OSIRIS ISIS 13 ISIS OSIRIS

JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS

Thomas Mann 1875 - 1955

Page 967

"Here Tiy, his mother, cleared her throat, rattled her ornaments, and said, looking ahead of her into space:
"Pharaoh is to be praised when he practises statesmanship in matters of religious belief and spares the simplicity of the many..That is why I warned him not to wound the popular attachment to Usir, king of the lower regions. There is no contradiction between knowing and sparing, in this connection; and the office of teacher need not darken knowledge. Never have priests taught the multitude all they themselves know. They have told them what was. wholesome, and wisely left in the realm of the mysteries what was not beneficial. Thus knowledge and wisdom are together in the world, truth and forbearance. The mother recommends that it so remain."
"Thank you, Mama, "said Amenhotep, with a deprecating bow. "Thank you for the, contribution. It is very valuable and will for / Page / 968 / eternal ages be held in honour. But we are speaking of two different things. My Majesty speaks of the fetters which the teaching puts upon the thoughts of God; yours refers to priestly statecraft, which divides teaching and knowledge. But Pharaoh would not be arrogant, and there is no greater arrogance than such a division. No, there is no arrogance in the world greater than that of dividing the children of our Father into initiate and uninitiate and teaching double words: all-knowingly for the masses, knowingly in the inner circle. No, we must speak what we know, and witness what we have seen. Pharaoh wants to do nothing but improve the teaching, even though it be made hard for him by the teachhing. And still it has been said to me: 'Call me not Aton, for that is in need of improvement. Call me the Lord of the Aton!' But I, through keeping silent, forgot.' See now what the Father does for his beloved son! He sends him a messenger and dream-interpreter, who shows him his dreams, dreams from below and dreams from above, dreams important for the realm and for heaven; that he should awake in him what he already knows, and interpret what was already said to him. Yes, how loveth the Father his child the King who came forth out of him, that he sends down a soothsayer to him, to whom from long ages has been handed down the teaching that it profits man to press on towards the last and highest! "

 

THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM

AN ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF CERTAIN

LETTERS, WORDS, NAMES, FAIRY-TALES, FOLK-LORE AND MYTHOLOGIES

Harold Bayley 1912

CHAPTER II

Page12

THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM

"The idea that identities of name were primarily due to punning, to blunder, or to accident, must be dispelled when we find that-as in most of the examples noted by myself -the symbolic value of the animal is not expressed by a homonym or pun, but in monosyllables that apparently are the debris of some marvellously ancient, prehistoric, almost extinct parent tongue. Modern language is a mosaic in which lie embedded the chips and fossils of predecessors in comparison with whose vast antiquity Sanscrit is but a speech of yesterday. In its glacier-like progress, Language must have brought down along the ages the detritus of tongues that were spoken possibly millions of years before the art of recording by writing was discovered, but which, notwithstanding, were indelibly inscribed and -faithfully preserved in the form of mountain, river, and country names. Empires may disappear and nations be sunk into oblivion under successive waves of invasion, but place names and proper names, preserved traditionally by word of mouth, remain to some extent inviolate; and it is, I am convinced, in this direction that one must look for the hypothetical mother-tongue of the hypothetical people, known nowadays as "Aryans."
The primal roots which seem to be traceable in directions far wider than any yet reconnoitred are the Semitic EL, meaning God and Power; the Semitic UR, meaning Fire or Light; the Semitic JAH, YAH, or IAH, meaning " Thou art" or the Ever-existent; the Sanscrit DI, meaning Brilliant; and the Hindoo OM or AUM, meaning the Sun. It is also evident that P A and MA, meaning a Parent, were once widely extensive, and in addition to the foregoing I have, I believe, by the comparative method, recovered from antiquity the root ak, apparently once meaning great or mighty."

Page 17

THE PARABLE OF THE PILGRIM

" Give me my scallop shell of quiet,
M y staff of faith to walk upon,
My scrip of joy, immortal diet,
My bottle of salvation,
My gown of glory, hope's true gage;
And thus I'll take my pilgrimage."

