[p.1]

THE NATURAL GENESIS

SECTION 9

The 149th chapter of the Ritual suffices of itself to demonstrate the astronomical nature of the Egyptian mythology after it had passed out of the first elementary phase. This chapter, said to be the most profoundly mystical and absolutely incomparable is the 'Book of instructing the Spirit, the Delight of the Sun, who prevails as Atum, and is rendered great as Osiris.' 'There is not known any other such, at any time, or anywhere. No men hath spoken it; no eye hath perceived it; no ear hath heard it; not any other face hath looked in it to learn it. Do not thou multiply its chapters[1], or do not thou let any face except thy own see it and eat thy heart, doing it in the midst of the Hall of Clothes (the Judgment Hall). It is put forth by the God with all his power. It is a true Secret; when it is known all the providers in all places supply the dead (Spirit) in Hades; food is given to his soul on earth; he is made to live forever; nothing prevails against him.'[2] The contents of this chapter show that the secret of its revelation, considered to be of such supreme importance in the eschatological phase, belonged to the gnosis of the celestial allegory, the earliest formation of the starry heavens, and a knowledge of the seven cows and the bull; the four mystical eyes; the four paddles of the boat of the sun, which are arranged according to the four corners or points of the compass. The seven cows; or seven Hathors, are but a later form of the water cow, the sevenfold one of the Great Bear, first represented by the hippopotamus, the old Typhon, whose son Sut, or Sevekh, was the bull of the seven cows, as Sut-Anta [p.2] before he had been superseded by Taht in the lunar mythos[3], and Osiris in the solar.

When the tail of the Great Bear points to the west at nightfall, the Chinese say it is autumn. That is the position of the constellation in the planispherei copied into the previous volume. The cow­sign is the type of Hathor, and the seven stars in that position are the seven Hathors, the foretellers of coming events, and therefore they were connected at this point with the inundation and the future harvest, which is indicated by the seven ears of corn in the hands and crown of Hathor-Isis who represents the sign of Virgo. It can be proved by their names that the seven cows are not the supposed 'Seven Pleiades.'*

* Ernest de Bunsen, for example, is wrong from first to last in assuming that the 'seven stars' of mythology are the Pleiades[4].

The Pleiades never were the 'seven stars' out of Greece. The Pleiades are six only, as the mothers, or sucklers of Kârti­kéya in India; six only as the hen and chickens of the planisphere; six only as the 'tau-one,' or the six, of the Mangaian Matariki[5].

In the Avesta the typical seven stars are the female companions of Sothis (Tistrya), and these are the stars Haptoiringa, the seven Bears[6].

The first one of the cows is called 'Hat-ka-neb-ter,' i.e., the maternal abode in which the lord (Osiris) was reconstituted, re­imaged, or reborn; for the Great Bear constellation, designated the car and coffin of Osiris, was also the meskhen of new birth, the womb of the genetrix who first gave birth to time in heaven, and the elements or seasons on earth; next, to the manifestors of time and season, the kronotypes, including the solar god; and lastly, to souls in the psychotheistic phase of the mythos.

The seven cows passed into the seven ploughing oxen of the Romans, the septentriones in Cicero's Aratus[7], as the seven of the Great Bear. The seven cows are also the seven Arushis of the Vedas, which, like the seven Hathors, are called the seven sisters. 'He brought the Seven Sisters, the Arushis,'[8] the bright cows, says the Vedic poet. These are no indefinite daughters of the dawn. The number seven has no foundation in the phenomena of dawn. Moreover, 'When the Sun flew up the Arushis refreshed their bodies in the water.'[9] This description applies to the seven stars, or cows, becoming invisible by day, when they retire once more into the celestial waters, like other teachers of time in heaven.

The Persians also have the seven sisters, who are the wise women considered to be present at birth as foretellers of fate, like the seven Hathors, or cows, in Egypt. The four paddles and eyes are Amset, Hapi, Tuautmutf, and Kabhsenuf the genii of the four Ritual[10] [p.3] quarters, who are also represented by Ra, Shu, Seb, and the Great Mother; or by other forms of the universal four. The very earliest four quarters were indicated in the circle or year of the Great Bear. Hence these four genii are four of the seven spirits of that constellation, who are also called seven planks in the boat of souls. Next the four quarters were founded in the lunar zodiac. Thus it is said of the ancient Babylonian king, Agu-kak-rimi, whose glory is the moon, that he was the establisher of the four regions[11]. Lastly, the four corners were the foundations of the solar zodiac, also termed the four paddles of the solar bark.

In the complete making out of time in heaven, all tune was perfected when the sun-god was acknowledged as chief ruler. He was the true Kronus in place of Sothis, Anup, Shu, Seb, and Taht, who receded to secondary and subordinate positions, or, as in the case of Sut, were degraded altogether. The paeans of exultation raised to this the one true god, who at last became first of the first, can be heard in all the later religious literature. It is said of the pharaoh assimilated to the sun 'His majesty went sailing as the image of Har-makhu; for lo! he took possession of that land, he obtained it for the time of the Sun.' This was following a reign of the Sut-Typhonians in Egypt. It is further affirmed that he took possession of the temples, priests, spondists, and offerings, and 'they were timed for the worship of the Sun.'[12] He 'has come forth like the Sun,' says the Osirified deceased in the Ritual. 'The Sun knoweth his going down,' exclaims the psalmist[13]. 'Helios will not overstep his boundaries,' sings the Vedic poet. 'Surya does not injure the appointed places,' as did those unfaithful guardians of time, period, season, and bounds, who had been cast out as the 'Children of Inertness,' founded on the stars that were fixtures.

In his exaltation of the solar type, which was the latest perfected, one Hindu writer asserts that the sun is the source of time, and that which was before the sun was no-time[14]. This is the language of the latest race or religion in all lands. When safe in heaven at last the deceased exclaims: 'The Osiris takes the time of heaven; his Time is that of the whole creation.'[15] His beatitude being expressed by a figure of time that was perfected. And here the final type of the various divinities is the sun as Amen-Ra the generator and father of souls who was Atum in one cult, Osiris in another, Abraham in Israel, Surya in India, and Hu in Britain. Proclus observes that: 'In divine souls likewise there is time, since as Plato says in "Phaedrus," they survey, through time, real being itself.'[16]

Chaos precedes creation in mythology. The elementary powers were the rulers in chaos, the domain of lawless force, discord, [p.4] dissolution, and timelessness. The first creation represents the passage of mythology out of chaotic space into the fixed world of time. The idea of a beginning with the observed motions of the stars is conveyed by the fixed stars being called and impersonated as the 'Beginningless lights' the anaghra raokau of the Avesta, in contradistinction to the movers and periodic revolvers.

In one of their creation legends the Blacks of Victoria relate that the moon at one time was aberrant in her motions until these were regulated by Nooralie. Nooralie, or old time, told her to die and let her bones whiten and crumble into powder. This the moon did and still she dies and reappears at regular intervals and does her duty to the black fellows as Nooralie in times long past commanded her to do[17]. These Aborigines have a group of typical powers under the name of 'Nooralie,' or beings of old time, and in Egyptian Nun is time; the earliest types of gods associated as fellows or grouped together were the Nnu. The legend of the moon identifies the Nooralie with the creation of time.

The 'Ritual' shows that a knowledge of these hidden facts of the celestial allegory concerning time was preserved in the Egyptian cult for making the safe passage through all the trial scenes in death, or in the judgment hall—the earliest guides in the darkness of night having survived as types of guidance through the dark of death and the salvation of the deceased depended on his having the facts treasured up in memory. 'Do not record beginnings; neither consider the things of old,' is the advice of Isaiah[18] to his countrymen. But the Egyptian priests preserved the beginnings by investing them with the most sacred significance; teaching them in the secrecy of the mysteries, and burying them with the mummies of the dead. They did not throw down the ladder by which they had climbed the heavens physically, but re-erected it in the caves and temples of the mysteries.

The earliest recorded beginnings of time then are with the bull and seven cows, or seven Hathors, seven bears, seven maidens, seven rishis, seven princes, or other types of the seven stars or constellations of Ashtoreth Elohim, Jehovah-Elohim, or Ta-Urt-Typhon, whom we can recognise and identify.

In the Bijek it is said, 'from one mother is the universe born.'[19] This beginning is universal in mythology. The Great Mother in her primordial phase was the abyss in space, and the goddess of the seven stars in time. No superseded type was ever lost, and the mother as space and domus did not pass away when time was established, but was continued in Nu, the lady of heaven, and consort of Seb-Kronus. Heaven as the bringer-forth was continued in the female figure arching over earth. In addition to this the Egyptians portrayed the zodiac in human shape; and astrology has brought on a human-shaped zodiac founded on the [p.5] female form. In this the sign of the Ram serves for the head; the Bull for neck and throat; the Twins for arms; the Crab for the breast; the Lion for the heart and back; the Virgin for the womb; the Scales for the lumbar region; the Scorpion for the groin; the Archer for the legs and thighs; the Sea-goat for the knees; the Waterer for the legs, and Fishes for the feet.

As bearer and bringer forth, the Great Mother became the goddess of the bear, or chariot, the merkabah (marukabatu, a chariot, Eg.), with which Jehovah is identified in the Kabbalah. Urt, or Ta-Urt (Eg.), means the chariot, the great bearer, who in the sphere of time was represented by the Great Bear, as the cow of the waters, the beast that came up out of the deep or 'sat upon' the celestial waters as the 'Mother of the Revolutions,' and therefore of time, who was her firstborn as Sevekh-Kronus, Sut, or Saturn, her dragon of the seven stars that went round with her in figuring the primary circle and cycle at the polar centre.

