X. 25 : "If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how

much more shall they call them of his household." He was also styled the prince or archon of daemons.
Typhon figures in the Book of the Dead^ as the Accuser of souls when they appear for judgment, as Satan stood up to accuse Joshua, the high- priest, before the angel, and as the Devil came to Jesus to tempt or test him during his great fast in the wilderness. He was also the deity de- nominated Baal-Tsephon, or god of the crypt, in the book oi Exodus^ and Set/ij or the pillar. During this period, the ancient or archaic worship was more or less under the ban of the government ; in figurative lan- guage, Osiris had been treacherously slain and cut in fourteen (twice sti'en) pieces, and coffined by his brother Typhon, and Isis had gone to Byblos in quest of his body.
We must not forget in this relation that Saba or Sabazios, of Phrygia and Greece, was torn by the Titans into setfen pieces, and that he was, like Heptaktis of the Chaldeans, the sevenrayQd god. Siva, the Hindu, is represented crowned with seven serpents, and he is the god of war and destruction. The Hebrew Jehovah the Sabaoth is also called the Lord of hosts, Seba or Saba, Bacchus or Dionysus Sabazios ; so that all these may easily be proved identical.
Finally the princes of the older regime, the gods who had, on the assault of the giants, taken the forms of animals and hidden in Ethiopia, returned and expelled the shepherds.
According to Josephus, the Hyk-sos were the ancestors of the Israel- ites.* This is doubtless substantially true. The Hebrew Scriptures, which tell a somewhat different story, were written at a later period, and underwent several revisions, before they were promulgated with any de- gree of publicity. Typhon became odious in Egypt, and shepherds ** an abomination." " In the course of the twentieth dynasty he was sudden- ly treated as an evil demon, insomuch that his effigies and name are obliterated on all the monuments and inscriptions that could be reached.'' f
In all ages the gods have been liable to be euhemerized into men. There are tombs of Zeus, Apollo, Hercules, and Bacchus, which are often mentioned to show that originally they were only mortals. Shem, Ham, and Japhet, are traced in the divinities Shamas of Assyria, Kham of
* " Against Apion," L 25. ** The Egyptians took many occasions to hate and envy us : in the first place because our ancestors (the Hyk-sos, or shepherds) had had the dominion over their country, and when they were delivered from them and gone to their own country, they lived therein prosperity."
f Bunsen. The name i>M with the syllable an from the Chaldean ana or Heaven, makes the term Satan. The punners seem now to have pounced upon it, as was thdc wont, and so made it Satan from the verb noig Sitan, to oppose.
488 ISIS UNVEILED.
Egypt, and lapetos the Titan. Seth was god of the Hyk-sos, Enoch, or Inachus, of the Argives ; and Abraham, Isaac, and Judah have been com« pared with Brahma, Ikshwaka, and Yadu of the Hindu pantheon. Ty- phon tumbled down from godhead to devilship, both in his own character as brother of Osiris, and as the Seth, or Satan of Asia. Apollo, the god of day, became, in his older Phoenician garb, no more Baal Zebul, the Oracle-god, but prince of demons, and finally the lord of the underworld. The separation of Mazdeanism from Vedism, transformed the deltas or gods into evil potencies. Indra, also, in the Vendidad is set forth as the subaltern of Ahriman,* created by him out of the materials of darkness,f together with Siva (Surya) and the two Aswins. Even Jahi is the demon of Lust — probably identical with Indra.
The several tribes and nations had their tutelar gods, and vilified those of inimical peoples. The transformation of Typhon, Satan and Beelzebub are of this character. Indeed, Tertullian speaks of Mithra, the god of the Mysteries, as a devil.
In the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse^ Michael and his angels overcame the Dragon and his angels : ** and the Great Dragon was cast out, that Archaic Ophis, called Diabolos and Satan, that deceiveth the whole world." It is added : " They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb." The Lamb, or Christ, had to descend himself to hell, the world of the dead, and remain there three days before he subjugated the eneinyy according to the myth.
Michael was denominated by the kabalists and the Gnostics, '* the Saviour," the angel of the Sun, and angel of Light. (Vms^», probably, from n:i'» to manifest and V« God.) He was the first of the -^ons, and was well-known to antiquarians as the ** unknown angel '* represented on the Gnostic amulets.
The writer of the Apocalypse^ if not a kabalist, must have been a Gnostic. Michael was not a personage originally exhibited to him in his vision (epopteia) but the Saviour and Dragon-slayer. Archaeological explorations have indicated him as identical with Anubis, whose effigy was lately discovered upon an Egyptian monument, with a cuirass and holding a spear, like St. Michael and St. George. He is also represented as slaying a Dragon, that has the head and tail of a seri>ent.|
The student of Lepsius, Champollion, and other Egyptologists will
* " Vendidad/' fargard x. The name Vendidad \& a contraction of Vidicva'data^ ordinances against the Daevas.
f BundaAest, ** Ahriman created out of the materials of darkness Akuman and Ander, then Sauru and Nakit."
X See Lenoir's ** Da Dragon de Metz,'' in '
II, 12.
A NECESSARY AND LONG-DEFERRED EXPLANATION. 489
quickly recognize Isis as the "woman with child," "clothed with the Sim and with the Moon under her feet," whom the "great fiery Dragon" per- secuted, and to whom " were given two wings of the Great Eagle that she might fly into the wilderness." Typhon was red-skinned.*
The Two Brothers, the Good and Evil Principles, appear in the Myths of the Bible as well as those of the Gentiles, and Cain and Abel, Typhon and Osiris, Esau and Jacob, Apollo and Python, etc., Esau or Osu, is represented, when born, as "red all over like as hairy garment." He is the Typhon or Satan, opposing his brother.
From the remotest antiquity the serpent was held by every people in the greatest veneration, as the embodiment of Divine wisdom and the symbol of spirit, and we know from Sanchoniathon that it was Hermes or Thoth who was the first to regard the serpent as " the most spirit-like of all the reptiles ; " and the Gnostic serpent with the seven vowels over the head is but the copy of Ananta, the seven-headed serpent on which rests the god Vishnu.
We have experienced no little surprise to find upon reading the latest European treatises upon serpent- worship, that the writers confess that the public is ** still almost in the dark as to the origin of the superstition in question." Mr. C. Staniland Wake, M.A.L, from whom we now quote, says : " The student of mythology knows that certain ideas were asso- ciated by tlie peoples of antiquity with the serpent, and that it was the favorite symbol of particular deities ; but why that animal rather than any other was chosen for the purpose is yet uncertain." \
Mr. James Fergusson, F.R.S., who has gathered together such an abundance of material upon this ancient cult, seems to have no more suspicion of the truth than the rest. J
Our explanation of the myth may be of little value to students of symbology, and yet we believe that the interpretation of the primitive serpent- worship as given by the initiates is the correct one. In Vol. i., p. 10, we quote from the serpent Mantra, in the Aytareya-Brahmana^ a l)assage which speaks of the earth as the Sarpa Rdjniy the Queen of the Serpents, and " the mother of all that moves." These expressions refer to the fact that before our globe had become egg-shaped or round it was a long trail of cosmic dust or fire-mist, moving and writhing like a serpent. This, say the explanations, was the Spirit of God moving on the chaos until its breath had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its mouth — emblem of eternity
* Plutarch : *' Isis and Osiris."
+ ** The Origin of Serpent Worship," by C. Staniland Wake, M.A.I. New York: J. W. Bouton, 1877.
X "Tree and Serpent Worship," etc.
490 ISIS UNVEILED.
in its spiritual and of our world in its physical sense. According to the notions of the oldest philosophers, as we have shown in the i)receding chapter, the earth, serpent-like, casts off its skin and appears after every minor pralaya in a rejuvenated state, and after the great pralaya resur- rects or evolves again from its subjective into objective existence. Like the serpent, it not only ** puts off its old age," says Sanchoniathon, " but increases in size and strength." This is why not only Serapis, and later, Jesus, were represented by a great serpent, but even why, in our own century, big snakes are kept with sacred care in Moslem mosques ; for instance, in that of Cairo. In Upper Egypt a famous saint is said to appear under the form of a large serpent ; and in India in some children's cradles a pair of serpents, male and female, are reared with the infant, and snakes are often kept in houses, as they are thought to bring (a magnetic aura of) wisdom, health, and good luck. They are the progeny of Sarpa Rajni, the earth, and endowed with all her virtues.
In the Hindu mythology Vasaki, the Great Dragon, pours forth ui>on Durga, from his mouth, a poisonous tluid which overspreads the ground, but her consort Siva caused the earth to open her mouth and swallow it.
