Chapter
XIV
FIRE
ON HEAVEN’S HEARTH
The way is now cleared for the
majestic sweep of the fire symbolism. It rises above the other elements in
grandeur and impressiveness. The full implication of its meaning lifts the mind
into reaches of luminous suggestiveness as to the splendor of the experience
awaiting us in nobility, and even as a mere figure it has a certain power to
stir dim intimations of the magnificence of that reality which it hints at.
There is in nature hardly a phenomenon more wonderful than the eating away of a
stick of wood by a flame. The mystery of all life is back of that energic
display. And the mystery becomes awesome when we realize that our own life is
more than analogous to fire; it is of kindred nature with it. The soul within us
is a spark of divine flame.
The origin of the word is of
interest. It goes back to the Greek pur(pyr). Massey traces the
word "pyramid" from the stem, plus the Egyptian met, meaning
"ten" or "a measure," giving us pyramet. He asserts
that it stands thus for the ten original measures or arcs traced by the god of
fire, the sun, through the zodiacal circuit. As the great pyramid at Gizeh, and
others, seem to have been intimately related to sidereal measurements, this
theory of origin is plausible. The word would then mean "a ten-form measure
of fire," a figure for manifest life.
But the Greek pur itself
traces back to the Chaldean ur, primitive word for "fire." To
this the Egyptians added their article "the" as prefix, in the form of
p-, making the word p-ur or pur. The first emanation,
Abraham, came out from ur, the primal fire of creation.
The Sanskrit Agni, god of
fire, is traced by Massey to the general root, ag, meaning "to move
quickly," as in the Latin ago, "to go," agile (Lat.),
"active," our "agitate" and others. As this derivation links
it closely to the Greek theos, "god," who by etymology is the
"swift runner," "the swift goer," Agni, god of fire, may
well be connected
303
with the theos, the god whose
symbol everywhere is the swift-darting shaft of fire, whether in the heavens or
in the uplands of reason and intelligence. The "flash of intelligence"
is the exact sign and token of the swift activity of the god within us.
That the soul is a spark from the
celestial fire is attested by the words of the Speaker in the Ritual (Ch.
97): "Lo I come from the lake of flame, from the lake of fire, and from the
field of flame, and I live."
In the Vision of Scipio Cicero
has preserved some of the ancient doctrine concerning the derivation of souls
from the empyrean. The spirit of Africanus tells his son that souls were
supplied to men from the eternal fires, which are constellations and stars.
Virgil says that in souls there is a potency like fire. In the Hymn to
Minerva of Proclus, souls originate
"From the great father’s
fount, supremely bright,
Like fire resounding, leaping into
light."
One of the Chaldean Oracles runs
as follows:
"The soul being a splendid
fire, through the power of the Father remains immortal, is the mistress of life
. . . the soul extends vital illumination to body."
And again most succinctly:
"All things are the progeny of
one fire."
The first Oracle of Zoroaster tells
of a ladder which reached from Tartarus to the first or highest fire. This was
the gamut of stages between the lowest levels of material life and the highest
spiritual. The principle of soul, says the Oracle, is the operator and giver of
life-bearing fire. It fills the vivific bosom of Hecate (the lower nature) and
pours on the linked natures of matter and spirit the fertile strength of a fire
endured with mighty power. Concerning divine Love the Oracle speaks:
"Who first leaped forth from
intellect, clothing fire bound together with fire, that he might govern the
fiery cratera (bowls), restraining the flower of his own fire."
When Ceres delivered up the
government to Proserpina, her daughter (intellect to soul), she instructed her
to have conjugal relation
304
with Apollo, the sun-god, as thus
the god would beget "famed offspring, with faces glowing with refulgent
fire."
The upper fire, the Oracles affirm,
did not shut up its power in matter, nor in works, but in intellect. "For
the artificer of the fiery world is an intellect of intellect." Saturn,
who in the Oracles is the first fountain, the strong spirit which is
beyond the fiery poles, endues all the lower principles with his essence. These,
through his pervading might, "become refulgent with the furrows of
inflexible and implacable fire." They "are the intellectual
conceptions from the paternal fountain, plucking abundantly the flower of the
fire of ceaseless time." And that our progress upward is a return to a
fiery nature is shown by these excerpts:
"A fire-heated conception has
the first order. For the mortal who approaches to fire will receive a light from
divinity; . . ."
"A singular fire extends itself
by leaps through the waves of air; or an infigured fire, whence a voice runs
before; or a light beheld near, every way splendid, resounding and convolved.
But also behold a horse full of refulgent light; or a boy carried on a swift
horse--a boy fiery or clothed with gold."
"Rivers being mingled, perfect
the works of incorruptible fire."
It was the statement of Greek
philosophy that "from the exhalations arising from the burning bodies of
the Titans, mankind were produced."1
An echo of this abstrusity of
esoteric lore is heard in the accounts of the Wiradthuri tribe of Western
Australia. One of their initiations is apparently the analogue of the whole
basic structure of religion, represented in a fire drama. In the puberty
initiations the lads were frightened by a large fire lighted near them, being
told that the Dhur-Moolan was about to burn them. This god was supposed to take
them into the bush and instruct them in all the traditional customs. So he went
through a pretended killing of the boys, cutting them up and burning the
pieces to ashes, after which he molded the ashes into human shape and restored
them to life as new beings.2 Primitive ignorance may be the nursery of
superstition, but much alleged primitive ignorance is old wisdom surviving in
ruinous grandeur by the implacable power of tradition.
In the Clementine Homilies (8:18)
the offspring of the unnatural
305
and untimely union between the sons
of God and the daughters of men described in Genesis are declared to be
"bastards, begotten of the fire of angels and the blood of
women." The gods are rebuked for polluting themselves with women, "as
the sons of men do," and for creating a hybrid and unworthy progeny whose
destruction they would in the future lament. (Enoch 12)
Many tribes held the fire-fly, which
thrives in moist grasses, to be a typical emblem of our divinity. Its periodical
flashing in the dark is suggestive.
The Logia and Revelation both
yield data on the theme of fire. At the first angel’s trumpet message there
ascended on the earth a hail of fire which was scattered from the Altar of Fire
before the throne. "And the hail of fire was mingled with the blood of the
Lamb; these were cast upon earth to consume away its evil." Horus had said
that he came to put an end to evil. At the second angel’s blast lightning
flashed forth and went down into the sea, which it changed into blood. We
have seen that a hail of stars or sparks over the earth was the typical
figuration of the descent of the bright deities. The Egyptian ceremony of
flinging a blazing cross into the Nile conveys the same connotation. The deities
in incarnation were styled by the Greeks water-nymphs. A cross on fire thrust
into water carried the purport of the sacrificial act of incarnation. A fiery
serpent on the cross is a kindred emblem. The Targum commands: "Make thee a
burning." In India the swastika cross was a special emblem of fire, the god
Agni. In the early Church the cross of fire was adorned on a Friday, when a
lighted cross was suspended from the dome of St. Peter’s, the cross being
covered with lamps in a fire-traced figure. Dante describes the souls in
Paradise as praying inside a cross of fire, which is their world. The hawk is a
symbol of solar fire, and Horus arose hawk-headed or divinized with fire.
