writer of the Book of Job as the circle made by Behemoth or the Bear, the Egyptian Khebt, of the quarter named Khepsh. When the writer of the Book of Job celebrates the potency of the deity, the great types of the creative power selected are purely typhonian. They are the crocodile and the river-horse, both consecrated to Typhon. The latter being the image of the genetrix Kheb, who as an earlier Nupe, consort of Seb, was associated with Khebek (Sevekh), the crocodile divinity.

The Jews call the Book of Genesis, 'B'rashith,' from the two first words of the beginning. In the same way the whole series of the cuneiform creation tablets is named Enuma Elish[32], from the first words of the first tablet, which commences 'Enuma elish la nabu samamu;' 'when the upper region was not yet called heaven.' Elish, the upper or raised-up region of the south, answers to the Hebrew rashith, as a place, the sky that was not yet called Heaven. The words b'rashith, when literally translated, read 'In the beginning of' leaving an ellipsis, without stating in the beginning of what! This at least serves to show that 'In the beginning' is not the only possible rendering. Rashith is considered to be derived from rash, head, chief, with the added syllable ith, indicating the first in point of time, and therefore in the beginning.

Rashith denotes the firstborn, the first time or condition, the origin of all. Rash also signifies to be set in motion, to move to and fro; to seize, lay hold of, the highest stars, the upper part. As before said, rashith is used[33] for the chief of the ways of God, and the trite doctrine is alluded to by Wisdom[34], who says 'the Lord possessed me in the rashith (beginning) of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting.' The setting-up of Wisdom and the building of her house, be it observed, is connected with the number seven. 'Wisdom hath builded her house, and hath hewn out her seven pillars.'[35] Her foundations were laid in the seven stars which made the first circle in Heaven. So in the Ritual[36] 'Sefkhabu built his house for him,' is said of the Osirian or deceased. Sefkhabu reads seven horns. Seven horns is the equivalent of the sevenfold 'One, or single-horn, the hippopotamus, the constellation of the seven stars. There are reasons for supposing that Sefekh (goddess of the seven), consort of Taht (formerly Sut), was a survival of the typhonian genetrix who made the earliest circle, built the first house, and framed the primordial heaven.

Rabbi Bechai renders b'rashith 'in order,' 'before all'[37]. The Seventy and Philo translate it in arke ('Αρχή)[38]. Ark (Eg.) means periodicity, encirclings, enclosings, and tyings-up. The ark-symbol is a noose held in the hand of the goddess of the Great Bear, who [p.135] personates the beginning. The word orach (חרא) is applied to the feminine period, as the 'orach of women.'[39] Arksha, in Sanskrit, means, regulated by stars.

Arke, in the Greek mysteries, was the genetrix of the gods. In a Greek mythos also arkas was personified as the offspring of Callisto, the Great Bear. At Engyum the divine mother was worshipped as a dual feminine divinity, the same that was adored at Crete as the Great and the Little Bear. Arkia the mother of Phoroneus was denominated 'the first that reigned;' she was the first by whom time was reckoned. Venus Architis was also a form of the mother, in Arke. The Laplanders likewise designate the genetrix of the gods Virchu Archa.

Egyptian will help us to render the Hebrew beginning in a tangible form, and not leave it as indefinite as 'once upon a time.' Ras (Eg.) is the English raise, and rasit is equivalent to the raised. It (Eg.) is a name of heaven, and ras-it reads the upraised or suspended heaven. Hence ras is a name of the south, as the elevated or upper heaven. The determinative of the word ras, to raise up, watch, in one instance is the sign of suspending and supporting a weight; in another it is the ideograph of heaven, raised up and sustained on three props or rests. The Egyptian rasit, the propped-up heaven, is paralleled in meaning by the Hebrew תשאר (resheth), a bolster, used only once for the bolster of Saul[40], that which raises up, from ras, to be high and lifted up. Whether we read ras-it, the elevated and suspended heaven, or ras, to raise, hang up, and it, to figure forth, this will yield the phenomenal origin of the beginning, designated b'rashith in Hebrew. Once we can get on Egyptian ground we can tread securely.

This rashith of the beginning is the rusat or rusta (for the word is read both ways) of the Ritual. In the inscription at Denderah, of the time of Kufu, referring to the Sphinx, rusta is written rusut. Primarily the rusta denotes the raised-up or humanly-figured heaven, and is likewise used as a type of commencement. It has various applications.

Res (Eg.) is to raise up, suspend, be elevated, bow out. The res, in Egyptian, may be written res-t, although not found so written. But it is so in the Norfolk rist, the rise or a rise. Rish is also to rest, and the rish becomes the 'rest-and-be-thankful' of our ascents. In this sense the rusta becomes the place of rest for the dead. A variant of res is the urs (Eg.), the pillow, bolster, or support, which, with the th terminal, is the Hebrew תשאר, the bolster of Saul.

The rashith of the celestial beginning was the primal resting-place in heaven. Ras, to raise and prop up, becomes the raçi of the Hindu astronomers. Thirty degrees make one raçi, rendered a [p.136] sign; twelve raçi make one revolution or circle of the twelve signs. Again, raçi has the meaning of raising up, because the heavens of the mythological astronomy were raised up, piled and propped up in building them, just as in piling up so many stones. The Rasi-Chakra is the circle of signs; rasa, the name of a circular dance[41].

Ras, in Assyrian, denotes two roads crossing each other within the canopy of heaven. 'It' (Eg.) is the heaven. So that the raised-up place of the one language becomes the crossing of the other. It is solstitial in the south (ras), and equinoctial at the crossing, as at the rusta of the west, the entrance to the underworld in the Ritual.

It was at Rosetta, in the temple of Atum, that the stone with the trilingual inscription was found, which served as the point of commencement (b'rashith) for the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphics[42]. This rusta, in the north of Egypt, is the terrestrial analogue to the one we are in search of in the northern heaven. Reshi, in Assyrian, is first, beginning. Ras, as a point of commencement, passes into the title of Mercury, as Ris-Risati, the chief of the beginning. The point of beginning for the Egyptian year was in ras, the south.

There was a rusta south, and a rusta north; also a rusta of the equinoctial level. Rusta is the southern gateway of the sun when he goes forth to the eastern horizon of the heaven, and the fields of the Aah-ru, the house of the gates or the zodiac[43].

Horus, in the fifteenth gate, on the day of the festival of the adjustment of the year, or at the time of the vernal equinox, says, 'I have brought, I have prepared, the things in Abtu, for I led the road from Rusta.'[44] Abtu is the place of beginning. Also, 'The Osiris has seen the pool of the Persea, which is in the midst of the Rusta.'[45] This pool was in An, the place of beginning, and of repetition. Again, we read[46], 'Hail keepers of the seven chief staircases! made the staircases of Osiris, guarding their halls. The Osiris knows you; he knows your names—Born-in-Rusta; when the gods passed, making adorations, to the lords of the horizon.' Here are seven keepers of the seven staircases, which were converted into those of Osiris, whose names are 'Born-in-Rusta.' These seven are the seven great spirits of Ursa Major. The rusta they were born in was the circle of the Great Bear, the rashith of the celestial north.