Thus the mystic drama of the celestial virgin pursued by the dragon seeking to devour her child, was not only depicted in the constellations of heaven, as has been mentioned, but was represented in the secret wor- ship of the temples. It was the mystery of the god Sol, and inscribed on a black image of I sis.* The Divine Boy was chased by the cruel Typhon. f In an Egyptian legend the Dragon is said to pursue Thuesis (Isis) wliile she is endeavoring to protect her son. J Ovid describes Dionc (the consort of the original Pelasgian Zeus, and mother of Venus) as flying from Typhon to the Euphrates, § thus identifying the myth as belonging to all the countries where the Mysteries were celebrated. Virgil sings the victory :
** Hail, dear child of gods, great son of Jove ! Receive the honors great ; the time is at hand ; The Serpent will die ! " |
Albertus Magnus, himself an alchemist and student of occult science, as well as a bishop of the Roman Catholic Ci>urch, in his enthusiasm for astrology, declared that the zodiacal sign of the celestial virgin rises above the horizon on the twenty-fifth of December, at the moment assigned by the Church for the birth of the Saviour. T"
♦ Godfrey Higgins : ** Anacalypsis ; ** Dupuis : ** Origines des Cultes," iil, 51. f Martianus Capella : ** Hymn to the Sun," i., ii. ; Movers ; ** Phiniza," 266. j Plutarch : ** Isis and Osiris." | Virgil : •• Ekrlogues,*' iv.
g Ovid: *• Fasti,'' iL, 451. ^ Knorring: "Terra ct Coelum," 53,
THE MYSTERIES OF DEMETER AND MITHRAS. 49I
The sign and myth of the mother and child were known thousands of years before the Christian era. The drama of the Mysteries of Demeter represents Persephoneia, her daughter, as carried away by Pluto or Hades into the world of the dead ; and when the mother finally discovers her there, she has been installed as queen of the realm of Darkness. This myth was transcribed by the Church into the legend of St. Anna * going in quest of her daughter Mary, who has been conveyed by Joseph into Egypt. Persephon6 is depicted with two ears of wheat in her hand ; so is Mary in the old pictures ; so was the Celestial Virgin of the constella- tion. Albumazar the Arabian indicates the identity of the several myths as follows :
"In the first decan of the Virgin rises a maid, called in Arabic Ader- enosa [Adha-nari?], that is, pure immaculate virgin, f graceful in person, charming in countenance, modest in habit, with loosened hair, holding in her hands two ears of wheat, sitting upon an embroidered throne, nursing a boy, and rightly feeding him in the i)lace called Hebraea ; a boy, I say, named lessus by certain nations, which signifies Issa, whom they also call Christ in Greek." J
At this time Grecian, Asiatic, and Egyptian ideas had undergone a remarkable transformation. The Mysteries of Dionysus-Sabazius had been replaced by the rites of Mithras, whose "caves" superseded the crypts of the former god, from Babylon to Britain. Serapis, or Sri-Apa, from Pontus, had usurped the place of Osiris. T'he king of Eastern Hin- dustan, Asoka, had embraced the religion of Siddhartha, and sent mission- aries clear to Greece, Asia, Syria, and Egypt, to promulgate the evangel of wisdom. The Essenes of Judea and Arabia, the Therapeutists § of Egyjit, and the Pythagorists J of Greece and Magna Graecia, were evi- dently religionists of the new faith. The legends of Gautama superseded the myths of Horus, Anubis, Adonis, Atys, and Bacchus. These were wrought anew into the Mysteries and Gospels, and to them we owe the
* Anna is an Oriental designation from the Chaldean ana, or heaven, whence Anaitis and Anai'tres. Uurga, the consort of Siva, is also named Anna puma, and was doubtless the original St. Anna. The mother of the prophet Samuel was named Anna ; the father of his counterpart, Samson, was Manu.
f The virgins of ancient time, as will be seen, were not maids, but simply almas^ or nubile women.
X Kircher : •* CEdipus iEgypticus." iii, $.
§ From 0fparciM», to serve, to worship, to heal.
I £. Pv)cocke derives the name Pythagoras from Buddha^ and guru^ a spiritual teacher. Higgins makes it Celtic, and says that it means an observer of the stars. See •* Celtic Druids." If, however, we derive the word Pytho from nnD» p^^oh, the name would signify an expounder of oracles, and Buddha gum a teacher of the doctrines of Buddha.
492 ISIS UNVEILED.
literature known as the Evangelists and the Apocryphal New Testament, They were kept by the Ebionites, Nazarenes, and other sects as sacred books, which they might ** show only to the wise ; " and were so preserved till the overshadowing influence of the Roman ecclesiastical polity was able to wrest them from those who kept them.
At the time that the high-priest Hilkiah is said to have found the Book of the Law^ the Hindu Puranas (Scriptures) were known to the Assyrians. These last had for many centuries held dominion from the Hellespont to the Indus, and probably crowded the Aryans out of Bac- triana into the Punjab. The Book of the Lata seems to have been a purana, " The learned Brahmans,'* says Sir William Jones, " pretend that five conditions are requisite to constitute a i^dX purofta :
" I. To treat of the creation of matter in general.
"2. To treat oi the creation or production of secondary material and spiritual beings,
** 3- To give a chronological abridgment of the great periods of time.
** 4. To give a genealogical abridgment of the principal families that reigned over the country.
" 5. Lastly, to give the history of some great man in particular."
It is pretty certain that whoever wrote the Pentateuch had this plan before him, as well as those who wrote the New Testament had become thoroughly well acquainted with Buddhistic ritualistic worshi]), legends and doctrines, through the Buddhist missionaries who were many in those days in Palestine and Greece.
But " no Devil, no Christ." This is the basic dogma of the Church. We must hunt the two together. There is a mysterious connection between the two, more close than perhaps is suspected, amounting to identity. If we collect together the mythical sons of God, all of whom were regarded as "first-begotten," they will be found dovetailing together and blending in this dual character. Adam Kadmon bifurcates from the spiritual conceptive wisdom into the creative one, which evolves matter* The Adam made from dust is both son of God and Satan ; and the latter is also a son of God,* according to Job.
Hercules was likewise "the First-Begotten." He is also Bel, Baal, and Bal, and therefore Siva, the Destroyer. Bacchus was styled by Euripides, " Bacchus, the Son of God." As a child, Bacchus, like the Jesus of the Apocryphal Gospels, was greatly dreaded. He is described as benevolent to mankind ; nevertheless he was merciless in punishing whomever failed of respect to his worship. Pentheus, the son of Cad-
* In the Secret Museum of Naples, there is a marble bas-relief representing the Fall of Man, in which God the Father plays the part of the Beguiling Serpent,
JOB EXPLAINED BY THE " BOOK OF THE DEAD." 493
mus and Hermion^, was, like the son of Rabbi Hannon, destroyed for his want of piety.
The allegory of Job, which has been already cited, if correctly under- stood, will give the key to this whole matter of the Devil, his nature and office ; and will substantiate our declarations. Let no pious individual take exception to this designation of allegory. Myth was the favorite and universal method of teaching in archaic times. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, declared that the entire story of Moses and the Israelites was typical ; * and in his Epistle to the Galatians^ asserted that the whole story of Abraham, his two wives, and their sons was an allegory. \ Indeed, it is a theory amounting to certitude, that the historical books of the Old Testament were of the same character. We take no extraor- dinary liberty with the Book of Job when we give it the same designation which Paul gave the stories of Abraham and Moses.
But we ought, perhaps, to explain the ancient use of allegory and symbol ogy. The tnith in the former was left to be deduced ; the symbol expressed some abstract quality of the Deity, which the laity could easily apprehend. Its higher sense terminated there; and it was employed by the multitude thenceforth as an image to be employed in idolatrous rites. But the allegory was reserved for the inner sanctuar}', when only the elect were admitted. Hence the rejoinder of Jesus when his disciples interrogated him because he spoke to the multitude in parables. " To you," said he, " it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance ; but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath." In the minor Mysteries a sow was washed to typify the purification of the neo[)hyte ; as her retiu-n to the mire indicated the su])erficial nature of the work that had been accomplished.
'* The Mythus is the undisclosed thought of the soul. The character- istic trait of the myth is to convert reflection into history (a historical form). As in the epos, so in the myth, the historical element predomi- nates. Facts (external events) often constitute the basis of the myth, and with these, religious ideas are interwoven."
The whole allegory of Job is an oi>en book to him who understands the picture-language of Egypt as it is recorded in the Book of the Dead, In the Scene of Judgment, Osiris is represented sitting on his throne,
* First Epistle to the Corinthians, x. 11. : *^ All these things happened unto them for types:''
\ Epistle to the Galatians, iv. 24 : ^* It is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid, the other by a freewoman . . . which thin^ are an allegory."
494 ISIS UNVEILED.
holding in one hand the symbol of life, " the hook of attraction," and in the other the mystic Bacchic fan. Before him are the sons of (lod, the forty-two assessors of the dead. An altar is immediately before the throne, covered with gifts and surmounted with the sacred lotus-flower, upon which stand four spirits. By the entrance stands the soul about to be judged, whom Thmei, the genius of Truth, is welcoming to this conclu- sion of the probation. Thoth holding a reed, makes a record of the proceedings in the Book of Life. Horus and Anubis, standing by the scales, inspect the weight which determines whether the heart of the deceased balances the symbol of truth, or the latter preponderates. On a pedestal sits a bitch — the symbol of the Accuser.
Initiation into the Mysteries, as every intelligent person knows, was a dramatic representation of scenes in the underworld. Such was the allegory of Job.
Several critics have attributed the authorship of this book to Moses. But it is older than the Pentateuch. Jehovah is not mentioned in the poem itself ; and if the name occurs in the prologue, the fact must be attributed to either an error of the translators, or the premeditation exacted by the later necessity to transform polytheism into a mono- theistic religion. The plan adopted was the very simple one of attrib- uting the many names of the Elohim (gods) to a single god. So in one of the oldest Hebrew texts of Job (in chapter xii. 9) there stands the name of Jehovah, whereas all other manuscripts have " Adonai." But in the original poem Jehovah is absent. In i)lace of this name we find Aly Aleiffiy Ale, Shaddaiy Adonai, etc. Therefore, we must con- clude that either the prologue and ei)ilogue were added at a later i)eriod, which is inadmissible for many reasons, or that it has been tampered with like the rest of the manuscripts. Then, we find in this archaic poem no mention whatever of the Sabbatical Institution ; but a great many references to the sacred number seven, of which we will speak further, and a direct discussion upon Sabeanism, the worship of the heavenly bodies prevailing in those days in Arabia. Satan is called in it a " Son of God," one of the council which presents itself before God, and he leads him into tempting Job's fidelity. In this poem, clearer and ])laincr than anywhere else, do we find the meaning of the appellation, Satan. It is a term for the oflSce or character o^ public accuser, Satan is the Typhon of the Egyptians, barking his accusations in Amenthi ; an office quite as resi)ectable as that of the i)ul)lic prosecutor, in our own age ; and if, through the ignorance of the first Christians, he became later identical with the Devil, it is through no connivance of his own.