When Lucifer fell upon the earth and
with his key unlocked the pit of the abyss, there issued from it clouds of smoke
like that which proceeds from a great furnace, and it obscured the light of the
sun! That is to say, the mingled steam and exhalation from electrolyzed
"water" and ‘burning flesh," or the carnal nature vivified by
currents of deific potency, rose all around the god and well nigh obscured his
inner glow. And out of the smoke came forth locusts and scorpions, having power
to sting and poison. And these went forth to torment all the
306
dwellers on earth; only they could
not harm those who had not the mark of the Beast on them. The army of horsemen
that came forth to battle these forms of evil coming out of the smoke appeared
as if "emitting fire." This fire scorched those who love to do
wickedness, and drove them back into the pit. This denotes the burning out of
those strong animal propensities in the fiery furnace of human experience.
Proclus in his Timaeus (Lib. V) observes concerning the telestic art that
"it obliterates through divine fire all the stains produced by
generation." This is the true and only meaning of purgatory.
Another angel descended with a
rainbow on his head, his face was as the sun for brightness and his feet were
resting upon pillars of fire. This lower fire searched the lives of all on earth
and filled with pain those who bore the mark of the Beast.
In the Book of Overthrowing Apap this
arch-fiend and his associates, the Sami and the Sebau (minions of Seb), are
burnt up by the flames of the sun-god. In the Book of Am-Tuat the bodies,
souls, shadows and heads of the enemies of Ra are burnt and consumed daily in
pits of fire. In the eighth section of the Book of Gates a picture is
drawn of a monster speckled serpent called "Kheti," with seven folds,
in each one of which stands a god. The open mouth of the serpent belches a
stream of fire into the faces of the enemies of Ra, whose arms are tied behind
their backs in agonized helplessness. Horus stands by, urging the reptile to
consume the enemies of his father. In the Book of Am-Tuat there is
also a group of twelve serpents, whose work was to pour fire from their bodies
"which was to light the dead sun-god on his way." The soul of the god,
typed often as "the Eye of Ra," is described as "the flame which
followeth after Osiris to burn up the souls of his enemies." "Uatchet,
the Lady of Flames, is the Eye of Ra." Ra is addressed as "Thou who
givest blasts of fire from thy mouth, (who makest the two lands bright with thy
radiance)." The Manes who come out of Amenta pure "shall have burnt
incense before Ra."
The inner idea of burning animal
flesh on a physical altar was the consuming by divine fire of the dross that
emanated from the carnal segment in man. The god came into the natural man to
transfigure him. To achieve this aeonial labor his fire had to burn out slowly
the grosser elements, earthy and moist, by spiritual alchemy and replace them by
subtle and pure essence akin to its own diviner substance. A Buddhist phrase,
"the gross purgations of the celestial fire," attests the
307
nature of the chemistry that must
take place. The burning up of dross to refine pure metal is a glib poetic
shibboleth in philosophy, but few know that it is a description of an actual
bio-chemical process taking place in human life. All our lower emotionalism and
heavier sensualism is as fuel for the burning. The lurid flare of such a
combustion is only turned to pure clear flame by pain and defeat. Animal
sacrifice on an altar was only to dramatize the conversion of lower man to
higher under the action of fiery spiritual energies. And it is significant that
the ancients swore, not by the altar, but by the fire which was on the altar.
One would not swear by the impermanent part of his nature, but by the stable and
abiding. This was the fire of soul and conscience. The inner fire, imprisoned in
body, strives to burn its way into flame. But its fuel is moist and damp--green
wood--and it must first slowly dry out the resistant mass. The grossly
misunderstood phrase, "the wrath of God," is just this steady
consuming of obstructing material.
Says the Eternal, then, in Deuteronomy
(32), when he notes that his sons have sacrificed to "demons, to
no-gods, to gods who are utter strangers, to new-comers of gods""
"For a self-willed race are
they,
Children devoid of loyalty.
My wrath has flared up,
flaming to the nether world itself,
burning up earth and all it bears,
setting the roots of the hills
ablaze.
.
. . . .
From Sinai came the Eternal,
from Seir he dawned on us;
from Paran’s range he rayed out,
blazing in fire from the south.
It is given in the Ritual (Ch.
108) that "the Osiris, triumphant, knoweth the name of this serpent. . . .
‘Dweller in his fire’ is his name."
The Manes "opens the doors of
heaven by the flames which are about the abode of the gods; he advances through
the fire which is about the home of the gods, who make a way for him, to make
him pass onwards, for he is Horus."
According to another text, "Horus
led the deceased through the abode of the gods situated among the flames of
fire."
308
Sut and Horus are the
representatives of the dual life of man, and are the divine twins, the first of
whom, Sut, brings the water of the inundation to submerge the fire of deity in
the sea of generation; and the second, Horus, brings the rebirth of the fire
within the very borders of the sea of life. Both were astrologically united in
the star Sut-Canopus. In an Australian myth the hawk brought the fire to the
aborigines.
A typical mythical account of the
war in heaven and descent of the fire-devas to earth is found in another
Australian legend of the bandicoot who had a firebrand, but refused to share it.
This was the rebellion. The hawk and the pigeon were deputed to get it. The
pigeon made a lunge for it, whereupon the bandicoot desperately hurled it toward
the water to put it out. But the hawk deflected it into the grass over the sea,
which caught fire. The hawk and pigeon (dove) are birds of soul-fire, the
bandicoot the bird of darkness, a type of the water that put out the solar fire.
All through the world’s Märchen
one finds that fire is often dual, the first being the natural fire, as of
lightning, flint-fire and other forms; the second is a fire that is human in
origin, requiring mind to achieve it.
Sut and Horus, as the human duality,
are typed in the two phases, light and dark, of the moon. Sut is the black
vulture (which lives on blood) and Horus the golden hawk. The lunar ibis, bird
of Ptah, is black and white, and portrays the two natures in one creature. There
is a legend of a black raven that once was white. In a Thlinker tradition the
white bird is represented as becoming black in passing up the flue of Kanukh’s
fire-place. This is a form of the phoenix which transforms from black to
white (or into the golden hawk) and from white to black in its passage to and
from the underworld, which is called Kanukh’s flue.
A prayer in the Ritual (Ch.
163) begs the god to "grant that the flame may leave the fire, wherever it
may be, to raise up the hands of Osiris," which were bandaged to the sides
of his inert body in the mummy case. Osiris is himself appealed to, as the
Governor of Amenta, to "grant light and fire to the happy soul which is in
Sutenkhenen (Heracleopolis)," the underworld. Samson’s bound arms were
freed by the burning away of his flaxen bonds. The soul (in Ch. 63B) says that
Ra has "lifted up the moist emanations of Osiris from the
309
Lake of Fire and he was not
burned." "A fire was kindled for thee in the hands of the goddess
Rerit [the hippopotamus goddess of the Nile, i.e., the virgin mother]; she
performeth acts of protection for thee every day." The Manes is exhorted to
"kindle the fire in order that the flame may rise up; and throw incense
upon it in order that the smell of incense may rise up." A chapter (137A)
deals with the four blazing flames which are made for the Khu or spirit. The
flame riseth, it is said, in Abru (Abydos) and it cometh to the Eye of Horus. It
is set in order on the brow of Osiris and on his breast, and is fixed within his
shrine. The Rubric specifies that this chapter shall be recited over the four
fires made of anointed atma3 cloth, and the fires shall be placed in the
hands of four men who shall have the names of the four pillars of Horus written
on their shoulders. It is promised that the soul that undertakes to perform the
offices of this chapter of the Four Blazing Fires each day shall find release
from every hall in the underworld and from the seven halls of Osiris. The four
men are the four guardians of the cardinal points, upholding man at the four
corners of his being, or in his four bodies.
