Chapter XXX: Section VIII: The Symbolism of the Mystery‐Names Iao and Jehovah, with (1)

their Relation to the Cross and Circle.

When the Abbé Louis Constant, better known as Éliphas Lévi, said in his _Histoire de la Magie_ that the _Sepher Jetzirah_, the _Zohar_, and the _Apocalypse_ of St. John, are the masterpieces of the Occult Sciences, he ought, if he had wished to be correct and clear, to have added—in Europe. It is quite true that these works contain “more _significance_ than words”; and that their “expression is poetical,” while “in numbers” they are “exact.” Unfortunately, however, before any one can appreciate the _poetry_ of the expressions, or the _exactness_ of the numbers, he will have to learn the real significance and meaning of the terms and symbols employed. But man will never learn this so long as he remains ignorant of the fundamental principle of the Secret Doctrine, whether in Oriental Esotericism, or in the kabalistical Symbology—the _key, or value, in all their aspects_, of the God‐names, Angel‐names, and Patriarch‐names in the _Bible_, their mathematical or geometrical value, and their relations to manifested Nature.

Therefore, if, on the one hand, the _Zohar_ “astonishes” the mystic, by the profundity of its views and the great simplicity of its images, or the other hand, that work misleads the student by such expressions as those used with respect to Ain Suph and Jehovah, notwithstanding the assurance that:

The book is careful to explain that the human form with which it
clothes God is but _an image of the Word_, and that God should not
be expressed by any thought, or any form.

It is well known that Origen Clement, and the Rabbis confessed that the _Kabalah_ and the _Bible_ were _veiled and secret_ books; but few know that the Esotericism of the kabalistic books in their present _reëdited_ form is simply another and still more cunning veil thrown upon the primitive symbolism of these secret volumes.

The idea of representing the _hidden_ Deity by the circumference of a circle, and the Creative Power—male and female, or the Androgynous Word—by the diameter across it, is one of the oldest symbols. It is upon this conception that every great Cosmogony has been built. With the old Âryans, the Egyptians, and the Chaldæans, the symbol was complete, as it embraced the idea of the eternal and immovable Divine Thought in its absoluteness, separated entirely from the incipient stage of the so‐called “creation,” and comprised psychological and even spiritual evolution, and its mechanical work, or cosmogonical construction. With the Hebrews, however, though the former conception is to be distinctly found in the _Zohar_, and the _Sepher Jetzirah_, or what remains of the latter—that which has been subsequently embodied in the _Pentateuch_ proper, and especially in _Genesis_, is simply this secondary stage, to wit, the mechanical law of creation, or rather of construction; while Theogony is hardly, if at all, outlined.

It is only in the first six chapters of _Genesis_, in the rejected _Book of Enoch_, and the misunderstood and mistranslated poem of _Job_, that true echoes of the Archaic Doctrine may now be found. The key to it is lost now, even among the most learned Rabbis, whose predecessors in the early period of the Middle Ages, in their national exclusiveness and pride, and especially in their profound hatred of Christianity, preferred to cast it into the deep sea of oblivion, rather than to share their knowledge with their relentless and fierce persecutors. Jehovah was their own tribal property, inseparable from, and unfit to play a part in, any other but the Mosaic Law. Violently torn out of his original frame, which he fitted and which fitted him, the “Lord God of Abraham and Jacob” could hardly be crammed without damage and breakage into the new Christian Canon. Being the weaker, the Judeans could not help the desecration. They kept, however, the secret of the origin of their Adam Kadmon, or male‐ female Jehovah, and the new tabernacle proved a complete misfit for the old God. They were, indeed, avenged!

The statement that Jehovah was the tribal God of the Jews and no higher, will be denied like many other things. Yet the Theologians are not in a position to tell us, in that case, the meaning of the verses in _Deuteronomy_, which say quite plainly:

When the Most High [not the “Lord,” or “Jehovah” either] divided
to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of
Adam, he set the bounds ... according to the number of the
children of Israel.... _The Lord’s_ [Jehovah’s] _portion is his
people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance_.(1259)

This settles the question. So impudent have been the modern translators of Bibles and Scriptures, and so damaging are these verses, that, following in the steps traced for them by their worthy Church Fathers, each translator has rendered these lines in his own way. While the above‐cited quotation is taken _verbatim_ from the English Authorized Version, in the French Bible,(1260) we find the “Most High” translated by “Souverain” (Sovereign!!), the “sons of Adam” rendered by “the children of men,” and the “Lord” changed into the “Eternal.” For impudent sleight‐of‐hand, the French Protestant Church seems thus to have surpassed even English ecclesiasticism.

Nevertheless, one thing is patent: the “Lord’s [Jehovah’s] portion” is his “chosen people” and none else, for, _Jacob alone is the lot of his inheritance_. What, then, have other nations, who call themselves Âryans, to do with this Semitic Deity, the tribal God of Israel? Astronomically, the “Most High” is the Sun, and the “Lord” is one of his seven planets, whether it be Iao, the Genius of the Moon, or Ildabaoth‐Jehovah, the Genius of Saturn, according to Origen and the Egyptian Gnostics.(1261) Let the “Angel Gabriel,” the “Lord” of Iran, watch over his people, and Michael‐Jehovah, over his Hebrews. These are not the Gods of other nations, nor were they ever those of Jesus. As each Persian Dev is chained to his planet,(1262) so each Hindû Deva (a “Lord”) has its allotted portion, a world, a planet, a nation or a race. Plurality of worlds implies plurality of Gods. We believe in the former, and may recognize, but will never worship the latter.(1263)

