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THE LIGHT IS RISING NOW RISING IS THE LIGHT
A MAZE IN ZAZAZA ENTERS AZAZAZ AZAZAZAZAZAZAZZAZAZAZAZAZAZA ZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZAZ THE MAGICALALPHABET ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262625242322212019181716151413121110987654321
BEYOND THE VEIL ANOTHER VEIL ANOTHER VEIL BEYOND
A HISTORY OF GOD Karen Armstrong 1993 The God of the Mystics Page 250 "Perhaps the most famous of the early Jewish mystical texts is the fifth century Sefer Yezirah (The Book of Creation). There is no attempt to describe the creative process realistically; the account is unashamedly symbolic and shows God creating the world by means of language as though he were writing a book. But language has been entirely transformed and the message of creation is no longer clear. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet is given a numerical value; by combining the letters with the sacred numbers, rearranging them in endless configurations, the mystic weaned his mind away from the normal connotations of words."
Page 250 THERE IS NO ATTEMPT MADE TO DESCRIBE THE CREATIVE PROCESS REALISTICALLY THE ACCOUNT IS UNASHAMEDLY SYMBOLIC AND SHOWS GOD CREATING THE WORLD BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE AS THOUGH HE WERE WRITING A BOOK. BUT LANGUAGE HAS BEEN ENTIRELY TRANSFORMED AND THE MESSAGE OF CREATION IS NO LONGER CLEAR EACH LETTER OF THE HEBREW ALPHABET IS GIVEN A NUMERICAL VALUE BY COMBINING THE LETTERS WITH THE SACRED NUMBERS REARRANGING THEM IN ENDLESS CONFIGURATIONS THE MYSTIC WEANED THE MIND AWAY FROM THE NORMAL CONNOTATIONS OF WORDS
THE LIGHT IS RISING NOW RISING IS THE LIGHT
....
LIGHT AND LIFE Lars Olof Bjorn 1976 Page 197 "By writing the 26 letters of the alphabet in a certain order one may put down almost any message (this book 'is written with the same letters' as the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Winnie the Pooh, only the order of the letters differs). In the same way Nature is able to convey with her language how a cell and a whole organism is to be constructed and how it is to function. Nature has succeeded better than we humans; for the genetic code there is only one universal language which is the same in a man, a bean plant and a bacterium."
"BY WRITING THE 26 LETTERS OF THE ALPHABET IN A CERTAIN ORDER ONE MAY PUT DOWN ALMOST ANY MESSAGE"
"FOR THE GENETIC CODE THERE IS ONLY ONE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE"
DNA AND DNA DNA AND DNA DNA AND DNA
DNA AND DNA DNA AND DNA DNA AND DNA
A QUEST FOR THE BEGINNING AND THE END Graham Hancock 1995 Chapter 32 Speaking to the Unborn Page 285 "It is understandable that a huge range of myths from all over the ancient world should describe geological catastrophes in graphic detail. Mankind survived the horror of the last Ice Age, and the most plausible source for our enduring traditions of flooding and freezing, massive volcanism and devastating earthquakes is in the tumultuous upheavals unleashed during the great meltdown of 15,000 to 8000 BC. The final retreat of the ice sheets, and the consequent 300-400 foot rise in global sea levels, took place only a few thousand years before the beginning of the historical period. It is therefore not surprising that all our early civilizations should have retained vivid memories of the vast cataclysms that had terrified their forefathers. A message in the bottle of time 'Of all the other stupendous inventions,' Galileo once remarked, what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very distant either in time or place, speaking with those who are in the Indies, speaking to those who are not yet born, nor shall be this thousand or ten thousand years? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangements of two dozen little signs on paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of men.3 If the 'precessional message' identified by scholars like Santillana, von Dechend and Jane Sellers is indeed a deliberate attempt at communication by some lost civilization of antiquity, how come it wasn't just written down and left for us to find? Wouldn't that have been easier than encoding it in myths? Perhaps. "What one would look for, therefore, would be a universal language, the kind of language that would be comprehensible to any technologically advanced society in any epoch, even a thousand or ten thousand years into the future. Such languages are few and far between, but mathematics is one of them" "WRITTEN IN THE ETERNAL LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS"
THERE IS NO ATTEMPT MADE TO DESCRIBE THE CREATIVE PROCESS REALISTICALLY THE ACCOUNT IS SYMBOLIC AND SHOWS GOD CREATING THE WORLD BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE AS THOUGH WRITING A BOOK BUT LANGUAGE ENTIRELY TRANSFORMED THE MESSAGE OF CREATION IS CLEAR EACH LETTER OF THE ALPHABET IS GIVEN A NUMERICAL VALUE BY COMBINING THE LETTERS WITH THE SACRED NUMBERS REARRANGING THEM IN ENDLESS CONFIGURATIONS THE MYSTIC WEANED THE MIND AWAY FROM THE NORMAL CONNOTATIONS OF WORDS
.... A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z = 351 = Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z = 126 = Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z = 9 = Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z = 351 = Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z = 126 = Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z = 9 = Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A
ABCDEFGH I JKLMNOPQ R STUVWXYZ = 351 = ZYXWVUTS R QPONMLKJ I HGFEDCBA ABCDEFGH I JKLMNOPQ R STUVWXYZ = 126 = ZYXWVUTS R QPONMLKJ I HGFEDCBA ABCDEFGH I JKLMNOPQ R STUVWXYZ = 9 = ZYXWVUTS R QPONMLKJ I HGFEDCBA
EVOLVE LOVE EVOLVE LOVE SOLVES LOVE EVOLVE LOVE EVOLVE
THE DEATH OF GODS IN ANCIENT EGYPT Jane B. Sellars 1992 Page 204 "The overwhelming awe that accompanies the realization, of the measurable orderliness of the universe strikes modern man as well. Admiral Weiland E. Byrd, alone In the Antarctic for five months of polar darkness, wrote these phrases of intense feeling: Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! I could feel no doubt of oneness with the universe. The conviction came that the rhythm was too orderly, too harmonious, too perfect to be a product of blind chance - that, therefore there must be purpose in the whole and that man was part of that whole and not an accidental offshoot. It was a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of man's despair and found it groundless. The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night.10 Returning to the account of the story of Osiris, son of Cronos god of' Measurable Time, Plutarch takes, pains to remind the reader of the original Egyptian year consisting of 360 days. Phrases are used that prompt simple mental. calculations and an attention to numbers, for example, the 360-day year is described as being '12 months of 30 days each'. Then we are told that, Osiris leaves on a long journey, during which Seth, his evil brother, plots with 72 companions to slay Osiris: He also secretly obtained the measure of Osiris and made ready a chest in which to entrap him. The, interesting thing about this part of the-account is that nowhere in the original texts of the Egyptians are we told that Seth, has 72 companions. We have already been encouraged to equate Osiris with the concept of measured time; his father being Cronos. It is also an observable fact that Cronos-Saturn has the longest sidereal period of the known planets at that time, an orbit. of 30 years. Saturn is absent from a specific constellation for that length of time. A simple mathematical fact has been revealed to any that are even remotely sensitive to numbers: if you multiply 72 by 30, the years of Saturn's absence (and the mention of Osiris's absence prompts one to recall this other), the resulting product is 2,160: the number of years required, for one 30° shift, or a shift: through one complete sign of the zodiac. This number multplied by the / Page205 / 12 signs also gives 25,920. (And Plutarch has reminded us of 12) If you multiply the unusual number 72 by 360, a number that Plutarch mentions several times, the product will be 25,920, again the number of years symbolizing the ultimate rebirth. This 'Eternal Return' is the return of, say, Taurus to the position of marking the vernal equinox by 'riding in the solar bark with. Re' after having relinquished this honoured position to Aries, and subsequently to the to other zodiacal constellations. Such a return after 25,920 years is indeed a revisit to a Golden Age, golden not only because of a remarkable symmetry In the heavens, but golden because it existed before the Egyptians experienced heaven's changeability. But now to inform the reader of a fact he or she may already know. Hipparaus did: not really have the exact figures: he was a trifle off in his observations and calculations. In his published work, On the Displacement of the Solstitial and Equinoctial Signs, he gave figures of 45" to 46" a year, while the truer precessional lag along the ecliptic is about 50 seconds. The exact measurement for the lag, based on the correct annual lag of 50'274" is 1° in 71.6 years, or 360° in 25,776 years, only 144 years less than the figure of 25,920. With Hipparchus's incorrect figures a 'Great Year' takes from 28,173.9 to 28,800 years, incorrect by a difference of from 2,397.9 years to 3,024. Since Nicholas Copernicus (AD 1473-1543) has always been credited with giving the correct numbers (although Arabic astronomer Nasir al-Din Tusi,11 born AD 1201, is known to have fixed the Precession at 50°), we may correctly ask, and with justifiable astonishment 'Just whose information was Plutarch transmitting' AN IMPORTANT POSTSCRIPT Of course, using our own notational system, all the important numbers have digits that reduce to that amazing number 9 a number that has always delighted budding mathematician. Page 206 Somewhere along the way, according to Robert Graves, 9 became the number of lunar wisdom.12 This number is found often in the mythologies of the world. the Viking god Odin hung for nine days and nights on the World Tree in order to acquire the secret of the runes, those magic symbols out of which writing and numbers grew. Only a terrible sacrifice would give away this secret, which conveyed upon its owner power and dominion over all, so Odin hung from his neck those long 9 days and nights over the 'bottomless abyss'. In the tree were 9 worlds, and another god was said to have been born of 9 mothers. Robert Graves, in his White Goddess, Is intrigued by the seemingly recurring quality of the number 72 in early myth and ritual. Graves tells his reader that 72 is always connected with the number 5, which reflects, among other things, the five Celtic dialects that he was investigating. Of course, 5 x 72= 360, 360 x 72= 25,920. Five is also the number of the planets known to the ancient world, that is, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus Mercury. Graves suggests a religious mystery bound up with two ancient Celtic 'Tree Alphabets' or cipher alphabets, which as genuine articles of Druidism were orally preserved and transmitted for centuries. He argues convincingly that the ancient poetry of Europe was ultimately based on what its composers believed to be magical principles, the rudiments of which formed a close religious secret for centuries. In time these were-garbled, discredited and forgotten. Among the many signs of the transmission of special numbers he points out that the aggregate number of letter strokes for the complete 22-letter Ogham alphabet that he is studying is 72 and that this number is the multiple of 9, 'the number of lunar wisdom'. . . . he then mentions something about 'the seventy day season during which Venus moves successively from. maximum eastern elongation 'to inferior conjunction and maximum western elongation'.13 Page 207 "...Feniusa Farsa, Graves equates this hero with Dionysus. Farsa has 72 assistants who helped him master the 72 languages created at the confusion of Babel, the tower of which is said to be built of 9 different materials We are also reminded of the miraculous translation into Greek of the Five Books of Moses that was done by 72 scholars working for 72 days, Although the symbol for the Septuagint is LXX, legend, according to the fictional letter of Aristeas, records 72. The translation was done for Ptolemy Philadelphus (c.250 BC), by Hellenistic Jews, possibly from Alexandra.14 Graves did not know why this number was necessary, but he points out that he understands Frazer's Golden Bough to be a book hinting that 'the secret involves the truth that the Christian dogma, and rituals, are the refinement of a great body of primitive beliefs, and that the only original element in Christianity- is the personality of Christ.15 Frances A. Yates, historian of Renaissance hermetisma tells, us the cabala had 72 angels through which the sephiroth (the powers of God) are believed to be approached, and further, she supplies the information that although the Cabala supplied a set of 48 conclusions purporting to confirm the Christian religion from the foundation of ancient wisdom, Pico Della Mirandola, a Renaissance magus, introduced instead 72, which were his 'own opinion' of the correct number. Yates writes, 'It is no accident there are seventy-two of Pico's Cabalist conclusions, for the conclusion shows that he knew something of the mystery of the Name of God with seventy-two letters.'16 In Hamlet's Mill de Santillana adds the facts that 432,000 is the number of syllables in the Rig-Veda, which when multiplied by the soss (60) gives 25,920" (The reader is forgiven for a bit of laughter at this point) The Bible has not escaped his pursuit. A prominent Assyriologist of the last century insisted that the total of the years recounted mounted in Genesis for the lifetimes of patriarchs from the Flood also contained the needed secret numbers. (He showed that in the 1,656 years recounted in the Bible there are 86,400 7 day weeks, and dividing this number yields / Page 208 / 43,200.) In Indian yogic schools it is held that all living beings exhale and inhale 21,600 times a day, multiply this by 2 and again we have the necessary 432 digits. Joseph Campbell discerns the secret in the date set for the coming of Patrick to Ireland. Myth-gives this date-as-the interesting number of AD.432.18 Whatever one may think-of some of these number coincidences, it becomes difficult to escape the suspicion that many signs (number and otherwise) - indicate that early man observed the results of the movement of Precession and that the - transmission of this information was considered of prime importance. With the awareness of the phenomenon, observers would certainly have tried for its measure, and such an endeavour would have constituted the construction-of a 'Unified Field Theory' for nothing less than Creation itself. Once determined, it would have been information worthy of secrecy and worthy of the passing on to future adepts. But one last word about mankind's romance with number coincidences.The antagonist in John Updike's novel, Roger's Version, is a computer hacker, who, convinced, that scientific evidence of God's existence is accumulating, endeavours to prove it by feeding -all the available scientific information. into a comuter. In his search for God 'breaking, through', he has become fascinated by certain numbers that have continually been cropping up. He explains them excitedly as 'the terms of Creation': "...after a while I noticed that all over the sheet there seemed to hit these twenty-fours Jumping out at me. Two four; two, four. Planck time, for instance, divided by the radiation constant yields a figure near eight times ten again to the negative twenty-fourth, and the permittivity of free space, or electric constant, into the Bohr radius ekla almost exactly six times ten to the negative twenty-fourth. On positive side, the electromagnetic line-structure constant times Hubble radius - that is, the size of the universe as we now perceive it gives us something quite close to ten to the twenty-fourth, and the strong-force constant times the charge on the proton produces two point four times ten to the negative eighteenth, for another I began to circle twenty-four wherever it appeared on the Printout here' - he held it up his piece of stripped and striped wallpaper, decorated / Page 209 /
with a number of scarlet circles - 'you can see it's more than random.'19 So much for any scorn directed to ancient man's fascination with number coincidences. That fascination is alive and well, Just a bit more incomprehensible"
NUMBER 9 THE SEARCH FOR THE SIGMA CODE Cecil Balmond 1998 Cycles and Patterns Page 165 Patterns "The essence of mathematics is to look for patterns. Our minds seem to be organised to search for relationships and sequences. We look for hidden orders. These intuitions seem to be more important than the facts themselves, for there is always the thrill at finding something, a pattern, it is a discovery - what was unknown is now revealed. Imagine looking up at the stars and finding the zodiac! Searching out patterns is a pure delight. Suddenly the counters fall into place and a connection is found, not necessarily a geometric one, but a relationship between numbers, pictures of the mind, that were not obvious before. There is that excitement of finding order in something that was otherwise hidden. And there is the knowledge that a huge unseen world lurks behind the facades we see of the numbers themselves."
THE USBORNE BOOK OF FACTS AND LISTS Lynn Bressler (no date) Page 82 10 most spoken languages The first alphabet Sounds strange The Rosetta Stone Did You KnowMany Chinese cannot understand each other. They have different ways of speaking (called dialects) in different Translating computers Worldwide language Page 83 Earliest writing Chinese writing has been found on pottery, and even on a tortoise shell, going back 6,000 years. Pictures made the basis for their writing, each picture showing an object or idea. Probably the earliest form of writing came from the Middle East, where Iraq and Iran are now. This region was then ruled by the Sumerians. The most words English has more words in it than any other language. There are about1 million in all, a third of which are technical terms. Most A scientific word describing a process in the human cell is 207,000 letters long. This makes this single word equal in length to a short novel or about 80 typed sheets of A4 paper. Many tongues International language The languages of India and Europe may originally come from just one source. Many words in different languages sound similar. For example, the word for King in Latin is Rex, in Indian, Raj, in Italian Re, in French Roi and in Spanish Rey. The original language has been named Indo-European. Basque, spoken in the French and Spanish Pyrenees, is an exception. It seems to have a different source which is still unknown. Number of alphabets
....
THE LIGHT IS RISING NOW RISING IS THE LIGHT
OF TIME AND STARS Arthur C. Clarke Page 205 The Sentinel "I can never look now at the Milky Way without wondering from which of those banked clouds of stars the emissaries are coming. If you will pardon so commonplace a simile, we have set off the fire alarm and have nothing to do but to wait. I do not think we will have to wait for long.
I CAN NEVER LOOK NOW AT THE MILKY WAY WITHOUT WONDERING FROM WHICH OF THOSE BANKED CLOUDS OF STARS THE EMISSARIES ARE COMING. IF YOU WILL PARDON SO COMMONPLACE A SIMILE, WE HAVE SET OFF THE FIRE ALARM AND HAVE NOTHING TO DO BUT TO WAIT. I DO NOT THINK WE WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR LONG.
I CAN NEVER LOOK NOW AT THE MILKY WAY WITHOUT WONDERING FROM WHICH OF THOSE BANKED CLOUDS OF STARS THE EMISSARIES ARE COMING
IF YOU WILL PARDON SO COMMONPLACE A SIMILE, WE HAVE SET OFF THE FIRE ALARM AND HAVE NOTHING TO DO BUT TO WAIT.
I DO NOT THINK WE WILL HAVE TO WAIT FOR LONG
THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM AN ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF CERTAIN LETTERS, WORDS, NAMES, FAIRY-TALES, FOLK-LORE AND MYTHOLOGIES Harold Bayley 1912 "The Hebrew for man is ish and for woman isha." Page 300 "Each language, whether Sanscrit or Zulu, is like a palimpsest, which, if carefully handled, will disclose the original text beneath the superficial writing, and though that original text may be more difficult to recover in illiterate languages, yet it is there nevertheless. Every language, if properly summoned, will reveal to us the mind of the artist who framed it, from its earliest awakening to its latest dreams. Everyone will teach us the same lesson, the lesson on which the whole Science of Thought is based, that there is no language without reason, as there is no reason with.out language."1 An analysis of the several terms for man, soul, or spirit reveals the time-honoured belief that the human race emerged in its infancy from the Great Light, and that every human soul was a spark or fragment of the EverExistent Oversoul. The Egyptian for man was se, the German for soul is seele - cognate with Selah! - and meaning likewise the "Light of the Everlasting." The Dutch for soul is ziel, the fiery light of God, and the English soul was once presumably is ol, the essence or light of God.2 The Hebrew for man is ish and for woman isha.
SELAH HALES
THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM Harold Bayley 1912 Page 300 The Latin homo is OM, the Sun, as also is the French homme ; and dme, the French for soul, is apparently the Hindoo AUM. The ancient Mexicans traced their descent from an ancestor named Coxcox, i.e. ack ock se, ack ock se, the "Great Great Light, the Great Great Light." 8 The Teutons claim to have descended from TIU or TUISCO, an Aryan God of Light, and the name TUISCO may be restored into tu is ack O , the "brilliant light of the Great O." Page 300 Notes 1 Biographieses of Words, Intro.
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN Thomas Mann 1875-1955 Page 466 "Had not the normal, since time was, lived on the achievements of the abnormal? Men consciously and voluntarily descended into disease and madness, in search of knowledge which, acquired by fanaticism, would lead back to health; after the possession and use of it had ceased to be conditioned by that heroic and abnormal act of sacrifice. That was the true death on the cross, the true Atonement."