Sir Walter Raleigh

.
THE notion that Life is a pilgrimage and Everyman a pilgrim is common to most peoples and climes, and Allegories on this subject are well-nigh universal. In 1631 one of them was written in BOHEMIA under the title of The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. Its author was John Amos Komensky (1592-1670), a leader of the sectarians known among themselves as the "Unity" or " Brethren," and to history as the "Bohemian Brethren" or the "Moravian Brothers." These long-suffering enthusiasts were obviously a manifestation of that spirit of mysticism which, either active or somnolent, is traceable from the dawn of History, and will be found noted under such epithets as Essenes, Therapeutics, Gnostics, Montanists, Paulicians, Manichees, Cathari, Vaudois, Albigeois, Patarini, Lollards, Friends of God, Spirituals, Arnoldists, Fratricelli, Anabaptists, Quakers, and many others.
The Labyrinth of"the World was condemned as heretical, and, until 1820, was included among the lists of dangerous / Page18 / and forbidden. books. COUNT LUTZOW-to whom English readers are indebted for an admirable translation-states that so congenial was its mysticism, that the many Bohemian exiles who were driven on account of their faith from their beloved country carried the Labyrinth with them, and that it was often practically their sole possession. In BOHEMIA itself, the book being prohibited, the few copies that escaped destruction passed from hand to hand secretly, and were safely hidden in the cottages of the peasants.1
The author of The Pilgrim's Progress was a persecuted Baptist tinker, and among the pathetic records of Continental Anabaptism will be found the continually expressed conviction: "We must in this world suffer, for Paul has said that all that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution. We must completely conquer the world, sin, death, and the devil, not with material swords and spears, but with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and with the shield of faith, wherewith we must quench all sharp and fiery darts, and place on our heads the helmet of salvation, with the armour of righteousness, and our feet be shod with the preparation of the Gospel. Being thus strengthened with these weapons, we shall, with Israel, get through the wilderness, oppose and overcome all our enemies." 2 In 1550 another obscure Anabaptist under sentence of death for heresy exclaimed: "It is not for the sake of party, or for conspiracy, that we suffer: we seek not to contest with any sword but that of the Spirit that is, the Word of God." 3
These pious convictions are to be seen expressed in the / Page 19 / trade mark emblems herewith, representing the sword of the Spirit and the helmet of Salvation."

Page 18 Notes

1 The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, edited. and Englished by Count Lutzow (The Temple Classics), p. 266.
2 A Martyrology of the Churches of Christ commonly called Baptists, translated from the Dutch by T. J. Van Braaght, and edited for the Hanserd
Knollys Society by E. B. Underhill, vol. i. p. 376. London, 1850

3 Ibid

 

THE LOST LANGUAGE OF SYMBOLISM

AN ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF CERTAIN

LETTERS, WORDS, NAMES, FAIRY-TALES, FOLK-LORE AND MYTHOLOGIES

Harold Bayley 1912

CHAPTER: XXII

Page 347

CONCLUSION

" Facts are only stopping-places on the way to new ideas."

Dion Clayton Calthrop

.
"Perhaps in spite of every disillusionment, when we contemplate the seemingly endless vistas of knowledge which have been opened up even within our own generation, many of us may cherish in our heart of hearts a fancy, if not a hope, that some loophole of escape may after all be discovered from the iron walls of the prison-house which threaten to close in and crush us ; that, groping about in the darkness, mankind may yet' chance to lay hands on" that golden key that opes the palace of eternity,' and so to pass from this world of shadows and sorrow to a world of untroubled light and joy."

J, G. Frazer

"The one Spirit's plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull, dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass they bear;
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light."

Shelley.

