[p.267]

THE NATURAL GENESIS

SECTION 12

[p.281] Also in Assyrian field measures the unit was sixty yards, and the soss contained 360 yards.

The Akkadians divided the moon at first into three parts of ten days each. These were subdivided into six parts of five days each, three of which were assigned to the masculine solar triad and three to the goddess in her triple form. This division was in accordance with the hexagram or sixfold heaven. The hexad in space was composed of the four corners and the upper and lower halves of heaven. Six is the number that divides the universe in equal parts. The distribution of all time, of all things above the earth and under the earth, is done by the hexad of the zodiac[32], or of space in six directions.

The number 6, says Proclus, is allied to the soul. 'Rectilinear motion demonstrates through the hexad its alliance to the psychical peculiarity.'[33] It was so primarily because the soul of breath as ses (Eg.) is synonymous with the number 6. For instance, the cube is a figure of six. This, as Plutarch says, was called Neptune[34]; that is nef in Egyptian. Nef is the sailor, and the word denotes breath. Net as god, was the breather under water, the chief solar divinity in the sixfold or cubical heaven, like Anu the sesr whose number was that of the 1= 6.

Again, the vau is the sixth letter in the Hebrew alphabet, and has the value of number 6. The sign represents a nail, and is like it in the Phoenician shape. The earliest form of the nail, however, was human, a type of virile force which is number 6 as the power of Bala. The Phoenician vau passed into Greek as the letter baf, the Latin f. Baf, paf or pabo, in Egyptian is the name of breath, the soul of breath. Beb denotes exhalation or breath. The syllabic fâ (ff) is found written with six snakes, the numeral value of vau. The breather of life, breath, or soul, who was female at first, is identified under this type-name both as the mother and father, because both originated in pubescence.

Breath is synonymous with conception. The Arabic legends relate that Mary conceived by the breath of Gabriel, the angel of annunciation[35]. So the Mexican traditions declare that the god Tonacatecotle begot Quetzalcoatl by means of his breath alone (breath is the earliest form of spirit) when he sent his ambassador to the virgin of Tulla[36].

The relation of the genetrix to the Two Truths of the water and breath expressed by the numbers 5 and 6 may be seen by the two numerical ornaments of the goddess Maya, who wears the flower of five petals in each ear, and a sixfold phallic symbol round her facei. She is [p.282] designated the queen of 6, of the six circles called shat-chakras, or the window of life and passage of the soul; and in that place is the flower of the back of one thousand leaves in which she dwells[37].

The six, or hexad, was held by Pythagoras to be the perfect sacred number; it was called Venus, the mother[38]. One type of this number was the sistrum, or seshsh, which was a figure of six, with its three wires and their six ends. The sesksh represented motion and generation in relation to the sixth day of the period. Sesh means motion, to open, unclose, free passage, and the seshsh was sometimes ornamented with the mirror of reproduction in place of the wires. In Egyptian ses, or sas, is the name of breath and breathing. Ses-mut is the breathing, i.e., breeding-mother or brood-mare. Ses is likewise the name of number 6, a period of six days, a date, a time, an epoch of the sixth day, a six-sided block or cube. The word also signifies to reach land or solid earth, to curdle and accumulate, to breathe again, respire, embellish, and be beautiful, i.e., fit for sexual intercourse after the passage of the waters or the period of five days. This is shown by ses for clothing, with the sign of linen hung up to dry, and by seskh for perfect liberty, in being free to go. The number 5, then, is synonymous with the flow, the mystical inundation, and number 6 is identical with cessation in nature, as it is by name.

The Chinese have the six breaths, which are said to produce all things in silence. The one of heaven, as water, is also juxtaposed with the 'Six of Earth.' They say 'Heaven's One,' the unity of essence, produced water. This was perfected by the 'six of earth.'[39] The primordial water was the celestial Nun, the element out of which creation came, synonymous with number 5, or one hand. The number six of earth is identical with the Egyptian ses for six, and ses to make land or earth, curdle, solidify, reach land, and respire.

According to the Hebrew legend, as related by Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel, the souls of men were created during the six days of the beginning but independently of bodies[40]. The sixth being the day of breath and embodying, the legend is thus related to the Chinese six breaths called the six of earth.

Ziz in Assyrian signifies as you were before, restored and flourishing. It also has the sense of to cease, stop, stand still, and become fixed. Zis-ta is ceasing; zuzu, a fixture, in agreement with the Egyptian ses to curdle, accumulate, reach land. This applies to the waters and the cessation of the five days' flow, the sixth day being the last of the one period and the first of the other; and no other phenomenal fact can be found in nature that will furnish such an identity for number 6 and cessation.

In the Persian scriptures the end or cessation of the feminine flow is so closely connected with the sixth day and the number 6, that in one [p.283] text we find the phrase of 'the six months' period' for the six-day period of monthly occurrence. 'The clothing which is to be wasted for the six months' period is such as is declared in the Avesta.'[41] If it be woven, 'they should wash it out six times with bulls urine; they should scour it six times with earth; they should wash it six times with water; they should air it six months at the window of the house[42];' the numbers being in accordance with the monthly period reckoned as six days.