'In Rasit,' as Egyptian, gives us a point of place, which, when identified with phenomena, is a starting-point in space, in time, and a foothold for thought. The full form of the words rendered, 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,' is 'B'rashith bara Elohim eth ha shamaim v'eth ha aretz.' The Hebrew bar, to declare, make manifest, agrees with the Egyptian par, or para, to show, cause to appear, make obvious, manifest, come forth, surround, go [p.137] round, glide round. Pra denotes visibility, with the eye for determinative. The word is also determined by the symbol of time, and signifies appearance in time. The mode of this manifestation is shown by pra, to go round, surround, make the round, the image of the cycle of time, in which consisted the 'Creation' of mythology.

The primitive genesis has no relation whatever to the doctrine of creation out of nothing—creatio ex nihilo. The word create (ker-at, Eg.) retains all that was meant by the first creation. Ker signifies to curve, and at is a type, a circle, a time; and by the circle of time was curved, carved, or created the heaven and the earth of symbolism, as will be adequately set forth. The earliest observed creators of a circle of time were the seven stars in Ursa Major. The word bra has also the sense of engraving or drawing, as might be done in forming a circle. The passage may be rendered, 'In Rasit the Elohim showed and explained the upper and nether heavens,' or heaven and earth; the Elohim being the appearing, encircling, cycle-making disposers, on whose motion and pathway the earliest celestial chart was founded. Hebraists are not aware of the special force of the eth in this passage. In Hebrew תוא has the meaning of a sign, a type. At (Eg.) means to type, form, image, the circle. It is to figure, paint, or portray. Aft (Eg.) is the abode, and the four corners; a first formation, and a name of the genetrix.

Ath in the hard form of תע means something defined, bounded, established. It is especially used for a time, the time, a course of time, definite times of the year, also for a year[47]. The true sense of the passage is, in Rasit (Rusta) the Elohim manifested the typical heaven and earth, leaving the particular point of commencement undetermined. This we affirm to be the beginning with the seven stars of the Great Bear, in the name of which, as Ursa, we find a form of the Rus in Rusta, and in Rusta was the place of rest. An illustration of this rashith may be derived from another meaning of the word. Rashith also signifies the noose or a network. The altar of the deity, as described[48], is to have a grating of rashith with four rings at the four corners. Netting is typical of catching and laying hold. The goddess Net (Neith) is the knitter in that sense. The tie carried by Kefa (of the Great Bear) is a yet earlier sign of netting. She crossed the first bit of network in heaven.

It is now suggested that the Elohim of the Hebrew Genesis had their phenomenal origin in the seven great stars of the Bear, no matter which of the two Bears was the first observed as the constellation of the pole, and that the Seven Elohim are the same personages and types as the seven rishis of India, the seven hohgates of the Californian Indians, the seven spirits of the Great Bear found in Egypt, China, and Japan; the seven khnemu or pygmy sons of Ptah, the seven Cabiri, the seven sons of Sydik, the seven dwarf [p.138] sons of Pinga, in the Mangaian mythology; the seven dancing Indians of the North American tribes; the seven sintos of the Japanese, the seven amshaspands of the Persians, the seven sons of Aish, the seven sons of Jesse, the seven princes of the Chariot, the seven titans with Kronus, the seven heliadae of the Greeks, the seven companions in the Ark with the British Arthur, the seven associates with St. George, the seven spirits before the Throne, the seven eyes in the Stone, the seven bears, the seven-headed dragon, the seven Hathors, seven Persian wise women, the seven sisters, the seven Korubantes of Korubas, the seven whistlers, the seven pillars of Wisdom, the seven gates of Thebes, the well of seven springs, the tower of seven stories, the seven doors in the cave of Mithras, seven steps of the Masonic Ladder, the seven enclosures of the Jewish Temple, the candlestick with seven branches, the seven tablets and seven seals.

The name of the Elohim will be dealt with hereafter, and shown to be derived from alu (Eg.), the first revolvers in relation to an earlier alv and kherv, and the Hebrew achim, or brotherhood, as a name of the seven sons and seven companions of all mythology who sometimes appear as male fellows, sometimes as seven females. For example, the following form of the mythical beginning with the seven was presented by the Vice-President, Section B, American Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Saratoga Meeting (August, 1879):

'The philosopher of Oraibi tells us that, when the people ascended by means of the magical tree which constituted the ladder from the lower world to this, they found the firmament—the ceiling of this world—low down upon the earth—the floor of this world. Machito, one of their gods, raised the firmament on his shoulders to where it is now seen. Still the world was dark, as there was no sun, no moon, and no stars. So the people murmured because of the darkness and the cold. Machito said, "Bring me seven maidens," and they brought him seven maidens; and he said, "Bring me seven baskets of cotton boils," and they brought him seven baskets of cotton boils; and he taught the seven maidens to weave a magical fabric from the cotton, and when they had finished it he held it aloft, and the breeze carried it away toward the firmament, and in the twinkling of an eye it was transformed into a beautiful full-orbed moon, and the same breeze caught the remnants of flocculent cotton which the maidens had scattered during their work, and carried them aloft, and they were transformed into bright stars. But still it was cold, and the people murmured again, and Machito said, "Bring me seven buffalo robes," and they brought him seven buffalo robes, and from the densely-matted hair of the robes he wove another wonderful fabric, which the storm carried away into the sky, and it was transformed into the full-orbed sun. Then Machito appointed times and seasons and ways for the heavenly bodies, and the [p.139] gods of the firmament have obeyed the injunctions of Machito from the day of their creation to the present.'[49]

This is a legend of the seven stars, the seven Hathors, seven cows, bears, or sisters which are met with in the oldest mythologies. The seven cows and the bull constitute one of the mysteries in the Ritual, in conjunction with the four mystical eyes and the four paddles of the sun, arranged according to the four quarters. A knowledge of these things was necessary to the deceased in death; hence the great incentive for the living to keep them in remembrance in life.

The Christian theology is supposed to derive its doctrine of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost from the Latin version of the text of Isaiah[50]. 'The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.' But these seven spirits were extant in Egyptian theology as the seven souls of the solar god, who is spoken of as 'Ra with his seven souls.'[51] 'Hail to thee, O Ra, four times; hail to thee and thy soul seven times.'[52] These seven personated seven functions or attributes of the sun. They had a still earlier form in the seven spirits of the Great Bear[53]; the first seven spirits of light having their phenomenal origin in the seven revolving stars. The seven gifts of the Holy Ghost are derived from the lady of the seven stars, who as Taurt, was called the 'living Word.'

The Hebrew Elohim in Job are the sons, the Beni-Elohim, and identical in origin with the Egyptian seven gods of the elements; the taas, a septenary of gods of the word or speech; the seven spirits of the wind or breath invoked by the Hurons.

