|
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
|