THE TRUE DEATH ON THE CROSS THE TRUE AT ONE MENT
ATONEMENT
CRUCIFIXION
CRUCIFIED
Scofield References Page 1117 A.D. 30. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily,
IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS Fragments of an Unknown Teaching P.D.Oupensky 1878-1947 Page 217 'A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.'
I AM THAT LAZARUS COME FROM THE DEAD COME BACK TO TELL YOU ALL I SHALL TELL YOU ALL
FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS Graham Hancock 1995
"Conscious of being alone, this blessed and immortal being contrived to create two divine offspring, Shu, god of the air and dryness, and Tefnut the goddess of moisture: ' I thrust my phallus into my closed hand. I made my seed to enter my hand. I poured it into my own mouth. I evacuated under the form of Shu, I passed water under the form of Tefnut.' 7"
CREATE C RE AT E AT RE C CREATE SEE R SEE E SEE E SEE R SEE CREATE C RE AT E CREATE REACTIONS CREATIONS REACTIONS
KEEPER OF GENESIS A QUEST FOR THE HIDDEN LEGACY OF MANKIND Robert Bauval Graham Hancock 1996 Return to the Beginning Page 283 'I stand before the masters who witnessed the genesis, who were the authors of their own forms, who walked the dark, circuitous passages of their own becoming. . .
I stand before the masters who witnessed the transformation of the body of a man into the body in spirit, who were witnesses to resurrection when the corpse of Osiris entered the mountain and the soul of Osiris walked out shining. . . when he came forth from death, a shining thing, his face white with heat. . . I stand before the masters who know the histories of the dead, who decide which tales to hear again, who judge the books of lives as either fun or empty, who are themselves authors of truth. And they are Isis and Osiris, the divine intelligences. And when the story is written and the end is good and the soul of a man is perfected, with a shout they lift him into heaven. . .' Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (Norrnandi Ellis translation)
KEEPER OF GENESIS A QUEST FOR THE HIDDEN LEGACY OF MANKIND Robert Bauval Graham Hancock 1996 Page 282 Map What can it be that was put in Rostau? What hidden thing with fire about it? And where in darkness does it lie?
KEEPER OF GENESIS A QUEST FOR THE HIDDEN LEGACY OF MANKIND Robert Bauval Graham Hancock 1996 Return to the Beginning Page 283 "Is it possible that men and women of great wisdom and learning cast a 'glamour' over the Giza necropolis at some point in the distant /Page 284/ past? Were they the possessors of as yet unguessed-at secrets that they wished to hide here? And did they succeed in concealing those secrets almost in plain view? For thousands of years, in other words, has the ancient Egyptian royal cemetary at Giza veiled the presence of something else — something of vastly greater significance for the story of Mankind? Such was all-knowing Hermes, who saw all things, and seeing understood, and understanding had the power both to disclose and to give explanation. For what he knew, he graved on stone; yet though he graved them onto stone he hid them mostly . . . The sacred symbols of the cosmic elements [he] hid away hard by the secrets of Osiris . . . keeping sure silence, that every younger age of cosmic time might seek for them.' The text then tells us that before he 'returned to Heaven' Hermes invoked a spell on the secret writings and knowledge that he had hidden: Page 287 "Looking at the awe inspiring scale and precision of the monuments we feel, too, that the purpose of the ancient master-builders was sublime, and that they did indeed find a way to initiate those who would come after - thousands of years in the future - by making use of the universal language of the stars. They found a way to send a message across the ages in a code so simple and so self explanatory that it might rightly be described as an anti-cipher. Perhaps the time has come to listen to that clear, compelling signal that beckons us out of the darkness of prehistory. Perhaps the time /Page 288/ has come to seek the buried treasure of our forgotten genesis and destiny: Stars fade like memory the instant before dawn. Low in the east the sun appears, golden as an opening eye. That which can be named must exist. That which is named can be written. That which is written shall be remembered. That which is remembered lives. In the land of Egypt Osiris breathes . . .6" Conclusion The quotation is from the Normandi Ellis's translation of the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Awakening Osiris, and is drawn from Chapter XV of the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Papyrus of Ani.
I THAT AM AT MAAT AM MAAT AT AM THAT I
The Official Graham Hancock Website: Library ... of a chapter from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Reu Nu Pert Em Hru, ... These are the 42 Judges or Assessors of the Dead, before each of whom the ...www.grahamhancock.com/library/hm/c4
Chapter 4 We took time to examine this scene, which consists of a chapter from the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, Reu Nu Pert Em Hru, literally the "Book of Coming Forth By Day", one of a large corpus of funerary texts copied and recopied at all periods of Egyptian history, that concerned themselves with "the freedom granted to spirit forms which survived death to come and go as they pleased". Standing in the doorway of the shrine our eyes were drawn to the wall on our left containing an elegant relief of Ptolemy IV Philopator (ruled 221–205 BC), the Macedonian Greek Pharaoh on whose orders this Temple of Maat was built. Represented as a deceased soul, dressed in sandals and a simple linen kilt, this scene shows him being ushered into a spacious hall at the head of which, in partially mummified form, sits Osiris, the high god of death and resurrection, identified in the ancient Egyptian sky-religion with the great southern constellation of Orion. The place to which Ptolemy has been brought is sometimes referred to as the Judgement Hall of Osiris, and sometimes as the Hall of the Double Maati - which translates as "the Hall of the Two Truths" or possibly "the Hall of Double Justice". It is not a place to which the soul was believed to have come immediately after death. Indeed, it could only be reached by those who were spiritually "equipped" to complete a long and hazardous post-mortem journey through the first five of the twelve divisions of the Duat - the fearful parallel dimension, shadowy and terrifying, filled with fiends and nightmares, that was believed by the ancient Egyptians to separate the land of the living from the kingdom of the blessed dead. The reader will recall that it was this same Duat, referred to as the Duat-N-Ba (the "netherworld of the soul"), that was said to have provided the model for the mysterious "primeval temple" spoken of in the Edfu Building Texts. Ptolemy stands in the posture of salutation, left hand clenched across his right breast, right hand raised. On either side of him is a figure of Maat (hence "Double Maati") - a tall and beautiful goddess, sensual and full-breasted, wearing a head-dress topped by her characteristic ostrich-feather plume (the hieroglyph for "Truth"). The figure behind Ptolemy is empty-handed, and seems to be guiding him into the hall; the figure facing him holds in her right hand a long staff and in her left hand the hieroglyph ankh, the "cross" or "key" of life - the symbol of eternity. In a double row at the side of the Hall 42 dispassionate figures crouch in the manner of scribes pouring over papyrus, each wearing the feather of Maat. These are the 42 Judges or Assessors of the Dead, before each of whom the deceased must be able to declare himself innocent of a particular wrong - the 42 so-called "Negative Confessions". For example: No. 4 "I have not stolen"; No. 5 "I have not slain man or woman"; No. 6 "I have not uttered falsehood"; No. 19 "I have not defiled the wife of a man"; No. 38 "I have not cursed the God". On this encounter of the heart with Truth everything hinges. For at this moment an irrevocable Judgement will be passed which will offer the prospect of eternal life to the soul that triumphs, and eternal annihilation to the soul that fails. Beyond the scales is depicted the agency of the soul's extinction: a monstrous hybrid, part crocodile, part lion, part hippopotamus, who is known as Ammit, the "Devourer", the "Eater of the Dead". And beyond Ammit, seated in majesty on his throne at the extreme right of the scene, our eyes are drawn again towards the mummified figure of the star-god Osiris, the agency of the soul's resurrection. Horus and Anubis test the scales, and proceed to measure the weight. Meanwhile, to the immediate right of the scales, between the deceased and the snarling, slavering jaws of Ammit, we observe the tall ibis-headed figure of Thoth, the "personification of the mind of god ... the all-pervading and directing power of heaven and earth ... the inventor of astronomy and astrology, the science of numbers and mathematics, geometry and land surveying". Mysteriously referred to in archaic inscriptions as "three times great, great", Thoth was the ancient Egyptian god of wisdom, "the recorder of souls", who - from Ptolemaic times onwards - would also come to be known to the Greeks under the name of Hermes Trismegistus ("Hermes the Thrice Great"). In the Judgement Scene he is shown as a powerful man dressed in a short tunic, wearing his characteristic avian head-mask. In his left hand he holds up a palette and in his right a fine reed pen. Heart and feather stand poised in equilibrium, as they must if the soul is to be admitted to the afterlife kingdom of Osiris. Horus confirms the balance. Anubis announces the verdict. Thoth records ...
Page 2 The word maat has many meanings in addition to "truth" - for example, "that which is straight", and, in the physical and moral sense, "right, real, genuine, upright, righteous, just, steadfast, unalterable", etc. Khebest maat is "real lapis-lazuli" as opposed to blue paste. Shes maat means "ceaselessly and regularly". Em un maat indicates that a thing is really so. The man who is good and honest is maat. And the truth, maat, "is great and mighty and it hath never been broken since the time of Osiris". It is perhaps not surprising that in some versions of the Psychostasia the goddess Maat, with her arms outstretched, takes the form of the scales themselves. As we shall see in later chapters, obelisks played a special role in the quest for immortality that was pursued for millennia by Egypt's high initiates. From the remotest times this quest was intimately associated with the cult of Thoth, whose will and power were believed to keep the forces of heaven and earth in equilibrium: "it was his great skill in celestial mechanics," observed Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, "which made proper use of the laws (maat) upon which the foundation and maintenance of the universe rested". After an exhaustive analysis of funerary texts from all periods of ancient Egyptian history, Budge also comments on the manner in which Thoth is ubiquitously portrayed as possessing "unlimited power" in the afterlife realm of the Duat. It is this power that is symbolized by his role as recording angel in the Judgement Scene. According to the Book of What is in the Duat (numerous representations of which survive in the tombs of Pharaohs from the Eighteenth Dynasty onwards): "The examination of the words takes place, and he [Thoth] strikes down wickedness - he who has a just heart, he who bears the words in the scales - in the divine place of the examination of the mystery of mysteries of the spirits." But what exactly is meant by "wickedness" and what is the real nature of the mystery that is examined in the Judgement Hall of Osiris?
Page 3 Chapter 4 the testing of the soul in the Balance in the Hall of Osiris is not described as the judging or "weighing of actions" [which the 42 Negative Confessions certainly are] but as utcha metet, the "weighing of words". The words ... must be learned from Thoth, and without knowledge of them, and of the proper manner in which they should be said, the deceased could never make his way through the Duat. The formulae of Thoth opened the secret pylons for him, and provided him with the necessary meat, and drink, and apparel, and repelled baleful fiends and evil spirits, and they gave him the power to know the secret or hidden names of the monsters of the Duat, and to utter them in such a way that they became his friends and helped him on his journey ... What the texts imply is that only he or she who has sought and found the books of Thoth can attain eternity. "How long have I to live" the deceased asks in some versions of the Judgement Scene. If all is well at the "weighing of words" Thoth replies by offering the coveted prize: "Thou art for millions of years, a period of life of millions of years ..."
Page 4 The tradition of the books of Thoth persisted well into the Christian era, associated with Graeco-Egyptian temples such as Deir el Medina, Dendera, Edfu and the Temple of Isis at Philae where the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs continued to be used and understood until as late as the fourth century AD. It is therefore hardly surprising that Clemens (AD 150–215) should have been aware of this tradition which was, indeed, set down afresh in writing in his adopted city of Alexandria at about this time. These writings, the so-called Corpus Hermeticum, repeatedly describe Thoth (the "Hermes Trismegistus" of the Greeks) as "he who won knowledge of all". He: saw all things, and seeing understood, and understanding had the power both to disclose and to give explanation. For what he knew he graved on stone; yet though he graved them onto stone he hid them mostly, keeping sure silence [so] that every younger age of cosmic time might seek for them ... Ye holy books ... which have been anointed with the drug of imperish-ability ... remain ye undecaying through all ages, and be ye unseen and undiscovered by all men who shall go to and fro on the plains of this land, until the time when Heaven, grown old, shall beget organisms worthy of you.
Page 5 Setnau went there with his brother and passed three days and nights seeking for the tomb ... and on the third day they found it. Setnau recited some words over it, and the earth opened and they went down to the place where the book was. When the two brothers came into the tomb they found it to be brilliantly lit up by the light which came forth from the book. It is generally agreed that the Westcar Papyrus reports - or at any rate touches upon - real events. According to Professor I. E. S. Edwards it contains a "kernel of truth" and "was certainly a copy of an older document". Edwards further points out that Heliopolis, the site of the "Inventory Building", had been a centre of astronomical and astrological science in Egypt since times immemorial and that the title of the high priest of that city was "Chief of the Astronomers". The Egyptologist F. W. Green expresses the opinion that the "Inventory building" could well have been a "chart room" at Heliopolis "or perhaps a 'drawing room' where plans were made and stored". Similarly, Sir Alan H. Gardner argues that "the room in question must have been an archive" and that Khufu "was seeking for details concerning the secret chambers of the primeval sanctuary of Thoth". The central image of the Westcar Papyrus of some great secret of Thoth lying sealed away in a box is repeated in another text which tells how the wisdom god had deposited one of his books "in an iron box in the middle of the Nile at Coptos" (an ancient site some kilometres to the north of Luxor): The iron box is in a bronze box, the bronze box is in a box of palm-tree wood, the palm-tree wood box is in a box of ebony and ivory, the ebony and ivory box is in a silver box, the silver box is in a gold box ... The box wherein is the book is surrounded by swarms of serpents and scorpions and reptiles of all kinds, and round it is coiled a serpent which cannot die. So there is a sense in all of this that what is weighed in the Judgement Scene at the "weighing of words" must in some way have to do with the possession of knowledge by the deceased, the kind of knowledge that can be inscribed on to tablets of stone or written down in books and "documents".
Page 6 Chapter 4 The young god [the deceased entering the afterlife kingdom of Osiris having found immortality] is born of the beautiful West, having come here from the land of the living; he has got rid of the dust which was on him, he has filled his body with magic, he has quenched his thirst with it ... he has mastered the land through what he knew. See, Your Majesty has come, you have acquired all power, and nothing has been left behind by you ... You have filled your body with magic, you have quenched your thirst with it ... you have mastered the land with what you know like those to whom you have gone down. I have passed over the paths of Osiris; they are in the limit of the sky. As for him who knows this spell for going down into them, he himself is a god, in the suite of Thoth; he will go down to any sky to which he wishes to go down to. But as for him who does not know this spell for passing over these paths, he shall be taken into the infliction of the dead which is ordained, as one who is nonexistent. Page 7 Chapter 4 In fact the Duat had very specific celestial co-ordinates. The first systematic attempt to chart these co-ordinates was undertaken in the 1940s by the Egyptologist Selim Hassan. Through a painstaking study of a mass of funerary and rebirth texts he established that the Duat had been conceived of by the ancient Egyptians as having been "localized in the eastern part of the sky" when the bright star Sirius - identified with the goddess Isis - and the stars of the Orion constellation - Osiris - were visible there in the pre-dawn. This was clear, he reasoned, from passages in the oldest texts which tell us: "Orion has been enveloped by the Duat while he who lives on the Horizon purifies himself. Sothis [Sirius] has been enveloped by the Duat while he who lives on the Horizon purifies himself." Hassan understood that such passages must have been based on observational astronomy: as the sun rises and purifies himself in the Horizon, the stars Orion and Sothis are enveloped by the Duat. This is a true observation of nature, and it really appears as though the stars are swallowed up each morning by the increasing glow of the dawn. Perhaps the determinative of the word Duat, the star within a circle, illustrates this idea of the enveloping of a star. Precessional calculations for 2500–2300 BC - when the oldest surviving funerary texts from ancient Egypt were supposedly compiled - indicate that in that epoch the Duat could only have been regarded as being "active" (i.e. with Orion and Sirius rising just ahead of the sun) at around the summer solstice - the longest day of the year. At this time, and at no other season, would it have been believed to open its gates to the assembled souls of the dead. At one gate stood the constellation of Leo. At the other, divided from Leo by the glowing river of the Milky Way, stood Sirius, Orion and the constellation of Taurus. In 2500 BC this sacred portal in the heavens was said to "open" at the summer solstice because the sun rose in it at that time of the year. Today, because of the effects of precession, the sun "swallows up" Orion and Sirius at the autumnal equinox. In 10,500 BC phenomenon could only have been witnessed on the spring equinox. Is it possible that the initiate's skill at "going down to any sky" could be a reference to an ability to make precessional calculations - i.e. to harness intellect to imagination and to visualize the skies of former and future epochs? Was it such knowledge that was believed to be sufficiently powerful to counterbalance the feather of Maat on the scales of Judgement and to triumph over nonexistence? This is the word which is in darkness. As for any spirit who knows it he will live among the living ... he will never perish ... he will never die.
Page 8 Chapter 4 everlasting world ... in which the endeavour to outlast eternity reaches its most self-conscious. [They] spell out the precise phrasing by which a dead person could be made into an eternally rejuvenated being. Today we call these ancient texts "funerary literature", but this technical term does them little justice: these are texts to transfigure the dead, to make human beings into immortal gods. meaning recitations that would turn a person after death into an akh, "a transfigured spirit". The only alternative was to die and remain mut, "dead". These opposites of akh and mut are roughly equivalent to the European contrast between the blessed and the damned. As in the European tradition, paradise is envisaged in terms of light, and the word akh itself is one of a group in which the idea of light and radiance is paramount, such as the Egyptian for "horizon", akhet, the home of light. Faced with the alternative, the Egyptians concentrated all their resources into securing this eternal radiance. In line with Quirke's view, it has become customary amongst Egyptologists today to disparage the texts as little more than wishful thinking - "a strange accretion of spells and mumbo-jumbo ... a reflection of humanity's earliest supreme revolt against the darkness and silence from which none returns". Some scholars have even gone so far as to insist that: In spite of their meticulous attention to detail in practical matters, the Egyptians of the Pyramid Age never evolved a clear and precise conception of the After-Life ... The impression made on the modern mind is that of a people searching in the dark for a key to truth and, having found not one but many keys resembling the pattern of the lock, retaining all lest perchance the appropriate one should be discarded. It is the fundamental proposition of Heaven's Mirror that matters are by no means so simple and that the Egyptian scriptures contain extraordinary material with an importance vastly deeper and darker than mere mumbo-jumbo, and far, far older than scholars have imagined.
The Magic Mountain Thomas Mann 1875-1955 Page 511 "Hermetics - what a lovely word "
Brahma If the red slayer think he slays, R.W.Emerson
Encyclopedia Of Ancient And Forbidden Knowledge Zolar 1988 Edition Page 39 KABBALISTIC WISDOM There is no death; there is no destruction. All is but change and transformation-first the caterpillar, then the chrysalis, then the mighty mind, and at last a noble Soul."
DISMEMBERED AND REMEMBERED REMEMBERED AND DISMEMBERED ALL IN ALL THE ONLY RIGHT WAY TO DIE
THE SCALES THAT QUIVER AND NOW DELIVER
THE HOURS OF HORUS IS ARRIVED HURRAH FOR RAH FOR RAH HURRAH AMEN THAT NAME GODS NAME AMEN RA IN BOW LIGHT GODS LIGHT RA IN BOW THE LIGHT IS RISEN NOW RISEN IS THE LIGHT
JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS Thomas Mann 1875 - 1955 JOSEPH THE PROVIDER Page 967 "But I am King, and teacher; I may not think what I cannot teach. Whereas such a one very soon learns not even to think the unteachable."