The Book of Job is a complete representation of ancient initiation, and the trials which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies.
PERVERSIONS OF THE TEXT AND INTERPOLATIONS. 495
The neophyte perceives himself deprived of everything he valued, and afflicted with foul disease. His wife appeals to him to adore Cjod and (lie ; there was no more hope for him. Three friends appear on the scene by mutual appointment : Eliphaz, the learned Temanite, full of the knowledge ** which wise men have told from their fathers — to whom alone the earth was given ; '* Bildad, the conservative, taking matters as they come, and judging Job to have done wickedly, because he was afflicted ; and Zophar, intelligent and skilful with " generalities ** but not interiorly wise. Job boldly responds : " If I have erred, it is a matter with myself. You magnify yourselves and plead against me in my reproach ; but it is God who has overthrown me. Why do you per- secute me and are not satisfied with my flesh thus wasted away ? But I know that my Champion lives, and that at a coming day he will stand for me in the earth ; and though, together with my skin, all this beneath it shall be destroyed, yet without my flesh I shall see God. ... Ye shall say : * Why do we molest him ? * for the root of the matter is found in me ! "
This passage, like all others in which the faintest allusions couKl be found to a *' Champion," " Deliverer," or " Vindicator," was interpreted into a direct reference to the Messiah ; but apart from the fact that in the Septuagint this verse is translated :
"For I know that He is eternal Who is about to deliver me on earth, To restore this skin of mine which endures these things," etc.
In King James's version, as it stands translated, it has no resemblance whatever to the original.* The crafty translators have rendered it, " I know that my Redeemer livethy* etc. And yet Septuagint, Vulgate, and Hebrew original, have all to be considered as an inspired Word of God. Job refers to his own immortal spirit which is eternal, and which, when death comes, will deliver him from his putrid earthly body and clothe him with a new spiritual envelope. In the Mysteries of Eleusinia, in the Egyptian Book of tJie Dead, and all other works treating on matters of initiation, this " eternal being " has a name. With the Neo-platonists it was the Nous, the Augoeides ; with the Buddhists it is Aggra ; and with the Persians, Ferwer, All of these are called the "Deliverers," the " Champions," the " Metatrons," etc. In the Mithraic sculptures of Persia, the ferwer is represented by a winged figure hovering in the air above its " object " or body, f It is the luminous Self — the Atman of
* See ** Job," by various translators, and compare the different texts, f Sec Kerr Porter's ** Persia," vol. i., plates 17, 41.
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the Hindus, our immortal spirit, who alone can redeem our soul ; and will, if we follow him instead of being dragged down by our body. Therefore, in the Chaldean texts, the above reads, " My deliverer^ my restorer^' i,e., the Spirit who will restore the decayed body of man, and transform it into a clothing of ether. And it is this JVbus, Augoeides^ Ferwer^ Aggra^ Spirit of himself, that the triumi)hant Job shall see with- out his flesh — /, e.y when he has escaped from his bodily prison, and that the translators call " God."
Not only is there not the slightest allusion in the poem of Job to Christ, but it is now well proved that all those versions by diflferent trans- lators, which agree with that of king James, were written on the author- ity of Jerome, who has taken strange liberties in his Vulgate, He was the first to cram into the text this verse of his own fabrication :
•* / know that my Redeem fr Hves^
And at the last day I shall arise from the earthy And again shall be surrounded with my skin, And in my flesh I shall see my God."
All of which might have been a good reason for himself to believe in it since he knetv it^ but for others who did not^ and who moreover found in the text a quite different idea, it only proves that Jerome had decided, by one more interpolation, to enforce the dogma of a resurrection " at the last day," and in che identical skin and bones which we had used on earth. This is an agreeable prospect of " restoration " indeed. Why not the linen also, in which the body happens to die ?
And how could the author of the Book of Job know anything of the New Testament^ when evidently he was utterly ignorant even of the Old one ? There is a total absence of allusion to any of the patriarchs ; and so evidently is it the work of an Initiate^ that one of the three daugh- ters of Job is even called by a decidedly " Pagan '* mythological name. The name of Kerenhappuch is rendered in various ways by the many translators. The Vulgate has " horn of antimony ; " and the LXX has the " horn of Amalthea," the nurse of Jupiter, and one of the constellations, emblem of the " horn of plenty." The presence in the Septuagint of this heroine of Pagan fable, shows the ignorance of the transcribers of its meaning as well as the esoteric origin of the Book of Job.
Instead of offering consolations, the three friends of the suffering Job seek to make him believe that his misfortune must have come in punish- ment of some extraordinary transgressions on his part. Hurling back upon them all their imputations, Job swears that while his breath is in him he will maintain his cause. He takes in view the period of his prosperity " when the secret of God was upon his tabernacles," and he was a judge
JOB A SYMBOLICAL POEM UPON INITIATION. 49/
" who sat chief, and dwelt as a king in the army, or one that comforteth the mourners," and compares with it the present time — when vagrant Bedouins held him in derision, men " viler than the earth," when he was prostrated by misfortune and foul disease. Then he asserts his sympathy for the unfortunate, his chastity, his integrity, his probity, his strict justice, his charities, his moderation, his freedom from the prevalent sun-worship, his tenderness to enemies, his hospitality to strangers, his openness of heart, his boldness for the right, though he encountered the multitude and the contempt of families ; and invokes the Almighty to answer him, and his adversary to write down of what he had been guilty.
To this there was not, and could not be, any answer. The three had sought to crush Job by pleadings and general arguments, and he had de- manded consideration for his specific acts. Then appeared the fourth ; Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the kindred of Ram.*
Klihu is the hierophant ; he begins with a rebuke, and the sophisms of Job's false friends are swept away like the loose sand before the west wind.
" And Elihu, the son of Barachel, spoke and said ; * Great men are not always wise . . . there is a spirit in man ; the spirif within me constraineth me. . . . God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man pcrceiv- eth it not. In a dream ; in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon man, in slumberings upon the bed ; then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction. O Job, hearken unto me ; hold thy peace, and 1 shall teach thee wisdom.' "
And Job, who to the dogmatic fallacies of his three friends in the bit- terness of his heart had exclaimed : ** No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you. . . . Miserable comforters are ye all. . . . Surely 1 would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God. But ye are forgers of lies, ye are physicians of no value ! " The sore- eaten, visited Job, who in the face of the official clergy — offering for all hope the necessarianism of damnation, had in his despair nearly wavered in his patient faith, answered : " What^'^ know, the same do I know also ; I am not inferior unto you. . . . Man cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down : he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not, . . . Man dieth, and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? , , . [{ a. man die shall he //Vv again ? . . . When a few years are come then I shall go the way whence I shall not return. . . . O that one might plead for a man with God, as a man pleadeth for his neighbor ! "
* The expression ** of the kindred of Ram ** denotes that he was an Aramaean or Syrian from Mesopotamia. Buz was a son of Nahor. '^ Elihu son of Barachel " is susceptible of two translations. £li-Hu — God is, or Hoa is God ; and Barach-Al— the worshipper of God, or Bar- Rachel, the son of Rachel, or son of the ewe.
32
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Job finds one who answers to his cry of agony. He listens to the wis- dom of Elihu, the hierophant, the perfected teacher, the ins])ircd phi- losopher. From his. stern lips conies the just rebuke for his impiety in charging uix)n the Supreme Being the evils of humanity. " God," says Elihu, " is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice ; He will not afflict r
So long as the neophyte was satisfied with his own worldly wisdom and irreverent estimate of the Deity and His purposes ; so long as be gave ear to the pernicious sophistries of his advisers, the hierophant kept silent. But, when this anxious mind was ready for counsel and instruc- tion, his voice is heard, and he speaks with the authority of the Spirit of God that " constraineth " him : "Surely God will not hear vanity^ nei- ther will the Almighty regard it. . . . He respecteth not any that are wise at heart."
What better commentary than this upon the fashionable preacher, who ^^ multiplicth words without knowledge!" This magnificent /r^ phetic satire might have been written to prefigure the spirit that prevails in all the denominations of Christians.
Job hearkens to the words of wisdom, and then the " I^ord " answers Job "out of the whirlwind" of nature, God's first visible manifestation : *' Stand still, O Job, stand still ! and consider the wondrous works of God ; for by them alone thou canst know God. * Behold, God is great, and we know him not^ Him who * maketh small the drops of water ; but they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof ;*^^ * not according to the divine whim, but to the once established and immutable laws. Which law "removeth the mountains and they know not ; which shaketh the earth ; which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not ; and sealeth up the stars ; . . . which doeth great things past finding out ; yea, and wonders without number, . . . Lo, He goeth by me, and I see him not ; he passeth on also, but I perceive him not I " \
Then, ** Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowl- edge ? '* J speaks the voice of God through His mouthpiece — ^nature. ** Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowestl When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy ? . . . Wast thou present when I said to the seas,
* Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further ; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed ? ' . . . Knowest thou who hath caused it to rain on the earth, where no man is ; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man.
• . . Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands
«
♦ xxxvl 24-27. t i^ S"'*' X xxxviiL i, et passim.