KOMENSKY attributes the recondite and supernormal kn-ow­ledge possessed by his "True Christians" to Intuition or Inspiration. Following his description of ministering angels, he says: "I saw also (and it is not beseeming to conceal this) another advantage of this holy, invisible companionship-to wit, that the angels were not only as guards, but also as teachers to the chosen. They often give them secret knowledge of divers things, and teach them the deep secret. mysteries of God. For as they ever behold the / Page 348 / countenance of the omniscient God, nothing that a godly man can wish to know can be secret to them, and with God's permission they reveal that which they know, and which it is necessary that the chosen should know. Therefore the heart of the godly often feels that which has befallen elsewhere, mourns with the mournful, and rejoices with the joyful. Therefore, also, can they, by means of dreams and other visions, or of secret inspirations, imagine in their minds that which has befallen, or befalls, or will befall. Thence comes also other increase of the gifts of God within us, deep, valuable meditations, divers wondrous discoveries, by means of which man often -surpasses himself, though he knows not how he has that power. Oh, blessed school of the sons of God! It is this which often causes the astonishment of all worldly-wise men, when they see how some plain little fellow speaks wondrous mysteries; prophesies the future changes in the world and in the Church as if he saw them before his eyes; mentions the names of yet unborn kings and heads of states; proclaims and announces other things that could not be conceived either by any study of the stars or by any endeavour of human wit."
The history of Heresy is conspicuous for these claims to supernatural guidance. It was a main tenet of the Montanists, and the Albi'geois similarly claimed that they received daily visitations from their Invisible Chief, the Holy Spirit. In his account of the Huguenots SMILES relates that after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, "The rapidity with which the contagion of convulsive prophesying spread was extraordinary. The adherents were all of the poorer classes, who read nothing but the Bible, and had it nearly by heart. It spread from Dauphiney to Viverais, and from thence into the Cevennes. 'I have seen,' said Marshal Villars, 'things that I could never / 349 / have believed if they had not passed under my own eyes -an entire city, in which all the women and girls, without exception, appeared possessed by the devil; they quaked and prophesied publicly in the streets.'"
To account at all rationally for the facts accumulated in the preceding chapters one must necessarily accept either some theory of inspiration or the only alternative theory of a mystic tradition transmitted secretly by word of mouth from a vast period anterior to Christianity. There is plentiful testimony to the existence of some such esoteric knowledge, and in many Literatures are to be found references to certain " hidden wisdom," and claims to the stewardship of a Secret Doctrine. We meet them among the priesthoods of EGYPT and AMERICA, and in the Mysteries of GREECE and ROME. To the Jews the writer of Esdras stated it as a command from the Highest that cc Some things shalt thou publish and some things shalt thou show secretly to the wise." 1
In the Advancement of Learning BACON refers to the discretion anciently observed of publishing part and reserving part to a private succession. Of this Traditionem Lampadis, the handing on of the traditive lamp or the Method bequeathed to the Sons of Sapience, he observes: "The pretence thereof seemeth to be this: that by the intricate envelopings of delivery the profane vulgar may be removed from the secrets of Sciences, and they only admitted which had either acquired the interpretation of parables by Tradition f(om . their teachers or by the sharpness and subtlety of their own wit- could pierce the veil." 2
The writer of the Epistles of St Paul- which are admittedly tinged strongly with Gnosticism - claims to speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world.3
It is now very generally recognised that Christianity / Page 350 / did not originate in JERUSALEM or in PALESTINE or indeed from any unique focus) but that it arose simultaneously from many geographically independent foci. The. current diction of the primitive Christians, as exemplified in the Gospels, was more or less symbolic) and it was, thinks Professor W. B. SMITH) "a misconstruction of this symbolism (by second-century Ecclesiasticism) that has for 1800 years concealed the true nature of Proto-Christianity, which was an organised crusade of Greek-Jewish monotheism against the prevalent polytheism." 1