Ceasing, measuring, founding, resting, restoring, enjoying, knowing, judging, exchanging, or having intercourse, are all related to the sixth day, and are all found under the one type-name.

On the sixth day the waters cease, and

This was primarily the sixth day of creation, the day of rest which preceded the Sabbath, or the seventh day. Thus

When the waters subsided, the ground was attained for breathing again, that is, for creating or procreating. Hence

In the hieroglyphics, feminine pubescence is denoted by the ankh-tie, which signifies to put on linen or clothes, first worn at puberty. The earliest idea of clothing in Africa originated with the feminine period, and

Clothing is connected with the number 6 under this and other names because it was identical with the period. Knowledge, wisdom, [p.284] law, liberty, morality, all originated in relation to the six days of creation. Thus

In Egypt the assize or judgment was presided over by the goddess of the Two Truths.

Sas in Sanskrit means to train, instruct, and teach; and sishta, from the same root, signifies to be tamed and trained, disciplined, orderly, well-regulated, law-abiding, correct in manners, virtuous, educated, learned, wise. Every element of civilization, culture, rule, and refinement are to be found under this one word, and the initial point of all, as language shows, was the observance of the feminine period. This first taught mankind distinction of season, by which he separated himself from the monkeys and other menstruating beasts.

Zazelo, in Zulu Kaffir, is the name for conscience. Sesh (Eg.), applied to the mystical period, means free to go, to open, be open, free passage. Sisk, Sanskrit, is to distinguish and individualize; the sitesh, Hebrew, is the distinguished individual who became the noble, the free man; sos means to guide, lead, and rule; hence sos in Coptic for a shepherd.

The natural genesis of the name of the sister is probably connected at root with this origin of sis for the breath, pudency, the second phase, in which the female became a sister in the tribe. Sest (Eg.) is the she, the she that goes, determined by the going and pregnant mare. The suster in English is a concubine, called a Bed-suster by Robert of Gloucester[43], and suse is the she.

The primitive idea of good, delight, and pleasure can be traced by name to the period of puberty.

Hence:—

This led to the phallic celebration and periodic ceremony of the sixth day, which culminated finally in a festival of the seventh day called the Sabbath. As we have seen, the sabbatic festival ordained by the Kamite god Til was to be celebrated on the sixth day. This was the date of a universal festival related to the new moon. Indeed, a primitive idea of sin or crime can still be traced to an offence against the new moon. It is extant in Swabia, where to this day the country folk consider it sinful to spin or sew in the moonlight. In various lands and legends the moon is looked up to as an avenger of crimes, and the guilty were said to go to the moon for punishment. This can only be interpreted by the typology when we know what the moon represented in relation to the reckoning [p.285] of time. The festival of the sixth day of the new moon was in commemoration of the feminine period, a lunar Sabbath of the sixth day. It was on this day that Osiris re-entered the moon as Lord of the sixth day's festival. It is said of him, 'Thy beauties are in the midst of the Sacred Eye, in that name which is thine, Lord of the Sixth day's festival!'[44] The sacred eye was lunar, a type of reproduction, the mirror of the sun, which opened on the sixth day after being closed or eclipsed during five days. As lord of the sixth day's festival, and bull of the mother, Osiris is invoked to revisit the genetrix who reproduces him as her child, to 'spread the water of his soul and the bread of his life, that the gods may live and men also.' He is called upon to come to 'kha,' and re-beget himself in the feminine Adytum[45]. This festival, then, was a Sabbath of the sixth day, celebrated once every moon, the new moon of the monthly Sabbath, and the institute was sacred to the period that was to be kept in purity, so that a sin against nature in this respect was a crime committed against the new moon, the celestial image of renewal, by which the taboo-time was reckoned[46]. Besides which, there is the man in the moon, held up for ever as the warning example of the sinner who profaned the Sabbath, violated taboo, worked by moonlight (as Typhon hunted by moonlight), looked on his mother-in-law, violated his elder sister, or in some way or other sinned against the moon, like the ape (aan, Eg.), he who accompanied with the mother during the period of eclipse, or like Heitsi-Eibib, who committed incest on his mother when her friends were out of sight. Among the Sandwich islanders, the taboo at one time was so strictly kept, that any one who made a noise on a day of taboo (sacred to the gods) was condemned to death.

The rabbis assert that Adam was born on the sixth day of creation, exactly at six o'clock in the evening of Friday, which is identical with the rebirth of Osiris on the sixth day of new moon. So essentially Kamite was this lunar date of creation that one of the names of Egypt itself is 'the land of the sixth day of the moon.'[47] And as the land of Egypt was born and continued to be reborn of the flood, this also shows the connection with ses for number 6, and ses, to curdle, accumulate, make land, and breathe again after the inundation. Here it is Egypt itself that is named as the child of the six days' creation. The sixth day of the month was also called the day of being conducted in the Boat of the Sun[48]; one form of which was the lunar Ark, the ma-at of the god moon[49]. In the Samaritan Pentateuch[50], the work of creation is completed on the sixth day instead of the seventh. This is in keeping with the original festival of the sixth day of the moon.

