|
Now, that is very good sign language, especially as the "half-moon" is a
public-house symbol. It was an invitation to eat and drink to the
full, or come to the full as the half-moon does; it may be, to "get
fu'," in the Scottish sense. A moon already full would not have
answered the purpose.
9. An eclipse projected the shadow of coming
calamity. The renewed light of the old moon was like a promise of
eternal life and everlasting youth. When personified this was the
healer, the saviour, an image of very life. The first-born from
the dead, the first-fruits of them that slept in the graveyard of sunken
suns, and cemetery of old dead moons, was reproduced visibly in external
phenomena, as the new moon which was personated by the male moon-god
Taht, called the eighth, and lord of the eighth region, as the place of
rising again from the dead in the orb of the moon. There was a
lunar mythology extant long before it was known that the lunar orb was a
reflector of the solar light. There was a time also when it was
not known, and could not be divined, that the moon which dwindled and
died down visibly was the same moon that rose again from the dead.
Hence there were two different messages conveyed from heaven to
men on earth, by the hare as messenger for the moon in the lunar myths
of the Hottentots and other primitive races. In one of these
versions the moon declared that, as it died and did not rise again from
its grave, even so was it with man, who went down to the earth and came
back no more. But, when it had made out that the same moon
returned as the old orb renewed, the nature of its revelation was
reversed. Its message now contained a doctrine of the
resurrection from the dead for man as well as moon. The re-arising
and transforming orb at last proclaimed that even as it did not die out
altogether, but was renewed from some hidden spring or source of light,
so was it with the human race, who were likewise renewed to re-live on
hereafter like the moon. In a myth of the Caroline Islanders it is
said that at first men only quitted this life on the last day of the
dying moon, to be revivified when the new moon appeared. But there
was a dark spirit that inflicted a death from which there was no
revival. This dark spirit, with its fatal message, was primary in
fact, and the true assurance of survival, like the moon, depended on its
being identified as the same moon which rose again. It is in this
way that we can re-think the primitive thought, by getting it re-thinged
in the physical realities of natural phenomena. In the Ute Mythos
the task of making a moon was assigned to Whip-Poor-Will, a god of the
night. The frog offered himself as a willing sacrifice for this
purpose, and he was transformed by magical incantations into the New
Moon. The symbolism is identical, whether derived from Egypt or
not. So is it when the Buddha offers his body as a sacrifice, and
transforms himself into the lunar hare.
10. The Maories have a tradition of the first children
of earth, in which they relate that the earliest subject of human
thought was the difference between light and darkness; they were always
thinking what might be the difference betwixt light and darkness.
Naturally, the primary conditions of existence observed by primitive men
were those that were most observable, and, foremost amongst these, were
the phenomena of the day and the dark, which followed each other in
ceaseless change. Mythology begins with this vague and merely
elemental phase of external phenomena, alternating in night and day.
In a secondary stage, it was observed that the battle field of this
never ending warfare of day and dark was focussed and brought to a
definite point in the orb of the moon, where the struggle betwixt the
two personified powers of light and darkness went on and on for ever,
each power having its triumph over the other in its turn,—these being
depicted in one representation as the solar light and the serpent of
darkness, in another by the lion and the unicorn. These phenomena
of light and darkness were at first set forth by means of animals,
reptiles, birds, and other primitive types of the elemental powers; and
lastly the human type was adopted, and the cunning of the crocodile, or
the jackal of darkness, is represented by the Egyptian Sut, the
Norse Loki, the Greek Hermes, or the Jewish Jacob,
the dark deceiver; and to-day, we find the Christian Evidence Society
engaged in defending such characters as that of Jacob, in the full and
perfect belief that Jacob was a human being, and one of God's chosen
race. Whereas, he was no more a person than was Sut-Anup in Egypt,
or Reynard the fox in Europe! The human form, like that of the
earlier animal type, was only representative of some power manifested in
natural phenomena. This mode of representation was known when
these sacred stories were first told of mythical characters; it was
afterwards continued and taught in the so-called "mysteries" by means of
the Gnosis. When the art or Gnosis was lost to the world outside,
the ancient histories were ignorantly supposed to be human in their
origin; mythology was euhemerized (that is, the ideal was mistaken for
the real), and Egyptian mythology was converted into Hebrew miracles and
Christian history.
11. Thus when the Iroquois Indians claim that the
first ancestor of the red man was a hare, we do not know what that
saying means until we learn the representative value of the symbol!
So is it all sign-writing through.
12. When Herodotus went to Egypt, he recognised the
originals of the gods that were adored, amplified, embellished, or
laughed at in Greece. At present, however, the Müllerites dare not
mention Egypt, but look askance at those who do. Here is a crucial
instance of survival, evidenced by philology,—the name of Mars as Ares
will serve to prove how Egyptian underlies the Greek! The planet
Mars is called Har-Tesh in Egyptian, which signifies the red lord,
or the lord of gore. Cedrenus writes the name of Arês as Hartosi,
and Vettius Valens as Hartes, whence Artis, and finally Arês.
Again, the name of Hera denotes the heaven, over, in Egyptian; which
certainly describes the nature of the Greek goddess of that name.
13. When we are told by the Roman Catholic
Egyptologist, Renouf, that "Neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any of
their ideas from Egypt," we can only think of such a dictum as an
intentional blind, or as a result of putting up the glass to an eye that
cannot see. It is simply impossible for the non-evolutionist, the
bigotted Bibliolator, or the Müllerite, to interpret or to understand
the mythology of Egypt. Its roots go deep, and its branches spread
too far, for their range of thought. And now, let me offer a
remarkable example of the modes in which the Egyptians expressed or
thinged their thoughts, by means of external phenomena. The
sun-god Ra is represented as possessing fourteen spirits or kaus,
the living likenesses and glorified images of himself. These are
pourtrayed as fourteen personages at Edfu and Denderah. In one
text it is said,—"Hail to thee and thy fourteen spirits fourteen times."
