CHAPTER VI.

THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT.
The serpent is a very ancient symbol of wisdom and was once an object of worship. Hargrave Jennings says, in " The Rosicrucians " : —
" Here we have the object of adoration of the Ophites, the female generative power, the de- stroying and regenerating power among the Ophites, and indeed the Gnostics generally. The serpent was called the Megalistor, or Great Builder of the Universe (Maia, the Buddhistic Illu- sion)." Even Jesus bears testimony to the wis- dom of serpents. " Be ye therefore wise as ser- pents."
The ancient symbol of a serpent with his tail in his mouth was derived from the appearance of the foetus in the womb at the end of the first month. (See Plate II.) Given a starting point, and force propelling an object into space, the ob- ject will describe a circle and return to the start- ing point.
THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT.
Line in nature is not found, Unit and universe are round,
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says Emerson.
The serpent in physical form is the only ani- mate being that conforms to the second principle in creation, namely, the boundary line, — circum- ference, — the moving force of objects, — the cir- cumstances which compel the struggle for exist- ence. The serpent may be said to be the force in the universe and within us that disintegrates, dis- solves, throws off matter from the center to the circumference. By his power the solid rock is dissolved, changed into soil and afterwards dissi- pated as intangible spirit. Through him all forms change, die, pass away and disappear from mun- dane experience.
A revolving wheel carries an object on its cir- cumference much more rapidly than the same ob- ject could be made to move at its axis, and it is this rapidity of motion which tears, disintegrates, and destroys. It is the same motion which is evil in the cyclone, that vibrates in healthful, rhythmic, peaceful activity in a gentle breeze.
Truth is at the center where all is silent, and he who abides near it escapes the storms that
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devastate life. He who turns his back on truth and departs from it is approaching the circum- ference of being, where increasing vibrations of passion will soon destroy him. Evil increases outwardly, but truth and wisdom unite in the tem- perate zones of man's being, where love grows to completeness. The serpent is the heat, fire, pas- sion of the blood; it is force, violence ; but within wisdom is latent, coiled, hidden in the dark re- cesses of man's great deep, his love nature.
Imagine the human form a sphere with the soul its center, in the region of digestion, in the prov- ince of love. This is where the waters of the animal nature are divided from the waters of the human nature, the soul, or ego, being the power which controls and regulates each. The higher, human nature is luminous, and in it are love, truth, and wisdom, while below is an abyss where the Venom Queen of passion reigns, and mon- sters serpentine and slimy spit venom to corrupt the blood and inflame the mind. In these turbid waters all evil generates and becomes strong and powerful in mankind.
All forms of life generate in water, and from it we ascend, and entering into the blood of our
PLATE I.
The Ovum at three weeks.
THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT. Ill
parents, fire them with lust to the begetting of ourselves. But the first microscopic form we as- sume in the dark recesses of our mother's body is the form of a serpent. (See Plate I.)
In illustration of this interesting and suggestive subject the following cuts and descriptions, from the work of Louis Crusius, A.M., M.D., are sub- joined. In description of the different appear- ances of the foetus during pregnancy he says : —
11 During the first week the ovum remains in the fallopian tube. . . . Having entered the upper part of the tube and become impregnated, it slowly moves down, in the meantime beginning its process of repeated division or cleavage known as the ' segmentation of the ovum.' At about the eighth day the ovum enters the uterus." (See Plate I.) " Here we have the serpent at three weeks from conception. Fourth week or end of first month the entire ovum is about the size of a pigeon's egg, measuring about three quarters of an inch in its greatest diameter, and weighing in the neighborhood of forty grains. The entire chorion is covered by villi. The umbilical vesicle is fully developed. The embryo measures about one third of an inch in length and resembles a
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small, thick worm curled up. While in the pre- vious week the embryo was still erect, it now is flexed to such an extent that the head and tail meet and the outline of the back resembles a circle. The eyes appear as two black dots and the limbs are indicated by two pairs of bud-like processes. The caudal extremity projects as a free tail and upon the back on each side of the median line are mapped out the provertebrae, a series of quadrilateral areas."
Behold him now encircling a globe, the body around the soul, the circumstances of mortal life with which the human beine has to contend. Here is the serpent with his tail in his mouth, or near enough to suggest time and consciousness without beginning or end. Thus does nature testify to the truth of the drama of creation. The serpent typifies that third principle which separates duality and becomes one side of the A.
