CHAPTER III

OW at the end of Chapter I we proposed to select some symbol wherein we might look for a clue as to what was to be achieved, and in order that we may take some type that will be almost universally familiar, and at the same time find its parallel in Alchemical literature, we can hardly do better than choose one of the most ancient of all, the Serpent. This symbol can be traced right back into the most remote ages, just as can Phallism, with which it is usually associated and allied. But it must not be thought for one moment that the latter was ever an integral part of the belief of the enlightened, or that they at any time worshipped serpents, though this accusation is quite frequently made against them. The fact is that Serpent Symbolism began to be mis- understood by the ignorant at a very early stage, the people having mistaken the symbol for the fact in a manner that has been emulated by their successors in the various religions of the world ever since. What, then, is at the back of the Serpent Myths? It is generally admitted that the Serpent was much used as a symbol for Wisdom, Creation, Generation and 25
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Regeneration or Rebirth, and we shall do well to consider and correlate some of these ideas in order to see whether we may not, by such a study, discover the clue we are seeking. We will therefore take these four ideas seriatim, beginning with Wisdom.
Serpents have always been associated with Wisdom from the very earliest times, though side by side with them there have been “ wicked serpents ” and ‘‘crooked serpents ”’ as their evil antitheses. To go no further than the Bible, we have Christ’s injunction to the Apostles (Matt. x. 16), “‘ Be ye therefore wise as ser- pents,”’ which can mean no evil sort of knowledge ; over against which we have the first serpent mentioned in the Scriptures, the Serpent of the Fall, who was ‘“‘ more subtile than any beast of the field that the Lord God had made.”
Then there were, on the one hand, the fiery serpents that afflicted the Children of Israel in the Wilderness, and on the other, the Brazen Serpent which Moses set upon a pole that the people might be perfectly healed. This latter is the Qabalistical Serpent of Wisdom, the Serpent Nogah, twined about the Central Pillar of the Sephirotic Tree (for the ten Sephiroth which we mentioned in Chapter II were arranged by the Qabalists in three Columns or Pillars, which arrangement was designated by them the Tree of Life), and is interpreted rightly or wrongly in Christian Symbolism as a type of Christ Crucified.
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The bearing of this example on our subject is well illustrated by the following example of scriptural exegesis ascribed by Hippolytus to the Peratae, an otherwise unknown Gnostic School. It is admirably summarised by G. R. S. Mead, in his Fragments of a Faith Forgotten. He says:
“Thus then they explained the Exodus-myth. Egypt is the body ; all those who identify themselves with the body are the ignorant, the Egyptians. To “come forth’ out of Egypt is to leave the body ; and to pass through the Red Sea is to cross over the ocean of generation, the animal and sensual nature, which is hidden in the blood. Yet even then they are not safe; crossing the Red Sea they enter the Desert, the intermediate state of the doubting lower mind. There they are attacked by the ‘ gods of destruction,’ which Moses called the ‘serpents of the desert,’ and which plague those who seek to escape from the ‘gods of generation.” To them Moses, the teacher, shows the true serpent crucified on the cross of matter, and by its means they escape from the Desert and enter the promised land, the realm of the spiritual mind, where is the Heavenly Jordan, the World-Soul. When the Waters of Jordan flow downwards, then is the generation of men; but when they flow upwards, then is the creation of Gods.”
Leaving the Bible we have the Winged Globe of Egypt, on many examples of which we may see the twin
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serpents, leading us to the not unnatural inference that it was the prototype of the Caduceus of Hermes (who was, of course, the Egyptian Thoth), another form of the idea portrayed as the Tree of Life of the Qabalah. |
Lest it be thought that we are getting away from the idea of Wisdom, it must be pointed out that the study and understanding of this Tree was the discovery of the True Wisdom, typified in the mystical Fifty Gates of Understanding of Binah, the third Sephira, the Mother Supernal, whose name signifies Understanding.
But as this point, Wisdom, will have to be stressed in two of the following sections, Creation and Re- generation or Rebirth, we will not pursue it further for the moment.
In the Creation Myth the evolution of the universe, according to some schools, followed the physical analogy of the generation of man in the womb from a “serpent”? and an “egg.” But the Cosmic serpent was variously described as the Great Power, the II- limitable Vortex, the Mighty Whirlwind, while the Egg figured as the Envelope embracing the All of the world system, as the primordial “‘ fire-mist ”? which is still so familiar in modern theorisings. Taken thus, the Serpent was a type of the Will of God, Divine Intelligence, the Mind of the Father, the Word or Logos. The Egg represented the Primordial Idea, the Great Mother Supernal. The embryonic universe was 28
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therefore portrayed as a circle, the Egg, with a serpent either twined round it or placed diameter-wise across it, representing the former of the Cosmos and of Man. It was Man’s Creator, but nevertheless it was supposed that man could utilise the serpent force himself and create by it; but first he must cease from generation and free himself from its toils.