The Manes says again: "I am the
Great One, son of the Great One; I am Fire, son of Fire, to whom was given his
head after it was cut off." The descent was symbolized as a cutting off of
the head, since intellect was lost.
The genetrix of the seven stars is
called the keeper of fire, the spark-holder.
Sut signifies
"Fire-stone," according to Massey. Oddly enough, lightning was
anciently regarded as the dart of a fiery stone, and it has the name of the
fire-stone widely attached to it among many peoples. So we have Jesus saying,
"I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." But the name likely
has also a reference to the flint-stone fire, as potential fire locked up in
stone. Indeed flint was a frequent symbol of the buried deific potency. One of
the Mexican legends reports the Mother-Creatrix as having given birth to a flint
knife, which fell on earth and became the origin of men. The flint is a graphic
symbol of the presence of hidden fire in the physical world. In the same fashion
a god (fire) is buried invisibly within the body of physical humanity. Flint
nurses the potentiality of the birth of fire within it! "When the
Serpent-lightning darted out of the cloud it buried itself in the earth,
310
leaving its stone-head in the
aerolith of smelted sand." It was called the Thunder-hatchet. (Records
of the Past.)
The element of fire was regarded as
latent in both wood and stone, needing effort, force, a blow or heat to bring it
forth. Fire, with its eternal intimation of spirit, was regarded as the divine
inner essence of these materials, a conception now endorsed by late science.
When the Mystery candidate came
forth from the examination he was asked what the judges have awarded him and he
replies: "A flame of fire and a pillar of crystal." (Ch. 125.)
The Quiché name for lightning is
Cak-ul-ha, that is, "fire coming from water"; and the serpent of fire
and the serpent of water are one, ultimately. The winged serpent signified
winged lightning.
The Old Testament (Exod. 24:12)
declares that the glory of the Lord was in appearance like a devouring fire on
top of the mount. The Psalms (18) say that he "thundered in the
heavens. He made darkness his secret place; a smoke issued from his nostrils and
devouring fire out of his mouth . . . and he hurtled stones and coals of
fire." He is called the "Lightning-sender." In Exodus (20)
the Eternal descended in fire upon a cloud. Here is the mingling of fire and
water again. "Smoke rose like steam from a kiln, till the people all
trembled terribly." The lightning only flashed on the third day, a
significant fact explained later.
In most of these illustrations the
fire alluded to is that of upper intelligence flashing forth to enlighten the
natural order. But this fire, in its contact with the watery and earthly
elements of the carnal self, stirs up steam, sulphurous exhalations, fumes,
noxious gases and dust, and in this transformation it becomes truly a fire of
Tophet and Hades! Nevertheless it is still the purifying fire. As washing by
water was an emblem of purgation, so fumigation was a companion type. Says
Massey:
"Amenta was the land of
precious metals and the furnace of solar fire. Hence Ptah, the miner, became the
blacksmith of the gods, the Kamite Vulcan."4
If, then, the earth is the furnace
of fire, there can be no quibbling about the meaning of the vivid narrative of
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, the three who were cast into the fiery furnace,
in Daniel. It is only another allegory of the solar triadic god, in his
three prin-
311
ciples of mind-soul-spirit, embodied
in the sphere of flesh, typed now as a fiery furnace. The Manes, who is spirit in
this furnace, is shown his Ka, his pure higher soul, as a means of aiding
him to remember his name in the great house, "in the crucible of the
great house of flame." One of the chapters is designed to be read so
that its magical potency may enable the Manes to "escape from every
fire." In another the soul prays (Ch. 17) to be "delivered from the
god who liveth upon the damned, whose face is that of a hound, but whose
skin is that of a man," "at the angle of the pool of
fire." Here is the man and animal combined, another of the oft-recurring
glyphs of our duality. And where the man and the animal are united, where they
meet, is the pool of fire!
In the Psalms it is said,
"They go through fire and through water" and are "brought out
into a place of abundance." "So," says Edward Carpenter,
"was the Greek Hercules, who overcame death though his body was consumed in
the burning garment of mortality out of which he rose to heaven."5
The Book of Judges (6)
recounts how at the sacrifices for the Eternal, the meat and the unleavened
bread which the angel had commanded Gideon to "put on the rock
yonder," were touched by the tip of the wand in the angel’s hand, at
which "fire spurted out of the rock and burned up the meat and the cakes.
So Gideon realized it was an angel of the Eternal."
In Exodus (12) the directions
from the Eternal to the Israelites were that the meat of the sacrificial
offering was "not to be eaten raw or boiled in water, but roasted in fire,
head and legs and all." The true food for man to consume is not that
immersed in his lower watery nature, but that transformed into suitable
spiritual nourishment by the fire of spirit alone. It is to be recalled that the
Titans first boiled the members of Bacchus in water and afterwards roasted them
in fire. The fiery force of deity had caused the lower elements to seethe and
boil; when the moisture (carnality) was all dried out, the remainder of the
process was a "roasting."
The immolation of Jephthah’s
daughter as a burnt sacrifice appears to be another figuration of the
divinization of the mortal (feminine) nature after two and a fraction aeons. For
she asked permission to bewail her unfruitfulness for two months in the hills.
Hill or hills is a frequent glyph for earth. To burn her up was not to destroy
her, so we
312
can save our tears. It was to set
her on fire with a brighter purer flame.
Gideon’s routing of the Midianites
"in the valley below" by the smashing of the clay pitchers in which
were lighted torches, is of extremely apt relevance in the terms of the
symbology of fire and water. A pitcher is a water container, but these were
empty. The water had been dried up, and the fire burned unquenched. The water of
sense burned out, the only remaining task for the spirit, to consummate its full
release from its prison, was to rend asunder the veil of flesh, the body. This
was achieved in the shattering of the clay pitchers. The Midianites are the
multitude of lower impulses, ever the adversaries, the enemies. They flee and
vanish the moment they see the divine fire glow forth in its full release of
hidden power!
The story of Samson, a typical solar
hero, provides splendid exemplification of the fire symbology. When he was
delivered over to the Philistines (the lower propensities again) he was bound
with two new ropes. But when the Philistines were about to punish him, "the
spirit of the Eternal inspired him mightily, the ropes around his arms became
like flax that has caught fire, the bonds melted off his hands." The
god within burned away his bonds. A whole chapter of exposition could not add
force to the sublime meaning here pictured.
It is appropriate to consider the
beautiful emblemism of the "pillar of cloud by day and of fire by
night," whereby the Eternal manifested his guiding presence with his
children on their mundane journey. In the full glare of the blinding light of
divinity, some watery veil is necessary to intervene between us and the
overpowering glory. The Eternal put his hand over Moses’ eyes while his glory
passed by. Man’s face must be veiled in the presence of deity. God interposes
the veil of matter between us and his hidden spirit. This is the cloud by day.
But in the evolutionary night time, when the soul is deeply submerged in
material darkness, there is needed the shining of the pillar of fire. It is the
moon by night. In the Elysian or paradisical realms the angels are represented
as refreshing themselves in bowers of shade or cloud. Shade is grateful in the
summer. But on earth the buried god needs light. The gross physical sense of the
moving pillars is impossible. A marching column of some two million people, and
some twenty miles long, would need to rest at night, whereas the literal
translation would presuppose their needing a light to guide their nocturnal
march.