Philo on the Allegories of the Sacred Law, shows that he knew something of the mystery of the seven cows or bears. He observes 'the constellation of the Great Bear is made up of seven stars, which constellation is the cause of communication and unity among men, and not merely of traffic.'[20] It continued the celestial model on which they were grouped together in sevens, whether as the seven eundas or totems of the Damaras, the seven tribes of the Ja-jow-er-ong Australians, the seven Hohgates and seven Rishis, the seven patriarchs who preceded the ten; the seven sons of Mitzraim, of Japheth, Sydik, Ptah or Jesse, the heptanomis of the seven Egyptian nomes, the seven-portioned earth of the Iranians, or the seven provinces of Dyfed and of Alban, the one type of the whole being the seven primary constellations. It is not in the Hebrew, Assyrian, Greek or Hindu scriptures that we shall find the most archaic forms, the bare skeleton of the mythos, but in the traditions of races which are now almost extinct. The Indians of Los Angeles, California, who relate that the divine Quaoar descended from heaven and reduced chaos into order and then put the world on the back of seven giants[21], possess one of the most primitive forms of the creation-myth. These are the seven giants who in another myth are the builders of the tower; the seven who formed the gigantic cycle of the stellar year which was connected with the revolution of the bears. The Murray natives have the Great Bear under the name of Koob-borr. This is the old kheb (earlier khub) of Egypt. The same original is apparent in the North American Indian languages, where it is applied to two different representatives of the water-horse kheb as

[p.6] The Crow Indian name of the bear, duh-pitsa agrees with the Swabian pecister; the Assyrian batsiati (hippopotamus), whilst the Pawnee koorooksh for the bear corresponds to another Australian name of the Great Bear as Kur-ruk-ar-ook. Kur-ruk-ar-ook is she who assembles all the bears[22], and settles the quarrels respecting the waters. The bears are said to be seven in number. The waters are celestial and the settling of the quarrels is a primitive mode of stating that the genetrix of the bears was the arranger and determiner in space and time. This distant re-identified goddess of the Great Bear (Koob­borr or Kur-ruk-ar-ook) is known to have been a 'Very fine and very big woman,' and is equivalent therefore to the Great Mother[23]. Kur­ruk-ar-ook, a female, now the seven stars[24], was the only one who could make fire (weenth) and in a story told by the aborigines of the river Yarra, Kur-ruk-ar-ook, the keeper of fire, would not give any of it away. In the Egyptian mythos the genetrix of the seven stars is likewise the keeper of fire, as kar-tek, the spark-holder. Otava the Great Bear in Finnic has the same name as the Egyptian Tef, Tep, or Tabi of the seven stars. The Great Bear in Britain and Ireland is Arth, who, with her starry son Arthur, identifies our beginnings with the Bear constellation, and the typical seven stars and constellations.

The Ainus, or hairy men in the Island of Jesso, the most northern part of Japan, trace their beginnings back to a bear and a dog. They say that the first human being was a woman, who, when the world was formed out of the waters, floated on the deep carrying fishing and hunting gear. She landed on an island, where she dwelt alone in a beautiful garden, which still exists although no man can find it. The loss of this paradise is connected with the increase and dispersion of the race, following the advent of a 'protector' whom she had permitted to enter the garden which was their Eden of the foreworld. The dog, as already shown, was a type of the Lesser Bear constellation as well as of Sirius, the star. In certain tales told of the Peguans their progenitors are said to have been a dog and a woman; and some anthropologists (Camoens[25] amongst other writers), in the absence of the mythical typology, have discussed the possibility of such beginnings. In this, as in the Ainu legend, the woman and dog are represented by the Greater and Lesser Bear, or Sothis the Dog-star.

The starting-point in all the oldest mythologies is on the nightside of phenomena. Hence the counting by nights, and not by days or dawns of light as with those Polynesians whose reckoning of time was by nights, and whose days had no name. Out of this darkness issues the first shape, that of the Great Mother, followed by the twin brothers, who are represented under various but correlative types. In the beginning, say the Gallinomeros of Central California, there was no light, but a thick darkness covered all the earth. It was so dark that men stumbled blindly [p.7] against each other, animals against animals, the birds clashed together in the air, and there was nothing but the confusion of constant contact. The hawk happened by chance or luck to fly into the face of the coyote, and after mutual apologies and a long discussion concerning the situation, these two resolved to set about finding a remedy. The coyote gathered a great heap of tales, rolled them up into a ball, and gave it to the hawk, together with some pieces of flint[26]. In this version the prairie dog takes the place of the typhonian wolf-dog, the fenekh of Abyssinia; and the two, the coyote and hawk are identical with the Sut-Horus of the monuments, the brothers Warpil and War of the Australians, and with Heber and Heremon in Arthuria or Ireland. The whole nation of the Thlinkeets is separated into two great divisions, one of which is called the wolf, the other the raven. Bancroft says, 'Upon their houses, boats, robes, shields, and wherever else they can find a place for it, they paint or carve their crest, an heraldic device of the beast or bird designating the clan to which the owner belongs.'[27] This, the oldest division into two, corresponds to that of the eagle-hawk and raven of the Australian aborigines.

Moreover, the black bird and wolf, two of the types of Sut, are here combined by the Thlinkeets. The black bird represented the son of the mother on one horizon, and was the type of the lower world, the wolf or jackal (Anup) on the horizon of the resurrection, where it arises in other of the American myths. These legends of the twins, however, belong chiefly to the vague stage of mere light and dark, and the earliest division of night and day which is often applied to the human creation.

The Yumala negroes say that Til,* the Great Creator cut the kneecaps from the hermaphrodite Venus, and made from them a black and white human pair.

* Til. It is observable that tir, the arrow, still used in Persian, is the name of Mercury in the Bundahish, the planet assigned to Sirius; and that Tiriel in the Kabbalah is the intelligence of the planet Mercury.

Another version of the negro myth was taken down from a native in Tumale, near the centre of Africa, by Dr. Tutschek[28]. In this, Til (God) made men and bade them live together in peace and happiness; labour five days, and keep the sixth as a festival. They were forbidden to hurt the beasts or reptiles. They themselves were deathless, but the animal suffered death. Til ordered the men to build mountains: they did so, but they so on for got the god's commands, killed the beasts and quarrelled with one another. Wherefore Til sent fire and destroyed them, but saved one of the race, named Musikdegen, alive. Then Til began to recreate beings. He stood before a wood and called, 'Ombo Abnatum Dgu!' and there came out a gazelle and licked His feet. So He said, 'Stand up, gazelle!' and when it stood up, its beast-form disappeared, and it was a beautiful maiden, and He called her Mariam. He blessed [p.8] her, and she bore four children, a white pair and a black pair. When they grew up, Til ordered them to marry, the white together, and the black together. In Dai, the story goes that Til cut out both Mariam's kneecaps, and of each He made a pair of children! Those which were white He sent north; to those which were black He gave possession of the land where they were born[29]. This black and white pair, however, were celestial at first, not human. And here it may be observed that when the African or Australian aborigines speak of going down in death as 'black fellows' and coming up as 'white fellows' we need not think it is intended as a compliment to Europeans. The doctrine belongs to the earliest division of light and darkness. The sun as Kak (or Hak) went down black and rose up white as Hu Osiris the father was black; Horus the son was white. The Hottentot Urisep, the son of Heitsi-Eibip, is the whitish one by name. In a later stage which reflects the red race, the ruti, Atum set as the red sun and re-arose as the white. His hut sign signifies white. Sut was black and Horus white.

White denoted the second of the Two Truths, and was used in the shape of pipe-clay by the Africans as the paint of puberty. Also the black fellows must have pipe-clayed their dead both In Africa and Australia ages before ever they saw a white man.

In Egyptian, paint has the same name of khu as white or light; and the khu is a spirit. Pennant in his tour through South Wales[30] says on inquiry into the origin of the prevalent whitening of the cottages there, he found the good people thought by thus whitening they were shutting the door of their houses against the devil, or black man. The act was precisely the same as that of the blacks who whiten themselves with pipe-clay.

Froebel says of the negroes in the United States that they believed the damned became monkeys, but if they behaved well they would be changed again into the human form, and their ultimate beatitude consisted in becoming white[31]. The imagery is as old as the observation of night turning into day, or the black moon that was typified by the black ape transforming into the white disk which the ape carried.

The hermaphrodite Venus is identified as the inner African 'first woman' who is called Iye, or life[32]. Iye is the earlier Ife, Eve, Heva or Kefa, the mother of life, or life personified. Now the kneecap is a hieroglyphic kâ; earlier kab (kabt), for the knee and kneepan. Kab means to duplicate, hence the cap, the joint, as the sign of kab or modified kâ. Of course the kneecap is a symbol and here it can be shown how the Yumala negroes continued to talk that language of typology which can often be interpreted by the hieroglyphics, in [p.9] which the kneecap remained and bears the name of the genetrix and duplicator Kep or Eve. Moreover when the Tasmanian natives assert that men had tails originally, but no knee-joints or kneecaps, they are talking the same typology. The Maori Ponaturi are the people of the knee-joint, or the division of heaven above and the waters below. But here the people who have no knee-joint are the undivided, the undistinguished herd which preceded the 'divided people.'

The hermaphrodite genetrix of the blacks whether in Africa or Australia, is one with the ancient Typhon in Egypt, the earliest form of the producer in space and time; the one alone whose children were the undivided, undistinguished mongrels of promiscuity. As goddess of the Great Bear, and the hinder part north she was the thigh, the backside, and her type is the tail. Hence the men, tribes, or races who date from this beginning were derided and scoffed at in later times as the men with tails but without kneecaps. The Jew's were reported to be born with tails. In China the Miau-tze, the aboriginal children of the soil are accredited with tails. The wild tribes of Africa, the Cagots of the Pyrenees, the Coata Tapztya in South America, are all considered to be people with tails. The men of Kent were called the long tails. Bishop Bale[33] says Englishmen had a perpetual infamy of being considered men with tails, through lying legends. The people of one county after another as they shed the tail themselves threw it behind them in the face of those of another backward county. The belief that Cornishmen had tails is yet extant in Devonshire. When the Jewish father cut off the tails of the future progeny in a symbolical representation he was repudiating that most ancient, prehuman and totemic type of the primordial people.

In the Magic Papyrus, spells and prayers are uttered against all animals having long tails[34]. One of these is the 'Bad dog;' another was the kant or kaf-ape. From the dog and ape descended the men with tails, as the children of Typhon.

The goddess of the seven stars was cast out as Baba the Beast. She was the beast under several forms, the hippopotamus, lioness, crocodile, bear (tabi) serpent and monkey (her muzzle or mouth being that of the kaf-ape). Her progeny too were represented by the crocodile, the ass, the fenekh, the ape and other animals. A caricature of an Egyptian concert in the Turin Satirical Papyrus is anti-typhonian. In this the ass is playing the harp, the lioness a lute, the crocodile a guitar, and a human-headed ape blows a double wind instrument[35]. The ass, lioness, crocodile and ape were four types of Typhon the genetrix.

