[p.93]

THE NATURAL GENESIS

SECTION 10

They are Seven! they are Seven! Who were Watchers once in heaven.
They are Seven! they are Seven! Who have never wooed nor wiven.
They are Seven! they are Seven! Into sex they were uncleaven.
They are Seven! they are Seven! in the Deep that has no haven.
They are Seven! they are Seven! Death and Hell to them are given.
They are Seven! they are Seven! Ever driving, ever driven.
They are Seven! they are Seven! In the Storm-clouds thunder-riven.
They are Seven! they are Seven! And their laughter is the levin.
They are Seven! they are Seven! Lo! they rush to blind and deafen.
They are Seven! they are Seven! Ruthless all to the bereaven.
They are Seven! they are Seven! Grim destroyers never grieven.
They are Seven! they are Seven! Who were Watchers once in heaven.[1]

It has been shown that the 'gods' of mythology in general are of two classes or types, namely those of the elementary forces of nature which dominated in Chaos, and the Kronidae, or keepers of the time-cycles, who afterwards became the ruling powers in creation. The various 'creations' are identical with the establishment of the circles and cycles of time; and the gods who have souls in distinction to the earlier elementaries are intelligencers to men as the demonstrators, watchers, and keepers of their several periods of time. The goddess of the Great Bear was the mother of these continued from Chaos. She brought forth her progeny on the summit of Am-smen, the paradise of the eight gods. She is the mother-goddess of time, the 'Mother of the Revolutions' who was the 'regent of the birth-place' in heaven; the 'Mother of the Fields of the Aah-en-ru' (Aahru), the divisions in the celestial circle. Her firstborn in this new phase of time was Sevekh the dragon or crocodile, the earliest form of Saturn-Kronus in heaven. These two, as mother and son, Great Bear and Lesser (including the dragon), were the primal pair in the circumpolar heaven. They are a form of the typical Sut-Typhon of Egypt; Sutekh and Astarte (in a pre-lunar phase), Saturn and Gaea, the primeval dyad in mythology that were humanised as the first parents of our race who were placed in the [p.94] Garden of Eden, on the mount where stood the tree of the pole. Six other gods of constellations were associated with these two, and the genetrix was represented as being mother of the same number in the sphere of time as she had been in the previous phase of Chaos or limitlessness; the seven elementaries having now become seven keepers of time and period. The various mythical creations then were the result of establishing certain periods of time and season, and the 'Fall' was a consequence of the failure in keeping time faithfully, and of observing periodicity sacredly this being also mystically applied in a human phase.

The Kabbalists relate that after the fall of Adam the angels communicated to him the doctrines of the Kabbalah as the means whereby he might recover the lost paradise of his pristine condition. Kircher also quotes an Arabian doctor, who relates how Adam, one day after his fall, was meditating on the heaven he had lost, and the state of felicity from which he had lapsed, and he prayed to God for some alleviation of his misery. On the third day after his supplication the angel Rasiel came to him with a book that shone like white flame; in this there were letters traced by which Adam could understand all the events that ever had been or ever were to be; 'all the secrets of the heavens and their manifestations, the motions of the sun, moon, and stars, and their natures, together with all things by which the world is regulated.'[2] The constellations of the Two Bears, with which we identify the primal pair, figure in the Kabbalah as the two chariots. The Lesser Bear in Arabic is named Rakubah. These chariots were looked upon as bearers of the most hidden wisdom. Also the Buddhists have two classes of tradition, divided into the Mahâyana and Hinayana, which are distinguished as sutras of the great and the lesser chariot. Now, the paradise that could be recovered by the Kabbalah and the true keeping of the time cycles had been lost through those that were untrue and untrustworthy. Time is that which is true, and the word true answers to the Egyptian teru for time, measure, and limit. Time is that which is measured truly. Tema or tsema (whence the variant sema) signifies the making true or accomplishing the truth[3].*

* 'Par substitution d'un impulsif à un autre, Tma égale Sma dans le sens de faire la verité.' But M. Pierret omits the fundamental motive for keeping time as the object called the true, the true measure, the truth. Tem and sem both denote a total of two halves, the two times of teriu, such as those of the two solstices, or equinoxes.

'Har­Tema' is a title of the maker-true, whether as the star-god Shu, or as the solar Horus, in the sense of the true timekeeper. Hence he is the warrior enemy, and conqueror of the Typhonian powers of evil, who would disturb the established order of things and break up the harmony of creation. These began with the darkness impersonated as the dragon, the akhekh or Apophis serpent, the [p.95] opponent, the swallower of the sun or its eye, and the natural antithesis of light and life. When the sun sets it enters the dark valley, where lurks the Kamite Apollyon waiting to attack, and twine round, and strangle the sun-god during the twelve hours of night. The winter sun growing weaker and diminishing daily is under this malign influence. Ra says of his evil opponents, 'Beware of those enchanters whose mouth is subtle, through whom I am enchanted myself I cannot preserve myself because of my old age.'[4] Hence the need of Har-Tema, his supporter in this perilous passage, as his avenger on the powers of darkness. Through his aid the sun comes to time in the morning, and keeps time annually.

The earliest intelligence manifested in heaven above to man below, which made the primal appeal to his apprehension, was shown in periodic recurrence; the intelligence of the starry serpent annually crawling round; and mythology proper begins with the founding of time on the cyclic movements of the heavenly bodies. The twin beings of the Avesta, who are the Two Truths of light and dark personified, are yet considered to be sons of time without bounds, who became the demonstrators of time within the primary bounds of night and day; the twins of twilight. It was by drinking the amrit juice of immortality that the dragon of darkness, as Rahu, was transformed into one of the keepers of time, and figured in heaven at the place where he had been cut in two. By drinking of this juice he had got 'time in his body,' and thenceforth could not be destroyed. The elementaries acquired their souls as timekeepers; the soul and time being synonymous as seb (Eg.). Rahu became one of the kronotypes as the dragon of the annual eclipse, because he now possessed a soul, or was fabled to have drunk of the immortal juice.

It is one of the kronian gods who is described in the Books of Enoch and Daniel as the 'Ancient of Days.'[5] Also the typology of parent and offspring or father and son applied to deity, was founded on the series and sequence of the time-cycles, as a human mode of expressing known phenomena, and not under a pretence of revealing the unknown. The god, whether stellar, lunar, or solar, was born of the cycle of time. Hence it is said of Amen-Ra, one of the latest because solar divinities, in the Temple of El-Kharjeh, 'He has not come out of a womb, he has come out of cycles.'[6] The first figure of formation is a circle, the image of a cycle. Hermes speaks of 'Every soul being in flesh (or embodied) by the wonderful working of the gods in circles.'[7] When the gods are discussing their plans of battle after the Assyrian fall, it is said, 'In a circle may they sit.' They were founded on the circle because they were born of cycles of time, even as men are born of nine solar months. The antithesis of the circle was Chaos, the deluge, and timelessness. In the Ritual the goddess Renen, the gestator, is said to receive the breaths (or spirits) of the departed, [p.96] those belonging to her, and to turn them into time, 'She has made each time of the breath, the time of the *** (lacuna),' as a mode of continuity in a future life. The mummy of the dead is figured as the bull of Renen, and she reproduces his spirit just as Keridwen reproduced Taliesin in nine months. Being reproduced millions of times is the Kamite expression for eternity[8]. 'My soul is from the beginning—from the reckoning of years,' says the Osirified deceased in the Ritual[9]; and such was the origin of the kronian deities. The gods in heaven prepare their cycles of time according to the respective lengths assigned to them by their human creators on earth, ranging from the 'chiefs preparing moments'[10] up to Atum the solar lord of millions of years, or an eternity that is aeonian.

In Egyptian the oath and covenant are also synonymous with true timekeeping. The word ark denotes the thirtieth day, the end of a month; and to make the circle, enclose, tie up, take an oath, keep the covenant. Time and truth were founded on this covenant of the ark, or in arke. In the Book of Enoch[11]* we are told that the Most High established the oath of Akae 'by the instrumentality of the holy Michael. These are the secrets of this oath, and by it were they confirmed. Heaven was suspended by it before the world was made for ever. By it has the earth been founded upon the food. By this oath the sun and moon complete their progress, never swerving from the command given to them for ever and ever. By this oath the stars complete their progress, and when their names are called they return an answer for ever and ever.' Such was the nature of the 'Ark and Covenant;' the 'Ark to build, the Covenant to keep;' and such the oath taken by the timekeepers and appointed watchers of the heavens, as unfolded in the 'third parable of Enoch.'

* Compare akh (Eg.), to suspend, adjust, revolve.

To comprehend the Egyptian idea of truth and justice impersonated, we must know the types; the straight inflexible rule-measure; the scales at perfect poise, which could be turned by a feather; the tongue of their balance being a vase named full, as the type of absolute equilibrium. Truth was geometrical, the truth of the stone­squarers and the Masons, whose emblems are the square, the level, the compasses; the straight line of plumb-rule. When the true heart is weighed in the judgment scales it is described as balancing itself by its own bearing or deportment; that being a figure for uprightness. Such, and not abstract conceptions, is the base of all their building in the realm of thought. More abstract ideas were gradually evolved in later stages of development. The kronian deity being born of the cycle, the truth was established and the covenant fulfilled by the true timekeeper; and the eternal of mythology was evolved by a process of selection from the various cycle-makers, the goddess of the Great Bear and Sothis; [p.97] Sut-Horus; Shu and Seb the star-gods; Sut-Anup, Taht and Khunsu the lunar, and lastly the solar gods, ending with the survival of the fittest in the final sun-god. For the foundations of the eternal were based on that which was ultimately true in time, the order of things established by calculation, measure, and reckoning of the various periods. The sun at last became the perfected type of the true keeper of time or, what the Egyptians harped on incessantly, the maker of truth. This stage had been attained in Egypt before the time of Menes in the cult of the solar Horus, and in that of Atum-Ra; the sun had consequently become the truest god. As soon as the sun rises the reign of truth begins, with the god upon his throne; truth is united with his glory; he establishes truth in his bark; he becomes the producer and bringer forth of truth; he makes truth; and truth becomes identical with the god[12]. The sun who overthrows his enemies by his word, does so through that word being made or making truth, and he re-arises from the underworld as Har-Ma-Kheru, who is the True Word, the word that makes truth or the word made truth[13]. The word of Horus is truth. The word is truth against the enemies of the sun or the souls who are overthrown by the truth of the word, or the word made truth, as it was in the divine Ma-Kheru.

Shu and Har-Tema, the supporters of the sun in his weakness, were the makers of truth. Taht is master of the truth, he makes the truth; he is the 'fecundator of the truth,'[14] as he who constitutes the world, the established order of things, that is, as the reckoner and the keeper of the register of time and period. The antithesis of this is found in the 'Lying Speech' of the Avesta. When Yima forsook the true word or voice for 'Lying Speech' he fell. All who suggest evil thoughts, or who do bad deeds, are termed the 'Mithra Liars,' those who are false to Mithra. The origin of this lying speech is traced to Anra-Mainyus (Aharman, in the Bundahish), the Dark Mind, or devil of the dark, who is the reverse image of the good deity, his likeness in shadow, a dark silhouette of the Lord of Light.