These are also mentioned in the tablet of Ipsambul, as the fourteen
kaus of Ra, which "Taht has added to all his ways." Taht is the
moon-god, and this gives us a clue to the fourteen spirits, which, I
think, no Egyptologist has yet suspected. But Taht is the god of
the first fourteen days of the moon's lunation, and fourteen nights of
the new moon reproduced the likeness of the solar god in light fourteen
times over; these were designated his apparition seen nightly in
the moon! Indeed, the moon in its dark half was treated as the
mummy or un-illuminated body of the sun-god, who is described
as coming to visit, to comfort it, to beget upon it, in the under-world.
This lunar body of the solar soul is represented by the ass-headed god
Aai (upon which the sun-god rode), who is found mummified on the tomb of
Rameses 6th. Thus, the dark orb or body of the moon was the mummy
of the sun, and its fourteen days of growing light were thought of as
fourteen manifestations of the solar-god in spiritual apparition,
visible by night in the moon; hence it will be seen how natural it was
that the lunar orb should be looked up to as the home of spirits, as
when the Egyptian prays that his soul may ascend to heaven in the disk
of the moon! Another fable of the dark half of the lunation has
been preserved by Plutarch, who relates that when Typhon, the evil
power, was hunting by moonlight, he by chance came upon the dead body or
mummy of Osiris prepared for burial, and, knowing it again, he tore it
into fourteen parts, and scattered them all about. These fourteen
parts typify the fourteen days of the lessening light, during which the
devil of darkness had the upper hand. The twenty-eight days made
one lunar month according to Egyptian reckoning.
14. The earlier and simpler representation of the
lunar light and dark is pourtrayed in the myth of the Two Brothers, who
always contend for supremacy over each other. The most ancient and
primitive myths are found to be the most universal; and this of the twin
brothers is extant all over the world. It is the myth of Sut-Horus
in Egypt; the Asvins or Krishna and Balarama in India; the Crow and the
Eagle of the Australian blacks; Tsuni-Goam and Gaunab among the
Hottentots; Jack and Jill, and twenty other forms that I have compared
in my "Natural Genesis." It is that struggle of two brothers in the
beginning which is represented in the Hebrew book of Genesis as the
murderous conflict of Cain and Abel. Cain as the victor is
the same character as the Egyptian Khunsu, Khun or Khen,
meaning to chase, hunt, beat, be the victor, and therefore I take
it that the name of Cain is probably one with the Egyptian
Khun. Abel is the dark little one that fades and falls and
passes away, the one who becomes a sacrificial type, because of the
nature of the phenomena. The conqueror is pourtrayed as the
killer. The Gnostic Cainites, however, maintained truly that Cain
derived his being from the power above, and not from the evil power
below. They knew the Mythos. The contention of Jacob and
Esau for birth and for the birth-right is another form of the same myth.
Esau, the red and hairy,
is really the lord of light in the new moon. Jacob is the child of
darkness, hence the deceiver by nature and by name. A Jewish
tradition relates that Esau, when born, had the likeness of a serpent
marked upon his heel. This shows he was a personification of the
hero who bruised the serpent's head, and that Jacob, who laid hold of
Esau's heel, was a co-type in phenomena with the serpent of darkness.
There is nothing moral or immoral in mere physical phenomena themselves.
No fratricide is actually committed by the conquering Cain, nor fraud by
the dark and wily Jacob. But when these same phenomena are
dramatised, and the characters are made human, or inhuman, as the case
may be, the un-moral becomes immoral, and the human image is disfigured
by the most wilful flaw, or wanton brand of degradation. Cain is
made the murderer of his own brother, in the beginning, and that red
stain is supposed to run through all human history, as a first result of
Adam's fall, and to burn on the brow of man until it is washed out at
last in the blood of a redeeming Saviour—who is equally mythical.
15. This lunar representation has several shapes in
Egyptian mythology, where the Twin Brothers are Sut and Osiris, Sut and
Horus, the two Horuses, Taht and Aan, or Khunsu and Typhon.
16. In his Hibbert lectures Mr. Renouf says
curtly, the Egyptian god "Khunsu is the moon." But such Egyptology has
not yet blazed the veriest surface of the mythology. Such
statements teach nothing truly, because they do not put in the bottom
facts. They do not help us to think in those phenomena which have
been entified or divinised in and as mythology. It
may be said quite as bluntly that Khunsu is not the moon. He only
represents one phase of the lunar phenomena, which are triadic.
Khunsu is the child of the sun and moon. His name denotes the
young hero. When this deity was evolved it had been discovered
that the moon derived her light from the sun. In the planisphere
of Denderah the youthful God Khunsu is pourtrayed in the disk of the
full moon at Easter, where he represents the light and force of the sun
that is reborn monthly and annually of the lunar orb considered to be
his mother, who thus reproduces the child of light in the disk of the
moon. The same myth is likewise Osirian, as we learn from one of
the hymns, where it is said, "Hail to thee, Osiris, Lord of Eternity!
When thou art in heaven thou appearest as the sun, and thou renewest
thyself as the moon." But this renewal of light in the moon was
pourtrayed as the re-birth of the god in the person of his own child;
hence the child Horus is also depicted like the child Khunsu in the disk
of the full moon, as both may be seen in the same planisphere of
Denderah. Khunsu is the Egyptian Jack the giant-killer. In
the Ritual he is called the slayer of rebels and piercer of the proud.
His natural genesis was in the tiny light of the new moon, which rose up
with its sharp horns to pierce the powers of night, and drive them out
of the darkened orb. The giants of the primitive mind were
the powers of darkness, which forever rose up in revolt against the
light, kept all life cowering in their shadow by night, took possession
of the moon in the latter half of the lunation, or covered its face with
the blood and dust of battle during the terrible time of an eclipse.
