[p.292]

THE NATURAL GENESIS

SECTION 6

[p.302] Mr. B. S. Parker's pamphlet, on the Aborigines of Australia, contains a curious statement respecting the 'Myndie.' He says—

'In the latter end of the year 1840 the Aborigines of all the neighbouring districts were in a fearful state of excitement owing to the capture and imprisonment of some hundreds of their number. Two died on the spot and several sickly people, eventually, from fright. Some of the natives told me confidentially that destruction was coming upon the white population, even those who were friendly; as it was known that secret incantations were being practised with this object. The effects were graphically described as producing dreadful sores, dysentery, blindness, and death. The Myndie was to come! At the time I did not much regard the prediction, but afterwards ascertaining that the scars of the small-pox were termed "lillipook Myndie" (the scales of the Myndie), and the plague itself which was to come in the dust, as Monola Myndie, the dust of the Myndie, I was able to identify the threatened agent as small-pox, about the ravages of which there are traditions among the natives of the interior. It is thought to be in the power of the large serpent Myndie to send forth this plague in answer to the appeal of those who seek the destruction of a foe (that is the sorcerers and charmers). The natives of Melbourne say the Myndie is a great snake, very long, thick and powerful, under the dominion of Pund-jel; and when commanded by him, Myndie will destroy black people young or old. He can do nothing of himself, and must first receive orders from Pund-jel. He knows all tribes and they all know him, and when a tribe is very wicked, or when a tribe fails to overtake and kill wild black fellows, then Pund-jel makes Myndie give them diseases or kill them. Myndie isn't quite snake-like, having a large head, and when he hisses or ejects poison his tongue appears, which has three points. He lives in a country called Lill-go-ner, to the N.W. of Melbourne, near a mountain named Bu-ker-bun-nel, and he drinks from only one creek named Neel-cun-nun. The ground round about this spot is very hard—no rain can penetrate it; and it is covered with hard substances, small and white like hail. Death and disease are given to any blacks who venture near this ground. Myndie can extend or contract his dimensions when ordered by Pund-jel; he can hold on to a branch like a ring-tail opossum, and stretch his body across a great forest so as to reach any tribe. Myndie has several little creatures of his own kind, which he sends out to carry diseases and affliction among those tribes who have not acted well in war or peace; these creatures are troublesome, but not so dreaded as a visit from Myndie himself—from whom no one can escape. All plagues are caused by Myndie or his little ones; and when he is known to be in any place the blacks run for their lives—they don't stop to take their weapons, or bags, or rugs—not even to bury their dead, but set the bush on fire and run as fast as they can. Some, as they run, are afflicted by Myndie; and becoming sick lie down and die; some try to rise, but fall down again, but those who can run swiftly and escape are always quite well and never suffer from sickness.'[35]

In the inner African languages, blackness is mindi in Kiniamwezi; maundi in Gindo; muindo in Diwala; moindo in Isuwu; and in Egyptian menat is death. The Hurons likewise held that disease and death were caused by a monstrous serpent that lived under the earth[36]. The Chinese have a sort of serpent known as the Min.

According to the present derivation from the Kamite origins the Myndie serpent of the Australian Blacks is identical with the Mehnti serpent of the Egyptian Ritual, the name of which signifies 'the snake from what is in the Abyss,' the meh of the north. Death, darkness, disease, were in the abyss which lay between the [p.303] West and East, and we learn that all the evils that have ever afflicted the blacks of the southern and south-eastern tribes of Australia have come, they believe, from the north north-west. The Myndie was dominated by the power of the god Pund-jel, and in the Ritual the mehnti draws the boat of the sun, to which its tail is securely attached.

Disease being typified by the serpent of evil, any power over disease was described as influence over the serpent. The healer, doctor, medicine-man, magician or Manitou was a charmer of the serpent. 'Who is the Manitu?' is asked in an Algonquin chant, and the reply is, 'life that goes with the serpent;' that was the conqueror who could charm the serpent into subjection; magic being the earliest medicine and the first healing, a mental operation supplemented by fetish images, and lastly by drugs. The medicine-man, as the Manitou, is the charmer of the serpent of evil or disease. The root of this name is widespread. Mana, Maori, is magic influence and power. In Irish, manadh is magic, incantation; mantra, Vedic for magic incantation; moniti, Lithuanian, incantations; manthra, Pahlavi, magic incantation against disease. It denotes the primary form of mind. The Blacks of Australia have their Manitou in Min-nie Brum-brum, who is able to arrest and pull back the Myndie with a wave of his hand or a movement of his finger; but none know his secret, no one can arrest Myndie but Min-nie Brum-brum. A family named Min-nie Brum-brum was the only one that ever set foot on Myndie's territory. Mr. Thomas says, 'A sorcerer, celebrated as a man possessing great power, a very old black, and a member of the same tribe as Min-nie Brum-brum, was a prisoner in the Melbourne gaol many years ago for having committed some depredations on the flocks of the settlers. The news of his arrest was carried to tribes far and near even to 200 miles off. Telegraph fires were lighted. Messengers from seven tribes were sent to my blacks, who importuned me to set free the black stranger. Finding I would not they urged me and all the settlers to leave the district and go to Van Dieman's Land or Sydney. Some hundreds of blacks were in Melbourne when the old man was imprisoned, and they all fled in terror fearing he would move Pund-jel to let Myndie loose, who they believed would spare no one—and, what is more, they did not return until the prisoner was set free, some months after.'[37]

In Egypt, Taht was the divine doctor, the god of physicians, and his medicine is magic. The Stele of Metternich informs us that Taht has magical words to bewitch, poison and prevent it front doing serious injury, and by his words he bewitched the Apap serpent and all the evil enemies that for ever fight against Ra. The same power is assigned to Horus the healer or saviour of souls, when he is depicted in the act of [p.304] holding the serpent, scorpion, and other typhonian types of evil, helpless and harmless through the power of his charming.*

* 'And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and Scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy.'[38]