313
Then there is that other great
religious usage, the significance of which no mind can fail to sense in all its
dynamic admonition for humanity. Many nations felt it incumbent, under the
strength of the most powerful obligations, to maintain a fire perpetually
burning on the central hearth of the nation. In Rome a class of virgins, chosen
for physical and spiritual purity, were put in charge of the Vestal Fire, and
death was the penalty for letting it die out. Likewise, as is not so generally
known, death by burial alive was the penalty for sexual intercourse, inflicted
remorselessly upon these maidens. This, too, was regarded as a letting of the
spiritual fire on the hearth of life go out. The ancients knew that if once the
spark of empyreal fire kindled in the moist nature of the earthy man was
permitted to die out, it was the second and irretrievable death of the soul.
That portion or fragment of deity that was sent into the flesh could be
divulsed entirely from its linkage to heaven--the silver cord could be cut--and
the soul lost, for the rest of the aeonial cycle. The 64th chapter of the Ritual
is to be recited in order that the person may not die a second time,
"but may come forth and escape from the fire." To escape the second
death the Manes had to keep the sacred fire aglow.
In the elaborate ceremony conducted
over the mummy, there was one act which stands out in the sharp forcefulness of
its meaning. The Rubric to the 137th chapter says that the figure of the mummy
was to be smeared with bitumen (the same substance was used to caulk the wicker
boat in which Moses and Sargon floated among the reeds) and set fire to. This
was to figure the lower nature being lighted up by the fire of the higher. The
life of the god, says Budge naively, "sometimes takes the form of a flame
of fire." Budge adds: "These ceremonies are said to be ‘an
exceedingly great mystery of Amenta and a type of the hidden things of the other
world.’"6 Again we see the scholar’s mind stultified by want of that
one key to ancient books: that this world is Amenta. For the mystery
pertains to the hidden things of no other world than this one we know. But it
is, of course, a type of the mysteries of all other cosmic worlds.
Then there is the "burning
bush" of Moses. "When he looked there was the thorn-bush ablaze with
fire, yet not consumed" (Ex. 2). "The angel of the Eternal
appeared to him in a flame of fire rising out of the thorn-bush." To be
sure, the fire rises out of the natural order, sym-
314
boled by a bush. The figure of the
burning bush seems to offer no more significance than the "golden
bough" of classical lore, or the branch of the sycamore-fig that burns with
fire but is not consumed. Horus indeed was typed as the "golden unbu"
(branch) from his mother’s tree. No fact in nature lends itself with more
felicity to the idea of new life from old than that of the bright new shoot (as
of the pine) at the end of last season’s more darkly colored growth. Its
lighter color is significant of new glory. As Jesus was the shoot of the vine
(also Horus), his Egyptian mythical designation would have been the "golden
unbu." In the texts the unbu is the symbol of the son reborn
from the dead father. There is a figure of the disk of light raying all ablaze
from the summit of the sycamore-fig, which thus appears to burn with fire, but
is not burned. The Manes approaches the holy emblem without shoes, salutes the
tree and addresses the god in the solar fire: "Shine on me, O unknown soul.
I draw near to the god whose words were heard by me in the lower earth" (Ch.
64). One is now prepared to sense the meaning of the bright-spangled star that
tops our Christmas pine tree. And by the same token one can know the cryptic
meaning of the Star of Bethlehem. Need it be added that the burning bush is just
the symbol of nature’s "green" product, the first Adam, being
divinized to golden splendor by the touch of the god’s spiritual fire? Any
green tree or stalk or stem, tipped at its summit by the bright-hued flower,
furnishes the same moral. Human life is to flower out at its summit in radiant
colors. And we set fire to the Yule log.
An old English legend identifies the
golden bough of Horus with the bush that flowered at Christmas, the Glastonbury
thorn. The flowering at Christmas depicts the birth of the solar god at the
solstice, the application of which to individual spiritual history will be
examined later. Says Horus (Ch. 42): "I am Unbu, who proceedeth from Nu,
and my mother is Nut." Again: "I am Unbu of An-ar-ef, the flower in
the abode of occultation," or in the fleshly world of hiding. Possession of
the golden bough in classical mythology was the passport of release from the
underworld.
There is, also, the flaming
two-edged sword of the angel set to guard the tree of life in the garden. Origen
says that the Gnostic diagram of this symbol was as follows: "The flaming
sword was depicted as the diameter of a flaming circle, and as if mounting guard
over
315
the tree of knowledge and of
life." There is doubtless much mystical, astrological and other occult
symbolism in the sign; but in relation to the human situation its meaning seems
to be simpler. Man’s life here is cast between the two fires of heaven and
earth, the bright fire of celestial splendor and the lurid one of earth. They
are of course two aspects or modifications of the same one fire. Hence his life
is cut by the fire that catches him on both sides, upper and lower. The fire of
life consumes in both directions. It lights and it also burns. It glows in
beauteous glory; it painfully consumes the lower self. Heaven is fiery; so is
hell. As the waters were sundered, so was the divine fire. The flaming sword is
the eternal reminder of the two-edgedness of our nature. The doubleness of the
fire that has come to deify us is announced in the line in the Ritual: "Pepi
is the country (or the god) Setit, the conqueror of the Two Lands, whose
flame receives its two portions." We are bathed in "the Pool of the
Double Fire." The Two Lands are the two areas or fields of our dual
selfhood. Man is to conquer the twoness of his being, merging the two portions
into one new creation. The Ritual says that "he cultivates the Two
Lands, he pacifies the Two Lands, he unites the Two Lands." It says also
that "he cultivates the crops on both sides of the horizon."
John Baptist’s statement in the New
Testament is a mighty affirmation of the truth of what is here presented. He
represented the lower man, antecedent and preparatory to the spiritual self. He
bears the symbolism of water (if not of earth), as Jesus does that of fire and
air. For his statement yet rings down the centuries of Christian theology:
"I indeed baptize you with water, but he that cometh after me shall
baptize you with the Holy Spirit [Latin: spiritus, "air"!] and
with fire." The man born of the natural or maternal order (man born of
woman) alone, preceded him that was born of the Father’s divine spirit. Again
our thesis is dramatically vindicated by "scripture."
Iamblichus tells us that the three
golden apples of Hesperides are: (1), Illumination; (2), A communion of
operation; and, (3), A perfect plenitude of Divine Fire.7
A mass of testimony could be drawn
from the Bible to stress the prominence of the fire typology. Isaiah strongly
enjoins us (50, 11): "Behold all ye that kindle a fire, that compass
yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks
that ye have kindled." Job admonishes evildoers (18:5): "Yea, the
light of the
316
wicked shall be put out and the
spark of his fire shall not shine. The light shall be dark in his tabernacle,
and his candle shall be put out with him." Paul says that if we awake
"from the dead," "Christ will shine upon" us. Isaiah says
that we wait for the light, and exhorts us to "arise, shine, for thy light
is come." John says that "light is come into the world"
and "that was the true light" when the Christos arrived. He
declares that the only condemnation was the world’s rejection of the light
when it came. The Psalmist says that the Lord is his light and his salvation and
that "light is sown for the righteous." "In thy light shall we
see light." Jesus said: "When I am in the world I am the light of the
world." He assured the righteous that they were the light of the world,
that indeed they needed no other light to lighten their path, as they had light
in themselves. The Lord made his ministers a flame of fire. "The Lord God is
a sun and a shield"--the pillar and the cloud, the meaning of which,
clear at last, is simply spirit and matter. When there was darkness over the
land of Egypt, "the Israelites had light in their dwellings." And this
is not speaking of rush lights in Egyptian huts, but spiritual light in physical
bodies. Jesus was "the sun of righteousness" and at the end of
human evolution "the righteous shall shine like the sun." And
if there is needed a pointblank utterance from the Bible to cover our claim, it
might be found in the line from the Psalms: "Our God is a living
fire." For a long series of generations Christendom has set fire to the
Yule log and lighted candles on the Christmas tree. Yet there is hardly a child
in the West that could give a reason for these rites that would convey a modicum
of the truth. For the venerable teaching that nature put forth on its topmost
bough a bright effulgence of deity, a bright flower at the top of the green
stem, a shining god at the summit of elemental creation, has long been lost. Yet
the Christ has come, bringing and distributing "that light that lighteth
every man that cometh into the world."