The men who had tails but no knee-joints were the Typhonians of Chaos. The mother was not then even cut in two as Omoroka [p.10] or as the cow; the genetrix was not divided into the two sisters of one blood. It was the state of promiscuity, and according to the later thought men were all beasts together then without distinction, division or kneecaps.

The Tinneh Indians of North America whose languages extend in a line four thousand miles in length and diagonally over forty-two degrees of latitude, stretching from the northern interior of Alaska down into Sonora and Chihuahua, ranging from the borders of Mexico to the mouth of the Mackenzie River, claim their descent from the dog[36], like the Ainus of Japan. They say that whereas all other people owe their origin to the bird deity, they derive theirs from the dog and therefore to this day the dogs flesh is an abomination to the Tinneh. Indeed only a short time before the visit of Captain Frankland, the Tinneh had nearly ruined themselves by killing all their dogs because some fanatic had broken out afresh on this subject of their origin, and persuaded them of the wickedness of working their near relation. One of these tribes is the Takulli and in their tongue the dog is named thuli.

The Nez Percés tribe of Indians trace their origin and that of the human race to the wolf. Originally, they say, there were annuals only, and a monster devoured them alive. At last the wolf entered the monster's belly where he found the animals engaged in snarling at and tearing each other as they had done in the world outside. The wolf addressed them and urged them to cooperate against the common enemy. This they did and all fell upon him with one accord, eating their way out of the devourer's side. The monster perished and the animals were transformed into men. The wolf (or jackal) was one of the seven elementaries born of the genetrix—the wolf of day and dark, or the twilight. As Sut-Anup the wolf kept the horizon of the resurrection and showed the way up from the underworld, like Nebo, who 'kept the morning and evening gate of souls.' The tradition affiliates the Nez Percés to Anup one of the first male types that were figured in heaven as the sons of the primordial mother, Typhon, the goddess of the Great Bear. The primary and most honoured totems of various tribes among the red-skins are the bear, wolf, and turtle. The Osages claim descent from the beaver. The totem represents the name of their progenitor according to this beginning with the elementaries and zootypes that were afterwards figured in the stars of heaven.

But the ancient mother whose constellation was the Great Bear, had several types on earth. She was called the 'Dipper' in latitudes where she descended below the horizon, when the heaven was known as the celestial water. She was also the 'Digger' in relation to the earth which she was seen to sink into or ascend from; and the 'digger' takes various forms, hence she has several types. [p.11] Rerit, the sow, was one of these; and as Typhon was of a red complexion, it is probable that the river-hog (genus choiropotamus) now of tropical Africa, which is of a bright red colour, was an inner African prototype. The sow was the poker in the earth; as such it passed into the plough; for the plough is derived from the pig's snout. The pig has been recognised as the first plough in Africa[37]. The Latin porca, a ploughed field, is identical with porca a sow. Plutarch derives the name of the ploughshare from that of the boar[38]. The sow Rerit made the circuit complete in heaven by ploughing through the earth long before a plough was invented to open the ground, and her name of Kheb was afterwards given to the plough. Also, the Great Bear is still called the 'Plough.' A pig figured on a cross is one of the symbols found upon the ancient Gaulish coins or talismans. This represents the pig that crossed, the pig of the crossing, corresponding to Rerit the sow that crossed in the northern quarter of the heavens, where the bear dipped down and re-arose.

In the island of Celebes the world is described as being supported by the hog, and when the animal rubs itself against the tree there is an earthquake[39].

The tortoise that buries itself underground and emerges periodically is another type of Typhon. The North American Indians assert that earthquakes are caused by the buried earth-bearing tortoise[40]. Mythology rather than geology will tell us why. The tortoise having been adopted as the type of an established order of things called the 'world' or the 'age,' it remains at the sunken foundations of the past, and at the same time this will also explain the ancient custom of burying a live tortoise at the base of a building. The Hindu grammarians tell us that the tortoise is a type of woman, who ought never to stir from home. This also recognises the feminine foundation of which the tortoise was a symbol. The tortoise that supported the earth of mythology and was fabled to sustain the universe is portrayed at the base of the beginnings in the temple of Meaco where there is a stately chapel dedicated to the creator of all things. The opening is depicted by an ox in the act of breaking an egg; the egg that is still broken at Easter in many lands, which is a symbol of the opening year. In the midst of the temple there is a pit full of water, surrounded by a wall, seven feet high from the ground. In the middle there is an enormous tortoise with its feet, head, and shell under water, out of its back rises the stem of a great tree of brass, on the top of which sits a grotesque figure with four arms. One hand holds a cruse; from this water issues continually; another contains a sceptre. About the middle of the tree an exceeding great serpent has wreathed itself twice, whose head and body is held fast on the right side by two shapes; the remaining part thereof (i.e., of the serpent) to the tail is stretched out by two kings and one of Japan's [p.12] sages, one of the kings having the duplicated Janus head. Such is Ogilby's description; and as the reader will see by comparison the imagery is substantially the same as in the Hindu churning of the ocean[41] and the second incarnation of Vishnui. The representation contains the pool of the Two Truths and the tree with the dual being issuing from the primordial one, whose type is the tortoise. And again, the twin being issues from the tree like the bifurcating Mashya and Mashyoi in the Bundahish.

The first and oldest types of the Kamite beginnings went to the bottom, as sediment deposited in the underworld of eschatology. And in monumental times the tortoise, together with other typhonian figures, had sunk down from its place in heaven as the base and support of the world or the celestial beginnings, to become a type of evil and death, a dweller solely in the Hades where it is an image of the power opposed to light. But its names of apsh (or khepsh) and shet prove that it was a type of Sut-Typhon. In a myth of the beginning related by Cusick, the chief of the Tuscarora Indians, who set it down in the year 1825, he says there were two worlds among the ancients, one upper, the dwelling-place of mankind; one lower, the lurking-place of monsters. A woman who was in labour (the enceinte mother) sank from the upper region to the dark world beneath. Here she was received on the back of a tortoise, which had a little earth on its shell, and this became an island. She bore twin sons into the dark lower world and died[42]. The story has been mentioned in the mythos of the twin brothers. When the Chinese relate that the original hieroglyphics were invented from the figures marked on a tortoise which came up out of the celestial waters, they do but go back to this beginning, and tell us in their way that the tortoise, a type of Typhon, and therefore of the Great Bear, was a primordial hieroglyphic ideograph in the heavens, with which the signs began, and from which written characters were founded. Such statements become historical facts when interpreted by mythology. In like manner the origin of music may be traced to the tortoise of the seven stars. Hermes is said to have met with a tortoise, which he killed in order that he might invent the lute by furnishing the shell with seven strings. The same myth is manifest in the story, told by Plutarch, of Hermes cutting out the muscles of Typhon to make lute-strings of them[43]. The fable probably refers to the superseding of Sut by Taht-Hermes and the application of the number seven which was Typhon's own, to a week of seven days in the establishment of lunar time. This lute was figured in heaven as the constellation Lyra, the star Gamma of which is known in Arabic by the name of Sulhifat, from sulhifah a tortoise. Also Lyra was the constellation of Arthur, son of Arth the bear, in Britain.

[p.13] Sometimes the elephant supports the world and stands on the back of the tortoise. The elephant in Asia took the place of the hippopotamus type of puissance and power, but it has the same name of Abu in Egyptian as the rhinoceros which interchanges with the hippopotamus as an image of Typhon; and in the Hindu legends it is the world-supporting elephant whose movements are the cause of earthquakes. In inner Africa the two types are interchangeable under the same names. The African mother was Kheb and Khebma; her great types were the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, (or elephant), and crocodile, found under these names. It is noticeable also that the elephant is named yomuroka in the African Dsekiri language and that this is identical with the Babylonian Omoroka, a form of Tiamat, the one who was divided in the beginning, to make the heaven and earth. Because the beginning in time was based on the revolution of the sphere, and marked particularly by the Great Bear, these images of the elephant, hog, tortoise or others remain at the foundations of the so-called world. The duck, goose or swan was another of the types, as the diver under the waters. Khep (Eg.) is the name of some kind of duck (the neophron?), and khepsh may be read the pool of the duck as well, as the hippopotamus. Tel is another name of the duck or typical waterfowl; Apt is another. These likewise are names of the genetrix Typhon. Time was says an Indian legend, when the world was covered with water, and the only creatures in existence were a duck, a hawk, and a crow. The duck dived and brought up a beakful of mud and then died. With this bit of earth the hawk and the crow began to build the mountains of California. The hawk working on the eastern range and the crow on the western, they met at Mount Shasta. But the crow had stolen some of the hawk's share of the mud and consequently his was the larger half. This is the same story as that told by the Australian Aborigines of the contention between the eagle-hawk and crow. In this legend the old mother who bore the earth on her back as the tortoise, brings it up from the depths as the duck, which was Apt in Egypt, the genetrix by name; whilst the hawk and crow are identical with her bird-headed twins Sut and Horus, the hawk being the bird of the eastern horizon and the blackbird the phoenix of the west. The swan that floats double in light and shadow presented another dual image of the goddess above and in the waters below. In a myth of the island of Celebes seven celestial nymphs descend from the sky to bathe. They are seen by Kasimbaha who at first took them for seven white doves, but when they alighted in the bath he saw they were women. Whilst they were bathing he stole the robes of one of them named Utahagi. These robes gave her the power of flying, and without them she was caught. She became his wife and bore him a son[44]. [p.14] The seven swans denote the same original as the seven bears or seven cows (Hathors). In a German story the swan-maiden bears seven sons at once who are able to transform themselves into swans, and seven was the number of the primal progeny of the ancient mother. The serpent was a supreme type of the encircler and turner-round. One of its names in Egyptian is rer, rru or ru. Rer denotes the circuit, to go round and make the circuit. This also was a symbol of the old mother who bears its name as Rerit or Lelit (written with the l) the serpent-woman Lilith of rabbinical tradition. Speaking under this type the osirified deceased says. 'I pass through substances. I pierce the darkness. Hidden reptile is my name. The soul of my body is a serpent of lift.'[45] The formula of faith found inscribed on a bowl or goblet which Von Hammer argues belonged to the Templars, is Latinised by him to the following effect. 'Let Mete be exalted who causes all things to bud and blossom, it is our root; it (the root) is one and seven.'[46] Mete was the Baphomet or mother of breath. An invocation addressed to this form of the bearded mother is shown by Du Puy to have been 'Yalta' a supposed Saracenic word[47]. This like so many other titles of the genetrix, such as Nana and Maya, is an inner African name for the Great or Grand Mother who is