Here we can further see how age itself became identified with sorcery, because the aged and the wise were synonymous. In Egyptian, aak the aged man, and aak the mage or magician are identical. The aged were the wiseacres, wizards, and witches. Hence the Hottentot tribes used to leave their old people behind to die the 'devil's death' and be devoured by vultures, because being aged they were all the greater sorcerers, and the awe-stricken tribe were so fearful of witchcraft, that friends dared not keep their own relations alive[39]. So, in Europe, old women were naturally considered to be witches, and were persecuted accordingly. The Amazulus generally regard the grandfathers as the dead[40]; and in Egyptian the akh is the dead, the manes as well as the aged one, or the mage. These three are one by name. Moreover, the Akhekh becomes our hag for the snake and the old witch, Russian hexe, Polish yega, the sorceress or fiend. The Egyptian form of the word as hekau means magic and to charm. The same word signifies a net, snares, and the serpent is the ensnarer as the magnetiser and lier-in-wait. It is likewise the name for intoxicating drinks in which the enchanter lurked. Hekau is beer, containing the alcoholic spirits, and in Chinese, hak is a name for distilling spirits. This also was a mode of magic. Hekau for magic is the name of thought. So Hugi, according to the Prose Edda is thought in person. The 'serpent-charmer' who was primally the serpent itself; made so early an appeal to thought by means of its magic power, that thought, mind, and magic, were named after it, and this will help to explain why the serpent became a type of wisdom, knowledge, occult influence, the wise hag, Yaga, or Khekh, synonymous with the wise woman or wise man. Though not particularly profound, yet it was the first thinker or magician to the primitive sense, on account of its deluding and eluding subtlety. The Hottentots still believe that a particular snake, the Dassies-Adder, can detect the criminal among hundreds of people and kill him unerringly, without turning its avenging ire on the innocent[41]. Amongst the types of the 'elementaries' perceived as active forces of the material universe, the serpent naturally rose to supremacy as very crest of crests on account of its subtle craft and glozing guile. The hippopotamus and crocodile were wider-mouthed, but manifested no such commanding cunning as the serpent with its secret sorcery. Hence, in Egypt, it became the one universal symbol of the gods. This beginning with the darkness, symbolised as the deluding and [p.305] devouring reptile, will likewise account for the common notion of primitive races, that spirits or divinities are demons in the bad sense, and naturally evil, like the bad spirit of the eclipse, who mischievously intercepts the light intended to be shed on the earth and its inhabitants[42]. This is particularly shown by the North Australian Aborigines, who will not go near to human graves by night, but when compelled to pass them they always carry a fire-stick to keep off the spirit of darkness[43]. The beginning was not with the spirits of the dead, but with the inimical in external nature, and this mould continued to shape their later thought. The first monster was the darkness solidified (so to say) as that which checked, Egyptian khekht, Amoy kek; repelled, repulsed, and turned back. The type of this was that which did the same, whether as the serpent, crocodile, alligator, scorpion, or other turner-back. The darkness as the enemy of light was naturally represented by the greatest enemy of man. In the recurring phenomena of the lunar eclipses, the dragon of the dark took form in space as the visible opponent of the lunar light. In Egyptian, lunar eclipses are named tennu or taniut. Tan signifies to rise up in revolt and to cut off. The tan of the eclipse rose up in revolt and cut off the light. The tan is a well-known typical monster in the Hebrew writings. One form of it is the dragon of the deep. Tan is an Egyptian name for the water-worm (tanmu) the destroyer in the waters, and in Hebrew the tannin may be the crocodile, a sea-snake, the monster of the mythos or the dragon of eclipse. The Hebrew Leviathan is the mythical monster of the waters, the den-dayan of the Book of Enoch. This name, like that of the khekh, is worldwide, as is the type. In Arabic the tannin is the serpent. The taniwha of the Maori are huge mythical monsters, of reptile or dragon-shape, who seize and swallow people in deep waters. They lurk in the bend of the river, like the Egyptian dragon in the bend of the great void. That was where the starry procession dipped down below the horizon. The tan is inner African also as the danh serpent of Dahome, the great divinity of the pantheon. This serpent or snake takes two forms, as the serpent of earth, the Danh-Gbwe, and the serpent of heaven, in strict keeping with the dual serpent and the Twin Truths of Egypt. The serpent of earth is first. The serpent of heaven is simply called the Danh. This is the rainbow. Danh makes the popo beads, and showers wealth on men. He is represented as a horned snake made of clay and coiled up in a calabash[44].

[p.306] We shall find the serpent and rainbow are equivalents elsewhere.

The scorpion is named yatan in Mampa.

Ndengei is a Fijian serpent-deity, who is portrayed with a serpent's head and body, and who dwells in darkness where he does nothing but crouch in his cave and devour his food. Our own thunder when personified is a form of the tan. The German Satan was at one time represented by the red-bearded thunder. Sut-Typhon was of a red complexion, and this one of the two proper hues was retained in the beard of thunder and of the giants, who were images of the Akhekh, the gigantic, the monster. Indeed, Thunder was one of the giants slain by Jack the Giant-Killer, who cut the ropes that suspended the drawbridge, and when the giant tried to cross he fell. In a later phase the thunder was represented by the thunderer as Donner. In English heraldry tenny denotes the dragon's head; the swallower during an eclipse. One primitive and universal idea was that in its period of eclipse the orb of the moon or sun was being seized, gripped, pinched, choked or swallowed by the monster of darkness. The Tahitians say of the moon under an eclipse she is natua (Maori nati, to pinch, constrict, throttle), that is, pinched and strangled, showing the idea of the serpent or dragon, the ahi or throttling serpent. The Caribs held that the demon Mabaya, the enemy of light was devouring the moon or the sun. The Chinese of Kiatka said that eclipses were caused by the evil spirit placing its dark hand on the face of the moon. Knowing the monster's mealtime was the Siamese equivalent for knowing how large an eclipse was about to occur. Sometimes the swallower was the jaguar; at others, the dog; at others, the wolf of darkness. When the sun was eclipsed the Tupis said the 'Jaguar has eaten the Sun.' 'God guard the Moon from the wolves,' became a French proverb. 'My God! how she suffers!' exclaimed a crowd of French country-folk during an eclipse of the moon, believing that she was falling a prey to the monster who sought to devour her. To all appearance it was a lunar eclipse that so terrified the Lybians in the time of Neb-Ka the first king of the Third Dynasty, that they once more submitted to the rule of Egypt, against which they had risen in revolt. When an eclipse of the moon occurs, the Hottentots who are out on an expedition of war or hunting will return home saying, 'We are overpowered by Gauna,'[45] the dark and evil opponent. The Finns and Laps say the moon is being eaten, and the primitive conception was preserved by the Mexicans when they also spoke of the sun or moon being eaten or swallowed, although they had attained exact knowledge of the cause of eclipses. In an allegorical dance the Mexican priests represented the sun as being devoured by the moon[46]. The moon in the dragon's mouth was likewise an emblem of eclipse in the old British calendars. [p.307] This, with so many other mythical types, survived in the Christian iconography. In the Church of Our Lady of Halle, the Devil or dragon is depicted as endeavouring to swallow the Bible, which is upborne on the back of an Eagle, the soaring Bird of light. The Greek Gorgô, the swallower or devourer, imaged with the mouth wide open was a continuation of the Akhekh dragon, and the Nakak crocodile, both of which were portrayed with the wide-open mouth, the throttler with its throat. Gorgeo Negro or Black Throat was an epithet of the monster hurled at the Huguenot by the French Catholic. The Gorgeo or Gorge was personified in the Gorgo. And—