THE DEATH OF FOREVER A NEW FUTURE FOR HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS Darryl Reanney 1991 Page 101 "The basis of our consciousness is cyclic and repetitive. After ten years of life, a child has experienced about 3650 day/night cycles. Its psychology has been totally and irreversibily structured in terms of this periodicity; it accepts unconsciously, instinctively, that light follows dark. This periodic and reiterative structure of consciousness is encoded in our very speech. The latin prefix 're' usually has the sense /Page 102/ of 'again' Can it be coincidence that the words we use to describe our fundamental myths and activities are not things we do but things we do again? reproduction redemption representation reincarnation recognition rebirth resurrectionEven the word re-ligion may fit this pattern: one of its possible meanings is 'bind (join) again' . In the Christian tradition, we are told that Christ 'rose again from the dead', despite the fact that the resurrection of his body was supposedly an unique, once-off affair. Taken together, these facts tell us something quite fundamental—that there is a natural and inevitable association between the concept of an afterlife and the enduring legacy of cyclic time. Far from being an innovation or an invention, the religious idea of rebirth, of life (light) after death (dark), is an expression of one of the oldest aspects of life on earth. Most 'higher' creatures exhibit daily circadian rhythmns (from Latin circa meaning about, die meaning day)."
LIFE LIVE A LIVE LIFE LIFE DEATH LIFE DEATH LIFE RESURRECTION INCARNATION RESURRECTION
Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3: I. Excerpts by Stobæus: Commentary - Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. 3, by G.R.S. Mead, [1906], at sacred-texts.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- COMMENTARY ARGUMENT 1. The “Virgin of the World” is a sacred sermon of initiation into the Hermes-lore, the first initiation, in which the tradition of the wisdom is handed on by the hierophant to the neophyte, by word of mouth. The instructor, or revealer, is the representative of Isis-Sophia, and speaks in her name, pouring forth for her beloved son, the new-born Horus, the first draught of p. 135 immortality, which is to purge away the poison of the mortal cup of forgetfulness and ignorance, and so raise him from the “dead.” This pouring-forth explains that the divine economy is perfect order, mystery transcending mystery,—each state of being, and each being, a mystery to those below that state. This order no mortal intellect can ever grasp; nay, in the far-off ages, when as yet there were no men, but only Gods, those essences that know no death, the first creation of the World-creator,—even these Gods, these mysteries to us, were in amazement at the glories of the greater mysteries which decked the Heaven with their unveiled transcendent beauty. Even these Gods did not know God as yet. 2. The Gods were immortal, but unknowing; they were intoxicated with Heaven’s beauty, amazed, nay awestruck, at the splendour of the mysteries of Heaven. Then came there forth another outpouring of the Father over all; He poured the Splendour of His Mind into their hearts and they began to know. 1 With this representation is blended a mythical historical tradition which suggests that all this was brought about for an “earth” on which our humanity had not as yet appeared, in far-off distant days when apparently our earth was not as now, ages ago, the purest Golden Age when there were Gods, not men. In that race of Gods, those of them in whom the ray was no low-burning spark, but a divine flame, were the instructors in the heavenly wisdom. 3. Of these was Hermes, a race or “being” rather p. 136 than an individual; these “Sons of Fire” left the record of their wisdom engraved on “stone” in symbol, in charge of others of the same race but less knowing than themselves; and so they ascended to Heaven. 4. Those that succeeded them had not the flame so bright within their hearts; they were of the same race, but younger souls—the Tat-race. Hermes could not hand on the direct knowledge to them, the “perfect sight” (θεωρία), and so recorded the wisdom in symbol and myth. Still later the Asclepius-race joined themselves to the Tat-souls. All this, however, took place many many ages ago, long even before the days of the men-gods Osiris and Isis; for the real wisdom of Hermes was so ancient that even Isis herself had had to search out the hidden records, and that too by means of the inner sight, when she herself had won the power to see, and the True Sun had risen for her mind. 5. But the strain of reconstructing the history of this far-distant past, as he conceived it to have been, is too much for the writer. He knows he is dealing with “myths,” with what Plutarch would have called the “doings of the daimones;” he knows that in reality these primæval “Books” of Hermes have no longer any physical existence, if indeed they ever had any; he knows that no matter what legends are told, or whatever the general priesthood may believe about ancient physical inscriptions of the primæval Hermes,—all this has passed away, and that the real wisdom of Hermes is engraved on the tablets of the æther, and not hidden in the shrines of earth. The “Books” are engraved in the “sacred symbols of the cosmic elements,” and hidden away hard by the “secrets of Osiris”—the mysteries of creative fire, the light that speaks in the heart. The true Books of p. 137 [paragraph continues] Hermes are hidden away in their own zones, the pure elements of the unseen world—the celestial Egypt. 6. This wisdom was held in safe keeping for the “souls” of men; it was a soul-gnosis, not a physical knowledge. Hereupon the writer begins the recital of his tradition 1 of the creation of the “souls” of men in their unfallen state, all of which is derived from the “Books of Hermes.” The soul-creation runs as follows: The Watchers 2 approach the Creator. The hour has struck for a new Cosmic Dawn, for a new Day. The time has come for Cosmos to awake after the Night. 3 The Creative Mind of the universe turns His attention, His thought, to a new phase of things, a new world-period. 7. God smiled, and His laughter thrilled through space, 4 and with His Word, called forth into the light the new dawn from out the primæval darkness of the new world-space. His first creation, transcendental or intelligible Nature, stood before Him, in all the marvel of her new beauty, the primal plērōma, or potential fullness, of the new universe or system, the ideal cosmos of our world, for there were many others,—the Gods who marvelled at the mystery. Straightway this Nature fell from one into three, herself and Toil and their fairest child Invention, to p. 138 whom God gave the gift of being, themselves producing ideal form alone. The first creation, then, was the bringing forth of potencies and types and ideas, to whom God gave the gift of being; it was as yet the world “above,” the primæval Heaven, in ultimate perfection, thus constituting the unchanging boundaries of the new universe that was to be. These things-that-are were filled with “mysteries,” not “breaths” or “lives,” for these were not as yet. 8. The next stage is the breathing of the spiritual (not the physical) breath of lives into the fairest blend of the primal elements that condition the world-area. This blend or soul-substance is called psychōsis. The primal elements were not our mixed earth, water, fire, and air, but “knowing fire” (perhaps “fire in itself,” as Hermes elsewhere calls it, or intelligible fire, perchance the “flower of fire” of the so-called “Chaldæan Oracles” 1) and unknowing air, if we may judge from the phrase (7): “Let heaven be filled with all things full, and air and æther [? = fire] too!” It is Heaven or the ideal world that is so filled; even earth-water was not yet manifested, much less earth and water. It seems, then, that these souls (souls corresponding above with the subsequent man-stage below) were a blend of the three: spirit, knowing fire, and unknowing air,—triads, yet a unity called psychōsis. 9. They were moreover all essentially equal, but differed according to some fixed law of numbering; they were also apparently definite in number, one soul perchance for every star, as with Plato, according to the law of similarity of less and greater, of within and without. 10. These souls, then, were “sacred (or typical) men,” p. 139 a creation prior to that of the “sacred animals”; their habitat was in Upper Nature, the “all-fairest station of the æther”—the celestial cosmos. 11. They were appointed to certain stations and to the task of keeping the “wheel revolving,”—that is, as we shall see, they were to fashion forms for birth and death, and so provide means of transmission for the life-currents ever circulating in the great sphere. This was their appointed task, the law imposed on them, as obedient children of the Great King, their sire. So long as they kept their appointed stations they were to live for ever in surroundings of bliss and beauty, in full contemplation of the glories of the greater universe, throned amid the stars. But if they disobeyed the law, bonds and punishment await them. 12. We next come to a further creation of souls—a subject somewhat difficult to follow. These souls are of an inferior grade to the preceding, for they are composed of the primal water and earth, of “water in itself” and “earth in itself” we must suppose, and not of the compound elements we now call by these names. These are the souls of certain “sacred animals” or lives, which bear the same relationship to the souls which “keep the wheel revolving” as animals do to man on earth. They are, however, not shaped like the animals on earth, nor possess even typical animal forms, but bear the forms of men, though they are not men. 13. Still was the divine “water-earth” substance unexhausted, and so the residue was handed over to “those souls that had gone in advance and had been summoned to the land of Gods,”—that is to say, those stations near the Gods, in highest æther, of which mention has just been made. These souls are, of course, the man-souls proper. Out of this residue these Builders were to fashion p. 140 animals, after the models the Creator gave them,—certain types of life, below the “man” type proper, ranged in due order corresponding to the “motions of the souls.” That is to say, there were various classes of Builders according to the types of animals which were to be copied. The Builders were to fashion the forms, the Creator was to breathe into them the life. 14. Thus these Builders fashioned the etheric doubles of birds, quadrupeds, fish and reptiles, and not their physical bodies, for as yet the earth was not solid. 15. And so the Builder-souls accomplished their task, and fashioned the primæval copies of the celestial types of animals. Proud of their work, they grew restive at the restraints placed upon them by the law of their stations, and overstepped the limits decreed by the Creator. 1 Whereupon the punishment is pronounced, and the Creator resolves to make the human frame, therein to imprison the disobedient souls. And here we learn incidentally that all of this p. 141 psychogenesis which has gone before was the direct teaching of Hermes to the writer; of no physical Hermes, however, but of that Hermes whose “Books” are hidden in the zones (5), of the Hermes whom the writer, as he would have us believe, came to know face to face only after his inner vision was opened, and he had gazed with all-seeing eyes “upon the mysteries of that new dawn” (4). 16. For the new and mysterious fabrication of the man-form, all the seven obedient Gods, to whom the man-souls are kin (17), are summoned by the chief of them, Hermes himself, the beloved son and messenger of the Supreme, “soul of My Soul, and holy mind of My own Mind.” 1 17. All of the seven promise to bestow the best they have on man. 18. The plasm out of which the man-form is to be modelled is the residue of the mixture out of which the Builders had already made the animal doubles. But the Builder of the man-frames was Hermes himself, who mixed the plasm with still more water. 19. Here the writer inserts a further piece of information concerning the source of his tradition. It is no longer as before what Hermes himself reveals to him in vision, but what the writer was told at a certain initiation called the “Black Rite.” This rite was presided over by Kamēphis, who is called the “earliest of all,” or perhaps more correctly the “most primæval of [us] all.” Kamēphis is thus conceived as the representative of a more ancient wisdom than that of Isis, and yet even he but hands on the tradition of Hermes. 2 20. The souls are “enfleshed,” and utter loud complaints. Apparently not all at first can speak articulately; most of them can only groan, or scream, p. 142 or hiss. The leading class of souls can, however, so far dominate the plasm as to speak articulately, and so one of their number utters a desperate appeal to Heaven. 21. They have now lost their celestial state, and Heaven is shut away from them; no longer can they see “without the light.” They are shut down into a “heart’s small compass”; the Sun of their being has become a light-spark only, hidden in the heart. This is, of course, the logos, the inmost reality in man. 22. The souls pray for some amelioration of their unhappy lot, and the conditions of the moral law are expounded to them. They who do rightly shall, on their body’s dissolution, reascend to Heaven and be at rest; they who do ill, shall work out their redemption under the law of metempsychosis, or change from body to body, from prison to prison. 23. Details of this metempsychosis are then given with special reference to the incarnations of the “more righteous,” who shall be kings, philosophers and prophets. Such souls apparently, for it is not expressly so stated, shall, in passing round the wheel of rebirth, when out of incarnation in a human body, have some sort of life with the souls of the leading types of animals, which are given as eagles, lions, dragons, and dolphins. Or, if we are unjustified in this speculation, such souls shall in their animal parts have intimate relation with the noblest types of animal essence (24). 25. There now comes upon the scene the mighty Intellect of the Earth, a veritable Erdgeist, in the form of Mōmus, who speaking out of affection for him (28), urges Hermes to increase ills and trials upon the souls of men, so that they shall not dare too much (25-27). And thereon Hermes sets in motion the instrument or engine of unerring fate and mechanical retribution (28, 29). p. 143 29. Now all these things took place at the dawn of earth-life, when all as yet was inert, as far as our now solid earth is concerned. We must then suppose that as yet our present phase of existence on earth had not yet been manifested; that all was as yet in a far subtler or more primitive state of existence, when earth was still all “a-tremble,” and had not yet hardened to its present state of solidity;—that is to say, that the man-plasm was in an etheric state (30). 31. The earth gradually hardens. Into the now more solid earth, the Creator and His obedient sons, the Gods who had not made revolt, poured forth the blessings of nature. This is described by the beautiful symbol of the hands of blessing, figured in Egypt as the sun-rays, each terminating in a hand for giving light and life. 1 The imprisoned souls, the kinsmen of the Gods obedient, continue their revolt; they are the leaders of mankind, of a mankind far weaker than themselves, a humanity, apparently evolved normally from the nature of things and as yet in its childhood. Instead of teaching them the lessons of love and wisdom, the Disobedient Ones use them for evil purposes, for war and conflict, for oppression and savagery. 32. Things go from bad to worse; the earth is befouled with the horrors of savage man, until in despair the pure elements complain to God. They pray that He will send a holy emanation of Himself to set things right (32-34). 35. Hereupon God sends forth the mystery of a new birth, a divine descent, or emanation, an avatāra, as the Aryan Hindu tradition would call it, a dual manifestation. 2 And so Osiris and Isis are born to help the p. 144 world, to recall men from savagery, and restore the moral order (35-37). It was they who were taught directly by Hermes (37) in all law and science and wisdom. Their mission meets with success, and the “world” is filled with a knowledge of the Path of Return. But before their ascension into Heaven they have a petition to make to the Father, that not only earth but also the surrounding spaces up to Heaven itself may be filled with a knowledge of the truth. Thus then they proceed to hymn the Sire and Monarch of all in a praise-giving which, unfortunately, Stobæus did not think fit to copy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The original text of the “Virgin of the World” treatise is obviously broken only by the omission of the Hymn of Osiris and Isis, and Excerpt ii. follows otherwise immediately on Excerpt i. The subject is the birth of royal souls, taken up from the instruction given in K. K., 23, 24 above. 39. There are four chief spaces: (i) Invisible Heaven, inhabited by the Gods, with the Invisible Sun as lord of all; (ii) Æther, inhabited by the Stars, of which for us the Sun is leader; (iii) Air, in which dwell non-incarnate souls, ruled by the Moon, as watcher o’er the paths of genesis; (iv) Earth, inhabited by men and animals, and over men the immediate ruler is the Divine King of the time. 40. The king-soul is the last of the Gods but the first of men 1; he is, however, on earth a demigod only, for his true divinity is obscured. His soul, or ka, comes from a soul-plane superior to that of the rest of mankind. The ascending souls of normally evolving humanity are thought of, apparently, as describing ever widening p. 145 circles in their wheelings in and out of incarnation, rising, as they increase in virtue and knowledge, at the zenith of their ascent in the intermediate state, before they turn to descend again into rebirth, ever nearer to the limits of the sensible world and, the frontiers of Heaven. 41. But there is also another class of descending royal souls, who have only slightly transgressed, and therefore descend only as far as this grade of humanity. 42. For the royal or ruling soul is not only a warrior monarch; his sovereignty may be also shown in arts of peace. He may be a righteous judge, a musician or poet, a truth-lover or philosopher. The activities of these souls are not determined, as is the case with souls of lower grades,—that is, those souls which have fallen deeper into material existence,—by what Basilides would have called the “appendages” of the animal nature; they are determined by a fairer taxis, an escort of angels and daimones, who accompany them into birth. 43. The description of their manner of birth, however, is, unfortunately, lost to us, owing either to the hesitation of Stobæus to make it public, or to its being cut out by some subsequent copyist. 44. We are next told that sex is no essential characteristic of the soul. It is an “accident” of the body, but this body is not the physical, but the “aery” body, which air, however, is not a simple element, but already differentiated into four sub-elements. 1 45. Moreover the sight, or intelligence, of the soul also depends upon the purity of certain envelopes, which p. 146 are called “airs,”—“airs” apparently more subtle even than the aery body (45). 1 46. Next follows a naïve reason for the excellence of Egypt and the wisdom of the Egyptians (46-48). Here the writer seems to be no longer dependent directly on the Trismegistic tradition, but is inserting and expanding popular notions. 49. The remaining sections of the Excerpt are taken up with speculations as to the cause of delirium (49, 50), and Stobæus brings his extract to a conclusion apparently without allowing the writer to complete his exposition. SOURCES? The discussion as to the meaning of the title, which has so far been invariably translated “The Virgin of the World,” will come more appropriately later on. How much of the original treatise has been handed on to us by Stobæus we have no external means of deciding. Our two Extracts, however, plainly stand in immediate connection with each other, and the original text is broken only by the unfortunate omission of the Hymn of Osiris and Isis. The first Extract, moreover, is plainly not the beginning of the treatise, since it opens with words referring to what has gone before; while the second Extract ends in a very unsatisfactory manner in the middle of a subject. What we have, however, gives us some very interesting indications of how the writer regarded his sources,—whether written or oral, whether physical or psychic. He of course would have us take his treatise as a literary unity; and indeed the subject is so worked up that it is very difficult to discover what the literary p. 147 sources that lay before the writer may have been, for the story runs on straight enough in the same thought-mould and literary form, in spite of the insertion of somewhat contradictory statements concerning the sources of information. When, however, Reitzenstein (p. 136) expressly states that the creation-story shows indubitable traces of two older forms, and that this is not a matter of surprise, as we find two (or more precisely four) different introductions,—we are not able entirely to follow him. It is true that these introductory statements are apparently at variance, but on further consideration they appear to be not really self-contradictory. THE DIRECT VOICE AND THE BOOKS OF HERMES The main representation is that the teacher of Isis is Hermes, who saw the world-creation, that is, the creation of our earth-system, and the soul-making, with his own spiritual sight (2). Isis has obtained her knowledge in two ways: either from the sacred Books of Hermes (4, 5); or by the direct spiritual voice of the Master (15). The intention here is plainly to claim the authority of direct revelation, for even the Books are not physical. They have disappeared, if indeed they ever were physical, and can only be recovered from the tablets of unseen nature, by ascending to the zones (5) where they are hidden; and these zones are plainly the same as the soul-spaces mentioned in S. I. H., 8. At the same time there is mention of another tradition, which, though in later details purporting to be historic and physical, in its beginnings is involved in purely mythological and psychic considerations. When the first and most ancient Hermes ascended to Heaven, he left his Books in the charge of the Gods, his kinsmen, p. 148 in the zones, and not on earth (3). On earth there succeeded to this wisdom a younger race, beloved of Hermes, and personified as his son Tat. These were souls as yet too young to understand the true science face to face. They were apparently regarded as the Tat (Thoth) priesthood of our humanity, who were subsequently joined by wisdom-lovers of another line of tradition, the Imuth (Asclepius) brotherhood, who had their doctrine originally from Ptah. 1 This seems to hint at some ancient union of two traditions or schools of mystic science, perhaps from the Memphitic and Thebaic priesthoods respectively. 