The oldest form of the Great Mother, the mother of the gods, known to the Greeks as Rhea, Kubele, Kubebe, Abbas and Mâ, is identified by her names with this the most ancient genetrix. Under the name of Orthia too, she is recognisable as the Egyptian Urt (Ta-Urt) the Irish Art, Welsh Arth for the bear. Hence her representation as a bear and her attendants as little bears. 'I was a Bear at the Brauronia, wearing the saffron coloured robe,' says one of the women, in the Lysistrate, who had been one of the arktoi or bears at the festival of the Fundatrix, Archegetis, or Brauron, otherwise Orthia, who is described by tradition and who was celebrated as a bear, calling for human blood[48]. This identifies the goddess with her celestial type. The red terracotta hippopotamus found by Dr. Schliemann at Hissarlik at a depth of twenty-three feet[49], is the expressly Egyptian image of the typhonian genetrix who was reputed to be of a red complexion. 'Archegetis,' shows that she was the goddess of the beginning. The deess Hippa, whom Proclus styles the 'Starry Soul of the world,'[50] was the still earlier Kheba (Eg.) the water-horse. The Arcadians claimed to have been in [p.15] existence before the moon, they called themselves Proselenes as the people who preceded the moon. But, the country of Arcadia which existed before the moon had been created (or reached up to) was the celestial land in the northern heaven, the place of beginnings with the bear and the seven bears. Ortygia the land of the quail, the birth place of Artemis and Orthia, originated in this region, not in cloudland merely, but in the circle of the bear, of Urt and Arth whence came the name of the quail όρτυ and Ortolan, the bird urt of the hieroglyphics, as the hearer of news and the herald of spring.

Juhu, personified, is the wife of Brahma and the goddess of speech. Juhu is the tongue; the name is supposed to be derived from the root hve[51]. But the h of hve implies a prior k, which modified into the j of Juhu and Jihva; this is found in Khefa or Kep, the ancient genetrix who was the Kamite living word, and who was portrayed with the protruding tongue, as goddess of the seven stars. 'The whole World is her Seat,' may well be said of the lady of the seven stars, the seven constellations, seven hills or other shapes of the hebdomad and heptanomis, by which she can be followed round the world as Urt, or Art, i.e., Rerit in Egypt, Rī in Akkad; Lri in India, Rhea in Greece; Kêd in Britain; Kivutar or Otava in Finland, and Koob in Australia, the lady of the seven bears, seven cows, seven hills or the seven-stepped mountain of the world, who as the African Eve, Ife or Iye, (the woman in scores of African languages), probably had her throne on the seven African mountains, or ridges mentioned by Ptolemy, in the human birthplace[52]. A country called Ife (5º E. Long; 8º N. Lat.) is looked upon by the Yorubans as the birthplace of being, both human and divine. The Ethiopians, says Diodorus, relate that they are the first of all men in order of time[53]. They were the children of Kep or Khepsh, i.e., Küsh or Habesh, who as genetrix of the seven, formed the first cycle of time in heaven, and who became the Hebrew Chavvach or Eve, the life, the bone of all flesh; the typical substance born of; she who was personified as the Great Mother of inner Africa, and as the mother whose name means life, bone, and the rib.

The mother is ekafo and ekami in the Anan language; and with the nasal articulation, n'Gob in Mbe. E'Kafo (or ekami) wears down to iya in the same language (Anan) for the mother, which modification is very general in the inner African dialects. Bone was a primitive form of substance, power, kep, (Eg.), or Eve; and bone is—

[p.16]

The rib is

This identifies the mythical mother of all flesh with the bone and rib, as inner African by name and origin.

The womb or belly is the—

The thigh is another feminine type, as khep, khepsh, or khept in Egyptian, and this is—

Here then we find the types of the womb, bone, rib, and the mother under one prototypal word in inner Africa; which is the name of the old Typhon Kep or Kefa, the Hebrew Chavvach, or Eve of Genesis, and the Great Mother Ife of the land of Ife locally known as the birthplace of existence, human and divine.

Although not so frequently found as Eve the mother, yet the name of Adam occurs often enough in inner Africa, to show whence came the primal pair who were personified as the typical parents in Egypt, and continued in the sacred writings brought out of that land by the Hebrews. The type-name for the father is—

The first form of the Adam as vir was the male who became of age, not the individualised father, but the elder or old one, which is—

[p.17] 'Adam' is also the 'grandfather,' in several inner African languages, as—

A group of the Southern African languages are known as the Atam or Adamic tongues. They are peculiarly distinguished by an initial inflection. The people of these tribes are all called Atams or Adams in Sierra Leone. One form of the name is Udom, as in the Assyrian Udumu, and Egyptian Tum, which is the type-name for mankind, the human race, as created man. Thus in Southern Africa we find the race of Atam and the family of Atamic languages; whilst the same root in Egyptian indicates those who may have preceded language, the dumb (tum) people in contradistinction to those who are known by name as the speakers in a later stage. An Adamic country is also extant in Adamawa, lat. 8 0, north, 13 30 east, on the way Egypt-ward. A Buddhist saying affirms that those who know not Adi Buddha are ignorant of beginnings. And here the ancient race or totemic name of Gotama applied to Buddha, to Durga, the Naga-king, and others, is identical with that of the inner African Adam (Kotama), the elder or oldest one. The Hebrew םדק (qdm), likewise denotes the original one, that which is primitive in place, position, time, and person; the oldest and first one.

The universal mother of beginnings is one on earth, as in heaven, because she was the first form taken by space, and next the first describer of a circle, as the sign of time. Making the circle as a type of the cycle is the figure of all beginning. Nen-put (Eg.) the word for never means more literally no-circle, or un-circled, without boundary, boundless because there was no period of time. On the other hand the age, aeon or ever (heh), is signified with the circle for its ideograph. This figure being first drawn in heaven by the constellations of the seven stars, the Great Bear was therefore personified as the genetrix and bringer-forth of the primal birth of time. The creation was here effected by, in, and as the circle of the seven stars; the creation which appears in the Book of Genesis as the work of Jehovah-Elohim.

The Chinese creation begins with the circle represented by the ideographic Tae-Keih, or the great limit. Woo-Keih, no limit, or the absence of limit, is their representative of the Kabbalist 'Ain-Soph,' and the Persian 'Zarvan-Akarana' that preceded time. This circle denoted limit, and included duality expressive of motion and [p.18] rest. The Chinese introducer of the circle, we are told[54], applied to the figure, the terms 'extreme limit, chaos, primitive existence, and unity.' 'Tae-Keih' likewise includes tri-unity as well as duality within the circle of its power[55]. At first the circle expressed a limit, and a total of time, in which the oneness was then divided into the two heavens, or heaven and earth, and the various twofold forms of the twin principle, expressed as the yin and the yang. Yin and yang are the twin-total([), the biune being consisting of the two principles into which the primary oneness everywhere divides to become male and female. Both principles of source, as water and breath, are feminine at first, on the most natural grounds of observation, but when divided and distinguished by personification as the mother and her son, yin is the female, and yang becomes specifically the male. According to the Chinese accounts, when the circle was divided and became two, there then existed an odd and even number; the odd number being yin, the imperfect nature and lower half of the circle, but still primary; the one of all beginning. Yin for the female represents one of the commonest type-words in the world as in the Sanskrit yoni, and it is inner African in all its variants, as already shown. Yen, in Chinese, is to take origin from. Yun means to come round, make the round, encircle. This circle and circle-maker was the female one who was afterwards reduced to a mere cipher. Un (Eg.) is the opening, the cycle or period as one, one hour, one round. Yang (Ch.) signifies number two, or an even number. Yen was the feminine first, who bifurcated into the two sexes before yang could exist.

The celestial Eden, or Gheden (ןדע), is described as a land of delight, on account of the feminine birthplace. But the root word ןדע denotes periodicity and a definite time, especially related to the female. Both demonstrate the human origin of Eden. Eden also means time, to measure a time, or make a round of time, a period, a year. This was first figured above as one turn of the stars in the circumpolar heaven. Thus aten (Eg.), an equivalent for Eden, means to make a circle, or a circular formation, a disk. The heten (Eg.) is a ring, the earliest form of which is kheten; the khet (Eg.) being a seal-ring, the type of reproduction; and the word means to shut and seal up; the khetem is a shut-place, the circle, with the signs of life, of bringing together, embracing, and reproducing. The seal-ring khet, the type of the inclosing and reproducing circle, illustrates the Gathas of the Avesta.

'When thou madest the world with its bodies, and gayest them motions and speeches; then Thou, Mazda, hadst created at first, through thy mind the Gaet has or Enclosures.' This occurs in the 'Gatha Anunavaiti.' The gatha is divided into the typical seven chapters, [p.19] and in the heading we are told that the archangels first sang the gathas. The archangels are identical with the stars that sang together in the dawn of creation when all the sons of Elohim[56] shouted for joy. These were the seven children of the genetrix, or the seven singers of the seven gathas, because they were circle-makers. By these gathas, Haug understood the ancient settlements of the Iranian agriculturists[57]. So in the Mohammedan legends an Eden is represented as a place fit for the pasturage of flocks. Unquestionably the gathas were afterwards applied to agriculture, just as ancient cities were called kheti or gates. But the primary khet of mythology is physiological and celestial; it is the circle in space, and cycle in time. This khet, kheten or khetam was formed before the earth was cultivated by agriculturalists. The Dravidian kutam is an enclosure, as a water-pot. The Arab khitmah is a seal, a ring. Kati, Maori, is shut in, enclosed. Qata (Fiji) means enclosed. The cotha (Ir.) is an enclosure, cuta (Xhosa), to close in; godi (Zulu), a hollow place, a grave; kata a coil; kohtu (Fin.), koht (Esth.), kat (Eg.), kyte (Scotch), kete (Fijian), quiti (Alem), the womb; koti (Fin.), cwt or cyd (Welsh), cot (English), the dwelling-place. This word is one of the prototypes of all languages. Even the wise men of Gotham who went to sea in a bowl were in a form of khetam or Eden of the circular shape. In Arabic the kadah is a bowl or cup. The pail or bucket is a kit, English; chad Hebrew; kad Slavonic; ghada, Sanskrit; cadus, Latin. The khet (Eg.) is a port and a ford. The Canoe in Banyun is a kiden. The Welsh kadair or Irish cathair is the seat or settlement; khet (Eg.) and seat being identical.