The Gorgon as swallower is the—

The Gorgon's head was a common type of the grave, or the devouring dark of death, on Etruscan temple-tombs. The first Gorgon would be the darkness when the livid gleams with petrifying stare made visible a face of ghastly gloom, that looked and lightened, and some victim fell stone-dead, or was turned to stone. The face of darkness in the orb of the moon was a projected shadow of the monster of eclipse, the Gorgon. Epigenes of Sikyon, the most ancient writer of tragedy, in his lost work on the poetry of Orpheus, said the theologer called the moon Gorgonian because of the face in it[47]. Plutarch quotes Homer as saying that in eclipses the faces of men were seized upon by darkness. He also intimates that evil spirits were daunted and driven away from the lunar paradise by the awful face seen within the orb[48]. When the shadow of the black Aharman was cast over the world, and was beaten back again by the good spirit of light, it is said, 'Many dark forms with the face and curls of Azi Dahaka (the Serpent of Evil) suffered punishment.'[49] The dragon or devil of darkness did not originate in the mere form and look of a 'cloud that is dragonish,' nor in a cloud that is supposed to imprison the rain. The blacker the cloud the more certain is it not to withhold the rain. These types did not originate in any such child's play with phenomena as the Aryanists have assumed. The struggle of Indra and Vritra, the devil of darkness, the constant theme of the Vedic poets, is identical with that of the sun and Apophis, or in the later rendering of Horus and Typhon, in the Ritual. The Vedic Vritra is the old dragon-type of physical phenomena, the coiler round the light, no matter whether the light be stellar, lunar, or solar. Indra [p.308] is a form of the solar god, whose birthplace is the spot where Vritra lies dead. Vritra is the coiler round who envelopes and hides the light. Vri, to unfold, represents pri (Eg.) to come out, to wrap round; prt answers to vrit (Sans.) and varto (Lat.) to turn in a reverse way; but vritra is also a form of the 'crooked' serpent of lightning that never goes straight, like the Hottentot Gama-Gorib, the zigzagger. In a Karen myth Ta Ywa was born as a very little child who went to the sun to be made to grow. The sun blew him up until his head reached the sky. He went forth and travelled over all the earth. Then he was swallowed by a great snake. This was cut open, whereupon Ta Ywa issued forth to a new life.*

* Ta Ywa places the god Shieoo under the earth to support it, and whenever he moves there is an earthquake. Shieoo corresponds to the Egyptian Shu, who is the supporter of the nocturnal heaven.

The myth evidently relates to the light of day being swallowed up by the dark typified as the Akhekh serpent. In this the daylight is treated as a child of the sun[50]. When an eclipse of the moon occurs the Akkadian legends describe the dragon with the seven heads, or the seven evil spirits, as rushing on the lunar orb with intent to destroy its light. With terror the gods behold their lamp going out in heaven. Bel saw the eclipse of the moon-god and sent Nebo (Nusku) his messenger to Hea for advice. Hea called his son Merodach, and said, 'Lo, my son, the light of the sky, even the moon­god is grievously darkened in heaven, and, in eclipse, from heaven is vanishing. Those seven wicked gods, the serpents of death, who fear not,' were waging war on the moon[51]. Merodach overthrows the seven powers of darkness. The gods do all they can to help the moon in eclipse, as did their human imitators in all lands, who howled and threatened, and clenched their fists, threw stones or shot their poisoned arrows at the gruesome shadow of danger that turned the moon to blood, laid the dark hand upon her face or covered earth with the drear dun hues of the solar eclipse. In this representation the dragon-slayer is the solar hero; but the solar god, as conqueror of the evil power, typified by the serpent, implies the latest form of the myth. The moon that shone by night was an earlier opponent of the darkness than the sun, and the earlier dragon slayer was lunar. In the moon-myth we find Khunsu the youthful god of the moon, is especially personified as the giant-killer, and therefore the contender with the Apap by night as the visible luni-solar Hercules. But the lunar mythos was extant long before the moon was known to derive its light from the sun, or the sun was portrayed as descending into the underworld, to fight the devouring dragon of darkness. Thus, when Typhon tore the body of Osiris into 14 parts, [p.309] the conflict was between the dark power and the lunar light, during the waning half of the moon. One character of Osiris is that of the lord of light in the moon, the reflector of the solar light. The fourteen parts are the fourteen days or nights from full to new moon, the 'obscure half,' during which the dragon of darkness was dominant. Hence the type of a feminine dragon-slayer. In various versions it is the woman, and not her son, that crushes the serpent's head.

The Australian blacks tell of a mysterious creature, the Nar-gun, a cave-dweller that inhabits certain places in the bush, especially the valley of the Mitchell in Gippsland. He has many caves, and if any one should incautiously approach too near one of these, he is dragged in by Nar-gun and seen no more. If a spear is thrown at Nar-gun, the spear returns to the thrower and wounds him. Nar-gun cannot be killed. He dwells in a cave at Lake Tyers. A native woman once fought Afar-gun at this cave, but nobody knows how the battle ended[52].