It has been repeatedly stated in this work that every religious and philosophical symbol had seven meanings attached to it, each pertaining to its legitimate plane of thought, _i.e._, either purely metaphysical or astronomical; psychic or physiological, etc. These seven meanings and their applications are difficult enough to learn when taken by themselves; but the interpretation and the right comprehension of them become tenfold more puzzling, when, instead of being correlated, or made to flow consecutively out of, and to follow, each other, each, or any one of these meanings, is accepted as the one and sole explanation of the whole symbolical idea. An instance may be given, as it admirably illustrates the statement. Here are two interpretations, given by two learned Kabalists and scholars, of one and the same verse in _Exodus_. Moses beseeches the Lord to show him his “glory.” Evidently it is not the crude dead‐letter phraseology as found in the _Bible_ that is to be accepted. There are _seven_ meanings in the _Kabalah_, of which we may give two as interpreted by the said two scholars. One of them translates while explaining:

“Thou canst not see My face;... I will put thee in a cleft of the
rock and I will cover thee with My hand while I pass by. And then
I will take away Mine hand, and thou shalt see My _a’hoor_,”
_i.e._, My back.(1264)

And then the translator adds in a gloss:

That is, I will show you “My back,” _i.e._, My visible universe,
My lower manifestations, but, as a man still in the flesh, thou
canst not see My invisible nature. So proceeds the Qabbalah.(1265)

This is correct, and is the cosmo‐metaphysical explanation. And now speaks the other Kabalist, giving the numerical meaning. As it involves a good many suggestive ideas, and is far more fully given, we may allow it more space. This synopsis is from an unpublished MS., and explains more fully what was given in Section III, on the “Holy of Holies.”(1266)

The numbers of the name “Moses” are those of “I am that I am,” so that the names Moses and Jehovah are at one in numerical harmony. The word Moses is משה (5 + 300 + 40), and the sum of the values of its letters is 345; Jehovah—the Genius _par excellence_ of the Lunar Year—assumes the value of 543, or the reverse of 345.

In the third chapter of Exodus, in the 13th and 14th verses, it is
said: And Moses said, ... Behold I come unto the children of
Israel, and shall say unto them. The God of your fathers hath sent
me unto you; and they shall say unto me, What is his name? What
shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses,

I Am That I Am.

The Hebrew words for this expression are _âhiyé asher âhiyé_, and in the value of the sums of their letters stand thus:

אהיה אשר אהיה 21 501 21

... This being his [God’s] name, the sum of the values composing
it, 21, 501, 21 is 543, or simply a use of the simple digit
numbers in the name of Moses, ... but now so ordered that the name
of 345 is reversed, and reads 543.

So that when Moses asks, “Let me see Thy face or glory,” the other rightly and truly replies, “Thou canst not see my face ... but thou _shalt see me behind_”—the true sense, though not the precise words; for the corner and the _behind_ of 543 is the _face_ of 345. This is

For check and to keep a _strict use_ of a set of numbers to
develop certain _grand_ results, for the object of which they are
specifically employed.

As the learned Kabalist adds:

In other uses of the numbers, they saw each other face to face. It
is strange that if we add 345 to 543 we have 888, which was the
Gnostic Cabbalistic value of the name Christ, who was Jehoshua or
Joshua. And so also the division of the 24 hours of the day gives
three eights as quotient.... The chief end of all this system of
Number Checks was to preserve in perpetuity the exact value of the
Lunar Year in the Natural measure of Days.

These are the astronomical and numerical meanings in the secret Theogony of sidereo‐cosmical Gods invented by the Chaldæo‐Hebrews,—two meanings out of seven. The other five would astonish the Christians still more.

The series of Œdipuses who have endeavoured to interpret the riddle of the Sphinx, is long indeed. For many ages she has been devouring the brightest and the noblest intellects of Christendom; but now the Sphinx is conquered. In the great intellectual struggle which has ended in the complete victory of the Œdipuses of Symbolism, it is, however, not the Sphinx, who, burning with the shame of defeat, has had to bury herself in the sea, but verily the many‐sided symbol, named Jehovah, whom Christians—the _civilized_ nations—have accepted for their God. The Jehovah symbol has collapsed under the too close analysis, and is—drowned. Symbologists have discovered with dismay that their adopted Deity was only a mask for many other Gods, a _euhemerized_ extinct planet, at best, the Genius of the Moon and Saturn with the Jews, of the Sun and Jupiter with early Christians; that the Trinity—unless they accepted the more abstract and metaphysical meanings given to it by the Gentiles—was, in truth, only an astronomical triad, composed of the Sun (the Father), and the two planets Mercury (the Son) and Venus (the Holy Ghost), Sophia, the Spirit of Wisdom, Love and Truth, and Lucifer, as Christ, the “bright and morning star.”(1267) For, if the Father is the Sun (the “Elder Brother,” in the Eastern Inner Philosophy), the nearest planet to it is Mercury (Hermes, Budha, Thoth), the name of whose Mother on Earth was Maia. Now this planet receives seven times more light than any other; a fact which led the Gnostics to call their Christos, and the Kabalists their Hermes (in the astronomical meaning), the “Seven‐fold Light.” Finally, _this_ God was Bel—the Sun being Bel with the Gauls; Helios, with the Greeks; Baal, with the Phœnicians; El, in Chaldæan, hence El‐ohim, Emanu‐el, and El, “God,” in Hebrew. But even the kabalistic God has vanished in the rabbinical workmanship, and one has now to turn to the innermost metaphysical sense of the _Zohar_ to find in it anything like Ain Suph, the Nameless Deity and the Absolute, so authoritatively and loudly claimed by the Christians. But it is certainly not to be found in the Mosaic books, at any rate by those who try to read without a key to them. Ever since this key was lost, Jews and Christians have tried their best to blend these two conceptions, but in vain. They have only succeeded in finally robbing even the Universal Deity of Its majestic character and primitive meaning.