Periodical time was so profoundly important a subject of the early thought, and the orbs of heaven were demonstrators so august and glorious, that no conception of unfaithfulness, of failing in duty, of being treacherous to all trust, could have been embodied in more appealing or appalling imagery than this of the stars, the eternal watchers in Heaven proving false to the watchers on earth, who had trusted them for their periodic time; the luminaries themselves breaking the law of light and siding with the dragon of darkness, the akhekh monster of eclipse, the primal cause of all obstruction, disorder, and confusion in external phenomena! When this was first observed, it must have seemed as if they had lost their one firm bit of solid foothold in the infinite; as if the uniformity on which they had based the stability of [p.98] the universe were found to be failing them. At least this is the impression made by the mythos.

The Persian 'Revelation,' as the Parsee writings are termed, contains some of the most valuable and definite matter extant for the understanding of the story of the Fall. In these scriptures the first creation is emphatically the birth of Time itself. For '"Three thousand years the creatures were possessed of bodies and (had) not (been) walking on their navels. The sun, moon, and stars stood still." In the mischievous incursion at the end of the period, Ahura-Mazda observed thus: "What advantage is there from the creation of a creature although thirstless, which is unmoving or mischievous?" And in aid of the celestial sphere he produced the creature Time, and Time is unrestricted, so that he made the creatures of Ahura-Masda moving, distinct from the motion of Aharman's creatures, for the shedders of perfume were standing one opposite to the other while emitting it. And observantly of the end, he brought forward to Aharman a means out of himself the property of darkness, with which the extreme limits of Time were connected by him, an envelope of the black-pated and ash-coloured kind.'[15]

The creatures of Aharman (here described as preceding time) that were unmoving and mischievous, are identical by nature with the elementaries of Egypt, the children of laziness, inertness, and revolt, who ruled in Chaos as the progeny of the evil Typhon. The ancient phraseology makes the matter seem remote, but it relates to the establishment of day and night, light and dark, and the limits of the grey twilight, in which the two powers met to mingle as co-partners in the production of time as a day and night, the time of the Asvins, or Sut and Horus. The evil spirit Aharman, the opponent of the spirit of light, in the Bundahish, is identical with the Apophis of the Ritual, the eternal enemy of the sun. Ahura-Mazda lives in a region of limitless light; Aharman dwells in a domain that is endlessly dark. Then the evil spirit arose from the abyss and came in unto the light which he saw[16], and rushed forward to destroy.

'Aharman came from accompanying Time out to the front, out to the star-station, and having darkness with himself he brought it into the sky, and left the sky so to gloom that the internal deficiency in the sky extends as much as one-third over the star-station.'[17]

So in the Bundahish, the evil spirit rushed towards the luminaries. 'He stood upon one-third of the inside of the sky, and he sprang like a snake out of the sky down to the earth.'[18] It is also said that his shadow covered one-third of the base of the sky in a downward direction, and that darkness, without an eyelid, was brought on by him. The same measure of darkness over-spreading the sky is employed in John's Revelation: 'And there appeared a dragon in [p.99] heaven having seven heads, and his tail drew a third part of the stars of Heaven and did cast them to the earth. And there was war in Heaven.' 'And the great dragon was cast out into the Earth, and his angels were cast out with him.'[19]

The attack of Aharman is not limited to indefinite darkness. It takes form in an eclipse, and the exact time of an assault on the celestial luminaries is given. 'In the month Fravardin and the day of Ahura-Mazda (that is at the time of the vernal equinox), he rushed in at noon, and thereby the sky was as shattered and frightened as a sheep is by a wolf.'[20] The time identifies this manifestation of the Evil One with the dragon of eclipse, this being the season of lunar eclipses, and the period of rebirth for the young sun-god[21].

The first demon named as an assistant of the Evil One is the wicked Géh, who is a personification of the impurity of menstruation. The Dark Mind, or Devil, Aharman, is represented as powerless, and unable to make a breach in the good creation until the coming of Gêh at the completion of the three thousand years[22] of confusion that followed the first vain assault made by darkness upon the light. Thus menstruation, the dark shadow of periodic time, the solution of continuity, is here represented as an equivalent in one domain of nature to the dark break in the circle of light caused by Aharman's eclipse in the other. So when Ahura-Mazda had created Hapta-Hendu, the opposition of the dark deity was shown in producing irregular menstruation[23]. These, then, are two periodic breaches made in continuity, or time, considered to be the shadow projected on creation by the Evil Mind, the dragon of eclipse.

The next assault is described as having been made on the primeval ox called Gayomard, who is now to be identified with the star Sothis and Haptoringa, the seven Bears—two stellar types north and south of her who was set in heaven as the mother-goddess of time. The primeval ox, the sole-created, is distinctly stated in the Selections of Zad-Sparam[24] to have been female at first. 'It was a female white and brilliant as the moon.' This agrees with the Egyptian form of Sothis described as the female bull which was originally the cow (or the water-cow). From the ox there were produced for Airyana-Vaêjo, a pair of oxen, male and female. This likewise agrees with the Egyptian beginning. The cow (or water-cow) is female in the north, and has a masculine character as Sothis in the south, the forepart being male.

As Plutarch says, 'The souls of the Gods are stars shining in Heaven. The soul of Isis is called the Dog by the Greeks, but by the Egyptians Sothis; that of Horus Orion; and that of Typhon the Bear.'[25] The soul of Isis (genetrix) was said to dwell in the Dog-star. So Gôshurvan, [p.100] as the soul of the primeval ox Gayomard, is a female. She comes forth from the ox as its soul, after its fall, and asks the creator where is the promised seed, the man of whom it was said by Ahura­Mazda, 'I will produce him so that he may preach carefulness against another fall. And Ahura-Mazda said, 'You are made ill, O Gôshurvan! you have the illness which the evil spirit brought on (the Gêh). Forth Gôshurvan walked to the Star-Station and cried in the same manner, and forth to the Moon-Station and cried in the same manner, and forth to the Sun-Station, and then the Guardian Spirit of Zaratusht was exhibited to her, and Ahura-Mazda said this: "I will produce for the world him who will preach carefulness." Contented became the spirit Gôshurvan, and assented thus: "I will nourish the creatures," that is, she became again consenting to a worldly creation in the world.'[26] This was when the adversary had prevailed over Gayomard, or as may be illustrated, if not interpreted, when Sothis was discovered to be lapsing and losing time, and the true, the solar timekeeper is promised to be brought forth by the ancient genetrix. Gayomard, as the ox (male), repeats the bull of the seven cows, or seven stars, in the Egyptian Ritual. Before the coming of Aharman, Ahura-Mazda had 'brought forth a sweat upon Gayomard so long as he might recite a prayer of one stanza. Moreover, Ahura-Mazda formed that sweat into the youthful body of a man of fifteen years, radiant and tall. When Gayomard issued from that sweat he saw the world dark as night ... the celestial sphere was in revolution, the sun and moon remained in motion; the world's struggle, owing to the clamour of the Mazinikan demons, was with the constellations.'[27]

This duplicating of Gayomard by a second creation is in agreement with the formation of the dual-headed Sut-Horus, or Sut-Anubis. Anup like Horus is a typical youth. 'His Majesty was like a young Anup.'[28] Now, Sothis (Sirius) is known to be the star Tishtar.

'The star Tistrya, the shining, majestic, we praise, who brings hither the circling years of time.'[29] The bull was one of the types of Tishtar, who, in the Vendidad[30] is expressly invoked as the golden bull. That is as Sut-Anta (Eg.). Also the female companions of Tishtar are invoked in the Khordah Avesta[31]. 'Tistrya praise we, the female companions of Tishtar praise we, the first (star) praise we, the female companions of the first star praise we; I praise the stars Hapto-ringa for resisting the sorcerers and parikas.' These are the seven Bears which as the seven cows in the Ritual are the seven female companions of the bull. They were also the sevenfold soul of the bull or Sothis. Thus Gayomard and the genetrix, who is called the soul of the bull (the giver of breath, or inspirer of life as the mother), are the same dyad, now identified [p.101] by the celestial phenomena, as the good Sut-Typhon. In the appointment of Time at first it was decreed that the period of Gayomard-Tishtar should be thirty years, the time of the Egyptian Sut-Heb, a Sothic festival. A reason is given for the failure or fail of Gayomard-Sothis, who came under the influence of the Dark Mind, the evil Aharman, the author of discord and dissolution, the antithesis of time and the law of light.

'In the Beginning it was so appointed that the Star Jupiter (Planet of Ahura-Mazda), was life towards the Creatures, not through its own nature, but on account of its being within the control (band), of the luminaries, (especially the signs of the zodiac, to whose protection the Good Creation was committed), and Saturn was death towards the Creatures. Both were in their supremacy at the beginning of the Creation, as Jupiter was in Cancer on rising, that which is called Givan (living), for it is the place in which life is bestowed on it. And Saturn was in Libra, in the great subterranean, so that its own venom and deadliness became more evident and dominant thereby. And it was when both shall (should) not be supreme that Gayomard was to commence his own life, which is the thirty years, (during which) Saturn came not again to supremacy, that is to Libra.' And 'at the time when Saturn came into Libra, Jupiter was in Capricornus.' That is while Saturn performed one revolution about the Sun, Jupiter performed two and a half his cycle consisting of eleven years and three hundred and fifteen days, so that when Saturn was again supreme, the reviving influence of Jupiter was at its minimum power, on account of the small altitude of Capricorn. Cancer and Capricorn were the two signs in which the end of a world was fabled to occur by a conflagration and a deluge. In consequence of this victory of Saturn over Jupiter, 'Gayomard suffered through those very defects which came and are to continue advancing, the continuance of that disfigurement which Aharman can bring upon the creatures of Ahura-Masda.'[32]

Here it occurs to me, that the same mode of reckoning and adjusting the reckonings is described on the cuneiform tablet, when 'Bel goes to Elam.' 'At last, after thirty years the Smitten are restored the Great Gods return with them.'[33] This appears to refer to the cycle of thirty years, the Egyptian Heb-Sut or festival of the Triakontaeteridae, which was probably regulated by or in relation to Saturn's revolution, and thirty years of three hundred and sixty days. The restoration of the smitten, and the return of the Great Gods to their supremacy would then be a metaphorical mode of describing the readjustment of the year, and the reckoning according to the fixed rules.