When CORTEZ landed in MExIco he reported that" the Devil had positively taught to the Mexicans the same things which God had taught to Christendom," and TERTULLIAN complained with characteristic bitterness that in the mysteries of MITHRA the Evil One had "emulously mimiced" even the precise particulars of the Divine sacraments. . We have it on the notable authority of ST AUGUSTINE' that "That very thing which is now designated the Christian Religion was in existence among the ancients, nor was it absent even from the commencement of the human race up to the time when Christ entered into the flesh, after which true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian."
Mysticism was the core and kernel of Primitive Christianity, and Symbolism was the language of Christian and every other form of Mysticism. "The earliest Christian Symbolism," says Mrs JENNER) "was for the most part constructed so that it should be understood fully by the initiated only. At the time at which Christianity was revealed to the world esoteric religions were common; and though Christianity differed from Mithraism and various Gnostic sects in that it had received and obeyed a command to go in to all the world and preach the Gospel / Page 351 / to every creature, nevertheless there were many details which were only explained to .those who. had accepted the preliminary teaching. These, as in other religions, were often represented by signs to which the uninitiated would attach either some other, or perhaps no meaning at all, but which would remind the initiated of what they had learnt. As there has been an .unbroken tradition of Christianity, from those troublous times of its beginning, through the days when it no longer needed to hide it.self in caves and catacombs, until now, we know fairly well what these symbols meant. But had Christianity died out before the cessation of persecution, many of them would be as great puzzles to antiquaries as some of the Mithraic devices still remain. Even after the Peace of the Church the tradition of esoterism lingered on, as St John Chrysostom's not in­frequent phrase, "The initiated will understand," shows us ; and the same symbols and types continued to be used, even after their meanings had become common property. It is not at all certain that what is known as the disciplina arcani had any real existence, and certainly if it had, some of the Apologists, such as St Justin, did not make much account of it. But a natural instinct of self-preservation, coupled with an objection to casting the pearls of the new religion before the Pagan swine, would lead to a consider­able amount of unsystematic concealment, which would result in signs and emblems analogous to those of modern Freemasons." 1
The Founders of Christianity were uneducated, hard­working men, and the workers of the Middle Ages persistently claimed that they and not the luxurious clergy were the real possessors of the truths of Christianity.
There is on record the unwilling testimony of Roman Catholic inquisitors that the Vaudois "heresy" had / Page 352 / existed in these valleys from all antiquity. The Vaudois themselves maintained that the religion they followed had been preserved from father to son "from all time, and from time immemorial," and most of their historians support this same opinion.
It was said by Julian that "There is no wild beast like an angry theologian," and the " schismatics" of the Middle Ages have been assailed with such sulphurous rhetoric by their antagonists, that it is now almost impossible to dis­entangle the truth from fiction. But it is sufficiently evident that during the darkest periods of ecclesiastical corruption the Mysticism of the common man was in the maI n a shrine preserving the living kernel of Christianity, and that most of the so-called New Thought, New Theology, Christian Science, and Higher Criticism of to-day is merely recrudescence under new tumults of very ancient and well-nigh universal ideas.
The Troubadours, like the Templars and the later Freemasons, claimed to be the depositaries of a Noble Savoir or "Noble Knowledge," and their role in connection with a Mystic Tradition has been lucidly presented by Mrs I. Cooper-Oakley in Mystical Traditions and Traces of a Hidden Tradition in Masonry and Medieval Mysticism.
One of the most potent influences on the Thought of EUROPE was the Romance of the Rose, and this encyclopredic poem of 23,000 lines-; about twice the length of Paradise Lost-was evidently.committed to memory, the poet exhorting his "readers