The inner African seat as a bench or a stone is a kudun in Barnbara, kudun in Dsalunka, getumi in Nso. Ketam or ketanam, in Sanskrit, is the abode, the symbol of a goddess, a feminine type. Also a form of khetam (Eden) exists as the Paradise or Dead Man's Land of the Dahome people, which, Captain Burton says, is called kutom[58], a name certainly not derived from the Hebrew writings attributed to Moses. The Egyptian am indicates a residence in a park or paradise.

The following list will show how the type-names of khet, kedamn, gheden (ןדע) or Eden had been applied to the enclosure, house, home, place of reproduction, in inner Africa.

[p.20] The keten, or Eden, wears down into or was derived from the

and these were continued in the etans of Keltiberia, the tuns of Scandinavia and duns of Britain, which are especially identified as enclosures on the tops of hills, and with the mounds devoted to the dead. The Irish dun was a royal residence on the height that represented the typical mount above. In Caledonia a whole country is designated as the duns of the Gael, and its capital is named Dunedin, the dun with the rampart round.

Another name of Gan-Eden is Paradise. According to M. Renan, the word was borrowed by the Hebrews from the Persians[59]. Max Muller assures us that the name was derived from the Persian through Xenophon into Greek as paradeisos, and transferred thence as a foreign word into Hebrew. 'This,' he says, 'is the real history of the word. It is an Aryan word but it does not exist in Sanskrit.'[60] This comes of looking for the old lost paradise in the shape of a Hebrew garden. Eden signifies pleasure, and the place of pleasure. Pari-tosha (Sans.) is complete satisfaction, delight, pleasure, contentment, gratification. Paradêça is a region of supreme loveliness. Pari-dha is to put round, wrap round, clothe round, surround, encompass, clasp. Pari-dhi is a hedge, fence, enclosure, that by which anything is enclosed, a circle, or circumference. Paridhi-stha is situated on the horizon. Pari-tas is around, about, all round, on all sides, the round, and there are twelve tushitas, who are astronomical, and related to the round in the heavens. Para (Eg.) means to go round, surround, encircle. Tesh is the nome, the frontier and boundary. Paradise was the Para-tesh, or nome, first mapped out on the celestial chart in the circle of the seven stars that revolved about the mount, and thus defined the earliest astro-nome or Para-tesh.

Paz-des, the Armenian paradise, the Persian pardis, modern Arabic firdaus, applied to park or garden, is too late an application for an interpretation of the beginnings. Human gardens were not enclosed or cultivated when the Para-tesh was formed, and the nome first named in heaven. The Pairadaeza in the Avesta is a mound thrown up around a corpse bearer to isolate the unclean person. 'Let the worshipper of Ahura-Mazda raise about the space a Pairadaeza,' i.e., make an inclosing circle. Paradise, then, is an inclosing circle without defining the nature of the space fenced off and ringed round that may vary indefinitely. The creation of paradise or Eden is just the same as the circle-making already described. In the solar creation the circle is zodiacal; the latest of all the series. In the Avesta, Mithra is the preparer of a circle or congregation (as in the [p.21] Egyptian creation of Ra) and this is rendered by Windischmann (Mihr Yasht) he 'who directs the furrows,'[61] whilst in the Babylonian astronomy the ecliptic is the 'furrow of heaven.' The first furrow in heaven, however, was made by the constellation afterwards known as the 'Plough,' and the old lost paradise of many lands has to be identified in tile circle of the seven stars, the birthplace of all beginning in time. Ketem in Hebrew signifies the beginning of time, and the beginning in Eden, Heten, Keten or Kedam was in heaven because the beginning depended on the formation of a circle of time which was figured by the seven stars revolving in the north about the pole of heaven. In various mythologies and forms of the mythos the birthplace of creation is in the north. It was so in India as in Egypt. There stood the Mount of Meru as the typical centre of the starry revolution. In an Akkadian hymn to Ishtar the goddess is addressed as the 'queen of the mountain of the world' and 'queen of the land of four rivers of Erech,'[62] that is as the goddess of the mythical mount of the pole and the four rivers of the four quarters which arose in paradise. The mountain of the world was the mount of the north in its primary phase and of the east in the solar mythos.

Language in inner Africa will tell us where the birthplace in heaven, as well as Adam and Eve, was first named. Kep for the front of, the face, and khept for the hinder-part of heaven, in Egyptian, are names of heaven as gopa in Mano, and gbate in Sarar, keput in Balu. Tameri or Tamara is a name of Egypt and in Udso Tamara is heaven. The name of Zulu signifies heaven. The Khonds of Orissa (India) derive from this primal birthplace, and in the inner African, Ihewe, Oloma, etc., orisa is heaven. Eden or Keten is heaven itself as kodan in Padsade and gudana in Biafada. Here too, we shall also find the famous Airyana-vaejo of the Avesta which has caused so much vain search, in common with the Hebrew paradise. In the Vendidad, Fargard I it is taught that Ahura-Mazda created the home; an Eden of delight, a Paradise of pleasantness where there was no habitable place before. This was at one time considered by the 'best authorities' to have been the starting-point of successive and most ancient migrations of the muchly-overlauded (especially by the Germans) Aryan race[63]. But mythology and its naming preceded general geography. The place of beginning was in heaven, which still preserves its memorial of the time that is immemorial on earth. Ariyanna is the Soso name of heaven. Arianna is the Timne name of heaven. Also the name of the famous seat of the Aryans in Aran or Iran appears as

[p.22] In these languages it means the seat, as something to sit on, which preceded the agricultural settlements of the Aryans; as did the seat or chair called 'Cader Idris' in Wales. Am is also an inner African type-name of heaven, as

Aaru or aalu is the Egyptian name for Elysium; the heaven mapped out as the fields of the Aaru, the astro-nomes, Para-tesh or Paradise.

So far from the Aryan name having begun with the so-called Aryan race of Central Asia it is as old as the naming of the gods of the earliest orbit, the brotherhood of the seven stars. The an in Egyptian are the companions, the watchers who became the seven Kab-ari, as the an of kheb (Egypt), or from kab (Eg.) to revolve together. The ari of kheb or heb would account for the name of the Iberri in Africa and Ireland, and for the Kam-ari, or Cymry of Wales. The An were Kamite blacks before they were the Median Arioi or the Aryas of India. Apuleius mentions the Arii as an African race together with the Ethiopians or Kushites of the Persian Gulf, and Egyptians[64]. The An are also found as the Zingari, the European Attu-arri, Boio-arri, Chattu-arri, Petu-arri, Ingu-arri, Bav-ari, Bulg-ari and others of this type-name, which was not derived from the Saxon ware, for men. The Ar or Arya brotherhood had gone out over the world in the earliest times and was carried forth by and as the black people. The Kaûi-ari are found among the aborigines of Brazil as wild men, or monkey-men. The 'Areoi' are a brotherhood of blacks in New Caledonia. The Arii in Tahiti are a class of nobles.

It is noticeable in this connection that the Mangaian plural 'pa' also means the enclosure and doorway. Another plural is vaka, which denotes a 'canoe-full-of.' And such were the Ari (Cabari), Hohgates, Rishis or Ariyas of the seven stars. The Kamite origin of the name for those who associate or kab together is shown by an earlier form of the Ari as Rari or Reri, the companions, the children whose mother was Rerit, the goddess of the seven stars. The Cabari are the seven companions considered to be a brotherhood of sailors through the celestial ocean, and the Aryan Aryanatha does not denote the chariot of the Aryans in any other primary sense than the chariot of the seven stars, the seven Rishis, often called Aryas in the Vedas, seven princes of the chariot, seven Hohgates of the boat, seven companions (of Arthur) in the ark. Now in the original and commentary of the Pahlavi Vendidad[65] we learn that Hapta-Hendu was the place of those who are the seven Hindus (Hindukan) and that their seven Hinduism consists in the fact that the chief rulers are seven. Yet, says the commentator, 'I do not say there [p.23] are not seven;' but he intimates that there is an Avesta text which mentions only two, the eastern and the western Hindu[66]. Some reckon by the two (divisions) and others by the seven rulers. Egyptian alone will explain this. Khebta-Khentu are the two halves or Egypts into which the celestial heptanomis was divided. The seven rulers were the seven stars or constellations in Khebti. In the Zend or commentary it is said that there are ten months of winter, and two of summer in Airyana Vaéjo. Literally interpreted, this must have been a paradise of cold. Another commentary says 'Seven months of summer are there, five months of winter.' Enough for the present purpose that the division is into summer and winter; the length of each does not signify. Summer and winter answer to south and north, upper and lower heaven. These two correspond to Khepta-Khentu, as north and south, or the later (i.e., solar) east and west. We learn from the Bundahish that the Persian year was divided into two seasons, seven months summer, and five months winter. 'From the auspicious day Ahura-Mazda of the month Fravardin, to the auspicious day Aniran of the month Mitro is the summer of seven months; so from the auspicious day Ahura-Mazda of the month Avan to the auspicious month Spendarmad on to the end of the five supplementary days is the winter five months.'[67] This then is the division of the circle of Airyana Vaéjo into two halves, like the year, and the two halves are hapta-hendu as the north and south in the circle of the seven stars. In Airyana Vaéjo we find the first formation or circle by means of which time was born, and the earth and heaven were divided and discreted into Khepta-Khentu (Eg.) or Hapta-Hendu, described as the twofold region of the seven stars above and below, or north and south. The Vaêjo of the Avesta is the Sanskrit vik, to divide, separate, and the Egyptian puka or pekh, for the division, answering by name to pekh, the divided lioness. The first division was into upper and lower, south and north, and afterwards by east and west. The explanation given for this division is that it was not possible to go so far as from one region to the other except by means of the yazadan or angels. This statement is repeated in the Bundahish and Minokhird. The yazadan is a term applied to the angels and to the gods, like the Elohim in the Hebrew books. The first means of passing from one division to the other were the seven stars or seven constellations; and seven appears to have been the primary number of the yazads. In the Ijashne ceremony the number of recitations depends on the nature of the Ijashne. 'If it be celebrated for Rapithwin, twelve are necessary; if for Hormazd, ten; if for the Frohars eight; if for Sarosh, five; and if for the Yazads, seven.' Four times these seven (which we have to return to in a later section) [p.24] make the twenty-eight yazads of the moon in the blending of the stellar with the lunar reckonings[68].