In the Chippewa tale of the 'Little Monedo' it is related that there was a tiny boy, who grew no bigger with years, but who was mighty powerful and performed marvellous feats. One day he waded into the lake and shouted, 'You of the red fins come and swallow me.'[53] Here it may be remarked that red fins, or the red, i.e., typhonian fish, appears in the Egyptian Magic Papyrus[54]. The fish came and swallowed him. But seeing his sister standing in despair on the shore, he called to her, and she tied an old moccasin to one end of a string, the other to a tree and threw the shoe into the water. 'What is that floating on the water?' asked the monster. The boy said to the fish, 'Go take hold of it, and swallow it as fast as you can.' The fish darted towards the old shoe, and swallowed it; the boy-man laughed to himself but said nothing till the fish was fairly caught, and then he took hold of the line and hauled himself to shore. When the sister began to cut the fish open she heard her brother's voice from inside the fish, calling to her to let him out, so she made a hole, and he crept through, and told her to cut up the fish and dry it, for it would last them a long while for food.*[55]

* This is a form of the mythical Jonah, whose phenomenal origin was the sun, or fire, that was carried across the waters by the Fish, probably Piscis Australis, which marked the passage of the sunken sun. A writer in the Dictionary of the Bible (article; 'Jonah') remarks with much simplicity—'We feel ourselves precluded from any doubt of the reality of the transactions recorded in this book (Jonah) by the simplicity of the language itself and by the thought that one might well doubt all other miracles in scripture as doubt these[56]. Oh! Sancta Simplicitus!

On the monuments it is the genetrix herself in the character of Isis-Serk, who is placed in command over the Apap dragon by night, and when he is seen fettered and fast bound, the end of the cord or [p.310] chain is held in her hands. The genetrix also triumphed over the darkness, as the 'woman' of the moon who 'guards the forepart of the orb at the paths of total darkness.' She boasts that the twin lion-gods are in her belly, and says she has deprived the darkness of its power. 'I am the Woman, an orb of light in the darkness. I have brought my orb to the darkness, it is changed into light. I overthrow the extinguishers of flame! I have stood! The fiends have hidden their faces. I have prepared Taht (the young moon-god) at the gate of the Moon.'[57] In a Chinese myth the dragon devours nine maidens consecutively. Then Kî the daughter of Li Tau, volunteered to go to the monster's cave. She took a sword and a dog that would bite snakes; and placed rice and honey at the mouth of the monster's den. At nightfall out came the dragon with its head as big as a rice-rick, and its eyes like mirrors, two feet across. The mess attracted it; the dog attacked it in front and Kî hacked at it behind until it was mortally wounded. Kî then entered the cave and recovered the skeletons of the nine maidens whose fate she bewailed and then she leisurely returned home[58]. The Prince of Yueh on hearing of her exploit, raised her to become his queen. This is a lunar form of the mythos in which the woman spears the serpent's head, instead of Horus, her son and seed. Kî and her dog answer to Isis and her dog in the underworld; and in relation to the dragon of eclipse, the nine maidens may possibly represent the nine previous moons; the tenth the genetrix, as the bringer-forth of the young sun-god at the time of the spring equinox (nine months from the summer solstice), when the moon in her travail wrestled with the dragon of eclipse, and this time conquered for the year; or the nine months reckoned from the Harvest Moon of the autumn equinox to Mesore (Egyptian), the month of rebirth at the summer solstice. It is noticeable that the Marquesans had a year which was reckoned as ten moons, and that in Egypt the year consisted of ten moons, or nine solar months, with an inundation (which was the child of Isis), that flowed during three months.

There was a stone in the north end of the parish of Strathmartin, Forfar, called Martin's stone. Tradition affirmed that this was erected on the spot where a dragon had devoured nine maidens, who had gone out on a Sunday evening one after the other to fetch water from the well or spring. The dragon was said to have been killed by Martin[59]. At Lambton Hall the worm* was reputed to drink the milk of nine cows, which correspond to the nine maidens or moons.

* The 'worm' was the dragon in Britain. The worm is the krimi in Sanskrit; kirm, Hindustani; kirmele, Lithuanic; cruimh, Irish; and in inner Africa the alligator is the karam in Kanuri; karam in Munio; karam in N'guru; karam in Kanem; the animal being a real dragon of the waters.

[p.311] In one myth the light is rescued by the sun-god, and in the other it is reborn of the genetrix. The 'woman' in the Ritual boasts that she has 'made the Eye of Horus, when it was not coming at the fifteenth of the month.' The eye was the mirror or reflector, and the full moon was an eye of sight that reflected the sun. This was in connection with the origin of the so-called 'eye-goddesses' in Egypt, such as Tefnut who is named from tef, the pupil of the eye.

The imagery portrayed in the planisphere shows the woman as the bruiser of the serpent. On Christmas Day when the Christ, the Buddha, or Mithras was born, the birthday of the sun in the winter solstice, the constellation of the Virgin arose upon the horizon; she was represented as holding the newborn child in her arms, and being pursued by the serpent which opened its mouth just beneath her in the position of being trodden underfoot. The symbolism was applied to Isis and Horus in Egypt; to Maya and Buddha in India and China; to the woman and child in Revelation, to Mary and Jesus in Rome; and is still to be read in the signs of heaven, where it is old enough to prove a unity of origin for the several myths.

Alexander Henry in his travels among the North American Indians, relates that when the mother was travailing sorely in the pangs of labour, like the woman in Revelation, or the mother-moon in eclipse, and the midwives grew fearful lest the child should be born dead, they hastened to catch and kill a serpent and gave the woman its blood to drink[60]. Here the origin of the serpent-type alone will enable us to interpret the custom. The dragon of darkness had to be cut in two at the crossing for the orb to pass through or the light to be reborn. In Kanuri, 'Dinia fatsar kamtsi,' for the day dawns, signifies the day has cut through. The solar conqueror, as Horus the cutter-through, is portrayed as the wearer of the serpent's skin for the trophy of his triumph. So in the Algonquin myth, Michabo, the solar god, is represented in conflict with the Prince of Serpents who dwells in a deep lake; he destroys the reptile with his dazzling dart, and clothes himself in the skin of his fallen foe[61]. It was at one time common in England for people to believe that the skin of a snake bound round a woman in travail would ease her labour pains.*

* The Egyptian Magical Texts show that hair, feathers, the serpent's skin, and the 'blood of the mystic eye' were used as charms of protecting or destroying power. 'Shu takes the shape of an Eagle's wing.' 'A lock of hair is made to strangle the soul' of an enemy. Shu prevails by carrying the 'hair of a cow' the hood of a serpent, and the 'blood of the mystic eye.' The latter denotes what is known amongst certain of our peasantry as 'Dragon's Blood,' (not the chemical compound used as a kind of size) which is employed as a potent love-charm or philtre according to instructions still or lately given by the wise woman[62].