"To learn the whole by heart,
In view that whereso ye depart,
In city, castle, thorp, or town,
Ye may right widely make it known."

From time immemorial the most illustrious Bards and Poets have claimed to be vehicles of a supremely ancient / Page 353 / Wisdom. It is related, for instance, of VAINOMOINEN in the Kalevala that

"Day by day he sang unwearied, Night by night discoursed unceasing, Sang the Songs of bygone ages, Hidden words of ancient wisdom: Songs which all the children sing not, All-beyond men's comprehension; In these ages of misfortune,
When the race is near its ending." 1

Among the three Orders of the Druids were the so­called Bards or Masters of Wisdom, and a corresponding class flourished among all primitive and ancient races. The Druidic precepts which it was unlawful to set down in writing, were expressed in rhymed triplets amounting, it is said, to 20,000 in number. The whole of these were committed to memory and handed on from mouth to mouth. The memories of the American natives were, and still are, a matter of amazement. The entire Popul Vuh was memorised, and the Spaniards were struck with astonishment at the ease with which the Mexicans recited poems of stupendous length.
Tradition is not infrequently more truthful and more trustworthy 2 than script, and the tendency of modern research is to reinstate the accuracy and reputation of Tradition. The two most current traditions are the lapse of mankind from a Golden Age, and the destruction of the world by water, and I venture to think that both these beliefs are based upon actual fact.
Scattered over the world is material evidence in the / Page 354 / form of ruins, majestic in conception and colossal in execution, proving beyond controversy the past existence of a civilisation in comparison with which much so-called "progress" is a fall rather than an advance. To some unknown pre­historic people the world is indebted for the development of wheat, of maize, and of the many fruits and edible grains which millions of years ago must have been scientifically evolved from wild plants.
The original unity of the human race is admittedly proved by the universal similarity of folk-lore customs, fairy-tales, and superstitions, but more especially by language. Philology has already established such affinities as can only be accounted for by the supposition that mankind had a common cradle, the relation between all languages being that of sisters-daughters of one mother who perished, as it were, in. giving them birth. It is believed that no monuments of this Mother Tongue have been preserved, and that we have no history or even tradition of the nation that spoke it.1
The mysterious ancestors from whom many modern races have supposedly sprung, have been termed Aryans, a Sanscrit word meaning "excellent" or "honourable," and the beneficent character of the Aryans has been deduced / Page 355 / from the fact that the most ancient words all relate to peaceful occupations. " It should be observed," says MAX MULLER, "that most of the terms connected with chase and warfare differ in each of the Aryan dialects, while words connected with more peaceful occupations belong generally to the common heirloom of the Aryan language. The proper appreciation of this fact in its general bearing will show how a similar remark made by Niebuhr, with regard to Greek and Latin, requires a very different explanation from that which that great scholar, from his more restricted point of view, was able to give it. It will show that all the Aryan nations had led a long life of peace before they separated/ and that their language acquired individuality and nationality as each colony started in search of new homes-:-new genera­tions forming new terms connected with the warlike and adventurous life of their onward migrations. Hence it is that not only Greek and Latin, but all Aryan languages, have their peaceful words in common; and hence it is that they all differ so strangely in their warlike expressions."
There is thus already-apart from any etymological evidence that I may have accumulated-good ground for the tradition of a Golden Age when, as the Indians say, "all men were well happified." I think that there is equally good ground for supposing that the world-wide legend of a Deluge was based upon some physical disaster, and that "in all probability this tradition preserves the memory of the destruction of Atlantis, circa 10,000 years ago. SOLON, who knew nbthing of the findings of modern Philology, described the Atlanteans in very much the same terms as the scientist now applies to the hypothetical Aryans. According to SOLON, "For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well-affectioned toward the gods, who were / Page 356 / their kinsmen; for they possessed true and in every way great spirits, practising gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of life, and in their intercourse with one another. "They despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly on the possession of gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to them; neither were they intoxicated by luxury; nor did wealth deprive them of their self-control; but they were sober, and saw dearly that all these goods are increased by virtuous friendship with one another, and that, by excessive zeal for them, the honour of them, the good of them is lost, and friendship perishes with them. By such reflections, and by the continuance in them of a divine nature, all that which we have described waxed and increased in them; but when this divine portion began to .fade away in them, and became diluted too often, and with too much of the mortal admixture, and the human nature got the upper hand, then, they being unable to bear their fortune, became unseemly."