The worship of the Elohim marks what is termed the time of the judges in Israel. The judges are the Elohim identified by the name in the Book of Exodus[54]. In the 28th verse of chapter 22 the Elohim are gods in the text, and judges in the margin. Another Hebrew name of the judges as טפש yields a form of Kheft (Sheft), whose name of Apt signifies judgment and the judge. Also sebti and hepti have the value of number seven. These are the typical princes of the people also supposed to have ruled between the time of Joshua and Samuel, who are seven in number, as the princes of the Kabbalah. In the margin[55] the Elohim of Egypt, that is of Kheb, are the princes, and the seven princes of the Kabbalist chariot are the seven stars of Ursa Major, by which we identify the princes who were the Elohim, or Alu-akim, the brotherhood, the gods of the orbit.

The earliest divinities of the Egyptians are called the Nun, Nu­Teru or Nunteru. Nun (Nunu) means a time appointed, a type, an image or portrait, and ter is time. The Nunteru, Nuteru, or Nnu were portrayers of time personified as gods. They were of both sexes, [p.140] but the Nnu appear as a group of males who are fellows, associates. And there is an ideographic sign called nnu, figured thus[56]:

This calls to mind that in the old Siamese planispheres the figures of the stars are circles[57], not rayed likenesses. Here the circle is emblematic of those that moved in observed cycles of time and made the circle, of which a loop was the earliest known sign. The Nnu are here determined by the number eight. An eight-rayed star is the ideographic sign of the Assyrian god Assur, who is the Great God. This eight-rayed star was continued in the iconography of the catacombs as the symbol of the manifestor. The number eight, as in the case of Taht-Esmun, denotes the manifestor of the seven; that is the seven who were first represented by the seven stars of the Great Bear, and afterwards by the seven planetary gods. Name for name, Assur is the same as Asar (Osiris), Ar the son of As, Hes, Isis. But whereas Osiris was the solar ar (son), Assur is a star-god, and therefore the Sabean son who in Egypt is Sut-Har. The eight-rayed star of Assur is the equivalent of the eight Nnu, who were known as the eight great gods of Egypt, but whose origin is unknown. In the Phoenician mythology Esmun, the eighth son of Sydik, was the manifestor of the seven, and he was represented with eight rays round his head; his temple, in which the sacred books were kept, being placed on the top of the Birsa at Carthage. The Phoenician Esmun was the Egyptian Taht, Lord of Smen or the Eight. Taht took the position of the earlier Sut as manifestor of the seven.

Bunsen maintained that Sut was an Asiatic creation, and his rootage, together with that of the Typhonian Cult, was not to be found in Egypt[58]. Nevertheless he was absolutely wrong. Sut is so ancient as to seem at times entirely new in Egypt. Bunsen admits that the seven primary gods are indissolubly connected with an eighth, Taht, who is called by the name of Eight, and is lord of the region of eight, smen or Ses-sen. But he says these numbers cannot be explained from the groups of the gods themselves[59]. Nor do the monuments offer any direct information as to the origin and nature of the seven, or their relation to Taht as the eighth, who is the manifestor, in whom the Pleroma is revealed. In all the representations of Taht, the god of Sesennu, the City of the Eighth, he is always portrayed in conjunction with the seven gods as the one who reveals. These seven cannot be planetary, as Taht, the lunar god, would be one of seven, whereas he is the god Eight. Nor are they [p.141] mere elementaries, although the elements were associated with them as seven in number. These seven were phenomenally founded on the seven Elohim of the Great Bear. They are the seven who were associated with seven Taas, seven elements, seven elementary forces, or seven properties of nature, into which the Egyptians divided the whole as 'matter, cohesion, fluxion, coagulation, accumulation, station and division.' The seven were afterwards denounced as the betsh, the children of revolt who were first established on the height of Am-Smen. These were the first movers, revolvers, timekeepers before the raising of the firmament. They are seven in number, with the eighth for manifestor or teller of time. But they did not keep true time, they were lazy, the 'children of inertness,' and got deposed. The later glosses on this subject, which make Ra the creator of the eight, do but confuse the matter; these came first out of chaos, and the kingdom of Ra was the latest established of three, stellar, lunar, and solar. It cannot be explained except by remembering that Taht, the lunar revealer, had taken the place of Sut, the Dog-star, the first announcer of the seven, and it is through Sut that we have to explain the seven.

Sut, as the first announcer and manifestor of the seven, was the son of Typhon, the goddess of the Great Bear, Khepsh, the oldest form of the goddess Sefekh, whose name signifies the number seven. Taht, the lunar god, superseded Sut, and Sefekh, the mistress of the writings, became his consort, as representative of the ancient Khepsh, Taurt, or Apt, who was called the 'Living Word.' The taas, who are the seven gods of the word or speech, represent the goddess Seven, who was the 'living word.'

The Great Bear is called the Seven Bears in the Zend. Hathor, the cow-headed genetrix, is septiform in the seven Hathors or cows; the great serpent or dragon is seven-headed, and so in various ways the one constellation is also the sevenfold in accordance with the phenomena, and in no other form of phenomena do we meet with the seven in one satisfying all the requirements of the various illustrations. This is the only source of the seven, who are at the same time one. The seven appear as the seven spirits of the Great Bear, and were also converted into the seven assistants or attendants of the builder Ptah and the seven sons of the Phoenician Sydik, with Esmun for the eighth. So in Hebrew shmen is number eight, and as place smen (Eg.) is a name of Sesennu, which is Egyptian for number eight. The eight Nnu are the eight of Smen, the seven of the Bear and the Dog-star, the eight that appear in one form as the seven cows and the bull, the husband of the cows, in the Ritual. The Hebrew smin also means a being of either gender, and the image or idol was represented as a man with the head of a bull.

The doctrine of the seven, with the eighth for their messiah, as Sut and Taht had been, was known to Micah, who, in speaking of [p.142] the coming of the manifestor, whose goings forth have been from of old for ever, that is aeonian, and who is to be the mashal of Israel[60], says, 'This shall be the Peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land, and tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him Seven shepherds and Eight principal men,' which are equivalent to, if not the same as, the eight great gods, with the eighth as the manifestor of the seven.

Ibn Sarûk[61] considers the Hebrew ןמשח (plural chashmannim), of Psalms 68:31, to be the same as the Egyptian name of Hermopolis. He is right as to the words being identical, but it does not mean that the people of Hashman or Chashman shall come out of Egypt. The princes are the eight great gods of Smen, considered as the seven Cabiri of Ursa Major and Sut, or later Taht, who was the eighth.

We are able to connect the eight-rayed star of Assur and the eight-looped sign of the nnu with Sut, as the predecessor of Taht, the manifestor of the seven stars. The loops also occur in the sign of sah for a constellation, which sign is found in the tomb of Rameses IV at Biban-el-Muluk, directly after the star Sothis, the star of Sut, with a star and eight points annexed to it[62]. Hitherto the star with eight points has been taken to denote the constellation Sah supposed to be Orion. It is now suggested that the eight-pointed star denotes Sut (Sirius), not as the sign of the dog-star constellation of group, as Eratosthenes[63] thought, but as the representation and manifestor of the seven stars of the Great Bear. This does not exclude Orion as one of the starry types of Sut-Har.