2 What, however, is clear is that the writer professes to set forth a higher and more direct teaching than either the received tradition of the Isiac mystery-cult or of the Tat-Asclepius school. This he does in the person of Isis as the face to face disciple of the most ancient Hermes, 3 thus showing us that in the Hermes-circles of the Theoretics, or those who had the direct sight, though the Isis mystery-teaching was considered a tradition of the wisdom, it was nevertheless held to be entirely subordinate to the illumination of the direct sight. p. 149 KAMEPHIS AND THE DARK MYSTERY In apparent contradiction to all this we have the following statement: “Now give good heed, son Horus, for thou art being told the mystic spectacle which Kamēphis, our forefather, was privileged to hear from Hermes, the record-writer of all deeds, and I from Kamēphis when he did honour me with the Black [Rite] that gives perfection” (19). 1 Here Reitzenstein (p. 137) professes to discover the conflation of two absolutely distinct traditions of (i) Kamephis, a later god and pupil of Hermes, and (ii) Kamephis, an older god and teacher of Isis; but in this I cannot follow him. It all depends on the meaning assigned to the words παρὰ τοῦ πάντων προγενεστέρου, which Reitzenstein regards as signifying “the most ancient of all [gods],” but which I translate as “the most ancient of [us] all.” I take it to mean simply that, according to the general Isis-tradition, the founder of its mysteries was stated to be Kamephis, but that the Isis-Hermes circles claimed that this Kamephis, though truly the most ancient figure in the Isis tradition proper, was nevertheless in his turn the pupil of the still more ancient Hermes. The grade of Kamephis was presumably represented in the mystery-cult by the arch-hierophant who presided at the degree called the “Dark Mystery” or “Black Rite.” It was a rite performed only for those p. 150 who were judged worthy of it (ἐτίμησεν) after long probation in lower degrees, something of a far more sacred character, apparently, than the instruction in the mysteries enacted in the light. I would suggest, therefore, that we have here a reference to the most esoteric institution of the Isiac tradition, the more precise nature of which we will consider later on; it is enough for the moment to connect it with certain objects or shows that were apparently made to appear in the dark. As Clement of Alexandria says in his famous commonplace book, called the Stromateis 1: “It is not without reason that in the mysteries of the Greeks, lustrations hold the first place, analogous to ablutions among the Barbarians [that is, non-Greeks]. After these come the lesser mysteries, which have some foundation of instruction and of preliminary preparation for what is to follow; and then the great mysteries, in which nothing remains to be learned of the universe, but only to contemplate and comprehend nature [herself] and the things [which are mystically shown to the initiated].” 2 p. 151 KNEPH-KAMEPHIS But who was Kamēphis in the theology of the Egyptians? According to Reitzenstein, Kamephis or Kmephis, that is Kmeph, is equated by Egyptologists with Kneph, who, according to Plutarch, 1 was worshipped in the Thebaid as the ingenerable and immortal God. Kneph, however, as Sethe has shown, 2 is one of the aliases of Ammon, who is the “bull [or husband] of his mother,” the “creator who has created himself.” Kneph is, moreover, the Good Daimon, as Philo of Byblus says. 3 He is the Sun-god and Heaven-god Ammon. “If he open his eyes, he filleth all with light in his primæval 4 land; and if he close them all is dark.” 5 Here we have Kneph-Ammon as the giver of light in darkness, and the opener of the eyes. Moreover, Porphyry 6 tells us that the Egyptians regarded Kneph as the demiurge or creator, and represented him in the form of a man, with skin of a blue-black tint, girt with a girdle, and holding p. 152 a sceptre, and wearing a crown of regal wings. This symbolism, says Porphyry, signified that he was the representative of the Logos or Reason, difficult to discover, hidden, 1 not manifest 2; it is he who gives light and also life 3; he is the King. The winged crown upon his head, he adds, signifies that he moves or energizes intellectually. Kamephis, then, stands in the Isis-tradition for the representative of Agathodaimon, the Logos-creator. He is, however, a later holder of this office, and has had it handed on to him by Hermes, or at any rate he is instructed in the Logos-wisdom by Hermes. HERMES I. AND HERMES II. In this connection it is instructive to refer to the account which Syncellus 4 tells us he took from the statement of Manetho. Manetho, says Syncellus, states in his Books, that he based his replies concerning the dynasties of Egypt to King Ptolemy on the monuments. “[These monuments], he [Manetho] tells us, were engraved in the sacred language, and in the characters of the sacred writing, by Thoth the First Hermes; after the Flood they were translated from the sacred language into the then common tongue, but [still written] in hieroglyphic characters, and stored away in books, by the Good Daimon’s son, the Second Hermes, the father of Tat, in the inner shrines of the temples of Egypt.” p. 153 Here we have a tradition, going back as far as Manetho, which I have shown, in Chapter V. of the “Prolegomena” on “Manetho, High Priest of Egypt,” cannot be so lightly disposed of as has been previously supposed,—dealing expressly with the Books of Hermes. This tradition, it is true, differs from the account given in our Sermon (3-5), where the writer says nothing expressly of a flood, but evidently wishes us to believe that the most ancient records of Hermes were magically hidden in the zones of the unseen world, and that the flood, if there was one, was a flood or lapse of time that had utterly removed these records from the earth. For him they no longer existed physically. Manetho’s account deals with another view of the matter. His tradition appears to be as follows. The oldest records were on stone monuments which had survived some great flood in Egypt. These records belonged to the period of the First Hermes, the Good Daimon par excellence, the priesthood, therefore, of the earliest antediluvian Egyptian civilization. After the flood they were translated from the most archaic language into ancient Egyptian, and preserved in book-form by the Second Hermes, the priesthood, presumably, of the most ancient civilization after the flood, who were in time succeeded by the Tat priesthood. That this tradition is elsewhere contradicted by the Isis-tradition proper, which in a somewhat similar genealogy places Isis at the very beginning prior even to Hermes I., 1 need not detain us, since each tradition would naturally claim the priority of those whom it regarded as its own special founders, and we are for the moment concerned only with the claims of the Hermes-school. p. 154 The main point of interest is that there was a tradition which explained the past on the hypothesis of periods of culture succeeding one another,—the oldest being supposed to have been the wisest and highest; the most archaic hieroglyphic language, which perhaps the priests of Manetho’s day could no longer fully understand, 1 was supposed to have been the tongue of the civilization before the Flood of Hermes I. It may even be that the remains of this tongue were preserved only in the magical invocations, as a thing most sacred, the “language of the gods.” The point of view, however, of the circle to which our writer belonged, was that the records of this most ancient civilization were no longer to be read even in the oldest inscriptions; they could only be recovered by spiritual sight. Into close relation with this, we must, I think, bring the statement made in § 37, that Osiris and Isis, though they themselves had learned all the secrets of the records of Hermes, nevertheless kept part of them secret, and engraved on stone only such as were adapted for the intelligence of “mortal men.” The Kamephis of the Isis-tradition, then, apparently stands for Kneph as Agathodaimon, that is for Hermes, but not for our Hermes I., 2 for he has no physical p. 155 contact with the Isis-tradition, but for Hermes II., who was taught by Hermes I. THE BLACK RITE But what is the precise meaning of the “black rite” at which Kamephis presides? I have already suggested the environment in which the general meaning may be sought, though I have not been able to produce any objective evidence of a precise nature. Reitzenstein (pp. 139 ff.), however, thinks he has discovered that evidence. His view is as follows: The key to the meaning, according to him, is to be found in the following line from a Magic Papyrus 1: “I invoke thee, Lady Isis, with whom the Good Daimon doth unite, 2 He who is Lord ἐν τῷ τελείῳ μέλανι.” Reitzenstein thinks that the Good Daimon here stands for Chnum, and works out (p. 140) a learned hypothesis that the “black” refers to a certain territory of black earth, between Syene and Takompso, the Dedocaschœnus, especially famed for its pottery, which was originally in the possession of the Isis priesthood, but was subsequently transferred to the priesthood of Chnum by King Dośer. Reitzenstein would thus, presumably, translate the latter half of the sentence as “the Good Daimon who is Lord in the perfect black [country],” and so make it refer to Chnum, though indeed he seems himself to feel the inadequacy of this explanation to cover the word “perfect” (p. 144). But this seems to me to take all the dignified meaning out of both our text and that of the Magic Papyrus, and to introduce p. 156 local geographical considerations which are plainly out of keeping with the context. It is far more natural to make the Agathodaimon of the Papyrus refer to Osiris; for indeed it is one of his most frequent designations. Moreover, it is precisely Osiris who is pre-eminently connected with the so-called “under world,” the unseen world, the “mysterious dark.” He is lord there, while Isis remains on earth; it is he who would most fitly give instructions on such matters, and indeed one of the ancient mystery-sayings was precisely, “Osiris is a dark God.” 1 “He who is Lord in the perfecting black,” might thus mean that Osiris, the masculine potency 2 of the soul, purified and perfected the man on the mysterious dark side of things, and completed the work which Isis, the feminine potency of the soul, had begun on him. That, in the highest mystery-circles, this was some stage of union of the man with the higher part of himself, may be deduced from the interesting citations made by Reitzenstein (pp. 142-144) from the later Alchemical Hermes-literature; it clearly refers to the mystic “sacred marriage,” 3 the intimate union of the soul with the logos, or divine ray. Much could be written on this subject, but it will be sufficient to append two passages of more than ordinary interest. The Jewish over-writer of the Naassene Document contends that the chief mystery of the Gnosis was but the consummation of the instruction given in the various mystery-institutions of the nations. The p. 157 [paragraph continues] Lesser Mysteries, he tells us, commenting on the text of the Pagan commentator, pertained to “fleshly generation,” whereas the Greater dealt with the new birth, or second birth, with regeneration, and not with genesis. And speaking of a certain mystery, he says: “For this is the Gate of Heaven, and this is the House of God, where the Good God 1 dwells alone, into which [House] no impure [man] shall come; but it is kept under watch for the spiritual alone; where when they come they must cast away their garments, and all become bridegrooms obtaining their true manhood through the Virginal Spirit. For such a man is the Virgin big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son, not psychic, not fleshly, but a blessed Æon of Æons.” 2 In the marvellous mystery-ritual of the new-found fragments of The Acts of John, lately discovered in a fourteenth century MS. in Vienna, disguised in hymn form, and hiding an almost inexhaustible mine of very early tradition, the “sacred marriage” is plainly suggested as one of the keys to part of the ritual. Compare, for instance, with the “casting away of their garments,” in the above-quoted passage of the Naassene writer, the following: “[The Disciple.] I would flee. [The Master.] I would [have thee] stay. [The Assistants.] Amen! [The Disciple.] I would be robed. [The Master.] And I would robe [thee]. [The Assistants.] Amen! [The Disciple.] I would be at-oned. p. 158 [The Master.] And I would at-one. [The Assistants.] Amen!” 1 BLACK LAND. But to return to the “mysterious black.” Plutarch tells us: “Moreover, they [the Egyptians] call Egypt, inasmuch as its soil is particularly black, as though it were the black of the eye, Chemia, and compare it with the heart,” 2—for, he adds, it is hot and moist, and set in the southern part of the inhabitable world, in the same way as the heart in the left side of a man. 3 Egypt, the “sacred land” par excellence, was called Chemia or Chem (Ḥem), Black-land, because of the nature of its dark loamy soil; it was, moreover, in symbolic phraseology the black of the eye, that is, the pupil of the earth-eye, the stars and planets being regarded as the eyes of the gods. 4 Egypt, then, was the eye and heart of the Earth; the Heavenly Nile poured its light-flood of wisdom through this dark of the eye, or made the land throb like a heart with the celestial life-currents. Nor is the above quotation an unsupported statement of Plutarch’s, for in an ancient text from Edfu, 5 we read: “Egypt (lit. the Black), which is so called after the eye of Osiris, for it is his pupil.” Ammon-Kneph, too, as we have seen, is black, or blue-black, signifying his hidden and mysterious p. 159 character; and in the above-quoted passage he is called “he who holds himself hidden in his eye,” or “he who veils himself in his pupil.” This pupil, then, concludes Reitzenstein (p. 145), is the “mysterious black.” Is this, then, the origin of this peculiar phrase? If so, it would be connected with seeing, the spiritual sight, the true Epopteia. THE PUPIL OF THE WORLD’S EYE But Isis, also, is the black earth, and, therefore, the pupil of the eye of Osiris, and, therefore, also of the Chnum or Ammon identified with Osiris at Syene. Isis, therefore, herself is the “Pupil of the World’s Eye”—the κόρη κόσμου. 1 Reitzenstein would, therefore, have it that the original type of our treatise looks back to a tradition which makes the mystery-goddess Isis the disciple and spouse of the mysterious Chnum or Ammon, or Kneph or Kamephis, as Agathodaimon; and, therefore, presumably, that the making of this Kamephis the disciple in his turn of Hermes is a later development of the tradition, when the Hermes-communities gained ascendancy in certain circles of the Isis-tradition. This is very probable; but dare we, with Reitzenstein, cast aside the “traditional” translation of κόρη κόσμου, as “Virgin of the World,” and prefix to our treatise as title the new version, “The Pupil of the Eye of the World”? It certainly sounds strange as a title to unaccustomed ears, and differs widely from any other titles of the Hermetic sermons known to us. But what does the “Virgin of the World” mean in connection with our treatise? Isis as the Virgin Mother is a p. 160 familiar idea to students of Egyptology 1; she is κατ᾽ ἐξοχὴν, the “World-Virgin.” THE SON OF THE VIRGIN And here it will be of interest to turn to a curious statement of Epiphanius 2; it is missing in all editions of this Father prior to that of Dindorf (Leipzig, 1859), which was based on the very early (tenth century) Codex Marcianus 125, all previous editions being printed from a severely censured and bowdlerized fourteenth century MS. Epiphanius is stating that the true birthday of the Christ is the Feast of Epiphany, “at a distance of thirteen days from the increase of the light [i.e. December 25]; for it needs must have been that this should be a figure of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and of His twelve disciples, who make up the thirteen days of the increase of the Light.” The Feast of the Epiphany was a great day in Egypt, connected with the “Birth of the Æon,”—a phase of the “Birth of Horus.” For Epiphanius thus continues: “How many other things in the past and present support and bear witness to this proposition, I mean the birth of Christ! Indeed, the leaders of the idol-cults, 3 filled with wiles to deceive the idol-worshippers who believe in them, in many places keep highest festival on this same night of Epiphany [= the Manifestation to Light], so that they whose hopes are in error may not seek the truth. For instance, at p. 161 [paragraph continues] Alexandria, in the Koreion, 1 as it is called—an immense temple, that is to say the Precinct of the Virgin—after they have kept all-night vigil with songs and music, chanting to their idol, when the vigil is over, at cock-crow, they descend with lights into an underground crypt, and carry up a wooden image lying naked on a litter, with the seal of a cross made in gold on its forehead, and on either hand two similar seals, and on either knee two others, all five seals being similarly made in gold. And they carry round the image itself, circumambulating seven times the innermost temple, to the accompaniment of pipes, tabors and hymns, and with merry-making they carry it down again underground. And if they are asked the meaning of this mystery, they answer: ‘To-day at this hour the Maiden (Korē), that is, the Virgin, gave birth to the Æon.’” He further adds that at Petra, in Arabia, where, among other places, this mystery was also performed, the Son of the Virgin is called by a name meaning the “Alone-begotten of the Lord.” 2 Here, then, at Alexandria, in every probability the very environment of our treatise, we have a famous mystery-rite, solemnized in the Temple of the Virgin, who gives birth to a Son, the Æon. This, we shall not be rash in assuming, signifies not only the birth of the new year, but also still more profound mysteries, when we remember the words of the Naassene Document quoted above: “For such a man is the Virgin, big with child, conceiving and bearing a Son,—not psychic, not fleshly [nor, we may add, temporal], but p. 162 a blessed Æon of Æons”—that is, an Eternity of Eternities, an immortal God. We should also notice the crowing of the cock, which plays so important a part in the crucifixion-story in the Gospels, 1 and above all things the stigmata on the image, the symbols of a cosmic and human mystery. THE MYSTERY OF THE BIRTH OF HORUS In our own treatise the mysterious Birth of Horus is also referred to (35, 36) as follows. Isis has handed on the tradition of the Coming of Osiris, the Divine emanation, the descent of the efflux of the Supreme, and Horus asks: “How was it, mother, then, that Earth received God’s efflux?”