Then the little hero, the child of light, arose and made war on the
giants, and overcame them as he grew in glory and waxed greatly in the
plenitude of his Hidden father's power and might. The name of
Khunsu's father is Amen, the Hidden God, the child Khunsu being his
visible representative re-born in the new moon.
17. Mythology is the ground-work of all our theology
and Christology, and it is only by mastering the plan that we can learn
how the superstructure has been built. This character of Khunsu is
that of the mythical Messiah, or manifester in external nature, as a
representative of the Eternal in the phenomena of time. In Egypt,
Seb-Kronus, or Time, was designated the true Repa, or Heir-Apparent to
the father, Osiris or Amen-Ra, and the re-birth in time, might be
monthly or annually, every nineteen or twenty-five, 500 or 2155, years,
according to the particular period. In the mystical or spiritual
phase this representative of divinity was the Christ within, the Son of
God incarnate in matter; the Christ of the Gnostics who was not a
man; their Jesus, who could not be a Jew; their Redeemer, who was but
the immortal principle in man, a Deliverer from the degradation; a
Saviour solely from the dissolution of matter, which the Greek poet
Linus calls the "Giver of all shameful things."
18. But to return to the Moon Mythos. The legend
of Samson can now be read for the first time as the Hebrew version of
the Egyptian myth of Khunsu, the luni-solar hero who slays the giants—or
Philistines—and overcomes the powers of darkness. It was
impossible to read the riddle by supposing, with Steinthal, that Samson
was simply the sun-god himself; because if he were, in killing the lion
he would be only slaying the reflection of himself—the lion being a
solar type. The name of Shimshon denotes the luminous or shining
one, as an emanation of the solar fire. Samson, like Khunsu, is
the typical hero. Khunsu is the Egyptian Heracles. Samson,
like Heracles, slays the lion, as his first great labour, or feat of
strength. This deed is represented allegorically, and is put forth
as his riddle. Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the
mighty came forth sweetness. The mighty one who devours is the
lion, and the honey was found in its dead carcase. The Mithraic
and Egyptian monuments will enable us to read the riddle. In the
Persian we see the lion depicted with a bee in its mouth. The
lion, or rather the lioness, was an Egyptian figure of fire—the
lioness in heat. She was represented, by the goddess of the solar
fire and alcoholic spirit, as Sekhet, who carries the sun's disk on the
head of a lioness. The name of this she-lion, Sekhet, is also the
name for the bee, which is the royal symbol of Lower Egypt; and the
bee denotes the sweetness in the lion. Now, the fiercest solar
heat was coincident with the waters of the Inundation, two-thirds of
which (according to Hor-Apollo) poured down into Egypt whilst the sun
was in the sign of the lion. Sekhet was also the goddess of
sweetness or pleasure—we may say literally, goddess of the honeymoon.
Hence the association of the lion and the bee, or the honey in the lion.
The triumph over the lion may be understood in this way. Sekhet,
the she-lion, impersonated the force of the sun, which was often fatal,
hence she was made the punisher of the wicked with hell-fire; and this
lunar hero, as Heracles, Khunsu, or Samson, was the conqueror
in the cool of the night, which followed the fiery fervour of the sun by
day. Further, at the time the sun was in the lion-sign, the full
moon rose vis-à-vis
in the sign of the Waterman, or Waterwoman, in the Hermean Zodiac; and we
cannot read one part of the celestial imagery independently of the
other. In this full moon, which brought the sweet, fresh waters to
Egypt, the hero attained the height of his glory, as conqueror of the
furnace-heat which culminated then and there with the sun in the sign of
the lioness, as reflector of the fiercest solar fire. As the moon
was the bringer of the waters, and the breath of life in the coolness
and the dews of night, the lunar hero was not only credited with drawing
the sting of Sekhet, but with extracting honey from the dead lion.
19. When the young hero as son of the sun-god, reborn
of the new moon, has once more conquered in conflict with his eternal
enemy, and he breaks out in triumph, free from the throttling folds of
the dragon, of the Sami, or the Philistines, as he ascends aloft he is
seen bearing the dark orb of the old moon as a palpable proof of his
power. He had burst through the barriers of the underworld, the
gates of death and darkness; and so it would be fabled that he carried
the barriers away with him, and bore them visibly on high to the summit
of the lunar ascent! It is so represented when Samson not only
breaks out of Gaza, but tears up the city gates, and carries them away
by night with their posts, bolts, and bars, to the top of the hill, or
mountain of the moon, as the lunar height was called! The
soli-lunar nature of the hero is shown by the number 30 (the thirty days
to the month in the soli-lunar reckoning.) Samson has thirty companions.
He smote thirty men at Ascalon, and spoiled them of thirty changes of
raiment. The number 7 is also an all-important factor in the lunar
mythos, with its twenty-eight days to the month. In the cuneiform
legend of Ishtar the goddess descends and ascends through seven gates,
each way in her passage to and from the netherworld, as female
representative of the moon. So when Sut-Typhon, the dark one of
the lunar twins, was beaten by Horus, he is described by Plutarch
as fleeing from the battle during seven days on the back of an ass!