THE NEOPHYTE IS BROUGHT TO LIGHT. 499
of Orion ? . . . Canst thou send lightnings^ that they may go, and say unto thee, * Here we are ? ' " *
" Then Job answered the I^rd." He understood His ways, and his eyes were opened for the first time. The Supreme Wisdom descended upon him ; and if the reader remain puzzled before this final Petroma of initiation, at least Job, or the man " afflicted " in his blindness, then real- ized the impossibility of catching ** Leviathan by putting a hook into his nose." The Leviathan is occult science, on which one can lay his hand, but ** do no morgy' f whose power and " comely proportion ** God wishes not to conceal.
** Who can discover the face of his garment, or who can come to him with his double bridle f Who can open the doors of his face, * of him whose scales are his pride, shut up together as with a closed seal?' Through whose * neesings a light doth shine,* and whose eyes are like the lids of the morning." Who " maketh a light to sAine after him," for those who have the fearlessness to approach him. And then they, like him, will behold " all high things, for he is king only over all the chil- dren of pride." J
Job, now in modest confidence, responded :
*^ I know that thou canst do everything. And that no thought of thine can be resisted. Who is he that maketh a show of arcane wisdom, Of which he knoweth nothing ? Thus have I uttered what I did not comprehend — Things far above me, which I did not know. Hear ! I beseech thee, and I will speak ; 1 will demand of thee, and do thou answer me : I have heard thee with my ears, And now I see thee with my eyes, Wherefore am I loathsome. And mourn in dust and ashes ? "
He recognized his " champion," and was assured that the time for his vindication had come. Immediately the I^ord ("the priests and the judges,*' Deuteronomy xix. 17) saith to his friends : "My wrath is kin- dled against thee and against thy two friends ; for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.*' So '*the Lord turned the captivity of Job," and " blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning."
Then in the judgment the deceased invokes four spirits who preside over the Lake of Fire, and is purified by them. He then is conducted to
♦ Job xxxviii. 35. f Ibid., xli 8. \ Ibid., xlL 34.
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his celestial house, and is received by Athar and Isis, and stands before Atum^ * the essential God. He is now Turu^ the essential man, a pure spirit, and henceforth On-ati, the eye of fire, and an associate of the gods.
This grandiose poem of Job was well understood by the kabalists. While many of the mediaeval Hermetists were profoundly religious men, they were, in their innermost hearts — like kabalists of every age — the deadliest enemies of the clergy. How true the words of Paracelsus when worried by fierce persecution and slander, misunderstood by friends and foes, abused by clergy and laity, he exclaimed :
"O ye of Paris, Padua, Montpellier, Salerno, Vienna, and Leipzig! Ye are not teachers of the truth, but confessors of lies. Your philosophy is a lie. Would you know what magic really is, then seek it in St. John's Revelation. ... As you cannot yourselves prove your teachings firom the Bible and the Revelation^ then let your farces have an end. The Bible is the true key and interpreter, John, not less than Moses, Elias, Enoch, David, Solomon, Daniel, Jeremiah, and the rest of the prophets, was a magician^ kabalist, and diviner. If now, all, or even any of those I have named, were yet living, I do not doubt that you would make an example of them in your miserable slaughter-house, and would annihilate them there on the spot, and if it were possible, the Creator of all things too ! "
That Paracelsus had learned some mysterious and useful things out of Revelation and other Bible books, as well as from the Kabala^ was proved by him practically ; so much so, that he is called by many the ** father of magic and founder of the occult physics of the Kabala and magnetism.'' f
So firm was the popular belief in the supernatural powers of Paracel- sus, that to this day the tradition survives among the simple-minded Alsatians that he is not dead, but " sleepeth in his grave " at Strasburg. J And they often whisper among themselves that the green sod heaves with every respiration of that weary breast, and that deep groans are heard as the great fire-philosopher awakes to the remembrance of the cruel wrongs he suffered at the hands of his cruel slanderers for the sake of the great truth !
It will be perceived from these extended illustrations that the Satan of the Old Testament^ the Diabolos or Devil of the Gospels and Apostolic Epistles^ were but the antagonistic principle in matter, necessarily inci- dent to it, and not wicked in the moral sense of the term. The Jews,
* Atum^ or At-ma, is the Concealed God, at once Phtha and Amon, Father and Son, Creator and thing created, Thought and Appearance, Father and Mother, f Molitor, Ennemoser, Henman, PfafT, etc X Schopheim : *' Traditions,'* p. 32.
ORIENTAL AND CHRISTIAN SATANISM UNLIKE. 50I
coming from the Persian country, brought with them the doctrine of two principles. They could not bring the Avesta^ for it was not written. But they— we mean the Asidians and Pharsi — invested Ormazd with the secret name of mrr,and Ahriinan with the name of the gods of the land, Satan of the Hittites, and Diabuios, or rather Diobolos, of the Greeks. The early Church, at least the Pauline part of it, the Gnostics and th^ir successors, further refined upon their ideas ; and the Catholic Church adopted and adapted them, meanwhile putting their promulgators to the sword.
The Protestant is a reaction from the Roman Catholic Church. It is necessarily not coherent in its parts, but a prodigious host of fragments beating their way round a common centre, attracting and repelling each other. Parts are centripetally impelled towards old Rome, or die system which enabled old Rome to exist ; part still recoil under the centrifugal impulse, and seek to rush into the broad ethereal region beyond Roman, or even Christian influence.
T'he modern Devil is their principal heritage from the Roman Cybel^, ** Babylon, the Great Mother of the idolatrous and abominable religions of the earth."
But it may be argued, perhaps, that Hindu theology, both Brahman- ical and Buddhistic, is as strongly impregnated with belief in objective devils as Christianity itself. There is a slight difference. This very subtlety of the Hindu mind is a sufficient warrant that the well-educated people, the learned portion, at least, of the Brahman and Buddhist divines, consider the Devil in another light. With them the Devil is a metaphysical abstraction, an allegory of necessary rvil; while with Christians the myth has become a historical entity^ the fundamental stone on which Christianity^ with its dogma of redemption^ is built. He is as necessary — as Des Mousseaux has shown — to the Church as the beast of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse was to his rider. The English-speaking Protestants, not finding the Bible explicit enough, have adopted the Diabology of Milton's celebrated poem. Paradise Lost^ embellishing it somewhat from Goethe's celebrated drama of Faust, John Milton, first a Puritan and finally a Quietist and Unitarian, never put forth his great production except as a work of fiction, but it thor- oughly dovetailed together the different parts of Scripture. The Ilda- Baoth of the Ophites was transformed into an angel of light, and the morning star, and made the Devil in the first act of the Diabolic Drama. Then the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse was brought in for the second act. The great red Dragon was adopted as the same illustrious personage as Lucifer^ and the last scene is his fall, like that of Vulcan-Hephaistos, from Heaven into the island of Lemnos ; the fugitive hosts and their
502 ISIS UNVEILED.
leader ** coming to hard bottom " in Pandemonium. The third act is the Garden of Eden. Satan holds a council in a hall erected by him for his new empire, and determines to go forth on an exploring expedition in quest of the new world. The next acts relate to the fall of man, his career on earth, the advent of the Logos, or Son of God, and his redemp- tion of mankind, or the elect portion of them, as the case may be.
This drama of Paradise Lost comprises the unformulated belief of English-speaking "evangelical Protestant Christians." Disbelief of its main features is equivalent, in their view, to ** denying Christ" and "blas- pheming against the Holy Ghost." If John Milton had supposed that his poem, instead of being regarded as a companion of Dante's Divine Comedy^ would have been considered as another Apocalypse to supple- ment the Bible, and complete its demonology, it is more than probable that he would have borne his poverty more resolutely, and withheld it from the press. A later poet, Robert Pollok, taking his cue from this work, wrote another, The Course of Time, which bade fair for a season to take the rank of a later Scripture ; but the nineteenth century has fortunately received a different inspiration, and the Scotch poet is falling into oblivion.
We ought, perhaps, to make a brief notice of the European Devil. He is the genius who deals in sorcery, witchcraft, and other mischief. The Fathers taking the idea from the Jewish Pharisees, made devils of the Pagan gods, Mithras, Serapis, and the others. The Roman Catholic Church followed by denouncing the former worship as commerce with the powers of darkness. The malefecii and witches of the middle ages were thus but the votaries of the proscribed worship. Magic in all ancient times had been considered as divine science, wisdom, and the knowledge of God. The healing art in the temples of ^sculapius, and at the shrines of Egypt and the East, had always been magical. Even Darius Hystaspes, who had exterminated the Median Magi, and even driven out the Chal- dean theurgists from Babylon into Asia Minor, had also been instructed by the Brahmans of Upper Asia, and, finally, while establishing the wor- ship of Ormazd, was also himself denominated the instituter of magism. All was now changed. Ignorance was enthroned as the mother of devo- tion. Learning was denounced, and savants prosecuted the sciences in peril of their lives. They were compelled to employ a jargon to conceal their ideas from all but their own adepts, and to accept opprobrium, calumny, and poverty.
The votaries of the ancient worship were i>ersecuted and put to death on charges of witchcraft The Albigenses, descendants of the Gnostics, and the Waldenses, precursors of the Protestants, were hunted and mas- sacred under like accusations. Martin Luther himself was accused of
VARIOUS SORTIES OF SATAN. 503
companionship with Satan in proper person. The whole Protestant world still lies under the same imputation. There is no distinction in the judgments of the Church between dissent, heresy, and witchcraft. And except where civil authority protects, they are alike capital offences. Religious liberty the Church regards as intolerance.
But the reformers were nursed with the milk of their mother. Lu- ther was as bloodthirsty as the Pope ; Calvin more intolerant than Leo or Urban. Thirty years of war depopulated whole districts of Germany, Protestants and Catholics cruel alike. The new faith too opened its batteries against witchcraft. The statute books became crimsoned with bloody legislation in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Great Brit- ain, and the North American Commonwealth. Whosoever was more lib- eral, more intelligent, more free speaking than his fellows was liable to arrest and death. The fires that were extinguished at Smithfield were kindled anew for magicians ; it was safer to rebel against a throne tlian to pursue abstruse knowledge outside the orthodox dead-Une.