The Egyptian asat is a type of time. Egypt itself began with the heptanomis, a first formation of seven provinces with the ten upper and ten lower extending on either hand. This reflects the heptarchy stelled in the earliest heavens, and the ten divisions which led to the mapping of them out into seventy degrees and nations[69]. Egyptian alone shows us why hapta in Pahlavi, and saptan in Sanskrit came to signify no. 7. Hepti, Greek hepta, is seven because kep is the hand, as a figure of five; and ti is number two. Egypt itself contains that duality and sevenfoldness which are obscurely referred to in the Avesta commentary. Egypt was dual, as north and south in Khebta­Khentu; and khebti, kepti, sebti or hepti was also the heptanomis.

The beginning, whether applied geographically or to the tribal divisions, is with the number seven among some of the oldest races on earth. Scotland begins with the heptanomis, ruled by the seven brothers who were the seven sons of Alban; and seachd in Scotch is number seven. The seven provinces of Dyfed form the first starting-point in Wales.

Sevekh, another Egyptian name for seven, is found in savaiki (avaiki) the Mangaian name for the seven islands of the Hervey group. The Quiches say they migrated from Tulan-Zuiva, the seven caves, and again zuiva echoes sevekh (Eg.) for no. 7. These and other beginnings with the seven are here identified with the first formation of a circle of time that was made in heaven by the revolving sept of seven constellations considered as a companionship, a brotherhood personified as the seven sons of the genetrix who was goddess of Ursa Major. To the polar centre of this celestial circle of the seven, the heptanomis above, we have to look for the Eden of Genesis, the paradise lost of ancient legend, the Airyana Vaéjo of the Avesta. It is not necessary to deny that Hapta-Hendu or Sapta-Sindhu may have also denoted a land of the seven streams. The two waters, four rivers, seven streams, were divisions just as the burn and bourne are one in the water boundary. 'When Tishtar produced the rain, and the seas (or deluge) arose therefrom, the whole place was converted into seven portions half taken up by water,'[70] and these were reckoned either as the seven streams, or the seven lands divided by the seven streams. The Kabbalists say: 'The source of the water and the water-streams proceeding therefrom to spread itself are two. A reservoir is then formed and is the third. Then the unfathomable deep divides into seven streams resembling seven long vessels. The source, the water-stream, the reservoir and the seven streams together snake ten. In this way the cause of causes gave rise to the ten sephiroth.'[71] In the same way [p.25] the Hindus represented the origin of the river Ganges. It is depicted as issuing from the source itself, out of Vishnu's foot, the god having assumed his female form. The water issuing from the goddess falls on the head of a figure seated on a rock below, where it divides as in the Egyptian picture of the one water becoming two. It then dashes itself into seven streams by means of the seven Rishis who receive it as if about to drink of it[72]. Both descriptions of the water dividing in twain and becoming seven are in accordance with the physical facts in Egypt where the one water of Hapi-Mu divided into the Blue and Red river, the water above and the water below, and then into the seven streams and outlets of the river Nile, which were elevated to the planisphere. In the Odyssey[73] Homer calls the river Nile Diipetes, the sky-fallen. The spring which surrounds the sublime mountain is represented by the Akkadian 'Khi-tim-kur-ku'; and this is a personification of the celestial water; that is the heaven called water, which was divided into twin pools, then into four waters, or into seven streams or oceans, identified with seven constellations, as a primitive mode of mapping out the vague vast of infinitude. These water-divisions are alluded to in the statement: 'Like the streams in the circle of heaven I besprinkle the seed of men.'[74]

The 'abyss' itself which preceded the first act of creation is Kamite by name in the primary form of the word. This was the place of the waters in the lower heaven or the earth, from whence the water-cow ascended periodically to denote the division of upper and lower, and make the circle on which was founded the first creation of time. In Africa, beyond Egypt, so far south that Khepsh (Kush) or Habesh was then the north localized by name as the region of the Bear (Khepsh), the constellation dipped below the horizon, and demonstrated the lower and upper of two; where it descended was the abyss or khepsh (Eg.) which means both the cow and the waters (sh, ¢) of the cow. Hence the north (abyss) and the Great Bear have the same name. The khepsh was the place of the waters of darkness, the mythical abyss of darkness. This was actual in Africa. When farther inland, Kush (Ethiopia) was the abyss in the north, then Habesh (Abyssinia); next Nubia called Kep-Kep; then Coptus, and lastly lower Egypt or Khept; the abyss or khepsh being the lower Egypt of the two heavens. In the African Baga language the dense dark forest is called the âbys or âpus. In Dsuku the lower world or hell is the âbsiu. In the Assyrian legend the place of beginning is the abzu. Damascius says 'the Babylonians like the rest of the barbarians pass over in silence the one principle of the universe, and they constitute two.'[75] These are represented by the Tavthe and Apason who appear on the tablets as Tiamat and Abzu.

The Tepht and Khepsh are one in locality (Eg.) one also as the [p.26] water-cow, but the oneness divides in the two heavens, two hands, two bears, (or cows) as the primal act of creation. Thus we are told that in the beginning Belus cut the woman Omoroka in two; from one half of her he made the sky above, from the other, the earth beneath. As Yomuroka, this would be the elephant a fellow-type with the hippopotamus or bear; and the divided bear would be the two bears; so the division of the negro Eve is described by the cutting out of her kneecaps, to form the first pair of beings. The water-cow, or Khepsh the hippopotamus, likewise furnished the name for the land-cow as a type of earth and of space which was divided into upper and lower. In the Bundahish the cow is cut in two. This cow in the Avesta is the geûsh[76] Sanskrit gaûs and Greek gaea applied to both the cow and the earth. According to the Gatha Ushtavaiti the creator as maker of the earth is literally the 'Cutter of the Cow.' The cow or rather the ox, as that represents either sex, was the primeval geûsh and gayomard, from the division of which in two halves as male and female sprang the whole creation. This can be explained by the beginning with the mother who was divided to form the heaven above and the mother earth below, and who was also represented as masculine in the forepart or south and feminine in the hinder part north. The opening of creation by the one becoming twain is variously typified as an act of cutting in two. Several of these illustrations have been adduced. Here is another. The opening act of creation is the passage out of chaos and vague space into the world of time. The Great Bear is personified as the mother of time. Her first son was Sevekh-Kronus of the Dragon or Lesser Bear who represented the child of the genetrix in time. Now, the vague heaven being the water above, this in creation was separated from the water below. Uranus is the Egyptian Urnas the celestial water, and the cutting of Uranus by Cronus, or time, is another mode of dividing equivalent to separating the heaven from the earth, the light from the darkness, or of cutting any other type in two as the figure of division. In the Polynesian story told by Williams, for example, the heaven and earth are said to have been bound closely together with cords and the severance of these cords was effected by myriads of dragonflies who cut them asunder with their wings[77]. The celestial dragon was Sevekh-Kronus the son of Khepsh, the true cutter of Ouranus, who in the Greek version of the myth was instigated to do it by the mother Gaea, who is Khep(sh) the ancient Typhon.

The Kamite origin of Ouranus as the Urnas or Uranus is shown by the signification of the name which is that of the celestial water out of (nas) which all came at first. In the book of that which is in the lower hemisphere (the Tuaut), the Urnas or Uranus is a river that runs through the fields of the Aahlu (Elysium) cultivated by the osirified deceased. These were divided into twelve parts with gates [p.27] like the New Heaven in Revelation[78]. The original feminine nature of the Urnas or celestial water was continued in the personification of the Assyrian and Cyprian goddess Ouraniê. According to Pausanias Ouraniê was first adored by the Assyrians and afterwards by the people of Cyprus, the Phoenicians of Ascalon in Palestine and by the Cythereans[79]. There was also a shrine of Aphrodite Ouraniê at Athens. But the Egyptian Urnas as the water of heaven preceded personification.

The 'heaven' of mythology is no mere undiscreted space or blue sky but a definite creation, a first formation which could be followed by a second and a third according to the length of cycle and size of circle. In one of the cuneiform texts there is a variant reading of the name of Tavthe or Tiamat in which she is called 'The Divine Mother who has borne the heaven.'[80] Just as the Egyptian Tepht (Typhon) is mother of the Aahlu or divided heaven, called the fields of Elysium. The 'heaven' was something that could be borne by the mother; be distinguished by the two sisters; be divided into north and south by the twin brothers, facing both ways; be lifted up by Shu and brought by Anhar; be carried on the backs of the seven giant brothers; be founded on the four quarters by the lunar god and established finally on the twelve signs, thirty-six crossing stars and seventy-two duo-decans of the solar zodiac. 'I beheld the secrets of the heavens and Paradise (κὰτ' έξοχήν) according to its divisions,'[81] says Enoch; and these divisions extended from the first severance of earth and heaven into lower and upper, the earliest division of the firmamental waters, to the final seventy-two duo­decans of the zodiac. And here a couple of hieroglyphics will determine the nature and origin of the sword which turned every way in the region of the Bear or Khepsh[82]. As before said the crooked sword or sickle of the Egyptians is called the khepsh and bears the name of the region and the goddess of the bear. The leg of the hippopotamus was its model. The seven great stars in Ursa Major, called the khepsh or thigh, form a figure not unlike the thigh, leg, and bended knee of the hippopotamus. The leg or 'thigh of the Northern Heaven,' is identified with the Great Bear, in the Ritual. The 'Leg of Gorgô' or Typhon, was also a model for Greek vases[83], with which may be compared the thigh of Typhon, goddess of the Great Bear. The vase was a type of the womb, and her constellation of the 'Thigh,' was the Meskhen, the birthplace in heaven. The Khepsh then is both the Great Bear (hinder thigh) constellation and an Egyptian sickle-sword and it has been amply shown how the types will interchange in representing the same thing. Thus the constellation may be the bear, hippopotamus, tortoise, elephant, hinder thigh, a wain, a pig, a plough [p.28] or the sword fashioned after the shape of the other Khepsh, so that instead of the animal, the plough, or the leg turning round, the word khepsh warrants us in substituting the khepsh sickle for the khepsh thigh and we recover an Image of a sword that turned round in the circumpolar heaven, corresponding to the flaming sword that turned every way, the sword of the four quarters; and if the word charbu be rendered sword in the difficult passage[84] instead of kherpu a sufficiency as suggested[85], the sword is there likewise identified with Behemoth (or Khepsh) the chief of the ways of the creator, the typhonian goddess of the Great Bear. Moreover the khepsh thigh of the female is called the ur-hekau, or great magic power; and it is the type of the birthplace above because it was the birthplace below; hence when we are told that Gan Eden means the Garden of Pleasure, we have to read the imagery as physiological according to the sign of the hinder thigh and the gnosis of the two truths, or the double truth. The pleasure-place of reproduction is also called hedenesh, delightful, as the birthplace of Zaratusht in the Bundahish. Thus the circle of Eden is further identified by the types of the khepsh, the uterus and crooked sword which have one name in the hieroglyphics (L), and finally, the crooked sickle (scythe of time) formed by Gaea, mother of the seven Titans, with which Kronus mutilated Uranus, is none other than the crooked khepsh sabre, modelled after the leg of the hippopotamus, the khepsh that turned every way, and by its revolution formed the circle of Eden, or, as it was represented, kept the way of the tree of life, the pole, where the happy garden was planted as the primary creation, which was the home of the primeval pair.