In each case the number 7 signifies one quarter of a moon. The
number 7, answering to one lunar quarter, is prominent in the legend of
Samson. In one phase he tells Delilah that if he is bound with
seven new bow-strings his strength will depart, and he will become weak,
and be as another man. But when these are applied to him they are
snapped like a string of fire-singed tow! We may suppose this
phase to represent the first seven days of the growing
crescent moon; hence the seven new bow-strings, which are in keeping
with the seven strings of the lunar harp. In the second phase the
hero is bound with new ropes, which he freed himself from as if they had
been thread. Fourteen days brings us to the moon at full, and to
the culmination of Samson's glory. Then he confesses to his
charmer that if the seven locks of his head are shaven off his strength
will assuredly depart. Now, hair is an especial, primitive type of
virility, potency, and power. In the Egyptian Ritual the Osirified
as Horus, ascends the heaven with his long hair reaching down to his
shoulders as a type of his growing glory. Moreover, Samson's hair,
the emblem of his strength, is in seven locks. These answer to the
seven nights of the quarter in which the lunar splendour comes to the
full, and the opposing powers of darkness, called the Philistines, are
very literally "cleared out." When this period is past, and the hero is
shorn of his hair, the Philistines are upon him once more. This
time the drama is to come to an end. But not without an intimation
of its being continued or repeated in the next new moon, for the
narrative confesses conscientiously that Samson's hair began to grow
again after he was shaven. But for the present the powers of
darkness prevail; and having shorn the hero of his glory during seven
nights, and brought him low, they put out his sight and bind him with
fetters of brass, eyeless in Gaza, pitiful and forlorn as "blind Orion
hungering for the morn."
20. The eye of the blinded Horus being put out by Sut,
who was at the head of the Typhonian powers, called the Sami, or
conspirators, is identical in the Egyptian mythos with the putting out
of Samson's eyes in the Hebrew version! In the Osirian myth,
however, it is the eye of Horus that is wounded; the eye that is
swallowed by Sut; the eye that is restored at dawn of day, and this
one-eyed form of the mythos survives in the account of Samson's
blindness when he prays for strength enough to avenge the loss of one
of his two eyes, as we have it in the margin! The lunar light
was the eye of the sun, but this becomes the two eyes of the hero
when he is rendered according to the complete human likeness, which
shows us how the mythos was rationalised as history. It is Delilah
who causes the ruin of Samson, just as Ishtar, called Goddess 15, as the
moon at full, is the ruin of her lovers, in the legend of Ishtar and
Izdubar, where she is charged with being an enchantress, a poisoner, a
destroyer of male potency. Izdubar, the sun-god, reproaches her
with witchcraft, her murderous lust, her merciless cruelty, and declines
to become her lover himself! According to the myth the luni-solar
male divinity was represented in the wane of the light as suffering from
the evil influence of the female moon. It is very evident that the
myths were made by men; as in case of a fall or catastrophe it was
always she who
did it. She tempted the poor man, or overcame the god.
It was she
who had shorn him of his glory; she who had given him poison to
drink, and betrayed him to the powers of darkness; she who is the
cause of his impotential mood, his waning, languishing, and drooping
down. And the true meaning of Delilah's name, I take it, expresses
the weakened, worn-out, impotent condition of the lunar hero thus
brought low—the name being derivable from a root signifying to totter,
droop, and hang inertly down—Delilah being the personified cause of this
emasculated condition of the reduced and wretched, bound and blinded
lunar god, the mighty hero in his fallen state. The Danes have a
lunar Delilah or lady of the moon, who is described as being very
beautiful when seen in front, but she is hollow behind: she plays upon a
harp of seven strings, and with this she lures young men to her on
purpose to destroy them. The Hebrews have a Talmudic tradition
that Samson was lame in both his feet. And this was the
status or condition of the child-Horus, who was said to be maimed and
halt in his lower members; the cripple deity, as he is called by
Plutarch. Other scattered fragments of the true myth are to be
found; for instance, in the lunar triad of the mother and the twin
brothers, one of them accompanies the female moon during the first
half of the total lunation, the other during the latter half;
and this appears to be reflected by the Hebrew mythos when Samson's wife
is "given to his companion whom he had used as a friend." Again, the
jackal was an Egyptian type of the dark one that devoured by night,
and of Sut, the thief of light in the moon, he who swallowed the Eye of
Horus. Jackal and fox are co-types, and they have one name, that
of Shugal, the howler, in Hebrew. This enables us to understand
the story of the 300 foxes or jackals in the Jewish form of the myth.
Samson being the representative of the sun-god who drives the darkness
out of or away from the lunar orb, and does all the damage he can to the
Typhonian powers, or Philistines, the story-teller multiplies the jackal
to enhance the triumph of his hero; and instead of the struggle between
Horus and the jackal-headed Sut-Anup, we have the more difficult feat of
catching 300 jackals and setting fire to their tails, so that they might
consume the crops of the Philistines, or, in other words, burn out the
darkness from the orb of the moon.
21. It is probable that Mithra, son of Ahura Mazda,
and natural opponent of the dark Power, is the same representative of
the God of Light, reflected in the moon as the witness by night for the
absent sun. It may be noted that Matra in Egyptian means the
Witness, or more fully, the Witness for Ra. The scene pourtrayed
on the Persian monuments is nocturnal, and the time of year is that of
the sun's entrance into the sign of Scorpio, where it is deprived of its
virility. At this time the moon rises at full in the sign of the
Bull, the first of the superior signs. The Lord of Light in the
moon is now the dominating power during six months. Thus Mithras
slaying the Bull is equivalent to Samson killing the Lion, or overcoming
the fierceness of the Solar fire; and also of Osiris doing battle with
Sut-Typhon and conquering his terrors in external phenomena.
Osiris dies on the 17th of the month Athor, which was at the time of the
Autumn Equinox, or rather he enters the six lower signs at that time.
An ark was made in the shape of a crescent moon, and on the 19th of the
same month the priests proclaimed that Osiris was found, his
resurrection on the third day being in the moon. Thus it was in
the new moon that the Dead Osiris first returned to life in the
form of his own son.
22. Our modern solarite interpreters can talk of
little else but the sun, the dawn, and the dark. Mr. Renouf,
in his Hibbert lectures, identifies Sut-Anubis with the twilight, or as
the dusk. Hence, when it is said in the texts that he
"swallowed his father Osiris," this on the face of it looks like the
darkness of night swallowing the disappearing sun. But Egyptian
mythology is by no means so simple as that. It is not to be
fathomed on the face of it, nor can it be interpreted without such a
knowledge of the total typology, as the Aryan School all put together do
not possess. There is nothing simply solar in it anywhere!