As was said in _Isis Unveiled_:

It would seem, therefore, but natural to make a difference between
the mystery‐god Ιαω, adopted from the highest antiquity by all who
participated in the esoteric knowledge of the priests, and his
phonetic counterparts, whom we find treated with so little
reverence by the Ophites and other Gnostics.(1268)

In the Ophite gems of King,(1269) we find the name of Iao
repeated, and often confounded with that of Ievo, while the latter
simply represents one of the Genii antagonistic to Abraxas.... But
the name Iao neither originated with, nor was it the sole property
of the Jews. Even if it had pleased Moses to bestow the name upon
the tutelary “Spirit,” the alleged protector and national deity of
the “chosen people of Israel,” there is yet no possible reason why
other nationalities should receive Him as the Highest and One‐
living God. But we deny the assumption altogether. Besides, there
is the fact that Iaho or Iao was a “mystery name” from the
beginning, for יהיה and יה never came into use before the time of
king David. Anterior to his time, few or no proper names were
compounded with Iah or Jah. It looks rather as though David, being
a sojourner among the Tyrians and Philistines,(1270) brought
thence the name of Jehovah. He made Zadok high priest, from whom
came the Zadokites or Sadducees. He lived and ruled first at
Hebron (חברון), Habir‐on or Kabeir‐town, where the rites of the
four (mystery‐gods) were celebrated. Neither David nor Solomon
recognized either Moses or the law of Moses. They aspired to build
a temple to יהוה, like the structures erected by Hiram to Hercules
and Venus, Adon and Astarte.

Says Fürst: “The very ancient name of God, Yâho, written in the
Greek Ιαω, appears, apart _from its derivation_, to have been an
old mystic name of the Supreme Deity of the Shemites. Hence it was
told to Moses when he was initiated at Hor‐eb—the _Cave_—under the
direction of Jethro, the Kenite (or Cainite) priest of Midian. In
an old religion of the Chaldæans, whose remains are to be found
among the Neo‐Platonists, the highest Divinity, enthroned above
the seven Heavens, representing the Spiritual Light‐Principle, ...
and also conceived of as Demiurgus,(1271) was called Ιαω (יהו),
who was, like the Hebrew Yâho, mysterious and unmentionable, and
whose name was communicated to the Initiated. The Phœnicians had a
Supreme God, whose name was triliteral and _secret_, and he was
Ιαω.”(1272)

The cross, say the Kabalists, repeating the lesson of the Occultists, is one of the most ancient—nay, perhaps, the _most_ ancient of symbols. This has been demonstrated at the very beginning of the Proem in Volume I. The Eastern Initiates show it coëval with the circle of Deific Infinitude and the first differentiation of the Essence, the union of Spirit and Matter. This interpretation has been rejected, and the astronomical allegory alone has been accepted and made to fit into cunningly imagined terrestrial events.

Let us demonstrate this statement. In Astronomy, as said, Mercury is the son of Cœlus and Lux—of the Sky and Light, or the Sun; in Mythology he is the progeny of Jupiter and Maia. He is the “Messenger” of his Father Jupiter, the Messiah of the Sun; in Greek, his name Hermes means, among other things, the “Interpreter”—the Word, the Logos, or Verbum. Now Mercury is born on Mount Cyllene among shepherds, and is the patron of the latter. As a psychopompic Genius, he conducted the Souls of the Dead to Hades and brought them back again, an office attributed to Jesus after his Death and Resurrection. The symbols of Hermes‐Mercury (Dii Termini) were placed along, and at the turning points of, highways, as crosses are now placed in Italy, and they were _cruciform_.(1273) Every seventh day the priests anointed these Termini with oil, and once a year hung them with garlands, hence they were the _anointed_. Mercury, when speaking through his oracles, says:

I am he whom you call the Son of the Father [Jupiter] and Maia.
Leaving the King of Heaven [the Sun] I come to help you, mortals.

Mercury heals the blind and restores sight, mental and physical.(1274) He was often represented as three‐headed and called Tricephalus, Triplex, as one with the Sun and Venus. Finally, Mercury, as Cornutus(1275) shows, was sometimes figured under a cubic form, without arms, because “the power of speech and eloquence can prevail without the assistance of arms or feet.” It is this cubic form which connects the Termini directly with the cross, and it is the eloquence or the power of speech of Mercury which made the crafty Eusebius say, “Hermes is the emblem of the Word which creates and interprets all,” for it is the Creative Word; and he shows Porphyry teaching that the Speech of Hermes—now interpreted “Word of God” (!) in _Pymander_—a Creative Speech (Verbum), is the Seminal Principle scattered throughout the Universe.(1276) In Alchemy “Mercury” is the radical “Moyst” Principle, Primitive or Elementary Water, containing the Seed of the Universe, fecundated by the Solar Fires. To express this fecundating principle, a phallus was often added to the cross (the male and female, or the vertical and the horizontal united) by the Egyptians. The cruciform Termini also represented this dual idea, which was found in Egypt in the _cubic_ Hermes. The author of _Source of Measures_ tells us why.(1277)

As shown by him, the cube unfolded becomes in display a cross of the Tau, or the Egyptian, form; or again, “the circle attached to the Tau gives the ansated cross” of the old Pharaohs. They had known this from their priests and their “King‐Initiates” for ages, and also what was meant by “the attachment of a man to the cross,” which idea “was made to coördinate with that of the origin of human life, and hence the _phallic form_.” Only the latter came into action æons and ages after the idea of the Carpenter and Artificer of the Gods, Vishva‐karmâ, crucifying the “Sun‐Initiate” on the cruciform lathe. As the same author writes:

_The attachment of a man to the cross_ ... was made use of in this
form of display by the Hindûs.(1278)

But, it was made “to coördinate” with the idea of the new rebirth of man by _spiritual_, not physical regeneration. The Candidate for Initiation was attached to the Tau or astronomical cross with a far grander and nobler idea than that of the origin of mere _terrestrial_ life.