—where Earth may well refer to the “Dark Earth,” a synonym of Isis herself. And Isis answers: “I may not tell the story of [this] birth; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of this descent, O Horus, [son] of mighty power, lest afterward the way of birth of the immortal Gods should be known unto men.” Here I think we have a clear reference to the mysterious “Birth of Horus,” the birth of the gods,—that is to say, of how a man becomes a god, becomes the most royal of all souls, gains the kingdom, or lordship over himself. This mystery was not yet to be revealed to the neophyte—Horus—and yet this Birth is suggested to Tat by Hermes—C. H., xiii. (xiv.) 2—when he says: “Wisdom that understands in silence [such is the matter and the womb from out which Man is born] and the True Good the Seed.” The womb is the mysterious Silence, the matter is p. 163 [paragraph continues] Wisdom, Isis herself, the seed is the Good, the Agathodaimon, Osiris. But in our treatise Horus has not yet reached to this high state; Isis, as the introductory words tell us, is pouring forth for him “the first draught of immortality” only, “which souls have custom to receive from gods”; he is being raised to the understanding of a daimon, but not as yet to that of a god. All of this, moreover, seems to have been part and parcel of the Isis mystery-tradition proper, for as Diodorus (i. 25), following Hecatæus, informs us, it was Isis who “discovered the philtre of immortality, by means of which, when her son Horus, who had been plotted against by the Titans, and found dead (νεκρόν) beneath the water, not only raised him to life (ἀναστῆσαι) by giving him life (ψυχήν), but also made him sharer in immortality.” Here we have evidence to show that in the mystery-myth Horus was regarded as the human soul, and that there were two interpretations of the mystery. It referred not only to the “rising from the dead” in another body, or return to life in another enfleshment, but also to a still higher mystery, whereby the consciousness of immortality was restored to the memory of the soul. The soul had been cast by the Titans, or the opposing powers of the subtle universe, into the deep waters of the Great Sea, the Ocean of Generation, or Celestial Nile, for as the mysterious informant of Cleombrotus told him, 1 these stories of Titans concerned daimons or souls proper, not bodies. 2 p. 164 From this death in the sea of matter, Isis, the Mother Soul, brings Horus repeatedly back to life, and finally bestows on him the knowledge of immortality, and so raises him from the “dead.” 1 This birth of the “true man” within, the logos, was and is for man the chief of all mysteries. In the Chapter on “The Popular Theurgic Hermes-Cult,” we have already, in elucidation of the sacramental formula, “Thou art I and I am thou,” quoted the agraphon from the Gospel of Eve concerning the Great Man and the Little Man or Dwarf, and lovers of the Aupaniṣhad literature of Hindu-Aryan theosophy need hardly be p. 165 reminded of “the ‘man,’ of the size of a thumb,” within, in the ether of the heart. 1 “ISHON” But what is of more immediate interest is that the same idea is to some extent found in the Old Covenant documents, especially in the Prophetical and Wisdom literature, which latter was strongly influenced by Hellenistic ideas. Ishon, which literally means “little man” or “dwarf,” 2 is in A.V. generally translated “apple of the eye.” 3 Thus we read in a purely literal sense, referring to weeping: “Let not the apple of thine eye cease” (Lam. ii. 18). It was, however, a common persuasion, that the intelligence or soul itself, not merely the reflection of the image of another person, resided in the eye, and was made manifest chiefly by the eye. Thus the “apple of the eye” was used as a synonym for a man’s most precious possession, the treasure-house as it were of the light of a man. p. 166 And so we read: “He [Yahweh] kept him [Israel] as the apple of his eye” (Ps. xvii. 8)—where ishon is in the Hebrew further glossed as the “daughter of the eye”; and again: “Thus saith the Lord of Hosts: . . . He that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zech. ii. 8). The “apple of the eye” (ishon) was, then, something of great value, something very precious, and, therefore, we read in the Wisdom-literature that the punishment of the man who curses his father and mother is that “his lamp shall be put out in obscure (ishon) darkness” (Prov. xx. 20)—that is, that he shall thus extinguish the lamp of his intelligence, or perhaps spiritual nature, “in the apple of his eye there will be darkness”; and this connects with a passage in the Psalms which shows traces of the same Wisdom-teaching. “In the hidden part 1 [of man] thou shalt make me to know wisdom” (Ps. li. 6). But the most striking passages are to be found in that pre-eminently Wisdom-chapter in the Proverbs-collection, where the true Israelite is warned to remain faithful to the Law (Torah), and to have no commerce with the “strange woman,” the “harlot”—that is, the “false doctrines” of the Gentiles. 2 “Keep my law as the apple of thine eye” (Prov. vii. 2), says the writer, speaking in the name of Yahweh, for he has seen the young and foolish being led astray by the “strange woman.” “He went the way to her house, in the twilight, in the evening; in the black (ishon) and dark night” (Prov. vii. 9). That is to say, p. 167 his lamp was put out; there was dark night in his eye, in that little man of his, which should be his true light-spark understanding the wisdom of Yahweh. Here, I think, we have additional evidence, that the idea, that the pupil of the eye was the seat of the spiritual intelligence in man, was widespread in Hellenistic circles. 1 But even so, can we translate κόρη κόσμου as the “Apple of the World-Eye”? It is true that Isis is the instrument or organ of conveying the hidden wisdom to Horus, and that it is eventually Hermes or the Logos who is the true light itself, which shines through her, the pupil of Egypt’s eye, 2 out of that mysterious darkness, in which she found herself, when she received illumination at the hands of Kamephis; but is this sufficient justification for rejecting the traditional translation of the title, and adopting a new version? On the whole I am inclined to think, that though the new rendering may at first sight appear somewhat strained, nevertheless in proportion as we become more familiarized with the idea and remember the thought-environment of the time, we may venture so to translate it. Isis, then, is the “Apple or Pupil of the Eye of Osiris.” On earth the “mysterious black” is Egypt p. 168 herself, the wisdom-land. Isis is the mysterious wisdom of Egypt, but in our treatise she is even more than this, for she is that wisdom but now truly illumined by the direct sight, the new dawn of the Trismegistic discipline of which she speaks (4). To a Greek, however, the word κόρη would combine and not distinguish the two meanings of the title over which we have been labouring; but even as logos meant both “word” and “reason,” so korē would mean both “virgin” and “pupil of the eye”; but as it is impossible to translate it in English by one word, we have followed the traditional rendering. THE SIXTY SOUL-REGIONS We now turn to a few of the most important points which require more detailed treatment than the space of a footnote can accommodate. There are, of course, many other points that could be elaborated, but if that were done, the present work would run into volumes. The number of degrees into which the soul-stuff (psychōsis) is divided, is given as three, and as sixty (10). If this statement stood by itself we should have been somewhat considerably puzzled to have known what to make of it, even when we remembered the mystic statement that 60 is par excellence the number of the soul, and that he who can unriddle the enigma will know its nature. Fortunately, however, if we turn to S. I. H., 6 (Ex. xxvii.), we find that according to this tradition the soul-regions also were divided into 60 spaces, presumably corresponding to the types of souls. They were in 4 main divisions and 60 special spaces, with no overlapping (7). These spaces were also called zones, firmaments or layers. We are further told (6) that the lowest division, that p. 169 is the one nearest to the earth, consists of 4 spaces; the second, of 8; the third, of 16; and the fourth, of 32. And still further (7), that there were besides the 4 main divisions 12 intervallic ones. This introduces an element of uncertainty, for, as far as I am aware, we have no objective information which can enable us to determine how the intervallic divisions were located in the mind of the writer; speculation is rash, but a scheme has suggested itself to me, and I append it with all reservation. First of all we have 4 main divisions or planes, separated from one another by 3 determinations of some sort, for the whole ordering pertains to the Air proper, and perhaps the 4 states of Air were regarded as earthy, watery, aery, and fiery Air. The 3 determinations may perhaps have been regarded as corresponding to the three main grades or florescences of the soul-stuff, which were apparently of a superior substance. Each division of the 4 may further have been regarded as divided off by three intervallic determinations; so that we should have 3 such intervals in the lowest division, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 1 space each; 3 in the second, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 2 spaces each; 3 in the third, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 4 spaces each; and 3 in the fourth, subdividing it into 4 spaces of 8 spaces each. The sum of these intervals would thus be 12. PLUTARCH’S YOGIN In this connection, however, I cannot refrain from appending a pleasant story told by Plutarch. 1 p. 170 The speaker is Cleombrotus, a Lacedæmonian gentleman and man of means, who was a great traveller, and a greedy collector of information of all sorts to form the basis of a philosophical religion. He had spent much time in Egypt, and had also been a voyage beyond the Red Sea. On his travels Cleombrotus had heard of a philosopher-recluse, who lived in complete retirement, except once a year when he was seen by “the folk round the Red Sea”; then it was that a certain divine inspiration came upon him, and he came forth and “prophesied” to the nobles and royal scribes who used to flock to hear him. With great difficulty, and only after the expenditure of much money, Cleombrotus discovered the hermitage of this recluse, and was granted a courteous reception. Our old philosopher was the handsomest man Cleombrotus had ever met, deeply versed in the knowledge of plants, and a great linguist. With Cleombrotus, however, he spoke Doric, and almost in verse, and “as he spake perfume filled the place from the sweetness of his breath.” His knowledge of the various mystery-cults was profound, and his intimate acquaintance with the unseen world remarkable; he explained many things to Cleombrotus, and especially the nature of the daimones, and the important part they played as factors in any satisfactory interpretation of ancient mythology, seeing that most of the great myths referred to the doings of the daimones and not of mortals. Cleombrotus, however, has told his story merely as an introduction to the quotation of a scrap of information let fall by the old philosopher concerning the plurality of worlds 1; thus, then, he continues: p. 171 “THE PLAIN OF TRUTH” “He told me that the number of worlds was neither infinite, nor one, nor five, but that there were 183 of them, arranged in the figure of a triangle of which each side contained 60, and of the remaining 3 one set at each angle. And those on the sides touch each other, revolving steadily as in a choral dance. And the area of the triangle is the Common Hearth of all, and is called the ‘Plain of Truth,’ 1 in which the logoi and ideas and paradigms of all things which have been, and which shall be, lie immovable; and the Æon [or Eternity] being round them [sc. the ideas], time flows down upon the worlds like a stream. And the sight and contemplation (θέαν) of these things is possible for the souls of men only once in ten thousand years, should they have lived a virtuous life. And the highest of our initiations here below is only the dream of that true vision and initiation 2; and the discourses [sc. delivered in the mystic rites] have been carefully devised to awaken the memory of the sublime things above, or else are to no purpose.” p. 172 This statement I am inclined to regard as one of the most distinct pronouncements on the nature of the higher mysteries which has been preserved to us from antiquity, and the locus classicus and point of departure for any really fruitful discussion of the true nature of the philosophic mysteries, and yet I have never seen it referred to in this connection. Our old philosopher was well acquainted with the Egyptian mystery-tradition, for Cleombrotus obtained information from him concerning the esoteric significance of Typhon and Osiris, and what I have quoted above falls naturally into place in the scheme of ideas of the tradition preserved in the treatise which we are discussing. 1 It, indeed, pertains to a higher side of the matter, for it purports to be the highest theoria of all, and possible for the souls even of the most righteous only at long periods of time. Of course the representation is symbolical. The triangle is no triangle; it is the “plain of truth,” the “hearth of the universe.” The triangle, then, pertained to the plane of Fire proper and not Air. Still, the ordering of the “worlds” is similar to that of our soul spaces. The triangle is shut off from the manifested world by the Æon; it is out of space and time proper. Time flows down from it. The worlds proper are 3 worlds or cosmoi, each divided into 60 subordinate cosmoi, in choral dance, or orderly harmonious movement of one to the other. Our soul-spaces, then, may have been regarded as some reflection of these supernal conditions. One is almost tempted to turn the plane triangle p. 173 into a solid figure, a tetrahedron, 1 and imagine the idea of a world or wheel, at each of the four angles, and to speculate on the Wheels of Ezekiel, the prototype of the Mercabah or Heavenly Chariot of Kabalism, the Throne of Truth of the Supreme, but I will not try the patience of my readers any further, for doubtless most of them will have cried already: Hold, enough! THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NUMBERS WHICH PREEXIST IN THE SOUL Perhaps, however, it would be as well, before dismissing the subject, to consider very briefly what Plato, following Pythagoras, 2 has to say concerning the “boundaries” of all numbers which pre-exist in the soul. These soul-numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 27 (the combination of the two Pythagorean series 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, 9, 27), or 1, 2, 3, 2², 2³, 3², 3³. Of these numbers 1, 2, 3 are apportioned to the World-Soul itself, in its intellectual or spiritual aspect, and signify its abiding in (1), its proceeding from (2), and its returning to itself (3); this with regard to primary natures. But in addition, intermediate subtle natures or souls are “providentially” ordered in their evolution and involution, by the World-Soul; they proceed according to the power of the fourth term (4 or 2²), “which possesses generative powers,” and return according to that of the fifth (9 or 3²), “which reduces them to one.” Finally also solid or gross natures are also “providentially” ordered in their procession according to 8 (2³), and in their conversion according to 27 (3³). 3 p. 174 From all of which we get the following scheme of circular progression and conversion of the soul, the various main stages through which it passes: With this compare the “Chaldæan Oracle” (ap. Psellus, 19): “Do not soil the spirit, nor turn the plane into the solid”—μὴ πνεῦμα μολύνῃς μῦτε βαθύνῃς τὸ ἐπίπεδον (ed. Cory, Or. clii., p. 270); where the four stages correspond to the point, line, plane, and solid. It is also to be remembered that since x0 = 1, 20 = 1 and 30 = l. That these are the boundary numbers of the soul, according to Pythagoreo-Platonic tradition, is of interest, but how this can in any way be made to agree with the ordering of the soul-spaces in our treatise is a puzzle. That by adding these numbers together (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 8 + 9 + 27) we get 54, and by farther adding the numbers of the World-Soul proper (1 + 2 + 3) we get 6, and so total out the whole sum of the phases to 60, savours somewhat of “fudging,” as we used to call it at school. It is by no means convincing, for we are here combining particulars with universals as though they were of equal dignity; still the ancients frequently resort to such combinations. That, however, there is something more than learned trifling in these numbers of Plato may be seen by the brilliant study of Adam on the “nuptial number” of Plato, 1 which was based upon the properties of the p. 175 [paragraph continues] “Pythagorean triangle,” a right-angled triangle to the containing sides of which the values of 3 and 4 were given, the value of its hypothenuse being consequently 5; and 3 × 4 × 5 = 60. The numbers 3, 4, 5, together with the series 1, 2, 4, 8, and 1, 3, 9, 27, were the numerical sequences which supplied those “canons of proportion” with which the Pythagoreans and Platonists chiefly busied themselves. Still, as far as I can see, this does not throw any clear light on the ordering of the soul spaces as given in our treatise, and we are therefore tempted to connect it with the tradition of the mysterious 60’s of Cleombrotus. But what that choral dance was which ordered the subordinate cosmoi into 60’s, and whether they proceeded by stages which might correspond to 3’s and 4’s and 5’s, we have, as far as I am aware, no data on which to base an argument. It may, however, have been connected with Babylonian ideas; the 3 may have been regarded as “falling into” 4, so making 12, and this stage in its turn have been regarded as “falling into” 5, and so making 60. THE MYSTERIOUS CYLINDER It is to be noticed, however, that before the souls revolted, the Demiurge “appointed for them limits and reservations 1 in the height of Upper Nature, that they might keep the cylinder a-whirl in proper order and economy” (11). They were, then, confined to certain orderings and spaces. But what is the mysterious “cylinder” which they were to keep revolving? So far I have come across nothing that throws any p. 176 direct light on the subject. However, Proclus 1 says that Porphyry stated that among the Egyptians the letter χ, surrounded by a circle, symbolized the mundane soul. It is curious that Porphyry should have referred this idea to the Egyptians, when he must have known that Plato, to whom Porphyry looked as the corypheus of all philosophy, had treated of the significance of the symbol X (in Greek χ) in perhaps the most discussed passage of the Timæus (36B). 2 This letter symbolized the mutual relation of the axes and equators of the sphere of the “same” (the “fixed stars”) and the sphere of the “other” (the “seven planetary spheres”). Porphyry, however, may have believed that Plato, or Pythagoras, got the idea in the first place from Egypt—the common persuasion of his school. This enigma of Plato is described as follows by Jowett in his Introduction to the Timæus 3: “The universe revolves round a centre once in twenty-four hours, but the orbits of the fixed stars take a different direction from that of the planets. The outer and the inner sphere cross one another and meet again at a point opposite to that of their first contact; the first moving in a circle from left to right along the side of a parallelogram which is supposed to be inscribed in it, the second also moving in a circle along the diagonal of the same parallelogram from right to left 4; or, in p. 177 other words, the first describing the path of the equator, the second, the path of the ecliptic.” We should thus, just as the Egyptians, according to Porphyry, symbolized it, represent the conception by the figure of a circle with two diameters suggesting respectively the equator and the ecliptic. But what is the rectangular figure to which Jowett refers, but which he does not further describe? The circles are spheres; and, therefore, the rectangular figure must be a solid figure inscribed in the sphere “of the same.” If we now set the circle revolving parallel to the longer sides of the figure, this “parallelogram” will trace out a cylinder, while the seven spheres of the “other,” the “souls” of the “planets,” moving parallel to one of the diagonals of our figure, and in an opposite direction to the sphere of the “same,” will, by their mutual difference of rates of motion, cause their “bodies” (the souls surrounding the bodies) to trace out spiral orbits. All this in itself, I confess, seems very far-fetched, and I should have thrown my notes on the subject into the waste-paper basket, but for the following consideration: Basil of Cæsarea, in his Hexæmeron, or Homilies on p. 178 the Six Days of Creation, declared it “a matter of no interest to us whether the earth is a sphere or a cylinder or a disk, or concave in the middle like a fan.” 1 The cylinder-idea, then, was a favourite theory with regard to the earth-shape in the time of Basil, that is the fourth century. This cylinder-idea, however, I am inclined to think was very ancient. In the domain of Greek speculation we first meet with it in what little is known of the system of Anaximander of Miletus, the successor of Thales. Anaximander is reported to have believed that “the earth is a heavenly body, controlled by no other power, and keeping its position because it is the same distance from all things; the form of it is curved, cylindrical, like a stone column; it has two faces; one of these is the ground beneath our feet, and the other is opposite to it.” 2 And again: “That the earth is a cylinder in form, and that its depth is one-third of its breadth.” 3 Now I have never been able to persuade myself that the earliest philosophers of Greece “invented” the ideas ascribed to them. They stood on the borderland of mythology and mysticism, and, in every probability, took their ideas from ancient traditions. p. 179 [paragraph continues] Anaximander himself was in every probability indirectly, for all we know even directly, influenced by Egyptian and Chaldæan notions; indeed, who can any longer doubt in the light of the Cnossus excavations?” 