The serpent that was slain was the dragon of darkness, which became the serpent of life and healing as a type of sacrifice when [p.312] the serpent that was severed at the crossing was 'offered up' on the cross.

Mr. Ruskin speaks of the 'true worship' which 'may have taken a dark form when associated with the Draconian one.' He assumes some 'primeval revelation' vouchsafed to a chosen people from the truth of which men lapsed into error[63]; but the dragon is part and parcel of all the primeval revelation there ever was; the Draconian was the first as the dragon at the polar centre still bears witness, and it was the fetishism of the dark because it was primeval. There has been a mental evolution corresponding to the physical, and mythology retains the means of tracing the progress from the vague darkness through the stellar, lunar, and solar phases of thought into the later light of day.

When Sanchoniathon says the first men 'consecrated the plants of the Earth, and judged them gods, and worshipped the things upon which they themselves lived, and to which they made libations and sacrifices,'[64] his statement is made according to the later thought and mode of expression. 'Consecration,' 'gods,' 'worship,' must have been very remote from the minds of the first men.

Augustine has remarked of Hermes Trismegistus, that he affirms the visible and tangible images to be as it were the 'bodies of gods,' because there are within them various invited spirits. By a 'certain art' these invisible spirits are made visible in a vesture of corporeal matter. 'This is what he calls making gods.'[65] Hermes was the great hieroglyphist of tradition, the supposed inventor of types, and of typology; the earliest mode of representing things, or making gods. We are now in a position to prove that the earliest 'gods' were 'elementary powers' which were directly apprehended at first; and to show how they were represented by natural types, in short, how the first gods grew. The Egyptian divinities, as the nenu, of which there is a figure of 8[66], are only the types, or representatives, the fetish-images of powers considered to be superior to man.

It has been assumed that the early man projected his own spirit upon external nature as the mirror which returned the shadow of himself. But if so, the earliest personifications of natural forces ought to have been in his own likeness, whereas the devil or divinity in the human form does not belong to the primary mythical formation. Powers beyond human were recognized in external nature,—furies of force in whose presence man was but an image of helplessness altogether inadequate to express them. The powers were superhuman; their likenesses are prehuman, and with the human advance the types were humanized. We see the Beast transfiguring into the Beauty, when the Mother Nature, who was once a dragon, a lioness, a hippopotamus, a milch-cow, a serpent, changes into [p.313] Uati, Hathor, Neith, or Rennut, as the goddess who wears the shape of Woman. It is another mistake to imagine that primitive man began personifying, and, so to say, entifying the elements by conceiving the eidolon of fire, wind, or water. Typology proves that he did not personify, as his mode of representation. His process was mainly that of objective comparison. He represented one thing by another; the invisible force by a corresponding type of power.

The process of representation was that which the logician terms in another application of the words, the 'substitution of similars.' For instance, having no name for the moon, he saw it as the eye of the dark, and called it the cat, earlier lynx or lioness, whose golden eyes were luminous by night. This was in the natural phase; but the image still served for typifying, when it was known that the moon was only a reflector of the solar light, because the eye is a mirror. Hence, the lunar cat-headed, or lioness-headed goddess, became the eye of the sun.*

* The cat—as Peht or Buto in Egyptian; Pâtu, Mandara; Patti, N'godsin; Budi in Mimboma; Poti, Maori; Bede, Australian; Footie, Shetland—also brought on the name of the lioness, which was Pekht in Egyptian, the earlier form of the word.

The primitive man did not animate the darkness or the water with any abstract spirit of destruction. But he realized the less definite swallower in the most definite form of the dragon, because he was compelled to think in things. He did not know how the earth gulped down the stars, or the water devoured the life, but he adopted the crocodile and hippopotamus as forms most palpable. Earth was the visible cause of darkness, and therefore it was represented by the crocodile that swallowed the lights as they went down in the darkness. The serpent was that which darted death, so was the lightning. The hippopotamus was the power of the deluge broken out of bounds; the howling wind was the great ape in its wrath; the fire was the flaming yellow lion or the golden bird that soared aloft fearlessly in the flames of the sun.

This mode of expressing phenomena was the origin of the primordial types which were continued as mythical, totemic, divine, and thus we are enabled to see that typology and mythology are twin from the birth and one in their fundamental rootage. Primitive men were forced to typify in order that they might know by name these elemental energies and non-intellectual powers, even as they represented their own totems, and named themselves by means of the animals.

According to the laws of evolution, cognition of the unapparent power as cause of phenomena must have belonged to the latest perception, not the primary; and it is an axiom of the present work that religious feeling originated in awe and admiration of powers superior to those possessed by the human being, but that the nearest and most apparent were the earliest. The first so-called deities of primitive man may be named weather-gods. The god and the weather, the [p.314] wind and the rain, are often synonymous among the African races. The 'Yongmaa' of the Akra people is either the rain or the god. The divinity, the heaven, and the cloud, are synonymous among the Makuas. Rain-Giver is a common African name for the power above. The savage may have advanced somewhat beyond the elemental stage, but the elements made the primary appeal. Air was the god Hurakan, portrayed under that name by the Quiches. Certain forces of nature were represented, but not personated, and their representatives became the earliest types of the particular powers. They were not personified in the human likeness; neither were they of any sex. The elements are of no sex; neither were the elementary types, or primordial gods. The seven 'elementaries' in Akkad are so far impersonal powers that they are sexless; 'female they are not, male they are not' (Akkadian); or 'male they are not, female they are not' (Assyrian). The producer as female is the only one whose sex is determined, and she is the dragon-horse. The sun or moon considered as the masculine in one language and feminine in another, is a result of this indefinite and impersonal beginning with the neuter type which could and did become both male and female in mythology and language, because it was neither in itself at first. The most perplexing elements of mythology and language originate in this the primary stage of typology, the elementary and elemental. When among the blacks of Australia men are named wind, thunder, hail, fire, the custom reaches back to this beginning.

The primary gods of Egypt are eight in number. They were gods in space who ruled over Chaos, or failed to rule it, before the cycles of time commenced. According to Herodotus the eight gods were extant for 17,000 years before the reign of Amasis[67]. These were the eight, however, who existed when Taht had superseded Sut; not the original eight elementaries. As before said, the eight gods of

[p.315] These are the genetrix and the seven pitris, or fathers, who were born as her seven sons.