In the seventeenth century Satan made a sortie in New England, New Jersey, New York, and several of the Southern colonies of North America, and Cotton Mather gives us the principal chronicles of his manifestation. A few years later he visited the Parsonage of Mora, in Sweden, and Life in Dalecarlia was diversified with the burning alive of young children, and the whipping of others at the church-doors on Sabbath-days. The skepticism of modern times has, however, pretty much driven the belief in witchcraft into Coventry ; and the Devil in personal anthropomorphic form, with his Bacchus-foot, and his Pan-like goat's horns, holds place only in the Encyclical Letters^ and odier effusions of the Roman Catholic Church. Protestant respectability does not allow him to be named at all except with bated breath in a pulpit- enclosure.
Having now set forth the biography of the Devil from his first advent in India and Persia, his progress through Jewish, and both early and later Christian Theo\o%y down to the latest phases of his manifestation, we now turn back to review certain of the opinions extant in the earlier Christian centuries.
Avatars or incarnations were common to the old religions. India had them reduced to a system. The Persians expected Sosiosh, and the Jewish writers looked for a deliverer. Tacitus and Suetonius relate that the East was full of expectation of the Great Personage about the time of Octavius. " Thus doctrines obvious to Christians were the highest axcana of Paganism." * The Maneros of Plutarch was a child of Pales-
♦ W. WiUiams: "Primitive History ;" DunUp: " Spirit History of Man."
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tine ; * his mediator Mithras, the Saviour Osiris is the Messiah. In our present ^^ Canonical Scriptures*' are to be traced the vestigia of the ancient worships ; and in the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church we find the forms of the Buddhistical worship, its ceremonies and hierarchy. The first Gospels^ once as canonical as any of the present four, contain pages taken ahnost entire from Buddhistical narratives, as we are prepared to show. After the evidence furnished by Burnouf, Asoma, Korosi, Beal, Hardy, Schmidt, and translations from the Tripi- taka^ it is impossible to doubt that the whole Christian scheme emanated from the other. The " Miraculous Concei)tion " miracles and other inci- dents are found in full in Wiivdy' ^ Manual of Buddhism, We can readily realize why the Roman Catholic Church is anxious to keep the common people in utter ignorance of the Hebrew BibU and the Greek literature. Philology and comparative Theology are her deadliest enemies. The deliberate falsifications of Nenaeus, Epiphanius, Eusebius and Tertullian had become a necessity.
The Sibylline Books at that period seem to have been regarded with extraordinary favor. One can easily perceive that they were inspired from the same source as those of the Gentile nations.
Here is a leaf from Gallaeus :
** New Light has arisen : Coming from Heaven, it assumed a mortal form. . . .
Virgin, receive God in thy pure bosom —
And the Word flew into her womb : Becoming incarnate in Time, and animated by her body. It was fotmd in a mortal image, and a Boy was created By a Virgin. . . . The new God-sent Star was adored by the Magi, The infant swathed was shown in a manger. . . . And Bethlehem was called ** God-called coimtry of the Word." •
This looks at first-sight like a prophecy of Jesus. But could it not mean as well some other creative God ? We have like utterances con- cerning Bacchus and Mithras.
" I, son of Deus, am come to the land of the Thebans — Bacchus, whom formerly Semeld (the virgin), the daughter of Kadmus (the man from the East) brings forth — being delivered by the lightning-bearing flame ; and having taken a mortal fonn instead of God's, I have arrived." J
The Dionysiacs^ written in the fifth century, serve to render this matter very clear, and even to show its close connection with the Chris- tian legend of the birth of Jesus :
♦ Plutarch: "Isis and Osiris," p. 17. \ " Sibylline Oracles," 760-788.
X Euripides: *'Bacchae."
THE SECRET OF PERSEPHONE. $0$
** Kor^-Persephoneia* . . . you were wived sis the Dragon's spouse, When Zfus, very coiled, his form and countenance changed, A Dragon -Bridegroom, coiled in love-inspiring fold . . . Glided to dark Kor^*s maiden couch . . . Thus, by the alliance with the Dragon of iEther, The womb of Persephon^ became alive with fruit, Bearing Zagreus, f the Horned Child." |
Here we have the secret of the Ophite worship, and the origin of the Christian IvLtcrrevised fable of the immaculate conception. The Gnos- tics were the earUest Christians with anything like a regular theological system, and it is only too evident that it was Jesus who was made to fit their theology as Christos, and not their theology that was developed out of his sayings and doings. Their ancestors had maintained, before the Christian era, that the Great Serpent — Jupiter, the Dragon of Life, the Father and ** CJood Divinity," had glided into the couch of Semele, and now, the post- Christian (inostics, with a very trifling change, applied the same fable to the man Jesus, and asserted that the same ** Good Divin- ity," Saturn (Ilda-Baoth), had, in the shape of the Dragon of Life, glided over the cradle of the infant Mary. § In their eyes the Serpent was the Logos — Christos, the incarnation of Divine Wisdom, through his Father Ennoia and Mother Sophia.
" Now my mother, the Holy Spirit (Holy Ghost) took me," Jesus is made to say in the Gospel of the Hebreivs\ thus entering upon his part of Christos — the Son of Sophia, the Holy Spirit. T"
** The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee^ and the Power of the High- est shall overshadow thee ; therefore, that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called Son of God," says the angel (Luke i. 35).
*' God . . . hath at the last of these days spoken to us by a Son^
* We doubt the propriety of rendering fco//iy, virgin. Demeter and Persephoneia were substantially the same divinity, as were Apollo and Esculapius. The scene of this adventure is laid in Krete or Koureteia^ where Zeus was chief god. It was, doubtless, /Ceres or Demeter that is intended. She was also named icofpa, which is the same as Kwpri. As she was the goddess of the Mysteries, she was fittest for the place as consort of the Serpent-God and mother of Zagreus.
f Pococke considers Zeus a grand lama, or chief Jaina, and Kore- Persephone, or Kuru-Parasu-panu Zagreus, is CAakras^ the wheel, or circle, the earth, the ruler of the world. He was killed by the Titans, or Teith-ans (Daityas). The Horns or crescent was a badge of Lamaic sovereignty.
X Nonnus : " Dionysiacs."
§ See Deane's '* Serpent Worship," pp. 89, 9a
I Creuzer : •* Symbol," vol. I, p. 341.
If The Dragon is the sun, the generative principle — Jupiter -Zeus ; and Jupiter ii called the ^* Holy Spirit " by the Egyptians, says Plutarch, ** De Iside," xxxvi.
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whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the ^ons »' (Paul ; Heb. i.). *
All such expressions are so many Christian quotations from the Nonnus verse "... through the -^^therial Draconteum," for Ether is the Holy Ghost or third person of the Trinity — the Hawk-headed Ser- pent, the Egyptian Kneph, emblem of the Divine Mind, f and Plato's universal soul.
" I, Wisdom, came out of the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth as a cloud,** J
Pimander, the Logos, issues from the Infinite Darkness, and covers the earth with clouds which, serpentine-like, spread all over the earth (See Champollion's Egypte), The Logos is the oldest image of God, and he is the active Logos, says Philo. § The Father is the Latent Thought,
This idea being universal, we find an identical ])hraseology to express it, among Pagans, Jews, and early Christians. The Chaldeo- Persian Logos is the Only-Begotten of the Father in the Babylonian cosmogony of Eudemus. "Hymn now. En, child of Deus," begins a Homeric hynm to the sun. || Sol-Mithra is an " image of the Father," as the kabalistic Scir-Anpin.
That of all the various nations of antiquity, there never was one which believed in a personal devil more than liberal Christians in the nineteenth century, seems hardly credible, and yet such is the sor- rowful fact. Neither the Egyptians, whom Porphyry terms " the most learned nation of the world, ^ nor Greece, its faithful copyist, were ever guilty of such a crowning absurdity. We may add at once that none of them, not even the ancient Jews, believed in hell or an eternal damna- tion any more than in the Devil, although our Christian churches are so liberal in dealing it out to the heathen. Wherever the word ** hell " occurs in the translations of the Hebrew sacred texts, it is unfortunate. The Hebrews were ignorant of such an idea ; but yet the gospels con- tain frequent examples of the same misunderstanding. So, when Jesus is made to say {Matthe7v xvL i8) ** . . . and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it," in the original text it stands " the gates of lieathJ*
* In the original it stands yEons (emanations). In the translation it sitLods worlds. It was not to be expected that, after anathematizing the doctrine of emanations, the Church would refrain from erasing the original word, which clashed diametrically with her newly -en forced dogma of the Trinity.
f See Dean's "Serpent Worship," p. 145.
X Ecclesiasticus xxiv. 3.
§ See Dunlap*s " Spirit History of Man," the chapter on "the Logos, the Only- Begotten and the King."
I Translated by Buckley. ^ " Select Works on Sacrifice."
PYTHON AND TYPHON SHADOWS OF THE LIGHT. 507
•
Never is the word " hell " — as applied to the state of damnation, either temporary or eternal — used in any passage of the 01 J Testament, all hellists to the contrary, notwithstanding. " Tophet," or " the Valley of Hinnoni " (Isaiah Ixvi. 24) bears no such interpretation. The Greek term ** Gehenna" has also quite a different meaning, as it has been proved conclusively by more than one competent writer, that " Gehenna" is identical with the Homeric Tartarus.