The deviation of Sothis from the true solar time—in its heliacal [p.102] rising—which was allowed for annually, and rectified every 1460 years, was considered to be the work of the opposing powers of disorder, falsehood, and chaos; these were depicted as gaining thus much ground according to the typical mode of representation, and such seems to be the meaning of this restoration of the smitten and the return of the Great Gods at the end of thirty years. The attack was made on Gayomard and Gôshurvan by the evil power, the enemy of true periodicity, and he who had been brilliant as the sun, now waned in the shadow of eclipse. When he issued from his sweat or swoon in which the youth was formed out of him, the whole world was dark as night, and swarming with all kinds of noxious creatures of Aharman. And it was at the 'coming of a planetary star into planetary conjunction, and the moon and planets all at sixes and sevens; (literally in fours and fives), that many dark forms with the face and curls of Azi-Dahak suffered punishment.'[34]

The planetary star of Sothis was Mercury, who is Sut-Anubis under his planetary type; but there was also a lunar Mercury or Hermanubis. When Ahura-Mazda's creatures had been disfigured, then through the same deterioration his own great glory was exhibited; for he came within the sky like an intrepid warrior, who has put on metal armour; and the sky in its fortress (burgo, which also means the zodiacal signs), spoke these hasty deceitful words to Aharman, thus:

'Now, when thou shalt have come in, I will not let thee back;' and it obstructed him until Ahura-Mazda prepared another rampart that is stronger around the sky, which is called "righteous understanding." And he arranged the guardian spirits of the righteous who are warriors around that rampart, mounted on horses and spear in hand in such a manner, as the hair on the head (or thick as hairs on the head); and they acquired the appearance of prison guards who watch a prison front outside, and would not surrender the outer boundaries to an enemy descended from the inside. Immediately, Aharman endeavours that he may go back to his own complete darkness, but he found no passage; and he recapitulated, with seeming misgiving, his fears of the worthiness which is to arise at the appearance of the renovation (of the universe) at the end of the nine thousand years. This was the first contest, that of the sky, with Aharman.'[35]

Thus, it is said, 'Both Spirits (the Dark and the light) have come to the body of Gayomard,'[36] which statement may be illustrated by the type of Sut-Horus or Sut Nub-ti with the double head, one black, one bright, denoting the dark and light spirits, the two representatives of time, as true and untrue, of order and disorder, of upper and lower, of heaven and earth, the horizon of darkness and death, and the horizon of the resurrection. The meaning is this: Sothis was [p.103] discovered to be losing time—in its heliacal rising—it lost one whole year every 1460 years; and the lunar Hermes-Anubis (described later) came to the assistance of the lagging timekeeper, the two being compounded as Sut-Anup the golden dog of Sothis.

The first timekeepers were constellations, not the planets, but the stars of fixed station, which turned round with the sphere as do the Bears, Kepheus, Orion, Hydra, the Eagle or Vulture, and the rest. Next the planets were added and combined with these.

'All the original creations residing in the World' are committed to the keeping of the constellations which have especial charge of the welfare of creation: 'So that when the Destroyer arrives, they overcome the Adversary and their own persecution, and the creatures are saved from their Adversaries,' and 'As a specimen of a warlike Army, which is destined for battle, they have ordained every single constellation of those 6480 thousand small stars as assistants, and among those constellations "four chieftains," appointed on the four sides, are Leaders.' On the recommendation of these four chieftains, the unnumbered stars were assigned to the various quarters and places. 'It is said that Tishtar is the chieftain of the east, Sataves the chieftain of the west, Vanand the chieftain of the south, and Hapto-ringa the chieftain of the north.'[37] Hapto-ringa is the constellation of Ursa Major or the seven Bears.

Tishtar is identified with Sirius, the other two are less certain, but most probably Antares in Scorpio and Fomalhaut in Pisces Australis are intended. Also the four are certain to be the gods of the four quarters who are found in so many mythologies. In the Avesta these watchers in the four quarters of the heavens are called Tistrya in the east; Satavaesa in the west; Vanand in the south, and Hapto-ringa (the seven Bears) in the north. Furthermore, the Bundahish[38], says, 'Seven chieftains of the planets have come in to the Seven chieftains of the constellations. The planet Mercury (Tir) unto Tishtar; the planet Mars unto Haptok-ring (the Seven Bears, the female companions of Tishtar); the planet Jupiter (Ahura-Mazda) unto Vanand; the planet Venus (Anahid) unto Sataves; the planet Saturn unto the great (one) of the middle of the sky, Gôkihar*; and the thievish Muspar (or Mus-parika), provided with tails, unto the Sun, Moon, and Stars.'[39]

* Gôkihar. Windischmann would read Gurgkihar, wolf-progeny[40].

The main point here, however, is that Mercury is the servant of Sothis—its messenger, its dog, who became its bright and better half in the reckoning of time, the period of the one being corrected and kept by the other. Plutarch suggested that the horizon immediately before the rising and immediately after the setting of the sun was symbolized by Anubisi[41]. Renouf says, 'I believe that he represents the twilight or dusk immediately following the [p.104] disappearance of the Sun.'[42] But Anubis is the guide of ways, the guide of Isis, and of Sothis, the discoverer of the sun, the conductor of souls. He was typified by the jackal that came out at dusk, and was painted with a black head, as guide of the western land, and the jackal was the golden dog, as the guide to the horizon of the resurrection.

What is needed here is a star of the dusk, that is a guide to the sun. This is to be found in the planet Mercury which is sometimes a morning and at others an evening star. This planet was given to Sothis as her guide and assistant, hence Anup accompanies Isis the genetrix in her search for the lost Osiris and is the guide of souls through the underworld of the dead, and was like Nebo the keeper of the morning and evening gate of souls, as well as of the sun, because he was the god of the morning and evening star. As evening star he presided over the burial of the sun, and was made the deity of embalmment and burial. As star of morning he restored the eye of the sun at the dawn of day not merely as the dusk or twilight, but as the herald light, the guide of ways, and conductor of the solar orb. Mercury watched at dusk over the closing grave of sunset, and at dawn he rose and preceded the resurrection of the sun. Sut-Anubis was Hermes-Anubis, who preceded Taht, in his lunar phase (yet to be described), and Mercury in his planetary character.

Moreover, there are seven spirits associated with the Great Bear. Anup makes their places, and stations them for the protection of the coffin of Osiris, i.e., the constellation of Ursa Major. The seven spirits are the gods of the seven constellations that preceded the seven planets and were finally superseded by them or compounded with them. There are eight altogether, considered as the genetrix and her progeny. The seven furnished a type which was continued in the lunar and solar phases of the mythos. They were typhonian at first, and Sut (Sevekh) was the chief of the seven. When lunar time had been established, Taht was made the manifestor, word or speech. When Ptah, a solar god, although not the sun, was created, the seven as the Khnemu are called his sons. And the eight-rayed star remained a type of the solar manifestor of the final pleroma of the godhead[43]. The eight are included under the type of the female dragon and her seven heads in the Akkadian legends. The original eight were elementaries in Egypt who had been represented under zoological types. These were afterwards more or less humanized when they became watchers and timekeepers, and personification had succeeded the earlier mode of representation. This is mentioned in passing because the change of type to the human form may have a bearing on the marriage of the sons of God who saw the daughters of men were fair, and took them wives from the women [p.105] of earth, who are charged with leading them astray in order that they might salute them[44]. In their second phase the seven (eight with the mother) became the watchers in heaven that failed to keep the true time; the betsh party who were degraded as the children of inertness, laziness, and revolt, and the sluggish 'Animals of Satan,' the standers-still, the 'Fools' and 'Sleepers' of later legends; they who, like Orion, were discovered to be bound in heaven and held to be fools and blind; or, as we say, they were fixed stars, that only turned with the sphere, not movers of themselves. Moreover, they were discovered to be losing, time all together in the course of precession, and so they were fabled to have been lifeless laggards, or, it was said they had fallen in love with the women of earth and were of the earth earthy—not true celestial beings, nor trustworthy watchers.

Hence the mythos of the fall in heaven. The fallen ogdoad survived in the Moslem traditions as the 'seven sleepers and their dog Al-Rakim.' In the Koran[45] it is asked, 'Dost thou consider that the companions of the cave, and Al-Rakim, were one of our signs and a great miracle?' In this version Al-Rakim takes the place of the dog, the companion of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. The companions of the cave are here said to have been struck deaf, and to have slept undisturbed for a long time, and then the Lord awoke them that we might know 'which of the two parties was more exact in computing the space that the sleepers had remained there,' according to which statement they were of the nature of timekeepers, and therefore belong to the astronomical allegory. 'Some say the sleepers were three, and their dog was the fourth,' as was the opinion of Al-Seyid, a Jacobite Christian of Najrân[46]. 'Others say they were seven, and their dog was the eighth.' 'And this was the true opinion.'[47] The four can be identified with the genii of the four corners, who are four of the seven spirits of the bear and the dog.

The time of their waking is that of the final resurrection of souls and the renovation of all things. There was a tradition at Ephesus that St. John was not dead, but sleeping there until the consummation or end of the world should come; and this points to the seven churches of Asia as having been founded on the seven constellations in the celestial heptanomis, the seven spirits of which appear 'before the throne' in the Book of Revelation[48] just as they do in the Egyptian Ritual[49].

It was in the time of the Nephilim (םיליפנ), as described in the Book of Genesis[50], that certain transactions occurred which led to a deluge. The Nephilim, called the giants, are the fallen ones. לפנ means to fall down, to fall down from heaven, to be overthrown, to be abortive, or an untimely birth. These fallen ones correspond to the celestial giants of the primary world or cycle of time who failed and [p.106] fell. In their time it is said the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they cohabited with them[51]. The legend is developed at length in the Book of Enoch where they appear as the 'Watchers' of heaven. In this version of the mythos they are the celestial watchers in the astronomical sense, the disposers and timekeepers, recognized as seven in number. The language is not to be understood apart from the total typology of the subject. The crime charged against Samyaza, Azazel, and their fallen fellows is that they have known and taught a reprobated or unworthy mystery[52]; this they have 'related to women in the hardness of their hearts;' and by that mystery, they have 'multiplied evils upon the earth.' They 'have associated with women, that they might be polluted with all their impurity.' They have discovered crimes to them. It is said to them, 'You being spiritual, and possessing a life which is eternal, have polluted yourselves with women, have coupled in carnal blood, have lusted in the blood of men.' 'They have disclosed to the world all the secret things which are done in the heavens.' 'Enoch, scribe of righteousness, go tell the watchers of heaven, who have deserted the lofty sky and their holy, everlasting station, who have been polluted with women, and done as the sons of men do, and who have greatly corrupted the earth, they shall never obtain peace or remission of sin, they shall not rejoice in their offspring, they shall behold the slaughter of their beloved, they shall lament for the destruction of their sons.'[53] This doomed offspring is emphatically described in the Clementine Homilies[54] as 'bastards,' begotten of the 'fire of angels and the blood of women.' The language is typical, the imagery physiological. The offspring are giants, that is types of typhonian powers which were lawless, and existed before the establishment of time and period, hence the non-respect to female periodicity in the figures employed! Hence also it is said, 'The souls of those who are dead cry out and complain even to the gate of heaven,'[55] these are the souls that should have been human, waiting to be born, and frustrated in fulfilling their earthly existence, because of this non-natural relationship which has filled the earth with iniquity and corruption. The language of the myth has the same basis in physics as that of the eating of the forbidden fruit and consequent fall of man. The watchers are tempted like the Adamic pair to eat of the carnal tree; and as in the one fable the act brings death into the world, in the other the earth is deprived of her children that should have been born but were abortions. Indeed, one of the watchers, Gadrel, he who discovered every stroke of death to the children of men, is singled out and said to have been the seducer of Eve[56].