In the account of creation inscribed on the Bark Record of the Lenape Indians, the primal power (or powers) rises from the waters eight-rayed. This precedes and does not represent the sun[68]. The number likewise agrees with the Quiche creative powers, who are described as eight in number. These, however, are called half male and half female. The Quiche legends, which tell of the struggles between the rulers of the upper and nether realms, also relate that in Xibalba, the realm of disappearing, the rulers or lords are 'One Death and the Seven Deaths.' The one and the seven, just as we find them in the dragon and her sevenfold progeny, in Sut-Typhon (or the eight gods), and in the divinity of the Templars, Mete, whose 'root is one and seven.' Ximenez says of these eight reduced deities who had been superseded, as in Akkad and Egypt, 'In the old times they did not have much power, they were the annoyers and opposers of men, and in truth they were not regarded as gods. But when they appeared it was terrible. They were of evil, they were owls, things of darkness, fomenting trouble and discord.'[69] It was in the old times, however, that the eight had all power, and only in later times were they relegated to their native hell as the devils of theology.

In the Latita-Vistara[70] eight heavenly beings are enumerated as the gods or devas. These are the Nagas, Yakshas, Gandharvas, Asuras, Garudas, Kinnaras, and Mahôrgas, which are submerged like the ruins of Yucatan beneath whole forests of after-growth; but they correspond fundamentally to the eight elementaries of Egypt, and can be recovered by the comparative process, because in them the earliest types are retained.

The Vedic Aditi is a form of the primordial genetrix, called in the vague stage of thought the boundless, the infinite. She also preceded time and the established order of things that followed Chaos. The infinite Aditi is really the non-established, the unopened, or undivided. She has seven sons called the seven Adityas. The eight—the genetrix and her sevenfold progeny—when compared with the Egyptian eight, will be found like them to be the gods of chaos, who existed as elementaries before the creation of Time. The elementaries of Egypt are likewise represented by the Asuras in India. The Mahãbhãrata[71] says that in the battle which they fought with each other, the Asuras were the elder brothers and the gods the younger. The gods were of the same parentage as the Asuras, but from a footing of equality they became superior to them[72]. The Asuras were primarily the product of an earlier phase of thought, and were afterwards considered non-spiritual on account of their physical and [p.316] material origin. It is the same with the inferior and superior hebdomads of the Gnostics.

The seven who are the evil progeny of Tiamat in Akkad, the seven-headed thunderbolt, and the seven-headed serpent, are also the sevenfold storm-wind as one of the tempest-types of fatal force. They are said to rush from the four cardinal points; they swoop down like a violent tempest in heaven and earth; they are the destroying tempests, the fiends of storm on their way to becoming the Maruts of the Indian mythology, who are seven at first, corresponding to the seven in Akkad. They are described as the 'seven with spears.' The embryo of the genetrix Aditi was divided into seven parts, and from these sprang the Maruts of the Vedas. As the story is told by Sayana, the embryotic seven were born of Diti, the divider[73]. In India the seven were developed into seven troops of the Maruts, but they had the same sole origin in nature, and in the typology. It was they who 'stretched out all the terrestrial regions and the luminaries of the sky'; they who 'divided and held the two worlds apart.' The Maruts have the same development from the status of evil destroyers who become supporters of the good god. They fight on the side of Indra just as the seven spirits of the Great Bear become the supporters of Osiris. They are likewise particularly associated with the seven Rishis of the Great Bear. Seven elements were identified with these seven elementaries or later spirits; also seven properties in Nature, such as Matter, Cohesion, Fluxion, Coagulation, Accumulation, Station, and Division.

And although the present writer is unable to fathom or follow the subject in India, he is satisfied that a mass of mysticism in Buddhism is the result of this beginning with the elementaries. For example, akasha is called the fifth element, the subtle ethereal fluid, which is the vehicle of sound, and the peculiar vehicle of life. Then it becomes the Creator (Brahma or other god) identical with ether. As kasa (Sans.) is the becoming visible or apparent, akasha is the invisible or unapparent. But in this elemental stage the unapparent is not God; it is only atmospherical. Ether is represented by the cone as the fifth sign in the diagram, in which the square signifies earth; the circle, water (heaven as the water above); the pyramid or triangle, fire; the crescent, air, and the cone, ether, which as fifth was once the quintessence of the elements.

The full number of these is seven in India, Egypt, Britain, and other countries. The seven elements from which came the seven spirits of mythology, are identified by the British Barddas, as earth, water, fire, air, ether (or vapour), blossom (the seminal principle) and the wind of purposes (or the ghost). A sixth element was identified by the Hindus with Bala-rama the representative of [p.317] masculine virility. Bala denotes force considered as a sixth form or mode of manifestation. It is the innate strength of the male, the semen virile. This is the sixth element, the fructifying principle of the Druids named blossom. The seventh was the soul and summit of the rest. Elementary types (or gods) were founded on the elements, and they are symbols of the elements which were typified.

It was argued in a preceding volume that the Jehovah-Elohim of Genesis comprised the same pleroma of eight gods. This is corroborated by the gnostic Pleroma of the Eight, consisting of Sophia the genetrix and her seven sons, who are named—

1. Ialdabaoth, Lord God of the Fathers (Pitris).
2. Iao, Javeh.
3. Sabaoth, Hosts.
4. Adoneus, Lord.
5. Eloeus, God.
6. Oreus, Light.
7. Astanpheus, Crown.

And this pleroma of eight is acknowledged by the Kabbalists as constituting the totality of היהא (Eheieh)[74], the existent[75], also termed תויח (Chivth), which may be rendered by circle or pleroma. The eight are likewise Phoenician, as Sydik and the seven Cabiri, although the father (Sydik) has been elevated to the place of the genetrix, in accordance with the later thought; as it was with Ptah and his seven assistant gods, or the Phoenician Illus and his auxiliaries, the Elohim.

There are seven spirits called archangels in the Parsee scriptures, who have severally the charge over man, animals, fire, metal, earth, water and plants[76]. But the Amshaspands are the primary form of the Persian seven.