This beginning with the seven Elohim of the Great Bear and the Dog-star will explain how there could be light before the sun, moon, and planets existed. In the Ritual the gods of the circle and of the seven aahlu are called the ancestors of light. According to the Hebrew Genesis it was the Elohim who first said, 'Let there be light, and there was light,'[64] and the light and darkness were divided into day and night. This was before the creation of sun, moon, and planets, or rather before time could be reckoned by their courses, a distinction lost sight of in the literalization of the myth. The seven stars that turned round nightly with the sphere were the primal light-bringers of the first creation. The periods of other stars followed, and Sut was their annual manifestor, then that of the moon was registered, and last of all the solar time was observed and kept. These generators and ancestors of light were so ancient they had been sublimated, divinized, and relegated to a kind of spiritual realm beyond the phenomenal creation described in the Book of Genesis.

The account of creation, then, in the Hebrew Genesis resolves into a statement that the first motion of the heavenly bodies, observed and registered for human guidance, was the periodic revolution of the [p.143] seven stars. These, as a constellation, are one; as stars they are the seven, and the divinity in whom we shall find the character of the sevenfold one is the deity of the Genesis.

In Hebrew zmen (ןמז) means to number, to measure out, apportion, arrange, determine, and is applied to appointed times and limits of time, hence to times of festival. The Aramaic smen and Maltese zmvn have the same signification. Also shmin (ןימש) is the name of the dual heaven. Now the smen, the eight great gods, were extant before the firmament was lifted or divided into the upper and lower heavens. These were the first creators of the heavens, which are two, or a double one, divided into north and south; Sut in the south, and Typhon in the north. The Dog-star and Great Bear are the determiners of south and north, therefore the makers of the two heavens, and as they are the eight smen in one aspect, so are they the two in another; hence the name of smen can also be applied to the dual heaven.

In the Chaldean creation at the dividing of the whole into two halves, the firstborn of Lakhmu and Lakhamu were Assur and Kissur, and 'Assur' agrees with the god Assur, who is now to be identified with the Dog-star. If this be right Kissur must denote the seven stars of the Bear, which would agree with the meaning of the word kissura for those who are united and bound together, as in the Hebrew רשק (qashar) for a confederacy, the constellated group of the seven stars, the companions, the Cabiri, sons, rishis, hohgates or Kissuri. Also in the Assyrian dedication of the months the twelfth is assigned to the seven great gods—the zodiacal sign being Pisces—whilst the Ve-Adar or intercalary month is given to Assur, the eighth god. In the Chaldean Oracles the smen described a septenary of living beings and there is no doubt the seven planetary disposers came to be regarded as the smen. But the seven planets never could be the eight smen. They were not the first establishers of the heavens. These were the seven of the Great Bear and the Dog-star, whence the typical eight in number.

If we take the root sem (Eg.), that is a name of the double plume of the two heavens, it also means representatives, myths, to pass, traverse, conduct a festival. The sami are a group, cluster, combination; and in sema, to encircle, go round, the number of revolvers is eight. The first form of these was the seven stars and Sut, and the later the seven planetary deities with the eighth god as completer and manifestor of the ogdoad. And only in the genetrix, who is the Egyptian goddess of the Great Bear, can we find the sevenfold one, who is both one and seven. This was Khept or Khebt, with many variants of her name. Khebt or hept signifies seven, also the ark of the seven. Khepsh may have had a form in Khevekh for Sefekh, number seven, to have come from; the sh having been an earlier kh. This would account for the name found as chavach, for [p.144] the cleft, opening, fissure, and feminine cave. Language corroborates this beginning with the seven stars. Khebti, hepti, sebti, and suti are variants of a type-word for number seven in Egyptian. These are also forms of the name of the goddess of the seven stars. Khebti, kheb, hepti, hat, uati and aft show the process of wearing down, and this can be followed in language generally with the names of number seven variously derived from the name of the genetrix, who is the goddess of the seven stars.

Other names of the genetrix and her number seven might be followed on other lines of language.

'Let Mete be exalted, who is our root, the root that is one and Seven,' is a formula of the worshippers of the image called Baphomet[65].

The Mexican mother-goddess Civacoatl, known as the serpent woman, was reported to be a form of the goddess seven, as Chicomecoatl, seven serpents. Civacoatl answers to the genetrix Kefa, and the seven serpents to the seven stars. The seven uraei appear in the Ritual. The seven-headed serpent, or dragon, was a type of the old typhonian genetrix. Hence the probability that the goddess Seven-Serpents was the sevenfold type of Civacoatl. The virgins who served Chicomecoatl carried in the sacred processions seven ears of maize[66].

This type of the seven ears of corn is also portrayed in the Egyptiani planisphere[67]. Virgo, as the goddess, bears seven ears of corn, five in her hands and two on her head. No origin was lost. This is one form of the goddess of the seven stars brought on in the zodiac as Virgo. So Hathor was one and seven under the cow type. In Pharaoh's second dream, behold the seven Hathors (cows) become the seven ears of corn, and 'the dream is one.'[68]

Hava in Sanskrit is a symbolical expression for the number seven. Haya also means the horse as the goer. The first horse that went was [p.145] the water-horse, and this, with the typical number seven, shows that Haya is the earlier Kefa, the goer of the seven stars. Another reduced form of Kefa is extant in the Chinese Ch'Hoo for the north pole and centre of motion, called the hinge of heaven, on which all turns, the Tëen Ch'Hoo. So in Egyptian, khepu signifies hinges. One form of the goddess Seven in Israel is Deborah of the hinder part, or north. She was the parent of the princes who are the seven of the chariot, the seven companions. There were no princes in Israel, she sings, until that I, Deborah arose, that I arose a mother in Israel. She preceded the 'new gods,' and the wars of the Lord[69]. Deborah was the first, the primordial Word, the oracle of the beginning, identical as such with tep (Eg.), the tongue, and teb, a name of Typhon, the living Word; one with wisdom of the seven pillars, and Arke of the beginning. Her name also identifies Deborah with the north, or hinder part. Before her time, we are told that the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through the byways. There was no celestial chart, no roads mapped out, no inhabitants in heaven. Hers was the time of the shepht, the judges (princes), the seven companions who are the Elohim of Genesis, whose judgment-seat was the mount, and who rode on white asses. Following Deborah, 'They chose new gods; there was war in the gates.'[70] Hers was the reign of peace. Hept (khept) means peace and plenty. Hers was the time when mankind were of one tongue, the golden age associated with the name of Sut or Saturn.

Her consort is Lapidoth (תודפל) the lightner; his name signifies lightnings. Another hero is Barak, whose name has the same meaning. Barak is Sutekh; Bar the Son, the Ar, is one of Sut's names. Sutekh or Barak was the glorious war-god, fierce as fire, the fulminator against the powers of darkness, one of the first, as the star Sothis and son of the Sabean mother, to pass through the Hades of death, cut through the akhekh of darkness, or make a way out of the swallowing monster of the mythos; the first, as the present writer thinks, to rise again on the horizon of the resurrection as Orion, or Sut-Oriens.