[p.286] On the sixth day of the new moon, the Druidic priests went six together in number to gather the sacred branch of mistletoe, a figure of the repa (Eg.), or the renewal typified by the shoot. The Hindus perform a religious rite on the sixth day of the moon. Also, on the sixth of Jyaistha, the first half moon, women who are desirous of bearing lovely children walk in the woods and eat certain vegetables they carry a fan in their hands[51], the Kamite neft, a symbol of breath or breeding. The annunciation in the Coptic calendar is celebrated on the sixth day of Moharrem (December 29, 1878), and on that day 'dry food should be used.'[52]

The sixth day remains in the Roman calendar identified as the day of transfiguration, August the 6th being memorized. The Russians have a saying applied to transfiguration day: 'The Saviour is coming; get your gloves ready!' The glove (skin), as already shown, is a type of virile power and pubescence; and the sixth day was that of Soter in the lunar reckoning. In the Coptic calendar another festival of the ascension is marked by the morning rising of the Pleiades, the typical six stars[53].

The number 6 is associated with the Jewish purification. This is illustrated at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, where there were 'set six water-pots of stone after the manner of the purifying of the Jews.' There was but one purification to which the number is primarily related, and here the mythos is turned into miracle by the Christ transforming the water into wine—at the marriage feast. Such is one result of mystery being published as agnostic history! The Japanese have six days of the month consecrated to religious services, called the roku-sai. Roku is number 6, and it signifies to be well, good, a record and reckoning. It is identical with the Egyptian rekhlu to reckon, keep account, know, rule, wash, purify, make white, be white, a pure spirit. Number 6 is

The same root supplies a type-name for that which is dried, bright, and shining, as:

in accordance with the sixth day. The leche is the healer, whence leche-craft for the art of healing.

Moreover, the logos or Word of either sex—or, as it was at last personified, of both in one—is represented by number 6, and the six [p.287] days' creation. Loghea is the name of the Burmese logos, or the doctrine of its incarnation, as well as of number 6. Loguo was the Carib logos or first man, he who created the earth, and then returned again to heaven after the six days' creation. The gnostic Horus was represented by the number 6. Six characters were assigned to him, as:

Horus, the Christ.
Stauros, the Cross.
Lytrotes, the Redeemer.
Carpistes, the Emancipator.
Horothetes, the Boundary fixer.
Metagoges, the One who brings back.

The Gnostics also identified the Christ of the gospels with the number 6 by the six letters in the name Ιησυς[54]. This number of the logos, as the feminine holy spirit, was typified by the six Pleiades or doves. These are portrayed in the Christian iconography, in the act of inspiring the soul into the infant Christ[55]. They are also the six mothers of the six-headed child Kârtikéya. The rising of the six Pleiades was the signal for rekindling the sacred fire, because of the relation of number 6 to the period of procreation. Also breath and number 6 are identical, both in the sign of the Pleiades and the Scorpion. The dove is a bird of breath or spirit, and the Pleiades are six doves named from peleia, the dove. The scorpion is a figure of 6, as well as the sign of Serk, to breathe, the genus Scorpio being determined by the six eyes. These two signs of breath and number 6 are vis-â-vis in the zodiac, where each succeeds the passage of the waters. Thus when the sun entered the sign of Scorpio in the month of Hathor, and the body of Osiris was shut up in the ark of the six lower signs by the evil Typhon, it was the time at which the Pleiades arose with their sixfold symbol of breath above, and of the regeneration of Osiris in the ark, or cow, of the moon, which they rose to accompany in the sign of the Bull.

This will explain the significance of the inscription 'Deo Bemilucio VI,' which occurs on the statue of an unknown god found in Burgundy. In Italian pictures of the Annunciation, Gabriel the angel presents a six-leaved lily to the virgin as the number of the logos. Six denoted the 'Sacred Flower,' as Orpheus calls Bacchus. Horus the child is called 'the soul rising out of the lotus-flower.'[56] So the six-leaved lotus springs from the navel of Vishnu, as the flower of breath and of reproduction out of the water. The water-iris was a very sacred flower of 6 with our British Druids. In Sanskrit bal means to breathe, to hoard up seed. Bala denotes virile force and power of articulation; force considered as a sixth organ of action; power personified in relation to sex, whence Bala-Rama. And it is on this ground that sex and the number 6 are synonymous.

[p.288] The Maori tamatea, or four sacred days, began on the sixth day of the moon's age, and lasted until the ninth inclusive. These are connected with taboo. Tama means the first, tea is white; and the white days were those which followed the six days of the purifying period, which was the origin of a festival being named the white day, as in our own White Sunday.

So the Babylonian holy-day or Sabbath was called the white day; the one that fell on the fifth day of the week or nineteenth of the month being designated the 'White Day of Cula,' she who represented the chaos of commencement that preceded creation, and therefore, in the mystical phase, the five days of the feminine flow, the five negative days marked once a month, just as they were memorized annually in the five nahsi of Egypt[57]. The Maori tamatea were the four white or clean days following the six. The Maori word for being set free from taboo after the period is 'pure,' and the rite of removing taboo is the pure ceremony. The word denotes the stoppage, arrest, detaining, and plugging up. Here the four festival days that were spread over four weeks in other countries were celebrated all together monthly as a lunar Sabbath; the seventh-day Sabbath being solar, as the day of the sun, our Sunday.