The fire emblem has become involved
in a host of combinations with other types, and its play in all mythology is
extensive. Many of these references to it carry valuable implications.
The ancient Apt, mother of the
world, is called "the kindler of sparks," the "kindler of light
for the deceased in the dark of death" (Rit., Ch. 137: Vign: Papyrus
of Nebseni). Thus the old first bringer of rebirth is the kindler of light
in the sepulcher--of earth. Mary Mag-
317
dalene who is her counterpart in the
Gospel version, comes to the tomb "early, while it is yet dark," and
finds the stone moved away and light kindled at the tomb sufficient to see by.
Chapter 137B is entitled: "Of kindling a flame by Nebseni, the scribe in
the temple of Ptah."
The great classical fable of
Prometheus bears relations to the fire sign. The myth is not entirely unique.
There is, for instance, the Hindu tale of the monster (Titan) Rahu, who smuggled
himself into the presence of the Gods of light and drank the Amrit-juice of
immortality. He was cut in two, but could not be destroyed, by Indra, and
the two halves were set as signs in the heavens at the places of the lunar
eclipses.
That the Promethean myth is not
entirely to be dissociated from the story of the Galilean savior is shown by the
fact that, according to Carpenter, "Prometheus, the greatest and earliest
benefactor of the human race, was nailed by hands and feet, and with arms
extended, to the rocks of Mt. Caucasus."8 When one knows that this figure
fastened to a cross or rock is but the outward dramatization of the truth of the
god’s impalement on the stake of matter, all historical realism connected with
it becomes revolting.
The Titans were styled in the
Mysteries "Thyrsus-bearers, and Prometheus concealed fire in a thyrsus or
reed; after which he was considered as bringing celestial light into generation
or leading soul into body, or calling forth the divine illumination."9 The
natural order harbors in it the seeds of spiritual growth.
Massey quite plausibly allocates to
the word "Teitan" the "number of the Beast" given in Revelation
as 666. He argues that the triple "S" on the Gnostic stones,
represents this number, "S" equaling 6. SSS then equals 666. It was a
sign of the six elementary creations that prepare the way for the seventh. He
traces the value of the letters as follows:
T ............... 300
E ............... 5
I ............... 10
T ............... 300
A ............... 50
N ............... 1
____
666
The statement that the Beast lost
one of its heads, which was afterwards restored and healed (Cf. a similar case
in the Egyptian mythos) is interpreted by him to mean that the descent of
the Titanic hosts was the figurative equivalent of the loss of the head or
intellect to be regained in the evolutionary sequel. The sevenfold corpus of
deity,
318
minus one of its heads, was thus
numerically reduced from seven to six. Man, then, is to be regarded as a
sevenfold being suffering the temporary loss of his (divine) intellect, or head,
which he is striving to restore or heal. We must round out the Beast in us by
giving him a head of intelligence. There is still more to this typology of seven
minus one. The fabled Mt. Meru "is also described as being intersected by
six parallel ranges running east and west. Six is typed by the hexagon or space
in six directions"--a symbol of our life in this three-dimensional world,
where the cube of six sides is the typical shape of any existential object. The
six parallel ranges are the six planes beneath the topmost level, where the
"heart of Bacchus" was preserved when the mental body was dismembered.
Says Proclus in the Timaeus: "The Framer made the heavens six in
number, and for the seventh he cast into the midst the fire of the sun."
This was the crowning of nature’s six elementary kingdoms with the element of
mind, or the first injection of intellect into the evolutionary creation in and
through the person of man, Atum-Ra, the first god-born race. Nature struggles
upward through six degrees of material coarseness, till her product, animal-man,
is sufficiently sensitized to be made the vehicle of Manas, or Mind.
Job (5:19)
relates six and seven mysteriously in a remarkable statement: "He shall
deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven, there shall no evil touch
thee." Trouble is associated with six and deliverance from it with seven.
Life is captive and harassed during its long peregrinations upward through the
three sub-atomic "elemental kingdoms" in the invisible world, the
preliminary stages in the formation of matter out of empty space, and the
mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms in the visible atomic world; and
intelligence comes in the seventh kingdom to release it from its sub-conscious
captivity. Life is in "Egyptian" bondage to nature through six aeons.
The seventh--and seven times seven--brings the glorious "year of
jubilee," when all captives and prisoners are set free. In Numbers a
Hebrew slave was to serve six years and go free in the seventh without paying a
ransom. The fields were to be cultivated for six years and to lie fallow the
seventh. But when the Messiah came--and his Egyptian name Iu-em-hetep means
"he who comes seventh"--he was allegorized as coming under the
dominance of the six lower forces; and so the number seven later took on in the
texts the evil implications of the number six and is the nu-
319
merical type of servitude. Jacob is
made to serve seven years for Leah and an added seven for Rachel. In some old
texts the ten plagues of Egypt were originally seven.
The profounder significance of the
first "miracle" of Jesus in turning water into wine at the marriage
feast of Cana hinges upon the fact, hardly ever commented on, that the servants
set out for the transformation six pots of water in earthen vessels!
Jesus, embodying the seventh or transmuting power, came to convert that nature
that had been constituted by the first six outpourings of primal life into
higher spiritual status. The Christ has the task of transfiguring six lower
elemental powers into divinity. And in the Gospel story he went up into the
mount for the transfiguration "after six days"! Spiritual
"wine" was to be made out of the six types of elemental
"water" in man’s constitution. And man, physically, comes close to
being six-sevenths water in composition!
The "year of the Lord" was
divided into six (double) signs of the zodiac. The sun passes annually through
these six signs, and man’s soul, his sun, also passes through six
levels of being in attaining self-conscious freedom. It makes the round of the
elements of earth, water, air and fire in twelve subdivisions. These elements
being embodied in his own constitution, the sun-soul in man passes through them
to achieve its mastery of all life. His victory in the seventh kingdom regains
for him all that was lost in the beginning. The Christ adds the seventh head to
the decapitated natural order. The seventh and "lost" Pleiad will be
recaptured by Orion, the mighty hunter, Egypt’s astrological figure for Horus.
The Christ will restore the lost light.
The Titans, of whom Prometheus was
one, appear in a dual and somewhat confusing character in the mythology. They
are both man’s good angel and his devil. The solution of this enigma of
theology will be fully expounded in the next chapter. But, briefly, it can be
said that the Titans of mythology match the Lucifer character of theology.