It is stated that in ancient EGYPT even the very games and dances had a religious significance, and that the sublimer portions of Egyptian religion are those which are the most ancient. 1 The inference is that the remoter the time the purer and simpler was Humanity. There can be no older human monument than Language, and it is already an axiom among Philologists that" Language is fossil poetry; in other words, we are not to look for the poetry which a people may possess only in its poems, or its poetical customs, traditions, and beliefs. Many a single word also is itself a concentrated poem, having stores of poetical thought and imagery laid up in it." 2
By the unveiling of an unsuspected beauty underlying many commonplace and supposedly unpoetic words, I am / Page 357 /
simply extending an already accepted principle. To what extent this New Philology may be sound, and to what extent fanhistic, must be gauged by Criticism, but the inherent probabilities are prima facie in favour of my having let loose- an imprisoned Poetry rather than imposed some­thing supposititous, self-made, and non-existent. I did not cunningly invent or contrive some half-a-dozen roots to fit a preconceived idea; most of those used are already familiar and well-recognised, and to those few which are novel I was surprisedly led by the lamp of the Comparative Method.
Hitherto, this modern tool has been used almost solely as a weapon of destruction, and at present it is the vogue either to resolve the material of Mythology and Romance into th'e soulless unity of physical phenomena or to regard it as "lewd, foul, revolting, and unnatural, as the gross growth of disgusting savagery."1 On the contrary, I believe it to be like many of the seemingly senseless and insane tribal customs of "savages," the survival of some infinitely ancient simple civilisation. The mere fact that certain
savage tribes who are now unable to count beyond five, possess the mysterious and marvellous art of Language-an art they certainly have not now the wit to invent-is presumptive evidence of decadence.
The age of this Earth, estimated from Radium deposits, is now calculated by some scientists as upwards of 750 million years, and there are said to be proofs of Man having existed in the MISSISSIPPI Valley 50,000 years ago. There is thus abundant time for the Human race to have evolved from a supposed bestiality, and risen to a culminating point of morality, whence they have since declined. Whether the ancient culture-centre of this Earth was some island in the ATLANTIC or a vague site in ASIA is a problem that has no / Page 358 / necessary relevance to Symbolism, but the Atlantean theory seems to me to offer the line of least difficulty. Primitive sounds And forms are, it is now generally believed, preserved more fa.ithfully in EUROPE than in INDIA, and Sanscrit has already been dethroned from the high place it occupied a few years ago.1
It is not impossible that our profusely numerous monosyllabic words and place-names are due to "phonetic decay," but it is far more probable that elementary words of one syllable are more primitive and more ancient than well­developed and complicated terms of two, three, four, or six syllables. It is more difficult to suppose that there was once intimate intercommunication between BRITAIN and MEXICO than it is to believe that both lands derived their customs and ideas from some common intermediate source­a parent-people who, like the British of to-day, circumnavigated and colonised the world.
Dr FRAZER observes that :- "The comparative study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind is fitted to be much more than a means of satisfying an enlightened curiosity, and of furnishing materials for the researches of the' learned. Well handled, it may become a powerful instrument to expedite progress, if it lays bare certain weak spots in the foundations on which modern society is built­if it shows that much which we are wont to regard as solid rest on. the sands 'of superstition rather than on the rocks of nature. It is indeed a melancholy and in some respects thankless task to strike at the foundations of beliefs in which, as in a strong tower, the hopes and aspirations of. humanity through long ages have sought a refuge from the storm and stress of life. Yet sooner or later it is inevitable that the battery of the comparative method should breach these venerable walls, mantled over with the ivy and / Page 359 / mosses and wild flowers of a thousand tender and sacred associations. At present we are only dragging the guns into position; they have hardly yet begun to speak. The task of building up into fairer and more enduring forms the old structures so rudely shattered is reserved for other hands, perhaps for other and happier ages. We cannot forsee, we can hardly even guess, the new forms into which thought and society will run in the future. Yet this uncertainty ought not to induce us, from any consideration of expediency or regard for antiquity, to, spare the ancient moulds, however beautiful, when these are proved to' be outworn."