But if Deborah be Typhon then the most especial Hebrew form of Sut or Bar-Typhon the war-god, is not Barak, but Samson. Samson lived in the time of the judges, the shepht, the princes, the seven, the Elohim. He was one of them himself, but whereas the other great warriors fight at the head of large forces, Samson is the hero alone. Hitherto the comparative mythologists have not looked beyond the solar type for a witness to Samson. The first celestial hero was not the sun, but the conqueror of the sun and solar heat. He was represented by the dog-star not only as the fire-god, but a god over fire; and at the season when the sun was in the sign of the lion and the heat in Africa was intolerable, then Sut, as Dog-star, or as Sut-Har (Orion), arose, and as the sun had then attained its supreme height and [p.146] began to descend, the Dog-star, or Orion, was hailed as the conqueror of this cause of torment. The lion, as is apparent from its place in the zodiac, was the type of the furious summer fire, hence Samson, like the later Hercules, slays the lion as his first feat of strength, and out of the slain lion comes the honey. The ass being a type of Sut Samson kills the Philistines, the inimical forces, with the jaw-bone of an ass. The fox is another type, and Samson destroys their corn by means of the foxes.

Sirius is designated the 'Hairy' in Arabic. The serau (Eg.) is also a hairy goat-kind of sheep. The star of Sut and hair thus meet in a word. Samson is the hairy one whose strength is associated with his hair. Sut, who vanquished the lion of the summer heat, brought the inundation. So the ass figures in traditions respecting the Jews, as the animal that guided them to the place of springs in the desert when they were dying of the drought. This is probably connected with the 'spring of the jawbone' in the place of Samson's exploit, founded on the story of Sut, bringer of the waters to the thirsty land. In accordance with this, the name of Samson (ןוש־מש) contains the Hebrew shevn (ןוש), to make water, pour out, cause to flow, pour out plentifully; sefa (Eg.) being a name for the inundation.

If we take 'Shem' as the title of the god or renowned hero, or shema to be bright, glittering, resplendent, shem-shevn (Samson) is the exact equivalent of the glorious star of Sut, the herald and hero of the outpouring waters of the Nile.

The Targum on Samuel[71] makes Samson to be the father of Goliath, and that is corroborative of his being a form of Sut. The giant is a personification of a large cycle of time; the largest of these was the Sothiac cycle, a period of 1460 years—the Goliath of cycles If we only take the annual cycle determined by Sut, that was a giant compared with the length of a lunation. This latter was reckoned by Taht, who superseded Sut, and the Hebrew Taht, David, is the slayer of Goliath; so the moon-god, Khunsu, is the giant-killer.

Another shape of the goddess of the seven stars in Israel is הוח Chavvah or Eve, the mother of Sut or Seth, who follows a form of the seven patriarchs, on the line of Adam and Lamech.

Ashtoreth, the horned goddess, commonly associated with the moon as her type, is the earlier Deess of the seven stars. She was represented by and as the moon, accompanied by the seven stars, erroneously assumed to be the seven planets[72]. The seven stars of Ashtaroth or Ishtar are independent of both moon and sun; they are the seven stars of the Bear.

The horns are not limited to the lunar type, they belong to the cow Hes or As, and it will be argued that Ashtoreth is the Egyptian Ta-urt in the form of the cow or seat, whence Hes-ta-urt. The cow was seven­ [p.147] fold in the seven cows or Hathors, the horns sevenfold in Sefekhabu. The typical seven do not originate with the moon, but with the seven stars, the Elohim of Ashtaroth.

On the under surface of a scarabaeus in the British Museum[73] we see the lady of the seven stars seated on a chair with the mystical seven figured in a straight line behind her. Before her stands a priest or adorer. Between the two there is a symbolic star. This then is the star of the number seven, the goddess of the seven stars, who in Assyria is Ishtar. The number seven is duplicated. In her left hand the goddess holds another seven similar globes or balls arranged circle-wise. These seven disks are identical with the seven balls or globes depicted within the rings on the Scottish stones, as the number of the stars in the Bear constellation.

The Kabbalists, who have preserved some of the most ancient images, have the double triangle or six-cornered figure of the two heavens, called the Shield of David (Y), the same figure that, with the addition of a circle round it, forms the sri yantra of Hindustan, and is an ornament in the Royal Masonic Arch. The inscription on it, seven times repeated, is Agla (אלגא). Agl (לגע) means to circle, be round, turn or wind round in a circle. The aglah is a rolling thing, a car, a chariot. The agl, agla, or aglah was also the golden or molten calf, a symbol of the divinity worshipped in Israel as the Agl-Meskah[74], that is the birthplace typified by the calf or heifer, a form of the virgin mother. The six-pointed star or double triangle called the Shield of David is the image of the four corners united to the height and depth, but the sevenfold Agla preserves the seven cows of Hathor, and belongs to the seven stars or the seven Elohim of the beginning.

רות, the Hebrew name of the heifer, is one with tepr (Eg.), and the heifer was a type of the genetrix worshipped in Israel. Also the whole law and doctrine, precepts, statutes, regulations, and religion of the Jews are named הרות, and tepr (Eg.) means the oral commencement, the Word of the Beginning. This was depicted in the planisphere by Tef, the genetrix with her tongue (tep) protruding from her mouth as the utterer of the primeval word of revelation, direction, and of law.

The dove as the ionah (הנוי), or thvr (רות), is a symbolical figure of Israel. The dove still bears the name of the ancient genetrix Tef. It is the typhonian bird of breath belonging to the pre-masculine period of mythology before the hawk was adopted. One name of the Typhonians is the Menat, and this is a name of the dove. The dove was a type of the great mother, as Semiramis, it was also an emblem of Juno; the spirit that brooded over the waters in creation was the dove-like. It signified the same thing and the identical cult in Israel as elsewhere. Tep (Eg.) means to breathe, inhale, and the thvr was the feminine bird of breath.

[p.148] When the Greeks symbolized the seven Pleiades as seven doves, they had got hold of the wrong constellation in relation to the number seven. The seven doves, like the seven bears, cows, sisters, Hathors, Hohgates, Cabiri, or others, are the seven great stars in Ursa Major. It appears to me that the same mistake may have been made in rendering the Hebrew keemah by the Pleiades[75]. המיכ according to Fuerst[76], is derived from םוכ, kvm, in which we have before found a form of the Egyptian khebma, the name of the hippopotamus-type of the Great Bear. Keemah, from kvm, would render one form of the name in the same reduced way that aish or gaish may render khepsh, whilst the sons of Gaish would be the seven considered as the Elohim, Cabiri, or male companions. The coupling of the constellation with Orion twice over points to its being Ursa Major. Both Bears are constellations of seven stars, and both are circumpolar. Possibly aish (khepsh) and keemah (khebma) may be the two forms of the Bear, or the Bi-Genetrix.