In his Creation of the World, Philo[58] speaks of its having been completed according to the perfect nature of the number 6. Applying this number mystically he also says, 'When that reason which is holy, in accordance with the number seven, has entered the soul, the number six is then arrested, and all the mortal things which that number makes.'[59] 'Wine is given with seventy, and the secret with seventy,' is a Kabbalist saying[60]. When the seventh day had been adopted for the Sabbath as the sixth extended, we have the legend of the Hebrew river Sambation. This river was fabled to flow during six days of the week so rapidly that it carried stones in its current It was a river of unrest, of turbulence, and opposing or Typhonian force. But on the seventh day it ceased to flow, and became a picture of peace. When Rabbi Akiba was asked by the emperor how he recognised the Sabbath day, he replied, 'The river Sambation proves it, and the necromancer proves it.' The sabbatic river stopped running, and the diviner by the monthly course could not divine on that day[61].

This, the earliest teller of time, was made use of in foretelling and divination in the Jewish mysteries. It had been their time-teller when they dwelt typically in the desert, where the manna also ceased on the seventh day. It is coupled with the river Sambation, in a Jewish prayer which says, 'On the Sabbath the manna did not fall; the necromancers were not answered on this day. Bear in mind that on this day the mystical river resteth.'[62] The manna in the desert is [p.289] otherwise 'a portion,'[63] because related to time and period. The manna represented the reckoning of time by the moon, and also by the catamenial or menstrual flow. This was the earliest men, moon, and almanac. During six days the manna was gathered, or the period was reckoned, and on the seventh day there was none to gather. Moreover, the manna ceased when the masculine cult became dominant at the time of the circumcision in Gilgal[64].

Henceforth they ate of corn, or lived by seed, instead of the feminine manna, the angels' food; the bread of the Aberim or Cabiri[65]. The Two Truths were typified by the manna and the corn, or by the pot of manna and the phallic rod of Aaron, which were carried in the Ark of Testimony as a witness to the simple nature of the beginnings. The Hebrew word ןמ (mn), should be compared with the Egyptian men, which goes beyond all abstract meanings. Men is the memorial; the period of illness; a liquid measure; the number 10; menâ personified is the mystical wet-nurse that nourishes the embryo and child during ten moons, or 10 Í 28 days; and who became the Syrian lunar goddess Meni. The human moon, that came down to women monthly, was the first in fact, but it was expressed in those terms of external phenomena by which symbolism originated. The mother as measurer of time was the author of those periods that were of profoundest interest to man.

There is a rabbinical tradition that Adam and Eve fell from Eden on a Friday, that is on the sixth day of the week, or rather that Friday was the day on which they ate of the forbidden fruit[66]. And so upon the eve of the Sabbath, a little before sunset, i.e., six o'clock, the Jewish women prepare a lamp or candle with seven cotton wicks, in keeping with the seven days of the week. This is considered to be the task of atonement assigned to the sex, because of the sin committed by their mother Eve, who extinguished the light of the world by not keeping sacred the time of taboo[67]. Professor Sayce has expressed the opinion that the Sabbath had an Assyrian or Akkadian origin. The fifth of the Creation Tablets asserts that the creator appointed the seventh day to be kept sacred as the Sabbath. The learned professor thinks this tablet clearly affirms that the Sabbath was coeval with creation[68]. But which Sabbath, and who was the creator? And what was the creation? As we have seen, the Kamite creator Til appointed the sixth day for the festival, and the Sabbath of Gula was the memorial of a fifth day, following the second Sabbath of the month.

According to Dion Cassius[69], the week was reputed to have been [p.290] invented by the Egyptians, and copied from them by other nations. And if there had been any invention in the matter it might be ascribed to these most ancient chronologers. Not that the week was invented in the modern sense of reckoning days by sevens until they made a year. It was attained by a much longer route. The name of Egypt or Kepti is identical with that of the number 7 as kepti, hepti, or sebti. The first known formation of the country was the heptanomis of the seven nomes. Egypt or Kepti is also dual as well as sevenfold, and thus reflects the first division by north and south of the celestial heptanomis, the heaven of the seven stars and the star of the seven; of Kep in the north, and Sothis in the south, the genetrix who in the dual character is Kepti, later Sebti, i.e., Sothis. We know the goddess of the seven stars, Kep or Typhon, was set in heaven as mother of the revolutions. We know that Sothis was her manifestor in the south, the star of the beginning of the year, and Ursa Major in the north. These were like the two hands of the clock, the Bear being the pointer-hand, and Sothis the hour-hand; unless we consider the two Bears were the two hands—Pythagoras called them the two hands of the genetrix[70]—and that Sothis as the dog proclaimed the hour.