1 Anaximander is thus said to have regarded the earth-cylinder as fixed, whereas in our treatise the cylinder is not the earth and is not fixed; it is, on the contrary, a celestial cylinder and in constant motion. Can it, then, possibly be that this cylinder notion was associated with some Babylonian idea, and had its source in that country par excellence of cylinders? In Babylonia, moreover, the cylinder-shape was frequently used for seals, fashioned like a small roller, so that the characters or symbols engraved on them could be impressed on soft substance, such as wax. Further, the Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations were, as we know, closely associated, and pre-eminently so in the matter of sigils and seals. In the Coptic-Gnostic works, translated from Greek originals, and indubitably mainly of Egyptian origin, the idea of “characters,” “seals,” and “sigils,” as types impressed on matter, is a commonplace. Can our cylinder, then, have some connection with the circle of animal types, or types of life, of which so much is said in our treatise? The souls of the supernal man class would then have had the task of keeping this cylinder in motion, so that thereby the various types were continually impressed on the plasms in the sphere of generation, or ever-becoming—the wheel of genesis? This may be so, for in P. S. A., 19, we read: “The air, moreover, is the engine, or machine, through which p. 180 all things are made . . . mortal from mortal things and things like these.” So also in K. K., 28, Hermes says: “And I will skillfully devise an instrument, mysterious, possessed of power of sight that cannot err . . . an instrument that binds together all that’s done.” Here again we have the same idea, all connected with the notion of Fate or Heimarmene; the instrument of Hermes is the Kārmic Wheel, by which cause and effect are linked together, and that too with a moral purpose. 1 Finally, in connection with our cylinder, we may compare the Âryan Hindu myth of the “Churning of the Ocean,” in the Viṣhṇu Purāṇa. The churning-staff or Pillar was the heaven-mountain, round which was coiled the cosmic serpent, to serve as rope for twirling it. The rope was held at either end by the Devas and Asuras, or gods and dæmons. There is also a mystic symbol in India which probably connects with a similar range of ideas. It is two superimposed triangles (⧖), with their apices touching, and round the centre a serpent is twined,—a somewhat curious resemblance to our X and cylinder-idea. And so much for this puzzling symbol. THE EAGLE, LION, DRAGON AND DOLPHIN We now pass to the four leading types of animals, connected with souls of the highest rank—namely, the eagle, lion, dragon, and dolphin (24, 25)—which it may be of interest to compare with the symbolism of some of the degrees of the Mithriac Mysteries. 2 p. 181 [paragraph continues] In one of the preliminary degrees of the rite, we are informed, some of the mystæ imitated the voices of birds, others the roaring of lions. 1 All of this was interpreted by the initiates as having reference to transmigration or metempsychosis. Thus Porphyry 2 tells us that in the Mysteries of Mithras they called the mystæ by the names of different animals, so symbolizing man’s common lower nature with that of the irrational animals. Thus, for instance, they called some of the men “lions,” and some of the women “lionesses,” some were called “ravens,” while the “fathers,” the highest grade, were called “hawks” and “eagles.” The “ravens” were the lowest grade; those of the “lion” grade were apparently previously invested with the disguises and masks of a series of animal forms before they received the lion shape. Porphyry tells us, further, that Pallas, who had, prior to Porphyry’s day, written an excellent treatise on the Mithriaca, now unfortunately lost, asserts that all this was vulgarly believed to refer to the zodiac, but that in truth it symbolized a mystery of the human soul, which is invested with animal natures of various kinds, 3 p. 182 according to the tradition of the Magi. Thus they call the sun (and therefore those corresponding to this nature) a bull, a lion, a dragon, and a hawk. It is further to be remembered that Appuleius, 1 in describing the robe with which he was invested after his initiation into the Mysteries of Isis, tells us that he was enthroned as the sun, robed in twelve sacramental stoles or garments; these garments were of linen with beautiful paintings upon them, so that from every side “you might see that I was remarkable by the animals which were painted round my vestment in various colours.” This dress, he says, was called the “Olympic Stole.” MOMUS Finally, it may perhaps be of service to make the reader a little better acquainted with Momus. Among the Greeks Momus was the personification of the spirit of fault-finding. Hesiod, in his Theogony (214), places him among the second generation of the children of Night, together with the Fates. From the Cypria 2 of Stasimus, 3 we learn that, when Zeus, in answer to Earth’s prayer to relieve her of her overpopulation of impious mankind, 4 first sent the Theban War, and on this proving insufficient, bethought him of annihilating the human race by thunderbolts (fire) and floods (water), Momus advises the Father of gods and men to marry the goddess Thetis to a mortal, so that a beautiful daughter (Aphrodite-Helen) might be born to p. 183 them, and so mankind, Greeks and Barbarians, on her account be involved in internecine strife—namely, the Trojan War. Further, the Scholiast on Il., i. 5, avers that it was Momus whom Homer meant to represent by the “will” or “counsel” of Zeus. Sophocles, moreover, wrote a Satyric drama called “Momus,” 1 and so also Achæus. 2 Both Plato 3 and Aristotle 4 refer to Momus. Callimachus, the chief librarian of the Alexandrian Library, from 260-240 B.C., in his Ætia, 5 pilloried his critic and former pupil Apollonius Rhodius as Momus. Momus, moreover, was a favourite figure with the Sophists and Rhetoricians, especially of the second century A.D. In Æl. Aristides, 6 Momus, as he could find no fault with Aphrodite herself, found fault with her shoe. 7 Lucian makes Aphrodite vow to oppose Momus tooth and nail, 8 and makes Momus find fault with even the greatest works of the gods, such as the house of Athene, the bull of Zeus, and the men of Hephæstus,—the last because the god-smith had not put windows in their breasts so that their hearts might be seen. 9 And, interestingly enough in connection with our treatise, Lucian, in one of his witty sketches, 10 makes p. 184 [paragraph continues] Momus one of the persons of the dialogue with Zeus and Hermes. Momus finds fault because Bacchus is reckoned among the gods, and is commanded by Zeus to refrain from making ridicule of Hercules and Asclepius. The popular figure of Momus was that of a feeble old man, 1—a very different representation from the grandiose Intelligence of our treatise, a true Lucifer. Some representations give his one sharp tooth, and others wings. The story runs that Zeus finally banished him from Olympus for his fault-finding. 2 The Onomastica Vaticana 3 connects Momus with Mammon; but this side-issue need not detain us. 4 THE MYSTIC GEOGRAPHY OF SACRED LANDS With regard to the symbolic figure of the Earth of §§ 46-48 of the second K. K. Extract, and the persuasion that Egypt was the heart or centre thereof, we may append two quotations on the subject from widely different standpoints. The first is from Dr Andrew D. White’s recent volumes 5: “Every great people of antiquity, as a rule, regarded its own central city or most holy place as necessarily the centre of the earth. “The Chaldeans held that their ‘holy house of the gods’ was the centre. The Egyptians sketched the world under the form of a human figure, in which Egypt was the heart, and the centre of it Thebes. For the Assyrians, it was Babylon; for the Hindus, it was Mount Meru; for the Greeks, so far as the civilized p. 185 world was concerned, Olympus or the temple of Delphi; for the modern Mohammedans, it is Mecca and its sacred stone; the Chinese, to this day, speak of their empire as the ‘middle kingdom.’ It was in accordance, then, with a simple tendency of human thought that the Jews believed the centre of the world to be Jerusalem. “The book of Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem as in the middle of the earth, and all other parts of the world as set around the holy city. Throughout the ‘ages of faith’ this was very generally accepted as a direct revelation from the Almighty regarding the earth’s form. St Jerome, the greatest authority of the early Church upon the Bible, declared, on the strength of this utterance of the prophet, that Jerusalem could be nowhere but at the earth’s centre; in the ninth century Archbishop Kabanus Maurus reiterated the same argument; in the eleventh century Hugh of St Victor gave to the doctrine another scriptural demonstration; and Pope Urban, in his great sermon at Clermont urging the Franks to the crusade, declared, ‘Jerusalem is the middle point of the earth’; in the thirteenth century an ecclesiastical writer much in vogue, the monk Cæsarius of Heisterbach, declared, ‘As the heart in the midst of the body, so is Jerusalem situated in the midst of our inhabited earth,’—‘so it was that Christ was crucified at the centre of the earth.’ Dante accepted this view of Jerusalem as a certainty, wedding it to immortal verse; and in the pious book of travels ascribed to Sir John Mandeville, so widely read in the Middle Ages, it is declared that Jerusalem is at the centre of the world, and that a spear standing erect at the Holy Sepulchre casts no shadow at the equinox. “Ezekiel’s statement thus became the standard of orthodoxy to early map-makers. The map of the world at Hereford Cathedral, the maps of Andrea Bianco, p. 186 [paragraph continues] Marino Sanuto, and a multitude of others fixed this view in men’s minds, and doubtless discouraged during many generations any scientific statements tending to unbalance this geographical centre revealed in Scripture.” So much for the righteous indignation of modern physical science; now for cryptology and mysticism. M. W. Blackden, in a recent article on “The Mysteries and the ‘Book of the Dead,’” writes as follows 1: “One other key there is . . . without which it is useless to approach The Book of the Dead with the idea of discussing any of those gems of wisdom for which old Egypt was so famous. . . . The knowledge of its existence is no recent discovery: it is simply that ancient nations such as the Egyptians, Chaldees, and Jews, had a system of symbolic geography. . . . “The Jewish and Egyptian priestly caste endeavoured to map out their lands in accordance with their symbols of spiritual things, so far as the physical features would permit. This symbolism of mountain, city, plain, desert, and river extended from the various parts and furniture of the Lodge, to use Masonic phraseology, up to the spiritual anatomy, as it were, of both macrocosm and microcosm. “Thus in the Jewish Scriptures it is not difficult to distinguish, in the prophetic battles of the nations that were to rage round about Jerusalem, the same symbolism as we have more directly expressed in a little old book called The Siege of Mansoul, the author of which was the John Bunyan of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a man who could well grasp the excellence of geographical symbolism. “I cannot, of course, here enter at length into the geographical symbols of Egypt, it would take too long; but as I have given Jerusalem as a symbol, I may say p. 187 further that Jerusalem as a symbol corresponds to the Egyptian On, or Heliopolis, and so astronomically to the centre of the world and of the universe, and in the microcosm to the spiritual Heart of Man. 1 “But there is one difference between the Hebrew and Egyptian city; for whereas the actual Jerusalem corresponds among the Hebrew prophets to that Jerusalem that now is, and is in bondage with her children, Heliopolis corresponded among the Egyptian priesthood to that city which was to come, the Heavenly City, the New Heart, that should be given to redeemed mankind.” Here then we have a thesis that deserves a volume to itself; and so I leave it to him who has a mind to undertake the labour. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes 137:1 Or rather apocalypse; see § 15: “As Hermes says when he speaks unto me.” 137:2 Cf. the Egregores of The Book of Enoch; see Charles’ Translation (Oxford; 1893), Index, under “Watchers.” 137:3 The new Manvantara following a periodical Pralaya, to use the terms of Indo-Aryan tradition. 137:4 The creation is figured in one Egyptian tradition as the bursting forth of the Creator into seven peals of laughter,—a sevenfold “Ha!” 138:1 Cf. the “florescence” of § 10. 140:1 Cf. the same idea as expressed by Basilides (ap. Hipp., Philos., vii. 27), but in reversed order, when, speaking of the consummation of the world-process, and the final ascension of the “Sonship” with all its experience gained from union with matter, he says of the remaining souls, which have not reached the dignity of the Sonship, that the Great Ignorance shall come upon them for a space. “Thus all the souls of this state of existence, whose nature is to remain immortal in this state of existence alone, remain without knowledge of anything different from or better than this state; nor shall there be any rumour or knowledge of things superior in higher states, in order that the lower souls may not suffer pain by striving after impossible objects, just as though it were fish longing to feed on the mountains with sheep, for such a desire would end in their destruction. All things are indestructible if they remain in their proper condition, but subject to destruction if they desire to overleap and transgress their natural limits” (F. F. F., p. 270). 141:1 Cf. Cyril, C. Jul., i. 35; Frag. xvi. 141:2 Cf. §§ 29 and 37. 143:1 Cf. Hermes-Prayer, iii. 3. 143:2 This is of special interest as showing how the Egyptian tradition, in this pre-eminent above all others, did not limit the manifestation to the male sex alone. 144:1 Cf. C. H., xviii. 8 ff. 145:1 The “spirituous” or “aery” body, or vehicle, is composed of the sub-elements, but in it is a predominance of the sub-element “air,” just as in the physical there is a predominance of “earth.”—Philoponus, Proœm. in Aristot. de Anima; see my Orpheus (London, 1896), “The Subtle Body,” pp. 276-281. Cf. also S. I. H., 15, 20. 146:1 Compare this with the prāṇa’s of Indian theosophy; see C. H., x. (xi.) 13, Comment. 148:1 Cf. Diog. Laert., Proœm., i.: “The Egyptians say that Hephæstus (Ptah) was the son of Neilus (the Nile), and that he was the originator of philosophy, of that philosophy whose leaders are priests and prophets”—that is to say, a mystic philosophy of revelation. 148:2 Thus Suidas (s.v. “Ptah”) says that Ptah was the Hephæstus of the Memphite priesthood, and tells us that there was a proverbial saying current among them: “Ptah hath spoken unto thee.” This reminds us of our text: “As Hermes says when he speaks unto me.” 148:3 The type of Isis as utterer of “sacred sermons,” describing herself as daughter or disciple of Hermes, is old, and goes back demonstrably to Ptolemaic times. R. 136, n. 4; 137, n. 1. 149:1 ὁπότ᾽ ἐμὲ καὶ τῷ τελείῳ μέλανι ἐτίμησεν. This has hitherto been always supposed by the philological mind simply to refer to the mysteries of ink or writing, and that too without any humorous intent, but in all portentous solemnity. We must imagine, then, presumably, that it refers to the schooldays of Isis, when she was first taught the Egyptian equivalents for pothooks and hangers. This absurdity is repeated even by Meineke. 150:1 The more correct title of this work should be “Gnostic Jottings (or Notes) according to the True Philosophy,” as Clement states himself and as has been well remarked by Hort in his Ante-Nicene Fathers, p. 87 (London, 1895). 150:2 Op. cit., v. 11. Sopater (Dist. Quæst., p. 123, ed. Walz) speaks of these as “figures” (σχήματα), the same expression which Proclus (In Plat. Rep., p. 380) employs in speaking of the appearances which the Gods assume in their manifestations; Plato (Phædr., p. 250) calls them “blessed apparitions,” or beatific visions” (εὐδαίμονα φάσματα); the author of the Epinomis (p. 986) describes them as “what is most beautiful to see in the world”; these are the “mystic sights” or “wonders” (μυστικὰ θεάματα) of Dion Chrysostom (Orat., xii., p. 387, ed. Reiske); the “holy appearances” (ἅγια φαντάσματα) and “sacred shows” (ἱερὰ δεικνύμενα) of Plutarch (Wyttenbach, Fragm., vi. 1, t. v., p. 722, and De Profect. Virtut. Sent., p. 81, ed. Reiske); the “ineffable apparitions” (ἄρρητα φάσματα) of Aristides (Orat., xix. p. 416, ed. Dindorf); the “divine apparitions” (θεῖα φάσματα) of Himerius (Eclog., xxxii., p. 304, ed. Wernsdorf),—those sublime sights the memory of which was said to accompany the souls of the righteous into the after-life, and when they returned to birth. Cf. Lenormant (F.) on “The Eleusinian Mysteries” in The Contemporary Review (Sept. 1880), p. 416, who, however, thinks that these famous philosophers and writers bankrupted their adjectives merely for the mechanical figures and stage-devices of the lower degrees. See my “Notes on the Eleusinian Mysteries” in The Theosophical Review (April, May, June, 1898), vol. xxii., p. 156. 151:1 De Is. et Os., xxi. 151:2 Berl phil. Wochenschr. (1896), p. 1528; R. 137, n. 3. 151:3 R. 133, n. 2. 151:4 προτογόνῳ—cf. the προγενεστέρου πάντων above. 151:5 Epeius, ap. Eusebius, Præp. Ev., i. 10, p. 41 D. 151:6 Ap. Euseb., Præp., iii. 11, 45, p. 115. 152:1 Cf. the epithet “utterly hidden” found in the “Words (Logoi) of Ammon,” referred to by Justin Martyr, Cohort., xxxviii., and the note thereon in “Fragments from the Fathers.” 152:2 Typified by the dark-coloured body. 152:3 ζωοποιός—typified, presumably, by the girdle (the symbol of the woman) and the staff (the symbol of the man). 152:4 Chron., xl. (ed. Dind., i. 72). 153:1 Varro, De Gente Pop. Rom., ap. Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xviii. 3, 8; R. 139, n. 3. 154:1 It is said that with regard to ancient archaic texts which are still extant, modern Egyptology is able to translate them with greater accuracy than the priests of Manetho’s day; but this one may be allowed to question, unless the ancient texts are capable solely of a physical interpretation. 154:2 The Hermes, presumably, who was fabled to be the son of the Nile, not the physical Nile, but the Heaven Ocean, the Great Green, the Soul of Cosmos, and whom, we are told, the Egyptians would never speak of publicly, but, presumably, only within the circles of initiation. This Nile may be in one sense the Flood that hid the Books of Hermes in its depths or zones; but equally so the son of Nile may be the first Hermes after the Flood. 155:1 Wessley, Denkschr. d. k. Akad. (1893), p. 37, l. 500. 155:2 So R., though this is a meaning to which the lexicons give no support; the verb generally meaning “to defer” or “assent to.” 156:1 Compare also the mystery ritual in The Acts of John: “I am thy God, not that of the betrayer” (F. F. F., p. 434). 156:2 As the Gnostic Marcus would have called it. 156:3 On this ἱερός γάμος or γάμος πνευματικός, see Lobeck (C. A.), Aglaophamus (Königsberg, 1829), 608, 649, 651. 157:1 That is, the Agathodaimon. 157:2 That is, the “Birth of Horus.” Hippolytus, Philos., v. 8 (ed. Dunk, and Schneid, pp. 164, 166, ll. 86-94). see “Myth of Man in the Mysteries,” § 28. The last clause is the gloss of the later Christian over-writer. 158:1 The text is to be found in James (M. R.), Apocrypha Anecdota, ii. (Cambridge, 1897), in Texts and Studies; F. F. F., pp. 432, 433. 158:2 De Is. et Os., xxxiii. 158:3 Cf. this with K. K., 47, where Egypt is said to occupy the position of the heart of the earth. 158:4 Cf. K. K., 20: “Ye brilliant stars, eyes of the gods.” 158:5 Cited by Ebers, “Die Körperteile in Altägyptischen,” Abh. d. k. bayr. Akad. (1897), p. 111, where other references are given. 159:1 Compare also the Naassene document, § 8, in the “Myth of Man” chapter of the Prolegomena, where Isis is called “the seven-robed and black-mantled goddess.” 160:1 Cf. “Isis, the Queen of Heaven, whose most ancient and distinctive title was the Virgin Mother.” Marsham Adams (F.), The Book of the Master, or the Egyptian Doctrine of the Light born of the Virgin Mother (London, 1898), p. 63. 160:2 Hær., li. 22. 160:3 And pre-eminently, therefore, for Epiphanius, the Egyptians. 161:1 That is, the Temple of Korē. This can hardly be the Temple of Persephonē, as Dindorf (iii. 729) suggests, but rather the Temple of Isis. 161:2 Cf. D. J. L., pp. 407 ff. 162:1 Though some have conjectured that the “cock” was the popular name for the Temple-watchman who called the hours. 163:1 See below, where the story is given from Plutarch’s Moralia. 163:2 Compare The Book of the Dead, lxxviii. 31, 32; Budge’s Trans. (London, 1901), ii. 255: “I shall come forth . . . into the House of Isis, the divine lady. I shall behold sacred things which are hidden, and I shall be led on to the secret and holy things, even as they have granted unto me to see the birth of the Great God. Horus hath made me to be a spiritual body through his soul, [and I see what is therein].” Compare the last sentence with C. H., i. 7, and xi. (xii.) 6, where the pupil “sees” by means of the soul of his Master. 