Pythagoras in his Golden Sayings calls the two Bears the hands of Rhea[77]. In another saying he calls the sea the tear of Time, and that is Egyptian. The Egyptian Rhea is Nupe, the pourer-out of the water; but the water-horse was earliest, therefore Rhea is Ur, or Ta-urt, of the Bear, or, according to Pythagoras, of both Bears.

The Great Bear is still known in Britain as David's Car[78]. In the name of David we have the earlier Dyvid (of Wales) identifiable as the Egyptian tepht, a name of the abyss of the north, and the goddess of the car, which imaged her as the bearer. Devab (בוד) or deb (בד) is a she-bear. In Egyptian tabi is the bear, and teb, tep, or tef is the goddess of the Great Bear. Debab (בבד) means to speak, and tep (Eg.) is the tongue. Tzebab (בבצ) is a collateral form of debab (בבד) as Zephon is the Hebrew form of Typhon, or Tef, the Bear. Seb-at in Egyptian would be the circle of Seb or time, but the male form of time personified in Seb is later, and Seb is the earlier Keb, Kep, or Kef. Kef-at then is the circle of Kefa, the Great Bear, the first feminine form of time, and identical with Devab the she-bear. Zebab means to cover, to roof over, to bend, turn, wind round together, as did the seven stars in the Bear. In Egyptian, kebeb, represented in Hebrew by zebab, means the source of all. Devab, Zebab, and Kebab meet in the primordial (Ap or Ab), and ancestral Teb, Zeb, Keb, or Kefa, goddess of the Great Bear, whose son was called Baal-Zebub the precise equivalent of Sut-Typhon.

The polestar is called the 'Star of Joudi' by the Arabs. Joudi is a modified form of khefti, the north, as hinder part. This tends to connect the polar constellation with Judah as her star, and suggests that the meaning of Judea was from kheft, the hinder thigh, a name of the Great Bear, and that the naming from the north, as Kush [p.149] or khebt, was continued in Judea. If we take the yod to represent a k-sound, דוהי contains all the necessary elements of Kheft. The Elohim of givah[79] are the gods of the hinder or northern region, and the khept (Eg.) is extant in תיוע from הוע or gavah, a hut-village, the lowly dwelling-place.

In the first chapter of Genesis the Creator is called Elohim, in the second chapter the divinity is denominated Jehovah (הוהי), and countless volumes have been written on the two different deities of the Elohistic and Jehovistic accounts of the creation, whereas it will be made manifest that both have one and the same nature under the two different names. Elohim, as in the title of Ashtaroth, the goddess of the seven stars, denotes the sevenfold nature, and Jehovah the one who is of a sevenfold nature. We have not far to seek for the sevenfold types of Jehovah of the seven days, seven trumpets, seven times, seven eyes in the stone, seven pipes, seven lamps, seven lights, and seven stars. Of all gods or goddesses, Jehovah is the divinity of the number seven.

The Hebrew writers identify Ashtaroth as Elohim. Elohim takes the place of Goddess and is its synonym. In 1 Kings 11:5 we read, 'And Solomon went after Ashtoreth the Elohim of the Zidonians,' where Ashtoreth is a feminine plural, whereas Elohim is a masculine plural[80]. This is in perfect accordance with the mythos of the seven stars. Ashtoreth as feminine singular is the goddess Hes-Taurt or Isis-Taurt, the secondary form in Egypt of the genetrix of the Great Bear. Ashtaroth yields a plural form of her name whether as bi-genetrix or the goddess seven. The cult of Ashtaroth is described as being the worship of the 'Host of Heaven.' Ashtaroth has the meaning of a flock, which is a form of the host. The word rendered host is Tzeba, and seba is the Hebrew word for number seven, from sebag, Egyptian Sefekh, number seven. The first host or flock was that of the seven stars, cows, or other animals, and Jehovah of Tzeba or Tzebaoth was the divinity of the seven stars, the seven eyes in the stone and the seven ewe lambs. The Assyrian Istarat are goddesses[81] like the Ashtaroth of the Hebrew[82], and their plural form together with the singular as Ashtoreth is only to be found in the constellation of the sevenfold one. Elohim as a masculine plural corresponds to the seven stars personified as the seven male companions, the seven Cabiri, Rishis, Hohgates, Khnemu, Princes or other male forms of the seven considered as sons whether of the mother or the father.

Another illustration of the sevenfold one is found in the term Elohim which literally means gods, and yet the verb is at the same time in the singular number. This answers to the unity of Ashto­Reth and the Elohim on the phenomenal basis now claimed for both in the constellation of the seven stars, which furnished the primary [p.150] type of another duality identified by name as the Hebrew Jehovah­Elohim, the exact replica of Ashtoreth-Elohim as the genetrix, the mother or representative of the seven. It is intended to show that Jehovah is also the mother-goddess and a form of Kefa or Khebt, the typhonian genetrix.

According to Hebrew scholars the name הוהי is to be derived from a stem הוה (havah), and this we take for the modified form of chavah, the heth with mappiq being an intermediate sound. Chavah הוח, (in Pih, fut חוהי) means to say, announce, declare, show. Kefa (Taurt) was the living word. Khab means to give birth to. Hab is the messenger. The mode of annunciation is manifest in kavah to move in a circle, to set up, establish in the form of a circle. The circle-maker was Kefa or Khebt of the seven stars, the encircler, surrounder, and binder. Chavah (Phoenician הוח) means to live, breathe, respire, therefore one with havah (הוה), Aramaic heba. The breather was the pregnant genetrix Kefa, one of whose names is Tep, to breathe, respire, inspire. The great mother is the enceinte one, the breather and inspirer of life. Kefa was portrayed as the pregnant water-cow. הוהי, as understood by Hebrews, is primarily the one who brings to be; the producer of being. So kefa (Eg.) denotes to be born, and to be born of; khab means to give birth to, khep signifies to generate, cause to exist, to be.

Manasseh Ben Israel[83] considers it is the universal opinion of the Kabbalists that the name of Jehovah designates the world of emanations, called the Aziluthic world. In Egyptian as is the seat, the foundation; ash is emanation, and lut denotes repetition, several. Lut also means to create, and retain the form. The same rabbi observes that the four letters of this name may be variously arranged to compose twelve different words, as was done by the Kabbalists, all having the same signification of 'to be.' Now when the name of Kefa is worn down to af, and af to au, au (Eg.) still signifies to be; the past, present, and future of being, the was, is, and is to be. On account of the feminine origin of Jehovah the name is frequently written She in the Pentateuch, and made to read He by the punctuators, after the image of the divinity had changed sex. In fact the word for 'he' in Hebrew וה will not only read she but is Heva, earlier Kefa, and when Isaiah iterates his 'ani-heva, ani-ani-heva' (I am He, I, even I, am Heva)[84], meaning, of course, the male, it cannot be done without reproducing the original She. The primal 'I am' was of a feminine form, the 'I am' announced by Neith at Sais, 'I am all that was, and is, and is to be.'[85] This was the very self signified by the Hebrew אוה, the self of the mother of the gods, and of the title Neith-Tes; tes meaning the selfhood, and being a special designation of the genetrix.