The Arab paradise, or Eden, is called the Garden of Irem or Arem. 'Hast thou not considered how the Lord dealt with Ad, the people of Irem.'[86] The city of Irem they say is yet standing in the deserts of Aden, although invisible. Aden is one with Eden, and the Arab tradition identifies another type-name in Irem. This again corresponds with the Arem of Mesopotamia, the land of the two streams and the two waters, which is called Rum in the Huzvaresh. The Egyptians called Arem (or Rum) the Nile-Land, Naharina; and another name of the Nile, or its inundation, is urm, urem, or rem. Also Rome, named from Ruma, the river Tiber, is another form of the earthly paradise under this name—an inner African type-name for water, out of which life issued and creation came.

The Garden of Eden being founded in a circle, this was figured around the summit of a vast mountain rising up from earth to heaven [p.29] in the north. The earliest geocentric mount would be a figure of station, in the midst of the stellar revolution, which became a type of the pole; and this natural genesis would lead up to the symbolical mountain of Meru, Alborz, or Eden. The gardens and paradise of Indra were placed by the Hindus around the celestial north pole, whilst Yama held his court in the opposite and Antarctic Circle, the station of the Asuras, who warred with the Suras, or gods of the firmament. The pole, or polar region, is Meru. Su-meru is the superior hemisphere; Ku-meru, the hades, in parts intensely hot, and in parts cold[87]. Mount Meru is said to be 84,000 yojanas in height, having the shape of an inverted cone, and being 32,000 yojanas in diameter at the top, and only 16,000 at the base. It is considered to form the central point of Jambu-Dvipa, the island of the Rose-Apple Tree, and to be 'like the Seed-Cup of the Lotus of Earth.' the leaves of which are formed by the various dvipas. For the mount is also described as a lotus rising up out of the waters, the lotus being an early type of emergence from the liquid element. Meru is the garden of the Tree of Life that takes two characters in Eden, and becomes fourfold in the vision of Zaratusht when he prayed for immortality[88]. Mount Meru is also the fount of the one water here fabled to be the celestial Ganga, that falls from the moon, which now becomes the type of the genetrix, and the source of the water that divided to become fourfold and sevenfold in the seven streams. The mount is circular, and yet it has four corners like the quadrangular kaers of the British Druids. The Vaya compares its summit to a saucer. The Matsya also says the measurement is that of a circular form, but it is considered quadrangular[89]. One of the creations in the Avesta is called Varen, the four-cornered. 'Its quadrangularity is this, that it stands upon four roads; some say that its city has four gates.' The circle of Yima is also the lofty, the four-cornered, and four-coloured golden mount, like Meru the golden, which is four-coloured on its four faces—white to the east, yellow to the south, black to the west, and red to the north. The four corners are also identified with four cities and four climes; Yamakoti, in the clime of Bhadrasva; Romaka (compare Rome), in Ketumala; Lanka, Bharata, and the city called that of the perfected in the clime of Kuru. The Puranas, however, say nothing of the four cities in the four climes, or quarters. The four quarters are further indicated by the one water that becomes fourfold as in the Book of Genesis, and in the Assyrian version. The four rivers of Paradise appear in a hymn to the goddess Ishtar, who is addressed as the 'Queen of the land of the four rivers of Erech.'[90]

Water, in Egypt, was the first 'way.' The water-way was the typical road of the gods. This element, as distinct from air, was [p.30] made the sign of the way, and the four ways in the Celestial Chart. In the Avesta the four waters, as sources of life, are also spoken of as the separating of ways, or guides of ways, 'who with long arms lead the body of the world without creating, without speaking.'[91] In one system the waters issue from the cow, or from four cows, which represent the Kamite water-cow Apt, of the four corners.

The Tibetan mythologists tell us there are four vast rocks from which flow the four sacred streams; close to these there grows the Tree of Immortality. It is where these four rivers run that the Flood is fabled to have burst forth and submerged the Garden of the beginning. In the Persian myth of Eden, four great rivers come from Mount Alborz, two north and two south. And the one fountain is the river Aredvivsur, that nourishes the Homa tree of immortality. There is a Chinese myth of the waters in the Garden of Paradise, which issue from one fountain of Immortality and divide into four streams. In the circle of yin and yang when the golden-coloured heavenly messenger disappeared, four genii flew to the spot from different quarters. The first from the north, is son of the essence of water; the second, from the south, is son of the essence of red earth; the third, from the east, is superintendent of wood (sap); the fourth is the golden mother, from a paradisiacal mountain in the west, His 'Imperial Reverence' and the four then produce from an immense crucible, by chemical process, a male and a female, from whom came, through the essential influence of sun and moon, the race of beings whose descendants gradually filled the earth[92]. These four cardinal sources correspond to the river of Eden which had four heads, Pison, Havilah, Gihon and Euphrates. These correlate likewise with the four waters of the Avesta—Azi, Agenayo, Dregudaya, and Mataras[93]. Mataras ('the Mother,') agrees with the 'Golden Mother' of the Chinese four and betokens the seed of men. Dregudaya is the juice of fruit, one with the superintendent of wood, or sap; Agenayo is the blood (in the veins) answering to the 'Son of Red Earth.' Azi is said to be unintelligible[94]. It is something vile; and asi (Eg.) means vile. It may represent the hes (Eg.) as menstrual excrement, the red earth itself of the mythos which acquired a vile character, more particularly with the Persians. These four elementals belong to the primordial circle; they are treated as personified principles (or the four waters), and placed at the four corners of the garden on the mount. The golden land of Havilah agrees with the Chinese Golden Mother. Also, the Golden Mother as the 'Golden Hathor' dwelt in a paradisiacal mountain of the west! The four mythical waters are not solely geographical; the physiological and celestial interpretation is required; as, for example, in the Vendidad, where it is said of the water of the west (or of [p.31] Sataves, a constellation of Venus, and therefore of the Golden Hathor), 'in purification the impurities flow.'[95]

The Navaho version of the beginning includes the division of the heaven and earth; the mount of the four corners and four rivers, and the type of the worm taking wings like the dragonflies in the Polynesian myth. They say that at one time all men dwelt underground in the heart of a mountain near the river San Juan, from which they literally wormed their way upward to the light. The moth-worm was the first to make the passage and emerge from the cave of the underworld. When he got outside on the mountain-top he found himself surrounded with water; all the world was under water. Then four great arroyos (water­worn ditches or wadis), were found to the north, south, east, and west by which all the water flowed away, leaving only mud; and so the earth, was formed. The human beings followed. While they lived below they were of one family and spake one tongue. But now they began to speak in many languages[96]. This change of language accompanies the going forth from the original home and birthplace in various lands. The myths belong to the mapping out of the four quarters in the first circle of time. The name of the celestial mount Meru is said by Burnouf and others to signify that 'which has a lake.'[97] Now the Egyptian lake, the primordial lake of the abyss in the north, is the Meh, the water-girth. Meh is likewise the name of the north, as the place of fulfilment and rebirth. The ru is the mouth, gate, place of emanation. Meh-ru is the outlet from the Abyss, the outrance, figured as a mount, an ascent of seven steps, a navel-mound, rising out of the lake, an especial African type of the waters.

The abyss is thus spoken of: 'I make the waters and the Me-hura comes into being. I am the maker of heaven and the mysteries of the twofold horizon,' which included certain illustrations of the Two Truths[98]. This Meh was the lake before the waters in it were designated a sea, and as the lake it was continued in the name of Meru in India. The celestial Ganga of the north discharges itself into Mânasa-Sârovara, the 'excellent lake of the spirit,' in agreement with the Egyptian Meh-ura or Meh-ru, the lake of the outlet and of primordial matter in the north, and with the lake of spiritual essences or principles in the south[99]. Meru (Eg.) also signifies an island, which rises from the water as does the island mount. Both the islands and lake were extant in Ethiopia and in the district of Meroe. The island was formed by the Nile and the rivers of Astapus and Astaboras at their two mouths—ast (Eg.) being a word meaning the periodic. Its capital was likewise called Meroe, and tradition will have it that this was the birthplace of the Egyptian priesthood and religion which were derived from India; that is from khenti (Eg.) or still farther south, the earliest India being inner African. [p.32] Meh-ru, the birthplace and outlet from the abyss, was imaged by the Mount Meru, by the island, the lotus, and the tree, which are its co-types of emanation from the water. The mythical mount represents the pole; and wherever a great mountain or a group of seven hills is found toward the north of any land into which the mythos spread, there the mount of the seven stars and the lady of heaven, called Khepshi (Kush), Reri-t, Ri, Parvati, Kêd, Anahita, Urt, Art, will also be found, as the mountain of Eden or the Ark; or of both united in one. The seven stars revolved around this figurative mount to make the first circle of time and earliest enclosure in heaven, called Eden, Paradise, Meru, or Airyana in that quarter from whence came the revivifying breath of life to the burning lands of Africa.