164:1 This passage, I believe, affords us an objective point of departure for the reconsideration of C. W. Leadbeater’s statement, in his Christian Creed (London, 1898), p, 45, that “Pontius Pilate” is a pseudo-historical gloss for πόντος πιλητός, the “dense sea” of “matter,” into which the soul is plunged. See for a discussion of this hypothesis D. T. L., pp. 423 ff. In connection with this a colleague has supplied me with an exceedingly interesting note from Texts and Studies, iv. 2, Coptic Apocryphal Gospels, p. 177, Frag. 4. The Sahidic text is found in Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, vol. iii., sem. 2, pp. 381-384 (Frammenti Copti, Nota Via), by Ignazio Guidi (1887). The legend runs that the Devil taking “the form of a fisherman,” goes fishing, and is met by Jesus as He was coming down from the Mount with His disciples. The Devil announces that “he who catcheth fish here, he is the Master. It is not a wonder to catch fish in the waters, the wonder is in this desert, to catch fish therein.” They then have a trial of skill, but the MS. unfortunately breaks off before the result is told. It is in this Fragment that the following remarkable sentence occurs: “Now as Pilate was saying these things before the authorities of Tiberius, the king, Herod, could not refrain from setting Pilate at naught, saying, ‘Thou art a Galilæan foreign Egyptian Pontus.’” The literal translation from the Coptic runs: “Thou art a Pontus Galilæan foreign Egyptian.” 165:1 Compare, for instance, Kaṭhopaniṣhad, Sec. ii., Pt. ii., iv. 11, 12: “The Man, of the size of a thumb, resides in the midst, within in the self, of the past and the future the lord; from him a man hath no desire to hide. This verily is That. “The Man, of the size of a thumb, like flame free from smoke, of past and of future the lord, the same is to-day, to-morrow the same will he be. This verily is That.”—Mead and Chaṭṭopādhyāya’s Trans. (London, 1896), i. 68, 69. Here “to-day” and “to-morrow” are said by some to refer to different incarnations; the “Man” (puruṣha) being the potential Self, destined finally to become, or grow into the stature of, the Great Self (Maha-puruṣha). 165:2 See the article, “Theosophic Light on Bible Shadows,” in The Theosophical Review (Nov. 1904), xxxv. 230, 231. 165:3 The minute image of a person reflected in the pupil of the eye of another may to some extent account for the popular belief underlying this identification. 166:1 The same idea which we found above in connection with Ammon. 166:2 To go “a-whoring” after strange gods and strange doctrines was the graphic figure invariably employed by Hebrew orthodoxy; “to commit fornication” not unfrequently echoes the same idea in the New Testament. 167:1 For the latest study on the subject, see Monseur (E.), “L’Âme Pupilline,” Rev. de l’Hist. des Relig. (Jan. and Feb. 1905), who discusses the significance in primitive religion of the reflected image to be seen in the pupil of the eye. This “little man” of the eye was taken to be its soul, and to control all its functions. 167:2 Cf., for the idea in the mind of the ancients, Tim. 45 B: “So much of the fire as would not burn, but gave a gentle light, they formed into a substance akin to the light of every-day life; and the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye, and especially the centre part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature, and allowed to pass only this pure element.” 169:1 De Defectu Oraculorum, xxi., xxii. (42lA-422C), ed. G. N. Bernardakis (Leipzig, 1891), iii. 97-101. See my paper, “Plutarch’s Yogī,” in The Theosophical Review (Dec. 1891), ix. 295-297. 170:1 In this referring to the passage in the Timæus, (55 C D), which runs: “Now, he who, duly reflecting on all this, enquires whether the worlds are to be regarded as indefinite or definite in number, will be of opinion that the notion of their indefiniteness is characteristic of a sadly indefinite and ignorant mind. He, however, who raises the question whether they are to be truly regarded as one or five, takes up a more reasonable position” (Jowett’s Trans., 3rd ed., iii. 475, 476). 171:1 Cf. S. I. H., 3: “Now as I chance myself to be as though initiate into the nature that transcendeth death, and that my feet have crossed the Plain of Truth”; and K. K., 22: “The Monarch came, and sitting on the Throne of Truth made answer to their prayers.” The locus classicus is, of course, Plato, Phædrus, 248 B. 171:2 Cf. K. K., 37: “’Tis they who, taught by Hermes that the things below have been disposed by God to be in sympathy with things above, established on the earth the sacred rites o’er which the mysteries in heaven preside.” 172:1 Our difficulty, however, is that Plutarch, in the words of one of his characters, rejects the idea of this numbering being in any way Egyptian, and ascribes it to a certain Petron of Himera in Sicily,—thereby suggesting a probable Pythagorean connection. 173:1 See the section, “Some Outlines of Æonology,” F. F. F., pp. 311-335. 173:2 See my Orpheus (London, 1896), pp. 255-262. 173:3 Cf. Taylor (T.), “Introd. to Timæus,” Works of Plato (London, 1804), p. 442. 174:1 Rep., viii. 545C-547A. See Adam (J.), The Nuptial Number of Plato: Its Solution and Significance (London, 1891). 175:1 Which may have been regarded as the prototypes of the soul-spaces. 176:1 Comment. in Plat. Tim., 216C; ed. C. E. C. Schneider (Vratislaviæ, 1847), p. 250. 176:2 A passage which Proclus, op. cit., 213A (ed. Sch., p. 152) further explains by means of the “harmonic canon” or ruler. 176:3 Jowett (B.), Dialogues of Plato (3rd ed., Oxford, 1892), iii. 403. 176:4 Cf. text 36C: “The motion of the same he carried round by the side to the right, and the motion of the diverse diagonally to the left,”—that is the side of the rectangular figure supposed to be inscribed in the circle of the “same,” and diagonally, across the rectangular figure from corner to corner; and 38D, 39A: “Now, when all the stars which were necessary to the creation of time [i.e. the spheres of the sun, moon, and five planets] had attained a motion suitable to them, and had become living creatures, having bodies fastened by vital chains, and learned their appointed task, moving in the motion of the diverse, which is diagonal, and passes through, and is governed by the motion of the same, they revolved, some in a larger and some in a lesser orbit. . . . The motion of the same made them turn all in a spiral.” With these instruments of “time,” surrounded by the sphere of the same, compare the idea of time flowing down on the worlds, from the Æon, in the story of Cleombrotus. 178:1 So quoted in Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (New York, 1898), i. 92. Dr White, unfortunately, does not give the exact reference. The “fan” is, of course, the winnowing fan, a broad basket into which the corn mixed with chaff was received after threshing, and was then thrown up into the wind, so as to disperse the chaff and leave the grain. 178:2 Alexander of Aphrodisias, Comment. on Aristotle in Meteor., 91r (vol. i., 268 I d); Diels, Doxographi Græci (Berlin, 1879), p. 478. Cf. Aëtius, De Placitis Reliquiæ, iii. 10 (Diels, 579). 178:3 Plutarch, Strom., 2 (Diels, 579). See Fairbanks (A.), The First Philosophers of Greece (London, 1898), pp. 13, 14. 179:1 Delitzsch also, in his Babel und Bibel, states that the great debt of early Greece to Assyria will be made clear in a forthcoming work of German scholarship. 180:1 I have also got a stray reference, “κύλινδρος, Plut., 2, 682 C, Xylander’s pages,” but I have not been able to verify this. 180:2 See Cumont (F.), Textes et Monuments figurés relat. aux Mystères de Mithra (Bruxelles, 1899), i. 315. 181:1 Ps. Augustine, Quæstt. Vet. et Nov. Test. (Migne, P. L., tom, xxxiv. col. 2214 f.). 181:2 De Abstinentia, iv. 16 (ed. Nauck, p. 253). 181:3 Cf. Clement of Alexandria on the Basilidian theory of “appendages,” remembering that the School of Basilides was strongly tinctured with Egyptian ideas. “The Basilidians are accustomed to give the name of appendages (or accretions) to the passions. These essences, they say, have a certain substantial existence, and are attached to the rational soul, owing to a certain turmoil and primitive confusion. On to this nucleus other bastard and alien natures of the essence grow, such as those of the wolf, ape, lion, goat, etc. . . . And not only do human souls thus intimately associate themselves with the impulses and impressions of irrational animals, but they even initiate the movements and beauties of plants, because they likewise bear the characteristics of plants appended to them. Nay, there are also certain characteristics [of minerals] shown by habits, such as the hardness of adamant” (F. F. F., p. 276). 182:1 Metamorphoses, Book xi. 182:2 Which Pindar and Herodotus ascribed to Homer himself. 182:3 See Frag. I. from the Scholion on Hom., Il., i. 5 ff. 182:4 See K. K., 34. 183:1 Frag. 369-374B (ed. Dind.); the context of which some believe to be found in Lucian’s Hermotimus, 20. 183:2 Frag. 29, from the Scholion on Aristophanes, Pax, 357. 183:3 Rep., vi. 487A: “Nor would even Momus find fault with this.” 183:4 De Partt. Animal., iii. 2. 183:5 And also at the end of his Hymn to Apollo, ii. 112; also Epigram. Frag., 70. 183:6 Or., 49; ed. Jebb, p. 497. 183:7 Cf. Julian, Ep. ad Dionys. 183:8 Dial. Deor., xx. 2. 183:9 Hermot., xx.; cf. Nig., xxxii.; Dial. Deor., ix.; Ver. Hist., ii. 3; Bab. Fab., lix.; and Jup. Trag., xxii. 183:10 Deor. Consil, iv. 184:1 Philostratus, Ep. 21. 184:2 For the above and other references, see Trümpel’s art. “Momus,” in Roscher’s Lexicon. 184:3 Lug., 194, 59. 184:4 See Nestle’s art. “Mammon,” in Cheyne’s Encyclopædia Biblica. 184:5 Op. supra cit., i. 98, 99. 186:1 The Theosophical Review (July, 1902), vol. xxx. pp. 406, 407. 187:1 “There is an old map of the world in the British Museum which demonstrates both these significations. See also Mappa Mundi, ‘Ebsdorf,’ 1284, and that in Hereford Cathedral made by Richard of Haldingham, one of the Prebends, 1290-1310.”
I THANK THE ANKH THE ANK I THANK
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSMUTED INTO NUMBER IS ONE OF THE MAIN CONDUITS THROUGH WHICH APPEAR CLEARER UNDERSTANDING OF THOSE REFRACTED PATTERNS APPARENTLY RANDOM DESCRIBING ENERGIES WHICH INTERMINGLED WITHIN THE GREATER HERE AND NOW OF REALITY ARE CONSIDERED THE LIVING EXPERIENCE REVELATORY OF THE CREATORS CONSCIOUS ETERNAL DIVINE THOUGHT
EARTH HEART THERA TERAH EARTH HEAT R R HEAT HEART HEART HEAT R R HEAT EARTH THE GROUND GOES ROUND GOES ROUND GOES THE GROUND
....
THE LIGHT IS RISING RISING IS THE LIGHT
THIS IS THE SCENE OF THE SCENE UNSEEN THE UNSEEN SEEN OF THE SCENE UNSEEN THIS IS THE SCENE
THE FAR YONDER SCRIBE AND OFT TIMES SHADOWED SUBSTANCES WATCHED IN FINE AMAZE THE ZED ALIZ ZED IN SWIFT REPEAT SCATTER STAR DUST AMONGST THE LETTERS OF THEIR PROGRESS
THE LIGHT IS RISING NOW RISING IS THE LIGHT
MATHEMATICS A LANGUAGE OF LETTERS AND NUMBERS
MATHEMATICS A LANGUAGE OF LETTER AND NUMBER
All about the planets in our Solar System. The nine planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the sun): Mercury,Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, ... www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets Our solar system consists of the sun, eight planets, moons, dwarf planets, an asteroid belt, comets, meteors, and others. The sun is the center of our solar system; the planets, their moons, the asteroids, comets, and other rocks and gas all orbit the sun. The nine planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the sun): Mercury,Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet). A belt of asteroids (minor planets made of rock and metal) lies between Mars and Jupiter. These objects all orbit the sun in roughly circular orbits that lie in the same plane, the ecliptic (Pluto is an exception; it has an elliptical orbit tilted over 17° from the ecliptic).
THE TIME IS COMING AND NOW IS
IN SEARCH OF EXTRA TERRESTRIALS Unsolved UFO sightings... strange secrets of the moon... new evidence that alien astronauts are exploring the earth Alan Landsburg 1976 Page 79 " The words of J. B. S. Haldane came back to haunt me. He once wrote, "Now my suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming."
I THAT AM THAT I THAT AM
THE LIGHT IS RISING NOW RISING IS THE LIGHT
I ME
LOOK AT THE 5FIVE5S LOOK AT THE 5FIVE5S LOOK AT THE 5FIVE5S THE 5FIVE5S THE 5FIVE5S
LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S THE 5S THE 5S
LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S THE 5S THE 5S
DAILY MAIL Thursday, February 7,2008 By Laura Clark Education Correspondent "I think therefore I'm five" PHILOSOPHY CLASSES FOR YOUNGSTERS
NUMBER 9 THE SEARCH FOR THE SIGMA CODE Cecil Balmond 1998 Page 32 5
THE BALANCING ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE NINE EIGHT SEVEN SIX
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
THIS IS THE SCENE OF THE SCENE UNSEEN THE UNSEEN SEEN OF THE SCENE UNSEEN THIS IS THE SCENE
LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S THE 5S THE 5S
LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S LOOK AT THE 5S THE 5S THE 5S
O NAMUH BELOVED CHILDREN OF THE RAINBOW LIGHT BLESSED DREAMER OF DREAMS AWAKEN THE ETERNAL MOMENT BIRTHS ITS FUTURE
Mandala NV: The Meaning of the hindu word OM www.mandalanv.com/Meaning_of_om.htm OM This syllable is the Highest. Whosoever knows this syllable obtains all that he desires” – Katha Upanishad I, ii, 15-17 • OM is the main symbol of Hinduism ... OM This syllable is the Highest. Whosoever knows this syllable obtains all that he desires” – Katha Upanishad I, ii, 15-17 • OM is the main symbol of Hinduism - For the Hindus and Buddhists, OM is the primordial sound, the first breath of creation, the vibration of existence. Most religions indicate that creation began with sound – “ In the beginning was the word ….” • OM is uttered at the beginning and finale of all proceedings • OM is a symbol and guide to meditation connecting Man, God and the Universe • OM gives Vitality. When spoken aloud, it is physically invigorating • OM is a Life Giving Force • OM is a Sacred Syllable of all Hindu Rites • Represents the English equivalent of Trinity ( a u m ) • Other meanings of OM - Light - Knowledge - Shakti (Power and Strength) • Aum (OM) is the sound of the infinite. • The 3 portions of AUM (OM) relate to the states of waking, dream and deep sleep • All the words produced by the human vocal organ can be represented by AUM. A is produced by the throat, U & M by the lips. • In the Vedas, AUM is the sound of the Sun, the sound of Light. It is the sound of assent (affirmation) and ascent (it has an upward movement and uplifts the soul, as the sound of the divine eagle or falcon) • The word OM is OMNIPOTENT, the Universal God. OM is extolled in the Upanishads as the best and most effective symbol of God. It contains 3 sacred sounds A, U and M where the sound of OM rings into the silence and wakes one in communion with God • Although OM symbolizes the most profound concepts of Hindu belief, it is in use daily. The Hindus begin their day or any work or journey by uttering OM. The sacred symbol is often found at the head of letters, at the beginning of examination papers and so on. The OM symbol is enshrined in every Hindu temple premise or in some form or another on family shrines • A newly born child is ushered into the world with this holy sign. After birth, the child is ritually cleansed and the sacred syllable OM is written on its tongue with honey. • “ OM is the one eternal syllable of which all that exists is but the development. The past, the present, and the future are all included in this one sound, and all that exists beyond the three forms of time is also implies in it” Mandukya Upanishad • OM is not a word but rather an intonation, which, like music transcends the barriers of age, race, culture and even species. If repeated with the correct intonation, it can resonate throughout the body so that the sound penetrates to the center of one's being, the atman of the soul. • While meditating, when we chant OM , we create within ourselves a vibration that attuned sympathy with the cosmic vibration and we start thinking universally. • Dr. Joseph Campbell in his book “Power of Myth” says the sound “ OM ” comes without the movement of lips and actually originates within the “self”. Next time, when we say “ OM ” notice that the lips never close while making the noise. • The sound of “ OM ” is divine as it comes from within. During OM recitation, the mind is also at a standstill. Try to think while reciting “ OM ”. If you do there will be no sound.
• Aum (OM) is the sound of the infinite. • The 3 portions of AUM (OM) relate to the states of waking, dream and deep sleep • All the words produced by the human vocal organ can be represented by AUM. A is produced by the throat, U & M by the lips. • In the Vedas, AUM is the sound of the Sun, the sound of Light. It is the sound of assent (affirmation) and ascent (it has an upward movement and uplifts the soul, as the sound of the divine eagle or falcon) • The word OM is OMNIPOTENT, the Universal God. OM is extolled in the Upanishads as the best and most effective symbol of God. It contains 3 sacred sounds A, U and M where the sound of OM rings into the silence and wakes one in communion with God
Om - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om [edit]. Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva within an OM ... Hindu Mythology portal ... Shunyākāsha, meaning literally "no sky", is more than ... From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Om (written universally as ॐ; in Devanagari as ओं oṃ [õː], औं auṃ [ə̃ũ], or 'ओ३म्' om [õːm]) is a mystical Sanskrit sound of Hindu origin (India), sacred and important in various Dharmic religions such as Sanātana Dharma or Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. The syllable is also referred to as omkara (ओंकार oṃkāra) or aumkara (औंकार auṃkāra), literally "om syllable", and in Sanskrit it is sometimes referred to as praṇava, literally "that which is sounded out loudly". Om is also written ओ३म् (ō̄m [õːːm]), where ३ is pluta ("three times as long"), indicating a length of three morae (that is, the time it takes to say three syllables)—an overlong nasalized close-mid back rounded vowel—though there are other enunciations adhered to in received traditions. It is placed at the beginning of most Hindu texts as a sacred incantation to be intoned at the beginning and end of a reading of the Vedas or prior to any prayer or mantra. It is used at the end of the invocation to the god being sacrificed to (anuvakya) as an invitation to and for that God to partake of the sacrifice. ओ३म् - O3m - Aum - OM, the highest and most proper name of the God. Contents 2.3 Scientific Approach 3 In Jainism Name, phonology and written representation [edit] The Sanskrit name for the syllable is praṇava, from a root nu "to shout, sound", verbal pra-nu- being attested as "to make a humming or droning sound" in the Brahmanas, and taking the specific meaning of "to utter the syllable om" in the Chāndogya Upanishad and the Shrauta Sutras. More rarely used terms are akṣara (lit. symbol, character) or ekākṣara (lit. one symbol, character), and in later times omkāra becomes prevalent. Phonemically, the syllable is /aum/, which is regularly monophthongized to [õː] in Sanskrit phonology. It is sometimes also written with pluti, as o3m (ओ३म्), notably by Arya Samaj. When occurring within a Sanskrit utterance, the syllable is subject to the normal rules of sandhi in Sanskrit grammar, however with the additional peculiarity that after preceding a or ā, the au of aum does not form vriddhi (au) but guna (o) per Pāṇini 6.1.95 (i.e. 'om'). In Hinduism [edit] Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva within an OM Hinduism Om.svg Hindu· The syllable "om" is first described as all-encompassing mystical entity in the Upanishads. Today, in all Hindu art and all over India and Nepal, 'om' can be seen virtually everywhere, a common sign for Hinduism and its philosophy and theology. Hindus believe that as creation began, the divine, all-encompassing consciousness took the form of the first and original vibration manifesting as sound "OM".[1] Before creation began it was "Shunyākāsha", the emptiness or the void. Shunyākāsha, meaning literally "no sky", is more than nothingness, because everything then existed in a latent state of potentiality. The vibration of "OM" symbolizes the manifestation of God in form ("sāguna brahman"). "OM" is the reflection of the absolute reality, it is said to be "Adi Anadi", without beginning or the end and embracing all that exists.[1] The mantra "OM" is the name of God, the vibration of the Supreme. When taken letter by letter, A-U-M represents the divine energy (Shakti) united in its three elementary aspects: Bhrahma Shakti (creation), Vishnu Shakti (preservation) and Shiva Shakti (liberation, and/or destruction).[1] Early Vedantic literature [edit] Further information: Mandukya Upanishad The syllable is mentioned in all the Upanishads, specially elaborated upon in the Taittiriya, Chāndogya and Māndukya Upanishad set forth as the object of profound religious meditation, the highest spiritual efficacy being attributed not only to the whole word but also to the three sounds a (a-kāra), u (u-kāra), m (ma-kāra), of which it consists. A-kara means form or shape like earth, trees, or any other object. U-kāra means formless or shapeless like water, air or fire. Ma-kāra means neither shape nor shapeless (but still exists) like the dark energy content of the Universe. When we combine all three syllables we get AUM which is a combination of A-kāra, U-kāra, and Ma-kāra.[2] The Katha Upanishad states: The Bhagvad Gi:tā (17.23) has: Puranic Hinduism [edit] The Om Parvat in Pithoragarh district. Its snow deposit is said to resemble the "om" symbol.