Dr FRAZER is our leading exemplar of the Comparative Method, and it is evident-vide the extract with which I have headed this chapter-that he is writhing uneasily at the pessimism of his own conclusions. It is true that Christianity-its symbols having grown too stark and solid -has been cast into the melting-pot, whence' it will never ,emerge except in a more rational, more widely sympathetic, less parochial, less petty, and less literalistic form. But the ancient moulds-to the degree that they are beautiful­will never prove outworn, and it would be a curious revenge if the irresistible guns of the Comparative Method instead of wreaking fresh and ever greater destruction, recoiled from the present dismal mud-and-dust Materialism, and became an instrument of the armies above, a trumpet-call of the Eternal Reason, and a weapon of the poetic dictum: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty."
Poets have from all time claimed to be the Tongues of an Unseen World, the 'custodians of an interior certainty, of a Knowledge standing behind and apart from evidence, and of an Understanding that makes darkness light. "Poets," to quote SHELLEY, "are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic /Page 360 / shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not but moves." And he adds: "The persons in whom this power resides, may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve the power which is seated on the throne of their own soul." 1
Although every scruple of due weight may be given to the force of Memory, to the possible existence of a Secret Tradition, and to the world-wide influence of Freemasonry; yet these causes are alone not adequate to account for the phenomena of Symbolism.
There are manifold problems in Literature' that are insoluble except by the supposition that the mind is at times an instrument played upon by the fingers of an Unseen Force. "When I sit down to write my book," said CHARLES DICKENS, "some beneficent power shows it all to me and tempts me to be interested, and I don't invent-really do not-but see it and write it down." Dickens, like most other imaginative artists, is said to have declared that every word uttered by his characters was distinctly heard by him before it was written down. Yet, on the other hand, he averred: "I work slowly and with great care, and never give way to my invention recklessly, but con­stantly restrain it." We have it on the authority of MILTON that the Muse" dictated" to him his" unpre­meditated song." W AGNER was astonished at the gulf existing between his intuition and his reason, i.e. between his inspiration as an artist and. his intellectual ideas as a philosopher. "Seldom perhaps," he writes in this con­/ Page 361 / nection, " have a man's ideas and intuitions been at such marvellous variance as mine." 1 In his essay on The Oversoul, EMERSON says, cc I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; I desire and look up, and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the visions come."
It is curious that Etymology, unable to account for the curiously fluctuating and seemingly whimsical variations of speech, is now perplexedly falling back upon old and discarded ideas. The author of The English Language,2 published only just recently, writes: "When the early physicists became aware of forces they could not understand, they tried to escape their difficulty by personifying the laws of nature and inventing' spirits' that controlled material phenomena.. The student of language, in the presence of the mysterious power which creates and changes language, has been compelled to adopt this medireval procedure, and has vaguely defined, by the name of 'the Genius of the Language,' the power that guides and controls its progress. If we ask ourselves who are the ministers of this power, and whence its decrees derive their binding force, we cannot find any definite answer to our question. It is not the grammarians or philologists who form or carry out its decisions; for the philologists disclaim all responsibility, and the schoolmasters and grammarians generally oppose, and fight bitterly, but in vain) against the new developments. We can, perhaps find its nearest analogy in what among social insects, we call, for lack of a more scientific name, 'the Spirit of the Hive.' This' spirit,' in societies of bees, is supposed to direct their labours on a fixed plan) with intelligent consideration of needs and opportunities; and although proceeding from no fixed / Page 362 / authority, it is yet operative in each member of the community. And so in each one of us the Genius of the Language finds an instrument for the carrying out of its decrees."
The' Brahmins in the Hymns of the Veda raised Language to a Divine rank, as they did all things that they were unable to explain. They addressed hymns to 'Her in which she is said to have been with the Gods from the beginning, achieving the most wonderful things, and never revealed to man except in part. It is impossible to fix the exact number of known languages, but they number, it is supposed, not less than nine hundred. When we consider that the myriads and myriads of human aspirations and ideas are all microscopically expressed by the mere permutations of some two dozen elementary sounds, the results without question are not far distant from the miraculous.
The present is a period :when the walls of matter are crumbling momentarily down and the Fairy-land of Electricity, Radium, Rontgen Rays, Wireless Telegraphy, Gramophones, Cinematographs, and other scientific wonders, is becoming a reality. I believe with MILTON in the Fairies and that­