Before leaving this particular myth, let us see what Thomas Vaughan in his Magia Adamica, when dealing with the Egyptian Emepht, as he terms it—called Emeph by lamblichos—can tell us. Speaking of Egyptian Theology he says :
** Their Catholic Doctrine, and wherein I find them all to agree is this. Emepht, whereby they express their Supreme God—and verily they mind the true One—signifies properly an Intelligence or Spirit converting all things into Himself and Himself into all things. This is very sound Divinity and philosophy if it be rightly understood. Now—say they—Emepht produced an egg out of his mouth, which Kircher expounds imperfectly, and withal erroneously. In the production of this egg was manifested another Deity, which they call Ptha, and out of some other natures and substances enclosed in the egg, this Ptha formed all things. But to deal a little more openly we will describe unto you their hieroglyphic, wherein they have very handsomely but obscurely discovered most of their mysteries. First of all then, they draw a circle,
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in the circle a serpent—not folded, but diameter-wise and at length. Her head resembles that of a hawk, the tail is tied in a small knot, and a little below the head her wings are volant. ‘The circle points at Emepht, or God the Father, being infinite—without beginning, without end. Moreover, it comprehends or contains in itself the second Deity Ptha and the egg or chaos out of which all things were made.
"The Hawk in the Egyptian Symbols signifies light and spirit; his head annexed here to the serpent represents Ptha, or the Second Person, who is the First Light—as we have told you in our Anthroposophia. He is said to form all things out of the egg, because in Him—as it were in a glass—are certain types or images, namely, distinct conceptions of the Paternal Deity, according to which—by co-operation of the Spirit, namely, the Holy Ghost—the creatures are formed. The inferior part of the figure signifies the matter or chaos, which they call the egg of Emepht.”
We must make a pause here before continuing with Thomas Vaughan, which we shall do a little further on, and consider briefly this name Emepht. According to Iamblichos it should be Emeph, and Wilder tells us that many have conjectured that this name should have been Kneph. This was the name of the Creator in Nubia and Elephantina, and He was considered to be the same as Amun, the Supreme God at Thebes. The name Kneph or Neph, he continues, almost 30
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identical with the Semitic term Nephesch or Soul, reminds us that this God was considered as the Soul of the World. Mariette-Bey considered him as the same as Thoth or Hermes, the God of learning. The Greeks, however, identified him with Asclepius, and the Orientals with Esmun of the Kabirian Rites.
Let us, however, hear Iamblichos himself on the subject.
“According to another arrangement,” he says, “Hermes places the God Emeph as leader of the celestial Divinities, and declares that He is the Mind itself, perceptive of itself, and converting the percep- tions into His own substance. But he places as prior to this divinity the One without specific parts, whom he affirms to be the first exemplar and whom he names Fikton. In him are the First Mind and the First Intelligence, and he is worshipped by Silence alone. Besides these, however, there are other leaders that preside over the creation of visible things. For the Creative Mind, guardian of Truth and Wisdom, coming to the realm of objective existence, and bringing the invisible power of occult words into light is called in the Egyptian language amon (the Arcane) : but as completing everything in a genuine manner without deceit and with skill, Phtha. The Greeks, however, assume Phtha to be the same as Hephaestos, giving their attention to the Creative art alone. But as the dispenser of benefits, he is called Osiris; and
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Coming to our next section, Generation, we shall, if we are not careful, find ourselves wallowing in a morass of Phallism, for following the Hermetic Maxim, ‘“‘As Above, so Below,” the Serpent is used to illustrate both birth and rebirth by means of physical analogies with the material methods of reproduction.
The forces of sex, employed for their legitimate purpose, procreation, are manifestations on a lower plane of the great outpouring and energising of the creative Deity and the evolutionary processes of the cosmos. It need hardly be emphasised, however, that they are poles apart—as far removed from one another as is animal-human passion from Divine Will.
And the mysteries underlying these sex forces formed part of the curriculum laid down for the Aspirants of old, but the study of them was not lightly to be under- taken. ‘They were rightly considered to be highly dangerous, for though an understanding of them might tend to a life of self-control and asceticism, a mere idle curiosity was likely to lead to the depths of depravity.
In this and what follows it may be as well to make it perfectly clear that nowhere in the truly sacred mysterles—at any rate of the West—was any teaching given involving any physical sex practices, such as 32 |
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attempted introversions of sexual forces, endeavouring to draw these up the spine and into the brain. In such directions lie disease, madness and death, and we cannot too strongly discourage anyone from being deluded enough to dabble with any such spurious and positively evil teachings, which, it is to be regretted, are current in many places to-day.
With this emphatic denial and warning we will continue.
For the purified in mind and body the reward was seership, illumination and direct or noetic knowledge, but for the impure there yawned that “ precipice beneath the earth ” of which the Oracle speaks.
Thus, almost invariably, we find in the history of such movements that the good and evil sides are found in close proximity, for the study of the mysteries of the self and of the cosmos leads naturally to a certain intensification of the whole nature, and if the animal and passional predominate it becomes even more uncontrollable. Whence many of the followers of the Mystery Schools were led away into both practical and technical error, so that writers of subsequent centuries were able to seize upon such lapses and magnify them into a general charge against those whom they regarded as heretics, completely ignoring the fact that the true students of the arcane sciences them- selves were most emphatic in their condemnation of all such abuses. |
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One need hardly add that the explanations given to the Aspirant of the Mysteries dealt principally with the central object of all such schools, regeneration and rebirth, and not with generation, so that, accurately speaking, the conversion of the sacred symbols to this lower form of expression ought to be ignored from our present point of view, leaving us, therefore, only three real modes of interpreting them, which modes are, in the ultimate, one only.
We come thus to the most important aspect of our subject, the Serpent in relation to the upward path of the candidate in particular and of mankind in general. And this inevitably brings us into definite contact with our main subject, Spiritual Alchemy, Theurgy, the Therapeutics of the Soul and so forth, where all the symbols with which we have dealt will appear again, but invested with a new meaning as will be seen in the Chapter that follows.
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