On the other hand, the Semites seem to have had no other or higher purpose in life than that of procreating their species. Thus, geometrically, and according to the reading of the _Bible_ by means of the numerical method, the author of _The Source of Measures_ is quite correct.

The entire [Jewish] system seems to have been anciently regarded
as one resting in nature, and one which was adopted by nature, or
God, as the _basis or law_ of the exertion practically of creative
power—_i.e._, it was the _creative design_, of which creation was
practically the application. This seems to be established by the
fact that, under the system set forth, measures of _planetary
times_ serve coördinately as measures of the _size_ of planets,
and of the peculiarity of their shapes—_i.e._, in the extension of
their equatorial and polar diameters.... This system [that of
creative design] seems to underlie the whole Biblical structure,
as a foundation for its _ritualism_ and for its display of the
works of the Deity in the way of _architecture_, by use of the
sacred unit of measure in the Garden of Eden, the Ark of Noah, the
Tabernacle, and the Temple of Solomon.(1279)

Thus, on the very showing of the defenders of this system, the Jewish Deity is proved to be, at best, only the manifested Duad, never the One Absolute All. Geometrically demonstrated, he is a _number_; symbolically, a _euhemerized_ Priapus; and this can hardly satisfy a mankind thirsting after the demonstration of real spiritual truths, and the possession of a God with a divine, not anthropomorphic, nature. It is strange that the most learned of modern Kabalists can see in the cross and circle nothing but a symbol of the manifested _creative_ and _androgyne_ Deity in its relation to, and interference with, this phenomenal world.(1280) One author believes that:

However man [read, the Jew and Rabbi] obtained knowledge of the
practical measure, ... by which nature was thought to adjust the
planets in size to harmonize with the notation of their movements,
it seems he did obtain it, and esteemed its possession as the
means of his realization of the Deity—that is, he approached _so
nearly to a conception of a Being having a mind like his own_,
only infinitely more powerful, as to be able to realize _a law of
creation_ established by that Being, which must have existed prior
to any creation (kabalistically called the Word).(1281)

This may have satisfied the practical _Semite_ mind, but the Eastern Occultist has to decline the offer of such a God; indeed, a Deity, a Being, “having a mind like that of man, only infinitely more powerful,” is _no_ God that has any room _beyond_ the cycle of creation. He has nought to do with the _ideal_ conception of the Eternal Universe. He is, at best, one of the _subordinate creative_ powers, the Totality of which is called the Sephiroth, the Heavenly Man, and Adam Kadmon, the Second Logos of the Platonists.

This very same idea is clearly found at the bottom of the ablest definitions of the _Kabalah_ and its mysteries, _e.g._, by John A. Parker, as quoted in the same work:

The key of the Kabala is _thought to be the geometrical relation
of the area of the circle inscribed in the square_, or of the cube
to the sphere, giving rise to the relation of diameter to
circumference of a circle, with the numerical value of this
relation expressed in integrals. The relation of diameter to
circumference, being a supreme one connected with the god‐names
Elohim and Jehovah (which terms are expressions numerically of
these relations, respectively—the first being of circumference,
the latter of diameter), embraces all other subordinations under
it. Two expressions of circumference to diameter in integrals are
used in the Bible: (1) The perfect, and (2) The imperfect. One of
the relations between these is such that (2) subtracted from (1)
will leave a _unit_ of a diameter value in terms, or in the
denomination of the circumference value of the perfect circle, or
a unit straight line having a perfect circular value, or a factor
of circular value.(1282)

Such calculations can lead one no further than to unriddle the mysteries of the _third_ stage of Evolution, or the “Third Creation of Brahmâ.” The initiated Hindûs know how to “square the circle” far better than any European. But of this more anon. The fact is that the Western Mystics commence their speculation only at that stage when the Universe “falls into matter,” as the Occultists say. Throughout the whole series of kabalistic books we have not met with one sentence that would hint in the remotest way at the psychological and spiritual, as well as at the mechanical and _physiological_ secrets of “creation.” Shall we, then, regard the evolution of the Universe as simply a prototype, on a gigantic scale, of the act of procreation; as “divine” _phallicism_, and rhapsodize on it as the evilly‐inspired author of a late work of this name has done? The writer does not think so. And she feels justified in saying so, since the most careful reading of the _Old Testament_—esoterically, as well as exoterically—seems to have carried the most enthusiastic enquirers no further than a certainty on mathematical grounds that from the first to the last chapter of the _Pentateuch_ every scene, every character or event are shown connected, directly or indirectly, with the _origin of birth_ in its crudest and most brutal form. Thus, however interesting and ingenious the rabbinical methods, the writer, in common with other Eastern Occultists, must prefer those of the Pagans.

It is not, then, in the _Bible_ that we have to search for the origin of the cross and circle, but beyond the Flood. Therefore, returning to Éliphas Lévi and the _Zohar_, we answer for the Eastern Occultists and say that, applying practice to principle, they agree entirely with Pascal, who says that:

God is a circle, the centre of which is everywhere and the
circumference nowhere.

Whereas the Kabalists say the reverse, and maintain it, solely out of their desire to veil their doctrine. By the way, the definition of Deity by the circle is not Pascal’s at all, as Éliphas Lévi thought. It was _borrowed_ by the French Philosopher from either Mercury Trismegistus or Cardinal Cusa’s Latin work, _De Doctâ Ignorantiâ_, in which he makes use of it. It is, moreover, disfigured by Pascal, who replaces the words “Cosmic Circle,” which stand symbolically in the original inscription, by the word Theos. With the Ancients both words were synonymous.