"Millions of spiritual beings walk this earth,
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep."

I believe with Sir THOMAS BROWNE that " We do surely owe the discovery of many secrets to the discovery of good and bad angels, and I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the courteous revelations of spirits; for these noble essences in; Heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow natures on earth." 1
I am in sympathy with the poet who wrote :/ Page 363 /

"Verily I was wrong,
And verily many thinkers of this age;
Ay, many Christian teachers, half in heaven, Are wrong in just my sense who understood Our natural world too insularly, as if
No spiritual counterpart completed it, Consummating its meaning, rounding all,
To justice and perfection, line by line,
Form by form, nothing single nor alone;
.!he great below clenched by the great above, Shade here, authenticating substance - there, The body proving spirit, as the effect,
The cause : we meantime being too grossly apt To hold the natural as dogs a bone,
(Though Reason and Nature beat us in the face) So obstinately that we'll break our teeth
Or ever we let go, For everywhere
We're too materialistic. . . . ay, materialist The age's name is. God himself with' some
Is apprehended as the bare result
Of what his hand materially has made."1
1 E. B. Browning, Aurora Lelg.;

Page 349 Notes 1 2 Esdras xv. 26. 2 Bk. vi. cap. ii. 3 I Corinthians ii. 7.

Page 350 Note 1 Ecce Deus

Page 351 Note Christian Symbolism, xv

Page 353 Notes
1 Runo, iii. 7, 14.
2 Tradition always maintained the existence of buried cities at HERCULANEUM and POMPEII, but the idea was long ridiculed by scientists as a vulgar superstition.

Page 354 Notes 1 " That such a people existed and spoke such a tongue is an inference of comparative philology, the process of reasoning being analogous to that followed in the kindred science of geology. The geologist, interpreting the inscriptions written by the finger of Nature herself upon the rock-tablets of the earth's strata, carries us back myriads of ages .before man appeared on the scene at all, and enables us to be present, as it were, at creation itself, and see one formation laid above another, and one plant or animal succeed another. Now languages are to the ethnologist what strata are in geology ; dead languages have been well called his fossils and petrifactions. By skilful interpretation of their indications, aided by the light of all other available monuments, he is able to spell out, with more or less probability, the ethnical records of the past, and thus obtain a glimpse here and there into the grey cloud that rests over the dawn of ages."-Article "Aryans," Chamber's Encyclopaedia,

Page 355 Note 1 Italics mine.

Page 356 Note 1 Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 91, 132. 2 Trench.

Page 357 Note 1 Dr Andrew Lang, M.A

Page 358 Note 1 Sayee, Principles of Comparative Philology, Preface.

Page 360 Note 1 A Prelude to Poetry.

Page 361 Notes 1 Cleather and Crump, Rt"n{J of the Nt"belung, pp. 127, 153. 2 Logan Pearsall Smith, M.A. VOL. 11.

Page 362 Note 1 Religio Medici.

Page 364

APPENDIX

THE LETTERS OF THE LATIN ALPHABET AS SEEMINGLY UNDERSTOOD BY THE MYSTICS

A = A cone) mountain) or pyramid) the Primal Cause.
B = The Feeder (?).
C = The crescent moon) the Great Mother) the Sea.
D = The Brilliant.
E = The letter of Apollo or the Sun) as at DELPHI.
F = The Fire or Life. '
G = The Self-Existent.
H = Twin pillars) the Aged and Immutable Gateway or Door. I = The" Holy One)" the Pole or Axis of the Universe.
L = God or Power.
M = When angular;) twin' mountain-peaks; when cursive) the waves of the sea or the undulations of a serpent.
O = The Sun disc) the perfect One) the Pearl of Price.
P = A Shepherd's crook.
R = A Shepherd's crook.
S = A twisted serpent.
T = A hammer) or twin axes.
U = JUPITER'S Chain.
V = Twin rays.
W = Gel11ini) The Twins.
X = The.Cross of Lux.
Y = The Three in One) the Great Unit.
Z = The zigzags of the Lightning Flash.

Page 365

APPENDIX

A SUMMARY OF THE PRIMITIVE ROOTS USED IN THE FOREGOING PAGES

P or B

OP = hoop or eye, as in hoop, optics.

P A =.Father, as in pa, pater, parent.

T or D

OT = hot, as in hot.
D I = brilliant, as in DIANA, diamond, etc., and Sanscrit dyu, DY AUS.

CH or J

AJ = aged, as in age.
J A, IA, or Y A = ever-existent, as in JAH, JEHOVAH, JAHWE.

K or G

AK = great or mighty, as in KARNAK, CARNAC, Zodiac.

L

EL = God or Powcr, as Semitic

EL. LA = "That which has existed for ever."

MOM = Sun, as in Hindoo OM or AUM.

MA = Mother, as in ma, mama, matcr.

N

ON = onE, as in one.

NE = born of, as in French ne (I have not made any use of this root, which is seemingly apparent in ne, natal, navel, naitre, natus, naissance nascence) nucleus, new (or just born)) and Noel, the Birth of God).

R

UR = Fire and Light, as in Semitic ur.
RA = The Sun-God Ra or Re-fundamentally ur A) the Fiery A./ Page / 366

S or Z and SH or ZH
ES = essence or light, as in esse, to he.
ZE = Fire and Lift, as in ZEUS, Zoology, Zodiac.

F or V

EF = Life, as in EVE, alive, and ivy.

FI = Life and Fire, as in feu and vie.