How the physiological origin dominated the figurative expression may be judged by the exclamation of Esdras for the climax of [p.107] confusion, 'and menstruous women shall bring forth monsters!'[57]—the monsters and giants of the mythos, which relate to the keeping of time and period, first in the human domain, next in the celestial, and lastly in the spiritual sense. The fallen stars then are period-breakers, and the mode of expressing this is in relation to the feminine periodicity. They are spoken of as guardians of time who have proved unfaithful to their trust. They are 'Stars which transgressed the commandment of God before their tune arrived, for they came not in their proper season, therefore was he offended with them, and bound them until the period of the consummation of their crimes.'[58] Enoch is carried to the summit of a mountain which reached to the top of heaven and is there shown the seven deposed stars or constellations, which appear 'like great blazing mountains, and like spirits entreating me.' The seven are the watchers who in the beginning were high in heaven, but who together with their fellows failed to keep time, and were cast out until the end of the secret or great year of precession, when the heavens were to be renewed. They are seen by Enoch, bound in a desolate place 'in which nothing was completed, and there I beheld neither the tremendous workmanship of an exalted heaven, nor of an established earth.'[59] They who first emerged from chaos had here returned to chaos; for in that place there was neither the 'tremendous workmanship of an exalted heaven, nor of an established earth' nothing but desolation. The seven appear as mountains because the mountain had been a figure of station and of the constellations; hence the seven mountains which represented them on earth. In like manner, the tree was not only imaged by seven branchesi, as it is on the Assyrian monuments, but also by the seven trees. The tree (vine) in the planisphere has seven branches, and this in the Codex Nazaraeus takes the form of seven vines[60]. So the staff of the twin brothers Kabil and Habil grew up into the seven trees. The total number of the stars that fell, leaders and followers together, who are described as alighting on Ardis, the summit of Mount Armon, was two hundred[61], and this is the exact number given in a Tongan tradition of creation which tells that when the islands were made, but before they were inhabited by reasonable beings, two hundred of the gods, male and female, took a great boat to go and see the earth which had been fished up from the sea by the god Tangaloa. So delighted were they with the newfound land that they broke up their big boat, intending to make smaller ones in which they should return. But after a time some of them died, and one of them, being divinely inspired, told them that since they had come to Tonga, breathed its air and eaten its fruits, thy should be mortal, and people the world with mortals. Then they were sad and [p.108] sorry that they had broken up their big boat. They set to work to build another, and went to sea hoping to reach Bolutu, the heaven they had left, but failing to find it they returned regretfully to Tonga[62]. Their great boat was the ark of the sphere in which the seven Cabiri had first sailed on their annual voyage through the celestial sea in the earliest cycle of time. The seven constellations may have included 200 stars.

It was as the seven that the Hohgates sailed in their boat when they were borne on and on to the edge of a vast cataract, and when about to disappear down the waterfall they were caught up to heaven and set there as the seven stars. An inverted way of identifying the seven that fell.

In the Norse Edda the temptation and fall are caused by the seducing women who came out of Jotunheim. Gangler asks, 'What did All-Father do after Asgard was made?' and Har replies 'In the beginning he appointed rulers, and bade them judge with him the fate of men, and regulate the government of the celestial city. They met for this purpose in a place called Idavoll which is in the centre of the divine abode. Their first work was to erect a court or hall, wherein are twelve seats for themselves, besides the throne which is occupied by All-Father. This hall is the largest and most magnificent in the universe, being resplendent on all sides, both without and within, with the finest gold. Its name is Gladsheim. Hence that age was named the Golden Age. This was the age that lasted until the arrival of the women out of Jotunheim who corrupted it.'[63]

One version of this mythos of the fallen angels has it that 'the mortals becoming proud and insolent married the daughters of Kronus and Taut.' This reverses the statement that the sons of God fell in love with the daughters of men, but agrees with the Norse account of the women who came out of Jotunheim to seduce mankind. As Kronus is time, and Taut is the lunar god, the reckoner, measurer, and recorder of time, the daughters of these must be the representatives of cycles and periods of time, and are equally illustrative of the typical fall from heaven. After the casting out of the unfaithful stars which in the Book of Enoch are primarily seven in number, and in Egypt were reckoned as the eight of Am-Smen (including the mother), they were merged with the evil powers of darkness, eclipse and death, so that Sut-Typhon, whether considered as the male Sut or the female Typhon, was held to be synonymous with the akhekh serpent, the Apophis dragon and devil of the deep. In this way it is possible to identify the Leviathan and Behemoth of the Book of Enoch. We learn that a great day of judgment is coming, a day of covenant for the elect, and of final confusion for the wicked. 'In that day shall be distributed (for food) two monsters, a female monster [p.109] whose name is Leviathan, dwelling in the depths of the sea, above the springs of waters, and a male whose name is Behemoth, which possesses the invisible wilderness. His name was Dendayen in the garden eastward, where the elect and the righteous will dwell when he received it from my ancestor who was man—from Adam the first of men.'[64]

Here the sexes have been changed. Leviathan represents the dragon or crocodile, the son of Behemoth (the Egyptian bekhmut, the hippopotamus), called by Job 'the beginning of the ways of God.'[65] The two are the Bear and Dragon. Behemoth was not only in Eden, for the garden was in the circle that Behemoth formed in the beginning of the celestial ways. These types revert to their earlier status as the evil forces of physical phenomena. The same fusion occurs in the Akkadian form of the mythos. In this the dragon of darkness and the abyss of Chaos is confounded with Tiamat, who was the bringer-forth of the primitive creation, she who was said to have 'brought the heaven,' just as Typhon was designated the mother of the fields of heaven, or Aahru.

It is related in the rabbinical legends that Lilith, who was Adam's first wife, beguiled the serpent at the gate of Eden to lend her its form for the time and the purpose of temptation. The serpent, being a type of the Two Truths, has two aspects, and that Lilith represented both of these may be gathered from the tradition preserved by Comestor, that while the serpent remained erect it had a Virgin's head[66]. The serpent and Lilith were types of the Virgin Mother in mythology. Lilith, as already shown, was the Egyptian Rerit, the goddess of the seven stars, who was represented by Rerit the sow, the suckler named Ta-ur-neb-hept[67], the enceinte bearer, who was the good lady; also by the hippopotamus or rhinoceros, another type of Rerit or Lelit, the rabbinical Lilith. But Rerit is also the snake as well as the suckler, and this explains the serpent form of Rerit or Lilith.

When Tiamat is confounded with the indefinite monster of chaos, disorder, and distraction, her fall has taken place, and she has then been identified with the dragon of darkness, the akhekh of eclipse, the devourer death, the gape of the greedy grave, exactly as it was with the most ancient genetrix in Egypt, who was turned into the evil Typhon, the female Satan and Egyptian Hela, her name supplying that of Tepi for the typical devourer. These types of commencement did not begin in India to be continued in Akkadia, and to end in Egypt, as Typhon the genetrix of the seven stars who was the first in heaven—first by name and nature. This process of derivation and development has to be reversed before we can reach the origins.

The Akkadian seven, as watchers, were founded on seven constellations of primordial time. These were the watchers in heaven that were found unfaithful and were cast out. They are called the [p.110] 'Rebellious Genii,' the 'Wicked Gods,' who, in 'the beginning,' had been 'formed in the interior of heaven.' They are especially described as the seven in the service of Anu their King, just as the seven spirits in the Ritual are said to be 'the Seven Great Spirits who are an the service of their Lord.'[68] They had been the first openers of heaven. 'That which had no exit they opened,' and 'the heaven, like a vault, they extended,' or hollowed out. In another version we are told that 'unto heaven that which was not seen they raised.' It was they who exalted on high the mighty God, the 'firstborn Supreme.' Like the seven great stars in the Book of Enoch, they once were watchers in heaven, for it is written, 'In watching (was) their office,' but 'among the stars of heaven their watch they kept not.'[69] They failed and fell. This was one form of their phenomenal origin then, as 'Watchers among the stars of heaven,' not merely as seven storm-clouds and typhonian winds, as the translator of the tablet seems to think. A group of seven storm-winds never watched in earth or heaven, whereas a group of seven stars or constellations are the watchers who were cast out as unfaithful to their trust, and were then associated with seven forms of phenomena, or elements, because the seven types had originated in these as the primary powers of Nature.

The seven likewise appear in the fragment of a Babylonian legend of the creation, in which we read of those 'Spirits who drank turbid waters, and pure waters did not drink,' and of the seven brethren who are called seven kings, the foremost of whom is the thunderbolt. A state of chaos is alluded to, and the 'evil curse which in blood he raised,' is mentioned. Following the disorder and bloodshed, the holy ordinances, or statutes, are said to be established. 'Seven against seven in breadth I arranged them.'[70] It is somewhat like the sevens entering the Ark against the Deluge. But, according to the present interpretation it refers to the appointment of the seven good spirits that were the opposite to the seven evil ones of chaos.

The seven elementaries in Egypt were translated into seven spirits of constellations, and continued by conversion. In Babylon, Akkad, and India, they were superseded by the creation of the seven stellar timekeepers who passed on into the final planetary seven. The fragment does not show whether the 'Seven against Seven' belong to the seven constellations or planets, as in the two sevens of Meru, but it does relate to the seven who fell in the so-called 'Revolt in heaven,' found on a cuneiform tablet. The harmony of the established order of things is portrayed by a concert of the celestial beings; a festival of praise is proceeding, when suddenly there is defection amongst the heavenly host, and a rebellion breaks out in the midst of the music. With a loud cry of contempt the children of revolt and discord broke up the sacred song, 'spoillng, con- [p.111] fusing, confounding' the hymn of praise. Then the god of the bright crown, with a wish to summon his adherents, sounded a trumpet blast which might wake the dead, and which prohibited return to those rebel angels. He stopped their service, and sent them to the gods who were his enemies[71].

Powers of evil are here postulated as being in existence before the revolt, and the rebels are sent to join them in eternal darkness. So the natural enemies of the sun-god are held to have been pre-extant in the Egyptian myth: 'My enemies,' they are called by Ra; 'let us smite the enemies;' also they are the 'followers whom my heart hates.' Of the same evil powers it is said in the Ritual[72]. 'The time when he made the heaven, creating the earth, creating all the accursed generation, cannot be found out.' This evil race, called the rebels in the Egyptian mythos, 'utter words against the majesty of Ra;' and in the Assyrian revolt they break up the holy song with a loud cry of contempt; spoiling, confusing, confounding the hymn of praise. In both, the destruction follows, and there is a new creation.

'In their room he created mankind.
The first who received life dwelt along with him.
May he give them strength never to neglect his word, following the serpent's voice, whom his hands have made.
And may the god of divine speech expel from his five thousand that wicked thousand who in the midst of his heavenly song had shouted evil blasphemies.
The god Assur, who had seen the malice of those gods that deserted their allegiance to raise a rebellion, refused to go forth with them.'[73]

We are told that the god then created mankind to fill the room of the fallen spirits, or celestial types. This mythos, like so many more, was continued by the Romish Church, which in the Middle Ages held the doctrine that mankind were created to fill the vacant place of the rebel angels who sinned and were cast out of heaven. The Assyriologist, Talbot, says, 'A friend has supplied me with some striking evidence that the medieval church also held the opinion, though it was never elevated to the rank of an authorized doctrine.'[74] This was a pre-Adamic Fall. Both can be explained by the astronomical allegory, with its series of creations, and in no other way. The serpent that raised the voice of the tempter in the Assyrian, appears as the 'enchanters' in the Egyptian revolt. In establishing the order of creation anew, Ra says to Seb, the god of planetary time, 'Beware of those enchanters whose mouth is subtle, through whom I am enchanted myself.'[75] These are spoken of as the serpents of the old time now superseded by the new. The serpents are simply types of time. Seb is both time and a serpent. Seb is called the father of these serpents, and the sun-god says to him, 'Be the guardian of their [p.112] children, for the hearts of their elders are perverted; through their intelligence they do what they like on the whole earth, through the charms which they have in their bodies.' Taht, also, the moon-god, is called upon to become the guard over those who do evil. Seb is to write in all the abodes of his serpents, saying, 'Beware to take hold of anything,' that is, they are to move in their circles unceasingly without pause, so that time may be correctly kept, and not become perverted like their elders and predecessors[76].