"Hesiod says the Father called
the Revolters by an opprobrious name, Teitans, when he cursed them. And they
were cast down into Tartarus and bound in chains and darkness in the
abyss." (Theogony I, 207; II, 717).
The god, the Titan, Prometheus,
Lucifer, who brought us our divine fire from the empyrean, was in part converted
into the Beast when his
320
Titanic intellect was linked with
the six elementary forces. He mingled his life-blood with theirs, and the
contagion of elementary impulse went to his head! Certain of the myths tend to
align the Titans with the six elementary powers; and this is a natural
confusion since the higher mentality did commingle with the lower instincts. The
god who was angelic, because untested, in heaven, became demoniacal on earth,
and the coloring of every attribute is altered as he indeed "suffers a sea
change" in plunging into the lower waters.
The myth of the Greek Saturn, who
was overthrown and despoiled by the Titans in that heavenly warfare, is read as
planetary cosmology by Massey and others. The meaning is that each lower grade
of life organized in the progressive outpourings "steals" away the
higher creative force to use on its own plane. The functions and the glory of
Saturn were alleged to have been transferred to the sun, who became the new lord
of the six. Saturn is identical with the Egyptian Sebek (Sevekh) whose name is
"seven," and in the early mythos he was the deity who crowned
the six elementary forces with completion, as their ruler and governor. Says
Massey:
"The sun and Saturn both became
the lord of the seventh day, the Sabbath, the day of rest and peace, which is
Hept, [Hetep] the name of No. 7. But in the cult of Sebek . . . the original of
the solar Sabazius, son of . . . Kubele, the sun and Saturn were combined as
Sabat, Sabaoth, or Sapt, which, read as Sebti, shows the dual form of Seb, for
the sun and Saturn . . . Sabazius was reported to have been torn into seven
parts by the Titans, corresponding to the seven days of the week and the seven
planets to which they were dedicated."10
That is to say, our number
"seven" (Latin: septem) is derived from Saturn and the sun
combined in their two names of Seb and Hept, compounded into sept. Seb,
as we have seen, covers the dual meaning of "star" and
"soul," both suggesting fire. As the coming of the god of intellect
and reason, the seventh element, crowned the long elemental warfare of cosmic
creation with the peace and rest of intellectual control, order and harmony, so
the deific principle gives its name to the day of peace that follows the
hurly-burly of the six secular days. In general we devote six days to bodily
interests; the seventh should go to the interests of the soul. Ancient
discernment of primary
321
creational verities gave us our week
of seven days, to stand as an eternal reminder of the sevenfold cosmic order, of
which our own basic constitution is itself a reflection and a miniature. And old
Egypt gives us the philosophical demonstration of all this in the dual meaning
of the word Hept, which is both "seven" and "peace."
The seventh element is that noetic intellect which stills the storm on the
passional waters and brings peace to chaotic nature, based on its six lower
mindless energies. Iu-em-hetep (Imhotep of the Greeks) is he who comes to bring
peace as number seven.
In Exodus (23) it is written:
"The radiance of the Eternal
rested on the mountain of Sinai; for six days the cloud covered it, and on the
seventh day he called from the cloud to Moses (the Eternal’s radiance looked
to the Israelites like blazing fire on the top of the mountain.)"
It is in a verse from this same
chapter that a very noteworthy statement is made:
"For six years you may sow your
land and gather in your crops, but every seventh year you must let the land
alone, so the poor people may pick up something; anything they leave the wild
animals can eat, for if you worship their gods it will endanger you."
There is ample warrant for a
moment’s digression from the main theme of the chapter to follow out several
implications of this astonishing passage. The injunction not to cultivate the
fields every seventh year, so that the "poor" might have some
"pickings," is on the face of it impossible physically. For if the
land was left alone, there would be no planting and hence no picking. How could
the earthly poor profit from unplanted fields?
The command has nothing to do with
agriculture or charity, except that which is cosmic and spiritual. It is one of
those ingenious "parables" by which ancient sagacity embodied great
evolutionary truth in pictorial representation. It concerns in this case a most
recondite fact of esoteric knowledge. Bizarre as it may sound to modern ears, it
was the teaching of the abstruse biological science of old that at the
dissolution of the several component principles of the multiple human
constitution at the completion of the cycle (the seventh day), one of these
bodies of etheric material (of types now predicated by science),
322
the "astral," called the
"chhaya" in India, floated free as an independent entity, possessing
both sufficient vitality to preserve it from disintegration, and a semblance of
mental automatism. In this condition it was utilized by nature for a particular
purpose. It was made the matrix or mold about which was aggregated coarser
matter, as a magnetic field organizes iron filings, which matter gave it a body
and localized it on earth as a living creature. Both the Bible and other
esoteric writings have mysterious sayings about the lower orders of life feeding
upon the lees or dregs of the orders above them, even in some cases
excrementitious matter. The meaning is approached along the line of a peculiar
emblemism. Man’s discarded "astral" shells, so the doctrine teaches,
serve as the models and the animating principles of lower forms of life. Our
"astral" leavings, cast-off clothing, are made to serve as the feeling
souls of inferior creatures. The animal picks up our emotion body and builds his
physical body over it as a model. Man’s part in creative evolution is far more
direct than he imagines. Every phase or grade of life is creative, to its
degree. If this item seems strange, it assuredly is no more so than many of the
almost unbelievable phenomena of physical biology in general in animal and
insect life. Nature has a bigger bag of tricks than we realize. She employs a
vast range of unsuspected and startling methods in the endless repertoire of her
ingenuity. At any rate the fact was so taught in the arcane schools of
occultism, and here in Exodus is a passage directly pointing to it, since
the text can mean nothing intelligible in its literal sense. The seventh round
in all cycles of life in nature is always the epoch at which soul consummates
its work in an organism and retires to its proper level above, leaving the
physical bases of life to stand without further cultivation until the beginning
of the next series of seven rounds. During the retirement the lower animal self,
the "poor," reaps the harvest of its previous attachment to the higher
entity. The ethereal vestures survive, for they are enduring in proportion to
their atomic fineness. We have already equated "the poor" and also
"the people" with the Gentiles, who were the "sons of men"
in contrast to the "Sons of God"; the humans in whom the Christ
principle has not yet been made consciously the ruler.
And the second startling item of
this excerpt asserts that what those "poor" semi-humans leave may be
picked up, in a third order of gradation, by the wild animals. This is
informative indeed. The process
323
of divination begins with the
highest God and is relayed, in ever diminishing power, from rank to rank, down
to the animal. Only by living on the lees of the superior order can each kingdom
link itself to its appropriate measure of divine vivification.
By such occult analysis is it
possible to see the meaning of the final hint of danger expressed by the line:
"for if you worship their gods it will endanger you." This work has
already set forth the peril involved for the heavenly visitant in taking
residence in animal forms, if it permitted itself to "worship their
gods" of sensuality and beastliness. A number of passages of scripture
admonish the children of light to "make no compact" with the
"natives" of that realm to which they were sent, nor to marry their
"women"!