It was a result of digital reckoning that the number 7 should be synonymous with pointing by means of the forefinger on the right hand, which made the sign and figure of seven in gesture language. Kep-ti (Eg.) for seven is equivalent to two on the second hand. Thus the seven stars pointed with the forefinger of the right hand to any other figures marked on the face of the horologe of time in the circle of the year, and these seven stars were identified by the Chinese, amongst others, as the pointer hand. The star Sothis was the pointer-dog of the seven stars; seven being synonymous with to point, the pointer is a figure of seven. It is so in the hieroglyphic Hept (Kepti), a conical pile or heap. Also in the pyramid which contains the triangle and the square of the four quarters in one figure of seven, and has the name of seven as sebti or Sothis. Kepti and Sebti then are two forms of the seven as two pointers in the primordial heptanomis of the seven constellations. Thus the two hands or constellations of Kep, the goddess of the seven stars, are Kepti, the later Sebti and Suti, the dual Sut-Typhon which the number, the names, and types identify with the Great Bear in the north, and Sothis in the south, or the genetrix who gave birth to the seven as her stellar progeny, her elementaries who had acquired souls and become intelligencers as kronotypes. The revolution of the sphere was measured and marked by seven great constellations turning round in Kepti or the Egypt of the heavens. The heptanomis was represented under various figures of seven, the seven mountains, seven caves (a primitive form of the celestial houses), seven patalas, seven trees, seven zootypes, a seven­headed serpent, or seven companions in an ark—which ark in one shape was the enceinte genetrix. The end of this year would be the [p.291] festival of the seven—seven as constellations, divisions, stars—of Typhon, whose stars are seven, and of Sothis, whose name is number seven was the number of the heaven above and the land below—for the seven-portioned earth in all countries did but copy the one original figure above—seven was the number of the pointers, and of the year, and as seven and Sabbath are identical (seb-ti, Eg.) it follows that the first Sabbath belonged by name to the cycle of the year established by the seven of the Bear, of Sothis, and the seven constellations, and did not originate in our week of seven days. The earliest Sabbath and celebration of stellar time would be the festival of a year, the festival of the goddess Seven, the seven constellations, the star of the seven. In Egyptian the festival is the uak, English wake. Uak means to be idle or resting. The word also denotes a week. Thus the festival and week are identical, only the week is not at first our week of seven days, nor need the festival be held weekly any more than the wake. It is the name and sign of a limit in various languages. The Irish wake is held at the end of a lifetime, and in the Yarra (Aust.) dialect the wykit are the dead or ended. Wake in Japanese is to divide and portion off. The wack in English is the full portion. In other languages it is a limit of numbers; wake in Xhosa Kaffir being a thousand; wak in Chippewa, a word of denomination for hundreds. Our English wakes were festivals of timekeeping, whether considered as vigils (or evyns*) or feast-days.

* 'Evens of paisse, or wayght, equilibrium.'—Huloet[71]. The even, or evyn, was a memorial celebration of a twofold time—just as the eventide is the twilight, the equal time—especially the two times of the equinoxes, with which our two great annual fairs of Easter and Michaelmas were connected. Even denotes that which is equal, just, and fair; hence the name of the 'fair' coincides with that of the evyn festival fair denoting that which is equal, just, and true.

The wake still kept by the 'waits' at Christmas is annual. The great Egyptian uak or wake, termed the feast of uaka, was held on the seventeenth and eighteenth of the first month of the year. This, therefore, was an annual celebration, the time of leisure and rest in Egypt, on account of the inundation, the Sabbath of the year. In the old calendar the period was marked by the seven days of great heat, called the bawahir by the Arabs, during which no clothes were to be washed; and little or no work was done[72]. Thus the seven days are an annual Sabbath. At the end of the seven days the Great Tanta fair begins. The time is coincident with the heliacal rising of Sothis in the fixed year.

Evidence of a seven days' rest or Sabbath once a year is preserved in other ways. For instance, the Danes have a superstition that from Yule Day to New Year's Day, that is, during seven days of the sacred season, nothing that runs round is to be put in motion[73].

The Book of Esdras shows that the festival of seven days was [p.292] continued to mark time on the great scale. At the next coming of the aeonian messiah, called Jesus, within four hundred years, there is to be, as in the former judgments, a seven days' Sabbath, or a silence of seven days[74].

Possibly we can now understand and explain the seven days' festival of the Hawaiians who had no week of seven days, and who did not observe a weekly Sabbath. This was their week of creation[75]. They held that the creation commenced on the twenty-sixth of the month, on the day of Kane. The seventh day, that of ku, being the first kapu or Sabbath-day. These seven days were kept monthly by all generations of Hawaiians from the beginning, the first and the last of the seven being the two sacred days. Here the division of the seven into five and two is in accordance with the Egyptian seb = 5 and ti = 2 for the number 7. Moreover, the seven days and the mode of memorizing can be paralleled in the Kamite reckonings in relation to the year of 360 days. The Egyptian movable year ends on the 30th of Mesore (Misreh), September 5th, 1878, and recommences on the first of Thoth (Taht), September 10th.

At the end and re-beginning of their year the Egyptians celebrated the renewal on two particular days, called the mesiu (from mes, rebirth), on the night of the last day of the old year, and at the evening meal of the first day of the new year. Between these two dates the five black and negative days, called the birthdays of the gods, were intercalated, and the five correspond to the Hawaiian five of creation, from the twenty-sixth to the thirtieth of the month inclusive. The two sacred days that were kept as kapu days answer to the two mesiu as the beginning and end of the total seven. These represented the two times or 'seb-ti,' which is 5 + 2, and the name of the number seven. This origin of the seven days as the 5 + 2 of sebti, we take it, will account for one of the Babylonian Sabbaths, which is a fifth day instead of a seventh. The seventh, fourteenth, nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth of the moon were solemnized as Sabbaths, or days of rest, upon which certain works were forbidden. The nineteenth was the fifth-day Sabbath, called the white day of Gula, a holy-day or dies candidus[76]. Such a reckoning would suffice for registering the five-day period that only occurs in nature once a month, and also serve as a memorial of the Metonic cycle of nineteen years, the period of the eclipses. Moreover five Sabbaths, in a month of thirty days, would register the Sabbath or festival of the sixth day of the moon, which was earlier than the solar Sabbath. No primitive reckoning was entirely superseded by the more perfect; one way or another all was continued in the total combination, and amongst the secrets of the gnosis.