The seven evil spirits of the Akkadian mythos, who attack the moon when it is eclipsed, and who are also identified with, or are led by, the dragon of the deep named Tiamat, are regarded as the allies of the incubus and nightmare which in the Hebrew tradition is personified as Lilith, Egyptian Rerit, the typhonian mother of the seven.

The lunar eclipse is portrayed as the act of the seven spirits of darkness who make war upon the moon. 'Against high heaven they plotted evil and had none to withstand them.' 'When those seven evil spirits rushed upon the face of heaven, and close in front of the moon with fiery weapons advanced, then the noble Sun and Im the warrior side by side stood firm.' The seven ringleaders of the demons are mentioned in the Bundahish[77] where they have been confused with the seven planets; which furnishes an additional reason for suspecting a continuation of the particular chapter by a later hand[78]. The seven planets never were denounced and superseded as demons, and this evidently is a misreading for the seven stars that were degraded. The passage runs thus 'Various new demons arise from the various new sins which the creatures may commit, and are produced for such purposes; who make even those planets* rush on which are in the celestial sphere. Their ringleaders are those seven; the head and tail of Gôkihar and Alushpar provided with a tail, which make ten.' Mushpar or Mushparika is the comet, and the head and tail of Gôkihar point to the severed dragon Rahu and Ketu whose head and tail represented the lunar nodes upon which eclipses depend—as the dragon of eclipse. For Gôkihar is related to the moon and is recognized as being its especial disturber. 'As Gôkihar falls in the celestial sphere from a moonbeam to the earth, the distress of the earth becomes such-like as that of a sheep when a wolf falls on it,' distinctly expresses the nature of a lunar eclipse[79]. Moreover, it is probable that one passage referring to the end of things quotes Gôkihar as the serpent or dragon who is to be consumed in molten metal[80]. These ten represent the seven evil spirits who assault the moon in her period of eclipse, with the addition of the dragon (head and tail) and the comet. Therefore the planetary [p.113] seven are mistaken for the typhonian seven of the Great Bear cycle, who were previously the seven elementaries; or the addition and reapplication has been made by an Agnostic.

* 'Planets rendered doubtfully,' West[81].

Now, the Book of Revelation is mainly Mithraic, as will be sufficiently demonstrated, and these ten are identical with the ten horns of the beast with seven heads which rose up from the pit. 'The ten horns receive power as kings one hour with the beast;'[82] and there is nothing in natural phenomena answering to that like the period of eclipse. It was at the vernal equinox that the young sun-god was annually reborn, and this is the time of the lunar eclipse. Plutarch says, 'There are some that will have the shadow of the earth from which they believe the moon to fall when eclipsed, to be called Typhon.' Also, 'The Egyptians believe and relate that Typhon at one time smote the eye of Horus, and blinded him, indicating by the blinding of him the lunar eclipse. This the sun cures again presently by shining on it, as soon as it hath escaped from the shadow of the earth.'[83] 'And there appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars, and she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven, and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns stood before the woman was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron.'[84] This was the later luni-solar genetrix who brought forth the young sun-god, the Deo Soli, in the heaven of the twelve zodiacal signs, called her crown of twelve stars. She is represented, in the pangs of travail and the shadow of eclipse, as opposed by the whole powers of evil, impersonated by the dragon with seven heads and ten horns. Tiamat (or Typhon) was the dragon with seven heads; the ancient genetrix and her seven elementaries of chaos who made war on the moon, here represented as the mother in labour. Three horns or powers have been added to the seven which the Bundahish enables us to explain. The ten horns, ten powers. or ten kings, 'which receive power as kings one hour with the beast,' denote the seven evil powers of Typhon (the seven who were also outcast constellations in their secondary phase) together with the head and tail of the dragon of eclipse; and Mushpar (provided with a tail) is the comet, who has to be taken charge of by the sun[85] to prevent it from working harm. This identification of Gôkihar with the head and tail of the dragon is further corroborated by the 'great one in the middle of the sky,' being the constellation into which Saturn is said to come. The seven heads of the beast in Revelation were the seven mountains on which the woman sat[86], and the seven mountains were the seven outcast constellations shown to Enoch[87]. Thus, the beast with the ten horns typifies the [p.114] typhonian totality of ten opposing forces that worked with the beast in unity for 'one hour' of eclipse, whilst opposing the rebirth of the young god of light, the deo soli invicti of the Mithraic cult, who as Osiris in the Egyptian was reborn of the moon.

The beast with the ten horns also appears in the vision of Daniel. This follows the beasts of the four quarters that rise up out of the sea—one like a bear, one like a lion, one like a leopard and the fourth corresponding to the crocodile or dragon—the ancient Typhon, whose types were the crocodile, kaf, bear (hippopotamus), and lion—the four beasts of the four quarters. It was the fourth (or fourfold) beast that had the ten horns[88]. The imagery is identical in Daniel, in Revelation, and in the Persian scriptures, and it can only be interpreted by the astronomical allegory of that 'original creation' which gives its name to the Bundahish. In neither case would it profit us to pursue the tag of interpretation which has been appended to the celestial allegory, with some local application looked upon by the agnostics as 'prophecy.'

The outcast seven became the seven devils or demons of various myths. In the oldest of these, however, the seven are not the outcasts the stellar stage, but of the earlier elementary phase which preceded the astronomical. The Karen believes in seven evil demons that roam about seeking his life.

The primary seven are the Maruts and Asuras of India, who were elementaries at first and afterwards became kronotypes, as the gods who were once considered to have been true in Jambudvipa, of whom the Hindu poet speaks, when he says, 'the other gods were seven supreme Ahuras or Lords of the Persians,' as shown by the seven sent adrift like wizened old men, and Indra became the supreme. But the seven deposed Asuras of the Rig-Veda are identical with the Metres used in the Yajurveda which are marked by the title of Asuri[89]. The Gnostics held that there were seven mundane demons which they term the inferior hebdomad; the superior and 'holy hebdomad' being the 'seven stars which they call planets.' 'They declare that these are the seven mundane demons who always oppose and resist the human race, because it was on their account that their father was cast down to this lower world.'[90] The Gnostics not only identify the typhonian seven that were cast out from heaven to become devils on earth, and distinguish them from the planetary seven, they likewise show them by name to have been the seven Elohim of the Hebrews. For the inferior hebdomad consists of Ialdabaoth, Iao, Oreus, Astanphoeus, Sabaoth, Adoneus, and Eloeus, who were born of the mother alone, Jehovah-genetrix, the gnostic Sophia.

The seven good spirits or superior hebdomad are also the 'seven [p.115] white spirits' in the Book of Enoch. The Ancient of Days, or eternal keeper of time, commands these seven to bring before him for judgment the seven which fell down first of all, and were followed by the seventy. This shows us the seven against seven as in the Babylonian legend. In the gnostic remains the superior seven are known as seven powers, intelligences, angels, or heavens of the planetary series. These are also represented by the seven letters or vowel-sounds previously described. According to Marcus seven powers do glorify the word, the IAO of the hebdomad. 'The first heaven pronounces alpha, the next epsilon, the third eta, the fourth—which is midmost of the seven—utters the sound of iota, the fifth omicron, the sixth upsilon, the seventh, which is also fourth from the middle, utters the element omega.'[91] These powers are now said to sound forth the glory of him by whom they were produced.

In the Popul Vuh the revolt and war in heaven, the fall of a race of beings called men, and the deluge are all combined in one great catastrophe[92]. In this version the serpent of the Hebrew Genesis is personated by Thevetat, the dragon-king whose tempting tongue seduced the people of Atlan, and led them to become a wicked race of sorcerers. The war in heaven began, and Atlantis or Atlan was submerged beneath the waters. Here it is noticeable that the tepht (Eg.) is the abyss of source, the place of the Kamite dragon.

In the Hawaiian legends relating to a fall of man and the bringing of death into the world, the gods had created a multitude of spirits—'I Kini Akhua'—who were not made as man was from the red moist soil of earth, but from the spittle of the gods—'i-Kuha-ia'—to be their messengers. A number of these disobeyed and revolted because they were denied the Ava or Kava, a sacrificial offering and sign of worship. The war in heaven followed, and they were conquered by Kane who thrust them down into uttermost darkness. The chief of these was Milu or Kanaloa, ruler of Po, the evil one[93].

A Russian legend relates that when Adam and Eve were first placed in Eden the dog was given to keep guard and watch over them. On no account was he to admit the Evil One. But the Evil One came to the gates of Paradise and tempted the dog with a bit of bread (or a fur tippet in another version), and the dog let in the devil[94]. This may be explained by the lapse of Sothis, the Dog-star, which was overcome by Aharman, the devil of darkness and disorder. But another Russian folk tale affirms that it is owing to the dog that any of God's corn was left growing in the world at all. For Ilya (Elijah) was so angry at the base use to which a woman turned God's corn that he began to destroy all the corn in the earth. At the dog's entreaty, however, Ilya left a few ears for seed. On this account ought mankind to cherish the dog. In another story a woman curses 'God's corn.'[95]

[p.116] The woman was the genetrix of the seven stars for whom there was no recovery or restoration in heaven as there was for the dog who as Sothis or Sut-Anup, the lunar Mercury, was continued as a timekeeper of the Sothic year; and who as Assur did not join in the revolt with the seven. The dog as guard of Eden is illustrated by an old planispherei, in which the Dog-star is figured watching in the tree constellation near to Virgo, and the place of beginning in the Egyptian solstitial year. According to the Kamite legend related by Diodorus, Osiris and Isis lived together in Nysa or Paradise. Here there was a garden wherein the deathless dwelt. Here Osiris discovered the vine and Isis the wheat, and they lived in perfect happiness until Osiris was seized with the desire to drink the water of immortality. Then he went forth in search of it and fell[96]. This region of corn and wine has left some of the imagery at the place of commencement in the Egyptian year. The vine is still there in the decans of Virgo, and Virgo as Isis carries the corn in seven earsi. But an earlier couple than Osiris and Isis was Sut-Typhon or Sevekh and Ta-Urt, who as the two constellations of the seven stars revolving round the tree or pole, were the primeval pair in paradise, she as the bear and he as her dog or dragon.

In an Iroquois myth the great mother lost heaven through being tempted with bear's grease. The first men lived alone, and feared for the extinction of their race. On hearing that a woman dwelt somewhere in the heavens they sent a messenger in search of her. He was borne aloft on the wings of many birds. He waited and watched at the foot of a tree until the woman came forth to draw water from the well. So in the Christian legend the angel Gabriel met the Virgin Mary as she went to the spring. Such meetings at the well are manifold in mythology. As she approached him he offered her the fat of bears, and then seduced her[97]. On seeing her shame the deity thrust her out of heaven and she fell. The tortoise, however, caught her on his back; then the fish of the sea brought clay from the depths to build up an island, and upon this floating island the Iroquois Latona brought forth her twins[98]. In this version the typhonian goddess of the bear is identified by the bear's grease and the tortoise. Her name of Ur (Ta-Urt) also means grease or ointment. In the Parsee ritual the kidneys and their fat are sacredly consecrated to the Bear or to Haptoringa, the seven bears. A myth of the Warau tribe of Guiana teaches that in reply to the supplications of his creatures the Great Spirit created the waters which they were permitted to drink, but were forbidden to bathe in or evil would befall them. This injunction is disregarded by two wilful maidens who are sisters, and who venture into the prohibited pool. In the centre of this water [p.117] there is a pole or tree which must on no account be touched. The two women represent the two divine sisters into which the mother divides as Isis and Nephthys, the beginning and ending ones. The pole in the water stands for the tree in the pool of Persea. The boldest of the two sisters shakes the pole or tree and the spirit of the pool rises and seizes her. The transgression is followed by the threatened woe. The result is the birth of evil in the shape of a serpent-child. The monster when attacked by the brothers of the two sisters always takes refuge in the mother's embrace. In like manner Isis was fabled to protect Typhon against Horus-Tema the avenger[99].