A. Cross And Circle.

In the minds of the ancient Philosophers something of the divine and the mysterious has ever been ascribed to the shape of the circle. The old world, consistent in its symbolism and with its Pantheistic intuitions, uniting the visible and the invisible Infinitudes into one, represented Deity and its outward Veil alike—by a circle. This merging of the two into a unity, and the name Theos being given indifferently to both, is explained, and becomes thereby still more _scientific_ and philosophical. Plato’s etymological definition of the word _theos_ (θεός) has, been given elsewhere. In his _Cratylus_, he derives it from the verb _the‐ein_ (θέειν), “to move,” as suggested by the motion of the heavenly bodies which he connects with Deity. According to the Esoteric Philosophy, this Deity, during its “Nights” and its “Days,” or Cycles of Rest and Activity, is the “Eternal Perpetual Motion,” the “Ever‐Becoming, as well as the ever universally Present, and the Ever‐Existing.” The latter is the root‐ abstraction; the former is the only possible conception in the human mind, if it disconnects this Deity from any shape or form. It is a perpetual, never‐ceasing evolution, circling back in its incessant progress through æons of duration into its original status—Absolute Unity.

It was only the minor Gods who were made to carry the symbolical attributes of the higher ones. Thus, the God Shoo, the personification of Ra, who appears as the “Great Cat of the Basin of Persæa in An”(1283) was often represented in the Egyptian monuments seated and holding a cross, symbol of the four Quarters, or the Elements, attached to a circle.

In that very learned work, _The Natural Genesis_, by Gerald Massey, under the heading, “Typology of the Cross,” there is more information to be had on the cross and circle than in any other work we know of. He who would fain have proofs of the antiquity of the cross is referred to these two volumes. The author says:

The circle and cross are inseparable.... The Crux Ansata unites
the circle and cross of the four corners. From this origin the
circle and the cross came to be interchangeable at times. For
example, the Chakra, or Disk of Vishnu, is a circle. The name
denotes the circling, wheeling round, periodicity, the wheel of
time. This the god uses as a weapon to hurl at the enemy. In like
manner, Thor throws his weapon, the Fylfot, a form of the four‐
footed cross [Svastika], and a type of the four quarters. Thus the
cross is equivalent to the circle of the year. The wheel emblem
unites the cross and circle in one, as does the hieroglyphic cake
and the Ankh‐tie ☥.(1284)

Nor was the double glyph sacred with the profane, but only with the Initiates. For Raoul Rochette shows that:(1285)

The sign ♀ occurs as the _reverse_ of a Phœnician coin, with a Ram
as the obverse.... The same sign, sometimes called Venus’ Looking‐
Glass, because it typified reproduction, was employed to mark the
hind‐quarters of valuable brood mares of Corinthian and other
beautiful breeds of horses.

This proves that so far back as those early days the cross had already become the symbol of human procreation, and that oblivion of the _divine_ origin of cross and circle had begun.

Another form of the cross is given from the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_:(1286)

At each of the four corners is placed a quarter arc of an oviform
curve, and when the four are put together they form an oval; thus
the figure combines the cross with the circle round it in four
parts, corresponding to the four corners of the cross. The four
segments answer to the four feet of the Swastica cross and the
Fylfot of Thor. The four‐leaved lotus flower of Buddha, is
likewise figured at the centre of this cross, the lotus being an
Egyptian and Hindu type of the four quarters. The four quarter
arcs, if joined together, would form an ellipse, and the ellipse
is also figured on each arm of the cross. This ellipse therefore
denotes the path of the earth.... Sir J. Y. Simpson copied the
following specimen, [Symbol: Oval, with large letter “Z” inside,
with horizontal crossbar] which is here presented, as the cross of
the two equinoxes and the two solstices placed within the figure
of the earth’s path. The same ovoid or boat‐shaped figure appears
at times in the Hindu drawings with seven steps at each end as a
form or a mode of Meru.

This is the astronomical aspect of the double glyph. There are six more aspects, however, and an attempt may be made to interpret a few of these. The subject is so vast that it would require in itself alone many volumes.

But the most curious of these Egyptian symbols of cross and circle, spoken of in the above cited work, is one which receives its full explanation and final colour from Âryan symbols of the same nature. Says the author:

The four‐armed Cross is simply the cross of the four quarters, but
the cross‐sign is not always simple.(1287) This is a type that was
developed from an identifiable beginning, which was adapted to the
expression of various ideas afterwards. The most sacred cross of
Egypt that was carried in the hands of the Gods, the Pharaohs, and
the mummied dead, is the Ankh ☥ the sign of life, the living, an
oath, the covenant.... The top of this is the hieroglyphic Ru
[Symbol: Horizontal oval] set upright on the Tau‐cross. The Ru is
the door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet. This denotes the
_birthplace_ in the northern quarter of the heavens, from which
the Sun is reborn. Hence the _Ru of the Ankh‐sign is the feminine
type of the birthplace, representing the north_. It was in the
_northern quarter_ that the Goddess of the Seven Stars, called the
“Mother of the Revolutions,” gave birth to time in the earliest
cycle of the year. The first sign of this primordial circle and
cycle made in heaven is the earliest shape of the Ankh‐cross
[Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right], a mere loop
which contains both a circle and the cross in one image. This loop
or noose is carried in front of the oldest genitrix, _Typhon of
the Great Bear_; as her _Ark_, the ideograph of a _period_, _an
ending_, _a time_, shown to mean one revolution. This, then,
represents the circle made in the northern heaven by the Great
Bear which constituted the earliest year of time, from which fact
we infer that the loop or Ru of the North represents that quarter,
the birthplace of time when figured as the Ru of the Ankh symbol.
Indeed this can be proved. The noose is an _Ark_ or _Rek_ type of
reckoning. The Ru of the Ankh‐cross was continued in the Cypriote
R, [Symbol: Circle with horizontal line beneath], and the Coptic
Ro, [Symbol: Figure like a Rho].(1288) The Ro was carried into the
Greek cross [Symbol: Large Greek Rho with letter Chi beneath it],
which is formed of the Ro and Chi or _R‐k_.... The Rek, or Ark,
was the sign of all beginning (_Arche_) on this account, and the
Ark‐tie is the cross of the North, the hind part of heaven.(1289)