All came out of the letter he, say the rabbis, and this takes us into the domain of hieroglyphy. [p.151] In Hebrew, h is the enclosure, the heth, from תוה, and earlier תוח (chevth), to surround, encircle, enclose. Chevth is the Egyptian Khept, the genetrix, who in the next stage, answering to heth, is Hat (Hathor), the habitation of the child. Finally, the chevth, hevth, and heth deposit the phonetic h, the letter out of which all came because it was a type of the motherhood. The ה has the numeral value of 5, and the original khept (Eg.) denotes the fist, a figure of 5, also the creative hand, the matrix. All came out of the goddess in mythology, the god included, as she was the genetrix of the gods, hence the ה, (heth letter), which, from an early period, stood for the name of Jehovah[86], must have denoted the female divinity and not the male Jahveh of the later cult. The following list will show how much the Hebrew derived from khepsh, khevekh, khept, kep, kheb, and aft.

This avth (or uth) represents the Egyptian Aft, a reduced form of Kheft the genetrix, who under her first name as Khebt or Kheft is goddess of the seven stars and of the north. As Aft her name denotes the four corners of her circle, the memorial sign of division of the circle into four quarters, aft (Eg.) being no. 4, the four corners. The Hebrew תוא is the foundation of eth or uth of the 'Em-Sikkuthi'[88] and in Egyptian Aft-Sekht would denote the ark of the four quarters, the tabernacle of Aft the goddess, the old genetrix who in the hippopotamus shape was the earliest queen of [p.152] heaven, Kefa, Kheft, or Kivan. This avth (תוא) which in Hebrew had become an abstract or indefinite term, thus recovers its original significance in relation to the obscured phenomena of the beginnings.

Inscriptions on the tombs and sarcophagi of the Lycians show that the people invoked the goddess Phate, the Greek Leto, to avenge them on those who dared to violate the resting-place of the dead. Phate also answers to Aft, the Great Mother, the birthplace of the living and abode of the dead. Another of her names, Urt or Ret (Taurt and Rerit), supplied the name of Leto.

It was on account of the feminine origin of Jehovah that it was considered blasphemy to pronounce the name. The Jews, with the Targums and the Seventy, understand that to blaspheme the name of Jehovah was to utter it distinctly, say it aloud. Hence the sacredness of the unutterable name. Therefore the man who blasphemed the name[89] may only have pronounced it. That was enough; to utter it was to identify it and proclaim its nature. The man's father having been an Egyptian would account for his knowing the name, and for uttering it he is commanded to be stoned to death.

The rabbis call the name of Jehovah the name of four letters: it was their mystical tetractys or Tetragrammaton, the wonderful number of the ineffable name. Now הוהי is really composed of three letters, not four, and the statement conceals a secret not meant for the profane. The younger Buxtorf[90] observes that the name of Jehovah resolves into only three letters, JHV, which denote the being who revealed himself as he who was, is, and is to come. A numerical four or figure of four is of more importance however to the Tetragrammaton than even four different letters. In the gnostic account of the beginning attributed by Irenaeus[91] to Marcus, it is said the deity uttered the first word of four letters. This word was Arke (άρχή)—the Greek form of the famous Tetragrammaton, which with the Hebrews was the name of four letters. In the later accounts of creation the deity is postulated as God the Creator, the cause of phenomena; in the earliest the phenomena when personified, supplied the divinity. 'In Arke' was in the beginning, and synonymous with 'in the circle' as a type of time. Ark (Eg.), as before said, means to encircle, encirclings, enclosings, settings, endings, weavings; arkai is to appoint a limit, fix a decree, and signifies finis. The first circle or arc observed in heaven as a measure of time was that of Άρκτος (Arktos), the Bear whose revolution made the first (Arctic) circle round the pole of the north. The four letters typify the four corners of all beginning. Apt is the name of the goddess of the Great Bear, and of the four corners. Here the secret of the mystery is that Jhvh was represented by the beast that went on all fours, whose name was written with four letters, and who was a figure of four. Apt the genetrix is the abode of the four corners. The [p.153] four corners at first represented by the four legs of Apt, the beast, were afterwards depicted by a goddess bending over the earth and resting upon her hands and feet, or on all-fours. Also the hippopotamus has four toes to each foot.

Everything continued by the Hebrews was typical, and they commonly dried their figs for preserving in the shape of four-sided cakes. This is an image of the old genetrix Teb or Apt. Both Teb and Aft are applied to the four corners or quarters. Also teb (Eg.) is the name for figs and for the box, the Hebrew square cake of figs.

According to Joshua Ben Jehuda, in his commentary on the Pentateuch, the ןיפת, cake was made and baked in the shape of a four-sided brick of clay or gypsum[92]. Teb (Eg.) is the brick, and the four­square loaf thus named after the goddess Teb is still called a brick.

The Hebrews have a Kabbalistic figure held to be most sacred and unfathomably profound. This consists of a circle containing three yods and a tau, or qamets.

Kircher says the three yods mark the three hypostases in the divine nature. By the single qamets (tau), placed beneath, they are meant to symbolize the unity of the essence common to each person in the trinity[93]. That is afterthought. The figure belongs to a time when there was no trinity and no fatherhood in heaven, but the mother and child only. This is the present writer's interpretation of the figure. The circle or noose is the hieroglyphic of ark or arkai, one meaning of which is the 30th of the month, as the type of a completed period, and it meant established, finished. Three yods in Hebrew have the numeral value of 30, and these give to this circle the significance of the noose (ark), carried by the goddess of beginnings.

The tau cross, hieroglyphic tat, or cross, means established for ever. The figure is thus composed of the circle and cross, and the no. 30 shows this to be a figure of in arke, the beginning. The three yods and the tau also furnish the numerical four on which the circle was founded, the four of Aft, the abode. If the lower sign be the ץמק, it is equivalent to a binding, a bundle, the noose (ark), for an enclosing, as qamets means to close, and would be a perfect determinative for the three yods, no. 30, 'in arke.' Arkhu is the Assyrian month or moon; araka, a Jain division of time.

The Jews are charged with preserving to a late time the symbol of the ass-head. This also is an Egyptian ideograph with the numeral value of 30, and therefore equal to the three yods. The end of a period and completion of the circle of one year is illustrated by [p.154] the head of an ass figured in the sign of Leoi at the point where the Egyptian year ended and was renewed[94].

Sha (Eg.) is likewise no. 30, and the word denotes various forms of the beginning, and types of cause and commencement.

Learned Jews assure us that the Kabbalists constantly added the yod to a word for the sake of a mystery. The Rabbi Bechai explains that it showed there was a plurality of persons included in the word[95]. The yod itself was a sign of plurality. It was a hand, and has the numeral value of 10, or two hands, just as the hieroglyphic I with inherent U, is a plural sign. Thus Jhvh denoted the plurality of Havah, a plurality never yet interpreted by the theologians. In the ancient Hebrew letters the yod has the shape of a kind of zed or zeta which is identical with the Coptic and ancient Greek zeta that passed into z. This letter is the hieroglyphic of Sut (Sebti), and its numeral value is seven. Thus one mystery of the yod prefixed to Havah might be resolved by the yod being a sign of seven, the number of Havah, as goddess of the seven stars.