The Hebrew legend of the 'fall' in the third chapter of Genesis is in particular accordance with that of the Persian scriptures; the title of the book being identical with the Bundahish or 'original creation.'

When the primal pair as Mashya and Mashyoi are created, Ahura­Mazda spoke thus:—

'You are homo, you are the ancestry of the world, and you are created perfect in devotion by me. Perform devotedly the duty of the law, think good thoughts, speak good words, do good deeds, and worship no demons.

Both of them first thought this: that one of them should please the other, as he is a man for him , and the first deed done by them was this. And the first words spoken by them were these: that Ahura-Mazda created the water and earth, plants and animals, the stars, moon, and sun, and all prosperity whose origin and effect are from the mani­festations of righteousness.

And afterwards antagonism rushed into their minds, and their minds were thoroughly corrupted, and they exclaimed that the evil spirit created the water and earth, plants and animals, and the other things. That false speech was spoken through the will of the demons, and the evil spirit possessed himself of this first enjoyment from them. Through that false speech they both became wicked, and their souls are in hell until the future existence.

And they had gone thirty days without food (or drinking water), covered with clothing of herbage; and after the thirty days they went forth into the wilderness, came to a white-haired goat, and milked the milk from the udder into their mouths. When they had devoured the milk Mashya said to Mashyoi thus: "My delight was owing to it when I had not devoured the milk, and my delight is more delightful now when it is devoured by my vile body."

That second false speech enhanced the power of the demons, and the taste of the food was taken away by them, so that out of a hundred parts one part (only) remained. Afterwards, in another thirty days and nights, they came to a sheep, fat and white-jawed, and they slaughtered it. And fire was extracted by them out of the wood of the date-plum (the kunar, a thorn-tree), and box-tree, through the guidance of the heavenly angels, since both woods were most productive of [p.118] fire for them; and the fire was stimulated by their mouths; and the first fuel kindled by them was dry grass, kendar, loto, date-palm leaves, and myrtle. And they made a roast sheep. And they dropped three handfuls of the meat into the fire and said, "This is the share of the fire." One piece of the rest they tossed to the sky and said, "This is the share of the angels." A bird, the vulture, advanced and carried some of it away from before them, as a dog ate the first meat.

And first a clothing of skins covered them; afterwards, it is said, woven garments were prepared from a cloth woven in the wilderness. And they dug out a pit in the earth, and iron was obtained by them and beaten out with a stone, and without a forge they beat out a cutting edge from it; and they cut wood with it, and prepared a wooden shelter from the sun. Owing to the gracelessness which they practised, the demons became more oppressive, and they themselves carried on unnatural malice between themselves; they advanced one against the other, and smote and tore their hair and cheeks (or tore their hair bare). Then the demons shouted out of the darkness thus: "You are man; worship the demon, so that your demon of malice may repose." Mashya went forth, and milked a cow's milk, and poured it out towards the northern quarter.* Through that the demons became more powerful, and owing to them they both became so dry-backed that in fifty winters they had no desire for intercourse, and though they had had intercourse they would have had no children.

* See plate in Drummond, Oed. Jud.,i

And on the completion of fifty years, the source of desire arose, first in Mashya and then in Mashyoi, for Mashya said to Mashyoi thus: "When I see thy shame my desires arise." Then Mashyoi spoke thus: "Brother Mashya, when I see thy great desire I also am agitated."

Afterwards it became their mutual wish that the satisfaction of their desires should be accomplished, as they reflected thus: "Our duty, even for those fifty years, was this." From them was born in nine months a pair, male and female: and owing to tenderness for offspring the mother devoured one and the father one. And afterwards, Ahura­Mazda took tenderness for offspring away from them, so that one may nourish a child and the child may remain.'[100]

This legend of the first parents who devoured their offspring also appears in a Pahlavi Rivayat. It needs to be interpreted by the comparative process. In the Avesta[101], Yima speaks of the evil mind having taught men to 'eat flesh in morsels' as a mode of leading them astray. The stanza is admitted to be utterly unintelligible to the translators. But the 'flesh in morsels' is to be read as a form of the forbidden fruit. Blood is liquid flesh, and on account of its typical nature the eating of it was prohibited to the Jews. The text, however, contains a allusion a metaphorical allusion to a certain manner of living in unclean intercourse which is equivalent to devouring the offspring.

[p.119] Epiphanius has bequeathed a few fragments of the Gospel of Eve, a book of the Ophite sect who revered the serpent as the inductor of the primal pair into the mysteries of wisdom. These passages show that the Gospel of Eve, that is of the woman, instead of the seed, her son, contained the allegory of the fall in all its naked nearness to nature.

One quotation relates to the plucking of the fruit.

'Being on a very high mountain, I beheld a man of lofty stature. There was another who had been mutilated. Then I heard a voice as of thunder, and as I drew near, he spake unto me thus: "I am thou; thou art me, and wheresoever thou art, thou am I. I am dispersed throughout all and thou canst gather me wheresoever thou wilt, but in plucking me, thou gatherest thine own self."'[102]

The man mutilated is introduced as emblematic of this self-gathering against which the voice of thunder protested. The tree itself appears in the second passage with its meaning truly interpreted. 'I saw a tree bearing twelve fruits (one) every month, and he said to me, this is the Wood of Life.' This, says Epiphanius, they allegorize into the monthly-produced feminine flowers. That is, they retained the actual meaning of the allegory in its biological aspect. He further states that 'they forbid child-making by miring one with another, for not unto child-making is the deflowered one courted amongst them, but for the gratification of lust.'[103] The suggestion is that they practise the crime which the allegory of Eve's gospel condemns by the intimation, 'In plucking me, thou gatherest thyself.' That is probably a Christian calumny, for, says Ephraem, 'they shamelessly boast of their Gospel of Eve,'[104] and they may have had no reason to be ashamed. The object of the teaching in this instance was moral. likely enough they may have continued the primitive practices of the Shakti Puja and the Yonias in their mysteries, and illustrated the creative chemistry by 'mixing one with another' in a manner totally different to the one supposed. These practices are strange and revolting to us, but originally they were physiological demonstrations and eucharistic rites, intended to teach obedience to human law and bind to fealty by sacred covenants. They knew what the typical serpent was that beguiled the woman, and the true nature of the 'seed,' which is what their malignant opponents never have known[105].

The lament of Lamech, when read by the rabbinical gloss, can likewise be understood. 'Lamech said unto his wives Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice, ye wives, hearken unto my speech; for I have slain a man (שׁיא) to my wounding and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold.'[106]

The word שׁיא (aish) has more than one meaning. It also denotes male-essence, the life. Ash (Eg.) is liquid and the tree of life. The [p.120] Book of Jasher affirms that in those days men did not desire to have children, and they gave the women potions to keep them sterile, which, if not the whole truth, contains a hint of it[107].

The great sin of the fallen angel Kasyade was that he discovered to the children of men the wicked stroke of the embryo in the womb, and how to cause abortion, and the wicked stroke of the spirit by the bite of the serpent[108].

In Philo's version of the allegories contained in the Book of Genesis he says the 'Sacred Writer' is not speaking of any actual river 'Phison,' but of the correction of manners in relation to periodicity[109]. He tells us the name 'being interpreted,' or rendered mystically, means the change in the month, or the monthly change. Phison in Hebrew denotes the flowing, and there is but one form of the flowing or of monthly change in nature which can be connected with the correction of manners, that of the periodic purification and the teacher of purity.

The Code of Gentoo Laws asserts that the earliest men lost their primitive innocence through debauchery and iniquity, and by assuming the licentiousness of eating forbidden things[110]. The Fall is characterised in the Avesta as the departure from purity.

According to the Clementine Gospel, the Christ, in healing the man[111] who was born blind, is represented as saying that his blindness was the result of his parents having disregarded the new moons and Sabbaths, not wilfully, but through ignorance. Parvagami is the Hindu epithet applied to one who cohabits with his wife during the prohibited period. The first day of the new and the full moon are also parvas days, as they were with the Jews; and these had been disregarded.

The title of the Kabbalistic book The Zohar signifies the glory. According to this work, the primal pair were instructed by a voice from on high. So long as they attended to this, they were guided by the wisdom from above, and, like Yima, they wore the glory or garb of celestial light. The supernatural visitant, or Holy One, is also said to abide with man whilst the male principle is properly united with the female principle. Here, as elsewhere, an improper connection is the cause of the fall from paradise, and the loss of the glory.

It is said in Hesia that an apple must not be eaten on New Year's Day, or it will produce an abscess; a mode of memorizing which goes right to the root of the typical Apple-Tree! Other symbolic representations of this kind might be adduced and explained.

'Look not on the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup,' says the proverb, in connection with the strange woman[112]. Various fables, amongst the Greeks, were derived from this origin.

[p.121] Erymanthus, the son of Apollo, was said to have been struck blind because he had looked on Venus when she was bathing. A rainbow, says Legge[113], is regarded in China as the result of an improper connection between the yang and the yin, the light and the dark, the fire and the water. The sun shining during the shower is thus made emblematic of improper intercourse between the male and female. The Chinese say, 'Foo yin yuĕ king lae she keaou hŏ yin yang'—'To have sexual intercourse during the menses will cause disease.'[114] Hence the rainbow was a sign and symbol of keeping the covenant, on account of not keeping it. Because the rainbow typified the improper, therefore impure, intercourse of the yang and the yin, it is a sign of disease, and there is a good and bad rainbow or geni connected with the phenomenon. An old Namaqua told Dr. Hahn that Gaunab, their Evil One, who deceives people, would lead them into the fire of the rainbow, and there they die, and are then called 'devil-dying-people.'[115] The Zulus assert that the rainbow is disease. If it rests on a man, something bad will happen to him[116]. If a man meets the rainbow coming out of the water, they declare it will poison him and cause eruptions. If it catches a man in the pool where it lives and drinks, it will devour him. The Karens of Burma assert that the rainbow is a devourer of men; it devours their ka-la, or spirit. In some myths it is identified with the serpent. The Zulus affirm that it dwells where the snake is. The rainbow in a Maori myth plays the part of the serpent that gnaws at the Tree of Life in others; and in the battle of the tempest and forest it is said to have placed its mouth close to Tane-Mahuta, the father of trees, and continued to assault him till the trunk was snapped in two[117].

Such legends and superstitious beliefs were the result of the rainbow being a symbol of keeping the covenant; one of the nature-types made use of in the primitive object-teaching.

A great sin obscurely stated in the Avesta, partly through the decay of tradition, partly because translators have not penetrated the subject matter, is described as 'Knowingly approaching the hot golden boiling waters as if speaking the truth, whilst lying to Mithra.'[118] In the Gujarat version this is rendered as 'He who gives impure waters of various kinds, as of miscarriage or menstruation, and says it is Pure Water.' This is nearer to the original. Haug takes it to refer to a solemn ordeal used as a test of the truth[119]. But the rite would be founded on a primary meaning, the religious typology having had a natural genesis, as in the case of the symbolic rainbow. Whoever knowingly cohabits with a menstruous woman, says the Avesta[120] shall 'furnish a thousand young cattle and offer the fat of the kidneys [p.122] of all these cattle to the priest for the fire, and he should offer it to the Good Waters,' as the antithesis of the bad waters. The fat of the kidneys was typical of fertility, hence opposed to the infertile act.