The festival week or uak, then, was annual before there was a [p.293] Sabbath celebrated on each seventh day; and the seven days' feast of the year preceded the consecration of each seventh day. Our Whit-Sunday, which is the seventh from the full moon of Easter, still memorizes the annual seven-day festival, reckoned by seven Sabbath-days, as the white day of the seven. The bi-annual celebration followed, with the division of the year in two halves, and the Jews preserve a connecting link between the annual uak of seven days and the monthly reckoning. Their two great yearly festivals, instituted to enact the entrance into the ark or tabernacle made of green boughs and the coming forth at the time of the Passover or transit, are six-monthly Sabbaths which last for seven days each. The Hawaiian 'creation' is identified by the seven days with the primordial cycle of stellar time, although on entering the lunar phase of reckoning the Sabbath was celebrated monthly instead of half-yearly or yearly. In the lunar stage the Sabbath became a fortnightly celebration, at new and full moon, with the Egyptians as with the Jews. And finally, under the solar regime, each seventh day was kept sacred as a Sabbath. But the stellar, lunar, and solar celebrations, the annual, six-monthly, monthly, fortnightly, and weekly Sabbaths are all alike founded on the original seven kronotypes, and their progenitor Kep, of the seven stars, who, in her second or dual character, is Kepti whence Sebti, Suti, and Hepti for the number 7 and for the star (Sothis) of the seven. Hept is the ark, and the seven stars were the ark in heaven. Hept is peace, plenty, and rest; and the seven with Sothis brought the peace and plenty once a year.

And this is the origin of the name Saturday, which is not merely the day of Setr or Saturn, but the day of the seven, the seven kronotypes of the constellations, and the seven stars of the inferior first hebdomad that preceded the planetary seven; the day of sevening and keeping the covenant of the seventh day. It is the pre-planetary hebdomad that explains the septenary arrangements found in countries and among races who have not the planetary week of seven days, which is comparatively late.

It has been shown that the sun and fire represent the principle of life, the fire that vivifies. Thus when the woman menstruated she was shut up where she could look on neither during her period. When the Aht girls attain puberty, they are placed in a kind of prison completely surrounded by mats to shut out every ray of sunlight and glimpse of fire. There they remain for several days; water is given to them during this period, but no food. The longer the girls remain in this cheerless retirement the greater the honour supposed to be reflected on their parents, who give feasts to near friends as a part of the ceremonial. But if the girl is known to have seen either fire or sun during this initiatory ordeal she is considered to be disgraced for life[77].

[p.294] The lesson to be conveyed at first by this custom was the keeping holy of the primeval Sabbath; and thus sedulously and painfully was the lesson rehearsed to make the impression permanent for life. So sacred was the keeping of the law implied by the numbers 6 and 7, that our common English expression of being 'all at sixes and sevens, as the old woman left her house,' or the mixing of these numbers indistinguishably, still denotes a condition of complete confusion and general demoralization in which there is neither law, order, nor organization. Religious rites and ceremonies were instituted as memorial teachings, and these were impressed so indelibly that the stamp remains and the customs survive when they are no longer understood. In Chittagong (India) the morality of the Kyoungtha is said to be very low indeed, and yet the newly married husband and wife are on no account allowed to sleep together until seven days after their marriage[78]. This is a good example of the teaching concerning the period, and cohabiting on the seventh day.

Instead of 'God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it,' Philo reads 'God blessed the manners which are formed in accordance with the seventh and divine light.'[79] 'The previous six days were not taken into account, because the manners which are not holy are not counted.'[80]*

* It was a Jewish maxim that there was no Sabbath in Holy Things. This institution belonged to things held to be unholy, and was intended for their correction.

'The case is thus,' says Philo, 'when the light of virtue, which is brilliant and verily divine, rises up, then the generation of the contrary nature is checked.'[81] 'Light' which had been sixth, is characterized by the same writer in his essay on the creation as the seventh thing made. This does not belong to the literal interpretation of the genesis, but it does to the symbolical signification of the seventh day in relation to the female period; as the day of reproducing the light. Jewish women were threatened with death in childbed for three particular transgressions: one, for not separating the first cake of dough; two, for not being careful of separation at the time of menstruation, and three for not lighting the lamp consisting of the seven cotton-wicks on the Sabbath day[82]. This reading puts a new meaning into the jibe of Apion, who, according to Josephus, asserted that the Jewish Sabbath was connected with the buboes in the groin and that they called the seventh day, on which they rested, the Sabbath because the buboes were named sabbatosis by the Egyptians. The statement goes deeper than a mere question of words, as between sabbo and Sabbath, and had another application than that of the supposed six days' journey out of Egypt with the resting on the seventh day. Either Josephus did not penetrate or choose to understand the allusion made by Apion, or he has not replied to his covert allusion[83].