The yod prefixed is of the same hieroglyphic value as the typographical sign of a hand, still made use of to point with. The phonetic yod signifies a hand, and in archaic form it had a rude resemblance to the hand. As a numeral it denotes 10 or double the value of one hand. The origin of the yod can be traced hieroglyphically by aid of the hand. The name yod (דוי) includes the vau[96], and this relates it to the Egyptian fa, the hand; fa is an abraded form of kefa, kaf; or kep, the hand; kefa and fa are reduced to â, the hand, and this â is equivalent to the Hebrew yod for the hand. Fa, the hand, implies a form in faf, hence possibly the reason why the yod appears at times in the place of vau; it also interchanges with the aleph. Kep (Eg.) the hand is the Hebrew kaph, called the hollow of the hand, the patina cave. פכ the hand, the curved hollow of the hand, is likewise the sole of the foot. The primal cave, however, is the womb, as is shown by the Egyptian kep and khepsh, the sanctuary of the hinder thigh.

Kaph the hand and foot denotes the double nature of the yod which gives it the numeral value of 10. The hand and foot, as explained, were types of the Two Truths, upper and lower, before and behind, breath and water assigned to Kefa as di-genetrix. One mystery of the yod sign of ten is that it stands for the hand and foot of the creatoress Kefa, the mother of all living, which hand and foot are portrayed in the figure of Brahma-Maya[97], as well as in the members of Khepra, the beetle-headed divinity. One title of Athor, the habitation of the child, is 'Divine Hand.'[98] The 'Working Hand' was an image of deity with the Mayas of Yucatan. This [p.155] working hand appears as the hand of the artist, the determinative of it (Eg.) to paint, figure, portray; 'it' being synonymous with yod.

We cannot name the hand as kef (Eg.) or kaph (Heb.) without at the same time identifying and designating the genetrix Kefa, and that in a particular manner, for the first kef (hand) was the womb. The goddess Kefa depicted as the hippopotamus had no other hand. That was the earliest working or creative hand, the kef, kep, or cave, named, before the external hand or foot. This unity of the hand is also part of the mystery of the yod; kep (Eg.) is a name of mystery as well as of the hand.

If we were to render the yod by aleph then ahevah suggests a form achevah perfectly consonant with hieroglyphic usage, akh and ka being variants of the same sign. A relic of this appears to remain in ףכא for the hand[99]. This interchange is not uncommon in the Hebrew. The Egyptian kar is the Hebrew akar, the Hades; Akar רכא, the husbandman is kar, the gardener. Akel (לכא) food, is kar food; ףכא to drive, spur, push, urge on, is kaph, should, must, receive, take; דכא fortress, castle, is khet, to be shut, sealed as a fortress.

The Mexicans call the Holy Spirit of their Trinity (that is, the Trinity as interpreted by Europeans) by the name of Echevah. Yzona is the father, Bacab the son, and Echevah remains for the mother. Echevah we take to be the Egyptian Kefa, as goddess of the Great Bear, and identical with the Hebrew Jehovah.

No vowel is a primary in the earliest formation of words, and in cases like this of the yod in Jhvh we must identify its earliest value before we can begin to discuss the meaning of the name. The yod as vowel hardens into the consonant, and goes back as representative of ה ,ע ,ק, and ח, which shows it to be a final development or deposit of a, guttural sound. Thus the yod interchanges with gimel in עדי and עדג, םדי and םדג; with kaf in רשי and רשכ, with qoph in רתי and רטק, with ayin in שבי and שבע, and with cheth in הני and הנח, באי, and בח. Therefore if Jhvh be a primary name the yod in it must stand for a guttural or a k sound. If we take it for k it follows that Jhvh is a later form of Chevah, Kevah, or Kefa. The hand as yod or דוי, Greek Ίώτα (אתוי) is a reduced form of kheft (Eg.) the hand. By spelling the name of yod, the hand, as we assume it to have been originally written, kaft, i.e. (דוי) yod with the k sound, we recover the plural Egyptian form of kaf in kaft or kepti the dual of kaf which duplicates the hand. Kepti is the di-genetrix and the double hand (or hand and foot) and when abraded into דוי or yod we find the character preserved by the letter being a figure of ten with the numeral value of two hands. In the word באי, to desire, long for, we have an instance of the yod being a softened form of the k sound, as באי is identical with בח, and by taking the yod (hieroglyphic hand) to be equivalent to the kaph (hieroglyphic hand), we see that it is a final [p.156] development of the k sound, hence its connection in Hebrew with the k sounds, and we are able to restore the original of Jhvh as Khevah, the Egyptian kh being the true initial sound in the name of Kefa, Chevah or Kheb.

The woman Ivi of the Polynesian mythology can be shown to be a form of the typhonian Kefa. Ivi in one application is a name of the widow, the woman that is mateless, as was the first mother in the mythos, the genetrix of the gods. Ivi, Maori wheva, signifies bone, and the Egyptian Kefa will enable us to correlate the bone, the widow, the Polynesian Ivi, Maori Wheva, Hebrew Chavvah or Khevah. The Ivi or bone of which Taaroa made the first woman means the substance, the body. This answers to af (Eg.) flesh, the matter born of. In another form af is ab, the name for ivory, and ivory the hard bone returns back to Ivi. Af, ap, abt (Eg.) are each represented by the hippopotamus as the type of hard strength and substance, the bone of the beginning, the single horn of this animal being the symbol of hardness. Thus af is flesh, and aft is the genetrix. Ab is ivory, horn, bone, and Abt is the genetrix, the hippopotamus goddess otherwise Kefa, Wheva, Jhevah, or Ivi.

According to J. M. Arnold[100] there is a negro Eve, the first woman whose name signifies life. It is rendered Iye, the y representing an earlier f and the name is also found in Ife, as the place of beginning. But this is not the Hebrew Chavvah gone back again: it is a form of the ancient mother of all flesh (Af) the hippopotamus-goddess of Africa who is the original of all the other Eves, and whose name up in Africa had been worn down from Khebma, Khep, Khef, Kef to Hawa in Swahili, Ife the Yoruba abode of the gods, and Iye for the negro Eve.

Jehovah-Elohim of the Hebrew Genesis is identical with Ashtoreth-Elohim, with Kefa of the seven stars, and Chavvah the mother of Seth and of all flesh; Jehovah denoting the one personage as the genetrix and Elohim the seven-eight as the seven gods and their manifestor Sut. Thus Seth is eighth to the seven patriarchs of one list in Genesis. In the Hebrew generations we are presented with two forms of the creation legend fused into one. These are commonly called the Elohistic and Jehovistic records. There are likewise two lists of the patriarchs who preceded the flood of Noah with seven names in the one and ten in the other.