The sum of this material which shows
the world to be figuratively "at sixes and sevens" is that conscious
life was in servitude and bondage to blind unintelligent elemental forces for
six aeons, three in the invisible and three in the visible worlds, and was only
lifted up to the liberty of sons of God when the spiritual fire of the spiritual
sun, the second Adam or the Christ, was set in the heavens of man’s conscious
being as the ruler of the six sub-mental powers. In Galatians (4) Paul
clearly states that when we were children in evolution "we were in bondage
to them that by nature are no gods." We were in slavery to the elementals
of the earth and of the air, as he distinctly says! He warns his brethren not to
come under the power of these elementals, as it would endanger their spiritual
integrity.
Stars are closely intermingled with
the fire symbolism. They are themselves fiery in constitution, blazing suns or
their planets. Stars were considered the children of Ra, the great lord of the
spiritual sun, who emaned them like tears from his eyes. Souls were his
offspring, centrally nucleated by his solar fire. He was the parent of the
Kumaras. Stars were held to be a race of higher beings, having souls of the
essence of light coming from the sun. "I have shed my seed (of light)
abroad for you," he says to his sons.11 In the Book of Adam and Eve, translated
from the Ethiopic by Malan, God says: "I made thee of the light, and I
wished to bring out children of the light from three." The sun’s children
were called Ruti, or men of excellence. Under the name of Khabsu the stars are
synonymous with souls, as also in the name of Seb. Souls in Amenta were
represented by stars. As the souls arose in their resurrection they appeared
above the horizon on the eastern
324
side of heaven. This is why the
rising star of the solar deity born in mankind was seen "in the east"
in the Gospel story. It dies in the west, like the sun, and has its new birth in
the house of bread (Bethlehem) in the east. The god Shu-Anhur was called the
"lifter up of the sky," together with its inhabitants, the stars. Ra
addresses Shu: "Be the guardian of the multitudes that live in the
nocturnal sky," or sky of the Lower Egypt of Amenta. "Put them on thy
head and be their fosterer," or sustainer. Spiritually this betokens the
elevation of our elemental nature by the shifting of the center of intellectual
and spiritual gravity above the horizon in the heaven of consciousness. The
stars were in fact the bodies of gods, and the lucent fragment of deity in man
is his star.
The Great Bear of seven stars drew
the first circle or cycle of time in the abyss of chaos, and gave definite law,
order and periodicity to the primary creation. From primal elemental disorder,
nature settled down to rhythmic regularity as the beginning of stable order in
her worlds. From blind erratic struggle the elements fell into order in a
septenary mechanism. This was imaged first in the Great Bear, the mother of the
first cycle of regular time and fixed revolutions. This primary cluster in the
sky should never cease to speak to our imagination of the heptarchy of forces in
nature, which are the bases of our lives as well. This mighty fact of creation
was in the mind of the sage who wrote that at the dawn of creation all the sons
of the Elohim shouted for joy and "the Morning Stars sang together" (Job
38). The music of the spheres began with the first swing into symmetrical
order and balanced harmony between centripetal and centrifugal energies that had
been jangling in confusion and dissonance before the seventh element, the sun or
spirit, gave the six a king. But Plato strangely tells us that "with the
sixth creation ended the order of song." (Philebus, 66.) Coincident
with this we are also told that the sixth pole star in succession passed from
the constellation of Lyra, the Harp, to that of Hercules, the man-god. All these
veiled hints have tremendous meaning, for this would seem to indicate that the
soul comes into the order of nature bringing a power of independent will, which
may contravene the mechanical automatism of nature, break into the rhythm and
mar the music--until it learns of itself anew to fix the measure to a higher
harmony. Man’s free agency does inject either a reasoned or an
unreasoned self-initiative into that which was automatically rhythmic
325
before. In a former reference we
have heard the great Lord himself complain of the spirits who had broken in upon
his celestial music and marred the harmony, for which he threw them down into
incarnation.
The Rubric to chapter 129 of the Ritual
says of the Manes: "And he shall be established as a star face to face
with Septet [Sirius, Sothis, the Dog-Star] and his corruptible body shall be as
a god . . . forever." To deify the human is to make a star of him. The
Manes himself prays (Ch. 102): "Let me be among the stars that never
rest." It is promised (Ch. 164) that "he shall become a star of
heaven." Has orthodoxy held out to its votaries any such thrilling cosmic
view of their future? The Osiris-Nu pleads (Ch. 188): "May I enter into the
house of his body, which, behold, hath become one of the starry gods!" This
would be the higher spiritual body, not the corporeal. It is said to the soul:
"Thou art purified with the libation of the stars. The stars that never set
bear thee up; thou enterest in the place where thy father is, where Keb [Seb] is
. . . thou becomest a soul therein." The soul (Pepi) pleads: "Make
thou this Pepi to be an imperishable star before thee." The acme of
directness is attained in the next statement: "Pepi is a star."
To Teta, the soul, it is said: "Thou seizest the hands of the imperishable
stars . . . for behold thou art one of the gods." "The imperishable
stars follow and minister unto thee." Pepi is addressed: "Thou art the
Great Star; Orion beareth thee on his shoulder. Thou traversest heaven with
Orion, thou sailest through the Tuat with Osiris." Again: "Pepi takes
his seat among you, O ye star gods of the Tuat." And finally in grand
simplicity stands the categorical pronouncement : "Thy soul is a living
star at the head of his brethren." For the six elementary powers were his
natural brothers, of whom he, like Joseph and like Jesus, was made the chief or
head. From brethren they were reduced to children when the god principle took
charge and synthesized their functions. The fiery soul of intellect became king
of the lower six elementary powers in man’s make-up. The Christos came
as the Prince of Peace to rise to kingship over nature’s six divisions of
force. "Unto you a king is given . . . and his name shall be called . . .
the Prince of Peace."
But the soul is specifically typed
by that great and brilliant emblem of our divinity, the Morning Star. The Titan
who came hurtling to earth still clinging to his stolen possession, the
spiritual fire, was Lucifer, "the bright and morning star."
326
The significance of this emblem is
in its heralding the approach of day. "The day star is rising." It is
the harbinger of the coming of the great Lord of Day. As the announcer it
becomes identical in function with Anup, the fiery ape in Egypt, Mercury in
Greek mythology, and John Baptist in Christianity. Anup is the way-opener for
the advent of Horus, who, though coming after him, was before him in stature and
authority (Rit., Ch. 44). Anup abode in the dark and empty reaches of the
desert of Amenta until the day of his manifestation in the heliacal rising of
the star Sothis (Sirius), the morning star of the year in Egypt, which heralded
the birth of Horus, as the opening of the year. John dwelt in the wilderness
until the time of his theophany or "showing forth in Israel" (Luke I:80).
The soul was held out in the wilderness of the six elemental energies until the
arrival of the Christ. Anup was only a star god, but as such he was the
precursor of the greater solar light. As the sun in its splendor far outshines
the total galaxy of the stars, so the deity whose association with man was
presaged by the star-god, was far to surpass in glory any product of the natural
series. And this is made clear by the Gospel statement that the least in the
kingdom of the god is greater than the highest of those born of woman, that is,
nature.
The stars typed one of the
elementary creations, of which there seem to have been three, the first being
cosmic and universal, offering a sevenfold differentiation in primal substance;
the second stellar and planetary; the third racial and individual in mankind.
Much of the endless confusion in the interpretation of creation legends has
arisen because of failure to distinguish which of these creations was being
dealt with. What is fundamental, however, to all understanding is that all of
nature’s cyclic processes are typical of each other. So that cosmogenesis
adumbrates the planetary formation, which in turn is an enlarged picture of the
anthropogenesis. As man was formed in the image and likeness of the Elohim, the
seven-rayed creative Logoi, the septenary constitution pictured in the first and
second creations appertains to him by reflection. All ancient philosophy
referable to man was built upon the human constitution as a septenate of powers.