Among the Assyrian fragments Smith found an allusion to one who was a lord of the upper region and of the lower region, and who drank turbid waters, and pure waters did not drink, and who is spoken of as that man[121]. Drinking the impure waters had become a metaphorical mode of describing the act of those who did not keep true to the covenant. The story of Atys is likewise linked to the mythos of the Fall. Rhea, or Kubele, was worshipped in two characters. She was adored in Phrygia as Idaia-Mater, the mother of knowledge, and held in her hand the pomegranate sign of her own full-wombed fruitfulness; a type also of the seed within herself. The sin of Atys was said to consist of an undue love for a nymph whose fate depended on a tree, and his passion for this nymph, who was Kubele herself in her other character, was an offence to the Great Mother[122]. The nymph represents the virgin motherhood, and Kubele, the Great Mother. The tree is identical with that on which grew the forbidden fruit, the Tree of Knowledge.

In the Hebrew Genesis, when the man has eaten unlawfully of the Tree of Knowledge he is turned out of the garden, now guarded by the fiery sword lest he put forth his hand and take also of the Tree of Life. This did Atys in the masculine sense. He ate of the Tree of Knowledge by cohabiting with the nymph, and then offered her the fruit of the Tree of Life by unsexing himself. The virgin of the mythos represented the first of the two feminine characters, variously called the Virgin, the Witch, Parika, enchantress, and even the fiend 'Géh,' or the insane woman. This was the Lilith of rabbinical tradition, who was Adam's first wife. The character of Lilith did not originate in any 'weird conception' of poetic imagination. The types of mythology represent facts, not fancies. She was the first wife of two, because the female has the two phases, menstrual and gestational. She was the serpent-woman, because the serpent typified the first form of feminine periodicity. This, in a later stage of thought, was portrayed as negational, evil, and at enmity with the Good Mind of the Persian scriptures. Hence Lilith was the witch-woman, the seducing serpent who strangled souls in her embrace or with the cincture of one single magical hair. She was then personified as the destroyer of infancy, because those who cohabited with the Lilith were non-procreators. She was only the mother of death—Eve being the mother of life—on account of her negational character. Hence it was fabled that Lilith assumed the serpent-form on purpose to enter Paradise, and induce the man, by means of the woman, to eat of the forbidden fruit with which she tempted him. According to the tradition, [p.123] it was in the power of Lilith to destroy children whenever she pleased, but this primarily depended on the human lover accompanying with her, like Atys with the nymph, which was a sin against the genetrix herself in her character as mother of life[123].

Stealing the flower was one form of the myth analogous to eating the prohibited fruit. And strange as it may appear, the little blue Forget-me-not growing in the water retains, in its typical name, the ancient appeal for purity of life in relation to the mystical waters. This is shown by the part assigned to it as the Luck-flower in folklore. This and the flower of the water-flag, the purple Iris, once uttered their mystical message to men in Britain, as the blue lotus did in Egypt.

One of the Mabinogi relates that there was, in ancient times, an island in the centre of a lake near Brecknock, with a door in the rock only found open on May-day. The place was invisible to all who stood on the margin of the lake, and no bird would fly over its waters. A secret passage led to the island and its enchanted garden, full of fruits and flowers. This concealed Eden was the dwelling-place of the 'fair, or fairy family,' called the Tylwyth-Teg, who presented their visitors with the choicest growths of the garden. All was given freely to those who pleased them, but nothing must be taken away[124].

One day some sacrilegious person stole a flower and put it into his pocket. As soon as he landed from the island he lost his senses and the flower vanished. The door of the secret passage closed never to open again. Paradise was once more lost through stealing the forbidden thing, in this legend a flower[125].

In the Rig-Veda[126] there is a cow too sacred to be milked, that must remain intact, untouched. This was the red cow of the rabbis, the mystery of which was only known to Moses and Akiba.* The crime of 'killing the cow,' for which the Brahmans say there is no pardon, originates in the same simple mystery, and the cow is not killed for food today because of its typical significance. The cow imaged the genetrix and the catamists were killers of the cow.

* The Akiba here acknowledged to be one of the most favoured keepers of secret tradition was the successor of Gamaliel the teacher of Paul. He was one of the authorities for the interpretation of the law in accordance with secret wisdom, being one of the 'Tanaim' or teachers of tradition.

The Mithra-lying-men in the Avesta are those who make the cow (or the genetrix) go the wrong way. She is called the 'Good Cow,' the 'Well-Created Cow,' whom 'Ahura-Mazda wishes to be active or furnished with fodder for the furtherance of the world.'[127] But the followers of Aeshma, the demon of lust, do not supply this fodder to the creative cow. What the maker of the cow said (that is made) pure they unmake by means of their impurities. 'This Manthra of [p.124] increase Ahura-Mazda created in agreement with Asha for the cow, and milk for those enjoying according to holy commands.' Whilst, 'unto these has Mazda announced evil to them who slay the soul of the cow with friendly speech (or, by maintaining that good will come of slaying the cow), to whom morsels are dearer than purity.'[128] 'Horrible are the dwellings,' says the Avesta, 'the abodes not blessed with offspring in which dwell the Mithra-liars, the wicked who openly slay the pure. In a horrible manner goes the cow walking on hoofs the wrong way, who has crawled into the narrow fastnesses of the Mithra-lying men.' 'Yatu' is the sin of uncleanness in relation to the menstrual period, which is dimly alluded to in the Parsee description of it as 'the infliction of a wound that cannot be healed in five days,'[129] as the other might be. It was a figurative form of murder, a passing of the seed through the fire of Moloch, a sin against the sun, the light, the hom-tree, or the glorious Haetumat.

According to Horapollo[130] the figure of Khem or Ptah with the 'penis manu compressa' denotes restraint and continence in a man. The whip sign is accepted by Egyptologists as emblematic of stimulating ($). In the portrait of Khem, the phallic god, the flagellum is suspended above with one hand reaching up towards it. Stephanius of Byzantium describes the deity of Panopolis as being imaged by a great statue, with the Priapus exposed, holding in the right hand the flagellum directed towards the moon. He says they call it the figure of Pan[131]. Herodotus identifies the Egyptian Pan as the goat-god, 'who did violence to his mother.'[132] Now if we take the whip as the sign of stimulating the moon, then we can read the figure of Ptah-Sekari when portrayed with the penis manu comnpressa and with one hand reaching toward the suspended whip. Sekar means to be silent, inactive, inert, assenting to quiescence; and the figure of Ptah-Sekari as the restrainer of the male whilst pointing to the moon evidently refers to continence during the lunar phase of feminine periodicity, and the god figured as the goat who did violence to his mother was the type of uncleanness denounced as typhonian. But, if this be the true reading for Ptah, it is possible the image of Khem conveyed the same lesson, and was a warning against doing violence to the mother.

In Egypt the portrait of the soul was painted of a blue colour. The mummy image called the shabti or double, the type of a second life, was made of red clay, which denoted the flesh, and glazed with a vitreous varnish that was blue, the colour sacred to the soul. This is the complexion of the deceased who has spiritualized. The soul is likewise painted blue in the act of leaving its red body behind. This colour is the symbol of human immortality. Blue is also the robe of wisdom whose bands are purple lace[133]. The Targum of Palestine [p.125] says, after the fall, 'the eyes of both were enlightened, and they knew that they were naked, divested of the purple robe in which they had been created. And they saw the sight of their shame.'[134] Losing the purple robe then was a losing of the soul by the act which occasioned the fall. This was equivalent to offering the seed to Moloch. The act was one of non-procreation described as making naked in the Book of Genesis[135]. After the pair had found themselves to be naked in their fallen condition, it is said, 'Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them.' The skin is a type of clothing, and this is the language of the Ritual. In the chapter of 'Not letting the body flow away as the water,' at the place of dissolution for the wicked, the spirit who has just been re-embodied, says to the god Amen-generator, 'Thou makest to me a skin.' 'I make to thee a skin, my soul.'[136] That is the synonym of being embodied, or re-embodied. Also it is said to Amen-Ra, on his entering the Tuaut, or feminine receptacle, 'Thou hast joined a new skin, thy mother has been embraced;' and 'Each god has assumed thy skin; without shape is their type compared to thy form. Thou art the majesty.'[137] Here the clothing with skin may be compared with the symbolical nature of the nakedness.

According to the second recension of the Targum Jerushalmi, God is said to have clothed the pair with the slough of the serpent; he made them a garment of honour from the serpent's skin[138]. This typified periodic renewal; and it was the means of renewal which they had lost by the sin that caused their nakedness. On account of its sloughing, the serpent was also a symbol of healing. Another rabbinical tradition records the belief that the nails of the human body are the sole remains of Adam's coat or clothing which he wore previous to the 'Fall.' This, too, shows the Fall is related to the loss of virility and manhood of which the nail is a type. In Sanskrit, for example, the nail, unguis, is named kamankasa, the same as the male member. Blue, as the colour of soul or virile force, is the origin of the blue ribbon being the symbol of an Order. The first Order of the blue ribbon was instituted by 'Wisdom,' who recovered mankind from the fall in which they lost the blue robe or other form of covering. 'Her bands are blue (purple) lace.'[139] This Order of the blue ribbon was an ancient institution with the Jews. 'Speak unto the children of Israel, and bid them that they make fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put upon the fringe of the borders a riband of blue, that ye may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of Javeh, and do them, and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye used to go a-whoring.'[140] Blue, the symbolic colour of the soul or spirit in Egypt, is identical with the French 'Cordon Bleu,' [p.126] the order of the Holy Spirit, which was at one time the highest order in France. It is exceedingly likely that the English Blue Ribbon of the Garter had the same typical origin, and that the story told of Joan, Countess of Salisbury, has picked up a dropped fragment of the ancient meaning. Many of our later legends have to be referred back for an explanation. In its latest form, the blue ribbon is still the sign of temperance or of total abstinence. It would be idle and vain for us to pursue subjects like the present unless we are prepared to probe and penetrate to the root of the matter. It is only at the root that we can demonstrate the unity of origin, and it demands the most plodding penetration to reach the root. Also, it should be borne in mind that the 'Natural Genesis' is not a book written for fools.

A re-adaptation or reapplication of the same original types to express the later, the extended, and lastly the more abstract ideas constitutes the history of mythology. The fall of the untrue timekeepers in heaven entered a kind of doctrinal phase relating to the human fall, in the teachings of primitive physiology. It has been pointed out how the so-called human creation reflects the various phases of the mythical. In the Bundahish[141], for instance, we are told that in the reign of Azi-Dahak, 'a young woman was admitted to a demon and a young man was admitted to a Farika (witch), and on seeing them, they had intercourse.' From this intercourse arose the race of black-skins, the Dasyus of India. The Azi-Dahak in the Avesta is the most powerful Druj, brought forth by the dark mind for the destruction of purity in the corporeal world[142], the serpent that seeks to make the seven Kareshvares empty of men[143]. Also, 'on the nature of the Ape and the Bear, they say that Yima, when reason had departed from him (or when his glory forsook him), for fear of the demons, took a demoness as wife, and gave Yimak, who was his sister, to a demon as wife; and from them originated the tailed ape and bear, and other species of degeneracy.' The ape and bear are two of the typhonian and elementary types in whose likeness certain totemic tribes were created, and in later times considered the accursed of the earth. The Yima and Yimak, or brother and sister of the Avesta and other Persian forms of the myth are one with the Mashya and Mashyoi of the Bundahish. These likewise lost the 'Glory' when they fell, as it is related in the account of their creation and fall.