It is true that Sut represents the presence and the power of
darkness. It is true that the nocturnal sun in the under world was
called Osiris, or Atum, or Amen-Ra. Also, the setting orbs of
light were represented as being swallowed down by the crocodile or some
other type of the devourer. But the continual conflict and
alternate victory of light and darkness were seen to have their
most obvious, most visible, most interesting field of battle in the
moon! It was there the watchers observed the never-ceasing
struggle for the birth-right of the twin brothers, who personated the
opposing powers. The dark one was first born from the mother moon
at full; but the light one was acknowledged to be the genuine
heir-apparent! There is a myth of the blind Horus in which he is
described as sitting solitary in his darkness. Sut is said to have
swallowed his eye, or to have wounded it, and put out the sight.
In one text Horus says, "Behold, my eye is as though Sut (Anup) had
pierced it." In another he cries, "I am Horus. I come to search
for mine eyes." Sut, who swallows the eye, is made to restore it again!
In one account the eye is said to be restored at the dawn of day;
that is in the vague stage of the conflict between the darkness and
the light.
23. At one time, says Plutarch, Sut smote Orus in the
Eye; this represented the diminution of the moon. At another he
plucked the eye out and swallowed it, afterwards giving it back to the
sun. This blinding denoted the Eclipse.
24. In the lunar phase of the mythos the Eye of
light, or of the sun, is the moon. The moon at full was the mirror
of light, hence it was the mother of Horus as the child of light!
But the eye was the primitive mirror. So the moon was called the
Eye of the sun, when it was known as a reflector of the solar
light. Thus the lunar orb was the consort of the sun; his
Eye by night, as the reproducer of his light when he was in the
under-world; and in reproducing the light she was as the mother bringing
forth his child! For instance, the cow was a type of the moon as
Hathor, or as Aahti, and when the cow is pourtrayed with the solar disk
between her horns, the imagery denotes the mother-moon as bearer of the
sun, that is, as reproducer of the solar light in the lunar orb, or, as
it was also said, in the Eye.
25. For this reason the mother of Horus, child of
light, is also described as being the eye of Horus, the moon-mirror in
which the father Osiris made babies in the eye, as the poets say, or was
reflected as Horus, the child of light, re-born monthly of the moon as
his mother. The lunar god Taht is sometimes pourtrayed with the
eye of Horus, or the new moon in his hand. And the goddess
Meri=Mary bears the eye upon her head, as typical reproducer of the
child. Now this is the eye that was swallowed by Sut. When
the power of darkness
had put out the lunar light, the eye was not only pierced but swallowed,
as the phenomena were rendered in the mythos. Moreover, as Osiris
had become the father of all, he was also the acknowledged father of
Sut; and as it was the father who was reflected by the mother-moon, or
the eye, Sut may be said to have swallowed his own father when he
obscured the lunar light, or swallowed it with the darkness during an
eclipse. This was the symbolic eye that was full on the 14th of
the month in the lunar, or on the 15th in the soli-lunar reckoning, or
on the 30th Epiphi, when the eye of the year was full, according to the
Egyptian Ritual. The swallowing of Osiris by Sut belongs to the
soli-lunar phenomena! Plutarch tells us that some of the Egyptians
held the shadow of the earth, which caused an eclipse of the moon, to be
Sut Typhon. By aid of which we can identify the original
dragon of the eclipse! The mythical and celestial dragon, as I
have elsewhere demonstrated, was founded on the crocodile as the natural
type of the swallowing darkness. The crocodile is the
swallower of the lights as they go down in the west, and the tail of the
crocodile reads kam, i.e.,
black, darkness. Typhon (both male and female) is represented by the
crocodile, the dragon of the waters and of darkness. Now the most
thrilling and fearsome act of the lunar drama was during the period of
eclipse. There is something very weird, uncanny, and unked, in the
projection of the earth's shadow across the luminous face of the moon.
To the primitive mind it was the crocodile above, or the dragon,
swallowing the orb of light, or Sut swallowing his father Osiris.
An eclipse was the meal-time of the monster. An eclipse was the
scene of the great battle between Horus and Sut, or Horus and the
Dragon, and the great battle was identical with that of our George and
the Dragon. The same struggle between the powers of light and
darkness is pourtrayed in the Book of Revelation when the woman clothed
with the sun, and the moon under her feet, is about to bring forth her
man child, and the great dragon of eclipse stands before her ready to
devour the child as soon as it is born! In the oldest astronomy
the years were reckoned by the eclipses, as it was in Egypt, China, and
India. And the most ancient type of time or Kronus, as Egyptian,
is Sevekh, the crocodile-headed god, that is, the dragon of eclipse who
annually swallowed the moon containing the Lord of Light or his infant
Image.
26. According to the mythical mode of representing the
natural fact, three days and three nights were reckoned for the absence
of the lunar light, between old and new moon, and the Lord of Light in
the lunar orb was said to be swallowed by a Dragon or a monster fish and
to remain for that length of time in its belly. The legend is
Egyptian. The great fish is the crocodile, the dragon of the deep.
This is called the fish of Horus in the Ritual. The Crocodile
first denoted the earth as the swallower of the Lights before it became
the Water-Dragon, and so the Manifestor, as Horus, Jonah, Tangaroa, or
the Christ, could be three days in the earth or the great fish
previously to his resurrection. Types and stories might be
manifold; the fact signified was always the same. Hence the Jonah
of the Hebrew version is identical with the Christ, not as type of him,
where all is typical; and in the Roman Catacombs the Jonah of one
version is the Christ of the other. Jonah issues from the great
fish in the form of the Child-Christ. Thus the origin of the
"three days and three nights in the heart of the earth," or in the
Crocodile, is to be found in lunar phenomena.