The primeval progeny of the genetrix also survived as the seven governors in the Divine Pymander where they are said[77] to be both male and female in one, whereas the Akkadian seven are neither male nor female, because the types had not then bifurcated into sexes. The illuminatist, Jacob Boehm, will show us how the ancient genetrix and her seven elementaries were continued in the teachings of the mysteries with a more abstract rendering of the gnosis or Kabbalah. He says, of the seven primary or 'Fountain Spirits,' and the feminine producer, 'We find seven especial properties in nature whereby this only Mother works all things' (to wit, desire which is astringent, bitterness, cause of all motion, anguish, cause of all sensibility, fire, light, sound, and substantiality); 'whatever the six forms are spiritually that the seventh is essentially'... 'These are the seven forms of the mother of all beings, from whence all that is in this world is generated.'[78] Which proves the survival and continuation [p.318] of the primitive thought and typology in the theosophy of European mystics. When the male creator takes the place of the mother in Egypt the seven are described as the seven souls of the god Ra or Osiris. So in Boehm's theosophy, 'The Creator hath, in the body of this world, generated himself as it were creaturely in his qualifying or Fountain Spirits, and all the stars are nothing else but God's powers, and the whole body of this world consisteth in the seven qualifying or fountain spirits.'[79] Man was created by, or in accordance with, these seven, 'therefore man's life hath such a beginning and rising up as was that of the planets and stars.'[80] 'But that there are so many stars, of so manifold different effects and operations, is from the infiniteness that is in the efficiency of the seven spirits of God in one another, which generate themselves infinitely,'[81] and 'man's property lieth in sundry degrees, according to the inward and outward heavens, viz., according to the divine manifestation, through the seven properties of Nature.'[82]

The student of Boehm's books finds much in them concerning these seven 'Fountain Spirits,' and primary powers, treated as seven properties of Nature in the alchemistic and astrological phase of the medieval mysteries. These seven revolve wheel-like in their workings with fire (that is the Har-Sun or solar soul) in the centre of all[83], and their wrestle for supremacy is the working of generation or creation. The followers of Boehm look on such matter as the divine revelation of his inspired seership. They know nothing of the natural genesis, the history and persistence of the 'wisdom' of the past (or of the broken links), and are unable to recognise the physical features of the ancient 'seven spirits,' beneath their modern metaphysical or alchemist mask. A second connecting link between the theosophy of Boehm and the physical origins of Egyptian thought, is extant in the fragments of Hermes Trismegistus[84]. No matter whether these teachings are called Illuminatist, Buddhist, Kabbalist, Gnostic, Masonic, or Christian, the elemental types can only be truly known in their beginnings. When the prophets or visionary showmen of cloudland come to us claiming original inspiration and utter something new, we judge of its value by what it is in itself. But if we find they bring us the ancient matter which they cannot account for, and we can, it is natural that we should judge it by the primary significations rather than the latest pretensions. It is useless for us to read our later thought into the earliest types of expression and then say the ancients meant that! Subtilized interpretations which have become doctrines and dogmas in theosophy have now to be tested by their genesis in physical phenomena, in order that we may explode their false pretensions to supernatural origin or superhuman knowledge. As [p.319] elementals the seven (with the mother, eight) were not intelligencers to men; they were seven overpowering, overwhelming forces recognized in the dragon, the scorpion, the leopard, or lion, the lightning, the hurricane and their kindred agents of violence, destruction, deluges, diseases, and death, who were the born children of the darkness, external and internal. The types themselves suffice to demonstrate the fact that they do not represent any personal beings conceived behind phenomena, and causing the on-goings amid which man found himself to be going on. The serpent emaning itself from its own mouth images no personality but a condition of being, perceived by man, an existence for ever self-emaning and self-renewing which the Egyptians termed 'Renewal, coming of itself.'

Primitive man did not begin with concepts of cause beyond the visible phenomena. He did not postulate a devil that made the darkness. Darkness from the depth was the Devil. And the darkness brought forth its brood of baleful beings, inimical to him. As the female was the obvious bringer to birth it followed that nature or space or the abyss of night should be first represented as the genetrix. In Egypt this abyss, the source of all things, also called the hole of the snake, serpent or dragon, is the Tepht; tepht modifies into tet (Eg.), the English depth; Welsh dyved; Cornish defyth, for a desert, wilderness, and the toyt, as the Shetlanders call their mystical sea, with the same meaning. These are inner African names for the abyss of darkness, the night.

The Egyptian tepht is one with the tavthe of the Babylonian cosmogony. Tiamat and tavthe are the same name by interchange of m and v, and the tavthe, as place, is the abyss of source, the hole of the dragon. Tavthe personified is the mother of the gods. Tiamat personified is the dragon, mother of seven wicked spirits. This was the Egyptian Tep, Teb, or Typhon, one of whose types was the crocodile, Sevekk, the dragon of the deep. It was a dragon from the deep that first taught Fo-hi the distinction of sexes, as it is stated in the Chinese sacred books. The Hottentot snake called the gâbeb, or the one which lives in a hole, is likewise the typical snake of the abyss. It is the snake supposed to dwell in every fountain of the land, and if it be killed the fountain will dry up.*

* Dr. Hahn, explains that in Khoi-Khoi, au, is a root, meaning to flow, or bleed, from which he derives aub, the snake, and aus, a fountain. Then the Khoi-Khoi forgot this original signification and 'Mythology got hold of Aub and Aus, and made sure that in every fountain lived a snake,'[85]. This is the Müllerite interpretation of mythology as a disease of language, and a misapprehension of the meaning of their own words made by all the people of the past. The motion of the serpent made it a type of that which flows—water flows, blood flows—here we shall find the flowing serpent in a mystical sense—and the serpent flows along the ground. When the fount dries up the typical serpent ceases to flow, and is said to be found in the fountain dead. This is according to a mode of typology, not a disease of language. Compare the םימד רוקמ or fountain of blood for the feminine pudenda[86], which is likewise the tepht of the snake.

This flow-er forth identified with the [p.320] issuing water of source is one with the dragon Tiamat, or Typhon, but it has not yet passed out of the serpent phase into that of the genetrix of the abyss. In Egyptian, however, the beb is the hole of the abyss and kebeb signifies the source[87].

At the spot in Syria where Typhon went underground the river Orontes had its origin. In German folktales, when Winkleried kills the dragon, a rivulet issues out of its hole. When the swollen torrents rush down from the Swiss mountains after a thunderstorm, the people say the dragon has come out. This identification of the dragon with the water shows the beginning with the water-flood as the destroyer! The water comes out of the abyss, the tepht (Eg.), which is the 'hole of the snake.' Thus the beginning with the dragon or serpent of source in the abyss is common to Akkad, China, Shetland, Egypt and inner Africa. The serpent and dragon became interchangeable as types, but they can be distinguished from each other.