'On the nature of men, it says in Revelation that Gayomard in passing away, gave forth seed; that seed was thoroughly purified by the motion of the light of the Sun and Neryosang (the angel who is said to be Ahura-Mazda's usual messenger to mankind) kept charge of two portions, and Spendarmad (the female archangel who has special [p.127] charge of the earth) received one portion. And in forty years, with the shape of a one-stemmed Rivas-plant (this plant is allied to the rhubarb; the shoots of it supply an acid juice used by the Persians for acidulating drinks and preserves), and the fifteen years of its fifteen leaves, Mashya and Mashyoi grew up from the earth in such a manner that their arms rested on their shoulders, and one joined to the other; they were connected together and both alike. And the waists of both of them were brought close and so connected together that it was not clear which is the male and which the female, and which is the one whose living soul (nismô) of Ahura-Mazda is not away (or which of the two represented the creative power or soul). And both of them changed from the shape of a plant into the shape of man (or the human shape), and the breath (nismô) went spiritually into them, which is the soul (ruban), and now, moreover, in that similitude a tree had grown up whose fruit was ten varieties of man.'[144]

In Zad-Sparam's version of this we are told that 'Spendarmad received the gold (seed, compare hiranya) of the dead Gayomard, and it was forty years in the earth. At the end of forty years, in the manner of a Rivas-plant Mashya and Mashyoi came up, and one joined to the other, were of like stature and mutually adapted; and its middle, on which a "glory" came, through their mutual connection (or like stature) was such that it was not clear which is the male and which the female. And afterwards they changed franz the shape of a plant into the shape of a man, and the "glory" went spiritually into them.'[145]

This denotes the creation of races of men with souls in them; that followed the seven born in the likeness of the elementaries, which were unintelligent. With the personification in a human image, the 'glory' entered creation, and distinguished the one sex from the other at puberty. The glory, then, is a form of what we term the soul. That is certain, because in the Avesta this glory is the essential for the resurrection of the dead at the end of the world; it is that which makes the dead to rise again. But we have to distinguish which type of the soul, as there were several. Here it is the soul that entered the human being at puberty, when the tree or stem is divided—just as it was split in two by Tiri.

In Egyptian, this 'glory' is the peh-peh, pehti, or pekti, generally rendered the double force. In relation to pubescence it is the duplicative force, which could be reckoned female as well as male, because both sexes are divided and doubled at puberty.

The majesty, the glory, and the power are early forms of the soul, the principle of a future life, the second of the Two Truths, or the doubled force. The masculine soul begins with the gold of Gayomard, the seminal seed, the mere seed of the animal or sap of the tree.

At this stage were created the men of the ape, bear, bull, and [p.128] dog types of the first time, and of the primordial imagery set in the planisphere. Hence the monkey-men, dog-men, bear-men, bull-men who are still extant among the outcast, that is the oldest of the decaying races of the world, like the hairy Ainus and others. In Central America the monkeys are held to have once been a human race. A Potowatomi myth shows how the Mannikins of the first creation, which is so frequently and variously depicted as a failure, only attained the status of monkeys. In South-Eastern Africa the apes are yet recognised as the preliminary people, the first form of men and women.

The Mbocobis of South America have a tradition of a great forest conflagration, in which mankind were consumed, all but one man and woman, who climbed a tree for safety, but in doing so were caught and singed by the flames, so that they were changed into apes, which contains matter of the same mythos as Yima's connection with the ape and the bear. The Zulu Kaffirs relate how the Amafene people were an idle race, who would not work but tried to live on the labour of others, saying, 'We shall live, although we do not dig, if we eat the food of those who cultivate the soil.' They were transformed into baboons, (fene (Zulu), a baboon, ben (Eg.), the great ape), and now they carry their hoes behind them, turned into tails[146].

The ape is a primeval type. It is one of four in the compound goddess of the Great Bear; and was continued as a type of Shu (Ma-Shu), who is the Kamite original of both Yima and Mashya. The statement that when Yima lost his reason he took a demoness to wife and begat the ape, is but a mode of representing him as becoming like the ape in practices connected with the fall of man. The bear and ape were first as totemic types, and this is a return to those types as a means of accounting for the fall of Yima and his sister, who had followed the typhonian powers of evil and been tempted to their fall.

The moral of the myth in relation to the apes may be read in the Jewish or Moslem legend related by Weil, of the men who would go a-fishing on the Sabbath day. A certain Jewish city stood beside a river that was full of fish which kept out of sight during the six working days and on the seventh came freely into view. This tempted the Jews to go a-fishing, whereupon they were transformed into apes as a punishment. They became ape-men through non-observance of taboo, like those who were so named in earlier times, because their actions were ape-like[147].

A most significant illustration of the motive for extracting, filing, or breaking the teeth is recorded by Bastian. This was given by the Penongs of Burma, who declared they broke their front teeth in order [p.129] that they might not resemble apes[148]. We know the practice was related to young-man-making and the rites of puberty when the males were sworn in as procreators and instructed in the ways of a manly life. One of the teachings was intended to distinguish the human being from the ape, who made no distinction of season in his sexual relationship. This sign of the broken tooth was intended to show that they were not as the apes, and therefore did not resemble or look like that undiscriminating animal. Such a mode of manifesting anxiety to distinguish themselves from the beast is indescribably pathetic.

The story of Yima's fall through begetting or becoming an ape is evidently related to Ma-Shu in the Kamite mythos, who is now claimed to be the original of Mashya. Shu was a lion-god of the solstice, who transformed into the ape kafi, and became a kehkeh. The word denotes an ape, also a crazy man, an obstinate mad fool. There is an allusion to this transformation of the lion-god in the Magic Papyrus, where it is said, 'Thou didst take the form of a monkey (kafi) and afterwards of a crazy man (kehkeh).' He is called the 'Ape of Seven Cubits,' and is said to dwell in a 'Shrine of Seven cubits,' from which he is transferred to a 'Shrine of Eight cubits.'[149]

As Kafi or Kepheus, Shu was the son of Kûlsh (Khepsh). His planetary type is Mars, and this planet in the Bundahish is assigned to the Bear; the shrine of seven cubits may therefore represent the heptanomis of the first time which was followed by the octonary. Moreover, two types of the old genetrix, the ape and lioness, were continued in Shu and his sister, Tefnut, who, so far, were the ape and the bear in person. And where Shu became the crazy man or ape, Yima is said to lose his reason or the glory and to marry a demoness and to beget apes, bears, and other typhonian progeny. Kafi-Shu or Ma-Shu is the ape in Egypt. Yima is identified with the ape in the Bundahish. Nor is the ape-type missing from the Hebrew mythos. For the rabbis assert that Adam was created with a tail in the likeness of an orang-utan, which was afterwards excised. As they were not evolutionists this shows the survival of the Kamite typology[150].

According to the Parsee tradition, Yima had maintained immortality in the world, so long as he lived the life of purity. His purity is symbolised by the çufra, a fan or winnower[151], which is identical with the khu (or khekh), fan of Horus and the Christ, 'whose fan is in his hand.' This was a sign of spirit or the masculine seed, in contradistinction to the aut emblem of matter.

Immortality was continuity, which was first maintained by pure and proper procreation. Hence the typical Hom Tree, called the healing and undefiled, the renewer of the world and producer of [p.130] immortality, was a type of the masculine source. When Yima fell, it was in consequence of the ape-like impurity which was destructive to the soul, conceived as the seminal essence. Then the glory departed, and he was figuratively said to fall and lose his immortality.

According to the natural genesis of the doctrine of salvation, the first mode of saving or winning souls was by insuring their propagation, which was looked upon as rescuing them from the clutch of the destroying powers of darkness that were opposed to life and light; and the teacher of propagation or human cultivation in purity was the saviour, who recovered mankind from 'the fall,' whether called wisdom or the Christ. Hence it is said, 'The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he that winneth souls is wise.'[152]

The glory lost by Yima at the fall was fabled to be worn upon his face, during the golden age, in his heaven of the four corners, or the circle which he made. It was by this glory that he maintained immortality for the world; the mighty glory peculiar to the Kavis or Iranian chiefs of old, before the times of Zoroaster. It was said to have been created by Ahura-Mazda when he produced all that was employed propagating glory good, bright, shining and in life. The glory is precisely thy same in the symbolical language of Hosea. 'As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird, from the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception. Ephraim is planted in a pleasing place, but Ephraim shall bring forth his children to the murderer. Give them, O Lord, a miscarrying womb and dry breasts!'[153]

The heroes of antiquity or of mythology performed their great deeds by aid of this glory or majesty which was the soul of their manhood. Hence the hair, as of Samson, was an interchangeable type of potency. In several letters of the popes addressed to Kings of England, 'Your Glory' is used as an expression synonymous with 'Your Majesty.'[154] When the primitive or archaic men had discovered the soul in the begetting source, they made much of it, and invested it with a halo of glory. At first it was possessed in common with the animals, and next it was held to persist in death and to be the means of rising again. It was the preserving and saving source; the glory, and the majesty, and the power of the male creator found out on the physical plane below, and then exalted to the heavens above, and personified there as the begetter of souls, and the re-begetter in death. In the Rig-Veda, the deceased is spoken of as putting on his tann, a body, or outward appearance in which he becomes glorified[155]. In Egypt the tahn had various representatives. In one form it was resin with which the corpse was preserved or tanned, as we say in making the skin more lasting as leather. The 'glory' was another type of preservation in death, and it is yet represented by the 'extreme unction' applied to the dying.

The 'oil of the eye' or 'oil of the face' of Horus was one of these [p.131] types. And here the African glory of grease attained a curious consummation in Egyptian mythology. In the fierce heat of inner Africa fat or grease is a preservative for the skin, and it was continued as a type of preservation in the oil of the face of Horus, the anointed son of the father. The Christ or karast (the embalmed and anointed mummy) is the greased, and the glory of the anointed was represented as the grease or oil upon his face. In fact, the divinity of Horus consisted in the preservation of the sacred oil that was always visibly shining on his face. Thus oil or grease, as a preservative and means of saving, became typical of the anointed one who was the saviour. We read in the texts 'I have anointed thy head (that of the god) with the oil of the face of Horus;' 'I have filled the eye of Horus with oil.' If the oil be destroyed, the glory, the divinity, vanishes. This glory of the god, represented by oil or ןמש was the glory worn on his face by Yima.

Certain of the eastern Christians are accustomed to eat the typical ointment. Tahn is a Turkish name of an oily paste which is still used by these Christians as food, to be eaten during Lent. This corresponds to the tahn or ointment of Horus, which was used in the Egyptian rite of glorifying the god. Also the eye of Horus, or the tahn, is a constellation placed in the planispherei on the colure of the vernal equinox at the place of resurrection.

From the unity or rather the bifurcation of yin and yang in the Chinese shape of the mythos, the female and male of source, the moisture and heat, the water and the breath, operated on each other and produced an intelligent being, or in