27. In a later form of the Osirian legend the Twins
are the double Horus, instead of the Sut-Horus of the Typhonian myth.
In this we see the little dark child eyeless, soulless, maimed in his
lower members, going into Tattu to meet his soul, his other self, his
glorified body, the double, like that of Buddha, which was called
his diamond body. This other self is designated the soul of the
sun, and it is this which revivifies, regenerates, and transforms the
child of the mother-moon into the virile Horus, the new moon horned and
pubescent. There is a tradition preserved by Plutarch that the
child Horus, the cripple deity, begotten in the dark, was the result of
Osiris having accompanied with Isis after her decease, or with Nephthys
her sister, below the horizon. Even this representation is
perfectly correct according to the natural phenomena. Isis
personates the moon, which dies to be again renewed. The renewal
occurs in the under-world, and is out of sight or all in the dark.
Osiris, as the sun below the horizon is the renovator of the
old, dead orb of the moon, which he causes to re-live with his
light; hence the fable of his accompanying with Isis after her demise is
in accordance with the mythical mode of representing the phenomena of
external nature in human imagery.
28. In one of its phases the moon was pourtrayed in
the character of a thief, which was personated by the jackal, ape, or
wolf, who represented Goddess 15. Ishtar is described as ascending
and descending the steps of the moon, so many days up and so many days
down—of these days there would be fifteen altogether, in accordance with
her name of Goddess 15. And here the Christian Mary can be
identified in this lunar character by means of the Apocryphal Gospels,
that contain legends of the infancy which are of primary importance,
hence they have been denounced as spurious, excommunicated as heretical,
and kept out of sight by Papal commands. In pseudo Matthew (ch.
iv.), we learn that when the Virgin was an infant, just weaned, she ran
up the fifteen steps of the temple at full speed, without once looking
back. At this age she was regarded as an adult of about thirty
years! The story of the fifteen steps is repeated in the Gospel of
Mary's nativity (ch. vi.), where the fifteen steps are associated
with the fifteen Psalms of degrees. Further, it was on the 15th
day of the moon that the dark one of the twins was re-born, as the
lessening, waning one of the two; and in the history of Joseph the
carpenter, Jesus says that Mary gave him birth in the fifteenth year of
her age, by a mystery that no creature can understand except the
Trinity. The Trinity being lunar, the subject matter is identical
according to the Gnosis of numbers, and Mary is also a form of the
Goddess 15,—Meri, or Hathor-Meri, in the Egyptian Mythos.
29. It is only in lunar phenomena that we can see how
the child could be born from the side of its mother, as Sut-Horus was,
as well as the Buddha, or the Christ. Also, the divine child, as
Buddha, was said to be visible whilst in the mother's womb. The
womb of the mother being the lunar orb in which the child in embryo can
be seen in course of growth, it was represented as being transparent
with the child on view. The child Jesus is so pourtrayed in the
Christian pictures of the enciente Virgin Mary, as may be seen in
Didron's Iconography!
30. The birth of the dark one of the mother-moon's two
children, depends upon that part of the lunar orb which is turned away
from the sun, being dimly seen through the light reflected from our
earth. As the light began to lessen, and the orb became opaque,
there was an obvious birth of the dark part of the moon! That was
the birth of the little, dark one, of the lunar twins. So fine a
point of departure from the light half to the dark, and from the dark
half to the light, may be likened to a single hair—as it was in the
Hindu mythos, which represents Krishna as being born from a single black
hair and Balarama from a single white hair of Vishnu. This is,
probably, the mythical meaning of a saying attributed to the Christ in
the gospel of the Hebrews,—"And straightway," said Jesus, "the holy
spirit (my mother) took me and bore me by one of the hairs of my head,
to the great mountain called Thabor." The exact colour of the dark orb
is slate-black, and this has been preserved in India as the complexion
of the dark child, Hari or Krishna. These types of the light and
dark twins were certainly continued as the two-fold Christ in Rome, one
form of whom is the little black Bambino of Italy, the Christ who was
black for the same reason that Sut was black in Egypt, and Krishna was
blue-black in India. He was black, because mythical, and not
because the Word was humanly incarnated as a nigger! He was black
because he was the child of the virgin-mother as the moon!
31. One type of the twins found in the lunar
phenomena has been humanised in the story of Jesus and John; these can
be traced back to Horus and Sut, who is Aan or Anup, the Egyptian John.
These two appear in the Ritual as the "Precursor," and the one who is
preferred to him who was first in coming. Speaking in the twin
character, the Osirified deceased says, "I am Anup in the day of
judgment. I am Horus, the Preferred, on the day of rising." Anup
presided over the judgment; so John the Precursor proclaims the
judgment; and calls the world to repentance. Jesus comes as the
"preferred one" on the day of his rising up out of the waters, when John
the Precursor says of Jesus, "After me cometh a man which is become
before me!" John's was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "Make
ye ready the way of the Lord." "I make way," says Horus, "by what Anup
(the Precursor) has done for me." The twin lunar characters of John and
Jesus can be identified in the gospel where John says of Jesus "He must
increase, but I must decrease." So the title of the Akkadian moon-god,
Sin, as the increaser of light, is Enu-zu-na, the Lord of waxing.
In the Mithraic mysteries the light one of the twins was designated the
bridegroom, and in one passage we meet with the bridegroom and the
bride, that is the lunar mother of the Twins and Christ as the
bridegroom. John personates the dark one; like Sut-Anup, he is not
the light itself, and only bears witness to the light. The Christ
or Horus was consort to the mother-moon, and the reproducer of himself.
John says of him, "He that hath the bride is the bridegroom; but the
friend of the bridegroom which standeth and heareth him rejoiceth
greatly because of the bridegroom's voice." These three, the bride,
bridegroom, and John, are a perfect replica of the lunar Trinity.