Now this, again, is entirely astronomical and phallic. The Paurânic version in India gives the whole matter another colour. Without destroying the above interpretation, it is made to reveal a portion of its mysteries with the help of the astronomical key, and thus offers a more metaphysical rendering. The Ankh‐tie [Symbol: Horizontal oval with tail to the right] does not belong to Egypt alone. It exists under the name of Pâsha, a cord which the four‐armed Shiva holds in the hand of his right back arm.(1290) The Mahâdeva is represented in the posture of an ascetic, as Mahâyogî, with his third eye [Symbol: Vertical oval with dot in the middle], which is “the Ru [Symbol: Horizontal oval with dot in the middle], set upright on the Tau‐cross” in another form. The Pâsha is held in the hand in such a way that the first finger and hand near the thumb make the cross, or loop and crossing. Our Orientalists would have it to represent a cord to bind refractory offenders with, because, forsooth, Kâlî, Shiva’s consort, has the same as an attribute!

The Pâsha has here a double significance, as also has Shiva’s Trisûla and every other divine attribute. This dual significance lies in Shiva, for Rudra has certainly the same meaning as the Egyptian Ansated Cross in its cosmic and mystic meaning. In the hand of Shiva, the Pâsha becomes lingyonic. Shiva, as said before, is a name unknown to the _Vedas_. It is in the _White Yajur Veda_ that Rudra appears for the first time as the Great God, Mahâdeva, whose symbol is the Lingam. In the _Rig Veda_ he is called Rudra, the “howler,” the beneficent and the maleficent Deity at the same time, the Healer and the Destroyer. In the _Vishnu Purâna_, he is the God who springs from the forehead of Brahmâ, who separates into male and female, and he is the parent of the Rudras or Maruts, half of whom are brilliant and gentle, others, black and ferocious. In the _Vedas_, he is the Divine Ego aspiring to return to its pure, deific state, and at the same time that Divine Ego imprisoned in earthly form, whose fierce passions make of him the “roarer,” the “terrible.” This is well shown in the _Brihadâranyaka Upanishad_, wherein the Rudras, the progeny of Rudra, God of Fire, are called the “ten vital breaths (_prâna_, life), with the heart (_manas_), as eleventh,”(1291) whereas as Shiva, he is the _destroyer_ of that life. Brahmâ calls him Rudra, and gives him, besides, seven other names, signifying seven forms of manifestation, and also the seven powers of nature which destroy but to recreate or regenerate.

Hence the cruciform noose, or Pâsha, in the hand of Shiva, when he is represented as an ascetic, the Mahâyogin, has no phallic signification, and, indeed, it requires an imagination strongly bent in this direction to find such a signification even in an astronomical symbol. As an emblem of “door, gate, mouth, the place of outlet” it signifies the “strait gate” that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven, far more than the “birthplace” in a physiological sense.

It is a cross in a circle and Crux Ansata, truly; but it is a cross on which all the human passions have to be crucified before the Yogî passes through the “strait gate,” the narrow circle that widens into an infinite one, as soon as the Inner Man has passed the threshold.

As to the mysterious seven Rishis in the constellation of the Great Bear; if Egypt made them sacred to “the oldest genitrix, Typhon,” India has connected these symbols ages ago with Time or Yuga‐revolutions, and the Saptarshis are intimately connected with our present age‐the dark Kali Yuga.(1292) The great Circle of Time, on the face of which, Indian fancy has represented the Porpoise, or Shishumâra, has the cross placed on it by nature in its division and localization of stars, planets and constellations. In _Bhâgavata Purâna_,(1293) it is said:

At the _extremity of the tail of that animal, whose head is
directed toward the south_, and whose body is _in the shape of a
ring_ [circle], Dhruva [the ex‐pole star] is placed; _along its
tail_ are Prajâpati, Agni, Indra, Dharma, etc.; _across its loins_
the seven Rishis.(1294)

This is then the first and earliest cross and circle, formed by the Deity, symbolized by Vishnu, the Eternal Circle of Boundless Time, Kâla, on whose plane lie crossways all the Gods, creatures, and creations born in Space and Time‐who, as the Philosophy has it, all die at the Mahâpralaya.

Meanwhile it is the seven Rishis who mark the time and the duration of events in our septenary Life‐cycle. They are as mysterious as their supposed wives, the Pleiades, of whom only one‐she who hides‐has proven virtuous. The Pleiades, or Krittikâs, are the nurses of Kârttikeya, the God of War (the Mars of the Western Pagans), who is called the Commander of the Celestial Armies, or rather of the Siddhas—Siddha‐sena (translated Yogîs in Heaven, and holy Sages on the Earth)—which would make Kârttikeya identical with Michael, the “Leader of the Celestial Hosts” and, like himself, a virgin Kumâra.(1295) Verily he is the Guha, the “Mysterious One,” as much so as are the Saptarshis and the Krittikâs, the seven Rishis and the Pleiades, for the interpretation of all these combined reveal to the Adept the greatest mysteries of Occult Nature. One point is worth mention in this question of cross and circle, as it bears strongly upon the elements of Fire and Water, which play such an important part in the circle and cross symbolism. Like Mars, who is alleged by Ovid to have been born of his mother Juno alone, without the participation of a father, or like the Avatâras (Krishna, for instance)—in the West as in the East—Kârttikeya is born, but in a still more miraculous manner, begotten by neither father nor mother, but out of a seed of Rudra‐Shiva, which was cast into the Fire (Agni) and then received by the Water (Ganges). Thus he is born from Fire and Water—a “boy bright as the Sun and beautiful as the Moon.” Hence he is called Agnibhû (son of Agni) and Gangâputra (son of Ganges). Add to this the fact that the Krittikâ, his nurses, as the _Matsya Purâna_ shows, are presided over by Agni, or, in the authentic words, “the seven Rishis are on a line with the brilliant Agni,” and hence “Krittika has Âgneya as a synonym”(1296)—and the connection is easy to follow.