Adam and Eve represent duality ; ignorance, blindness, incompleteness, but the introduction of the serpent completes the trinity of animate life, adding intellect, which leads man out of the nar- row confines of a garden into the boundless ex-
PLATE II.
The Ovum at one month.
THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT. 113
panse of a world of possibilities. The sugges- tion to "become as gods" fires ambition, kindles desire, enlarges the horizon, and increases the light of mind, whereby he scans the universe of which he is center and creator. Human life is enclosed in the circle of necessity, of whose area a slight segment only is dimly perceived. To become immortal is to know it all, and to be able to pass its boundaries and mingle with the super- natural, where necessity is unknown or non-ex- istent.
The analogy between the serpent, or spirit of wisdom, and the Christ Spirit, the Son of Man, the only-begotten of Love, is plainly indicated. Both signify the miraculous powers in man. The serpent exists in the first embryonic form that man assumes, and is constantly transformed in form, feature, and expression as the growth pro- gresses. Moreover, the fact that the serpent was the third actor in the drama of the so-called fall of man, even as Christ is the third Person in the Godhead, shows a still farther connection. Nor does the resemblance cease here ; both healed the sick and both were "lifted up," as Jesus testi- fies, saying, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in
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the wilderness, even so shall the Son of Man be lifted up."
Jesus was tempted in " the wilderness," and fiery serpents stung the children of Israel in " the wilderness." This wilderness signifies the arid wastes of passion which produce no living thing. The " fiery serpents" of passion unrestrained by reason are not *' lifted up" by the conscious knowledge of their sacredness or use in the hu- man economy. They crawl in the dirt and seek holes and dark places in which to hide from the light. Passion purified and elevated by reason and culture becomes love, a synonym for light, life, and immortality, the kingdom of heaven in man, where dwells the Holy Ghost, the Christ, and the Father. Placed on a standard, " ele- vated," the serpent healed those bitten by ser- pents.
The rod of Moses changed the dust into lice, turned the waters of the Nile to blood, and parted the floods of the Red Sea. This rod of Moses, a straight stick, symbol of the ego, the letter /, what was it but the numeral one (i), a straight line like those the schoolboy makes as a symbol of the beginning of that long journey of knowl-
THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT.
"5
edge the end of which, after countless zigzags, results in perfection, the completion of numbers (10), a return to or union with the circle? The ego becomes one with the all, the soul blends with its circumference. This miracle-working rod, cast on the ground, became a serpent before which even Moses fled in fear.
(There is an Arcana of the serpent which is un- veiled only to initiates.)
This rod is a small section of that straight line, the first dimension of space, which is changed into a circle in its projection around the universe. Within this circle are limitations of law which the wisdom of the serpent ignores, showing man his power by reason and knowledge to pass beyond the circle in a never-ending progress into the infi- nite and ineffable wisdom, where he is a law to himself.
Those under external law are wise only in part, and this wisdom is the result of the union of the soul (the center) with the Christ, the all-embrac- ing Circumference. Those who fully rise up to free contact with this elongated rod (O) can work mira- cles like Moses, and overcome death like Jesus.
Immortality cannot be conferred by any extra-
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neous power whatever. It is not a gift, like a garment, but is a transformation of the entire man from the crooked and angular into the or- derly, harmonious, and beautiful. This is effected by patience, constant effort, and love ; " and the greatest of these is love." This is the work of the man himself, and can be accomplished by no other. Christ is within, and if we are unconscious of his presence it is because of that stupidity which comes when " men love darkness rather than light." Men dislike to think deeply on this subject, but he who loves thought comes to the circumference where true wisdom is to be attained. The ego, that which thinks and knows, is man, and the son of man is begotten by this thinking, knowing principle of the soul, in an ecstasy of bliss and an indescribable increase of mercy and love.
Physically man is a trinity of Adam, Eve, and the serpent, but spiritually transformed he be- comes God, the Holy Ghost, and Christ. Paul indicates this truth when he says, " The first man Adam, was a living soul ; but Christ, the second man Adam, is a quickening spirit."