In fact, we have Peter himself as authority for it. In his second Epistle (ii. 2) the Apostle, in the original text, is made to say of the sinning angels that God " cast them down into Tartarus^ This expression too inconveniently recalling the war of Jupiter and the Titans, was altered, and now it reads, in King James's version: "cast them down to hell"
In the Old Testament the expressions "gates of death," and the " chambers of death," simply allude to the " gates of the grave," which are specifically mentioned in the Psalms and Proverbs. Hell and its sovereign are both inventions of Christianity, coeval with its accession to power and resort to tyranny. They were hallucinations born of the nightmares of the SS. Anthonys in the desert. Before our era the ancient sages knew the " Father of Evil," and treated him no better than an ass, the chosen symbol of Typhon, " the Devil." ♦ Sad degeneration of human brains !
As Typhon was the dark shadow of his brother Osiris, so Python is the evil side of Apollo, the bright god of visions, the seer and the sooth- sayer. He is killed by Python, but kills him in his turn, thus redeeming humanity from sin. It was in memory of this deed that the priestesses of the sun-god enveloped themselves in the snake-skin, typical of the fabulous monster. Under its exhilarating influence — the serpent's skin being considered magnetic — the priestesses fell into magnetic trances, and ** receiving their voice from Apollo," they became prophetic and deliv- ered oracles.
Again Apollo and Python are one and morally androgynous. The sun-god ideas are all dual, without exception. The beneficent warmth of the sun calls the germ into existence, but excessive heat kills the plant. While playing on his seven-stringed planetary lyre, Apollo produces har- mony ; but, as well as other sun-gods, under his dark aspect he becomes the destroyer. Python.
St. John is known to have travelled in Asia, a country governed by Magi and imbued with Zoroastrian ideas, and in those days full of Buddhist
* Typhon is called by Plutarch and Sanchoniathon, " Tuphon, the r^ Plutarch : *'Isis and Osiris," xxl-xxvi.
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missionaries. Had he never visited those places and come in contact with Buddhists, it is doubtful whether the Revelation would have been written. Besides his ideas of the dragon, he gives prophetic narratives entirely unknown to the other apostles, and which, relating to the second advent, make of Christ a faithful copy of Vishnu.
Thus Ophios and Ophiomorphos, Apollo and Python, Osiris and Typhon, Christos and the Serpent, are all convertible terms. They are all Logoi, and one is unintelligible without the other, as day could not be known had we no night. All are regenerators and saviours, one in a spiritual, the other in a physical sense. One insures immortality for the Divine Spirit ; the other gives it through regeneration of the seed. The Saviour of mankind has to die, because he unveils to humanity the great secret of the immortal ego ; the serpent of Genesis is cursed because he said to matter y "Ye shall not die." In the world of Paganism the coun> terpart of the ** serpent " is the second Hermes, the reincarnation of Hermes Trismegistus.
Hermes is the constant companion and instructor of Osiris and Isis. He is the personified wisdom ; so is Cain, the son of the ** Lord." Both build cities, civilize and instruct mankind in tlie arts.
It has been repeatedly stated by the Christian missionaries in Ceylon and India that the people are steeped in demonolatry ; that they arc devil-worshippers, in the full sense of the word. Without any exaggera- tion we say that they are no more so than the masses of uneducated Christians. But even were they worshippers of (which is more than be- lievers in) the Devil, yet there is a great difference between the teach- ings of their clergy on the subject of a personal devil and the dogmas of Catholic preachers and many Protestant ministers also. The Christian priests are bound to teach and impress upon the minds of their flock the existence of the Devil, and the opening pages of the present chapter show the reason why. But not only will the Cingalese Oepasampala, who belong to the highest priesthood, not confess to belief in a personal demon but even the Samenaira, the candidates and novices, would laugh at the idea. Everything in the external worship of the Buddhists is alle- gorical and is never otherwise accepted or taught by the educated fungis (pundits). The accusation that they allow, and tacitly agree to leave the poor people steeped in the most degrading superstitions, is not with- out foundation ; but that they enforce such superstitions, we most vehe- mently deny. And in this they appear to advantage beside our Chris- tian clergy, who (at least those who have not allowed their fanaticism to interfere with their brains), without believing a word of it, yet preach the existence of the Devil, as the personal enemy of a personal God, and the evil genius of mankind.
THE CINGALESE DEMON RAWHO. 509
St. George's Dragon, which figures so promiscuously in the grandest cathedrals of the Christians, is not a whit handsomer than the King of Snakes, the Buddhist Nammadanam-naraya, the great Dragon. If the •])lanetary Demon Rawho, is beUeved, in the popular superstition of the Cingalese, to endeavor to destroy the moon by swallowing it ; and if in China and Tartary the rabble is allowed, without rebuke, to beat gongs and make fearful noises to drive the monster away from its prey during the eclipses, why should the Catholic clergy find fault, or call this super- stition ? Do not the country clergy in Southern France do the same, occasionally, at the appearance of comets, eclipses, and other celestial phenomena? In 1456, when Halley's comet made its appearance, "so tremendous was its apparition," writes Draper, •* that it was necessary for the Pope himself to interfere. He exorcised and expelled it from the skies. It slunk away into the abysses of space, terror-stricken by the maledictions of Calixtus IH., and did not venture back for seventy-five years ! " *
We never heard of any Christian clergyman or Pope trying to dis- abuse ignorant minds of the belief that the Devil had anything to do with eclipses and comets ; but we do find a Buddhist chief priest saying to an official who twitted him with this superstition : " Our Cingalese relig- ious books teach that the eclipses of the sun and moon denote an attack of Rahu f (one of the nine planets) not by a Jrvil"\
The origin of the " Dragon *' myth so prominent in the Apocalypse and Golden Legend^ and of the fable about Simeon Stylites converting the Dragon, is undeniably Buddhistic and even pre-Buddhisiic. It was Gautama's pure doctrines which reclaimed to Buddhism the Cashmeri- ans whose primitive worship was the Ophite or Serpent worship. Frank- incense and flowers replaced the human sacrifices and belief in personal demons. It became the turn of Christianity to inherit the degrading superstition about devils invested with pestilential and murderous powers. The Miihdvansa, oldest of the Ceylonese books, relates the story of King Covercapal (cobra-de-capello), the snake-god, who was converted to Buddhism by a holy Rabat ; § and it is earlier, by all odds, than the Golden Legend which tells the same of Simeon the Stylite and his Dragon.
• ** Conflict between Religion and Science,'* p. 269.
f Rahu and Kehetty are the two fixed stars which form the head and tail of the constellation of the Dragon.
X E. Upham : •* The Mahivansi, etc.," p. 54, for the answer given by the chief- priest of Mulgirs Galle Vihari, named Sue Bandare Metankere Samanere Samavahanse, to a Dutch Governor in 1766.
§ Wc leave it to the learned archaeologists and pliilologists to decide how the Naga or Serpent worship could travel from Kashmir to Mexico and become the Narg&l worship, which is also a Serpent worship, and a doctrine of lycanthropy.
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The I^ogos tnumphs once more over the great Dragon ; Michael, the luminous archangel, chief of the -^ons, conquers Satan.*
It is a fact worthy of remark, that so long as the initiate kept silent '* on what he knew," he was perfectly safe. So was it in days of old, and so it is now. As soon as the Christian God, emanating forth from SiUnce^ manifested himself as the Word or Logos, the latter became the cause of his death. The serpent is the symbol of wisdom and eloquence, but it is likewise the symbol of destruction. " To dare, to know, to will, and be silent^'^ are the cardinal axioms of the kabali^. Like Apollo and other gods, Jesus is killed by his Logos ; " f he rises again, kills him in his turn, and becomes his master. Can it be that this old symbol has, like the rest of ancient philosophical conceptions, more than one allego- rical and never-suspected meaning ? The coincidences are too strange to be results of mere chance.
And now that we have shown this identity between Michael and Satan, and the Saviours and Dragons of other poeple, what can be more clear than that all these philosophical fables originated in India, that uni- versal hot-bed of metaphysical mysticism ? " The world,' ' says Ramatsariar, in his comments upon the Vcdas^ '* commenced with a contest between the Spirit of Good and the Spirit of Evil, and so must end. After the destruction of matter evil can no longer exist, it must return to naught." J
In the Apologia^ TertuUian falsifies most palpably every doctrine and belief of the Pagans as to the oracles and gods. He calls them, indiffer- ently, demons and devils, accusing the latter of taking possession of even the birds of the air 1 What Christian would now dare doubt such an authority ? Did not the Psalmist exclaim : *' All the gods of the nations are idols;'* and the Angel of the School, Thomas Aquinas, explains, on his own kabalistic authority, the word idols by de^nls? " They come to men," he says, " and offer themselves to their adoration by operating certain things which seem miraculous." §
The Fathers were prudent as they were wise in their inventions. To be impartial, after having created a Devil, they set to creating apocry- phal saints. We have named several in preceding chapters ; but we must not forget Baronius, who having read in a work of Chrysostoni about the holy XetwriSy the word meaning a pair^ a couple, mistook it for the
* Michael, the chief of the iCons, is also '^ Gabriel, the messenger of Life/* of the Nazarenes, and the Hindu Indra, the chief of the good Spirits, who vanquished Vasouki, tlie Demon who relielled against Brahma.
f See the Gnostic amulet called the ** Chnuphis-Scrpent,'* in the act of raising its head crowned with the seven vowels^ which is the kabalistic symbol for signifying the ** gift of speech to man," or Logos,
% *^ Tamas, the Vedas." § Thomas Aquinas: '* Somma," ii., 94 Art.