It is, then, the Rishis who mark the time and the periods of Kali Yuga, the age of sin and sorrow. As the _Bhâgavata Purâna_ tells us:

When the splendour of Vishnu, named Krishna, departed for heaven,
then did the Kali age, during which men delight in sin, invade the
world....

When the seven Rishis were in Maghâ, the Kali age, comprising
1,200 [divine] years [432,000 common years] began; and, when, from
Maghâ, they shall reach Pûrvâshâdhâ, then will this Kali age
attain its growth, under Nanda and his successors.(1297)

This is the revolution of the Rishis—

When the two first stars of the seven Rishis (the Great Bear) rise
in the heavens, and some lunar asterism is seen at night, at an
equal distance between them, then the seven Rishis continue
stationary in that conjunction for a hundred years,

—as a hater of Nanda makes Parâshara say. According to Bentley, it was in order to show the quantity of the precession of the equinoxes that this notion originated among the Astronomers.

This was by assuming an imaginary line, or great circle, passing
through the poles of the ecliptic and the beginning of the fixed
Maghâ, which circle was supposed to cut some of the stars in the
Great Bear.... The seven stars in the Great Bear being called the
Rishis, the circle so assumed was called the line of the Rishis;
and, being invariably fixed to the beginning of the lunar asterism
Maghâ, the precession would be noted by stating the degree, etc.,
of any movable lunar mansion cut by that line or circle, as an
index.(1298)

There has been, and there still exists, a seemingly endless controversy about the chronology of the Hindûs. Here is, however, a point that could help to determine—approximately at least—the age when the symbolism of the seven Rishis and their connection with the Pleiades began. When Kârttikeya was delivered to the Krittikâ by the Gods to be nursed, they were only six, whence Kârttikeya is represented with _six_ heads; but when the poetical fancy of the early Âryan Symbologists made of them the consorts of the seven Rishis, they were _seven_. Their names are given, and these are Amba, Dulâ, Nitatui, Abrayanti, Maghâyanti, Varshayanti, and Chupunika. There are other sets of names which differ, however. Anyhow, the seven Rishis were made to marry the seven Krittikâ before the disappearance of the seventh Pleiad. Otherwise, how could the Hindû astronomers speak of a star which no one can see without the help of the strongest telescopes? This is why, perhaps, in every such case the majority of the events described in the Hindû allegories is fixed upon as “a very recent invention, certainly _within_ the Christian era.”

The oldest Sanskrit MSS. on Astronomy begin their series of Nakshatras, the twenty‐seven lunar asterisms, with the sign of Krittikâ, and this can hardly make them earlier than 2,780 B.C. This is according to the “Vedic Calendar,” which is accepted even by the Orientalists, though they get out of the difficulty by saying that the said Calendar does not _prove_ that the Hindûs knew anything of Astronomy at that date, and assure their readers that, Calendars notwithstanding, the Indian Pandits may have acquired their knowledge of the lunar mansions headed by Krittikâ from the Phœnicians, etc. However that may be, the Pleiades are the central group of the system of sidereal symbology. They are situated in the neck of the constellation Taurus, regarded by Mädler and others, in Astronomy, as the _central group_ of the system of the Milky Way, and in the _Kabalah_ and Eastern Esotericism, as the _sidereal septenate_ born from the first manifested side of the upper triangle, the concealed [triangle]. This manifested side is Taurus, the symbol of One (the figure 1), or of the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph (א) “bull” or “ox,” whose synthesis is Ten (10), or Yod (י), the perfect letter and number. The Pleiades (Alcyone, especially), are thus considered, even in Astronomy, as the central point around which _our universe of fixed stars revolves_, the focus from which, and into which, the Divine Breath, Motion, works incessantly during the Manvantara. Hence, in the sidereal symbols of the Occult Philosophy, it is this circle with the starry cross on its face which plays the most prominent part.

The Secret Doctrine teaches us that everything in the Universe, as well as the Universe itself, is formed (“created”) during its periodical manifestations—by accelerated Motion set into activity by the Breath of the Ever‐to‐be‐unknown Power—unknown to present mankind, at any rate—within the phenomenal world. The Spirit of Life and Immortality was everywhere symbolized by a circle; hence the serpent biting its tail, represents the Circle of Wisdom in Infinity; as does the astronomical cross—the cross within a circle—and the globe, with two wings added to it, which then became the sacred Scarabæus of the Egyptians, its very name being suggestive of the secret idea attached to it. For the Scarabæus is called in the Egyptian papyri, Khopirron and Khopri from the verb _khopron_, “to become,” and has thus been made a symbol and an emblem of human life and of the successive “becomings” of man, through the various peregrinations and metempsychoses, or reïncarnations, of the liberated soul. This mystical symbol shows plainly that the Egyptians believed in reïncarnation and the successive lives and existences of the Immortal Entity. As this, however, was an Esoteric Doctrine, revealed only during the Mysteries, by the Priest‐hierophants and the King‐initiates to the Candidates, it was kept secret. The Incorporeal Intelligences (the Planetary Spirits, or Creative Powers) were always represented under the form of circles. In the primitive Philosophy of the Hierophants these _invisible_ circles were the prototypic causes and builders of all the heavenly orbs, which were their _visible_ bodies or coverings, and of which they were the souls. It was certainly a universal teaching in antiquity.(1299) As Proclus says:

Before the mathematical numbers, there are the _self‐moving_
numbers; before the figures apparent—the vital figures, and before
producing the material worlds _which move in a circle_, the
Creative Power produced the _invisible_ circles.(1300)

“_Deus enim et circulus est_,” says Pherecydes, in his Hymn to Jupiter. This was a Hermetic axiom, and Pythagoras prescribed such a circular prostration and posture during the hours of contemplation. “The devotee must approach as much as possible the form of a perfect circle,” prescribes the Secret Book. Numa tried to spread the same custom among the people, Pierius tells his readers; and Pliny says:

During our worship, we roll up, so to say, our body in a
ring—_totum corpus circumagimur_.(1301)

The Vision of the prophet Ezekiel reminds one forcibly of this mysticism of the circle, when he beheld a “whirlwind” from which came out “one _wheel_ upon the earth” whose work “_was_ as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel”—“for the spirit of the living creature _was_ in the wheels.”(1302)

“[_Spirit_] whirleth about continually, and ... returneth again according to his circuits”—says Solomon,(1303) who is made in the English _translation_ to speak of the “wind,” and in the original text to refer both to the _spirit_ and the _sun_. But the _Zohar_, the only true gloss of the Kabalistic Preacher—in explanation of this verse, which is, perhaps, rather hazy and difficult to comprehend—says:

It seems to say that the sun moves in circuits, whereas it refers
to the Spirit _under the sun_, called the Holy Spirit, that moves
circularly, toward both sides, that they [It and the sun] _should
be united in the same Essence_.(1304)

The Brâhmanical “Golden Egg,” from within which emerges Brahmâ, the Creative Deity, is the “Circle with the Central Point” of Pythagoras, and its fitting symbol. In the Secret Doctrine the concealed Unity—whether representing Parabrahman, or the “Great Extreme” of Confucius, or the Deity concealed by Phtah, the Eternal Light, or again the Jewish Ain Suph, is always found to be symbolized by a circle or the “nought” (absolute No‐ Thing and Nothing, because it is Infinite and the All); while the God‐ manifested (by its works) is referred to as the Diameter of that Circle. The symbolism of the underlying idea is thus made evident: the right line passing through the centre of a circle has, in the geometrical sense, length, but neither breadth nor thickness; it is an imaginary and feminine symbol, crossing eternity, and made to rest on the plane of existence _of the phenomenal world_. It is _dimensional_, whereas its circle is dimensionless, or, to use an algebraical term, it is the dimension of an equation. Another way of symbolizing the idea is found in the Pythagorean sacred Decad which synthesizes, in the dual numeral Ten (the one and a circle or cipher), the Absolute All manifesting itself in the Word or Generative Power of Creation.

B. The Fall Of The Cross Into Matter.

Those who would feel inclined to argue upon this Pythagorean symbol by objecting that it is not yet ascertained, so far, at what period of antiquity the nought or cipher occurs for the first time—especially in India—are referred to _Isis Unveiled_.(1305)

Admitting for argument’s sake that the ancient world was not acquainted with our modes of calculation or Arabic figures—though in reality we know it was—yet the circle and diameter idea is there to show that it was the first symbol in Cosmogony. Before the Trigrams of Fo‐hi, Yang, the unity, and Yin, the binary, explained cunningly enough by Éliphas Lévi,(1306) China had her Confucius, and her Tao‐ists. The former circumscribes the “Great Extreme” within a circle with a horizontal line across; the latter place three concentric circles beneath the great circle, while the Sung Sages showed the “Great Extreme” in an upper circle, and Heaven and Earth in two lower and smaller circles. The Yangs and the Yins are a far later invention. Plato and his school never understood the Deity otherwise, notwithstanding the many epithets applied by him to the “God over all” (ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός). Plato, having been initiated, could not believe in a personal God—a gigantic shadow of man. His epithets of “Monarch” and “Law‐ giver of the Universe” bear an abstract meaning well understood by every Occultist, who, no less than any Christian, believes in the One Law that governs the Universe, and recognizes it at the same time as immutable. As Plato says:

Beyond all _finite_ existences and _secondary_ causes, all laws,
ideas and principles, there is an Intelligence or Mind (νοῦς), the
first principle of all principles, the Supreme Idea on which all
other ideas are grounded, ... the _ultimate_ substance _from which
all things derive their being and essence_, the First and
efficient Cause of all the order, and harmony, and beauty and
excellency, and goodness, which pervade the Universe.

This Mind is called, by way of preëminence and excellence, the Supreme Good,(1307) “The God” (ὁ θεός), and the “God over all.” These words apply, as Plato himself shows, neither to the “Creator” nor to the “Father” of our modern Monotheist, but to the _Ideal_ and Abstract Cause. For, as he says: “This θεός, the God over all, _is not the truth or the intelligence_, but the Father of it,” and its Primal Cause. Is it Plato, the greatest pupil of the archaic Sages, a Sage himself, for whom there was but a single object of attainment in this life—Real Knowledge—who would have ever believed in a Deity that curses and damns men for ever, on the slightest provocation?(1308) Surely not he who considered only those to be genuine Philosophers and students of truth who possessed the knowledge of the _really‐existing_ in opposition to mere seeming; of the _always‐existing_ in opposition to the transitory: and of that which exists _permanently_ in opposition to that which waxes, wanes, and is developed and destroyed alternately.(1309) Speusippus and Xenocrates followed in his footsteps. The One, the original, had no _existence_, in the sense applied to it by mortal men. The τίμιον (the honoured) dwells in the centre as in the circumference, but it is only _the reflection_ of the Deity—the World Soul(1310)—the plane of the surface of the circle. The cross and circle are a universal conception—as old as the human mind itself. They stand foremost on the list of the long series of, so to say, international symbols, which expressed very often great scientific truths, besides their direct bearing upon psychological, and even physiological mysteries.