Professor Fraas of Stuttgart has reconstructed the Swabian lindwurm for the Natural History Museum of that capital[88]. This dragon combined the bird, lizard, kangaroo, and pachyderm; and could fly, crawl, leap, and swim. It is very curious for these four are a form of the hawk (bird), crocodile (lizard), ape (kangaroo), and hippopotamus (pachyderm), which represented the four elements and four quarters, and the four (with variants) were compounded in Typhon the mythical dragon. The monster of the abyss in the beginning, the crocodile or dragon of the west, that swallowed the setting stars, was preserved in the eschatological phase as the devourer of the souls of the damned.

The Egyptians had their museum of monsters in the underworld of the dead. Here the primitive types of destroying power served as imagery in the eschatological stage, where they were intended to strike terror as they had done on earth. This may be gathered from the following text, 'Greatest of spirits, red-haired monster, coming from the night, correcting the wicked by creation of reptiles.'[89] Ammit, the devourer in the Hades is depicted with the head of the crocodile the fore part of the lioness, the hind-quarters of the hippopotamus. The ancient genetrix of the abyss was thus turned into the evil Typhon of the Egyptian hell. Another compounded monster, the sesh-sesh dragon, is a crocodile in front and a serpent behind. The crocodile is the dragon of the waters. In Revelation, when the young solar god is born, the dragon is described as emaning a flood from its mouth[90]; that is equivalent to the end of a period called the deluge. Hydra, the sign of the inundation in Egypt, will also [p.321] explain why the serpent or dragon is the symbol of the flood. Also the red dragon of fire or lightning will account for the alternative type of an ending in a conflagration.

In times of drought the Chinese beseech the dragon of rain for wet weather. They affix on the houses pieces of paper containing prayers and also the likeness of the dragon of rain. Images of the dragon are carried in procession, and if no rain follows the dragon is smashed[91] into small pieces. The symbolical dragon is somewhat of a crocodile with wings, and the crocodile was a type of Typhon, the genetrix of the Seven Stars. Sevekh, the crocodile, is the capturer. This image of the genetrix was continued in Sevekh, her son. The crocodile was a type of darkness, even to the tip of its tail, which is a sign for black. Therefore it is feasible that the mythical dragon of the abyss, the waters of source, was founded on the crocodile, if not on the geological dragon. There was a great fish which the Greeks called 'dracon' and the crocodile is the fish and dragon under one type.

We find another reason why the crocodile should have been the natural prototype of the mythical dragon with the lidless eyes. Plutarch tells us one of the Egyptian reports was that the crocodile 'is the sole animal living in water that hath his eyesight covered over with a thin transparent film which descends from his forehead, so that he sees without himself being seen by others, in which he agrees with the First God.'[92] The crocodile was a type of the first goddess, Typhon. And if there be a first god in Egyptian mythology it is Sevekh, her son, who bore her image as the crocodile. That is Sevekh (or Khebek, whence Kek) was the one of the seven (the eight with the mother included) who was elevated to the primacy in the oldest (the typhonian) cult, as Sevekh Kronus the earlier form of Seb-Kronus.

Assuredly no more apt image of the jaws of darkness, as the earth or grave, silent, wide open, and waiting to devour, could have been adopted than this figure of the tongueless crocodile to form a basis for the mythical dragon. Darkness being the first producer personified as the dragon or the genetrix, and the earliest modes of phenomena that most impinged on primitive man being inimical and opposed to him and therefore evil, the first adversary as the dragon of darkness was accredited with a progeny of adversaries. These were reckoned as seven in number; the genetrix herself being either the first or the eighth. From these we shall derive the dragon with seven heads.

The Egyptian mythology begins with the eight gods that ruled in Am-Smen, the 'place of preparation' or of Chaos. Their domain was the timeless night which preceded the reign of order and the dawn of day. Egyptologists term them 'elementaries,' faute de mieux. They are looked upon as elementary forces of nature personified as [p.322] gods; or, rather, some French Egyptologists[93], who are not evolutionists, look on these primordial figures as mere types that were adopted by the Egyptians to express the various attributes of the one God.

The allusions to these 'gods' of the beginning are obscure and obscured; but they were the birth of Chaos, they were primary, and they were typhonian. They are denounced as the betsh, the 'children of revolt' and of inertness, corresponding in the latter phase to what Taliesin terms the 'sluggish animals of Satan.'[94] The same place of birth and rebirth in the Ritual is called smen, the place of the eight, in the stellar phase; Hermopolis or Sesennu in the lunar, and Annu (Heliopolis) in the solar myth, in accordance with the order of development from the elementary stage. The eight then are composed of the genetrix Typhon and her brood of seven. These reappear in Akkad and Assyria as the dragon Tiamat and the seven children of revolt, the seven wicked spirits that constitute the seven heads of the dragon of eclipse, or the devouring dark. The first is a scorpion, or the sting-bearer of heaven, the second is the thunderbolt, the third a leopard or hyena, the fourth a serpent, the fifth a raging lion, the sixth a rebellious giant who submits neither to god nor king, the seventh the messenger of the fatal wind. The scorpion, serpent, leopard, thunderbolt and typhoon are sufficient to prove the representation of those powers that were adverse to man. That the serpent was his mortal enemy—whence he became a supreme type of his immortal enemy—that the scorpion stung, whether called the scorpion of the dark or of fire, or the stingray of the sun, that the thunderbolt carried death in its stroke, and the burning breath of the typhoon or simoom was fatal, were among the simplest, most fundamental facts in nature. And of such were the sevenfold progeny of the dragon of darkness. The seven appear in the Egyptian Ritual, where two lists of their different names are given. In one they are called, Het-Het; Ket-Ket; The Bull, who never made smoke to dwell in his flames; Going eating his hour; Red Eyes; Follower of the House of Ans; Hissing to come forth and turn back, seeing at night and bringing by day[95]. These may be paralleled with the Akkadian seven, thus: 

[p.323] The first is Het-het, and hetet is the scorpion. Het means to afflict and injure. Kheti is the serpent of fire. In the inner African languages the scorpion is—