THE MEPHISTOPHELES OF GOETHE. 51I
name of a saint, and proceeded forthwith to create of it a martyr of Antioch, and went on to give a most detailed and authentic biography of tlie " blessed martyr." Other theologians made of ApoUyon — or rather Apolonon — the anti-Christ. Apolon6n is Plato's ** washer," the god who purifies^ who washes off, and releases us from sin, but he was thus trans- formed into him ** whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the (Jreek tongue hath his name ApoUyon " — Devil !
Max Miiller says that the serpent in Paradise is a conception which might have sprung up among the Jews, and " seems hardly to invite comparison with the much grander conceptions of the terrible power of ^''rilra and Ahriman in the Veda and Avesta" With the kabalists the Devil was always a myth — God or good reversed. That modern Magus, Mliphas Levi, calls the Devil livresse asirale. It is a blind force like electricity, he says ; and, speaking allegorically, as he always did, Jesus remarked that he ** beheld Satan like lightning fall from Heaven."
The clergy insist that God has sent the Devil to tempt mankind ; which would be rather a singular way of showing his boundless love to humanity ! If the Supreme One is really guilty of such unfatherly treachery, he is worthy, certainly, of the adoration only of a Church capa- ble of singing the Te Deum over a massacre of St. Bartholomew, and of blessing Mussulman swords drawn to slaughter Greek Christians !
This is at once sound logic and good sound law, for is it not a maxim of jurispnidence : " Qui facit per alium^facit per seV*
The great dissimilarity which exists between the various conceptions of the Devil is really often ludicrous. While bigots will invariably endow him with horns, tail, and every conceivable repulsive feature, even including an offensive human smell, * Milton, Byron, Goethe, Lermontoff, f and a host of French novelists have sung his praise in flowing verse and thrilling prose. Milton's Satan, and even Goethe's Mephistopheles, are certainly far more commanding figures than some of the angels, as represented in the prose of ecstatic bigots. We have
* See des Mousseaux ; see various other Demonographers ; the diflferent *• Trials of Witches," the depositions of the latter exacted by torture, etc. In our humble opinion, the Devil must have contracted this disagreeable smell and his habits of uncleanliness in company with mediaeval monks. Many of these saints boasted of having never washed themselves! '* To strip one*s self for the sake of vain cleanliness, is to sin in the eyes of God," says Sprenger, in the ** Witches* Hammer." Hermits and monks *' dreaded all cleansing as so much defilement. There was no bathing for a thousand years ! " exclaims Michelet in his ** Sorciere." \Vhy such an outcry against Hindu fakirs in such a case? These, if they keep dirty, besmear themselves only after washing, for their religion commands them to wash every morning, and sometimes several times a day.
f Lermontoff, the great Russian poet, author of the
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but to compare two descriptions. Let us first award the floor to the incomparably sensational des Mousseaux. He gives us a thriUing ac- count of an incubus, in the words of the penitent herself: "Once," she tells us, ** during the space of a whole half-hour, she saw distinctly near her an individual with a black, dreadful, horrid body, and whose hands, of an enormous size, exhibited clawed fingers strangely hooked. The senses of sight, feeling, and smell were confirmed by that of hearing ! ! '* ♦
And yet, for the space of several years, the damsel suffered herself to be led astray by such a hero I How far above this odoriferous gallant is the majestic figure of the Mil tonic Satan !
Let the reader then fancy, if he can, this superb chimera, this ideal of the rebellious angel become incarnate Pride, crawling into the skin of the most disgusting of all animals ! Notwithstanding that the Christian catechism teaches us that Satan in propria persona tempted our first mother, Eve, in a real paradise, and that in the shape of a serpent, which of all anin)als was the most insinuating and fascinating ! God orders him, as a punishment, to crawl eternally on his belly, and bite the dust. " A sentence," remarks Levi, " which resembles in nothing the traditional flames of hell." The more so, that the real zoological serpent, which was created before Adam and Eve, crawled on his belly, and bit the dust like- wise, before there was any original sin.
Apart from this, was not Ophion the Daimon, or Devil, like God called Dominus? \ The word God (deity) is derived from the Sanscrit word Deva, and Devil from the Persian daeva, which words are substantially alike. Hercules, son of Jove and Alcmena, one of the highest sun-gods and also Logos manifested, is nevertheless represented under a double nature, as all others.^
The Agathodaemon, the beneficent dxmon, § the same which we find later among the Ophites under the appellation of the Logos, or divine wisdom, was represented by a serpent standing erect on a pole^ in the Bacchanalian Mysteries. The hawk-headed serpent is among the oldest of the Eg}'ptian emblems, and represents the divine mind, says Deane.|
Azazel is Moloch and Samael, says Movers, T" and we find Aaron, the brother of the great law-giver Moses, making equal sacrifices to Jehovah and Azazel.
* ** Les Ilauts Phtnomcncs de la Magic," p. 379.
f " Movers," p. 109.
\ Hercules is of Hindu origin.
§ The same as the Egyptian Kneph^ and the Gnostic Ophis.
I "Serpent Worship," p. 145.
^ '* Movers," p. 397. Azazel and Samael are identical
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" And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats ; one lot for the Lord (Ihoh in the original) and one lot for the scape-goat " (Azaxel),
In the O/ii Testament Jehovah exhibits all the attributes of old Saturn,* notwithstanding his metamorphoses from Adoni into Eloi, and God of Gods, Lord of Lords.f
Jesus is tempted on the mountain by the Devil, who promises to him kingdoms and glory if he will only fall down and worship him {Matthew iv. 8, 9). Buddha is tempted by the Demon Wasawarthi Mara, who says to him as he is leaving his father's palace : " Be entreated to stay that you may possess the honors that are within your reach ; go not, go not I " And upon the refusal of Gautama to accept his offers, gnashes his teeth with rage, and threatens him with vengeance. Like Christ, Buddha triumphs over the Devil. J
In the Bacchic Mysteries a consecrated cup was handed around after supper, called the cup of the Agathodxmon.g The Oj)hite rite of the same description is evidently borrowed from these Mysteries. The com- munion consisting of bread and wine was used in the worship of nearly every important deity. J
In connection with the semi-Mithraic sacrament adopted by the Mar- cosians, another Gnostic sect, utterly kabalistic and theurgtc^ there is a strange story given by Epiphanius as an illustration of the cleverness of the Devil. In the celebration of their Eucharist, three large vases of the finest and clearest crystal were brought among the congregation and filled with white wine. While the ceremony was going on, in full view of everybody, this wine was instantaneously changed into a blood-red, a purple, and then into an azure-blue color. ** Then the magus," says Epiphanius, "hands one of these vases to a woman in the congregation, and asks her to bless it. When it is done, the magus pours out of it into another vase of much greater capacity with the prayer : " May the grace of God, which is above all, inconceivable, inexplicable, fill thy inner man, and augment the knowledge of Him within thee, sowing the grain of mus-
* Saturn is Bel-Moloch and even Hercules and Siva. Both of the latter are Hara^ kalOf or gods of the war, of the battle, or the " Lords of Hosts.'* Jehovah is called '* a man of war " in Exodus xv. 3. '* The Lord of Hosts is his name " (Isaiah li. 15), and David blesses him for teaching his " hands to war and his fingers to fight *' (Psalms cxliv. i). Saturn is also the Sun, and Movers says that " Kronos Saturn was. called by the Phcenicians Israel (130). Philo says the same (in Euseb. p 44).
f *' Blessed be lahoh, AUhim, Alahi, Israel'' (Psalm Ixxil)
X Hardy's *' Manual of Buddhism," p. 60.
§ Cousin : ** Lect. on Mo
I Movers, Duncker, Higgins, and others.
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tard-seed in good ground.* WTiereupon the liquor in the larger vase swells and swells until it runs over the brim."f
In connection with several of the Pagan deities which are made after death, and before their resurrection to descend into Hell, it will be found useful' to compare the pre-Christian with the post-Christian narratives. Orpheus made the journey ,J and Christ was the last of these subterranean travellers. In the Credo of the Apostles, which is divided in twelve sen- tences or articles^ each particular article having been inserted by each particular apostle, according to St. Austin § the sentence " He descended into hell, the third day he rose again from the dead," is assigned to Thomas ; perhaps, as an atonement for his unbelief. Be it as it may, the sentence is declared a forgery, and there is no evidence " that this creed was either framed by the apostles, or indeed, that it existed as a creed in their time." ||
It is the most important addition in the Apostle's Creed, and dates since the year of Christ 600. T" It was not known in the days of Euse- bius. Bishop Parsons says that it was not in the ancient creeds or rules of faith.** Irenaeus, Origen, and Tertullian exhibit no knowledge of this sentence, ff It is not mentioned in any of the Councils before the seventh century. Theodoret, Epiphanius, and Socrates ^re silent about it. It differs from the creed in St. Augustine. JJ Ruffinus affirms that in his time it was neither in the Roman nor in the Oriental creeds (Exposit, in Symbol, Apost. § 10). But the problem is solved when we learn that ages ago Hermes spoke thus to Prometheus, chained on the arid rocks of the Caucasian mount :
"To such labors loi^k thou for no termination, until some god
♦ " Hares," xxxiv ; "Gnostics," p. 53.
f Wine was first made sacred in the mysteries of Bacchus. Payne Knight be- lieves— erroneously we think — that wine was taken with the view to produce a false ecstasy through intoxication. It was held sacred ^ however, and the Christian Eucharist is certainly an imitation of the Pagan rite. Whether Mr. Knight was right or wrong, wc regret to say that a Protestant clergyman, the Rev. Joseph Rianchard, of New York, was found drunk in one of the public squares on the night of Sunday, August 5, 1877, and lodgetl in pristm. The published report says: **The prisoner said that he had been to church and taken a little too much of the communion wine ! "
X The initiatory rite typified a descent into the underworld. Bacchus^ Herakles, Orpheus, and Asklepius all descended into hell and ascended thence the thiid day.