The four corners were duplicated in the celestial octagon, or heaven of eight corners, which is a prominent figure in the typology of the celestials, as the Chinese call themselves on this ground of beginning above. These eight points of the compass had each its animal, bird or reptile as symbols of the elements and seasons. So in the Chaldean creation it is said of the Maker, 'He constructed dwellings for the great gods. He fixed up constellations whose figures were like animals.'[100] In the Chinese arrangement we find that water is located north; the mountains, north-east; thunder, east; wind, south-east; fire, south; earth, south-west; ocean, west and heaven, north-west. This is supposed to be a later arrangement resulting from a readjustment of the system of Fu-hsi[101]. It is, however, in general agreement with the Egyptian arrangement in which the north is the quarter of the water (hippopotamus = Typhon); the east of wind (ape = Hapi), the south of fire (phoenix = Har), and the west of earth (crocodile = Sevekh). The subdivisions might also be filled in; for example, across the water of the west or north-west, arose the mount Manu as the place of spirits perfected, corresponding to heaven as the eighth and the paradise of the siddhas; the paradise that the Buddhists of Northern India still locate in the west, which was an earlier point of beginning than the east.

The Chinese octagonal heaven of the eight points of the compass and eight seasons is also figured by eight different kinds of animals. Thus the eight points are said to represent: (1) the strength of a horse; (2) the docility of an ox; (3) the pleasurableness of a pheasant; (4) the degradation of a swine; (5) the penetration of a fowl; (6) the influence of a dragon; (7) is said to be pleasing like a lamb; (8) is faithful as a dog[102]. These eight are also portrayed as seven animals and a bird surrounding Orpheus who sits beneath a tree and plays upon his harp or lyre. This representation is given as Egyptian by Count Caylus[103]; and although the art is Greco-Egyptian the animals, such as the monkey, lion, elephant, and oryx are not Greek but African.

[p.33] In another example the ibis, the kaf-ape, and the hippopotamus appear, and these tend to show that the eight types were a survival from the time of the elementaries, which preceded personification in the human likeness. Caylus identifies Orpheus sitting thus amidst the eight with Harpocrates, who is portrayed on an Egyptian or Greek intaglio of black agate, with the various animals around him[104]. Orpheus encircled by the eight figures was reproduced in the Roman catacombs. One of the oldest frescoes in the cemetery of Callixtus exhibits Orpheus with his lyre at the centre of an octagon, within an outer circle containing eight scenes, four of which denote the four seasons. Orpheus is shown to be a continuation of the child Horus (Harpocrates) in Roman art by his being portrayed in the attitude of pointing with the index finger like the Egyptian Har-pi­Khart[105]. Consequently his origin is Kamite, and the Egyptian language will account for his name which is not directly derived from that of Har, but from the word uarp. Orpheus is always the harper, the charmer with his harp or lyre who enchants the wild beasts and overcomes the powers of Hades. Neither in Greek nor Roman art does he appear without his magical harp or lyre; and uarp (Eg.), which is identical with 'harp,' signifies delight, rejoicing, to charm, or be charmed. Orpheus is a developed form of the Horus who charms the lion, crocodile, scorpion, oryx, serpent, etc., in another mode of magic, i.e., a power of transformation, represented by the presence of Bes, who is a god of music and dancing and a player on the harp.

The octagonal heaven was earlier than the hexagonal one which included the nadir and zenith together with the four quarters. The Chinese book of the Yi-King is based on the change from the octagonal heaven in the system of Fu-hsi, founded on the duplicated four quarters, to the hexagonal heaven of King Wan that included the height and depth, which has yet to be described as the creation of Ptah in Egypt.

The Genesis has been rewritten by Jews and translated by Englishmen and others, who had no true idea of the subject-matter which is amongst the oldest in the world; this can only be recovered by the comparative process and understood in accordance with first principles. The creation of man or of men in the primordial mythos has no relation whatever to human beings, but to the earliest representations of celestial phenomena. It is so common a mode of expression that anthropologists even speak of the 'First Man,' as if he were a reality. We are frequently informed that such an one was the 'first man,' the 'Adam,' of this or the other people; as if that explained anything. There is no more a first man in mythology, as a human being, than [p.34] there is a primal individual parent known to evolution. There never was a first man. That is there never was a time when there was not a whole species of the animal at whatsoever stage of development; and the earliest myth-makers did not pretend to know anything about a first man, as a human being. Celsus, as one of those who were versed in mythology, naturally enough ridiculed the story of an Adam who was literally shaped by the hands of God and then inflated like a bladder by having his breath blown into him through his nose[106]. The story of the Australian blacks is far nearer to nature; their God having breathed the breath of life into man through his navel. The Hebrew Adam has been called the man without a navel. The Melbourne blacks also say that Pund-jel made of clay two males. This was in long, long ages past; and these two first breathed in a country toward the north-west. He made them in the following manner: With his big knife he cut three large sheets of bark. On one of these he placed a quantity of clay, and worked it into a proper consistence with his knife. When the clay was sort he carried a portion to one of the other pieces of bark, and he commenced to form the clay into a man, beginning at the feet; then he made the legs, then he formed the trunk and the arms and the head. He made a man on each of the two pieces of bark. He was well-pleased with his work, and he looked at the men a long time, and he danced round them. He next took stringy bark from a tree (Eucalyptus obliqua) made hair of it and placed it on their heads; on one straight hair, on the other curled hair. Pund-jel again looked at his work much pleased, and once more he danced round about them. To each he gave a name, the man with the straight hair he called Ber-rook-bourn, the curly-haired, Koo­kiu-Ber-rook. After again smoothing with his hands their bodies, from the feet upwards to their heads, he lay upon each of them and blew his breath into their mouth, into their noses, and into their navels, and breathing very hard they stirred. He danced round them a third time, he then made them speak, and caused them to get up, and they rose up, and appeared as full-grown young men—not like children.

Mohammedan tradition affirms that the body of Adam was at first a figure of clay that was forty years in drying, and then the Creator endowed it with the breath of life[107].

In a legend of creation the Kumis of Chittagong say that a certain deity created the world, the trees, and creeping things, and lastly he set to work to make one man and one woman by forming their bodies of clay, but that each night, on the completion of the model, there came a great snake, while the god was sleeping, which devoured the two images[108]. At last the divinity created a dog and this animal drove away the snake, and thus the creation of man was completed. This [p.35] myth faithfully represents the chaos preceding the time and the creation founded on the cycle of the seven stars of the mother and her dog. A North American tradition affirms that the deity Kamau­towit made the first men of a stone; these he disliked and broke up again. Then he made another man and woman of a tree, and these became the parents of all mankind[109]. This legend contains two identifiable types of creation. The human pair formed from one tree are identical with Mashya and Mashyoi in the Bundahish and elsewhere. The stone is one with that of Pundjel and Sut-Anup, the openers. The stone, or knife of flint, that fell or was flung from heaven, is the opener in many of the Aztec, Mexican, and other myths.

The Mexican traditions say there was a god in heaven named Citlalatonac, and a goddess called Citlalicue. This goddess gave birth to a flint knife Tecpatl. Her sons, who were living with her in heaven, on witnessing this extraordinary delivery were alarmed, and flung the flint down to the earth. It fell in a place designated Chicomoztoc, that is to say, the seven caves; and there immediately sprang up from it 1,600 gods. The flint knife here corresponds to the nuter sign of creation by dividing, the type of Sut-Anup, son of the genetrix. And in this act the genetrix brings forth and bifurcates just as Omoroka was cut in two to form the heaven and the earth, as the first act of creation in the Babylonian myth. The place of the seven caves is the celestial Khebta, or Egypt, which, when divided in two, becomes the Kebta-Khentu, north and south, in the circle of the Bears. This reading is fully corroborated by what follows, for this, the first act of creation, preceded the existence of the sun, or the establishment of solar time.

'There had been no sun in existence for many years, so the gods being assembled in a place called Teotihuacan, six leagues from Mexico, and gathered at the time round a great fire, told their devotees that he of them who should first cast himself into that fire should have the honour of being transformed into a sun. So one of them called Nanahuatzin—either, as most say, out of pure bravery, or as Sahagun relates, because his life had become a burden to him through a syphilitic disease—flung himself into the fire. Then the gods began to peer through the gloom in all directions for the expected light, and to make bets as to what part of heaven he should first appear in. And some said Here, and some said There; but when the sun rose they were all proved wrong for not one had fixed upon the east.'[110]

The Quiche gods took counsel together and determined to make man. They created one of clay, but they saw the work was not good. The creation was without cohesion or consistence; watery, wersh, unvivified; the face could only look one way, the eyes in one direction, and the head would not wag. He was endowed with speech [p.36] but had no mind, so he (or it) was run back again to the water[111]. This is the first man, the red, imperfect creation of other myths.

A legend of the Californian Neeshenams says, the first of all created things was the moon. This was a secondary type of the genetrix, in whom Ta-Urt of the earlier creation becomes Hes-taurt, or Ashtaroth Karnaim. The moon then created a man, as some say, in the shape of a stone, others in the form of a simple, straight, hairless, limbless mass of flesh, like an enormous earth-worm, and from that he was developed into his present shape[112]. This version unites the stone and the worm types of the beginning. The worm was a lowly image of the first formation. The root of all existence in the beginning, at the bottom of the hollow cocoanut shell of the Mangaian universe, is a worm-like being, without human shape, named Te-aka-ia-Roe. Roe is a small slender worm, the thread-worm; aka is the root; ia means it. This primary being, the root of all, is represented by the tiniest of worms. The worm was a type of the earth and the first of the Two Truths in formation, the source of all flesh. 'The worm my mother and my sister,' Job calls the reptile. The worm Prif is the first link in the chain of the British Abred at the primordial point of emanation. The worm, grub, or pupa, in taking wings, was a type of the soul of breath. There are few sights more curious (for example) than to watch the dragonfly crawl up the flag-stalk in the water, burst from the grub condition, and float up and away as a winged glory of green and blue! In the first gnostic creation, the man who is formed by 'a certain company of seven Angels,' is a mere wriggling worm[113]. In the second phase the worm is winged and becomes a living spirit.