According to Hindu philosophy (see Māndukya Upanishad), the letter A represents creation, when all existence issued forth from Brahma's golden nucleus; the letter U refers to Vishnu the God of the middle who preserves this world by balancing Brahma on a lotus above himself, and the letter M symbolizes the final part of the cycle of existence, when Brahma falls asleep and Shiva has to breathe in so that all existing things have to disintegrate and are reduced to their essence to him. More broadly, om is said to be the primordial sound that was present at the creation of the universe. It is said to be the original sound that contains all other sounds, all words, all languages and all mantras. In Hinduism [edit] Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva within an OM Hinduism Om.svg Hindu· Deities[show] The Māndukya Upanishad is entirely devoted to the explanation of the syllable. The syllable consists of three phonemes, a (Vaishvanara),[5] u (Hiranyagarbha), and m (Ishvara), which symbolize the beginning, duration, and dissolution of the universe and the associated gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, respectively.[6] Advaita [edit] Aum symbol on a temple elephant's forehead Scientific Approach [edit] Om(Aum) is also referred to as the basis of all sounds.[7] The first letter, A, is the root sound, the key, pronounced without touching any part of the tongue or palate; M represents the last sound in the series, being produced by the lips, and the U rolls from the very root to the end of the sounding board of the mouth. And hence Om represents the whole phenomenon of producing sound.[7] In Jainism [edit] Depiction of om in Jain script In Buddhism [edit] Buddhists place om at the beginning of their Vidya-Sadaksari ("om mani padme hum") as well in as most other mantras and dharanis. Moreover, as a seed syllable (a bija mantra) aum is considered holy in Esoteric Buddhism. In Buddhist texts of East Asian provenance, om is often written as the Chinese character 唵 (pinyin ǎn) or 嗡 (pinyin wēng). A key distinction should be made here between Buddhism as it arose in Nepal, and Buddhism after the migration of the teachings to Tibet under the guidance of Padmasambhava. In its original form, Buddhism in Nepal was characterized mainly by types of mindfulness meditation and did not involve the chanting of om or of mantras.[8] Tibetan Buddhism, with heavy Hindu influence and merger with Bon Shamanism, is now characterized by the AH[clarification needed] bija, which can be roughly translated as representing pure spirit (the fifth in the Tibetan system of elements). --> Om in Modern Literature [edit] Eben Alexander (author) III (born December, 1953 in Charlotte, North Carolina) is a neurosurgeon and the author of the best-selling Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife, in which he shares his thoughts on his near-death experience and whether science can explain that heaven really does exist. In his book Eben says " "I will occasionally use Om as the pronoun for God","OM" was the sound I remembered hearing associated with that omniscient,omnipotent,and unconditionally loving god". "Onkar" in Sikhism [edit] Main article: Ik Onkar Modern reception [edit] Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into other sections or articles. (April 2013) The Yoga teacher and Swami, Paramahansa Yogananda mentions Om/Aum numerous times in his teachings, for example on page 277 of his "Autobiography of a Yogi": "Patanjali speaks of God as the actual Cosmic Sound of Aum that is heard in meditation. Aum is the Creative Word, the whir of the Vibratory Motor, the witness of Divine Presence. Even the beginner in yoga may soon hear the wondrous sound of Aum." The name omkara is taken as a name of God in the Hindu revivalist Arya Samaj and can be translated as "I Am Existence"[citation needed]. The adherents of Arya Samaj always use the ordinary letters अ(Ah), ऊ(ooh) and म(ma) to write om. Omkāreshwar has come to be used as a given name in some parts of India.[citation needed] An obscure and possibly Catholic/Hermetic symbol called the Auspice Maria was identified by Louis Charbonneau-Lassay and René Guénon as spelling out the letters AVM and thus being equivalent to the symbol Aum.[13] The Brahmic script om-ligature has become widely recognized in western counter culture since the 1960s. As to its precise graphic form, the Vedic or Indian om is what most Westerners are used to, and the Tibetan alphabet om is less widespread in popular culture.[14] Even Tibetan handicrafts made in India tend to use the Nepali-script om for recognizability. References [edit] 1.^ a b c Paramhans Swami Maheshwarananda, The hidden power in humans, Ibera Verlag, page 15., ISBN 3-85052-197-4 The Māndukya Upanishad is entirely devoted to the explanation of the syllable. The syllable consists of three phonemes, a (Vaishvanara),[5] u (Hiranyagarbha), and m (Ishvara), which symbolize the beginning, duration, and dissolution of the universe and the associated gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, respectively.[6]
AUM ATUM AUM AUM 1234 AUM
AUM 1234 AUM AUM ATUM AUM
A TUM MUT 432 MUT A TUM MUT 432 = 9 9 = 234 TUM A TUM MUT 432 MUT A TUM
YOU ARE GOING ON A JOURNEY A VERY SPECIAL JOURNEY DO HAVE A PLEASANT JOURNEY DO
RAGE RAGE AGAINST THE PASSING OF THE LIGHT
THE JESUS MYSTERIES Page 177 "THE GOSPELS ARE ACTUALLY ANONYMOUS WORKS, IN WHICH EVERYTHING,WITHOUT EXCEPTION, IS WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS, WITH NO HEADINGS, CHAPTER OR VERSE DIVISIONS, AND PRACTICALLY NO PUNCTUATION OR SPACES BETWEEN WORDS. THEY WERE NOT WRITTEN IN THE ARAMAIC OF THE JEWS BUT IN GREEK"
THE GOD DOG ANUBIS A NUMBER IS
THE GOD DOG ANUBIS A NUMBER IS
HURRAH FOR RAH FOR RAH HURRAH.
HOLY BIBLE Scofield References JOB C 9 V 9 Page 575 "Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south."
HOLY BIBLE Scofield References JOB C 9 V 9 Page 575 WHICH MAKETH ARCTURUS ORION AND PLEIADES AND THE CHAMBERS OF THE SOUTH
THE SIRIUS MYSTERY Robert K.G.Temple 1976 Page 82 The Sacred Fifty "We must return to the treatise 'The Virgin of the World'. This treatise is quite explicit in saying that Isis and Osiris were sent to help the Earth by giving primitive mankind the arts of civilization: 'How was it, mother, then, that Earth received God's Efflux?' And Isis said: 'I may not tell the story of (this) birth; for it is not permitted to describe the origin of thy descent, O Horus (son) of mighty power, lest afterwards the way-of-birth of the immortal gods should be known unto men - except so far that God the Monarch, the universal Orderer and Architect, sent for a little while thy mighty sire Osiris, and the mightiest goddess Isis, that they might help the world, for all things needed them. "Page 73 A Fairy Tale 'I INVOKE THEE, LADY ISIS, WITH WHOM THE GOOD DAIMON DOTH UNITE, HE WHO IS LORD IN THE PERFECT BLACK.'
THE SIRIUS MYSTERY Robert K.G.Temple 1976 Page 74 "Mead quotes an Egyptian magic papyrus, this being an uncontested Egyptian document which he compares to a passage in the Trismegistic literature: 'I invoke thee, Lady Isis, with whom the Good Daimon doth unite, He who is Lord in the perfect black. '37 Page 77 "Bearing these books in mind (and I am sure they are there waiting underground like a time bomb for us), it is interesting to read this passage in 'The Virgin of the World' following shortly upon that previously quoted: Page 82 "We must note Stecchini's remarks about Delphi as follows :38
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD AND THE WORD WAS WITH GOD AND THE WORD WAS GOD THE SAME WAS IN THE BEGINNING WITH GOD ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY GOD AND WITHOUT GOD WAS NOT ANYTHING MADE THAT WAS MADE IN GOD WAS LIFE AND THE LIFE WAS THE LIGHT OF HUMANKIND AND THE LIGHT SHINETH IN THE DARKNESS AND THE DARKNESS COMPREHENDED IT NOT
I AM ALPHA AND OMEGA THE BEGINNING AND THE END THE FIRST AND THE LAST I AM THE ROOT AND THE OFFSPRING OF DAVID AND THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR AND THE SPIRIT AND THE BRIDE SAY COME AND LET THEM THAT HEARETH SAY COME AND LET THEM THAT IS ATHIRST COME AND WHOSOEVER WILL LET THEM TAKE THE WATER OF LIFE FREELY
THE CHRISTOS THE CHRIST
CHRISTOS SEE HERE IS THE CHRISTOS
OSIRIS
THE HERMETICA THE LOST WISDOM OF THE PHARAOHS Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy To the Memory of Giordano Bruno 1548 - 1600 Mundus Nihil Pulcherrimum The World is a Beautiful Nothing Page 23 "Although we have used the familiar term 'God' in the explanatory notes which accompany each chapter, we have avoided this term in the text itself. Instead we have used 'Atum - one of the ancient Egyptian names for the Supreme One God."
Page 45 The Being of Atum "Atum is Primal Mind." Page 45 The Being of Atum Give me your whole awareness, and concentrate your thoughts, for Knowledge of Atum's Being requires deep insight, which comes only as a gift of grace. It is like a plunging torrent of water whose swiftness outstrips any man who strives to follow it, leaving behind not only the hearer, but even the teacher himself. To conceive of Atum is difficult. To define him is impossible. The imperfect and impermanent cannot easily apprehend the eternally perfected. Atum is whole and conconstant. In himself he is motionless, yet he is self-moving. He is immaculate, incorruptible and ever-lasting. He is the Supreme Absolute Reality. He is filled with ideas which are imperceptible to the senses, and with all-embracing Knowledge. Atum is Primal Mind. Page 46 He is too great to be called by the name 'Atum'. He is hidden, yet obvious everywhere. His Being is known through thought alone, yet we see his form before our eyes. He is bodiless, yet embodied in everything. There is nothing which he is not. He has no name, because all names are his name. He is the unity in all things, so we must know him by all names and call everything 'Atum'. He is the root and source of all. Everything has a source, except this source itself, which springs from nothing. Atum is complete like the number one, which remains itself whether multiplied or divided, and yet generates all numbers. Atum is the Whole which contains everything. He is One, not two. He is All, not many. The All is not many separate things, but the Oneness that subsumes the parts. The All and the One are identical. You think that things are many when you view them as separate, but when you see they all hang on the One, /Page 47/ and flow from the One, you will realise they are unitedlinked together, and connected by a chain of Being from the highest to the lowest, all subject to the will of Atum. The Cosmos is one as the sun is one, the moon is one and the Earth is one. Do you think there are many Gods? That's absurd - God is one. Atum alone is the Creator of all that is immortal, and all that is mutable. If that seems incredible, just consider yourself. You see, speak, hear, touch, taste, walk, think and breathe. It is not a different you who does these various things, but one being who does them all. To understand how Atum makes all things, consider a farmer sowing seeds;
here wheat - there barley, Just as the same man plants all these seeds, so Atum sows immortality in heaven and change on Earth. Throughout the Cosmos he disseminates Life and movementthe two great elements that comprise Atum and his creation, and so everything that is. Page 48 Atum is called 'Father' because he begets all things, and, from his example, the wise hold begetting children the most sacred pursuit of human life. Atum works with Nature, within the laws of Necessity, causing extinction and renewal, constantly creating creation to display his wisdom. Yet, the things that the eye can see are mere phantoms and illusions. Only those things invisible to the eye are real. Above all are the ideas of Beauty and Goodness. Just as the eye cannot see the Being of Atum, so it cannot see these great ideas. They are attributes of Atum alone, and are inseparable from him. They are so perfectly without blemish that Atum himself is in love with them. There is nothing which Atum lacks, so nothing that he desires. There is nothing that Atum can lose, so nothing can cause him grief. Atum is everything. Atum makes everything, and everything is a part of Atum. Atum, therefore, makes himself. This is Atum's glory - he is all-creative, and this creating is his very Being. It is impossible for him ever to stop creatingfor Atum can never cease to be. Page 49 Atum is everywhere. Mind cannot be enclosed, because everything exists within Mind. Nothing is so quick and powerful. Just look at your own experience. Imagine yourself in any foreign land, and quick as your intention you will be there! Think of the ocean - and there you are. You have not moved as things move, but you have travelled, nevertheless. Fly up into the heavens - you won't need wings! Nothing can obstruct you - not the burning heat of the sun, or the swirling planets. Pass on to the limits of creation. Do you want to break out beyond the boundaries of the Cosmos? For your mind, even that is possible. Can you sense what power you possess? If you can do all this, then what about your Creator? Try and understand that Atum is Mind. This is how he contains the Cosmos. All things are thoughts which the Creator thinks."
FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS A QUEST FOR THE BEGINNING AND THE END Graham Hancock 1995 Chapter 32 Speaking to the Unborn Page 285 "It is understandable that a huge range of myths from all over the ancient world should describe geological catastrophes in graphic detail. Mankind survived the horror of the last Ice Age, and the most plausible source for our enduring traditions of flooding and freezing, massive volcanism and devastating earthquakes is in the tumultuous upheavals unleashed during the great meltdown of 15,000 to 8000 BC. The final retreat of the ice sheets, and the consequent 300-400 foot rise in global sea levels, took place only a few thousand years before the beginning of the historical period. It is therefore not surprising that all our early civilizations should have retained vivid memories of the vast cataclysms that had terrified their forefathers. A message in the bottle of time" 'Of all the other stupendous inventions,' Galileo once remarked, what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very distant either in time or place, speaking with those who are in the Indies, speaking to those who are not yet born, nor shall be this thousand or ten thousand years? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangements of two dozen little signs on paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of men.3 If the 'precessional message' identified by scholars like Santillana, von Dechend and Jane Sellers is indeed a deliberate attempt at communication by some lost civilization of antiquity, how come it wasn't just written down and left for us to find? Wouldn't that have been easier than encoding it in myths? Perhaps. "What one would look for, therefore, would be a universal language, the kind of language that would be comprehensible to any technologically advanced society in any epoch, even a thousand or ten thousand years into the future. Such languages are few and far between, but mathematics is one of them"
"WRITTEN IN THE ETERNAL LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS"
The FULCANELLI Phenomenon Kenneth Rayner Johnson 1980 The Praxis Page 190 Theoretical physics has become more and more occult, cheerfully breaking every previously sacrosanct law of nature and leaning towards such supernatural concepts as holes in space, negative mass and time flowing backwards ... The greatest physicists ... have been groping towards a synthesis of physics and parapsychology. - Arthur Koestler: The Roots of Coincidence, (Hutchinson, 1972.)
Aesop fables A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says, “Because if I do, I will die too.” The frog is satisfied, and they set out. But in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?” Replies the scorpion: “It’s my nature…”
Middle Eastern Mythology S. H. Hooke 1963 Middle Eastern Mythology Recent Sumerian studies 5 have shown that the conception or a divine garden and of a state when sickness and death did not exist and wild animals did not prey on one another is to be found in Sumerian mythology. The description of this earthly Paradise is contained in the Sumerian poem which Dr Kramer has called the Epic of Emmerkar: The land Dilmun is a pure place, the land Dilmun is a clean place The land Dilmun is a clean place, the land Dilmun is a bright place In Dilmun the raven uttered no cry, The kite uttered not the cry of the kite, The lion killed not, The wolf snatched not the lamb, Unknown was the kid-killing dog, Unknown was the grain-devouring boar ... The sick·eyed says not '1 am sick-eyed', The sick-headed says not '1 am sick-headed', Its (Dilmun's) old woman says not 'I am an old woman', Its old man says not 'I am an old man', Unbathed is the maid, no sparkling water is poured in the city, Who crosses the river (of death?) utters no ... The 'wailing priests walk not about him, The singer utters no wail, By the side of the city he utters no lament. Later, in the Semitic editing of the Sumerian myths, Dilmun became the dwelling of the immortals, where Utnapishtim and his wife were allowed to live after the Flood (p. 49). It was apparently located at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. According to the Sumerian myth the only thing which Dilmun lacked was fresh water; the god Enki (or Ea) ordered Utu, the sun-god, to 'bring up fresh water from the earth to water the garden. Here we may have the source of the / Page 115 / mysterious 'ed of which the Yahwist speaks as coming up from the ground to water the garden. In the myth of Enki and Ninhursag it is related that the mother-goddess Ninhursag caused eight plants to grow in the garden of the gods. Enki desired to eat these plants and sent his messenger Isimud to fetch them. Enki ate them one by one, and Ninhursag in her rage pronounced the curse of death upon Enki. As the result of the curse eight of Enki's bodily organs were attacked by disease and he was at the point of death. The great gods were in dismay and Enlil was powerless to help. Ninhursag was induced to return and deal with the situation. She created eight goddesses of healing who proceeded to heal each of the diseased parts of Enki's body. One of these parts was the god's rib, and the goddess who was created to deal with the rib was named Ninti, which means 'the lady of the rib'. But the Sumerian word ti has the double meaning of 'life' as well as ' rib', so that Ninti could also mean 'the lady of life'. We have seen that in the Hebrew myth the woman who was fashioned from Adam's rib was named by him Hawwah, meaning 'Life'. Hence one of the most curious features of the Hebrew myth of Paradise clearly has its origin in this somewhat crude Sumerian myth. Other elements in the Yahwist's form of the Paradise myth have striking parallels in various Akkadian myths. The importance of the possession of knowledge, which is always magical knowledge, is a recurring theme. We have seen that the myth of Adapa and the Gilgamesh Epic are both concerned with the search for immortality and the problem of death and the existence of disease. These and other examples which we have cited will serve to illustrate the point that the Akkadian myths were concerned with the themes which appear in the Yahwist's Paradise story.
QUO VADIS
Quo vadis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Quo vadis? is a Latin phrase meaning "Where are you going?" or "Whither goest thou?". The modern usage of the phrase refers to a legend in Christian ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quo_vadis Quo vadis? is a Latin phrase meaning "Where are you going?" or "Whither goest thou?". The modern usage of the phrase refers to a legend in Christian tradition, related in the apocryphal Acts of Peter (Vercelli Acts XXXV), in which Saint Peter meets Jesus as Peter is fleeing from likely crucifixion in Rome. Peter asks Jesus the question; Jesus' answer, "I am going to Rome to be crucified again" (Eo Romam iterum crucifigi), prompts Peter to gain the courage to continue his ministry and eventually become a martyr. The phrase also occurs a few times in the Vulgate translation of the Bible, notably including the occurrence in John 13:36 in which Peter also asks the question of Jesus, after the latter announces he is going to where his followers cannot come.
Quo Vadis. I fled by night and in the grey of dawn met on the lonely way a man I knew but could not name. He said “Good morning”, I the same .. rtnl.org.uk/now_and_then/html/242.html
Quo Vadis
Quo vadis is a Latin phrase meaning "Where are you going?" It is used as a proverbial phrase from the Bible (John 13:36, 16:5). ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quo_Vadis -
HOLY BIBLE Scofield References C 1 V 16 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLESPage 1148 (Part quoted) "MEN AND BRETHREN THIS SCRIPTURE MUST NEEDS HAVE BEEN FULFILLED WHICH THE HOLY GHOST BY THE MOUTH OF DAVID SPAKE"
CHEIRO'S BOOK OF NUMBERS Circa 1926 Page106 The question has been asked again and again, Is there some means of knowing when the moment has come to take the tide at the flood?
THE QUESTION HAS BEEN ASKED AGAIN AND AGAIN IS THERE SOME MEANS OF KNOWING WHEN THE MOMENT HAS COME TO TAKE THE TIDE AT THE FLOOD
YOU ARE GOING ON A JOURNEY A VERY SPECIAL JOURNEY DO HAVE A PLEASANT JOURNEY DO
KEEPER OF GENESIS A QUEST FOR THE HIDDEN LEGACY OF MANKIND Robert Bauval Graham Hancock 1996 Page 254 "...Is there in any sense an interstellar Rosetta Stone? We believe there is a common language that all technical civilizations, no matter how different, must have. That common language is science and mathematics. The laws of Nature are the same everywhere:..."
THE LURE AND ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY. A history of the secret link between magic and science 1990 Page# 31 / 32 note 1 Julius Ruska ,Tabula Smaragdini 1926 "THE EMERALD TABLE OF HERMES: " "True it is, without falsehood certain most true.That which is
Freiheit - Keeping The Dream Alive lyrics. From the Original Motion Picture ... In my fantasy I remember their faces The hopes we had were much too high ... www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/f/freiheit/keeping_the_dream_alive.html
Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm.
I SAY IS THIS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GREAT DIVIDE ? NO ITS OVER THERE I HAVE JUST BEEN OVER THERE AND THEY SAID ITS OVER HERE
Did Spacemen Colonise the Earth? Robin Collyns 1974 Page 206 "FINIS"
THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN Thomas Mann 1924 THE THUNDERBOLT Page 715 "There is our friend, there is Hans Castorp! We recognize him at a distance, by the little beard he assumed 'while sitting at the " bad" Russian table. Like all the others, he is wet through and glowing. He is running, his feet heavy with mould, the bayonet swinging in his, hand. Look! He treads on the hand of a fallen comrade; with his hobnailed boot he treads the hand deep into the slimy, branch-strewn ground. But it is he. What, singing? As one sings, unaware, staring stark ahead, yes, thus. he spends his hurrying breath, to sing half soundlessly: "And loving words I've carven He stumbles, No, he has flung himself down, a hell-hound is coming howling, a huge explosive shell, a disgusting sugar-loaf from the infernal regions. He lies with his face in the cool mire, legs. sprawled out, feet twisted, heels turned down. The product of a perverted science, laden with death, slopes earthward thirty paces in front of him and buries its nose in the ground; explodes inside there, with hideous expense of power, and raises up a fountain high as a house, of mud, fire, iron, molten metal, scattered fragments of humanity. Where it fell, two youths had lain, friends who in their need flung themselves down together - now they are scattered, commingled and gone. "Its waving branches whiispered and thus, in the tumult, in the rain, in the dusk, vanishes out of our sight. FINIS OPERIS
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