[p.295] The boils and diseases that were recognized as the result of 'dark rites' and the non-observance of feminine periodicity, are analogous to the fall of man as the consequence of eating the forbidden fruit that grew on the tree of knowledge. The tree of knowledge was a supreme type of time. In Chinese mythology it is the immortal peach-tree of the genetrix. In one Chinese legend we learn that Woo-te, who appears to have eaten of the forbidden fruit, became the builder of a lofty terrace of mud that was intended to reach up to heaven. By aid of this structure the great mother who produced the fruit of the immortal peach-tree descended to earth during seven days and seven nights to 'discuss the principles of reason' with Woo-te[84]. The tower intended to reach to heaven being of mud was a primitive form of the pyramid with the seven steps or mound of seven stages, and the number 7 identifies it with the time of the seven days and nights, or the establishment of the Sabbath of the sexes. The tree in the Egyptian planispherei and on a Babylonian cylinder (where it is accompanied by the serpent and primeval pair)[85] has seven branches. The number 7 is a fundamental factor in the Assyrian asherah-tree, or grove as it is rendered in the Old Testament; and not inappropriately, for it is a manifold tree of time and number. The asherah represented the feminine tree of life, the Egyptian ash or ashr. This is shown by the male emblems being offered to it in the monuments, and by the clothing of it in female attire when the women of Israel wove hangings and covered it with their broidered garments of divers colours[86]. Clothing having been put on primarily at puberty, the feminine raiment draped upon the asherah was an intimation of pubescence made at first by those who had attained the time of opening and were of age for the performance of a primitive religious rite that consecrated them for sexual intercourse. Doubtless the custom lapsed into common harlotry in the modern sense, but that does not explain the original significance.

The numbers chiefly associated with the asherah are seven, ten, and thirteen; and as asher signifies number 10, so the asherah-tree is a feminine figure of ten. Thirteen is the number of female periods in the year of thirteen months of twenty-eight days. Ten of these periods, lunar months, or mystical moons, constituted the time of gestation. The seven appear in the ornaments or tied-up groups which look like a conventionalized form of the seven heads or hoods of the naga serpent. This suggestion is enforced by the presence of the serpent with the tree of seven branches. Thus the asherah is a compound tree of time and number. The tree of the earliest heaven and first hebdomad, the tree of seven branches and of the serpent [p.296] with seven heads, the tree of the Two Truths of menstruation and gestation. Lastly, it is the tree of Venus or Belit. In some representations the seven branches appear as six, together with the yoni for the seventh—an oval figure with three branches on each side[87]. One of these, found on a cylinder of green jasper, shows two sacred figures plucking the fruit of the tree on the feast-day of the new moon; that is, on the evening of the sixth day, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, the time at which the fruit of the tree of life and knowledge might legally be plucked and eaten.

In another representation we see the bird-headed figures, the types of the masculine soul, making their offering to the asherah-tree with the seed-cone in one hand and the basket or scrotum in the other. On one side of the sculpture there are six stars for the six planets of which Venus was the seventh. In the Chaldean dedication of the days of the week to the seven deities these were reckoned, like those of the Chinese, as (1) Saturn; (2) the sun; (3) the moon; (4) Mars; (5) Mercury; (6) Jupiter; and (7) Venus. Thus the asherah with its sevenfold ornaments stands for Venus, whose planet was the seventh in the Chaldean series; the seventh day was the day of Venus and the phallic festival, here symbolized by the male emblems being presented to the female. The six stars show the conjunction of the sixth with the seventh on the evening of the sixth day, when the festival began. This combination of the sixth with the seventh is likewise figured by the priest who points to the asherah with the extended thumb and forefinger of his right hand, and thus makes the sign of number 6 and number 7 in gesture language[88]. At six o'clock in the evening, the seventh day, that of Venus, began.

The day of the Great Mother was held sacred, and the typical offerings were made to her emblem because the female nature had been the primary teacher of periodicity; and the Sabbath was founded in a religious sanction being conferred upon the proper intercourse of the sexes; the seventh day being sacred in relation to the feminine period and the six days of taboo. The day at last assigned to Saturn, as seventh in the planetary hebdomad, is our seventh day, the day of Sut or Sebti (seb = 5, ti = 2), of Saturn and Seter, or Saturday. This was named as the seventh day, the day of the seven and of seven-ing, before it was reckoned the first day of the seven. Seti or sati (Eg.) signifies conjunction, congress of the sexes, coitus, generation and impregnation; and so the original seventh day became satanic and Sut-Typhonian in later Egypt, when it was superseded by the day of the sun.

In the Russian Tale of Ivan of the Ashes, when the hero goes to kill the serpent of evil, he tries several maces by tossing them up in the air to test their force in falling; and only the one which remains aloft [p.297] for six days and falls with all its force upon the seventh is mighty enough to kill the snake[89]. This was the solar hero of the seventh day who, as the Greek Apollo, was the destroyer of Python, also styled the lizard-killer, Σαυροχτων[90].