Physically the serpent is a venomous reptile,
THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT. I I 7
but spiritually he is the winged seraph, a throng of which Isaiah saw around the throne, shouting, "Holy! Holy!" etc. So the sacred bulls, long worshiped in Egypt as the incarnation of Osiris, representing the vir of animal passion, the cre- ative principle of the physical world, are spiritu- ally the winged cherubim of Exodus. Moses, instructed in the magical lore of Egypt, con- structed the ark of the covenant to embody in visible form some principles of the Egyptian cult.
The mercy seat was placed in the ark " above the law," suggestive of the superiority of mercy ; and at each end of the mercy seat was an image of the sacred bull, the two cherubim, facing each other, their outstretched wings covering the mercy seat, in the shadow of which and between them the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob was wont to commune with Moses.
(More of this Arcana is contained in a Rosi- crucian manual permitted only to brothers of the Third Degree. I may say that it is entitled " The Mystery of the Serpent, or the Divine Quater- nary.")
It is evident that the command to Adam not to eat of the fruit of a certain tree had reference to
Il8 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
sexual acts from the nature of the curse put upon Eve for disobedience. The fall of Adam was a change in the blood from a pure, non-passional condition into an inflamed and lustful one, wherein conception and child-bearing were greatly multi- plied, together with its sorrows and pains. Why the Jewish bloody sacrifices as atonement for sin in the old dispensation and the blood of Christ in the new ? Blood is a symbol, and in it occurs a divine transformation by the quickening of it, changing it from a passional serpent state into the angelic, where blood is not red with passion.
All physical objects are composed of light. The colors of vegetation, of rock, hills, and floods, of all conceivable things, are precipitated light, and these colors return to light through fire, or the "quickening" of motion. They are corre- spondencies of spiritual activities. The sun cor- responds to the spiritual sun within, the soul, which radiates ineffable light. This light is the Christ, the life, whose work is the transformation of the blood into a force which corresponds to electricity in power, absence of color, and rapidity of vibration.
What is this that flies more rapidly than light,
THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT. 119
from the center to the circumference of creation, from pole to pole, from star to star, and reaches even the throne of God, questioning the great / am face to face, even as did Moses ? It is mind, typified by the serpent. It derives its strength and power to penetrate all mysteries and search out secret places by the desire for knowledge. Desire creates and sustains motion, from which hunger is born, which in turn builds anew by its satisfaction the wasted tissues of the body.
When the freedom of spirit is limited by law the hunger of desire is born. To investigate, to see, to go out into the new and untried, the for- bidden that lies beyond, are necessary to growth and the evolution and expansion of mind. Under law man is limited to a garden. It may contain all that is necessary to the vegetative life, but the breath of the living soul breathed into man longs for the freedom of the infinite expanse from which it came into the limitations of humanity. It needs only the temptation conveyed in a dream, the flight of a passing bird, any slight suggestion of freedom to tempt him to disregard the law of " Thou shalt not." The beginning of mind is in a question, the desire of knowledge, a motion
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that shall never end. Sent out into the void from a tiny center, it makes its serpentine way through chaos, measuring an eternity of time and an infin- ity of space around which it makes its tortuous way home, laden with the knowledge which is the answer to its questions.
Temptation incites to effort and helps progress. Without hunger food is tasteless, and without taste the stomach would be overfilled. Desire produces taste, and taste is the discriminating power of mind which declares things to be good or evil. Temptation to overeat depends on the taste, but the temperate use of food is regulated by the judgment, which is of the mind and will. This illustrates the fall of the physical man from health into disease, and the birth of mind results from pain, which is caused by a change in the blood, or disease. Pain forces man to think, and this is the force that explores the abyss and dis- covers the true and the false. The serpent, in giving God credit for knowing the result of dis- obedience, accuses Him at the same time of de- ception.
God said, " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die " ; but the serpent said, " Ye shall
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not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." After the success of the tempter God said, " Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil, and lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live for- ever," etc. Right here is the advent of truth and falsehood, the beginning of a ceaseless warfare, in which man is both field of battle and prize. The soul affirms but the mind denies, challenging investigation and experiment to find the truth. This story, literally understood, is far from compli- mentary to the character of the God who figures in it. He is represented as working blindly and being angry at His own failures. Man is a play- thing, a toy, created for His glory ; an automaton whose antics are sufficient to provoke " the inex- tinguishable laughter of Godhead."
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