We see the first creation in the hebdomadal formation of all physical creation;
the second in the septenary solar systems; the third in the human formed of
seven principles or natures. Of the first the Mother alone, the Virgin, Achamoth,
Typhon, Apt, Nut, Neith, Isis, Hathor, Rerit,
327
Ishtar, Tiamat, Semiramis, Cybele
and other primary feminine deities become the bearer and producer. Of the second
Sevekh (Sebek, Seb), Saturn, and the Sun, as the leader of the seven Rishis,
Archangels, Elohim, Kabiri, were the progenitors. Of the third the twelve
legions of Asuras, Kumaras, Titans, Deva-Angels, Rudras, Adityas, who came
collectively as Prometheus and Lucifer, individually as sons of the solar
radiance, sons of Ra, or sparks of the divine fire, were the chief agents. They
still supervise their continuing creation from their citadel deep within the
shrine of man’s life. In one form or another, solar light, essence, power is
centered in every manifestation. In the innermost sanctuary of life dwells the
spark, the ray, the flame of solar glory. The sun is the central type and
embodiment of the highest divinity. The Christs were all sun-gods.
In the Kabalah the vital statement
is found that in each solar system the soul in its aeonial round dwells
successively on six planes and spends its seventh aeon on the sun of that
system. This is after the analogy of the soul in the human body, for there it
successively energizes, from lowest to highest, the six elemental physical
ranges of power, and six sub-spiritual psychic centers, before it ascends into
the supreme flowering of the solar fire in the head.
Sirius, otherwise Sothis and Septet,
being the morning star in the mythos, etymologically supplies another
significant link in the story. Septet is another form of the word
"seven." The six natural forces were completed and synthesized by the
coming of the seventh. The morning star heralded the perfection of the sevenfold
creation as it announced the coming of the crowning glory. This Sirius, the
Dog-Star, was the type of Anup, the dog or jackal god, as the guide of souls in
the dark of night, or incarnation. "The star Sept (Sothis) with long
strides leads on the celestial path of Ra each day, and the blessed one rises as
a star." The star precedes Ra, the sun in man. Of Pepi it is written:
"His sister is Sept (Sothis), he is born as the Morning Star (Venus)."
And again: "His sister, the star Sept (Sothis), his guide, the Morning
Star, takes him by the hand to Sekhet-Hetep." Usually women, in the
mythology, are the guides, protectors and watchers of the sun-god in the
mythology, as they are the natural bearers, rearers and watchers of the human
infant, until his own divinity arises. As the feminine always types the natural
as distinct from the spiritual, the religious myth depicts the youthful solar
god as being born of woman,
328
cradled, watched and nourished by
women, type of the elementary forces. The god comes to be born, nursed and
nurtured in the lap of Mother Nature. But he must leave her at twelve!
In one place the text of the Ritual
says, as to Pepi: "The Morning Star giveth birth to him." In
another it says: "Pepi giveth birth to the Morning Star." The apparent
contradiction is a matter of viewpoint, or a matter like the priority of hen or
egg. Did John the Baptist bring Jesus, or Jesus John? John himself solves the
riddle by saying: "He who cometh after me is preferred before me." The
star brings the dawn, but the dawn also brings the star. Of the coming god, as
of the Christ, the Ritual says: "His light appeareth in the sky like
that of a great star, the Morning Star." And again: "Thou revolvest
about Ra, near the Morning Star." The Manes is instructed: "Command
thou that he is to sit by thee, on the shoulders of the Morning Star on the
horizon." Following the statement that heaven is pregnant with wine, it is
said that "Nut maketh herself to give birth to her daughter, the Morning
Star." And immediately follows the exhortation to the soul: "Rise up
thou, then, O Pepi, thou third Septet (Sothis), whose seats are purified."
Calling Pepi the "third Septet" bears out fully what has just been
expounded as to the three creations, each sevenfold in organization, the last
being that of septenary man. That the god in his coming was to enter the waters
of incarnation and the mires of earth is betokened by the following: "He
places thee like the Morning Star in the fields of Reeds (Sekhet-Aarru)."
Numbers (24:17)
predicts that "there shall come a star out of Jacob." As the Gnostic
Jesus of Revelation (22:16) himself declares: "I am the root and
offspring of David, and the bright and Morning Star." And the angel
promises in Revelation (2:28), to him that overcometh "I will give
the Morning Star." This comes as the seventh of a series of promises
"to him that overcometh."
The frequent use of the censer in Revelation
is to be noticed. Seven angels had given to them seven censers, containing
the fire from the altar of God within the innermost place, which the seven were
to cast upon the earth! Here is the basic allegory again in small compass. In
the Logia these details are preceded by the announcement: "And I
beheld yet another sign in the heavens, which was marvelous in its
329
meaning and great in its
issues!" Surely; for it was the story of the deification of the human race.
The burning of incense, a very general custom in religious observance in the
world, runs parallel in meaning to keeping alive the Vestal Fire. In the Old
Testament all cereal was to be mixed with oil and sprinkled with incense--a
double seal of divinity. The Manes is addressed in the Ritual: "Thou
art pure with the incense of Horus." Again we read" "Incense is
presented unto thee, thou becomest God." One becomes a god only by the gift
of that higher fire that purges the lower nature and refines it to true gold.
And this gold is the immortal solar light. The words for gold, light and deity
all derive from the same original root, "ar," "aur,"
"or."
Lightning, a great sacred symbol of
the outflashing of the power of God on earth, was often pictured as
seven-barbed. This usage establishes it definitely as a figure for the
seven-forked emanation that engendered the creation. It is the type of a fiery
power resident in latent form in the air and water elements. So the god is
latent in the water of physical nature. The swift power of the fiery dart was
typical of the "swift-running" power of deity, for the Greek word for
god, theos, means the "swift-darter." In Assyria Tiamat, mother
of "seven sons of the abyss," wielded a seven-speared thunderbolt,
typifying her children, as powers. The highest of the seven is lightning by
name. In Africa some tribes have a word for divinity which translates
"lightning." Many peoples had thunder-gods, and the Bible is full of
allusions to thunder. The fiery dart of Intelligence into the bosom of the
worlds produces or carries the Voice of the Logos out into nature, in seven
primary tones. The Hebrew male god of thunder, Kak, or Iach, probably equates
with the Hindu Vach, the Word. As the forerunner and prophet of rain, the
thunder held the office of Mercury and Anup, the announcers of divine advent.
Even embers and sparks are not
slighted in the typism. We have the ancient Egyptian tale of Cinderella, the
"sitter in the ashes," embers or cinders. Sitting in her lonely hutch
on earth by the dead embers of the fire, she is the soul come to desolation on
earth, stripped of her fire. But she surpasses her sisters and fits herself to
be dight with radiance again. The flame that ramifies out in seven tongues is
the original figure of the seven-branched candlestick. Deity comes to earth to
manifest himself in seven flaming aspects of his being. And still stand the
great ancient pyramids, the word by etymology reading "a
330
measure of (creative) fire,"
with square base and triangular upper faces, the four and the three united to
constitute the sevenfold physical structure of the worlds and man, and
multiplied to constitute the twelve deific powers to be unfolded by spiritual
humanity.
331