In the gospels the 'son of man,' the god in the image of Anthropos, is proclaimed to be the natural lord of the Sabbath[91]. He also claims the right to eat of the corn on that day which was the proper day for so doing, according to the gnosis that has been reported in the gospels by non-initiated men. The sacredness of the Sunday, the day of the sun-god, who represented the civilizer of men, can only be comprehended by aid of the most primitive factors in that civilization.

An ancient Indian tradition says the sacred aswatha-tree is only to be touched on a Sunday or the Sabbath, the seventh day. Then it is lucky as the dwelling-place of Lakshmi, the goddess of good luck. During the other six days poverty and misfortune abide in it. On the seventh day it was the tree of plenty, and therefore of fertility[92]. Hept, the Egyptian name for no. 7, also means good luck, or good hap. Thus the seven-branched tree of life was a type of the Sabbath, and the eating of it or touching it was right on the seventh day and wrong during six days; and that which is considered by the moderns to have been a system of impurity originated with the desire for cleanliness, physical pureness or health.

The true Sabbath of the Jews was a feast—luxus sabbatartius[93]. In the Hebrew scriptures it is a celebration paralleled in the margin with rest[94]; the same word shabbath having both significations. It is fundamentally the Sabbath of a cessation and disappearing, but the ceasing and disappearance first memorialized were not those of human labour. The Egyptian seba denotes solace, drink, and refreshment, as well as honour and worship. In Jewish invocations, the Sabbath is addressed as a bride for whom the worshipper is waiting with the longing of a lover. 'Number 7' says Philo[95], 'is the festival day of all the earth, time birthday of the world. I know not whether any one would be able to celebrate the number 7 in adequate terms. It is superior to every other form of expression. It is primarily divisible into the numbers one and six;' like the Chinese one as the Water of Heaven and the six of breath; or the six of cessation and the one of the re-beginning.

A picture of Cupid and Psyche, reproduced by Lundy[96], is called by him a Christian representation 'found on the bottom of a Tazza or drinking cup made use of in the Agape and the Eucharistic celebration of the divine love to the soul of man.'[97] The inscription on this [p.298] broken glass cup runs, 'Anima dulcis, fruamur nos sine bile. Zeses,' rendered 'Sweet soul, let us have delight without vexation. Live thou!' Cupid has laid aside his quiver, and Psyche her mirror, to celebrate the Sabbath or seventh day festival. The number 7 is signified by seven large spots or disks depicted on the wings of Psyche. In certain of the mysteries and feasts of the agape the coupling followed the draining of the cup, as it did in the witches' Sabbath; and in the present instance the motto at the bottom of the cup was an appropriate reminder. 'From this union of divine love and the human soul,' says Bryant[98], 'the ancients dated the institution of marriage.' The origin of the celebration, however, has to be sought in the totemic mysteries. It has to be shown how the masculine spirit or procreative force that descended on the boy with its natural transformation was celebrated at the time of puberty. In Egyptian he becomes the sheru or adult youth; in Hebrew, the shiloh—for the origin of the typical shiloh can be traced to this genesis.

The adult youth then became a lord of the six days' lunar festival (or the seventh solar), like Osiris when he entered the moon. This descent of the pubescent spirit by which the boy was transformed into the begetter was continued by the Jews as a mystery of their Sabbath.

The Talmud teaches that a second soul enters the bodies of men every Friday evening, and inhabits them until the end of the Sabbath, when it departs. The evidence of the presence of this supernumerary soul consists in an increase of appetite. Fish (particularly the skate) was commanded to be eaten. 'We are instructed to eat of the choicest fish on the Sabbath, especially at the third meal.'[99] This was as a stimulant to the sexual appetite. 'The mystery of voluptuousness on the Sabbath' was said to be intended for the exhilaration of the added soul[100]. Fish on Friday, the modern day of Venus, or Mary, was not limited to the Jews, and it is still sacred to Frigga's day.

Layard relates that the Druses of Lebanon hold secret vespers in which they offer worship to the sexual parts of the female, and pay their devotions every Friday night; the day sacred to Venus; the day on which the Muslim is instructed by the code of Mohammed to go to the mosque and also to perform the conjugal duty[101].

It was an ancient practice for the Sultans of Turkey to regularly buy a fresh slave or concubine for every Friday night; and it is reported that the present Sultan Abd-el-Hamid conforms to that custom[102]. The descent or influx of the supernumerary soul on the evening of the sixth day, and the mystery of voluptuousness, prove that the Hebrew Sabbath was a continuation of the festival of puberty [p.299] and its celebration of the descent of the soul, called the ruach. The Jewish Sabbath is the true link between the sixth and seventh day. It begins at sunset, equinoctial time, on the evening of the sixth day, at six o'clock; the evening and the morning being the first day. This leaves room for the superstitions connected with our sixth day, Friday, such as that of the sailor against going to sea on Friday, and also against going a-courting on that day. In Lancashire if an unlucky fellow is caught with his lady-love on Friday he is sometimes followed home with rough music[103]; the time of taboo not being ended. The whole seven days were at length assigned to the woman, as her time of separation, by the Jews, the North American Indians, and other races; but this was not the primary reckoning, according to which the intercourse began again on the evening of the sixth day.

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