32. John represents the dark half of the moon, the
child of the mother only, and he is unmistakably identified by Jesus in
or as this mythical character when he says of his fore-runner, "Among
them that are born of woman there is none greater than John, yet, he
that is but little in the kingdom of God is greater than he;" that is,
among those who are re-born
in the likeness of the father, as Horus was when
the solar god re-begot him in his own image as the reflection of his
hidden glory reproduced by the new moon—the least of these is greater
than he who was born of the mother alone.
33. As we have seen, the fox and jackal
were both
of them Typhonian types of the dark power, the thief of light in the
moon, and co-types, therefore, with the dragon that swallowed the moon
during an eclipse. Now, the name of Herod in Syriac denotes a red
dragon; and the red dragon in Revelation, which stands ready to devour
the young child that is about to be born, is the mythical form of the
Herod who has been made historical in our gospels. Here the
legendary devourer, the dark half of the lunation. The Germans
have a saying that the wolf is eating the candle when there is what is
still called a thief in it. So the primitive observers saw the
dark encroaching on the light, and they said the wolf, jackal, rat, or
other sly animal was eating the moon as the thief of its light.
This is why Hermes was represented as the thief. In
two different forms of the lunar mythos the jackal and the dog-headed
ape were two types of this thief of the light. And in the zodiac
of Denderah, just where Horus is on the cross, or at the crossing of the
vernal equinox, these two thieves, Sut-Anup and Aan, are depicted one on
either side of the luni-solar god. These two mythical originals
have, I think, been continued and humanised as the two thieves in the
Gospel version of the crucifixion.
34. The character of the thief still clings to the man
in the moon. In a North Frisian folk-tale the man in the moon is
fabled to have stolen branches of willow, or the sallow-palms, which he
has to carry in his hands forever. Here we can identify the
palm-branch of the man in the moon as Egyptian. The palm-branch
was a type of time and periodicity. Hor-Apollo tells us it was
adopted as the symbol of a month, because it alone produces one
additional branch at each renovation of the moon, so that in reckoning
the year is completed in twelve branches. A form of this appears
as the Tree of Life in the book of Revelation. The palm-branch is
carried by Taht, the man in the moon, and scribe of the gods, who
reckoned time by means of the lunations, and this evidently survives in
the Frisian legend. He who once reckoned time by means of the
shoots on the palm-branch became the picker-up or stealer of
willow-wands or sticks, according to the later folk-lore. Also,
when the moon-god was superseded by the sun as the truer reckoner of
time, the character of the lunar deity suffered degradation! We
find the same contention going on as there was between the number
thirteen and twelve. When the year was reckoned by thirteen moons
of twenty-eight days each, thirteen was then the lucky number (a charm
of primroses or a sitting of eggs was thirteen), but when this was
changed for the twelve months of solar time, then the number
thirteen became unlucky or accursed. The day of rest being changed
from Saturday, the old lunar god was charged with being a
Sabbath-breaker. He stole sticks, he strewed
brambles and thorn-bushes on the paths of people who went to church on
Sunday (the day of the Sun). He did not keep the day of rest, but
would go on working, or reckoning time with his palm-branch, Sundays as
well as week-days, and so he was doomed to stand in the moon for all
eternity as a warning to wicked Sabbath-breakers. Taht (or Khunsu)
is the Egyptian man in the moon, who in the dark half of the period was
represented by the dog-headed ape; and from these came our man in the
moon with his dog. The Creek Indians have the same myth.
They say the inhabitants of the moon consist of a man and his dog.
35. The ass was another Typhonian type of the moon.
In an Egyptian representation, it is by the aid of the ass-headed god
Aai that the solar divinity ascends from the under-world where the dark
powers have their time of triumph over him by night. The ass is
pourtrayed in the act of hauling up the sun-god with a rope from the
region below. That is one mode of expressing the fact that the
moon here represented by the ass was the helper of the sun by night, in
his battle against the powers of darkness —gave him a lift up, or, it
may be, a ride. Again, in the Persian form of the lunar myth, it
is the ass that stands on three legs in the midst of the waters, who is
the assistant of Sothis, the dogstar, in keeping time. The three
legs of the ass are a figure of the moon in its three phases of ten days
each, like the three legs of the frog in the Chinese myth. Also,
the head of the ass is an Egyptian hieroglyphic sign which has the
numeral value of thirty, or a soli-lunar month. Thus we find the
ass fighting on the side of the sun by night in the Egyptian mythos, and
against the waters of the deluge, as a timekeeper in the Persian legend.
In the Hebrew version the jaw-bone of the ass, a type of great strength,
becomes the weapon of power with which Samson slays the Philistines, or
fights the sun-god's battle by night against his enemies that lurk in
darkness. The ass, as a lunar type, was also represented as the
bearer of the solar Messiah, just as the cow carries the sun between her
horns as reproducer of his light in the moon. The moon at full was
the genetrix under either type. The lessening, waning moon was her
colt—the foal of an ass. The new moon, as the young lord of light,
came riding in his triumph on the ass, as the new moon on the dark orb
of the old mother-moon! Now, in the apocryphal gospel of James,
called the Protevangelium, the virgin Mary is described as riding on the
ass when Joseph sees her laughing on one side of her face, and crying or
being sad on the other! Which corresponds to the light and dark
halves of the moon. She is lifted from the ass to give birth to
the child of light in the Cave. In the Greek myth Hephaistos
ascends from the under-world riding on the ass, the wine-god having made
him drunk before leading him up to heaven. In the Hebrew version
the Shiloh is to come, binding his ass to the vine, his eyes red with
wine, his garments drenched in the blood of the grape, and he is as
obviously drunk as Hephaistos. This imagery was set in the
planisphere, ages before our era, as the fore-figure and prophecy of
that which was to be fulfilled in the Christian history, according to
the canonical gospels! Now it can be seen how the Messiah
may be said to come riding on an ass, and upon a colt, the foal of an
ass, although it is pitiful enough to give one the heartache, to expose
the miserable pretences under which this mythical Messiah has been
masked in human form, and made to put on the cast-off clothing of the
pagan gods, and play their parts once more; this time to prove the real
presence of a god in the world.