§ King's "Hist. Aix)st. Creed," 8vo, p. 26.
I Justice Bailey's ** Common Prayer," 1813, p. 9.
^ " Apostle's Creed ; " ** Apocryphal New Testament,"
*• " On the Cree
ft Li^- i« c. 2; ** Lib. de Princ," in ** Procem, Advers. Praxeam," c. iL
it "De Fide et Symbol."
" THE PRINCE OF HELL " AND " KING OF GLORY." S^S
SHALL APPEAR AS A SUBSTITUTE IN THY PANGS, AND SHALL BE WILLING TO GO BOTH TO GLOOMY HaDES AND TO THE MURK.Y DEPTHS AROUND
Tartarus !" (-^schylus : Prometheus^ 1027, ff.).
This go And it is he who was chosen as a model by the ingenious Fathers. Her- cules— called Alexicacos — for he brought round the wicked and con- verted them to virtue ; Soter^ or Saviour, also called Neulos Euraelos — the Good Shepherd ; Astrochiton, the star-clothed, and the Lord of Fire. ** He sought not to subject nations by force but by divme wisdom and persuasion," says Lucian. " Herakles spread cultivation and a mild religion, and destroyed the doctrine of eternal punishment by dragging Kerberus (the Pagan Devil) from the nether world." And, as we see, it was Herakles again who liberated Prometheus (the Adam of the pagans), by putting an end to the torture inflicted on him for his transgressions, by descending to the Hades, and going round the Tartarus. Like Christ he appeared as a substitute for the pangs of humanity^ by offering him- self in a self- sacrifice on a funereal burning pile. ** His voluntary immo- lation," says Bart, ** betokened the ethereal new birth of men. . . . Through the release of Prometheus, and the erection of altars, we behold in him the mediator between the old and new faiths. ... He abol- ished human sacrifice wherever he found it practiced. He descended into the sombre realm of Pluto, as a shade ... he ascended as a spirit to his father Zeus in Olympus,'^
So nnich was antiquity impressed by the Heraklean legend, that even the monotheistic (?) Jews of those days, not to be outdone by their con- temporaries, put him to use in their manufacture of original fables. Herakles is accused in his mythobiography of an attempted theft of the Delphian oracle. In Sepher Toldos Jeschu, the Rabbins accuse Jesus of stealing from their Sanctuary the Incommunicable Name !
Therefore it is but natural to find his numerous adventures, worldly and religious, mirrored so faithfully in the Descent into Hell, For extraordinary daring of mendacity, and unblushing plagiarism, the Gos- pel of Nicodemus^ only nojv proclaimed apocryphal, surpasses anything we have read. Let the reader judge.
At the beginning of chapter xvi., Satan and the "Prince of Hell" aie described as peacefully conversing together. All of a sudden, both are startled by " a voice as of thunder " and the rushing of winds, which bids them to lift up their gates for " the King of Glory shall come in." Whereupon the Prince of Hell hearing this "begins quarrelling with Satan for minding his duty so poorly, as not to have taken the necessary precautions against such a visit." The quarrel ends with the prince casting Satan " forth from his hell," ordering, at the saine lime,
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his impious officers " to shut the brass gates of cruelty, make them fast -with iron bars, and fight courageously lest we be taken captives."
But " when all the company of the saints ... (in Hell ?) heard this, they spoke with a loud voice of anger to the Prince of Darkness, * Open thy gates, that the King of Glory may come in,' " thereby proving that the prince needed spokesmen.
" And the divine (?) prophet David cried out, saying : * Did not I, when on earth, truly prophesy ? ' " After this, another prophet, namely holy Isaiah spake in like manner, " Did not I rightly prophesy ? *' etc Then the company of the saints and prophets, after boasting for the length of a chapter, and comparing notes of their prophecies, begin a riot, which makes the Prince of Hell remark that, " the dead never durst before behave themselves so insolently towards us" (the devils, xviii. 6) ; feigning the while to be ignorant who it was claiming admis- sion. He then innocently asks again : " But who is the King of Glory?" Then David tells him that he knows the voice well, and understands its words, " because," he adds, " I spake them by his Spirit.** Perceiving finally that the Prince of Hell would not open the " brass doors of iniquity," notwithstanding the king-psalmist*s voucher for the visitor, he, David, concludes to treat the enemy " as a Philistine, and begins shouting : * And now, thou filthy and stinking prince of hell, open thy gates. ... I tell thee that the King of Glory comes . . . let him enter in.* "
While he was yet quarrelling the "mighty Lord appeared in the form of a man ** (?) upon which " impious Death and her cruel officers are seized with fear." Then they tremblingly begin to address Christ with various flatteries and compliments in the sh^pe of questions, each of which is an article of creed. For instance : " And who art thou, so powerful and so great who dost release the captives that were held in chains by original sin ? " asks one devil. ** Perhaps, thou art thai Jesus," submissively says another, "of whom Satan just now spoke, thai by the death of the Cross thou wert about to receive the poiver over death V etc. Instead of answering, the King of Glory "tramples upon Death, seizes the Prince of Hell, and deprives him of his power."
Then begins a turmoil in Hell which has been graphically described by Homer, Hesiod, and their interpreter Preller, in his account of the Astronomical Hercules Invictus, and his festivals at Tyre, Tarsus, and Sardis. Having been initiated in the Attic Eleusinia, the Pagan god descends into Hades and " when he entered the nether world he spread such terror among the dead that all of them fled 1 " * The same words
•"Prcllcr:" il,p. 154.
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are repeated in Nicodemus, Follows a scene of confusion, horror, and lamenting. Perceiving that the battle is lost, the Prince of Hell turns tail and prudently chooses to side with the strongest. He against whom, according to Jude and Peter, even the Archangel Michael " durst not bring a railing accusation before the Lord," is now shamefully treated by his ex-ally and friend, the ** Prince of Hell." Poor Satan is abused and reviled for all his crimes both by devils and saints ; while the Prince is openly rewarded for his treachery. Addressing him, the King of Glory says thus : " Beelzebub, the Prince of HelU Satan the Prince shall now be subject to thy dominion forever ^ in the room of Adam and his righteous sons, who are mine . . . Come to me, all ye my saints, who were created in my image, who were condemned by the tree of the forbidden fruit, and by the Devil and death. Live now by the wood of my cross ; the Devil, the prince of this world is overcome (?) and Death is conquered'' Then the Lord takes hold of Adam by his right hand, of David by the left, and " ascends from Hell, followed by all the saints," Enoch and Elias, and by the "//^/y thief." ♦
The pious author, perhaps through an oversight, omits to complete the cavalcade, by bringing up the rear with the penitent dragon of Simon Stylites and the converted wolf of St. Francis, waggmg their tails and shedding tears of joy !
In the Codex of the Nazarenes it is Tobo who is *'the liberator of the soul of Adam,' to bear it from Orcus (Hades) to the place of Life. Tobo is Tob-Adonijah, one of the twelve disciples (Levites) sent by Jehosaphat to preach to the cities of Judah the Book of the Law (2 Chron. xvii.). In the kabalistic books these were "wise men," Magi. They drew down the rays of the sun to enlighten the sheol (Hades) Orcus, and thus show the way out of the Tenebra, the darkness of ignorance, to the soul of Adam, which represents collectively all the " souls of mankind." Adam (Athamas) is Tamuz or Adonis, and Adonis is the sun Helios. In the Book of the Dead (vi. 231) Osiris is made to say : " I shine like the sun in the star-house at the feast of the sun." Christ is called the " Sun of Righteousness," *' Helios of Justice " (Euseb;: Demons. Ev.y v. 29), sim- ply a revamping of the old heathen allegories ; nevertheless, to have made it serve for such a use is no less blasphemous on the part of men who pretended to be describing a true episode of the earth -pilgrimage of their God !
** Herakles, who has gone out from the chambers of earth. Leaving the nether house of Plouton ! " f
♦ Nicoderaus: ** Apocryphal Gospel," translated from the Gospel published by Grynaeas, **Orthodoxographa," vol. i., torn, ii., p. 643. \ Euripides : ** Herakles," 807.
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'* At Thee the Stygian lakes trembled ; Thee the janitor of Orcas Feared. . . . Thee not even Typhon frightened. . . . Hail true Son of Jove, Glory added to the gods I " ♦
More than four centuries before the birth of Jesus, Aristophanes had written his immortal parody on the Descent inio Hell, by Herakles. f The chorus of the "blessed ones," the initiated, the Elysian Fields, the arrival of Bacchus (who is lacchos — laho — and Sabaoth) with Herakles, their reception with lighted torches, emblems of new life and resurrection from darkness, death unto light, eternal life ; nothing that is found in the Gospel of Nicodemus is wanting in this poem : J
" Wake, burning torches ... for thou comest Shaking them in thy hand, lacche. Phosphoric star of the nightly rite ! " §
But the Christians accept these post-mortem adventures of their god, concocted from those of his Pagan predecessors, and derided by Aristo- phanes four centuries before our era, literally I The absurdities of Nico- tiemus were read in the churches, as well as those of the Shepherd of Hermas. Irenaeus (luotes the latter under the name of Scripture^ a divinely-inspired *' revelation ; *' Jerome and Eusebius both insist upon its being publicly read in the churches ; and Athanasius observes that the Fathers "appointed it to be read in confirmation of faith and piety. ^' But then comes the reverse of this bright medal, to show once more how stable and trustworthy were the opinions of the strongest pillars of an infallible Church. Jerome, who applauds the book in his catalogue of ecclesiastical writers, in his later comments terms it " apocryphal and foolish ! " Tertullian, who could not find praise enough for the Shepherd of Hermas when a Catholic, ** began abusing it when a Montanist," \