36. It was as the mother-moon that Ishtar of Akkad was
designated "Goddess Fifteen,"—she being named from the full moon in a
month of thirty days. The same fact is signified in the Egyptian
Ritual (ch. 80), when the Woman of the moon at full orb
exclaims,—"I have made the eye of Horus (the mirror of light), when it
was not coming on the festival of the 15th day." She is the Egyptian
form of the the swallower of the moon, is impersonated as a Jewish ruler
who commands all the innocent little ones to be murdered in order that
he may include the child-Christ reborn for the overthrow of him who can
only rule in the kingdom of darkness. Now, if we bear in mind that
fox, jackal, wolf, and dragon are equally Typhonian types of the evil
one, the destroyer, we may possibly interpret a particular epithet
applied to Herod, the destroyer, by the Christ in the gospel according
to Luke. When Jesus is told that Herod would fain kill him, "he
said unto them, Go and say to that fox, behold I cast out devils
and perform cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I am
perfected." The scene is obviously in the underworld, where the moon-god
descended during the three dark nights before he rose again or was
perfected on the third day. It was here that the god as
Khunsu, the caster-out of demons, or Horus, performed cures and
exorcised the evil spirits that infested the departed in their
underground passage where the dragon Herod, or the Typhonian reptile
Herrut, lurked, and sought to kill the healer of the diseased and
deliverer of the dead.
37. Having identified Herod, the mythical monster,
with the dragon, and as the fox, we may carry the parallel a
little farther, and perhaps identify him as the traditional murderer of
John!
38. As already shown, in the Christian continuation of
the legend, John takes the place of Taht-Aan, the dark one of the lunar
twins. John and Jesus are equivalent to Aan and Horus. In
the Apocryphal or Legendary Lore, John is often identified with
and identified as the primary Messiah! He is so in the
Apocryphal Gospel of James. In this, Herod is seeking the life of
the Divine child, and he sends his servants to kill John. We read
that "Herod sought after John, and sent his servant to Zachariah saying,
'Where hast thou hidden thy son?' and Herod said 'his son is going to be
the King of Israel." Here it is John who is to be the infant
Messiah whose life is sought by the destroyer Herod, and the fact,
according to the true mythos, is that John represents the first and that
one of the lunar twins whom Herod, or the Typhonian devourer, does put
an end to, because he personates the dark half of the lunation, the
waning, lessening moon, that darkens down and dies. In the Zodiac
of Denderah we see the figure of Anup pourtrayed with his head
cut off; and I doubt not that the decapitated Aan or Anup is the
prototype of the Gospel John who was beheaded by Herod. In the
planisphere Anup stands headless just above the river of the Waterman,
the Greek Eridanus, Egyptian Iarutana, the Hebrew Jordan; and we are
told that the Mandaites, who were amongst the followers of John, had a
tradition that the river Jordan ran red with the blood which flowed from
the headless body of John.
39. As I have previously pointed out, the Christ of
the Gospel according to Luke has several features in common with the
moon-god Khunsu, the healer of lunatics and persons possessed, who was
likewise lord over the pig, a type of Typhon, the evil power.
Khunsu followed Taht, as child of the sun and moon, after Taht had been,
so to say, divinized into invisibility. Taht-Khunsu is the visible
representative, who registers the decrees of the hidden Deity, Amen-Ra,
the god who seeth in secret. He is particularly the god of health
and long life. It is said that he gives years to those whom he
chooses, solicits the superior powers for an extension of the lease of
life, or "asks years" for whomsoever he likes, and increases life in
fulness and in length for those who do his will! "Life comes from
him, health is in him, Khunsu-Taht, the reckoner of time." This is
because he personated that renewal of light and time which was monthly
in the moon. Khunsu is the supreme healer amongst the Egyptian
gods, more especially as the caster-out of demons and exorciser of evil
spirits. He is called the driver-away of obsessing influences, the
great god, chaser of possessors, and is literally the lunar deity who
cures what are now termed lunatics.
40. And it is in this character that the Christ of
Luke is particularly pourtrayed. Chief of the suffering and
afflicted who came to be healed by the Christ were the
selhniaxomšnoi, or those who were lunatic. Curiously enough
they came to him on the mountain, where the swine were feeding—that is,
where the moon-god, Khunsu, holds the typical pig in his hand, denoting
the casting out of Typhon, the Egyptian devil. For it is on the
mount of the moon, or in the moon at full, that Khunsu is depicted as
the driver-out of demons and expeller of the powers of darkness, the
enemy of Sut-Typhon, the Egyptian Satan, whose presence is represented
by the pig.
41. In the Ute mythology, the Hero, as divine teacher
of men, sits on the summit of a mountain to think. He says
repeatedly,—"I sat on the top of a mountain, and did think." In the
Egyptian Mythos, preserved by the Gnostics, Hermes is the divine
teacher, who not only thinks, but preaches the Sermon on the Mount.
The transfiguration of Osiris in the mount of the moon occurred upon the
6th day of the new moon. This ascent of the lunar moon after six
days is repeated in our gospels, and can be paralleled in a myth of the
Buddha's transfiguration on the mount. Here, the six glories of
the Buddha's head shone out with a radiance that blinded the sight of
mortals and opened the spirit-vision, so that men could see spirits and
spirits could see men. It was on the mount of the moon that Satan
shewed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and at
that height it may not have been necessary for him to have shewn
them, as was explained by a German critic, "in a map." In Buddha's first
temptation the dark Mâra causes the earth to turn round, like the
potter's wheel, for him to see all the kingdoms of the world, and he
promises him that he shall rule the whole four quarters! The
quarters are lunar. By comparing the various myths with the Gospel
versions, we find that
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